Over the past decade, the transportation fuels industry has witnessed a fundamental change, with an increased focus on sustainability. Sole reliance on petroleum-based feeds has broadened to include a variety of biomass-derived feeds — resulting in process development work to scale-up advanced bioenergy and biofuel technologies. Examples of these processes are the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol and gasoline through fermentation, thermochemical conversion (e.g., pyrolysis, gasification), and catalytic conversion, either alone or in combination. A subset of these processes — the ones that showed the most promise, technically and commercially — have passed through a series of well-defined technology stage gates, the methodology for which was developed for more traditional CPI processes. The most successful of these bioenergy and biofuel processes are now being commercialized.
While the recommended approach for scaling bioenergy and biofuels technology follows similar scale-up steps to those traditionally used in the CPI, there are some challenges in the processing of fluids and the handling of solids in bioenergy applications that need to be carefully considered. As a consequence of these challenges, the scaling factors in going from one scale to the next (i.e., lab to pilot to demonstration to commercial) is an order of magnitude lower for bioenergy processes than for the equivalent CPI process.
This article discusses the stage-gate approach for scaling up bioenergy technologies, emphasizing how this approach differs from the traditional stage-gate process used in the CPI. It identifies the most common challenges encountered when scaling a bioenergy process and provides recommendations for addressing these challenges.