Biomass resource facilities and biomass conversion processing for fuels and chemicals

Biomass resources include wood and wood wastes, agricultural crops and their waste byproducts, municipal solid waste, animal wastes, waste from food processing and aquatic plants and algae. Biomass is used to meet a variety of energy needs, including generating electricity, heating homes, fueling vehicles and providing process heat for industrial facilities. The conversion technologies for utilizing biomass can be separated into four basic categories: direct combustion processes, thermochemical processes, biochemical processes and agrochemical processes. Thermochemical conversion processes can be subdivided into gasification, pyrolysis, supercritical fluid extraction and direct liquefaction. Pyrolysis is the thermochemical process that converts biomass into liquid, charcoal and non-condensable gases, acetic acid, acetone and methanol by heating the biomass to about 750 K in the absence of air. If the purpose is to maximize the yield of liquid products resulting from biomass pyrolysis, a low temperature, high heating rate, short gas residence time process would be required. For high char production, a low temperature.. low heating rate process would be chosen. If the purpose is to maximize the yield of fuel gas resulting from pyrolysis, a high temperature, low heating rate, long gas residence time process would be preferred. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.