fischer-tropsch fuel from wood?

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pybyr

Minister of Fire
Hearth Supporter
Jun 3, 2008
2,300
Adamant, VT 05640
This may or may not belong in the boiler room vs the "green room" but I have found that the collective horsepower of chemistry, physics, and practical experience here in the boiler room equals or exceeds any other dialogue group I've encountered-

so--

anyone know about whether anyone has fooled with trying to meld wood gasification with Fischer-Tropsch to take biomass to get liquid fuels for internal combustion reciprocating engines-especially if there's any promise of success?

see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process

for a bit of background.

thanks
 
Not that I'm aware of. As far as I remember, the process is not very efficient with currently known techniques (need a better catalyst - some interesting rumours about that). Given the inefficiency, I'd expect that there's a lot more interest in using more energy dense feedstock.

However, I assume it could work.
 
Two of our fine New England Land Grant universities are working on catalytic fast pyrolysis fuels produced from wood and biomass. They aren't exactly Fischer-Tropsch but similar.

(broken link removed to http://www.unh.edu/p2/biooil/)

UMass 'green gasoline'
 
thanks for the replies-- I get a grin out of the concept that my chainsaw and splitter and the vehicles used to drag the wood out of the woods could someday themselves be run on locally-sourced renewable liquid fuels (and not bogus ethanol) without the clutziness of wood-gas-fired engines (which obviosuly is out of the question on a chainsaw :) )
 
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