The conversion of anaerobic digestion waste into biofuels via a novel Thermo-Catalytic Reforming process

• A novel process for the treatment of agricultural waste was successfully tested.
• Digestate as a feedstock was converted to high quality products.
• Highly de-oxygenated liquid bio-oil was produced with the novel process.
• The produced bio-oil has a low acidity and a high heating value.

Producing energy from biomass and other organic waste residues is essential for sustainable development. Fraunhofer UMSICHT has developed a novel reactor which introduces the Thermo-Catalytic Reforming (TCR®) process. The TCR® is a process which can convert any type of biomass and organic feedstocks into a variety of energy products (char, bio-oil and permanent gases). The aim of this work was to demonstrate this technology using digestate as the feedstock and to quantify the results from the post reforming step. The temperature of a post reformer was varied to achieve optimised fuel products. The hydrogen rich permanent gases produced were maximised at a post reforming temperature of 1023 K. The highly de-oxygenated liquid bio-oil produced contained a calorific value of 35.2 MJ/kg, with significantly improved fuel physical properties, low viscosity and acid number. Overall digestate showed a high potential as feedstock in the Thermo-Catalytic Reforming to produce pyrolysis fuel products of superior quality.