Torrefied biomass to exchange coal and oil

In February, the Estonian-based startup New Same old Oil effectively commissioned their first industrial-scale prototype for drying and torrefaction of biogenic feedstock running with superheated steam at atmospheric power. The energy-efficient procedure used to be advanced on the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart, Germany, and produces treasured uncooked fabrics for the chemical and effort industries: fundamental chemical substances, biocoal and water.

Plant biomass is thought of as a climate-friendly selection to fossil uncooked fabrics. For subject matter and chemical use, renewable uncooked fabrics and residual subject matter streams from agriculture and forestry or downstream industries are in lots of circumstances transformed by the use of biotechnological or chemical conversion processes into particular chemical substances, akin to sugars or polymer development blocks.

A unique manner, which permits biomass for use utterly in one procedure, is being pursued through the startup New Same old Oil from Estonia: It depends on the thermal refinement and fractionation of biogenic residues akin to picket and hay to be able to convert them into “inexperienced” chemical substances and “inexperienced” coal with out leaving any residues.

That is made conceivable through a procedure advanced on the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart, Germany, as much as pilot scale, wherein biomass is heated in a closed setting of superheated steam with out oxygen and thereby torrefied, i.e. thermochemically degraded.

Torrefaction supplies inexperienced chemical substances and inexperienced coal

“We’ve got been operating with New Same old Oil over the last few years and are having a look ahead to partnering with the Estonian startup corporate as an international licensee for our expertise in value-added torrefaction of biomass with superheated steam at atmospheric power and valorization of the chemical substances,” says Dr.-Ing. Antoine Dalibard of Fraunhofer IGB.

The torrefaction procedure works in a similar way to delicate pyrolysis and follows a drying step wherein the water certain within the biomass evaporates. “In the similar plant, at temperatures between 200 and 300 levels Celsius, we then expel the unstable ingredients within the biomass, which originate basically from hemicellulose, one of the crucial 3 primary elements of biomass,” explains the thermal separation era skilled.

One of the crucial key benefits of the method arises from the particular design of the superheated steam drying machine. “Along with evaporated water, the fuel segment additionally incorporates treasured unstable compounds. Through cooling down the gaseous segment, we download a condensate that we will be able to separate into more than a few platform chemical substances the use of next separation processes akin to distillation, extraction or electrodialysis,” Dalibard explains.

The engineer has additional advanced and scaled up the method at Fraunhofer IGB and in addition investigated conceivable downstream processes for including price to the chemical substances condensed.

What stays as a cast is the torrefied biomass, which may also be noticed as biocoal. In comparison to untreated biomass, its carbon content material and thus its particular calorific price is considerably larger. Milled into powder or compressed into pellets, the “inexperienced” coal can be utilized, as an example, for climate-neutral firing of energy crops and substitute fossil coal or fuel.

Massive-scale prototype for a zero-emission calories and carbon economic system

“Confronted with calories costs rallying and effort safety at an rock bottom, we’ve invested on this procedure aiming to make a neighborhood blank and carbon-neutral calories provide a truth with our ‘Uniformer’ era, as we named it,” says Sven Papp, one of the crucial 4 co-founders of New Same old Oil.

In February 2023, the startup introduced its first industrial-scale prototype in Paldiski, Estonia, to transform fast-growing biomass and more than a few low-quality biomass combos into water, inexperienced chemical substances and biocoal within the established cascade strategy of drying and torrefaction. The younger corporate even plans to make use of the waste warmth bobbing up within the procedure for feeding into the heating community.

“Our Uniformer prototype can procedure as much as 150 kilograms of biomass in line with hour and is already generating one hundred pc marketable merchandise from woodchips and non-feed hay: biocoal as a cast brown coal-level biofuel, renewable chemical substances akin to methanol, furfurals and different chemical substances, moreover desalinated water in addition to the method warmth,” Sven Papp confirms the Fraunhofer IGB effects.

Biocoal can substitute picket pellets or fuel for mixed warmth and gear (CHP) technology. A plus for calories safety and grid steadiness: Electrical energy from CHP programs is dispatchable and may also be generated on call for at night time or all over calm classes when the solar and wind fail to ship sufficiently.

“With the assistance of this new cutting edge manner we calculate that costs for dispatchable renewable electrical energy from biocoal may just also be not up to that of land-based wind energy,” Papp continues. The founders are positive and are in the meantime making ready to commercialize their first Uniformer crops for the Eu marketplace.

Equipped through
Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB