Hybrid hydrogen-carbon process
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Bioenergy > Technologies > Thermochemical technologies > Gasification > Hybrid hydrogen-carbon process
"In order to achieve energy security for the United States and to create long-lasting jobs that enhance the economic development of the rural economy, it is essential to develop biomass to liquid fuel (biofuel) technologies that would be sustainable and co-exist harmoniously with other uses of biomass. Since the driver for biomass growth is energy from the sun, we begin our search for a suitable biomass-to-fuel conversion technology by examining a future scenario where solar energy is the prime driver of our energy economy. While we are currently analyzing this dynamic interaction to identify resource availability, technology needs, economics, environmental footprint for harmonious coexistence of all the end uses, we focus on the use of biomass to produce transportation fuels.
Historically, all the solutions for biomass to liquid fuel have relied solely on biomass and have ignored possible interaction with other resources and associated technologies. We start our analysis by first identifying a synergistic interaction across technologies that has a potential to supply much larger quantities of biofuel from a given quantity of biomass. As shown in the figure above, for a biomass growth rate between 1 kg/m2/yr to 3.75 kg/m2/yr, the net energy efficiency of solar photons to biomass conversion is 0.3 to about 1% The traditional methods such as fermentation, gasification followed by conversion to liquid fuel, fast-pyrolysis etc. that solely use biomass will lead to further reduction in Sun- to-biofuel efficiency due to conversion process inefficiencies. Generally, this means that the overall efficiency from sun photons to biofuel is in the range of 0.12 to 0.5%. Such overall low-conversion efficiencies directly translate into large land area requirements to meet all the liquid fuel need for the U.S. transportation sector.
On the other hand, processes to convert solar photons to electricity using photovoltaics or solar-thermal power easily have efficiencies of about 15%. With use of such electricity and an electrolyzer, one can produce hydrogen with an overall efficiency from sun-to-hydrogen of about 7.5% (based on lower heating value, LHV). This efficiency is an order of magnitude higher than the sun-to-biomass growth efficiency.
Based on the analysis above, we recently proposed a hybrid H2-Carbon (H2CAR) process. In the H2CAR process, H2 from a carbon-free energy source such as solar, nuclear etc. is reacted with biomass to provide liquid fuel for the transportation sector. Since all the carbon in the biomass is converted to liquid fuel in this process, only one-third the biomass needed to produce the same quantity of liquid fuel.
The most significant finding of the H2CAR process is that 1.366 billion tons of sustainable biomass available per year is capable of providing the 13.8 million bbl/day of liquid fuel needed for the entire U.S. transportation sector! This is in contrast to literature estimates that 1.366 billion ton biomass is sufficient to meet 30% of the U.S. transportation fuel need."
Information from: https://engineering.purdue.edu/H2biomass/Webpage/Research.htm
Hybrid hydrogen-carbon process is a proposed method for increasing the efficiency of gasification and other biomass to liquids technologies. By feeding hydrogen produced from renewable sources, particularly solar, into the gasification process you reduce the CO2 produced and can possibly triple the amount of liquid fuel produced per ton of biomass. The idea is to have biomass be purely a source of carbon for liquid hydrocarbons.[1]
Contents |
Products
Advantages
- H2CAR could fuel entire U.S. transportation!
- Pollution free!
- Increases energy efficiency of biomass-to-biofuel production efficiency!
- No changes has to be made in all vehicles engine!
Commercialization status
- This is still in the proposal and design stage.
- A patent application has been submitted.[1]
Sustainability and Environmental Concerns
- Would use substantially less land to produce the biomass, as more liquid fuel could be produced from less biomass.
Societal Impacts
Feedstocks
Feedstocks that can be used for gasification include
- Any organic material - Examples include agricultural wastes, hazardous organic wastes, and industrial wastes.
News
- New Webpage for H2CAR research group at Purdue University: https://engineering.purdue.edu/H2biomass/
Website includes newly patented H2Bioil!!! A new synergistic integration!
- Purdue University unveils biofuels process "to meet all U.S. transportation needs", 14 March 2007 from Biofuel Review. An improved version of a biomass-to-liquids technology, the new approach, called a hybrid hydrogen-carbon process, adds hydrogen from a "carbon-free" energy source, such as solar or nuclear power, during gasification. "Adding hydrogen during this step suppresses the formation of carbon dioxide and increases the efficiency of the process, making it possible to produce three times the volume of biofuels from the same quantity of biomass".
Projects
Publications
See books, reports, scientific papers, position papers and websites for additional useful resources.
- Synergistic Routes to Liquid Fuel for a Petroleum Deprived Future by Rakesh Agrawal, Navneet R. Singh, AIChE Journal,55,7,1898-1905,2009
- Sustainable fuel for the transportation sector (pdf) by Rakesh Agrawal, Navneet R. Singh, Fabio H. Ribeiro, and W. Nicholas Delgass; School of Chemical Engineering and Energy Center at Discovery Park, Purdue University, PNAS published online Mar 14, 2007.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 *Sustainable fuel for the transportation sector (pdf) by Rakesh Agrawal, Navneet R. Singh, Fabio H. Ribeiro, and W. Nicholas Delgass; School of Chemical Engineering and Energy Center at Discovery Park, Purdue University, PNAS published online Mar 14, 2007.
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