Co-gasification of black liquor and pyrolysis oil: Evaluation of blend ratios and methanol production capacities

• Biomethanol from co-gasified black liquor and pyrolysis oil at different capacities.
• Enables higher biofuel production for given available amount of black liquor.
• Opportunity for cost efficient black liquor gasification also in small pulp mills.
• The methanol can be cost competitive to 2nd generation ethanol and fossil fuels.
• Fewer pulp mills would need to be converted to meet given biofuel demand.

The main aim of this study is to investigate integrated methanol production via co-gasification of black liquor (BL) and pyrolysis oil (PO), at Swedish pulp mills. The objectives are to evaluate techno-economically different blends ratios for different pulp mill capacities. Furthermore, the future methanol production potential in Sweden and overall system consequences of large-scale implementation of PO/BL co-gasification are also assessed.It is concluded that gasification of pure BL and PO/BL blends up to 50% results in significantly lower production costs than what can be achieved by gasification of unblended PO. Co-gasification with 20–50% oil addition would be the most advantageous solution based on IRR for integrated biofuel plants in small pulp mills (200 kADt/y), whilst pure black liquor gasification (BLG) will be the most advantageous alternative for larger pulp mills. For pulp mill sizes between 300 and 600 kADt/y, it is also concluded that a feasible methanol production can be achieved at a methanol market price below 100 €/MW h, for production capacities ranging between 0.9 and 1.6 TW h/y for pure BLG, and between 1.2 and 6.5 TW h/y for PO/BL co-gasification. This study also shows that by introducing PO/BL co-gasification, fewer pulp mills would need to be converted to biofuel plants than with pure BLG, to meet a certain biofuel demand for a region. Due to the technical as well as organizational complexity of the integration this may prove beneficial, and could also potentially lower the total investment requirement to meet the total biofuel demand in the system. The main conclusion is that PO/BL co-gasification is a technically and economically attractive production route for production biomethanol.