Torrefied biomass to switch coal and oil

In February, the Estonian-based startup New Usual Oil effectively commissioned their first industrial-scale prototype for drying and torrefaction of biogenic feedstock running with superheated steam at atmospheric drive. The energy-efficient procedure used to be advanced on the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart, Germany, and produces precious uncooked fabrics for the chemical and effort industries: elementary chemical compounds, biocoal and water.

Plant biomass is thought of as a climate-friendly selection to fossil uncooked fabrics. For subject matter and chemical use, renewable uncooked fabrics and residual subject matter streams from agriculture and forestry or downstream industries are in lots of circumstances transformed by way of biotechnological or chemical conversion processes into particular chemical compounds, equivalent to sugars or polymer development blocks.

A distinct way, which permits biomass for use totally in one procedure, is being pursued via the startup New Usual Oil from Estonia: It is dependent upon the thermal refinement and fractionation of biogenic residues equivalent to wooden and hay with the intention to convert them into “inexperienced” chemical compounds and “inexperienced” coal with out leaving any residues.

That is made conceivable via a procedure advanced on the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart, Germany, as much as pilot scale, during which biomass is heated in a closed surroundings of superheated steam with out oxygen and thereby torrefied, i.e. thermochemically degraded.

Torrefaction supplies inexperienced chemical compounds and inexperienced coal

“Now we have been operating with New Usual Oil during the last few years and are taking a look ahead to partnering with the Estonian startup corporate as an international licensee for our technology in value-added torrefaction of biomass with superheated steam at atmospheric drive and valorization of the chemical compounds,” says Dr.-Ing. Antoine Dalibard of Fraunhofer IGB.

The torrefaction procedure works in a similar fashion to delicate pyrolysis and follows a drying step during which the water sure within the biomass evaporates. “In the similar plant, at temperatures between 200 and 300 levels Celsius, we then expel the risky elements within the biomass, which originate basically from hemicellulose, one of the crucial 3 major elements of biomass,” explains the thermal separation era professional.

One of the most key benefits of the method arises from the particular design of the superheated steam drying device. “Along with evaporated water, the gasoline segment additionally comprises precious risky compounds. By way of cooling down the gaseous segment, we download a condensate that we will be able to separate into more than a few platform chemical compounds the use of next separation processes equivalent to distillation, extraction or electrodialysis,” Dalibard explains.

The engineer has additional advanced and scaled up the method at Fraunhofer IGB and in addition investigated conceivable downstream processes for including cost to the chemical compounds condensed.

What stays as a forged is the torrefied biomass, which can also be observed as biocoal. In comparison to untreated biomass, its carbon content material and thus its explicit calorific cost is considerably larger. Milled into powder or compressed into pellets, the “inexperienced” coal can be utilized, for instance, for climate-neutral firing of energy vegetation and change fossil coal or gasoline.

Huge-scale prototype for a zero-emission calories and carbon economic system

“Confronted with calories costs rallying and effort safety at an rock bottom, now we have invested on this procedure aiming to make a neighborhood blank and carbon-neutral calories provide a truth with our ‘Uniformer’ era, as we named it,” says Sven Papp, one of the crucial 4 co-founders of New Usual Oil.

In February 2023, the startup introduced its first industrial-scale prototype in Paldiski, Estonia, to transform fast-growing biomass and more than a few low-quality biomass combinations into water, inexperienced chemical compounds and biocoal within the established cascade strategy of drying and torrefaction. The younger corporate even plans to make use of the waste warmth bobbing up within the procedure for feeding into the heating community.

“Our Uniformer prototype can procedure as much as 150 kilograms of biomass in keeping with hour and is already generating one hundred pc marketable merchandise from woodchips and non-feed hay: biocoal as a forged brown coal-level biofuel, renewable chemical compounds equivalent to methanol, furfurals and different chemical compounds, moreover desalinated water in addition to the method warmth,” Sven Papp confirms the Fraunhofer IGB effects.

Biocoal can change wooden pellets or gasoline for mixed warmth and gear (CHP) technology. A plus for calories safety and grid balance: Electrical energy from CHP methods is dispatchable and can also be generated on call for at night time or all over calm sessions when the solar and wind fail to ship sufficiently.

“With the assistance of this new cutting edge way we calculate that costs for dispatchable renewable electrical energy from biocoal may just also be less than that of land-based wind energy,” Papp continues. The founders are positive and are in the meantime getting ready to commercialize their first Uniformer vegetation for the Ecu marketplace.

Equipped via
Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB