Synergistic Routes to Liquid Fuel for a Petroleum-Deprived Future

When compared with biomass gasification/Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, hydropyrolysis/hydrodeoxygenation (HDO)-based processes have a potential to achieve high biomass carbon conversion to liquid fuel with much lower amounts of supplementary H(2). On the basis of this observation, we suggest a Hydrogen Bio-oil (H(2)Bioil) process using fast hydropyrolysis/HDO that has a potential to produce nearly double the amount of liquid fuel when compared with the existing biofuel processes while requiring only modest quantities of supplementary H(2). The optimal operating mode for the H(2)Bioil process is suggested to be in an entrained bed mode in presence of H(2) with gas phase HDO of hydropyrolyzed vapors. A remarkable result due to reduced need for the supplementary H(2) is that it provides synergistic integration of the H(2)Bioil process with a coal gasification power plant or a small scale steam natural gas (NG) reformer leading to a dramatic increase in the liquid fuel production from biomass and coal or NG. Here, hot synthesis gas (T>500 degrees C) from a coal gasifier or methane reformer supplies H(2)/CO for hydropyrolysis and deoxygenation as well as heat for the process. This result is exciting, because it presents us with an option to build integrated H(2)Bioil processes sooner rather than later when the cost effective H(2), becomes available from a carbon-free energy source such as solar or nuclear. The H(2)Bioil process and its integrated version with a small scale NG reformer have strong potential to be attractive on a small scale while being more efficient than any current biomass to liquid fuel process in operation. (C) 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 55: 1898-1905, 2009