Finding resilient refractory materials for slagging gasification systems have the potential to reduce costs and improve the overall plant availability by extending the service life. In this study, different refractory materials were evaluated under slagging gasification conditions. Refractory probes were continuously exposed for up to 27 h in an atmospheric, oxygen blown, entrained flow gasifier fired with a mixture of bark and peat powder. Slag infiltration depth and microstructure were studied using SEM EDS. Crystalline phases were identified with powder XRD. Increased levels of Al, originating from refractory materials, were seen in all slags. The fused cast materials were least affected, even though dissolution and slag penetration could still be observed. Thermodynamic equilibrium calculations were done for mixtures of refractory and slag, from which phase assemblages were predicted and viscosities for the liquid parts were estimated.

Maritime shipping is essential in global trade. The shipping industry uses fossil fuel with significant environmental impact as a result and a transition to renewable fuels may be part of the solution to reduce emissions. A fuel transition needs to be understood at all stages of the supply chain, ranging from feedstock to use in ships’ engines. The purpose of this paper is to do a synthesis of literature to provide an overview of main challenges and opportunities along potential supply chains of renewable methanol for maritime shipping, with a focus on bio-methanol. It is shown that renewable methanol is a technically viable option to reduce emissions from shipping and there are no major challenges with potential supply chains. Minor economic barriers that currently exist have the potential to be overcome with strengthening of environmental targets for shipping or if fuel oil prices revert to higher levels as seen previously.

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.

Pressurized oxygen-blown entrained flow black liquor (BL) gasification, the Chemrec technology, has been demonstrated in a 3 MWth pilot plant in Piteå, Sweden for more than 25,000 h. The plant is owned and operated by Luleå University of Technology since 2013. It is well known that catalytic activity of alkali metals is important for the high reactivity of black liquor, which leads to a highly efficient BL gasification process. The globally available volume of BL is however limited and strongly connected to pulp production. By co-gasifying pyrolysis oil (PO) with BL it is possible to utilize the catalytic activity also for PO conversion to syngas. Adding PO leads to larger feedstock flexibility with the possibility of building larger biofuels plants based on BL gasification technology. This presentation summarizes new results from research activities aimed at developing and assessing the PO/BL co-gasification process. Results from laboratory experiments with PO/BL mixtures show that pyrolysis behavior and char gasification reactivity are similar to pure BL. This means that the decrease in the alkali metal concentration due to the addition of PO in the mixture does not decrease the reactivity. Pure PO is much less reactive. Mixing tests show that the fraction of PO that can be mixed into BL is limited by lignin precipitation as a consequence of PO acidity. Pilot scale PO/BL co-gasification experiments have been executed following design and construction of a new feeding system to allow co-feeding of PO with BL. The results confirm the conclusions from the lab scale study and prove that the co-gasification concept is practically applicable. Process performance of the pilot scale co-gasification process is similar to gasification of BL only with high carbon conversion and clean syngas generation. This indicates that the established BL gasification technology can be used for co-gasification of PO and BL without major modifications.

One alternative to reduce the motor fuel production cost and improve the operational flexibility of a black liquor gasification (BLG) plant is to add pyrolysis oil to the black liquor feed and co-gasify the blend. The objective of this study was to investigate techno-economically the possibility to increase methanol production at a pulp mill via co-gasification of pyrolysis oil and black liquor. Gasifying a blend consisting of 50% pyrolysis oil and 50% black liquor on a wet mass basis increases the methanol production by more than 250%, compared to gasifying the available black liquor only. Co-gasification would add extra revenues per produced unit of methanol (IRR > 15%) compared to methanol from unblended BLG (IRR 13%) and be an attractive investment opportunity when the price for pyrolysis oil is less than 70 €/MW h. The economic evaluation was based on a first plant estimate with no investment credit for the recovery boiler and a methanol product value volumetric equivalent to conventional ethanol, both these conditions will not applicable when the technology has been fully commercialized.

This paper describes a pilot scale high pressure entrained flow gasification experiment with spent cooking liquor from a sodium sulfite based delignification process in the DP-1 black liquor gasifier in Piteå, Sweden. Approximately 92 tons of sulfite thick liquor were gasified during 100 h of operation without any operational problems despite the new feedstock. The syngas quality was found to be good for all operating points with the CH4 content below 0.3% and H2/CO ratio between 1.03 and 1.15. The experiment shows that the process capacity is limited by green liquor quality parameters primarily dependent on the presence of small amounts of unconverted carbon. The pilot plant capacity was found to be somewhat lower than for Kraft black liquor on mass basis but higher when measured as thermal load, due to the higher heating value of sulfite thick liquor. Mass and energy balances were made difficult by the unavailability of measured green liquor and syngas flow rates, which lead to the necessity of using alternative approaches for the estimation of these flows. Using these estimates, overall mass and energy balances were closed to within 5% for all operating points except one, and the process cold gas efficiency was 60-68% on sulfur-free lower heating value basis. Carbon balances indicate that 95-97% of feedstock carbon leaves with the syngas, mainly as CO and CO2 with the remainder being mostly green liquor carbonate. More than 95% of the feedstock sodium is found in green liquor, while 3-5% ends up in the gas condensate purge stream. The sulfur balance does not close as well as other elements but indicates that 70-73% of the feedstock sulfur ends up in the syngas as H2S and COS with the remainder being present in green liquor as dissolved sulfide salts.

Dimethyl ether (DME), is an excellent diesel fuel that can be produced through gasification from multiple feedstocks. One particularly interesting renewable feedstock is the energy rich by-product from the pulping process called black liquor (BL). The concept of utilizing BL as gasifier feed, converting it via syngas to DME and then compensating the withdrawal of BL energy from the pulp mill by supplying biomass to a conventional combined heat and power plant, is estimated to be one of the most efficient conversion concepts of biomass to a renewable fuel on a well-to-wheel basis. This concept has been demonstrated by the four-year BioDME project, including field tests of DME-fueled heavy-duty trucks that are operated commercially. Up till the summer of 2013 more than 500 tons of BioDME has been produced and distributed to 10 HD trucks, which in total has run more than 1 million km in commercial service