A Reversepowerplant for Heilbronn salt works

Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke AG is one of the most important salt producers in Europe with sites in Heilbronn, Berchtesgaden and Bad Reichenhall. On Thursday, December 7, the company celebrated the commissioning of its new SYNCRAFT reverse power plant at its headquarters in Heilbronn.

As part of its decarbonization strategy, Salzwerke is aiming to be climate-neutral by 2045. Part of this plan is the energy supply at the Heilbronn site, where a large proportion of the electricity and water supply will be sourced from the Reversepowerplant in future.

Construction of the power plant building began in October 2022 and the CW1800x2-1000 wood gasification plant was finally put into operation in December 2023. The power plant has a total output of 1000 kW of electrical energy and 1404 kW of thermal energy. It was built on the site of Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke. Equipped with three large drying bunkers, a moving floor bunker and the building section for the wood-fired power plant, the plant will generate a total of 8 million kilowatt hours of electricity and 11.2 million kilowatt hours of heating energy per year with around 8000 operating hours. This amount is enough to supply around 2000 households.

The salt works obtain the raw material from the immediate vicinity. From 16.9 tons of wood chips, 2.6 tons of valuable biochar are produced every day, which is marketed as a garden substrate by the subsidiary Carbuna AG. In total, SYNCRAFT's Reversepowerplant saves 4500 tons of_CO2 annually and permanently binds a further 2200 tons in biochar.