ENERGY

Bio oil may be fired directly in existing power boilers to produce renewable electricity [with little or no modifications].

It can be fired by itself or co-fired with oil, gas or coal.

It requires specialized nozzles for injection into boilers (similar to coal)  with some conditioning it will be useable in gas turbines.

It is virtually free of sulfur and metals and therefore does not generate sulfur dioxide or atmospheric mercury which are serious environmental problems for coal fired plants in particular.

The driving factor for growth is renewable electricity mandates for Europe and the United States .  The EU has set a target for 22% of electricity to be renewable by 2010.  It is up to the individual countries to establish the programs to accomplish this objective.

The total renewable electricity for the EU is forecasted to be 545 terawatt hours by 2010.  Of this total 11% is expected to be from biomass.  This amount would require about 33,000,000 dry tons of biomass fuel.  The biomass generation capacity would be about 7100 MW and the first Peruvian production unit could supply about 50 MW from 200,000 annual tons.

In the U.S. the renewable mandates are on a state by state basis and currently 20 states and the District of Columbia have mandates in place.

These mandates are referred to as Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS's).

In certain states these may be satisfied by the use of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs).

The Company believes that energy generated from its BioOil will qualify for REC certification.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) forecast that these existing mandates will create 31,000 MW of new renewable power by 2017.

Most of this will be wind and biomass.

If one third were biomass this would require about 50,000,000 tons of feedstock.

SYNTHETIC TRANSPORT FUELS

BIO OIL IN DIESEL ENGINES

Bio oil direct from prolysis has been used to fire stationary diesel engines successfully.  This fuel was of a lower quality not suitable for diesels in motor vehicles and work is being done to advance this approach.

“SYNGAS” DERIVED FUELS

BioOil-oil is very different chemically from crude Oil. Instead of oxygen-free hydrocarbons, it contains oxygen-rich substances.

But bio-oil can be converted by “reforming” it (exposing it to high temperature steam) into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as “syngas.”

Usually, the syn-gas production is carried out at elevated pressure, up to 40 bar, and temperatures of 800 to 1400oC.

After cleaning and conditioning, the syn-gas can be used for the synthesis of fuels and chemicals (e.g. methanol, Fischer-Tropsch diesel, ammonia, DME etc).

Hydrogen :

 Additional hydrogen and carbon dioxide are produced by reacting the carbon monoxide (created in the first step) with high temperature steam in the "water-gas shift reaction.". Finally, the hydrogen is separated out and purified. Hydrogen can be produced in bio oil gasification.  The process actually removes oxygen from water and 33% of the hydrogen produced comes from water.

If hydrogen does become a significant transportation fuel this should become a preferred production process .

Bio Diesel :

And syngas can, in turn, be processed into a high-grade hydrocarbon fuel, such as automotive diesel. Excellent quality transport diesels are being produced from pyrolysis to syngas to Fisher Tropsch (FT).

The Fischer-Tropsch process is a catalyzed chemical reaction in which carbon monoxide and hydrogen are converted into liquid hydrocarbons of various forms. The general reaction can be described as , or “SynGas plus energy and catalyst equals hydrocarbons and water”.

Typical catalysts used are based on iron and cobalt. 

A German company, Choren Industries, is developing a 200,000 ton/year commercial facility in Lubmin Germany to produce their “Sun Diesel” product.

They are selecting sites for additional units. [This fuel has better properties than biodiesel (produced from vegetable oils) and is preferred by automobile manufacturers. DaimlerChrysler AG and Volkswagen AG .]

Gasoline and Aviation Fuel :

The FT process can also produce gasoline and aviation fuel.

Advances in scale of gas and pyrolysis and gasification are being made to make these plants economically feasible.Last September, DynaMotive from Canada announced that researchers in Germany had succeeded in converting its bio-oil into synthetic gasoline using existing gasification facilities

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates a minimum renewable fuels consumption of 4 billion gallons in 2006, increasing to 7.5 billion gallons in 2012.  The majority of the mandate most likely will be met by ethanol.

In 2005, U.S. ethanol production capacity was 4.3 billion gallons from 95 ethanol refineries.  Capacity expansion totaled 0.2 billion gallons, while capacity under construction was 1.8 billion gallons.  Ethanol production consumed 1.6 billion bushels of corn (about 14 percent of U.S. corn production) in 2005; 2.6 billion bushels of corn are expected to be used by 2010 (about 22 percent of an 11.9 billion bushel crop).  Thus, ethanol production has already exceeded the 2006 target of the renewable fuel mandate.  A federal tax credit of $.51 per gallon on all ethanol, available to ethanol refiners, has also contributed to increased ethanol production.  Despite the rapid increase in production, consumption of ethanol has been outpacing production for the past few years, which has led to increased imports in the United States .

The U.S. has set a target for 30% of transport fuels by 2030 to be renewable.  This will require an estimated 60 billion gallons of ethanol or other fuels.  Most growth beyond 2010 is expected to be from cellulose ethanol because of limits on corn availability versus food requirements.

This will be made from biomass and will require over 600,000,000 tons.

Biorefineries producing ethanol feedstock from bio oil will be a major source.

In Europe the renewable target for transportation fuel is 5.75% by 2010 and 20% by 2020.  Current production is primarily biodiesel produced from vegetable oils and ethanol from wheat and other grains.  New processes are under development which will produce diesel directly from bio oil and alternatively from bio oil to syngas to FT.

Gasoline and aviation fuel can be produced from FP as well.

PLASTICS AND CHEMICALS

More than 300 compounds have been identified as fragments of the basic compounds of biomass.

Once subjected to pyrolysis the breakdown of cellulose and cellulosic materials occur in two ways: depolymerization, the main pathway, and dehydation of cellulose.

Dehydration is mostly responsible for the “Char” portion of the process.

The  depolymerization process yields large fractions of acetic acid, acetol, and hydroxyacetaldehyde and Levoglucosan.

Until now, only 40 to 50 % of typical BioOil compounds (excluding the water) have been identified , but many of the large, less severely cracked molecules are not yet identified.

All types of functional groups are present: acids, sugars, alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, phenols and their derivatives, furanes and other mixed oxygenates.

Phenols are present in high concentrations (up to 50 wt.%). .A large fraction of the oil is the phenolic fraction, consisting of relatively small amounts of phenol, eugenol, cresols, and xylenols, and much larger quantities of alkylated (poly-) phenols (the so-called water insoluble pyrolytic lignin) which has showed good performance as adhesive for waterproof plywood.

Levoglucosan, (LG) is a sugar derivative.

Existing and potential applications and markets for biomass-derived LG are due to the possible self-polymerisation of LG, giving low molecular weight oligo- or poly-saccharides.

Another anhydrosugar identified in the oil is the doubly dehydrated anhydrosugar Levoglucosenone.. Yields of LGS from cellulose can amount up to 24 wt.%.

Another sugar derivate, hydroxy-acetaldehyde can be present in relatively large amounts in the bio-oil. It represents the smallest sugar, and can be used for the browning of foods.

Components that can also be derived from bio-oil are carboxylic acids. In the aqueous fraction of the bio-oil these acids are present in small amounts.

 Finally, furfural and furfurylalcohol are present in amounts up to 30 wt.% and 12 to 30 wt.%, respectively were produced.

It should be noted that, the recovery of pure compounds from the complex bio-oil is technically feasible but in many cases may be economically unattractive because of the high costs for the recovery of the chemical and its low concentration in the oil.

Compounds in BioOil can also be introduced to other catalytic elements to produce long chain polymers for other products and can also be used as a feed stock with gasifiers to produce  “syngas”, a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, and other chemicals.

The syngas may be used as feedstock to produce a variety of chemicals and plastic resins such as polyethylene and polypropylene.