Pyromaniax: Mississippi State's SERC group, among 18 others, developing advanced biofuels from pyrolysis
Test burn of bio-oil made at Mississippi State's Sustainable Energy Research Center (SERC)
It was Julius Caesar who famously divided Gaul into three parts — he also said he’d rather be first in a village than second at Rome, and he didn’t like February very much, eventually stealing a day from February so that the month named after himself, July, could have 31 days.
All of this comes to mind while dusting snow off my jacket and listening to Bill Batchelor, who moved from the Rome of bioenergy, Iowa, to the comparative village of Starkville, Mississippi to help shape a group of scientists at Mississippi State University into the Sustainable Energy Research Center.
A major objective: an end-to-end system, based on fast pyrolysis, that would produce 1/3 renewable gasoline, 1/3 renewable diesel and 1/3 renewable jet fuel from Mississippi’s trees and waste forest biomass.
Working with an named early-stage renewable fuels developer based in Mississippi, the SERC group is now commencing development of a 10,000 square foot pilot facility that will test out the process they have been perfecting in the lab. Development of the facility, under a team led by SERC professor Phil Steele, could be finished within a year. Along with Envergent — a joint venture of UOP and Ensyn — and Dynamotive, the SERC project is at the forefront of a remarkable resurgence of pyrolysis over the past few years as an advanced biofuels processing technology aimed at drop-in renewable fuels. SERC’s advantages — high yield and an end-to-end process for creating biooil from forest products via pyrolysis, then upgrading bio-oil to drop-in renewable fuels via hydroprocessing to add more hydrogen.
Equipment at the Bio-Oil pyrolysis unit at Mississippi State's Sustainable Energy Research Center
A few years back, when reporting on field work at the Sustainable Power complex in Baytown, Texas — the hoots from a significant section of the Digest readership reverberated in skeptical comments on pyrolysis in general and the Rivera process in particular. “Pyrolysis is finished,” went the general drift of commentary from a notable number of academics and analysts eager to reeducate the Digest writers and editors. They cited the struggles of Sustainable Power and Dynamotive to develop their technologies in the harsh light afforded small-cap public companies in renewable energy.
The technology is straightforward in concept — with devil in all the details. Ground-up biomass, no more than 2 mm in size, is heated to more than 400 degrees celsius in a vacuum, which converts the biomass to a gaseous form, and in the presence of a catalyst
However, over the past two years, a remarkable resurgence of pyrolysis technologies has occurred, and the technologies have gained even more traction in DOE grants of late than some of their celebrated processing competitors such as transesterification and fermentation.
In SERC’s execution, their project is expected to be competitive with $70 oil and is based on $25 per ton biomass, although the project economics indicate that the biomass costs could be significantly higher and still meet that $70 threshold despite the public guidance given by SERC. One third renewable diesel, one third renewable gasoline, and one third renewable jet fuel — from readily available feedstocks — competitive with $70 oil. It’s a compelling offering from the Starkville team.
Here are 18 other projects of note around the world from a group that can be broadly titled the “Pyromaniax”, who have persisted in reviving an older technology into one of the hottest areas of biofuels development.
Anellotech. In Massachusetts, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst recently granted a biofuels startup company, Anellotech, exclusive global rights to the university’s catalytic fast pyrolysis technology developed by chemical engineer and UMass Amherst faculty member George Huber for producing clean, green “grassoline.” Huber will serve as chairman of Anellotech’s scientific advisory board. Anellotech will offer a low-cost, single-step process for turning forest residues and waste biomass into gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and renewable chemicals including benzene, toluene and xylenes. Nick DeCristofaro, director of the UMass Amherst Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer, said, “Huber’s new technique has been the most sought-after technology the campus has licensed to date. We’ve noted unprecedented interest from a number of quarters. Also, we salute Anellotech’s choice of David Sudolsky to lead the new firm through its next phases, including development of a pilot production plant. This is a very solid business decision.”
Anellotech said that its technology would produce commercial amounts of biofuel at price parity with gasoline by 2019. The company is developing a 2 ton per day pilot project and raising Series A venture capital. The first plant is scheduled to complete construction by 2014, according to the company’s website.
The Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (Washington, Idaho, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Tennessee) received up to $1,430,535 from the USDA, to compare the life cycle environmental and economic impacts for collecting forest residuals, short rotation crops, mixed waste, and biomass from fire risk reduction activities on federal lands for conversion to fuels via biochemical, pyrolysis and gasification systems. National estimates of biofuel production will be based on stratified biomass collection and processing implementation scenarios that can be evaluated against the Renewable Fuel Standard greenhouse gas emission objectives.
Desert Sweet Biofuels. In Arizona, Desert Sweet Biofuels will conduct a conference in Phoenix this Friday to introduce what it describes as a breakthrough in the production of algae for all algae growers. Desert Sweet CEO Rick Thompson said: “The model we are suggesting will allow high intensity algae farming to take place anywhere and not just near existing CO2 emitting facilities. We are using a combination of gasification and pyrolysis in such a way as to produce biochar (when added to the soil sequesters CO2), another byproduct is electricity. The heat from the process allows several different types of processing. The difference between closed or open systems is not important, although we are experimenting with several types of open production systems. One low cost algae production system we are currently developing is vectoring algae through Daphnia. Desert Sweet Biofuels research and production facility has the existing infrastructure to have many groups do algae research which we welcome.”
Dynamotive. In Canada, Dynamotive Energy Systems announced that it has commenced scalable production of renewable gasoline and diesel from biomass at its research facility in Waterloo Ontario through its two stage upgrading process from bio-oil. Dynamotive’s process uses a pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass to produce a bio-crude. The biocrude is then hydro-reformed to a gas-oil equivalent liquid fuel usable in stationary power and heating applications. The second-stage upgrade converts the oil into renewable transportation fuels. Dynamotive said it can deliver renewable fuels from biomass at a cost of less than $2 per gallon of “ethanol-equivalent fuel” at a volume of up to 4.5 Mgy per processing plant.
Envergent. UOP and Ensyn announce JV for fast pyrolysis energy venture to produce green gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. In New Jersey, UOP Honeywell and Ensyn announced a joint venture to commercialize Ensyn’s fast pyrolysis process for converting crop and forest residues to energy.Ensyn’s “rapid thermal-processing” technology, which heats biomass to more than 900ºF and converts it to bio-oil, a tar-like substance that can be used for home heating oil. Through development, the companies aim to refine the resulting oils to biomass-based gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. The Ensyn process, according to the company, takes less than two seconds to convert biomass to liquid in what they refer to as a “tornado of hot sand”.
UOP, which is developing biomass-based jet fuel under a contract with DARPA, said that it would contribute technology and equipment to the JV.
InfoSpi. In Florida, InfoSpi announced that it plans construction of 10 franchised facilities that will each convert 1 million used tires to bio oil, via a pyrolysis process. The venture projected that it would receive up to $400 per ton in material recovery and tipping fees for the tires. The company said that its initial facility is slated for construction in Pompano Beach. CEO Chris Hamilton noted that 300 million used tires are discarded per year, and said that his firm intends to “extract virtually all of the oil, carbon black and steel that originally went into producing the tires.”
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.
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.
QinetiQ. In the UK, QinetiQ has been awarded $2.4 million, three year contract for a PyTEC containerized Pyrolysis Waste Disposal System for the US Army. The self sustaining thermal pyrolysis system will process up to 100kg of Municipal Solid Waste per hour, and reclaims up to 500 kW of the thermal energy from the waste per hour. The system will be fully commissioned by 2012 after field testing. According to QinetiQ, “the energy recovery aspect will also significantly reduce the amount of fuel needed to support the base camp and provide associated cost savings while reducing the number of trucks on the road and freeing logistics assets for more critical mission requirements. PyTEC will enable the US Army forward operating bases to move towards being more self sufficient in the management of their waste management requirements.” The system produces 6.6 gallons of biochar per 100kg of waste.
Renewable Energy Institute International. REII’s $24 million DOE project in Toledo will produce high quality green diesel from agriculture and forest residues using advanced pyrolysis and steam reforming. The pilot plant will have the capacity to process 25 dry tons of feedstock per day.
Remediation Earth. The company’s pyrolysis process is an established commercial technology (over 15 years), and is enhanced using its patented real-time remote prognostic health monitoring (“PHM”) system. eThe company’s technology converts a wide variety of feedstocks into valuable energy products, including synthetic diesel, #2 fuel oil, transportation grade biofuels, electricity, carbon black and bio char, and H2 gas from pyro-liquids.
RTI (and ADM, ConocoPhillips, Albemarle) Biomass Energy. RTI has developed a single-step catalytic biomass pyrolysis process with high carbon conversion efficiency to produce a stable bio-crude “oil” with low oxygen content. The approach combines pyrolysis oil production, stabilization, and upgrading into one process. $3.11 million.
Sunset Ridge. In Texas, Sunrise Ridge Algae announced that it has produced and tested a one liter sample of crude bio-oil from algae. The company is working with a large refiner and refining technology licensor for further testing, and is developing plans to scale up to commercial size. Sunrise Ridge Algae uses a catalytic thermolysis process for converting low-lipid algae to crude oil with high yields. The process starts with algae containing only 4% lipid – typical of most algae grown at large scale or in open ponds. In the process, the whole algae biomass was converted to crude oil using moderate temperatures and a specialized catalyst. The bio-oil yield was approximately 25% of the original algae. The company has dubbed the product “bioleum”, and samples have been delivered to refiners and to a refining technology licensor for testing. The product is a heavy crude oil, similar to vacuum gas oil, and is similar to heavy Venezuelan crude oil except for a sulfur content of 0.22 percent compared to 2-4 percent for Venezuelan crude. The heating value of Sunrise Ridge Algae’s bioleum is 38 MJ/kg, which is similar to diesel fuel (42 MJ/kg), and almost double the value for wood pyrolysis oil which is typically around 20 MJ/kg.
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.
Tolero Energy. The University of Georgia announced that California-based Tolero Energy has licensed global rights to a fast pyrolysis technology developed by the University. The biomass is heated at carefully controlled high temperatures in the absence of oxygen, and are rapidly condensed into a bio-oil that can be added to biodiesel or petroleum diesel. Other pyrolysis by-products are gas and bio-char, which can be used as a soil amendment. Tolero CEO Chris Churchill said, “Infestations of the mountain pine beetle have devastated forests in the western United States and Canada, killing over 40 million acres of pine trees. As the trees decompose and decay, they release millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and the devastation has created a significant and dangerous fire hazard in the western forests. Harvesting dead trees and forest residue and converting them to renewable fuel and soil amendment products will help reduce the CO2 released into the atmosphere and reduce the fire danger. “The recent fire in the Los Angeles foothills,” Churchill added, “which was fueled by years of highly flammable dead biomass build-up, is a prime example of a situation where this technology can be put to use. Tolero has the capability to establish pyrolysis facilities to process the dead underbrush and convert it to a renewable fuel that is easy to transport.”
TSTO. In Florida, Henry Maclin of TSTO provided the following update regarding their Mobile Bio-Oil Plant flash pyrolysis system. “We have completed our agreement with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and with Keeneland Racing of Lexington KY. Our modular pyrolysis equipment is now containerized and will be used to reduce the disposal costs of horse muck (95% hay 5% manure) at NTRA track communities. “Our web site is here and will be updated soon to show the commercial units which are near completion now. The entrained gas flow design of John Tharpe, R & L Engineering, Albany GA, will process 24 dry ton equivalent (about 30 tons with 20% moisture) per day into about 3,000 gallons of pyrolysis liquid and 4 tons of bio char per 24 hour period.”
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”.
USDA. In Pennsylvania, Siemens Energy & Automation and the USDA Agricultural Research Service announced a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to development improvements in a fast pyrolysis process used to convert perennial grasses, animal wastes and agricultural residues such as corn stover into bio-oil. Under the agreement, Virginia’s Logical Innovations will install a Siemens SIMATIC PCS 7 Box-based control system on the fluidized bed fast pyrolysis system at the ARS Eastern Regional Research Center in Wyndmoor, currently operating at bench scale. Fast pyrolysis produces bio-oil, char, and synthetic gas from biomass. The project will commence before the end of this calendar year.
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