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Definition of IEA Bioenergy Task 42 Biorefinery is the sustainable processing of biomass into a spectrum of marketable products
Biorefinery: concepts, facilities, processes, clusters of industries Sustainable: maximising economics & social aspects, minimising
environmental impacts, fossil fuel replacement, closed cycles Processing: upstream processing, transformation, fractionation, thermo-chemical and biochemical conversion, extraction, separation, downstream processing Biomass: wood & agricultural crops, organic residues, forest residues, aquatic biomass Spectrum: multiple energy and non-energy products Marketable: Present and forecasted Products: both intermediates and final products (i.e. food, feed, materials, chemicals, fuels, power, heat) http://www.iea-bioenergy.task42-biorefineries.com/
http://www.iea-bioenergy.task42-biorefineries.com/
Cascading principle
The Biomass Value Pyramid: Biomass holds potentials for being converted into also higher level value chains. Combustion for production of heat and electricity gives the lowest value only, while production of biomass based fuel, fine chemicals, functional biomaterials, feed and food ingredients give higher value.
Biorefinery
Classification: the 4 features to characterise a biorefinery system IEA Bioenergy Task 42 1. Platforms 2. Products
Biorefinery
3. Feedstocks 4. Processes
Platforms
Platforms can be intermediate products towards products or linkages between different biorefinery concepts or final products Dominant platforms for biobased chemicals C6 Sugar platform Plant-based oil platform
Source. IEA-Bioenergy task 42
1-platform (oil) biorefinery using oilseed crops for biodiesel, glycering and feed via pressing, esterification and distillation Source. IEA-Bioenergy task 42
2G Ethanol refinery
1. Parts of each feedstock, e.g. crop residues, 3. Biomass upgrading includes any one of the densitication could also be used in other routes processes (pelletisation, pyrolysis, torrefaction, etc.) 2. Each route also gives co-products 4. AD = Anaerobic Digestion
Thermochemical value-chains
Biological value-chains
Thermo-chemical processes
Thermo-chemical conversion processes are sub-processes in a biorefinery, which aim to convert raw materials to a uniform intermediate product which can be further processed into a final value-added product using biochemical, catalytic or thermal methods. Thermo-chemical biomass conversion processes can be broadly classified as torrefaction, pyrolysis, gasification, hydrothermal liquefaction Combustion processes are applied for power, heat or combined heat and power (CHP) production.
Torrefaction
Torrefaction is a thermal process which operates at temperatures between 200 and 300C in the absence of oxygen. In general, torrefaction is combined with pelletisation, giving torrefied pellets (TO P) as the end product. Biomass is dried and partly decomposed to give a grindable, hydrophobic solid with high energy value. More like a pre-treatment than a conversion technology suitable for small scale
TORREFACTION
Fuel characteristics
BIOMASS PYROLYSIS
Pyrolysis is the thermal decomposition of biomass occurring in the absence of oxygen (anaerobic environment) that produces a solid (charcoal), a liquid (pyrolysis oil or bio-oil) and a gas product. The relative amounts of the three co-products depend on the operating temperature and the residence time used in the process. High heating rates of the biomass feedstocks at moderate temperatures (450C to 550C) result in oxygenated oils as the major products (70 to 80%), with the remainder split between a biochar and gases. Slow pyrolysis (also known as carbonization) is practiced throughout the world, for the production of charcoal. Fast Pyrolysis and flash pyrolysis are more advanced technologies and still under development.
FAST PYROLYSIS
Rapid thermal decomposition of organic compounds in the absence of oxygen to produce liquids, char, and gas Dry feedstock: <10% Small particles: <3 mm Short residence times: 0.5 -2 s Moderate temperatures (400-500 oC) Typical yields Oil: 60 -70% (can be used as substitute of heavy oil or in diesel engines) Char: 12 -15% Gas: 13 -25%
Pyrolysis
Use of various wood feedstocks has been demonstrated at a pilot scale. Many lignocellulosic biomass types (including agricultural wastes like straw, food processing residues etc.) may also be used as feedstocks, but some of them are more challenging to use than wood A number of fast pyrolysis technologies are all currently at various stages of development. Most processes employ fluidised- bed reactors, although other systems have also been designed.
The largest existing commercial-scale units are used to produce chemicals for the food flavouring industry. However, these units would only be considered pilot-scale for fuel production.
Pyrolysis applications
Pyrolysis oil can be utilised in a large number of applications, which can be divided in four main groups being heat, power, transport fuels and chemicals. Pyrolysis oil combustion in a boiler or furnace for heat is the most simple and straightforward application. Pyrolysis oil can replace both heavy and light fuel oils in industrial boiler applications. Pyrolysis oil co-combustion in an industrial, natural gas-fired power plant has been successfully demonstrated. Diesel engines and gas turbines for power production have been tested on pyrolysis oil, but some development is still required. Commercially available engines and/or gas turbines are stated to become available within several years. Transport fuels can be derived from pyrolysis oil either by direct upgrading or by gasification combined with gas-to-liquid synthesis to produce Methanol, FischerTropsch diesel or DME. Potentially high-value chemicals can be extracted like adhesives for wood, preservatives, browning/flavouring of food and more. Economic attractive recovery of chemicals from pyrolysis oil needs further development.
BTG constructed a 5 tonne/day pilot pyrolysis unit in early 2000. Shortly after, a 50 tonne/day semi-commercial plant was built in Genting Malaysia.
ROADMAP - PYROLYSIS
GASIFICATION Gasification is a high temperature (>700C) conversion of solid, carbonaceous fuels into combustible product gas which is used commercially in heat, power and CHP production. The gaseous intermediate fuel, consisting primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which can be used for the production of heat, power, liquid fuels, and chemicals.
The gas made in this process is cleaned and processed to form a so-called syngas, whose composition can be controlled. The importance of this technology lies in the fact that it can take advantage of advanced turbine designs and heatrecovery steam generators to achieve high energy efficiency.
GASIFICATION FOR BIOREFINERIES Since several decades biomass gasification offers the perspective of resourceefficient production of energy and co-products in poly-generation systems. More recently, biomass gasification has come to be seen as a central part of integrated biorefineries. The shift in interest to integrated biorefineries has led to an associated shift in the targeted application of the synthesis gas that is produced in biomass gasification. Pure syngas is the building block for organic chemistry, and in principle all products now being produced from fossil fuels can also be produced from syngas made from renewable biomass. Therefore, biomass gasification is becoming less focused on energy production but more on the production of high-added value products including transportation fuels, chemicals, Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG), etc.
The conversion of biomass in gasification processes is often combined with pyrolysis, combustion or both like in multi-stage gasifcation concepts. In these concepts, the gasification, pyrolysis and/or combustion processes are physically separated. Combined effect of the amount air supplied to the wood and the 3 Ts (temperature, turbulence and time). To explain and predict the gas composition an equivalence ratio is introduced. This is the amount of oxygen used relative to the amount required for complete combustion. The exact amount of air needed for complete conversion of wood to carbondioxide and water is called the stochiometric air.
Source: H.Knoef BE-Sustainable issue 1
Producergas cleaning
Syngas from biomass gasification is used for power production and synthesis of fuels and commodity chemicals. Impurities in gasification feedstocks, especially sulfur, nitrogen, chlorine, and ash, often find their way into syngas and can interfere with downstream applications. Incomplete gasification can also produce undesirable products in the syngas in the form of tar and particulate char. Several technologies for removing contaminants from syngas are available and are classified according to the gas temperature exiting the cleanup device: hot (T > 300oC), cold (T < ~100oC), and warm gas cleaning regimes. Cold gas cleanup uses relatively mature techniques that are highly effective although they often generate waste water streams and may suffer from energy inefficiencies. The majority of these techniques are based on using wet scrubbers.
Producergas utilization
Biological value-chains