ANDRITZ Inc. has signed an agreement with Bolton-Emerson Americas, LLC giving ANDRITZ exclusive rights to market and sell the Tornado Pulper for solid and liquid fuel applications, as well as biochemical processes. The Tornado Pulper is Bolton-Emerson’s unique technology for preparing non-wood feedstocks (annual fibers, plants, and residues) so that they can be further treated with ANDRITZ technologies for conversion into renewable solid and liquid fuels or biochemicals.

Unlike traditional pulpers found in the pulp and paper industry, ANDRITZ explains that the Tornado Pulper has a side-mounted assembly with replaceable grinding segments to simultaneously wash and chop incoming raw materials and resize them into a uniform slurry. The Tornado Pulper has been proven on difficult-to-process materials such as kenaf, hemp, flax, sugarcane bagasse, cereal straw, and others. The Tornado Pulper can also resize woody materials such as forest waste, waste wood, bamboo, and giant reeds into uniform slurries.

ANDRITZ supplies advanced pre-treatment technologies for biofuel production. The company says these technologies are well-proven in other industrial processes and, through extensive R&D, have been modified by ANDRITZ to satisfy the requirements for biofuel and biochemical producers.