Biofuels and Bioenergy

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Bio-fuels and Bio-energy

• How do we fit this

into this
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What are bio-fuels?
Bio-fuels are liquid fuels for transportation or
industry that are produced from biomass.
So what is biomass?
Biomass is any organic material that is living or
at one time was living. Technically, you are
biomass!
Wood Waste
Agricultural
Energy Crops
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Recently, a number of bio-fuels have been in the
news.
Fuel
Use
Production
Ethanol

• Blended with gasoline up to 85
• Used in spark engine with minor modifications

• Fermentation of starchy or sugary biomass
• Gasification and catalytic synthesis of woody
  biomass

Bio-diesel

• Blended with mineral diesel or pure bio-diesel
• Used in diesel engines with minor modifications

• Transesterification of vegetable oils
• Requires 10 by mass alcohol (methanol or ethanol)

Methanol

• Used in spark engines with minor modifications

• Gasification and catalytic synthesis of woody
  biomass

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Why do we care about bio-fuels?
Answer 1 Energy Security
We consumes a lot of foreign oil

• The US consumes 20.25 million barrels of oil each
  day

• The US consumes much more oil than it produces.
  We import more than 50 of the oil we consume,
  11.8 millions barrels each day

and the transportation sector runs on oil.

• 66 of oil consumed (13.6 million barrels each
  day) are used by the transportation sector (cars,
  trucks, air planes, motorcycles, etc.)

• 98 of all energy consumed by the transportation
  sector is oil!

Bio-fuels cant eliminate our dependence on
foreign oil, but they can help.
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Why do we care about bio-fuels?
Answer 2 Climate Change
Production and use of bio-fuels does not generate
greenhouse gases
Growth of biomass consumes same amount of CO2
Biomass harvested and brought to bio-fuel plant
Driving emits CO2
Lifecycle is carbon neutral
Bio-fuel used in cars
Bio-fuel produced
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Why do we care about bio-fuels?
Answer 3 Local Resources
Washington State has abundant locally available
feedstocks for the production of bio-fuels
Wood Waste for Ethanol and Methanol
Oil Crops (e.g. canola) for Bio-diesel
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Why do we care about bio-fuels?
Answer 4 Price
Price of gasoline and diesel continues to rise
due to tightness in global oil supplies.
Bio-fuels could relieve some market pressure.
Gasoline Price (cents/gallon)
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The Energy and Environmental Combustion lab has
been studying a number of bio-fuel issues

• Bio-fuels from forest thinnings
• Technology challenges to production of bio-fuels
  from forest thinnings
• Economics of production and logistics

• Vashon Island energy independence
• Assessed biomass resource on island
• Selection of candidate technologies for
  conversion to heat and power

• Pyrolysis oil combustion studies
• Development of atomizer for clean combustion of
  heavy pyrolysis oils
• Pyrolysis oil is a promising non-transportation
  bio-fuel

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Production of bio-fuels from wood waste is of
particular interest, but is a complex process!
Methanol Production from Wood Waste
Legend
Solid Phase
Power
Power
Flue Gas
Power, Heat
Gas Phase
Liquid Phase
Drying
Coarse Sizing
Gasifier
Gasification
Primary Path
Diesel Fuel
Heat
Input or Secondary Path
Aux. Power Generation
Pile Burner
Dirty Syngas
Power
Catalyst
Power
Water
Wet Gas Cleaning (100oC)
Gas Cleaning
Catalytic Tar Cracking
Syngas Compression
Bag Filtration (350oC)
Multi-cyclone
Particulate gt 5µm
Particulate gt 2µm, Alkali Metals
Residual Contaminants, Waste Water
Clean Syngas
Steam
Power
Steam
Power
Purge Gas
Power
Power Generation
Heat
Methanol Synthesis
Methanol Synthesis (260oC)
Steam Reformer (890oC)
Water-Gas Shift (330oC)
CO2 Removal (127oC)
Methanol
CO2, Acid Gasses
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The process works, but has a serious economic
problem
Lots of Equipment
Long Lifetime
Large Facility (1000 tons wood/day)

• High temperatures and pressures require heavy
  reaction vessels
• Complex, multi-stage process

• Large facility needed to bring down unit costs of
  equipment (economies of scale)
• Cost to construct a facility will initially be
  very high

• Facility needs to operate for at least fifteen
  (preferably more than twenty) years to justify
  the high construction cost

None of these are economic showstoppers. Power
plants, refineries, etc. for fossil fuels all
require economies of scale.
for a long time
without spending a lot of this?
But can we get a lot of this
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Bio-fuel production is dependent on the
availability of low-cost feedstock
Wood waste has very low density
Economic Collection Radius
Increasing distance or cost

• More expensive, nearby waste
• More distant, cheap waste
• Marginal economics for production of methanol

Transporting wood waste long distances is
uneconomic

• Distant or expensive waste
• Unprofitable production of methanol

• Cheap, nearby wood waste
• Profitable production of methanol

Usually, not enough nearby or low-cost wood to
operate profitably
Methanol production facility
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So if the waste cant be brought to the facility,
can the facility be brought to the waste?
Small Modular Biopower Systems
Go to the source and produce higher density,
higher value bio-fuels on site?

• Maybe for electricity generation, but not for
  methanol
• Pressures and temperatures required make
  mobilization difficult
• Amount of equipment required means huge penalties
  for severe downsizing

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But there may be another way around the problem
using bio-fuel intermediates
What do you mean by an intermediate?
Convert wood waste to a high density fuel but
not necessarily a high-value fuel
Whats the point of making an intermediate?
High density fuel could be transported to
centralized plant at much lower cost than wood
waste
What happens to the intermediate?
At the centralized plant, upgraded to high-value
bio-fuel using complex process
What processes are suitable for making
intermediates?
Low cost, mobile, modular process producing a
high-density fuel
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An example of this would be production of
pyrolysis oil and then upgrading to methanol
Economics unproven in practice, but seem much
more promising than other approaches
1. Logging operations generate wood waste in the
forest
Logging Operation
Forested Area

• 2. Wood waste gathered in the forest and
  converted to pyrolysis oil
• Pyrolysis oil production is relatively low cost
• Moderate temperature and atmospheric pressure
• Produces a low-value, but high density liquid fuel

Logging Road

• 3. Pyrolysis oil from many forests brought to
  centralized plant for methanol production
• Allows large-scale plant without feedstock
  logistics problems
• Low-value feedstock converted to high-value fuel

Major Road
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Also opens the door for bio-refining
recovering high-value chemicals from biomass
Say someone gives you a pile of gold, silver, and
copper coins that have been glued together. Do
you
A) Melt down the entire pile and sell it as scrap
metal?
B) Find some glue solvent and separate the gold
and silver?
When we produce bio-fuels from wood waste, we
choose Option A. Smart, eh?
Bio-refining is Option B. Wood naturally
contains small quantities of expensive chemicals.
Bio-refining needs even more equipment than
methanol production, so need even more feedstock!
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Bio-fuel intermediates could open the door for
high-value bio-refining of Washington states
unused wood waste
Thank you