BioOil Gains Traction

BioOil, also known as pyrolysis oil, is not quite renewable petroleum, but it is a renewable liquid fuel made from the destructive distillation of biomass. A Canadian company has announced that they will build a plant in Missouri:

Canadian Company to Convert Wood to Fuel

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Canadian biofuels developer said Wednesday it plans to build a $24 million plant in southeast Missouri that would convert wood scraps into fuel to operate factories and heat office buildings.

Dynamotive Energy Systems Corp. said the plant, to be built 180 miles south of St. Louis in Willow Springs, could generate up to 12 million gallons of fuel per year, consuming up to 73,000 tons of wood byproducts and other residue from nearby sawmills.

The company said it would be the first commercial plant in the U.S. to produce liquid biofuel from wood residues.

Industrial users could use the fuel, called BioOil, to replace conventional oil to fire their boilers, Dynamotive said. The company said it already uses the fuel to generate electricity at one of its two BioOil plants in Ontario and is negotiating with potential U.S. industrial customers.

The story goes on to explain that the market for this oil is for industrial boilers and not transportation. While I have been familiar with pyrolysis oil for a long time, I honestly don’t know anything about the economics. However, I suspect they aren’t all that bad. The process is straightforward, and doesn’t operate at extreme temperatures or pressures that might require exotic reactors. I guess the main question I would have is that if it is to be primarily used as boiler fuel, why not just burn the wood directly as boiler fuel? Maybe there is a good reason; I don’t know. It’s an interesting development regardless.

19 thoughts on “BioOil Gains Traction”

  1. “I guess the main question I would have is that if it is to be primarily used as boiler fuel, why not just burn the wood directly as boiler fuel?“

    I’m guessing because the boilers aren’t designed to burn wood (or coal, for that matter). And the raw material is sawdust and scraps, there’d be handling and other issues trying to burn that.

    Is BioOil usable as diesel fuel?

  2. It’s a lot easier to build one new plant than retrofit dozens of existing boilers.

    Plus if you run one of those boilers, you’re probably rather deal with a liquid fuel than the logistics of wood, a relatively bulky solid fuel which may have to be sourced from hither and yon.

  3. Larry, BioOil is not usable as diesel fuel. Technically BioOil isn’t really an oil. It’s water soluble (so it can’t be mixed with other oils) and is a mixture of all the chemicals that are in the feedstock.

    The advantage is it’s much easier to transport and use in boilers than bulky biomass. It can also be used as a source of value-added products by extracting the different chemical fractions.

  4. The advantage is it’s much easier to transport and use in boilers than bulky biomass.

    The disadvantage, though, is that only a small fraction of the energy content of the wood is being utilized.

    It can also be used as a source of value-added products by extracting the different chemical fractions.

    Which to me, is the biggest attraction of pyrolysis oil – it can be a building block for lots of other chemicals just like petroleum is.

  8. Good to see Dynamotive come up here, one of their plants is local. I considered applying for work there while I was still in Engineering Co-op.

  9. Why Pyrolysis and not Fischer Tropsch?

    Capital costs should be a lot lower, because the temperatures aren’t nearly as high as those required to produce syngas. The plant would also be substantially less complex.

  11. Changing World Technologies is using pyrolosis to change turkey offal into a similar product.

    They have had a rough start, due to financial (they thought the feedstock would be free) and local (smell) issues.

    On the direct-burning issue, there are a number of coal plants that have been retrofitted to burn wood chips as a blend with coal.

  13. Changing World Technologies is using pyrolosis to change turkey offal into a similar product.
    Thermal Depolymerization has been discussed here before.

    Their process is not pyrolysis and their product is nothing like BioOil, their product is hydrocarbon, more like what you’d get from gasification/Fischer-Tropsch.

    The process consists of two steps:
    1. Dilute Acid Hydrolysis (low temp, high pressure)
    2. High Temp, Low Pressure (of the organic part from step one).

    TDP is basically a way to convert lipids (fats, oils and grease) to hydrocarbons by hydrolysis (step #1) and decarboxylation (step #2). In other words it competes with biodiesel.

  15. Speaking of Range Fuels, their first plant is opening in Georgia.
    More precisely, construction has started.

    It will be interesting to see how these two technologies (BioOil’s pyrolysis and Range Fuels’ gasification) compete.

    My money is on Range Fuels due to better product and the flexibility to make hydrocarbon fuels, if desired.

  16. Pyrolysis technology has taken on a whole new life, U.S. Sustainable Energy Corp. (www.ussec.us) is producing a biocrude oil from a pyrolysis reactor that contains less than 1% water content. The feedstock USSEC is using is soy hulls, they can produce 5.7 gallons of biocrude out of one bushel of soy hulls. The reactor also produces a biogas and a 737 fertilizer.
    Recently their sister company Sustainable Power Corp.(www.sstp.us) has refined the biocrude in a distillation tower with the help of AmSpecLLC and produced 68 different products out of the biocrude oil. Two products are BG-100 Biogasoline, and Cellulosic Diesel Fuel. This is the first company that has been able to refine their Pyrolysis oil into transportation fuels. They have started a Biorefinery in Baytown,TX that will also produce Green Electricity.
    Additional websites:
    http://www.biocrude.us
    http://www.jhrivera.com

  17. A bushel of soy hulls? They say nothing about hulls. Sounds like they are still doing food->fuel, which is pretty weird if you go the pyrolysis route. We’ll have to see what’s up with this.

  18. The process used to produce the biocrude is called “The Rivera Process”. This new technology consists of unknown enzymes in the catalysts that create 5.7 gallons of biocrude from one bushel of biomass. This is the only pyrolysis/hydrolysis process in the world that produces a biocrude that contains less than 1% water content, and that blends with petroleum fuels. All other known pyrolysis oils are immiscible with petroleum, USSEC’s pyrolysis oil mixes 100% with petroleum.

    Unkown enzymes? Working a pyrolysis environment? More like unheard of. That noise you are hearing is a BS detector…

  19. One of the big problems with expanding Fischer Tropsch infrastructure.

    What’s stopping them from putting in Black Biomass, instead of Green Biomass? (i.e. Coal)

    Or taking any technology advances and applying it to CTL.

    (And yes especially if we consider that it’s a global issue)

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