BioTfueL project – 2G biofuels via thermochemical conversion



PROJECT FACTSHEET

Partners
Budget
€112.7 million (€33.3 million in public funding)
Feedstocks
Lignocellulosic biomass (straw, forest waste, dedicated energy crops)
Platform
Termochemical - Syngas
Technologies
Torrefaction, gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis
Products
Renewable diesel and jet fuel
Capacity target
200,000 metric tons per year
Date for market launch
2020
Location of the demonstration units
Pretreatment: Sofiprotéol’s site in Venette (France).
Gasification, purification and synthesis: Total’s site in Dunkirk (France).

GENERAL INFORMATION

Total is working in two large projects for retrofitting its conventional facilities with biorefining technologies. The first one is the transformation of the La Mède refinery into a HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) plant. The plans were unveiled in April 2015 and entail an investment of €200 million to produce 500,000 metric tons per year of high-quality renewable diesel. The second one is the initiative covered by this post: the BioTfueL project.

BioTfueL, launched by Total and five partners, is focused on developing and marketing an end-to-end chain of technologies for converting biomass into second-generation biofuels via thermochemical conversion. The process can also convert fossil feedstock mixed with biomass to ensure a continuous supply despite seasonal variations in biomass availability. The high quality biofuels produced using this process chain will be free of sulphur and aromatic compounds and technically suitable for use in all types of diesel and jet engines. The partners’ goal is to produce 200,000 metric tons of renewable diesel and jet fuel per year from one million metric tons of biomass by 2020. The BioTfueL project also examines the possibility of locating pretreatment units in regions that have an abundant supply of biomass, so as to densify biomass material early on in the production process.

After five years of R&D, the project entered a new phase with the construction of the demonstration units that are expected to come on stream later this year. The pretreatment will take place at Sofiprotéol’s site in Venette whereas the subsequent process steps will be performed at Total’s site in Dunkirk. The demonstration units will validate the technical and economic feasibility of the technologies and optimize their energy efficiency and environmental impact. On completion of the project, the process chain will be ready for the transition to industrial-scale production.

Figure 1. BioTfueL process (extracted from Total web page)

THE PROCESS

1. Biomass pretreatment
The biomass is pretreated, dried and pulverized so that it can be injected under pressure into a gasifier via fluidization and pneumatic conveying. The specific pretreatment to be used is the torrefaction, a mild thermal process (250-300ºC) at inert atmosphere and atmospheric pressure and with a residence time between 20 and 60 minutes. The product obtained must be easy to grind without facing considerable mass losses and homogeneous.

2. Gasification
Once the pretreated biomass has been ground into a powder, it is transported to the gasifier. There, it is exposed to very high temperatures (1,200 - 1,600ºC) in the presence of oxygen to convert it into syngas. The gasification reactions take place under a pressure of 30 - 42 bar and achieving a conversion of more than 99% takes less than two seconds. A pressurized entrained-flow gasifier has been selected because it offers high levels of treatment capacity, great flexibility in terms of feedstock and a very pure syngas. The synthesis gas leaves the reactor at the bottom and it is cooled down by a water quench to about 220ºC. This gasification technology of ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions (PRENFLO) is already used commercially to treat fossil fuel feedstock. However, significant changes are required to enable the injection of biomass into the gasifier, either alone or mixed with fossil fuel feedstock in varying proportions.

3. Syngas clean up and conditioning
To be converted into liquid fuel, the syngas must be very pure and have the correct chemical composition. Indeed, the syngas produced in the gasifier has a low H2/CO (0.5-0.7) ratio when compared with the requirement of the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactor (almost 2), hence Water Gas Shift (WGS) reaction is performed on a part of the syngas. The CO2 formed is removed with H2S and other impurities using an Acid Gas Removal (AGR) unit. Since the FT catalyst requires very low levels of impurities, a final purification step is performed with guard beds (chemisorption).

4. Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis and upgrading
The FT process converts purified syngas into a mixture of hydrocarbons. This step is followed by hydrocracking and hydro-isomerization stages in order to get final products: mainly middle distillates (diesel and jet fuel) and naphtha. Unlike the first three stages described above, no R&D work will be carried out on the FT process during the BioTfueL project, because this process is already available commercially. The technology is the GaselTM process (developed by IFP Energies nouvelles, ENI and Axens). This technology involves a cobalt catalyst, maximizing the production of middle distillates into a slurry bubble column reactor.
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REFERENCES
3 J.-C. Viguié et al.: “BioTfueL Project: Targeting the Development of Second-Generation Biodiesel and Biojet Fuels”. Oil & Gas Science and Technology – Rev. IFP Energies nouvelles, Vol. 68 (2013), No. 5, pp. 935-946.

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