Bionic µfuel technology unlocks potential of Lignin

As early as 2009 experiments have been conducted using pure lignin as a sample feedstock for Bionic's µfuel technology. A detailed report about the laboratory level tests has been published by a scientific partner, Erik Karlsen, in a Danish chemical journal. An English translation can be downloaded from Bionic servers: "From Lignin to Oil by Microwaves".

The central finding from the above report: the studied liquid product phase consisted of more than 85% phenols and still more than 75% methoxy phenols. This result suggests a significantly more homogeneous liquid phase from the Bionic µfuel process than reported so far in any other available paper on Lignin treatment with various (catalytic) pyrolysis methods. Commonly extremely heterogeneous combinations of complex aromatic molecules are found where good yields of highly homogeneous chemical substances are necessary for further conversion or processing into the final lignin derived building blocks which can economically serve as the raw material for future bioplastics like novel polyesters.

The Bionic µfuel Laboratory Reactor used for Lignin testing

The conversion of Lignin into higher value products is the primary challenge for the global cellulose and wood processing industries. Lignin alone makes up a share of 25-30 wt.% of all processed dry wood for cellulose and hemicellulose pulp extraction which is later used for paper, fiber and bioethanol production.

A lot more about the composition and properties of wood can be found at the excellent Pulp & Paper Resource & Information Site.

Despite billions of R&D money spent to date convincing pathways for lignin upgrading have yet to be identified. Scientific work usually labels the pyrolysis of lignin as highly promising for the building blocks of a future biochemical industry, but no true break throughs for commercial application are reported. Thus, enormous quantities of high quality lignin, estimated at more than 50M tons/year are still seen as a waste product and used primarily as a solid fuel for conventional industrial boilers.

A Frost & Sullivan study focusing on the commercial potential of lignin predicts it will become the most important natural aromatic raw material for future biochemicals with a combined market potential of more than USD 130 Billion at current market conditions.

Being the only natural and renewable source of aromatic compounds, lignin is one of the three major components of plant cell walls which together make up 90% of the cells biomass. Possible sources are wood, wheat and rice straw and grasses.

Currently Bionic is embarking on an extensive test program with major industry players to transform the promising lab results into a successful industrial application using the Bionic µfuel range of microwave conversion reactors.

Bionic µfuel modular design proves advantageous

mf480 reactor details

Bionic µfuel reactor and plant designs have come a long way over the recent 10 years of intense R&D work in the development labs. Starting from the drawing board and moving on to CAD workstations, performing endless process simulations in the technology lab and later on the first continuous pilot, all the way to the current mf60 prototype plants many details where refined and fine tuned literally thousands of times. During all that time, however, one fundamental cornerstone of Bionic's design principles was never questioned: the extremely modular design utilizing only the most tested, most proven assembly parts and modules available preferably off the shelf. This principle effectively differentiates Bionic's µfuel technology from practically all comparable technology designs out there.

For many years the huge advantages of such a design approach for on time project delivery, operational stability, easy scaling of plant size and ultimately capital and operational expenditure could only be explained theoretically.

This has changed with the recent mf60 commercial demonstrator now in prototype testing for something over 7 months, preparing for a first continuous 250 hour run coming up around the corner. We finally have plenty of hard evidence supporting the mantra of stubbornly insisting on uncompromising modularity. During the prototype testing period dozens of small changes and adjustments have been incorporated, often completed in a few hours. And even the major mf60 redesign described in this article required a suspension of test operations for barely 3 weeks.

Following the Bionic scaling philosophy the mf60 is nothing else than a down-scaled mf480, the latter being the bionicfuel reference reactor type for standard commercial plants. However large an individual plant might get, it will be built around clustered sets of always the same mf480 reactor units and the mf480 unit can even be temporarily reduced to around half its specified capacity with a corresponding reduction in microwave units. The consequences of this concept for the early commercial roll out are enormous.

Instead of monolithic, untested conversion plants budgeted at several hundred million USD, Bionic can offer clients a project approach incorporating risk management via a well controlled scale up process. Each reactor can be factory assembled, tested and certified against specifications even before leaving the manufacturer site. After shipping the installation process on site is a matter of weeks before final client acceptance can begin.

A factory and on-site certified single reactor system can then be rapidly upgraded by simply bringing in more of the identical reactor units combining them with standard feedstock preparation and product upgrading equipment.     

More rigorous testing upcoming for the bionicfuel mf60 prototype

Since the switch has been turned for the first time in August 2013 starting up the mf60 commercial demonstrator at the premises of SMERAL in Brno the engineers performed endless test runs while improving and fixing numerous design and engineering details.

Simply put, they where doing exactly what a prototype is meant to be used for: trial, error detection and correction... Preparing a rock solid processing core for serial production that is ready for 24/7 hard core operation when it reaches a production site for installation. Most fixes required just from a couple of hours to a day or two. But eventually in early January 2014 careful review of collected test data resulted in the decision to proceed with a major redesign of the vapor off-take from the main reactor vessel, an effort which would interrupt test operations and scheduled demonstrations for several weeks.

SMERAL engineers did a great job in preparing and implementing the revised design in only 3 weeks. The almost finished result can be seen below:

redesigned mf60 reactor unit

The new design results in a significantly lower height, making the reactor more robust and energy efficient. Durability will be further improved by repositioning the microwave units for optimized cooling.

Once all measures are completed, a continuous test run for a minimum of 10 days is scheduled which will be monitored by an independent certification agency.   

The official bionicfuel video... The Past - The Present - The Future

One month after the bionicfuel mf60d went public...

It's been hectic times for everyone at Bionic ever since the bionicfuel mf60 experienced its world premier at the industry fair at Brno last month. While a demonstration reactor was on exhibition at the booth on the fairgrounds, a fully functional unit was available for demonstrations at the test location within the SMERAL factory premises.

The most impressive stream of high profile and expert visitors has in fact not ended with the fair, where the bionicfuel Technology was honored with a prestigious award "Innovative Product of the Year 2013" delivered by the Industry Minister himself. We experience an unexpected ongoing flood of interest from around the world in a visit to the demonstration plant. The waiting list is so long that any end is simply out of sight...

Innovative Product of the Year 2013 awarded by the Industry Minister

Another outcome of the last few weeks is quite a number of new opportunities for far reaching cooperation and project delivery agreements. We are confident, that we can publish a lot of exciting news over the coming weeks and months. The commercialization of the technology has truly begun.

Bionic µBTL mf60d demonstrator entered test phase

Earlier this week the mf60d commercial demonstrator has been switched on for the first time, a success made possible by the excellent collaboration between Bionic R&D and its prime manufacturer SMERAL s.a. Brno in the Czech Republic.

See this Post by Bionic Laboratories BLG GmbH.

A few weeks of rigorous testing and adjustments have been kicked off. This phase includes a formal certification process by independent experts. Presentations for selected clients will commence afterwards.

Full public announcements can be expected in the first half of October.

Congratulations to everyone working hard to make this a success...

An operational mf60D complete with 2 condensers
and one quencher for the liquid fraction

Bionic history flash back: "Biomass to Liquid becomes reality"

In February 2009 Bionic published a video about the first continuous pilot of the microfuel technology. As we are about to get the first commercial prototype ready for certification it is time to look back. Soon the many lessons learned from that first pilot will become known to the interested public followers. The new MF60D release candidate contains several thousand of changes compared to the machine in the video and was actually redesigned from ground up.

The new Bionic µBTL MF60D entered the assembly phase

It has been some time since we last reported on the latest in Bionic's microfuel development. But finally the new downsized fully functional µBTL MF60D demonstrator announced in February is approaching completion. A moment we all are very excited about.

MF60D assembled without microwave units (CAD)

We are now able to share a couple of quite impressive pictures. Here are all of all the mechanical parts (still without Bionic's microwave technology and electronic control modules) while awaiting assembly.

MF60D (top view) awaiting assembly

The top down view gives an excellent perspective on what the completed assembly will look like from the inside. The rotational reactor vessel itself can be seen at the top left side with condenser parts, piping and supporting equipment positioned to the right of it.

The following picture adds the usual view providing a better understanding for the dimensions and actual size of the modules and the completed assembly. As explained before, the reactor unit and all the peripheral modules will later be installed in several standard size container frames, some stacked in two storey configurations.



 

MF60D awaiting assembly

Final assembly has started at the SMERAL s.r.o. production site in Brno (Czech Republic). Subsequently the microwave and electronic control units built directly at Bionic Laboratories BLG GmbH (Germany) will be added and the completed MF60D reactor unit will be furnished with some basic preprocessing equipment for testing.

Final assembly is under way at the Bionic manufacturerer
SMERAL s.r.o. Brno, Czech Rebulic

After some initial test runs formal certification by the German technical verification agency TUEV will commence. Once finalized we will have a thorough look at a very long waiting list for demonstration visit requests...

The most recent published pictures documenting the MF60D assembly progress can always be found first on the Bionic Laboratories Facebook Page.

Construction of the first Bionic µBTL MF60D reactor on schedule

Manufacturing of the recently announced new Bionic mf60 reactor series is coming along as planned. Watch the short movie of the production process to see the high level of precision and quality that goes into this piece of equipment. It will be used for both, µBTL (biomass-to-liquid) and µWTL (waste-to-liquid) configurations and in addition, in a mobile configuration, for specialty applications like soil decontamination and clean up of oil spills.

A ship based version is also under consideration for a planned ambitious environmental project designed to clean up floating islands of plastic waste putting maritime life in great danger.

A high resolution version of this movie can be viewed here directly on Youtube.

The movie shows how high quality German design is manufactured at one of the oldest Czech machine builders, renown for its dedication to quality. This reactor is built to last for decades and is designed to undergo easy upgrades when more advanced microwave technology becomes available. 

BTL Biomass-to-Liquid for Dummies

Today I am writing about some of the basics behind Thermo Catalytic Depolymerization (TCDP) and Bionic's more advanced version Microwave Depolymerization (MWDP) or µBTL. In fact both processes are the latest in advanced pyrolysis technologies adding the improved cracking capabilities of zeolite catalysts and microwave application to a core process known for thousands of years. It was really hard to get started with this and I kept pushing it away. I am not a writer by profession so this doesn't look like great fun to me. But I do believe it is important to share some insight with my readers about the rather simple background behind these fascinating processes.

First of all we should learn a little bit about oil in general and petroleum or crude oil in particular. Luckily there is Wikipedia, where they have done a great job on those subjects. So please let me refer you to here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil
and ask you to come back...

Lots of interesting stuff, isn't it?

As far as crude oil goes, you have seen the two theories about the origin of fossil oils. After doing a lot of research I came to believe that both theories have true value of their own. Funny how they were used as a tool for the capitalist/communist confrontation during the cold war. I really can't see a problem in the coexistence of both theories. However, any resources from a possible abiotic origin would be generally so deep down towards the center of the earth that they won't be within reach for a long time to come.

Now I would like to draw your attention to the article on synthetic oil. Wikipedia is still a bit weak here. The Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process definitely is a synthetic process, but the extraction of crude oil from tar sands has certainly not the least to do with a synthetic process. It is mere separation of sand and tar (=crude oil) which is later refined in traditional petrochemical ways. What makes the process so expensive is the separation of tar and sand, not the subsequent refining. It should be noted here, that MWDP actually offers an environmentally much cleaner, and less "equipment eating" option for this separation. No water or steam needed, no steel consuming direct contact processing.

Let's move on to the closely related subject of synthetic fuel. If you went through at least most of the linked reading material above, things should get fairly easy by now. What we are primarily interested in here is Biomass-To-Liquids (BTL), while everything else gives us a great background, because we can see now how closely related all these processes actually are. We also find catalytic depolymerization (CDP) mentioned for the first time and a link to Jim Trounson's website on this subject.

Going through all that information establishes a good basis for what we are headed for. Please bear with me a little longer. Those of you who want to get some insight in the controversial and sometimes heated debates of the self claimed experts out there, get yourself a large cup of coffee and start reading this thread on the BioDieselNow forum. If you start your reading there you immediately run into thermal depolymerization (TDP) as some kind of alternative to CDP.

Now let's start shedding some light on the confusion I have probably created by now.

All BTL processes and technologies have one thing in common: They intend to convert organic substances from various sources (natural or artificial) into oil or fuel. Typical sources are all types of organic waste streams from biomass to plastics, paper and cardboard or any type of biomass deriving from energy crop. Converting hydrocarbons (oils, fats, proteins) is widely considered an easy task compared with the conversion of carbohydrates (fibrous and cellulosic materials) into fuel.

BTL processes can be easily separated into two classes:

• (1) Gasification of feedstock with a subsequent FT synthesis
• (2) Depolymerization including Pyrolysis

(1) Gasification plus FT breaks down organic feedstock in an initial gasification phase to a gaseous mixture called syngas containing mainly just the basic molecules (CO and H). In a second phase the gas is converted into synthetic fuel using the FT process.

(2) Depolymerization achieves the same result, however, by converting the feedstock molecules directly to the intended result without breaking them down to the smallest possible structure first, before resynthesising them back to the intended larger molecular structures. Therefore depolymerization can achieve the same result with a much smaller energy input. The tricky part is how to sufficiently control the reactions.

Depolymerization itself can be broken down further in thermal depolymerization (TDP) and thermo catalytic depolymerization (TCDP) which is in my opinion falsely often abbreviated into catalytic depolymerization (CDP). Pyrolysis can be seen as the most important form of TDP.

Adding a catalyst to basic TDP technologies improves the process in several ways: First the breaking down or cracking of the large feedstock molecules requires less energy and second, a modern zeolite catalyst assists in better control over the reactions. While metal oxides contained in the zeolites facilitate the reaction itself, its molecular sieve properties allow for control.

I am aware that this is an extremely simplified explanation of what is really happening in highly complex chemo-physical mass-reactions, but it is that primitive model that helped me to understand what's going on. After all, I do not consider myself a scientist.

If you look at the first patent I was able to identify that goes back to the early 1920ties, the process worked at the IG Farben laboratories with simple metal oxide catalysts. Zeolites and their special capabilities where not yet known at the time.

A well publicized implementation of TDP was done by Changing World Technologies Inc. (CWT) at a Carthage, Missouri plant where they produce oil from animal waste (turkey offal). Energy is applied to the process through pressure and heat. It can be assumed, that some hydrogenation is taking place in the first stage. CWT is a clear proof that the chemo physical process of TDP works, while it still has to overcome some technical problems.

There are quite a number of other implementations of TDP around the globe with less publicity. A very recent one in Germany MME Technology AG (website not available anymore as the company went into receivership) for example claimed to successfully process straw. It should be noted that straw is a mainly carbohydrate biomass feedstock. (After this article was written MME went into receivership. No project has ever been completed)

As I have tried to set up the big picture with this chapter, I will use the next one to explore somewhat closer the details of TCDP. So come back for more soon...