H₂CAP – Hydrogen assisted catalytic biomass pyrolysis for green fuels

Biomass such as wood, straw and energy crops are considered renewable sources of carbonaceous fuels,however biomass is still a limited resource. It is therefore desirable to utilize biomass where no other sourceof renewable energy is readily available, such as fuels for the transportation sector. The objective of thepresent work is to convert biomass into gasoline and diesel. Fast pyrolysis of beech wood have beenconducted at high hydrogen pressure in a fluid bed reactor with a hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) catalyst asbed medium followed by a fixed bed HDO reactor for complete oxygen removal before oil condensation.Dependent on reactor temperatures the organic liquid yield including C₄+ gases varied between 16.3 and21.3 wt.% daf (dry, ash free basis). The oxygen content of the oil was always <1 wt.%, corresponding to anenergy recovery in the oil between 40 and 52 %. Ongoing work includes optimization of reaction conditionsand catalysts to improve the yield of oxygen free bio-oil.