Webinar: New R&D advances in hydrothermal gasification for biofuel production

Introduction

Hydrothermal gasification also called supercritical water gasification is a very promising process for energy production from humid and liquid carbon feedstock. This process produces a synthesis gas with high-energy content (mixture of CH4, H2 and CO2). This process benefits from water properties under high pressure and temperature. Beyond its critical point (temperature 374 ° C and pressure 22.1 MPa), water becomes a reactive medium and promotes gasification reactions. In this process, unlike dry gasification, it is not necessary to dry the feedstock first. Targeted feedstock for this process are for instance food waste industry, industrial effluents (black liquor), microalgae, methanization digestates, or wastewater sludge. Development of supercritical water gasification processes is still at laboratory pilot scale and the largest continuous reactors developed work at 100 liters / hour in limited operating times. Research and development actions are necessary to help its development on an industrial scale.

Target audience

Basic hydrothermal gasification process knowledge would help in achieving a better understanding of the seminar workings, but beginners could also follow the webinar, they will be helped by the first presentation “review / state of the art of the process”.

Workshop objectives

• Share with the scientific community the latest R&D advances on hydrothermal gasification illustrated by two H2020 projects on going which have hydrothermal gasification technical tasks: Pulp&Fuel and HyFlexFuel
  
  
• Identify the positive aspects of this process and the technical problems
  
  
• Share good practices

Program

• Introduction
  CEA & Axelera
  
  
• Hydrothermal Gasification Review
  Prof. Frédéric Vogel (PSI)
  
  
• Hydrothermal gasification review of the KIT-activities
  Dr. Nikolaos Boukis (KIT)
  
  
• Black liquor HTG(1) for H₂ production
  Pulp&Fuel (CEA)
  
  
• Water phase from HTL(2) in cHTG(3) process for CH4 production
  HyFlexFuel (PSI)
  
  
• Conclusions
  CEA
  

(1) HTG: Hydrothermal gasification process

(2) HTL: Hydrothermal liquefaction process

(3) cHTG: Catalytic hydrothermal gasification

This webinar is organised by :

ABOUT Pulp&Fuel project

This H2020 project started in October 2018 and involves 10 partners: CEA, SINTEF, RISE ETC, EPFL, IVL, GRENOBLE INP, SOFRESID, TOPINDUSTRIE, FIBRE EXCELLENCE and ABSISKEY. The CEA Grenoble coordinates this project (coordinator: geert.haarlemmer@cea.fr).

The project intends to make a significant contribution to biofuel development by taking advantage of the synergy between dry gasification and supercritical water gasification. The project has chosen to demonstrate its applicability to pulp industry that have both dry and wet wastes available. These wastes are today either recycled in low value fuel for combustion or are disposed at great cost. The mechanical and chemical processes provide large amounts of bark and wood co-products as dry waste. It also produces sludge as wet waste and an excess of black liquor in chemical pulp mills.

As no drying step is required, supercritical water gasification is considered as the most suitable process to transform black liquor in a syngas mainly composed of H₂, CH₄ and CO₂. The objective is to maximize organic matter conversion of black liquor into a gas, and to maximize H₂ yield. Associating this syngas with the one from bark dry gasification allows fulfilling the H/C ratio adapted for Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020

research and innovation program under grant agreement No 818011

ABOUT HyFlexFuel project

This H2020 project started in October 2017 and involves the following partners: AARHUS UNIVERSITET, AALBORG UNIVERSITET, PAUL SCHERRER INSTITUT, DBFZ DEUTSCHES BIOMASSEFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM GEMEINNUTZIGE GMBH, UNIVERSITAET HOHENHEIM, ORGANIC WASTE SYSTEMS NV, ENI SPA, HALDOR TOPSOE AS, ARTTIC. BAUHAUS LUFTFAHRT coordinates this project.

HyFlexFuel works on advancing hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) as key technology for truly sustainable and economically competitive production of drop-in fuels from a broad range of biomass feedstocks.

Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) offers the possibility to convert essentially any type of biogenic material into liquid fuels without the requirement of prior energy-intensive drying. HyFlexFuel aims at developing all individual process steps of HTL-based fuel production and at demonstrating their viability under relevant operational conditions. This includes the upgrading of the intermediate product biocrude to final fuels and the valorisation of residual process streams.

Specifically, the HyFlexFuel partners will

• demonstrate compatibility of HTL-based fuels production with a diverse biomass feedstock portfolio, including algae and waste streams, such as sewage sludge,
• increase energy and carbon efficiency of HTL through improved heat integration and product recovery,
• valorise organic and inorganic components in residual process streams,
• upgrade biocrude from HTL conversion by catalytic hydrotreatment into fuel products and demonstrate their drop-in capability, and
• assess technical, socio-economic and environmental performance potentials.