Woody biomass conversion to gasoline

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semipro

semipro

Minister of Fire
Hearth Supporter
Jan 12, 2009
4,353
SW Virginia
Interesting.

http://energy.gov/eere/articles/woody-biomass-converted-gasoline-five-company-team

An international consortium of five companies and organizations came together in a joint effort to transform woody biomass, including trees and wood waste, into a gasoline product suitable for use in today’s automobiles. Through their collaborative efforts, Haldor Topsoe, The Gas Technology Institute, Andritz Oy, UPM-Kymmene Corporation, and Phillips 66 succeeded in producing more than 10,000 gallons of gasoline. This gasoline passed the engine emission test for registration as a transportation fuel by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
 
Not really surprising. Sounds like some partial pyrolysis to syngas front-end, followed by a new process to make gasoline. As i understand it, diesel is easier.
In the end, biofuels are not a technical issue...they're a cost issue and a land-use issue.
 
The germans came up with the Fischer Tropschs process years ago. Unfortunately as the previous poster comments its the cost and the density of the available fuel that is an issue. Petroleum is basically millions of years of wood that is compressed into a very dense energy rich fuel.

The only possible place it makes sense is to take a waste stream of no value and convert it in to fuel rather than burying the waste in a landfill
 
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Or you can make pyrolysis gas (i.e. wood gas), convert it to whatever fuel you like, and then bury the charcoal to make carbon-negative bio-mass fuels. In other words, rebuild the coal beds as a form of energy positive geo-engineering. Probably makes sense to stop burning the actual coal first. :rolleyes:
 
woodgeek said:
Or you can make pyrolysis gas (i.e. wood gas), convert it to whatever fuel you like, and then bury the charcoal to make carbon-negative bio-mass fuels.
Click to expand...

I expect if a carbon credit market forms in the US that entrepreneurs will be jumping on that band wagon. To make it even more green, they will take hard to treat organic wastes like chicken crap and mix it in with the charcoal to form terra preta.
 
A distant relative is working on a similar concept. He's an engineer by trade, but a farmer by birth. His original idea was to pyrolyze straw into syngas, and use the Fischer-Tropsch process to make diesel for the tractors. That turned out to be more ambitious than he had the resources for.

He's now testing a prototype that burns the syngas in a modified generator to power their center pivot irrigation pumps. The connection fee the electric company charges for these pumps, since their use is seasonal, is apparently pretty steep, and in wheat country, straw is cheap. It's still in development though, and entrepreneurs aren't exactly jumping in to help fund him. His target customer - farmers - aren't exactly known for having lots of spare cash to invest in unproven technologies that, if they aren't reliable, will leave their livelihoods withering in the summer heat.

At the same time, he's investigating using the biochar left over from the pyrolysis as a soil amendment. Supposedly he sees good results from that, although he's still testing it.

I'm not sure if this is his company's site, or another company working on the same basic idea:
http://agenergy-solutions.com/renewable-electricity-system/
 
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I would like to know more about the hardware they are using. Not sure if AG Energy is vaporware or actually past the prototype phase. Checking now.

I've been following biochar pretty closely for the past year to the point of testing it with various inoculants. There is a large variance depending on the fertilizer amendment and the cellular structure of the source of biochar. Very interesting stuff. Locally we are interested in a community sized system for wood conversion into biochar. Most of the systems appear to use a lot of the syngas produced to maintain the process.
 
Since the guy at Ag Energy is a distant relative (I'm pretty sure I've got the right company), I've gotten all of my info on it second hand through a closer relative (our Christmas dinner conversations tend to be pretty nerdy). If you need more detailed info, it would probably be best to contact them to discuss whether a wood-fueled version is feasible on whatever kind of scale you'd be interested in - I'm sure it's significantly larger than what a single home could or would want to use.

The last I heard, it sounded like they were testing and refining prototypes of the various subsystems (gassifier, generator, fuel feed, biochar removal, etc), and had an early prototype of the whole thing either early in testing, or almost ready to start testing.

I haven't heard anything said yet about combined heat and power, but that doesn't mean it's not possible down the road. In eastern Washington in the summer when farmers are irrigating, heat is not a useful byproduct, but obviously it is in the winter when I'm sure you're interested in using it.

Also, I think I've posted this unrelated link elsewhere in the Hearth forums, but in case not, you'll probably find it interesting:
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20130328/NEWS01/703289947
 
The gas I am told, is mostly used to create heat to dry feedstock and maintain the correct temp for pyrolysis. This varies with the stock. Most of my experience so far has been with wood chips. Straw could be another animal entirely. This is one unit we are following.
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Probably we should not be burning anything. Solar or wind power charging an electric car does not burn anything.
 
Converting waste biomass to sequestrable carbon (biochar) as a soil amendment can be a carbon negative process that is beneficial, particularly if it is part of soil building cycle instead of the ubiquitous soil depletion cycle of modern agriculture.
 
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