COMSYN project partners successfully validate Fischer-Tropsch biofuels production
Type of post: NEWS.
Production of biofuel by gasification of
biomass residues was successfully validated within the framework of the COMSYN project last month. The process
performance was verified with bark in an 80 hour-long test run at VTT. The syngas conversion to
Fischer-Tropsch (FT) products was conducted by INERATEC GmbH.
Press release: “Complete production chain from biomass residues to Fischer-Tropsch
products successfully validated”, 26/9/2019.
Figure 1. COMSYN logo with slogan
The project
COMSYN is a four-year EU Horizon 2020 project
that lasts from 2017 to 2021 with a budget of EUR 5.1 M€ (Grant Agreement No
727476). The project consortium consists of seven partners from four different
countries combining research institutes, SME and top-level European industry.
COMSYN aims to develop a new BTL (Biomass-To-Liquid)
production concept by means of a compact gasification and synthesis process.
Biofuel production costs will be reduced by up to 35% compared to alternative
routes, which translates to less than 0.80 €/L production cost for diesel. The
production concept is based on the distributed primary conversion of various
kinds of biomass residues to intermediate liquid products at small-to-medium
scale (10-50 ktons/year FT products, 30–150 MW biomass) units located close to
biomass resources. The FT products will be upgraded to fuels in existing
central oil refineries, bringing the benefits of economy of scale to the
overall process.
The test
The main focus of the test was to study and verify
the performance of the gas cleaning train, and especially the entire synthesis
process with real wood-derived gasification gas:
- Crushed bark was gasified in a fluidized-bed reactor
with steam as the main gasification agent.
- The
raw gasification gas was filtered with advanced metal filters of GKN
Sinter Metals Filters GmbH.
- Tars and light hydrocarbon gases were
reformed using the staged reformer concept developed by VTT.
- Final cleaning of the reformed synthesis gas
of sulphur and other remaining contaminants was realized through a robust
sorbent-based process developed by VTT.
- The ultra-clean syngas was compressed and led
to VTT's mobile synthesis unit called MOBSU, which utilizes the innovative
compact FT technology of INERATEC.
- Two products, the FT- wax and FT-oil streams,
were collected and will be further refined to high-quality transport fuels by
UniCRE (Unipetrol Centre for Research and
Education).
