Biofuels Digest Special Report on Gasification & Pyrolysis

pyrolysis For those newer to the biofuels development story, they are mysterious both as words and technologies. But others know that they are increasingly seen as key technologies in a national energy solution, underpinning the commercial prospects of companies such as Coskata, Enerkem and Range Fuels.

This special Biofuels Digest issue focuses on the latest news from the hottest companies in the field, and how they are using gasification and pyrolysis to unlock maximum yields from algae, waste and a host of other conventional and advanced biomass feedstocks.

To put some scale behind this technology, researchers at Purdue University recently proposed a new gasification model to produce alternative fuels, hydrogen and electricity from municipal solid wastes, agricultural and forest residues. The research team found that a pre-processing of wastes and residues, followed by Fischer-Tropsch gasification, could replace as much as 20 percent of US fuel supply from 1.3 million tonnes of residues.

US

Range Fuels. The company uses a gasification-to-ethanol process to convert wood chips to cellulosic ethanol. Earlier this year, Range announced that it secured an $80 million loan guarantee through USDA that will contribute towards financing of its 100 Mgy wood-waste cellulosic ethanol plant. The plant was scheduled to open in early 2009, but there have been delays, and the plant will now open in 2010. Range previously had raised more than $100 million in venture capital in 2008, and obtained a $76 million grant from the Department of Energy for the plant’s construction.

Last November, founder Mitch Mandich stepped down after ,raising $180 million in debt guarantees and equity . His successor: David Aldous, former EVP of Strategy and Portfolio for Shell.

The company has a pilot plant in operation in Denver. According to the company, the “technology has been tested and proven in bench and pilot-scale units for over eight years. Over 15,000 hours of testing has been completed on over 30 different non-food feedstocks with varying moisture contents and sizes, including wood waste, olive pits, and more.”

Coskata. Last December, Coskata was ranked #1 on the Biofuels Digest “Hottest 50 Companies in Bioenergy”, nearing an historic deal to build a 100 Mgy cellulosic ethanol plant based on gasification of sugarcane bagasse. The deal has not been finalized, but would require one million tons of biomass from 32,500 acres. That’s 51 square miles, or the area within 4 miles of a 100 million gallon refinery. Coskata also revealed plans to Australian media for a 53 Mgy advanced biofuels plant in Victoria, and was seeking a partnership.

Ze-Gen. Ze-Gen is based in Massachusetts with a syngas facility using biomass as a feedstock of the gasification process. The company is using wood debris and other solid waste streams as feedstocks, utilizing steel industry techniques to generate the high temperatures for gasification. The demonstration scale facility is processing up to one ton of waste per hour, while a full scale plant would process up to 30 tons per hour. Last month, the company announced that it has raised $20 million in Series B funding from Omaz Zawawi Establishment, Flagship Ventures, VantagePoint Venture Partners and the Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation. The company said that it can create syngas from construction and municipal waste at a price of $6 per million BTUs.

The company’s process involves dropping waste into superheated liquid iron, which frees hydrocarbons and breaks them into a syngas of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

Sustainable Power. Sustainable Power first was profiled in the Digest in January 2008, when the company was first testing algal biomass for its fast pyrolysis process that uses nanobacteria as catalysts and aims to license operators in Europe and Asia this year. The company’s “Rivera Porcess” acts like a time machine, converting biomass into syngas, bio-oil and biochar over a period of seconds, mimicking the geological process by which biomass is converted into fossil fuels. Biocrude offers substantial promise not only for its use of low-impact, sustainable. carbon-neutral feedstocks, but because it can use the existing refining, marketing and distribution system of the petroleum industry.

For that reason, biocrude has become an increasingly favored biofuel not only among policymakers and investors, but among the major oil companies. Shell Oil and Chevron have both commenced biocrude development, and companies such as LS9, UOP, Syntroleum and the LiveFuels consortium have firmly entrenched themselves as the second wave of biocrude development, behind Sustainable Power.

Ineos. Ineos and Bioengineering Resources said that they will have a commercial-scale municipal wate-to-ethanol plant operational by 2011. Bioengineering Resources is now running a 40,000 gallon per year pilot plant in Fayetteville, while Ineos said that waste conversion is cost competitive with other ethanol production techniques, and is generating 105 gallons per ton of waste.

International:

Enerkem. Canada’s Enerkem has commenced start-up of its waste-to-biofuels plant in Westbury, Quebec. Construction commenced on the project in October 2007 and was completed in December 2008. The plant will produce 1.3 Mgy of ethanol from used electricity poles. The company said it has achieved commercially sustainable production rates of 95 gallons per ton of waste biomass.

The city of Edmonton has also announced a plant to convert 30 percent of their solid waste stream to ethanol, in partnership with Greenfield Ethanol and Enerkem. The Enerkem process converts dried solid waste into syngas, which is converted into ethanol in a catalytic reactor.

Dynamotive. Dynamotive Energy Systems will launch a pyrolysis plant in Henan provinvce in partnership with Great China New Energy Technology Services. Hubei Xinda Bio-Oil Technology is developing the new plant. The Chinese companies suggested an initial capacity of 6-10 Mgy in capacity for each pyrolysis facility. Dynamotive, under the agreement, will receive $2.3 million in technical support fees.

W2 Energy. W2 Energy announced that it will convert municipal solidwaste, tires, agricultural waste, human waste and coal into renewable electricity and syndiesel. The company, which uses a plasma-assisted biomass to energy process, is also seeking to use jatropha oil and algae as feedstocks.

According to the company: “The W2 Energy technology creates liquid fuels and waxes in approximately the following proportions. These proportions may shift somewhat based on the constituent molecules in the feedstock.

* 1 ton plastics, tires or solid waste: 100 gallons

* 1 ton coal: 131 gallons

* 1 ton animal or human waste: 66 gallons

Proportions vary based on hydrocarbons available in feedstock. W2 Energy’s catalytic technology can produce 80 grams of C5+ liquid hydrocarbons from 1 cubic meter of synthesis gas. W2 Energy’s gas-to-liquid catalyst produces liquid hydrocarbons in the following percentages by weight:

* CH4 (methane) – 11%

* C2-C4 (LPG) – 10%

* C5-C10 (Gasoline) – 27%

* C11-C20 (Diesel) – 31%

* C21+ (industrial waxes) – 21%”

Choren Industries. Germany’s Choren opened a 5 Mgy biomass-to-liquid plant. The company said it would take up to 18 months to reach full productivity at the plant. The Carbo V process is a gasification process in which biomass is gasified at high heat, and carbon monoxide and hydrogen are converted into synthetic diesel fuel. Meanwhile, Choren is studying the construction of a 71 Mgy commercial scale plant in Brandenburg. Meanwhile, Choren Industries and Norske Skog will JV on the potential for an advanced biofuels plant using wood biomass as feedstock for a synthetic biofuels process. Choren said that it hopes to increase capacity at that plant to commercial scale of 71 Mgy.

Research:

KIT, Lurgi. Researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed a $2.49 biofuel by using pyrolysis on wood waste and straw. The bioliq, produced by heating plant material in a vacuum at 500 degrees C, is then gasified, heated to 1400 degrees C, and catalytically converted into synthetic diesel, hydrogen or methanol fuel. KIT said that they will construct a pilot plant that will open in 2012, and have established an economic model with a production forecast of 272 Mgy.

Iowa State. Two Iowa State research teams have received $11.81 million from the Iowa Power Fund, USDA and the Department of Energy. One team received a $2.37 million grant from the Iowa Power Fund, to replace natural gas in ethanol projects with heat and power produced from biomass using gasification technologies. The second grant, $944,000 from USDA and the DOE, will support a project at Iowa State using fast pyrolysis, gasification and nanotechnology, to produce ethanol. Among improvements: new catalysts are solid nanospheres with honeycomb channels, loaded with a metallic catalyst and other species.

UK Carbon Trust. The Carbon Trust has pledged $10 million to fund pyrolysis projects. Pyrolysis is the chemical decomposition of organic materials by heating in the absence of oxygen or other reagents. Meanwhile, teams at Australia’s CSIRO and Monash University recently announced a new process for producing what it termed a “concentrated biocrude”.

Policy:

At the UN, the Climate Change panel is focusing on biochar. Panelists at the UN Climate Change meeting in Poznan advocated biochar, produced from biomass via a fast pyrolysis process that also yields gas and renewable fuel oils.

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Biofuels Digest Special Report on Gasification & Pyrolysis

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