Long-term operation of biomass-to-liquid systems coupled to gasification and Fischer–Tropsch processes for biofuel production

Long-term operation of the biomass-to-liquid (BTL) process was conducted with a focus on the production of bio-syngas that satisfies the purity standards for the Fischer–Tropsch (FT) process. The integrated BTL system consisted of a bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) gasifier (20 kWth), gas cleaning unit, syngas compression unit, acid gas removing unit, and an FT reactor. Since the raw syngas from the gasifier contains different types of contaminants, such as particulates, condensable tars, and acid gases, which can cause various mechanical problems or deactivate the FT catalyst, the syngas was purified by passing through cyclones, a gravitational dust collector, a two-stage wet scrubber (packing-type), and a methanol absorption tower. The integrated system was operated for 500 h over several runs, and stable operating conditions for each component were achieved. The cleaned syngas contained no sulfur compounds (under 1 ppmV) and satisfied the requirements for the FT process.

► A BTL process with a 0.1 bbl/d bench-scale experimental setup was demonstrated.
► Syngas, after passing through the current gas cleaning system, satisfies the requirement of FT process.
► FT catalyst showed no loss of activity due to sulfur poisoning during the integrated operation.
► The technical feasibility was proven by integrated operations for a total of over 500 h.