Mar
3
$15 Crude Oil? Reviewing a Report of Biomass to Fuel with Light Fact Checks
March 3, 2008 | 7 Comments
The U.S. National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and the American Chemical Society held a workshop back in June, on the 25th and 26th operated by the University of Massachusetts and chaired by George Huber. The report is titled “Breaking the Chemical and Engineering Barriers to Lignocellulosic Biofuels: Next Generation Hydrocarbon Biorefineries. The report is available in a pdf from the University of Massachusetts. 70 people participated form 24 academic institutions, 20 petroleum, chemical and biofuels companies, and 7 national laboratories. It’s required reading for everyone writing, reporting, investigating, analyzing and working close to the biofuels business. Hat tip, deep bow of thanks to Al Fin for spotting this Friday.
The report focuses on the chemical path to reforming biomass to fuel products instead of today’s hot ideas of biological systems like yeast-making ethanol. The report looks into the chemical processes, their attributes and offers recommendations for each of six directions the chemistry field is looking at.
This chart (click to see in a new page and click again to get to a big version.) (Stay With Me, its easier than it looks.) starts with biomass on the left both raw stocks such as wood, corn, and vegetable oils in a separate group at the bottom left. The groups are presented in the next step to the right – gasification, fast pyrolysis, liquefaction as strict chemical processes, pretreatment & hydrolysis, straight hydrolysis. Sugars go directly to either fermentation, APD/H, zeolite, or aqueous or S.C. reforming to make products. Where it gets interesting is the available stages that come next.
Syngas, and bio-oils can go directly to processes that yield petroleum products made from the planet’s current account. The processes, water-gas shift, MeOH synthesis, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, hydrodeoxygenation, zeolite upgrading, emulsive processes can work straight off the syngas and bio-oils. If one chooses pretreatment with hydrolysis then the options are hydrodeoxygenation, zeolite upgrading plus the Furfural track on to the aqueous phase process. Or dehydrate into esterification or hydrogenation.
There are a lot of possible yields on the right side.
The first fact check question is, “Its this doable with the land available?” Huber dives into that question in the Executive Summary with the proposition that 60% of current U.S. petroleum use could be displaced on U.S. agricultural and forestry lands at a processed cost of $15 per barrel equivalent of energy. While that seems just a claim, the land that isn’t used for food production is far more than the best food producing acreage. That fact and the prospect that the plant choices wouldn’t be limited to crops that easily can be made into ethanol or biodiesel offers that the plants with the ability to seize CO2 and form raw plant product would be widely disbursed and likely complementary to the ecosystems where grown. Huber’s thought of 60% may be high or even equally likely, low. Follow the CO2 and the H2O in the following chart:
The next question is, “The advantages are?” Bio/Chemical reformation recycles CO2. The products for sale would be essentially the same or better in quality and properties as what is for sale today, only science provided the “heat and pressure” instead of geology and millions of years. The processes can, or possibly should be small facilities spread across the country. The need for huge volumes of water is cancelled. The materials to make the products themselves are recyclable. The energy required is much smaller than the current process of making ethanol.
Fact check – “There have to be problems. It was a workshop.” That’s right, there are problems. The workshop did examine the processes and the paths to solutions. That’s the gist of the report. The current art of petroleum refining has decades of experience and development to rely on. There is every reason to understand that an accelerated effort to research and design working biomass refining would succeed with little standing to stop or derail the development. The surprise is the realization how low cost the products could be.
The report lists six direction of research and offers recommendations for each.
First up is pyrolysis or “fast pyrolysis” that offers two current problems. The process leaves a lot of oxygen in the product and the product forms as too acidic. The suggestions appear on pages 42 to 46.
Second is the issue of current petroleum refineries using biomass products. The biomass and fossil oil products are quite different and need considerable thought and research to minimize the capital costs to take biomass feedstocks for production of fuels. The report addresses these matters at page 57 to 63, however a full reading of the section is recommended: pages 50 to 63.
Third is liquid-phase catalytic processing. A lower cost method than gas-phase methods including much lower costs, liquid-phase catalysts are the early stages of research and design stage for biomass feeds. Beginning at page 66 and going to page 88 the discussion thoroughly covers the issues and offers recommendations for research that may yield quite significant results.
Fourth is catalytic conversion of syngas. We often see syngas in reports and papers and comparatively easy to get from biomass and it might be the most interesting track to follow. Perhaps one of the best if not nearly as easy to understand exploration of syngas begins on page 90. A high-grade stop at page 104 will bring one up to speed on the H2Car process, a step well worth the taking. By page 120, the reader will understand the great potential and the long and challenging list of problems to get functioning plants running. Not to overlook the likely prospect that complex plants like catalytic conversions may need to be quite large to be sound investments.
The fifth matter is process engineering and design. The organizers and participants being chemical engineers are by nature going to be looking to optimize whatever process they are working on. The report dutifully begins on page 124 to discuss the matter and over the 12 pages to 132 we are certain they are quite serious to manage the entire effort to one result, low cost fuel made at a profit. Heart warming!
The last segment is “Crosscutting Scientific Issues.” Beginning on page 134 we are introduced to the main fields that will be used in the drive to fuels sourced from biomass. They include thermodynamics, chemical reaction engineering, catalyst engineering, catalyst characterization, and computational catalysis. The recommendations starting on page 156 suggest that increasing knowledge followed by discoveries and developments in multiphase reactors would set the stage for solid gains in setting foundations under biofuel’s growth.
The report is a landmark result of untold hours of effort and thought seeking a solution for long-term fuel and petrochemical resources. While the report doesn’t say the solution is at hand, the paths to solutions are quite well thought through and understood.
Many believe that the price of oil is a disaster and in the short term for many it is a disaster. But dooming and glooming has never looked more a waste of time in finding ways and scenarios that spell peak oil or other notions that serve only to divert worthwhile resources away from productive efforts. Peak fossil oil may well be near, but it doesn’t really mean anything. Oil will be where ever people make it – and soon.
The contemporaneous moment can only serve to drive to a future of ever more low cost and abundant energy and fuels. That is a description of worthy effort. I applaud those who lent their knowledge and effort, their skill and creativity, and their commitment to working for a future that not just will solve the problems of today, but open the doors to new opportunities in the future.
On behalf of my readers and myself, thank you to the seventy people who worked on the report.
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