Initial Review and Evaluation of Process Technologies and Systems Suitable for Cost-Efficient Medium-Scale Gasification for Biomass to Liquid Fuels

The most promising routes for conversion of biomass to liquid (BTL) fuels are based on thermal processes, i.e. initial pyrolysis or gasification of the biomass and subsequent production of CO2-neutral methanol, ethanol, dimethylether (DME) or Fisher-Tropsh-diesel from the syngas. Swedish research groups have an extensive knowledge and experience of R&D on thermal conversion of biomass fuels in general, and also on gasification and pyrolysis processes. However, although much effort has been spent on the task during the last century and despite gasification is an emerging technology approaching a demonstration phase, there are very few if any successful commercial reference plants. The best reported cost-efficiencies are also still somewhat too high for market introduction. Most of the present knowledge gaps and technology development challenges seem to be more or less process chemistry related and actually quite suitable for the ETPC and BioFuelRegion (BFR) research groups. Recent work within the relatively unique area of thermal and especially molecular process chemistry have indicated that solutions to some of the previously identified major obstacles could potentially be developed by comparatively simple measures. In addition, the process complexity, many fuel-, process- and subprocess-variables governs a high potential for systematic process and system optimization, another expertise research area within UmU/ETPC and BFR.