biomass gasification in the united...

Biomass Gasification in the United States Country Report for IEA Bioenergy Task 33 Kevin Whitty, Elena Shanin and Spencer Owen

The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA 30 September 2015

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Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 1 Bioenergy and Biomass Resources .............................................................................................................. 2 Biomass Energy Policies and Incentives in the US ..................................................................................... 10 Status of Biomass Gasification Technology in the United States ............................................................... 13

Commercial Projects ............................................................................................................................. 13 Enerkem (Pontotoc, Mississippi) ..................................................................................................... 13 LanzaTech Freedom Pines Biorefinery Facility (Soperton, Georgia) ............................................... 15 Commercial Plant: INEOS Bio Cellulosic Plant in Vero Beach, Florida ............................................. 16

Pilot Plants ............................................................................................................................................ 17 TRI Plant in Durham, North Carolina ............................................................................................... 17 GTI Plant in Des Plaines, Illinois ....................................................................................................... 18

References ................................................................................................................................................. 20 Table of Figures Figure 1. Primary energy consumption by source 1949-‐2014 (in quadrillion BTU) [1] ............................... 2 Figure 2. Renewable energy consumption by source 1949-‐2014 (quadrillion BTU) [1] ............................. 2 Figure 3. Generation and capacity of biopower in the United States [2] ................................................... 3 Figure 4. Classifications of biomass sources and their respective biopower generation [2] ...................... 3 Figure 5. National distribution of forest residues available for biomass feedstock use as of 2012 [] ........ 5 Figure 6. National Distribution of Crop Residues as of 2012 [8] ................................................................. 6 Figure 7. Crop residue current and future supplies estimates [5] .............................................................. 6 Figure 8. Distribution of available urban wood waste in the United States as of 2012 [6] ........................ 7 Figure 9. Recovery and discards of materials in MSW, 1960 to 2012 [] ..................................................... 8 Figure 10. Estimated supply of forest biomass and wood waste at $80 per dry ton or less in 2012 [??] .. 8 Figure 11. Comparison of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Billion Ton Study Update estimates [7] 9 Figure 12. Renewable Fuel Standard Volumes by Year ............................................................................ 10 Figure 13. BETO’s Multi-‐Year Plan goals [24]. ........................................................................................... 12 Figure 14. Enerkem Gasification process for producing biofuels ............................................................. 14 Figure 15. Concord Blue Reformer Process .............................................................................................. 16 Figure 16. INEOS Gasification process for producing ethanol .................................................................. 16 Figure 17. INEOS Plant in Vero Beach, Florida .......................................................................................... 17

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Introduction Gasification is a process that involves thermochemical conversion of carbon-‐containing materials such as biomass, coal and oil to an energy-‐containing gas (synthesis gas, or syngas) typically rich in hydrogen (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO). Some of the first productive gasifiers reacted steam with coal to produce town gas for heating and lighting London in the 1850s. Gasification technology advanced slowly for the next 100 years, but recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in the level of sophistication, types of applications and number of gasifiers worldwide. Today, thousands of gasifiers with capacities ranging from a few kilowatts to over 500 megawatts generate syngas from a wide range of fuels for production of heat, electricity, chemicals and synthetic fuels.

Over 99% of syngas produced today comes from fossil fuels including coal, oil and petroleum coke. Biomass presents unique challenges for gasification, including relatively low energy density, limited availability within a given geographic region, inconsistency of physical and chemical characteristics, difficulty preparing and feeding the material, and production of condensable “tars” in the syngas. Nonetheless, growth in biomass gasification has accelerated in recent years and today there are many profitable, industrial-‐scale gasifiers, some processing more than 500 tons per day of biomass, operating reliably throughout the world.

This report provides an update on the status of biomass gasification in the United States, including availability of biomass resources, governmental policies relevant to biomass gasification, gasification technology development and biomass gasification facilities. The report focuses primarily on large-‐scale commercial biomass gasification technologies and facilities, although consideration is also given to small scale systems suitable for regional production of synthesis gas for heat or power.

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Bioenergy and Biomass Resources According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), renewable energy represented 9.8% of primary energy consumed in the United States in 2014 and its contribution to overall energy use has increased over the past 15 years, as seen in Figure 1 [1]. Biomass accounted for just under half of renewable energy consumption (5.03 EJ), hydroelectric accounted for roughly one-‐quarter, and other (wind, geothermal, and solar) made up the rest (Figure 2) [1].

Total U.S. electricity generation from all sources in 2014 was 4093 terawatt-‐hours (billion kilowatt hours), of which renewable energy represented 13%. Roughly half of renewable electricity was hydroelectric, but 12%, or 64 TWh, was generated from biomass and waste [1]. This represented a nearly 7% increase from 2013, when 60 TWh of electricity was generated from biomass and waste.

Figure 1. Primary energy consumption by source 1949-‐2014 (in quadrillion BTU) [1]

Figure 2. Renewable energy consumption by source 1949-‐2014 (quadrillion BTU) [1]

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The 60 TWh of biopower generation in 2013 came from 14 GW of capacity (Figure 3). Of this biopower generation, 39.9 TWh (67%) was based on forest and agricultural residues—predominantly produced through combustion—and 17.1 TWh (29%) was based on municipal solid waste (MSW) including landfill gas (Figure 4) [2]. The remaining 4% of biopower was generated from other types of biomass.

Figure 3. Generation and capacity of biopower in the United States [2]

Figure 4. Classifications of biomass sources and their respective biopower generation [2]

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The land base of the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, is about 9.16 million square kilometers (3.537 million square miles). Roughly 33% is forest land, 26% is grassland, pasture, and range, 20% is cropland, and 21% is urban, swamps, deserts and special use land [3,4]. Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, about 60% of the land in the United States has the potential for biomass production.

A number of studies have been performed to estimate biomass availability and costs in the United States. The most comprehensive, which considered biomass currently or potentially available for bioenergy, is the so-‐called Billion-‐Ton study, which was a joint effort between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Energy first published in 2005 then updated in 2011 [5,6].

In the United States, potential biomass resources are generally classified into four major categories:

• forest residues, including mill residues • agricultural residues • urban wood waste • dedicated herbaceous and woody energy crops

Forest Residues. Forest residues include waste materials from forestry for e.g. lumber and paper production, and includes stumps, tops, branches and dead trees commonly left in the forest. In addition to the 320 million dry tons of forest biomass used for primary forest purposes, approximately 93 million dry tons of forest residues are removed annually [6]. The distribution of forest residues in the U.S. is shown in Figure 5. Residues are concentrated in the Pacific northwest and southeastern states where most of the country’s forests are located. Changes in forestry practices could increase the amount of forest residues available for bioenergy production.

Estimates of forest residues potentially available for energy production vary widely and depend on the assumed intensity of residue removal, as-‐delivered value of the material (dollars per dry ton), consideration of sustainability of the forest and other factors [5-‐7]. It is estimated that there are between 22 and 64 million dry tons of forest residue available for energy use at $20 to $60 per ton. The expected increase of available forest biomass is marginal, with an estimated 66 million dry tons at $60 per ton in 2030.

A special category of forest residue that offers opportunities for biomass gasification is pulping liquor, or so-‐called black liquor, resulting from the chemical pulping process. Black liquor contains the lignin fraction of wood that is cooked and separated from the fibers, and is a highly reactive, pumpable biomass-‐based feedstock amenable to gasification. Approximately 50 million tons per year of pulping liquors are currently produced in the U.S. Production of pulping liquor is expected to grow, approaching 60 million tons by 2030 [6].

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Figure 5. National distribution of forest residues available for biomass feedstock use as of 2012 [8]

Agricultural Residues. Figure 6 shows map of crop residue availability in the United States. The highest concentration of agricultural residues is in the farming-‐heavy midwest states including Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and North and South Dakota. The current estimate of crop residue and agricultural waste available is 111 million dry tons, with three-‐fourths being corn stover, based on a farmgate price of $60 per dry ton [6]. That estimate takes into consideration the amount of residue that must remain on the fields to prevent erosion and maintain soil nutrients and carbon levels. As with forest residues, estimates used to predict the future availability of biomass feedstocks vary widely depending on the initial model assumptions used. Although greater efficiency in farming and other practices could lead to higher future yields, improvements might be offset by reductions associated with negative influences such as climate change.

Predicted future availability of agricultural residues costing $60 or less per dry ton are shown in Figure 7 for both a baseline and a high yield case. Corn stover is predicted to remain the major source of agricultural residues for many years to come.

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Figure 6. National Distribution of Crop Residues as of 2012 [8]

Figure 7. Crop residue current and future supplies estimates [5]

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Urban wood waste. Urban wood waste includes construction and demolition debris as well as the woody component of municipal solid waste. Generally, urban wood waste is the least expensive biomass resource based on gate prices, followed by mill residues, forest residues, agricultural residues, and energy crops. This more or less reflects the costs of acquisition (offsetting landfill tipping fees), collection (or production and harvesting), and processing.

Figure 8 shows the distribution of urban wood waste in the United States. Availability of urban wood waste is highest in areas of high population including southern California, the eastern seaboard and Florida. Depending on the cost that can be received for the feedstock, estimates for availability of urban wood waste for energy production range from 12 to 32 million dry tons per [6]. Construction and demolition waste is especially sensitive to cost, with an estimated 5 times more material available at $60 per dry ton than at $20 per dry ton.

Recovery of energy-‐containing materials from municipal solid waste is an important component of waste availability. The fraction of MSW recovered has risen in recent decades (Figure 9) and is expected to increase in the future.

Figure 8. Distribution of available urban wood waste in the United States as of 2012 [6]

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Figure 9. Recovery and discards of materials in MSW, 1960 to 2012 [9]

A summary of the estimated current availability of forest biomass and wood waste, not counting energy crops but including pulping liquors, and assuming high demand resulting in a cost of $80 per dry ton for residues, is shown in Figure 10. Current annual use is roughly 130 million tons and total potential availability is approximately 250 million tons.

Figure 10. Estimated supply of forest biomass and wood waste at $80 per dry ton or less in 2012 [??]

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As noted previously, estimates of biomass availability depend on assumptions and models used. Analyses performed in recent years emphasize sustainable forestry and agriculture, and are considered more realistic than the original 2005 USDOE/USDA Billion Ton Study [5]. The 2011 Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) 2011 Billion Ton Study Update [6] takes such issues into consideration. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released an analysis of the 2011 Billion Ton Study Update that created stricter model assumptions. In the UCS analysis [7], predictions in the increase of crop yields and the amount of agricultural residues removed are less than in ORNL study. The UCS estimate of biomass that will be available in 2030 is slightly less than the ORNL estimate based on moderate growth, with most of the difference relating to forest biomass (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Comparison of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Billion Ton Study Update estimates [7]

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Biomass Energy Policies and Incentives in the US In the United States, there is greater focus on increasing the use of renewable energy as a whole than specifically on increasing bioenergy use. No law requires any amount of electricity generation or heating to be sourced from biomass. Despite this, biomass is not only a viable source of energy for the future, it is also currently the second greatest source of renewable energy generation [6].

Biofuel tax credits. Much of the funding the biomass industry receives is through the federal government via incentives for general biomass technologies and requirements on the amount of biofuel use and production in the U.S. Since 1978, biofuel incentives have mainly come in the form of tax credits. The most recent round of tax credits expired in 2014, and as of this writing it is expected that these will soon be extended through 2016. If passed, the legislation will include a $1-‐per-‐gallon credit for biodiesel and renewable diesel as well as a $1.01-‐per-‐gallon production tax credit for cellulosic biofuels, which are the same as the tax credits that expired in 2014.

Renewable fuel standards. In 2005, the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which included a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program that required 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel to be blended into gasoline by 2012 [10]. In 2007, the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) [11], which improved upon the Renewable Fuel Standard program by including blending biofuels into diesel and increasing the volume of renewable fuels blended to 36 billion gallons by 2022 (Figure 12). The legislation requires 21 billion gallons of fuel per year to be from advanced biofuel, most of which is expected to be cellulosic ethanol.

Figure 12. Renewable Fuel Standard Volumes by Year

0"

5"

10"

15"

20"

25"

30"

35"

40"

2006"2007"2008"2009"2010"2011"2012"2013"2014"2015"2016"2017"2018"2019"2020"2021"2022"

Billion

s"of"G

allons"

Biomass6based"diesel"Other"advanced"biofuels"Cellulosic6advanced"biofuels"ConvenBonal"biofuels"

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In addition to contributing to renewable transportation fuels, biomass is a major component of the United States’ renewable energy goals and is included in nearly all legislation on renewables that provide federal funding and assistance. Programs offer financial support through grants, tax credits, and loan guarantee programs. Programs for renewable energy in general include the Improved Energy Technology Loan program, the USDOE Loan Guarantee program, and Advanced Energy Research Project Grants. All three of these programs are for commercial or research projects that would either significantly reduce air pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHG) or would reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign energy imports. The USDOE Loan Guarantee program in particular helps provide security for projects that are high risk and might not be undertaken otherwise. In June 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a Clean Power Plan under President Obama’s Climate Action Plan [17]. This plan set out a proposal to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. Power plants can cut their GHG emissions through conversion to cleaner burning advanced biomass, since many biomass gasification systems can have a lower pollutant and GHG output than burning natural gas.

The Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) oversees a research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) program that focuses on how to improve five technical elements of bioenergy in order to lead to greater use of bioenergy technologies in the US [20]. The first three elements the program focuses on—feedstock supply, conversion, and the improvement of power generation technologies—are R&D efforts [20]. The two final areas, integrated biorefineries and distribution infrastructure, are D&D tasks concentrating on demonstrating the reliability and success of biomass conversion technologies. These tasks focus on taking bench-‐scale technology and developing it into effective pilot, demonstration, and commercial scale refineries and plants. Since these are costly ventures, BETO’s main role is to provide financial assistance. Once the initial refineries are shown to be economically successful, private investors will be more likely to invest in projects and kick-‐start the construction of more refineries [19].

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has multiple programs to encourage industry to either build new biomass refineries or convert existing fossil fuel refineries. The USDA’s Biorefinery Assistance Program is a loan guarantee program that assists in the development, construction, and retrofitting of commercial-‐scale biorefineries [21]. The USDA Repowering Assistance Biorefinery Program is more specifically for providing incentives to retrofit existing power plants. The program can provide up to 50% of the cost to convert biorefineries from fossil fuel systems to biomass fuel systems [18]. One of the requirements in order to receive the funds is that the plant must show that it has a constant supply of biomass for a minimum of three years. This is a problem if the biomass is to be sourced from crops that are often also used for food purposes, since overuse of food crops for energy generation will lead to higher food prices.

The hesitancy to use food crops for biomass leads to the instability of biomass feedstock supply and demand. Producers of biomass often do not want to make the risk of growing crops for biofuels if there is no steady buyer. Similarly, biomass conversion lags because companies hesitate to take the risk of creating or upgrading a plant without assurance of an existing and reliable supply of biomass. In order to avoid hikes in food prices, advanced biofuels, defined as any biofuels not sourced from food crops, are

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incentivized more than other biofuels. The Advanced Biofuel Feedstock Incentives aims to alleviate some of the aforementioned problems. The program is part of the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, initially passed as part of the 2008 Farm Bill and renewed by the 2014 farm bill. For farmers looking to produce biomass crops, the legislation reimburses up to 50% of the cost of establishing an advanced feedstock crop [18]. Since woody feedstocks are both more difficult to establish and have a higher energy content, annual payments are given to producers for up to 15 years, as opposed to only 5 for herbaceous feedstock crops. Additionally, the legislation provides matching payments to the feedstock producer when selling the biomass to refineries, up to $20 per dry ton. The final federal effort to expand the biomass market is the USDA Value Added Producer Grants (VAPG). This program aims to generate new products, create and expand marketing opportunities, and increase producer income [22]. With available funding through 2018, VAPG gives planning or working capital grants to independent agricultural producers who are expanding into biomass crop production.

In terms of future expectations for biomass energy, the United States is continually striving to increase the amount of renewable energy used in the country. On June 30, 2015, the United States, China, and Brazil signed an agreement to increase the amount of electricity produced from renewable sources to 20% by the year 2030 [23]. This agreement comes in advance of the upcoming December United Nations Climate Change Conference, where it is expected countries will make further commitments to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. As a low-‐ or zero-‐carbon producer, biomass gasification is a technology that the United States can look to as a sustainable source of renewable energy.

In March 2015, BETO released its Multi-‐Year Program Plan for the next 5 years. The key activities BETO will be focusing on fall into three categories; feedstock supply, conversion, and demonstration and market transformation (Figure 13).

Figure 13. BETO’s Multi-‐Year Plan goals [24].

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Status of Biomass Gasification Technology in the United States Over the past ten years the United States has seen a flurry of new gasification facilities, and new gasification technology companies. The struggle in the United States, as in most places, has been to move the technology from demonstration to a large scale commercial facility. Many of the large facilities never came to pass or ran out of money quickly after operation. In Pontotoc, Mississippi, Enerkem was poised to build a 300 tons per day waste to ethanol plant back in 2010. This facility is still under construction and has not had any progress in building in the past year. Similarly, over $300 million was invested into a plant in Soperton, Georgia. This facility was shut down due to lack of funds and lack of production. Still, there is optimism and facilities being planned for the future.

Most of the technology for biomass gasification in the United States is smaller scaled. Over the past 20 years over 50 companies have sprung up to provide gasification facilities to businesses. The majority of the gasification facilities power small commercial buildings or manufacturing plants. Companies such as All Power Labs create gasifiers on a very small scale. These gasifiers are meant to power homes or small events.

Commercial Projects

Enerkem (Pontotoc, Mississippi)

Enerkem plans to build and operate a 300 ton per day waste-‐to-‐biofuels plant in Pontotoc, Mississippi, under its wholly-‐owned U.S. affiliate, Enerkem Corporation. The company has signed an agreement with the Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority of Mississippi (TRSWMA) for the supply of 190,000 tons of unsorted municipal solid waste (MSW) per year. The plant broke ground in 2011. It has successfully met federal environmental assessment requirements, which allows the company to move forward with the project. The plant is designed to produce 10 million gallons per year of ethanol with plans for future facility expansion that would double the capacity [25].

After over five years of planning, construction still has not started in Pontotoc. Enerkem has not given up on this facility, but is trying to work through planning and financing of the plant. Enerkem has not given an official date of when the construction will start on the Pontotoc facility [26].

Enerkem has developed a gasification-‐based technology that transforms sorted municipal solid waste (MSW) and forest and agricultural residues into transportation fuels, high-‐ value chemicals and electricity. Enerkem refers to their process as carbon recycling as it chemically recycles carbon that would otherwise be trapped in landfill waste. The process is complementary to traditional recycling practices as value is generated by converting the carbon in traditionally non-‐ recyclable waste to renewable energy sources.

Enerkem’s conversion technology results from years of research and has been tested at pilot plant scale since 2003. The technology is now being applied at Enerkem’s first commercial plant in Westbury, Quebec, Canada. The process combines gasification and catalytic synthesis and involves heat, pressure, advanced chemistry and the use of proven catalyst technology. Enerkem's gas conditioning steps

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generate a tailored syngas product suitable for conversion to premium products. Enerkem’s gasification-‐based process is shown in the simplified process flow diagram in Figure 14.

Figure 14. Enerkem Gasification process for producing biofuels

The feedstock is dried, sorted, and shredded, and then stored in a container that is connected to the gasifier via a front-‐end loading system. The gasifier feeding system is capable of handling fluffy material with no need for pelletizing. Carbonaceous slurries or liquids can also be fed into the gasifier through appropriately designed injectors.

The biomass is fed to the gasifier, where it is converted into a syngas in Enerkem's bubbling fluidized bed reactor, which is coupled with cyclone(s) for recovering the fluidized bed material (sand) from the syngas. The gasification is accomplished using air or oxygen-‐enriched air as a partial oxidation agent.

The required level of oxygen-‐enrichment is a function of the desired syngas composition. Steam at a controlled partial pressure is also required in the gasification process. The relatively low operating severity of the gasifier, temperatures between 700 and 750°C (1,292 and 1,382°F) and pressures between 2 atm and 10 atm (30 psi to 150 psi) allows for the use of inexpensive construction materials and refractory.

The syngas from the gasifier is cleaned and conditioned for downstream processes by cyclonic removal of fluidized bed materials, secondary carbon and tar conversion, heat recovery units, and reinjection of tar and solid fines into the gasification reactor. The syngas produced by this process is suitable for

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conversion to liquid products. Using a sequential catalytic conversion process, the syngas is converted into transportation fuels and chemicals like methanol, ethanol, synthetic gasoline, synthetic diesel, and dimethyl ether [27].

LanzaTech Freedom Pines Biorefinery Facility (Soperton, Georgia)

Location: Soperton, Georgia

Status:

In early 2012 LanzaTech assumed ownership of the Soperton, Georgia site that had previously been the location of the Range Fuels demonstration facility. LanzaTech began retrofitting the old gasifier to be compatible with the Concord Blue Energy Reformer and the LanzaTech gas fermentation system. LanzaTech is not finished with the retrofitting, but with successful test runs at their China facility, they hope to have a 125 ton per day facility working by the end of 2015 [28], [29].

Process Description: The pre-‐conditioned waste travels into a waste-‐storage vessel to ensure a constant supply of input material. When traveling from the waste storage to the reformer vessel, oxygen is removed, allowing for conversion without combustion. Working in an oxygen-‐starved environment means the facility doesn't produce toxic oxidized pollutants, such as dioxins and furans.

Heat carrier balls are heated to a high temperature and dropped from the heat carrier vessel to be mixed in with the organic waste. Then, in a two-‐stage thermolysis process, the waste, heated to over 400 degrees Celsius, is converted directly into gaseous form, due to the lack of oxygen. Unlike other waste-‐to-‐energy technologies, Concord Blue uses heat transfer instead of incineration to convert the waste. Finally, the gas produced in the thermolyser then travels to the separate reforming vessel, where it is transformed into high quality syngas [30].

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Figure 15. Concord Blue Reformer Process

Commercial Plant: INEOS Bio Cellulosic Plant in Vero Beach, Florida

INEOS was able to raise $130 million to build and run their plant in Vero Beach, Florida. The INEOS Bio plant in Florida is designed to produce 8 million gallons of ethanol every year. Also, it produces 6 MW of electricity per year. In the fall of 2013 the plant had been finished and was put online. INEOS is one of the very few companies in the United States that has successfully integrated the technology from their pilot facility into a commercial plant [31]. Unfortunately, in January of 2015 the plant had to be shut for a period of time because it started producing a hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in amounts that was detrimental to the bacteria in the fermentation stage. This was a problem that the plant had had in the beginning, but is now more prevalent. There have been scrubbers ordered to take care of this problem, but the installation is not complete. INEOS has not posted a restart day for the plant yet. It is shut down until they can find a solution to the HCN [32].

Figure 16. INEOS Gasification process for producing ethanol

Process: “The INEOS Bio gasification process is a two-‐step, oxygen-‐blown technology and converts the prepared, dried biomass waste into a synthesis gas comprising carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2) and CO2 gases. Carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases contain important chemical energy and are the building blocks for the production of bioethanol. Feedstocks of different bulk density, particle shape and size may be mixed together in order to optimize feed rate and minimize entrained air. Upon exposure to the heat in the lower chamber of the gasifier further drying takes place followed by pyrolysis, generating a pyrolysis gas. The pyrolysis gas passes through to the upper chamber where it is mixed with more oxygen, generating more heat from partial combustion. The high temperature and residence time cracks the pyrolysis gases to carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. No tars or aromatic hydrocarbons are present in the syngas. The gasification proceeds in a reducing environment, with insufficient oxygen present for complete oxidation of the carbon present. This reducing environment suppresses the formation of dioxins and furans, and any dioxins or furans introduced with the feedstock

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would be destroyed at the temperature and residence time in the gasifier. The gasifier also operates at slightly negative pressure, which prevents the escape of gases from the gasifier, and hence any emissions to air” [33].

Figure 17. INEOS Plant in Vero Beach, Florida

Table 1. Location of biomass gasification facilities in the US [34]

Pilot Plants TRI Plant in Durham, North Carolina ThermoChem Recovery International (TRI) operates a four dry tons per day pilot plant in North Carolina. This plant uses a steam reforming technology that was developed by TRI. This plant has tested a numerous amount of feedstock including wood chips, saw dust, rice hulls, grape plant prunings, municipal solid waste, poultry litter, and much more [35]. This plant converts this biomass to biofuels

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and biochemical. The Durham plant has seen over 9,000 hours of the steam reforming technology used, and over 4,500 hours of biofuels production [36]. TRI has licensed its technology to Fulcrum Bioenergy, who is building a 10 million gallon per year biofuel commercial plant in Nevada.

Figure 19 TRI Steam Reformer [36]

GTI Plant in Des Plaines, Illinois Gas Technology Institute (GTI) and Haldor Topsoe Inc. partnered up at the pilot plant in Des Plaines to test the Adritz-‐Carbona technology. Tests on this technology have just recently finished at this pilot plant. During their runs they used over 300,000 lbs. of biomass to produce biofuels. By scaling up this technology, they would be able to build a 57 million gallons per year of gasoline commercial plant. After these successful trials, Haldor Topsoe is now looking for buyers of their technology in order to build a commercial scale facility [37].

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Figure 21 Haldor Topsoe Gasification process [37]

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22

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