(228c) Novel Fluidized Bed Reactors for Biomass Thermochemical Conversion

Biomass residues are low-carbon renewable energy sources and have the potential to replace fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thermochemical pathways such as gasification and pyrolysis have been applied to convert biomass into drop-in biofuels, but still face both technical and economic challenges, which requires further development of novel technologies to improve the process efficiency. At the Fluidization Research Centre, we have developed and validated a dual fluidized bed reactor in pilot scale for steam gasification of biomass for the production of synthetic gas, which can be potentially converted to liquid biofuels or renewable natural gas. To produce high quality bio-oil and biochar from biomass pyrolysis, we also proposed and evaluated a gas-pulsating fluidized bed reactor in small pilot scale. The fluidization performance was optimized by adjusting the gas pulsation frequency and superficial gas velocity. The quality of bio-oil and biochar was evaluated, which showed superior performance in terms of oil water content, acidity and viscosity, and biochar surface area and water/nutrient affinity.