North Carolina AT&T State University launches syngas research project

Biofuels Digest
Isabel Lane
November 26, 2012   Read more

Iowa State researchers develop bio-oil gasifier for fuels, power

Ethanol Producer Magazine
By Iowa State University
October 23, 2012

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Nexterra, UBC and GE celebrate opening of biomass CHP system

Biomass Magazine
By Nexterra Systems Corp.
September 14, 2012

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Demonstrating Portable Energy

Biomass Magazine
A modular gasification technology produces on-demand, biomass-based syngas.
By Erin Voegele
August 29, 2012

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Report: harvesting technologies can cut feedstock costs

Biomass Magazine
By Lux Research
August 01, 2012

The bio-based materials and chemicals industry needs to tap newer, non-food sources of biomass and cellulosic material and raise volumes of feedstock before it can emerge as an economically viable alternative to petroleum-based products, according to a Lux Research report. Currently, high cost of capital and operations limit bio-based materials and chemicals to a few facilities located where corn and cane are plentiful and cheap.

“Bio-based materials and chemicals manufacturers need syngas and sugar to fuel their growth. Gasification and enzymatic hydrolysis are key technologies for securing vast amounts,” said Mark Bünger, research director and the lead author of the report titled, “Pruning the Cost of Bio-Based Materials and Chemicals.”

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Rocket developer, EERC begin testing solids pump for gasification

Biomass Power & Thermal
By Luke Geiver April 11, 2012

The University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Inc. (PWR), a global space propulsion systems developer, have officially begun the commissioning stage of a commercial-scale dry-solids prototype pump.

The pump is used to feed a novel gasification system designed to produce syngas from a range of feedstocks, including coal, petcoke and biomass. The system can feed roughly 400 tons per day of feedstock into the gasifier, helping to reduce capital costs of a commercial scale unit by 20 percent compared to conventional systems. The system also reduces carbon emissions by 10 percent, and the gasifier offers a 90 percent reduction in size compared to traditional systems. PWR credits that statistic to its ability to leverage decades of experience in rocket propulsion technology and its skill in controlling large amounts of energy in small spaces. “At this point, EERC is involved in rocket science,” said Gerald Groenewold, EERC director.

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Economic Analysis of a Mobile Indirect Biomass Liquefaction System

Biomass Power & Thermal
By John P. Hurley February 21, 2012

As I described in my February Biomass Power & Thermal column, the Energy & Environmental Research Center has built and tested a mobile system for converting wood waste into liquid products such as methanol. The system uses a unique gasifier to convert the wood waste into synthesis gas, which is cleaned, compressed, and converted in a reactor to a variety of possible liquid products. We have initially focused on the production of methanol because it can easily be reformed into hydrogen to power fuel cells to make electricity at remote sites distanced from the biomass resource. The gasifier was specifically designed by the EERC to handle wet wood waste with up to 40 percent moisture, thereby eliminating the need to separately dry the wood before gasification, as most commercial gasification units require.

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Conference keynote: landfills will become a thing of the past

Biomass Power & Thermal
By Anna Austin January 17, 2012

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes made by the biomass industry is not following the lead of the natural gas industry to come up with an industry title that sounds more environmentally friendly, according to Sierra Energy CEO Mike Hart.

“Natural gas sounds much better than fossil fuel-derived methane, so maybe we should call biomass natural mass,” Hart joked.

Hart was the keynote speaker at the third annual Pacific West Biomass Conference & Trade Show in San Francisco, Calif., Jan 16-18. He delivered a speech that emphasized the versatility of synthesis gas, as well as how the value of biomass—particularly municipal solid waste (MSW)—will drastically increase over the next couple decades.

Jokes aside, Hart said he believes that over the next 15-20 years, trash will become a valuable commodity as waste conversion technologies become widely implemented. “As time goes on, we’re going to be buying it and making competitive bids,” he said, adding that feedstock flexibility will become a dominant factor in the biomass energy industry, particularly those that can utilize complex wastes such as MSW.

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Innovative fuel plant goes public at Naperville launch

Naperville Sun
By Susan Frick Carlman scarlman@stmedianetwork.com
November 26, 2011 10:58PM

It’s scalable and skiddable. It’s just not quite functional yet.

The Green Fuels Depot, a collaborative effort seen as a bright light on the horizon of clean energy innovation, had its soft debut this past week. About 60 area business people, elected officials, activists and scientists gathered on the grounds of the Springbrook Water Reclamation Center in southeast Naperville for the unveiling.

Planned as a demonstration of what the device eventually will accomplish, the event wound up being more of an informational ribbon-cutting.

“I’m told there are still some regulatory approvals that we need before we can fire this up and produce energy,” said City Councilman Bob Fieseler, who has been a proponent of the energy plant for the three years since the project began.

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Exciting time for ethanol

Iowa Farmer Today
Posted: Thursday, November 17, 2011 7:50 am Updated: 9:44 am, Thu Nov 17, 2011.
By Gene Lucht, Iowa Farmer Today Iowa Farmer Today

AMES --- Forgive Robert Brown if he sounds a bit more upbeat about ethanol and other biofuels and bio-renewable products than most of the politicians and business leaders who offer their opinions on the subject.

It’s not that he’s a Pollyanna. It’s more that he’s a researcher and he sees plenty in the laboratory to make him smile.

“It’s a very exciting time,” says Brown, director of the Bioeconomy Institute at Iowa State University and director of the Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies (CSET).

One of the keys to several potential new products or technologies is a method called fast pyrolysis. Instead of using enzymes and microorganisms to make biofuels, researchers are simply using heat. Fast pyrolysis quickly heats biomass such as corn stalks or wood chips and in the absence oxygen to produce liquid, solid and gas products. These end products, are known as biochar, bio-oil and syngas.

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Rentech's Integrated Bio-Refinery Project Mechanically Complete

The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch
press release
Nov. 8, 2011, 9:00 a.m. EST

Cellulosic Fuels Production Expected by End of 2011

LOS ANGELES, Nov 08, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Rentech, Inc. /quotes/zigman/185313/quotes/nls/rtk RTK -4.38% announced today that all systems required to start up the Company's integrated bio-refinery (IBR) in Commerce City, Colorado are mechanically complete. Commissioning, validation and start-up of the renewable energy demonstration facility are underway. The project has reached this milestone within the original budget and schedule.

The IBR project was co-funded by a $23 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, to manufacture and install at the Rentech Energy Technology Center a 20 ton-per-day Rentech-ClearFuels biomass gasifier. The gasifier is designed to produce bio-synthesis gas from various high impact wood waste and sugar cane bagasse feedstocks. The gasifier has been integrated with Rentech's existing Product Demonstration Unit (PDU) at the site, which uses the Rentech Process and UOP's upgrading technologies to produce renewable drop-in synthetic jet and diesel fuels at demonstration scale. Rentech expects the integrated facility, which will have the flexibility to produce renewable syngas, hydrogen, and steam as well as biofuels, will be used to evaluate additional technology integration opportunities. Rentech funded the balance of the project's total cost of approximately $36 million, which includes the cost of building the gasifier, feedstock handling equipment, integration with Rentech's synthetic fuels plant, and operation of the facility for a period of 6 months to collect 2,000 hours of operating data. The project team responsible for meeting this important milestone for mechanical completion included URS Corporation, Linde Group/Hydro-Chem, Piper Electric Corporation and Ames Construction, Inc.

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New USDA loan guarantees, $50 biofuels, Asia, syngas among new biofuels trends, gossip at Pacific Rim Summit

Biofuels Digest
December 13, 2010 Jim Lane

Advanced biofuels and chemicals leadership gathered in the shadows of Oahu's Diamond Head to relate progress on commercialization, drop-in fuels, chemicals, with a focus on commercialization and research efforts underway in Hawaii with USDA, HECO, the state government, the US Navy and numerous private companies

In Honolulu, much of the leadership of the advanced biofuels and renewables chemicals industries have gathered this week at BIO’s Pacific Rim Summit. With seven of the hottest 14 companies in bioenergy on the presentation docket – plus USDA and DOE and a host of Asian academics and companies – what are the key trends?

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Synthetic Fuels Research Aims to Reduce Oil Dependence

ImperialValleyNews.com
Written by Green Liver
Tuesday, 14 September 2010

West Lafayette, Indiana - Researchers at Purdue University have developed a facility aimed at learning precisely how coal and biomass are broken down in reactors called gasifiers as part of a project to strengthen the scientific foundations of the synthetic fuel economy.

"A major focus is to be able to produce a significant quantity of synthetic fuel for the U.S. air transportation system and to reduce our dependence on petroleum oil for transportation," said Jay Gore, the Reilly University Chair Professor of Combustion Engineering at Purdue.

The research is part of work to develop a system for generating large quantities of synthetic fuel from agricultural wastes, other biomass or coal that would be turned into a gas using steam and then converted into a liquid fuel.

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EERC: Project to generate heat and power from biomass

Energy Digital
Andrea Marino Sun Sep 5, 2010

The Energy & Environmental Research Center and Cummins Power Generation develop a demo project for heat and power from biomass
The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) of the University of North Dakota, together with Cummins Power Generation, Inc., has started developing a demonstration project for the production of heat and power from high-moisture biomass.

Cummins Power Generation is a Minnesota-based world-leading designer and manufacturer of power generation equipment. The company has supplied the electrical generator for the project, which is a major component in producing 35 to 40 kilowatts of power each day, enough for a single home.

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A New Twist on Gasification

Biomass Magazine
August 2010
By Lisa Gibson

When Douglas Goodale, bioenergy project manager and principal investigator for the State University of New York at Cobleskill (SUNY Cobleskill) discusses his upcoming research project, he beams proudly, clearly illustrating that he believes it will represent a breakthrough in gasification systems and waste-to-energy technology. His enthusiasm is directed toward a rotary kiln gasifier developed and owned by Chicago-based W2E and en route to a new lab facility established for such research at SUNY Cobleskill.

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A Membrane Strategy for Increasing Hydrocarbon Yield in Biomass-to-Liquids Processes

FavStocks.com
By Green Car Congress on 04/04/2010 – 7:30 am PDT

Researchers from the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) in Germany have shown that hydrocarbon yield and energy efficiency can be increased in a Fischer-Tropsch (FT) biomass-to-liquids (BTL) process through the use of a hydrophilic membrane enabling the in situ removal of water from the catalyst bed. The work, described in a paper published 30 March in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels, provides a foundation for further optimization of such membranes for use in BTL processes.

FT synthesis uses syngas (primarily H2 and CO) generated from coal, natural gas, or biomass. For biomass, synthesis gas production occurs via oxygen/steam gasification or partial oxidation reactions. The resulting synthesis gas is then cleaned and adjusted to synthesis requirements.

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More Efficient Biomass Gasification Through Solar Concentrating Mirrors

Treehugger.com
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 03.10.10

Here's a new twist on biomass gasification, one which more or less merges it with solar thermal. Technology Review is highlighting the efforts of Colorado-based Sundrop Fuels to develop a system which uses the heat of the sun to vaporize biomass and turn it into syngas:

The system consists of a gasifying unit mounted on top of tower surrounded by solar concentrating mirrors which reflect sunlight back to the gasifier and heats its ceramic tubes to 1,200-1,300°C. Any biomass passing through the tubes gets vaporized, at higher temperatures than other units (meaning less residue build up), and more efficiently (no biomass is needed to power the unit).

Currently an R&D facility is operating in Colorado, with a first commercial facility expected to begin construction later in 2010. This will be coupled with a biofuel refinery with the capacity to produce 8 million gallons of fuel annually.

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Solar Fuels: Biomass Fuel Starts to See the Light

Science
11 December 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5959, p. 1474
DOI: 10.1126/science.326.5959.1474
by Robert F. Service

Even with a major push, commercial plants capable of turning CO2 or water into liquid fuels are still likely to be 2 decades away. A simpler version of the technology, however, already appears headed to market.

Even with a major push, commercial plants capable of turning CO2 or water into liquid fuels are still likely to be 2 decades away. A simpler version of the technology, however, already appears headed to market. Sundrop Fuels Inc., an energy start-up based in Louisville, Colorado, recently commissioned a 1-megawatt solar array to convert wood waste and other forms of biomass into a gaseous blend of carbon monoxide and hydrogen—known as synthesis gas—that can be converted into gasoline. The plant uses an array of 2700 mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a 20-meter-tall solar tower to produce heat needed to drive the chemical reactor. The company has told Science that in 2012 it intends to open a commercial plant capable of capturing 60 megawatts and use that energy to produce 19 million liters of gasoline annually.

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Fulcrum Bioenergy announces next generation ethanol breakthrough

The Nipawin Journal
Updated 9/16/09

Fulcrum BioEnergy, Inc., a leader in the next generation of advanced biofules, announced Sept. 1 that it has successfully demonstrated the ability to economically produce renewable ethanol. This milestone - achieved at the company's Turning Point Ethanol Demonstration Plant - confirms the second of the two new technologies that Fulcrum will use for the large-scale production of transportation fuel from garbage that would otherwise be landfill.

"The operating results from our Turning Point Ethanol Plant represents a watershed event for Fulcrum and t his new industry. It opens the door to our large development program that will reduce our country's dependence on foreign oil, lower greenhouse gas emissions and create new green jobs," said E. James Macias, Fulcrum President and CEO. "By demonstrating first the clean and efficient conversion of garbage to syngas, and now syngas to ethanol, we have demonstrated that the technology is ready for deployment at our first large-scale project, the Sierra BioFuels Plant."

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Idaho researchers pioneer new superyield process for cellulosic ethanol

BiofuelsDigest.com

In Idaho, researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory have developed a new technology to produce cellulosic ethanol. The researchers describe the process as bio-syntrolysis; it uses multiple technical steps, including the use of electrolysis to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, and combining this with a carbon-free electric source to convert up to 90 percent of carbon from biomass into liquid biofuel. Existing processes convert only up to 35 percent of carbon.

The researchers said that the process requires 1000 MW of power to produce 1 million gallons of fuel per day – the amount of power from a full-scale nuclear reactor, but far more than a conventional solar or wind power source can provide. In their process, oxygen is introduced with biomass to produce a syngas, while the remaining hydrogen is combined with the syngas is converted into liquid fuel.

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