Process and Technology

Our technologies

SYNOVA’s technologies convert solid feedstock into a gas. The MILENA technology makes the gas, and the OLGA technology removes the tars and particles from the gas. Together, these technologies form the key of our solutions.

MILENA

The patented MILENA technology has been developed together with our R&D partner TNO. MILENA is a fluidized bed reactor and operates with steam. It cracks the feedstock and if operated on plastic-rich material, it produces a gas that is rich in light olefins. It does so by using sand as the bed material to provide very fast heating rates. It needs no pure oxygen, no catalyst, no external fuels, and no exotic materials. It operates at near atmospheric pressure and at moderate temperatures. There is no rotating equipment within the reactor. It is designed to handle contaminated feedstock containing inert materials, water, plastics, and biogenic material. MILENA is a scalable fluidized bed technology. It has similarities with FCC technologies, but is made to handle solid contaminated feedstock instead of fossil crudes. MILENA has been built and operated up to a 1.2 t/h scale.

MILENA scheme

MILENA is one of the key SYNOVA technologies in our solutions to convert waste into olefins, BTX, styrene, renewable fuels or energy.

OLGA

The patented OLGA-technology is the first cleaning unit after MILENA. It efficiently removes particles and heavy components like poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (tar) without removing valuable components from the MILENA cracker gas. OLGA provides an important degree of freedom for the MILENA cracker to operate at the temperature required to produce valuable chemicals. OLGA is a scrubbing technology that shows similarities to what is being used in steel industry for cleaning coke oven gas (COG), but is designed to avoid tar/water mixtures. OLGA units have been built and operated up to 2000 Nm3/h capacity.

OLGA scheme