Lignocellulosic biomass pyrolysis mechanism: A state-of-the-art review

Trends in bioconversion of lignocellulose: Biofuels, platform chemicals & biorefinery concept

This report describes one potential biochemical ethanol conversion process, conceptually based upon core conversion and process integration research at NREL. The overarching process design converts corn stover to ethanol by dilute-acid pretreatment, enzymatic saccharification, and co-fermentation. Building on design reports published in 2002 and 1999, NREL, together with the subcontractor Harris Group Inc., performed a complete review of the process design and economic model for the biomass-to-ethanol process. This update reflects NREL's current vision of the biochemical ethanol process and includes the latest research in the conversion areas (pretreatment, conditioning, saccharification, and fermentation), optimizations in product recovery, and our latest understanding of the ethanol plant's back end (wastewater and utilities). The conceptual design presented here reports ethanol production economics as determined by 2012 conversion targets and 'nth-plant' project costs and financing. For the biorefinery described here, processing 2,205 dry ton/day at 76% theoretical ethanol yield (79 gal/dry ton), the ethanol selling price is $2.15/gal in 2007$.

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Process Design and Economics for Biochemical Conversion of Lignocellulosic Biomass to Ethanol: Dilute-Acid Pretreatment and Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Corn Stover

Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant and bio-renewable resource with great potential for sustainable production of chemicals and fuels. This critical review provides insights into the state-of the-art accomplishments in the chemocatalytic technologies to generate fuels and value-added chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass, with an emphasis on its major component, cellulose. Catalytic hydrolysis, solvolysis, liquefaction, pyrolysis, gasification, hydrogenolysis and hydrogenation are the major processes presently studied. Regarding catalytic hydrolysis, the acid catalysts cover inorganic or organic acids and various solid acids such as sulfonated carbon, zeolites, heteropolyacids and oxides. Liquefaction and fast pyrolysis of cellulose are primarily conducted over catalysts with proper acidity/basicity. Gasification is typically conducted over supported noble metal catalysts. Reaction conditions, solvents and catalysts are the prime factors that affect the yield and composition of the target products. Most of processes yield a complex mixture, leading to problematic upgrading and separation. An emerging technique is to integrate hydrolysis, liquefaction or pyrolysis with hydrogenation over multifunctional solid catalysts to convert lignocellulosic biomass to value-added fine chemicals and bio-hydrocarbon fuels. And the promising catalysts might be supported transition metal catalysts and zeolite-related materials. There still exist technological barriers that need to be overcome (229 references).

http://www.chtf.stuba.sk/~szolcsanyi/education/files/Chemia%20heterocyklickych%20zlucenin/Prednaska%207/Doplnkove%20studijne%20materialy/Hydroxymethylfurfural/Catalytic%20conversion%20of%20lignocellulosic%20biomass%20to%20fine%20chemicals%20and%20fuels.pdf

Catalytic conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to fine chemicals and fuels

Fast pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass produces a renewable liquid fuel called pyrolysis oil that is the cheapest liquid fuel produced from biomass today Here we show that pyrolysis oils can be converted into industrial commodity chemical feedstocks using an integrated catalytic approach that combines hydroprocessing with zeolite catalysis The hydroprocessing increases the intrinsic hydrogen content of the pyrolysis oil, producing polyols and alcohols The zeolite catalyst then converts these hydrogenated products into light olefins and aromatic hydrocarbons in a yield as much as three times higher than that produced with the pure pyrolysis oil The yield of aromatic hydrocarbons and light olefins from the biomass conversion over zeolite is proportional to the intrinsic amount of hydrogen added to the biomass feedstock during hydroprocessing The total product yield can be adjusted depending on market values of the chemical feedstocks and the relative prices of the hydrogen and biomass

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/330/6008/1222.full.pdf

Renewable Chemical Commodity Feedstocks from Integrated Catalytic Processing of Pyrolysis Oils

https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/2009_IowaUniv_NREL_TechnoEconomicComparisonBiochemicalEthanolProductionCornStover.pdf

Techno-economic comparison of process technologies for biochemical ethanol production from corn stover

Techno-economic comparison of biomass-to-transportation fuels via pyrolysis, gasification, and biochemical pathways

A techno-economic analysis on the production of cellulosic ethanol by fermentation was conducted to understand the viability of liquid biofuel production processes within the next 5-8 years. Initially, 35 technologies were reviewed, then a two-step down selection was performed to choose scenarios to be evaluated in a more detailed economic analysis. The lignocellulosic ethanol process was selected because it is well studied and portions of the process have been tested at pilot scales. Seven process variations were selected and examined in detail. Process designs were constrained to public data published in 2007 or earlier, without projecting for future process improvements. Economic analysis was performed for an 'nth plant' (mature technology) to obtain total investment and product value (PV). Sensitivity analysis was performed on PV to assess the impact of variations in process and economic parameters. Results show that the modeled dilute acid pretreatment process without any downstream process variation had the lowest PV of $3.40/gal of ethanol ($5.15/gallon of gasoline equivalent) in 2007 dollars. Sensitivity analysis shows that PV is most sensitive to feedstock and enzyme costs.

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Techno-Economic Analysis of Biochemical Scenarios for Production of Cellulosic Ethanol

There is provided a process for converting high free fatty acid containing feedstock such as acidulated soapstock into hydrocarbon compound especially fuel range hydrocarbons using amidation as a pretreatment step followed by hydroprocessing.

Geetha Kothandaraman

Papers

Techno-economic comparison of process technologies for biochemical ethanol production from corn stover

Techno-economic comparison of biomass-to-transportation fuels via pyrolysis, gasification, and biochemical pathways

Techno-Economic Analysis of Biochemical Scenarios for Production of Cellulosic Ethanol

Production of hydrocarbon from high free fatty acid containing feedstocks