lookKIT 02/2011 - PKM - KIT

0211
34 Wege
Carbonation of Biomass
Coal from Lop and Straw
Engler-Bunte Institute Develops Novel Process: Steam Processing
By Ingrid Vollmer // Photograph: Martin Lober // Translation: Maike Schröder
t took millions of years in nature,
but less than half an hour in the pilot
plant of KIT’s Engler-Bunte Institute:
Green stuff is turned into coal by the
newly developed and patented biomass
carbonation process.
For more than three years, Professor Henning
Bockhorn, head of the institute, his scientific as-
sistant Dr. Dirk Reichert, and three members of
the Division of Combustion Technology followed
the footsteps of the German chemist Friedrich Bergius.
As early as in 1928, Bergius described the
way of producing biocoal from biogenous materials.
At that time, Germany was cut off from crude
oil flows and alternatives were in great demand.
Today, at times of scarcer fossil fuels, “biocoal”
production is of interest again.
Bergius was the first to describe so-called hydrothermal
carbonation (HTC), by which biomass is
converted in a pressurized reactor under near-critical
conditions, a special state between liquid and
vaporous. This process takes several hours and has
to be run intermittently so biomass can be fed into
the pressurized reactor. Another drawback of hydrothermal
carbonation consists of the fact that water
in the near-critical state is highly corrosive to