Biomass Direct Liquefaction Options: TechnoEconomic and Life Cycle Assessment

Technical Report · Thu Jul 31 04:00:00 EDT 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1184983· OSTI ID:1184983

Tews, Iva J. ^[1]; Zhu, Yunhua ^[1]; Drennan, Corinne ^[1]; Elliott, Douglas C. ^[1]; Snowden-Swan, Lesley J. ^[1]; Onarheim, Kristin ^[2]; Solantausta, Yrjo ^[2]; Beckman, David ^[3]

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1. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
2. VTT Technical Research Center of Finland (Finland)
3. Zeton, Burlington, ON (Canada)

The purpose of this work was to assess the competitiveness of two biomass to transportation fuel processing routes, which were under development in Finland, the U.S. and elsewhere. Concepts included fast pyrolysis (FP), and hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), both followed by hydrodeoxygenation, and final product refining. This work was carried out as a collaboration between VTT (Finland), and PNNL (USA). The public funding agents for the work were Tekes in Finland and the Bioenergy Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy. The effort was proposed as an update of the earlier comparative technoeconomic assessment performed by the IEA Bioenergy Direct Biomass Liquefaction Task in the 1980s. New developments in HTL and the upgrading of the HTL biocrude product triggered the interest in reinvestigating this comparison of these biomass liquefaction processes. In addition, developments in FP bio-oil upgrading had provided additional definition of this process option, which could provide an interesting comparison.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1184983
• Report Number(s): PNNL--23579; BM0101010
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

09 BIOMASS FUELS
bio-oil
biocrude
biomass
catalysis
hydrotreating
liquefaction
pyrolysis