Transcript Document

The Biorefinery Concept – a Review
Bruce Sithole
7 October 2010
www.csir.co.za
© CSIR 2010 Slide 1
Outline of presentation
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Problems facing the industry
Definition of biorefinery
The Integrated Forest Products Biorefinery
Focus areas of Agenda 2020
The challenge of deployment
Extracting value prior to pulping
New value from spent pulping liquors
Biodiesel from tall oil
Examples of energy production
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What is the problem?
• Pressures on the pulp and paper industry
• Disruptive technologies
• Competition from Asia and South America
• No greenfield mills in north America for 20 years
• Greenhouse gas emissions
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What is the problem?
Disruptive technologies
Rank
Disruptive technology
1
News on the internet
2
Tablet computing
3
Internet shopping
4
Electronic books and papers
5
Functional coatings
6
Digital archiving
7
On-demand printing
8
Text messaging
9
Air-laid papermaking
10
Cellulosic bioenergy
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Solution
• Can new technology revitalize the pulp and paper industry and, at
the same time, help nations solve their energy problems? The
biorefinery concept is supposed to do that.
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Definition
• Biorefinery
• a facility that integrates biomass conversion processes and
equipment to produce fuels, power, and chemicals from
biomass
• analogous to today's petroleum refineries, which produce
multiple fuels and products from petroleum
• identified as the most promising route to the creation of a new
domestic biobased industry
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Current mill
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Forest biorefinery
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The Integrated Forest Products Biorefinery
• Yield from kraft pulping is 50%
• Very low rate that needs to be changed
• IFBR accomplishes this while
• protecting the ability to produce the core products of
the traditional facility,
• but also providing an ability to enhance their
production.
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The Integrated Forest Products Biorefinery
Arguments to supported this:
• Existing manufacturing facilities geared to collecting and
processing biomass
• Too much wealth used to purchase energy
• Using a CO2 neutral system for fuels and chemicals is
good, cheap insurance.
• Movement towards renewable energy system needed to
avoid major societal dislocations in the future
• With growing budget deficits, pressure to spend large
quantities of money to improve the health of public forest,
fight massive fires, and transfer more wealth to rural
populations.
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The Integrated Forest Products Biorefinery
Example from 2001 US pulp production:
• total chemical pulp production 53 million tons
• raw material 120 million dry tons of wood
• 6 million tons of wood converted into paper products by
mechanical or thermomechanical means
• 120 chemical pulp mills
Many modern kraft mills have an energy surplus
– hence have existing foundations for IFBR
No need to build greenfield mills
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The Integrated Forest Products Biorefinery
Advantages
• Manufacturing value-added products from greatly
underutilised raw material, could significantly improve
the return on invested capital at the facilities
• By improving the efficacy of utilising raw materials, the
industry could protect its traditional product lines
• IFBR would protect the core business of the pulp and
paper industry by making the entire base more
profitable
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The Integrated Forest Products Biorefinery
Preliminary estimates showed promising economics
• Manufacturing value-added products from greatly
underutilised raw material, could significantly improve
the return on invested capital at the facilities
• By improving the efficacy of utilising raw materials, the
industry could protect its traditional product lines
• IFBR would protect the core business of the pulp and
paper industry by making the entire base more
profitable
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Current mill
net revenue from traditional product, pulp = $5.5 billion
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Forest biorefinery
new value streams created with biorefineries
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Forest biorefinery
potential net revenue
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Forest biorefinery
Before pulping:
• Hemicelluloses extracted
• Converted to chemicals like ethanol and acetic acid
= $3 billion additional revenue
After pulping and the residual pulping liquors gasified,
• Syngas gas turned into power, liquid fuels and/or
chemicals
• Conversion to power = $3 billion additional
• Conversion to transportation fuels = $5 billion more
Pathway choice will be driven by economics of
circumstances and/or location
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Agenda 2020
Formulated and organised the “Forest Biorefinery”
research and development efforts into three focus areas:
• Sustainable Forest Productivity
• Extracting Value Prior to Pulping
• New Value Streams from Residuals and Spent Pulping
Liquors
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Agenda 2020
Sustainable Forest Productivity:
• Application of biotechnology to sustainable forestry that
will allow the management of US forestland at a high
intensity on fewer acres.
• A key focus is developing fast growing biomass
plantations specifically for the production of economic,
high quality feedstocks for bioenergy and biomaterial end
uses
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Agenda 2020
Extracting Value Prior to Pulping:
• Addresses the opportunities from the time the wood is
chipped at the mill but before it is pulped in the digester
• A key focus is hemicelluloses extraction from wood chips
prior to pulping followed by their utilization as biomaterial
feedstock and/or pulp additive
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Agenda 2020
New Value Streams from Residuals and Spent Pulping
Liquors:
• Addresses opportunities to manufacture bio-products
after the pulp digester.
• A key focus is conversion of biomass, including forest
residues and spent pulping liquor (black liquor) into syngas
through gasification technologies. The syngas is then
converted into liquid fuels, power, chemicals, and other
high-value materials
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Forest Biorefinery
Creates a diverse group of potential processes and
products:
New Processes
Sustainable forest productivity
Wood extraction
New Products
New/better/lower cost feedstocks
Hemicelluloses, sugars, oils, resins, etc
Wood extract conversion
Wood pyrolysis
Ethanol, acetic acid, polymers, etc
Resins, wood composites, carbon
products
Syngas
Approach tailored to end products
Electric power, renewable transportation
fuels, methanol, dimethyl ether, hydrogen
Wood/black liquor gasification
Gas conditioning
Gas conversion
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The Challenge of Deployment
Sustainable land use:
• Complex task that requires gaining public and legislative
approvals for:
• land use, faster growing trees, forest thinning, and
the type and amount of materials to be left on the forest
floor after harvesting
• Important commercial issues include more economical
transportation to allow a larger harvest radius, and
determining how increased value will be shared between
land owners, harvesters and users
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The Challenge of Deployment
Energy Reduction:
• Significant reductions in energy use are necessary
prerequisites in progressing towards biorefineries.
• Less energy that is used for the process means more
energy is available to “export”
•. A study in the USA showed that the average US pulp
and paper mill uses over 20 million BTUs per ton. This
could be reduced to 15 million BTUs per ton using the
best available technology
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The Challenge of Deployment
Collection of all sustainable residuals for use in an
adjacent biorefinery:
• Implement an adjacent biorefinery which will have its
own process and not interfere with current “fibre line”
operations use
• The residual biomass can be as much as 15% for
softwoods and 35% for hardwoods
•plus additional biomass from thinnings if the mill is
close to managed forests
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The Challenge of Deployment
Extracting value prior to pulping:
• Shorter chain hemicelluloses extracted with a mild cook
of water prior to pulping in a way that preserves or
enhances pulp properties
• Kraft pulping energy and bleaching chemicals can be
reduced as the chips will cook and bleach faster
• Less pulping damage will occur and will compensate for
some or all of the strength loss in water extraction.
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The Challenge of Deployment
New value from spent pulping liquors:
• Objective is to replace older Tomlinson chemical
recovery furnaces with modern black liquor gasifiers.
There are two reasons for wanting to do this:
1. To increase thermal efficiency from 30 to 40% for an
older Tomlinson, to 50 to 60% for a gasifier. This is
a huge gain in usable output.
2. To replace steam from a Tomlinson with syngas
from a gasifier
• The syngas can be burned in a conventional boiler to
make steam as needed
• Can also be converted to ethanol, diesel, dimethyl ether
or value added chemicals
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The Challenge of Deployment
Biodiesel from tall oil:
• Many pulp mills have tall oil recovery systems and sell
the tall oil for conversion into multiple products
• When the market value of tall oil is close to its BTU value
there is no incentive to change
• The economics are dependent on the differential
between tall oil and diesel.
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Progress
Positively impacting the environment:
• Options for communicating the industry’s environmental
performance are being considered
Increasing fibre yield:
• Several options were examined and it was concluded
that the best opportunity for increasing fibre yield was
borate autocausticizing, a novel approach that offers the
possibility of capital equipment elimination, energy
savings, and yield improvement.
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Progress
Reducing the complexity of drying :
• Paper dewatering is an obstacle to energy selfsufficiency. It is also expensive to ship water in the paper
• Better understanding of sheet dewatering can increase
press solids by 10%
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Progress
Retaining and improving fibre functionality:
• Novel calcium and silica-based fillers can increase filler
levels, lower basis weights and reduce costs while
maintaining or improving quality
• The technology may lower production costs by US$50
per ton of paper while maintaining physical properties,
brightness, opacity, strength, and bulk, and allowing basis
weight reduction
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Progress
Sustainable forest productivity:
• Clonal softwood forestry is considered key for keeping
the North American industry globally competitive
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Progress
Extracting value prior to pulping:
• A number of mills are exploring this option
• Flambeau River Biofuels plans to engineer and
construct one of the largest “green diesel” plants in the
United States at an existing pulp and paper mill in Park
Falls, Wisconsin
• The plant will convert 1,000 dry tons per day of
woody biomass from bark, sawdust, wood and forest
residue into green electrical power, steam and heat to
the adjacent Flambeau River Papers plant and green
diesel fuel and wax to the domestic market.
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Progress
Extracting value prior to pulping:
• A number of mills are exploring this option
• Canada has the first hardwood prehydrolysis kraft mill
that is targeted to produce 600 tonnes/d of dissolving
pulp
• If the hemicellulose stream can be off-loaded from the
recovery system, production of dissolving pulp can be
increased from 600 to 800 tonnes/d
• The mill should be able to generate new revenue from
value-added chemicals in the prehydrolyzate stream
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Progress
Creating new value streams from residuals and spent
pulping liquors:
• Targeted to production of renewable transportation fuels
from forest products industry residuals
• The Fischer Tropsch (FT) synthesis was selected as a
case study to illustrate the overall economics.
• Several gasifier pilot runs have been demonstrated in
Sweden and the USA
• A TRI black liquor gasifier has been supporting the entire
Norampac mill in Trenton, Ontario, Canada since 2003.
• The syngas is burned in the boiler to make steam for
the mill
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Enerkem: Methanol Synthesis
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Nexterra Gasification Technology
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Thermal Heat –> 100 MMBtu/hr
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Cogen – Up to 10 Mw Electricity
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Black Liquor Gasification
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The Biorefinery
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Pyrolysis Extracts/Byproducts
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Progress
Nanotechnology:
• Research is being conducted on various aspects of
nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC)
• NCC increases the strength and stiffness of materials it’s
added to
•Just a small amount can increase resistance to stress
threefold, making it attractive as a high-performance
reinforcing material
• Because NCC is affected by magnetic and electrical
fields, it could prove useful as a filler in magnetic paper,
electronic memory cards and readers, and other electronic
products
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Nanotechnology
Demonstration plant in Canada will produce a tonne of
nanocrystalline cellulose a day
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The Biorefinery
A viable and real concept!
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Thank You
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