Synergistic Use of Solar Hydrogen with Biomass to Produce Biofuels

For a successful large scale implementation of biomass to liquid fuel for transportation, it is imperative that production of liquid fuel from biomass be maximized. For this purpose, synergistic processes using energy from sustainable carbon-free energy sources are needed (Agrawal et al. 2007). In this presentation, we present such novel integrated processes that, when compared to the known conventional conversion methods, have potential to produce nearly two to three times more liquid fuel from a given quantity of biomass. The new processes treat biomass predominantly as a carbon source and rely on novel integrations to preserve carbon atoms during biomass conversion to liquid fuel. This synergy leads to an increase in process carbon efficiency and higher energy efficiency, significantly decreasing land area requirement to produce liquid fuel compared to fermentation based processes. Such synergistically integrated processes provide attractive opportunities for process design and systems analysis..

Reference:

“Sustainable fuel for the transportation sector,” Rakesh Agrawal, Navneet R Singh, Fabio H. Ribeiro & W. Nicholas Delgass. PNAS, 104 (12), 4828-4833 (2007).