Hydrogenation of pyrolysis oils to create gasoline.
EMSL Project ID
6093
Abstract
Pyrolysis Oil to GasolineIntroduction
In the DOE report "Opportunities for Biorenewables in Oil Refineries," refined pyrolysis oils were shown to have the potential to replace a significant portion of transportation fuels (60%). This thermal processing route can effectively utilize a vast majority of the 1 billion tons of biomass projected to be available in the United States, including those feedstocks unsuitable for fermentation. The pyrolysis pathway therefore provides the opportunity for increasing the impact of biofuels while leveraging existing processing and distribution systems.
In 2005, UOP, MRI and Battelle performed proof-of-principle experiments that indicated that pyrolytic lignin could be converted to gasoline with reasonable H2 consumption using mild hydrotreating followed by hydrocracking. A key finding was that mild hydrotreating conditions promote decarboxylation which significantly reduces the hydrogen consumption. The economics of this process are attractive when the price of crude oil increases (3 year payback for $50/bbl crude) or the price of pyrolysis oil decreases.
I. Purpose:
The desired outcome is to provide a foundation for development of an economically viable process for upgrading pyrolysis oil to gasoline. The purpose of this first nine-month phase is to gain a fundamental understanding of the process sensitivity to pyrolysis oil feed properties. At the end of this project recommendations for a standard pyrolysis feed will be made and initial feed standards will be defined. A key deliverable of this project will be development of a process model. This model will be a key input for completion of a technoeconomic analysis of the gasoline production process. The output of this analysis will be used in a stage gate development process to help decide whether further commercial development will proceed.
The project plan includes a series of analysis, research, development, and design efforts targeted at assessing the potential for the production of gasoline from pyrolysis oil derived from a diverse range of biomass feedstocks.
Benefit to DOE/PNNL/NREL
In this project, the benefit to DOE is the development of a new biorefinery concept which utilizes thermochemical conversion of biomass to produce supplemental feed for petroleum refineries to displace imported petroleum.
The majority of EMSL related work will be analytical characterization of products formed in this process.
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2004-07-06
End Date
2007-03-22
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members
Related Publications
Elliott DC, and TR Hart. 2009. "Catalytic Hydroprocessing of Chemical Models for Bio-oil." Energy and Fuels 23(2):631-637. doi:10.1021/ef8007773
Minard KR, VV Vishwanathan, PD Majors, LQ Wang, and PC Rieke. 2006. "In-Situ, Near Real Time, Magnetic Resonance Imaging of PEM MEA Dehydration and Gas Manifold Flooding." Journal of Power Sources 161(2): 856-863.
Minard KR, VV Vishwanathan, PD Majors, LQ Wang, and PC Rieke. 2006. "Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of PEM Dehydration and Gas Manifold Flooding During Continuous Fuel Cell Operation." Journal of Power Sources 161(2):856-863.