Preliminary status note: Thermal biomass conversion technologies ...

Haldor Topsoe is involved in several international projects to provide synthesis equipment for the
production of liquid fuels based on gas from entrained flow reactors.
2.1.4. Perspectives
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Entrained flow gasification is in most cases used in relatively large plants. To obtain optimal operation the
entrained flow reactor is often combined with an oxygen production plant and the gasifier is pressurized.
The largest potential of the technology in a bio based society is probably as large integrated biomass
gasification plants that can provide one or several different products as electricity, transport fuels, process
heat, natural gas and chemicals. Energy.Dk (Vestervang 2011) has proposed that a flexible gasification
plant is integrated with wind mill production. The plant will then supply synthetic gas to the gas net when
there is a surplus of wind mill electricity, and provides power when the wind mills are stopped.
The main limitations of the biomass entrained flow technology compared to other gasifier types are that
relatively large and complicated plants are used (pressurized reactor and oxygen plan), while advantages
are a high fuel flexibility and a tar free product gas. Most system studies shows that the total efficiency of
pressurized gasification based liquid fuel production, judged by the amount of transport work per feedstock
consumed, are generally better for gasification processes than for bio-­‐ethanol or bio-­‐diesel systems
(Ahrenfeldt et al. 2011).
A challenge for the development of biomass entrained flow gasification technology is the development of
efficient fuel feeding technology of biomass into a pressurized rector. One way to do this is by obtaining a
slurry of char and tar from a flash pyrolysis unit and then pump this high energy density slurry into the
reactor. Another important issue is appropriate control of ash behavior in the gasifier.
Relevance and strong positions in Denmark:
-­‐ The Danish energy system with many wind mills makes it appropriate to build large flexible
entrained flow gasifier plants, which can supply multiple energy products
-­‐ DTU has a large research group (CHEC) that have the expertise and experimental facilities to
perform research and development with respect to entrained flow gasification
-­‐ TK energy works on developing a small scale cyclone entrained flow gasifier
-­‐ Haldor Topsoe have several activities related to gas conditioning, gas cleaning and synthesis of
liquid fuels that is tested on biomass gasifier plants (this is explained in more detail in the section :
Synthesis of transport fuels using gasification gas)
2.1.5. Bibliography
(lui et al. 2010) Liu, K., Cui, Z., and Fletcher, T.H., Coal Gasification, in Hydrogen and Syngas Production and
Purification Technologies, K. Liu, C. Song, and V. Subramani, Editors. 2010, A John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
Publication. p. 156-­‐218.
(Ahrenfeldt et al. 2011) Jesper Ahrenfeldt, Ulrik Birk Henriksen, Janus Münster-­‐Swendsen, Anders Fink,
Lasse Røngaard Clausen, Jakob Munkholt Christensen, Ke Qin, Weigang Lin, Peter Arendt Jensen, Anker
Degn Jensen. Final report EFP06. Production of methanol/DME from biomass. National Laboratory for
Sustainable Energy (Risø DTU), 2011.