DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Written by: Joshua Delung
Researchers at Virginia Tech are using science to control unstable components in biomass — recently living organisms such as wood or waste products — to develop stable oils that can be readily upgraded to transportation fuels for the first time.
Converting woody feedstocks — in this case, poplar and pine wood — to liquid fuels usually produces bio-oil that is unstable, acidic and that cannot be converted to transportation fuel using traditional processing technologies. These bio-oils present further problems, said Foster Agblevor, a Virginia Tech professor of biological systems enginering who has been working on the research for three years. The oils become thicker during storage, resulting in a substance that turns to char when heated. In storage for only a few months, these bio-oils are unusable for fuel.
The team's work is based on a theory that by looking at the three unstable components of biomass — cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin — and controlling them separately, the overall product can become more stable. Agblevor said his team just “had to change the normal way of doing things.” He is working with Ted Oyama, professor of chemical engineering, and Francine Battaglia, associate professor of mechanical engineering, both at Virginia Tech, and BASF scientist Ron McClung.
Bio-oil, biosyncrude and biogasoline
Agblevor and the other research team members — professors and PhD students — are working on producing stable bio-oils and the potential for biogasoline. Thus far, Virginia Tech researchers have developed catalysts that produce stable bio-oils that can be stored for at least one year without significant increases in viscosity. Agblevor believes a stable biosyncrude has never been produced until now.
“We will be able to move from where we are now to making transportation fuels from biomass without doing complicated processes that have been done in the past, and if it's pursued aggressively, we should see biogasoline on the market soon,” Agblevor says.
The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through a 2008 grant from the Biomass Program, is overcoming several hurdles by turning biomass into transportation fuels that can directly replace fossil fuels. The research shows a potential pathway toward lowering carbon emissions while using domestic biomass resources to produce sustainable energy for vehicles.
“I think [creating biogasoline in existing refineries] can be done sustainably and cost-effectively within three years if the research in this area is funded,” says Agblevor.
Agblevor is looking at the entire production cycle to understand how the current fuel infrastructure could play a part. “My rationale is that instead of trying to build a new biorefinery that will cost millions of dollars, this process can use existing petroleum refineries and make them green.”
This new bio-oil could be processed in traditional petroleum refineries, which leverages existing infrastructure. The next step for Agblevor's team is to develop a pilot test that will transform biomass materials directly into transportation fuels as evidence that this solution works.
“We are now working on moving forward with developing a demonstration where you'll see wood coming in one end and, out of the other, we'll see gasoline,” he says. “This should get everyone very excited.”
If research at Virginia Tech provides a successful demonstration, biogasoline could potentially be created in existing petroleum refineries.
* Contact: Joshua.Delung@ee.doe.gov