Hybrid-renewable processes for biofuels production: concentrated solar pyrolysis of biomass residues

Technical Report · Wed Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1172803· OSTI ID:1172803

George, Anthe ^[1]; Geier, Manfred ^[1]; Dedrick, Daniel E. ^[1]

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1. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

The viability of thermochemically-derived biofuels can be greatly enhanced by reducing the process parasitic energy loads. Integrating renewable power into biofuels production is one method by which these efficiency drains can be eliminated. There are a variety of such potentially viable "hybrid-renewable" approaches; one is to integrate concentrated solar power (CSP) to power biomass-to-liquid fuels (BTL) processes. Barriers to CSP integration into BTL processes are predominantly the lack of fundamental kinetic and mass transport data to enable appropriate systems analysis and reactor design. A novel design for the reactor has been created that can allow biomass particles to be suspended in a flow gas, and be irradiated with a simulated solar flux. Pyrolysis conditions were investigated and a comparison between solar and non-solar biomass pyrolysis was conducted in terms of product distributions and pyrolysis oil quality. A novel method was developed to analyse pyrolysis products, and investigate their stability.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1172803
• Report Number(s): SAND2014--19004R; 540652
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

09 BIOMASS FUELS