Research & Development

Robbie Venderbosch, Daan Assink, Elwin Gansekoele en Jan Florijn

Pyrolysis of Empty
Biomass can be transformed into a liquid trough fast pyrolysis. This is the rapid thermal decomposition under the absence of oxygen. In 2005, BTG built a 2 t/hr production plant in Malaysia, using Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB) as a feedstock. EFB is a left-over from palm oil mill processing which at present is incinerated. The purpose of the pyrolysis is to valorize these residues and produce clean and uniform oils that can be stored, transported and used easily.

In this paper the status of BTGs plant in Malaysia is briefly reviewed. Challenges for the future are to improve the reliability of pyrolysis systems, optimize the heat integration, and demonstrate the use of the oil. in boilers, engines and gas turbines, as a chemical feedstock or as transportation fuel.

To overcome such disadvantages, an indirect approach could be followed, namely a pre-treatment process at the site of the biomass collection to create a more uniform product with a higer density that can be transported and used less expensively. Table 1 shows the options for various pre-treatment techniques. Fast pyrolysis is a promising pre-treatment technique. The (oxygen containing) product liquid can be used as fuel (for instance in boilers or turbines), or be further upgraded to chemicals, or bio-fuels. The interest in bioliquids has grown rapidly in recent years, because: liquid fuels can be used to (co-)fire existing boilers, power stations, engines, and turbines; the bio-liquid production is decoupled in scale, time and location from its use at the location of heat or electricity; the liquefaction is a rather cheap pre-treatment step, the process is flexible towards its biomass feed, and the oil production plant generates its own heat and electricity. In previous papers in this journal [1,2] and in various reviews [for instance 3], the principles of flash pyrolysis and techniques and process were discussed extensively. In this short paper the technology status of BTGs pyrolysis process is updated, and some new views and insights concerning pyrolysis technologies and opportunities are highlighted.

Introduction
Biomass offers promising alternatives for fossil derived products. The use of biomass as a fuel, or to produce heat and/or electricity is rapidly expanding. However, the scale of industrial biomass use is several orders of magnitude lower than unit operations known in petrochemical industries (up to about 100 MWth for biomass compared to several GWth for conventional refineries). This is related to four intrinsic problems of biomass, summarized by the acronym CASE: the Contaminants present in biomass (usually ash is mentioned, but equally important is that biomass contains much water and oxygen); its Availability (in general biomass becomes available in quantities ranging from 1 to 10 t/hr dry and ash-free); the Structure varies for each biomass type (wet /dry, fluffy / dense, chips / flour etc); biomass has a low Energy density per volumetric unit.

R.H. Venderbosch, D. Assink, E. Gansekoele, J.F. Florijn, Biomass Technology Group B.V., P.O.Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede. www.btgworld.com office@btgworld.com

Fig. 1 Simplified process scheme 1

BTG pyrolysis Process

Pyrolysis is the thermal cracking of biomass at temperatures ranging from 400 to 600oC. It includes fast heating of the biomass (for instance by using hot sand), followed by rapid condensation of the vapors produced. Several techniques are available nowadays. BTG, one of the pioneers in pyrolysis, started their fast pyrolysis developments at the beginning of the nineties with a new reactor concept in which no inert gases were required to enable rapid mixing of biomass and hot bed material. The concept was the result of research done at the University of Twente. In this concept the rapid mixing and heating of the biomass was achieved by mechani-

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Fruit Bunch
cal mixing of hot sand and biomass inside a rotating cone reactor [1,2]. Over the years, the way in which the mixing took place was improved considerably, and its efficiency increased. This led to the worlds first commercial unit of 50 t/d running on so-called Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB for short) in Malaysia. EFB is a left-over from palm oil production.

Fig. 2 2 Fresh fruit bunch

EFB pyrolysis
In the Malaysian plant EFB is taken directly from a nearby palm mill, pressed, shredded, dried and converted into bio-oil. Reception to oil delivery takes about one hour. A simplified scheme for the process is given in Figure 1. It shows the complete chain from EFB reception, storage, pre-treatment (pressing, shredding and drying), storage (approx. 4 ton) and conversion. The heat required for the drying of the EFB (65 wt% moisture upon reception) is taken from the pyrolysis unit. Steam production is fully integrated in the production unit. Figure 2 shows pictures of EFB and the pyrolysis plant. The plant has been running on a daily basis since mid-2005, showing the potentials but also the shortcomings. The main achievements over the last two years are: more than 1,000 tons oil has been produced, requiring more than 5,000 tons of wet EFB; the pyrolosys oil is co-fired, replacing conventional diesel in a waste disposal system located about 300 km from the site; the drying of EFB (down to 5%) is possible using the excess heat from the pyrolysis process; the oil quality can be controlled by the operating conditions; the energy recovered from the process can be used effectively for drying the (very) wet EFB, and potentially to generate the electricity required. maximum capacity of the plant so-far is about 1.7 t/hr (design 2 t/hr) on a daily continuous basis. Nevertheless, some shortcomings of the system can be listed as well: fluid bed combustion of the char from EFB has a high risk of blockages, due to the specific nature of the EFB ash (amongst others low melting point); considerable pre-treatment of EFB is necessary (as shown on Figure 1), with high risk of erosion of equipment parts, mainly for the press and shredders; the oil yield is lower than for wood, while the water content is higher; the supply of EFB from palm mill varies considerably, from 2 2.5 t/hr during the day to
Fig. 3 3 Empty fruit bunch

Fig. 4 4 Oil storage tanks

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Research & Development

Fig. 5 Pyrolysis unit

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1 1.5 t/hr at night, and large amounts of (dried and fluffy) EFB cannot be stored easily; as a first-of-a-kind installation, the reliability of the plant was limited; much effort and resources were spent to improve and optimize the plant. In the pyrolysis unit of the Malaysian plant, sufficient heat is generated to dry the wet EFB to < 10 wt.%. This waste heat may also provide the electricity to feed the complete plant, including pre-treatment (pressing, shredding etc.) and the pyrolysis. From an operational point of view, this heat integration, together with improving reliability of the overall system, will be a challenge for the coming years. The progress in Malaysia has been significant since the beginning of the plant design in 2004.. From an initial set of experiments in 2003 (8 hours and a maximum feed rate of 100 kg/hr), the system has been scaled up to a factory running 24 hours/day, where a direct link has been established between the palm mill and the pyrolysis plant. In addition, the process is applied to a very difficult biomass feedstock as, next to being fluffy and wet, the ash of the mineral rich feed has a very low melting point (below 650C). l
References See www.npt.nl at Inhoudsopgaven.

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Ash Gasification Pyrolysis Carbonisation Torrefaction

1 Mixing

Availability Increase -1 1 1

Structure Improvement , Gas , Liquid oil , Charcoal , Charcoal like

Energy density increase (GJ/m3) --, 5 - 10 , 20 - 25 , 8 - 10 , 4 - 7

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of products becomes possible

Table 1. Improvement of biomass characteristics by various pre-treatment techniques compared to original biomass

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