The Pilot Plant at partner TCL
A step towards sustainable biofuels The petro-chemical industry is under intense pressure to reduce its impact on the environment and develop more sustainable methods of fuel production. The work of the BIOGO project in transforming the production process could lead to radical improvements in these terms, as Professor Gunther Kolb and Dr Hannah Newton explain The development of biofuels is widely recognised as a research priority, in line with the wider goal of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. The BIOGO project, an initiative bringing together 15 partners from across Europe, will make an important contribution in these terms. “The idea of BIOGO is to utilise non-food waste, like wood residue, which is widely available across Europe. We aim to use this waste to create synthetic gasoline-grade fuels,” says dissemination manager Dr Hannah Newton. A number of steps are involved in creating synthetic fuels out of biomass sources like wood residue. “First we make pyrolysis oil, which is a product of high-temperature
Electron microscope image of one of the nanocatalysts being developed within the project (BIOGO nanocatalyst).
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treatment of this biomass. We also use biogas in the project,” explains Project Coordinator Professor Gunther Kolb. “From the biogas and the pyrolysis oil, we get a socalled synthesis gas (or syngas), which is mostly a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. From this, we can then synthesise methanol, from which the synthetic gasoline is then produced.”
Gas-to-gasoline A number of companies already make synthetic fuel out of synthesis gas, but there are some drawbacks to existing methods, mostly related to the formation of large-scale hydrocarbons. These drawbacks can be avoided with the use of methanol, as
demonstrated by a former natural-gas-togasoline project in New Zealand; however, Professor Kolb says the project is taking a different approach. “In New Zealand they used natural gas, but we want to utilise wood residue, which is widely available across Europe. We are aiming for a sustainable process that is independent of fossil fuels,” he outlines. There are two key pillars to the project’s research, the first of which centres around designing, developing and preparing nanoscale catalysts for converting bio resources into liquid fuels, covering each step of the production process. “For each of the individual steps, we want to improve the available catalysts. There have been no commercial catalysts developed for some of the steps, while there are formulations existing for other steps,” says Professor Kolb. Along with others, researchers are using a novel approach to develop nanocatalysts, applying a technique called cluster beam sputtering, where extremely small particles are ejected on to the surface of a carrier material with a high surface area. Sputtering techniques are usually used to cover the whole surface of a material, but in the project researchers are instead making small clusters of atoms on the surface of the material to improve performance. Catalysts are being developed for each of the four key steps of the production process; those that lead to improvements will then be incorporated into what Professor Kolb describes as a mini-plant, which is the second main pillar of the project. “This
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At a glance Full Project Title Catalytic partial oxidation of bio gas and reforming of pyrolysis oil (Bio Oil) for an autothermal synthesis gas production and conversion into fuels (BIOGO-for-Production)
BIOGO Schematic is effectively a demonstration of the whole process chain, using multiple catalyst formulations to demonstrate the feasibility of the whole process chain, from the reforming of the pyrolysis oil to the production of synthetic gasoline,” he outlines. The mini-plant itself will be highly mobile, situated within a specially designed container for the production of chemicals The idea is to move the future production plant to the specific waste source. By creating these decentralised container plants, researchers
process. “We’ll look at the components and the projected composition of the output,” explains Professor Kolb. The economic background is an important factor in terms of potentially applying this approach more widely in fuel production; while the fuel price is currently quite low, it is likely to rise again in future, at which point Professor Kolb says we will need to look more closely at biofuels. “We are developing this approach for the future. It will take a long time to really prove the feasibility of this
The idea of BIOGO is to utilise non-food waste, like wood residue, which is available across Europe. We aim to use this to create synthetic fuels of gasoline-grade quality hope to achieve some significant improvements over conventional methods. “We aim to minimise both transportation costs and energy consumption,” explains Dr Newton. The mini-plant is very small and is designed to produce only a very small amount of fuel, but Professor Kolb says the target is to scale it up in future. “At this stage, the project is really about proving the feasibility of the concept. All the required process steps have been incorporated, so we get a fuel of relevant quality, but in a very small quantity. The next step, which would be investigated in a followup project beyond BIOGO, would be to upscale the process chain,” he says. “It would be effectively a linear scale-up of the process. Maybe some purification steps would need to be done differently on a larger scale, but basically it would be about making what works already on a larger scale.”
Production run A pilot-scale catalyst production run is planned for early 2017, where researchers will look to test the miniplant and demonstrate its manufacturing potential. This will involve analysing fuel samples and assessing the efficacy of the production
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kind of approach, to install it and remove all the obstacles,” he says. “This process should be further developed until we are sure what we can achieve with it. Then, when the economic circumstances change, we will have a competitive process available.” This is central to the long-term agenda of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, and research continues into creating a comprehensive production process. The development of the catalysts for the different process steps is quite far advanced, in particular for the first step, the re-forming of biogas and pyrolysis oils. “We are now implementing these catalysts into the microreactors, ready for the mini-plant run,” says Professor Kolb. This research could have a significant impact on the petrochemical industry, and the project is keen to explore its wider potential. “Project partners regularly attend major trade events, and close links have been established with industry,” says Dr Newton. “We’re looking ahead to the results of the mini-plant run, and we intend to hold some further events with potential end-users of this process, from the petro-chemicals and the fuel industry, as well as with suppliers of bio resources.”
Project Objectives BIOGO is a 4-year collaborative project supported through the European Commission’s Nanoscience, nanotechnologies, materials and new production technologies (NMP) theme. The project’s key objectives are to design, develop and prepare highly advanced nanoscale catalysts at an industrially relevant scale for the conversion of bio resources to liquid fuels; to develop and demonstrate a process that converts renewable bio-oils and bio-gas to synthesis gas for subsequent catalytic transformation into biofuels and chemical platform products; Reduce the dependence on rare earth oxides and precious metals for the catalyst formulations applied throughout the BIOGO project. Project Funding European Union FP7 – Grant Agreement number 604296 Project Partners • Please see website for full partner details. Contact Details Professor Gunther Kolb, Project Coordinator Fraunhofer ICT-IMM, Bereichsleiter Energieund Chemietechnik, Head of Division Energy and Chemical Technology, Carl-Zeiss-Straße 18-20, 55129 Mainz, Germany T: +49 6131 990-341 E: Gunther.Kolb@imm.fraunhofer.de W: www.biogo.eu
Professor Gunther Kolb
Professor Gunther Kolb studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Erlangen Nürnberg and finished his PhD in Reaction Engineering at the chair of Professor Hanns Hofmann in 1993 on zeolite catalysis and deactivation by coke formation. He was 5 years employee at the GRACE Davison FCC catalyst Division in Worms, Germany and switched then to the Institute of Microtechnology Mainz (IMM, now Fraunhofer ICT-IMM). He held there different positions such as Group Leader, Head of the Decentralised and Mobile Energy Technology Department and is currently Head of the Division Energy and Chemical Technology. Since 2012 he is Part Time Full Professor Micro Flow Energy Technology at the Technical University of Eindhoven, Netherlands. Since 2013 he is coordinator of the European large project BIOGO. He is author and co-author of 80 peer reviewed publications in the field of catalysis, chemical engineering and fuel processing.
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