A Novel Hybrid Digestion-Gasification Process Integrated with Membranes for Efficient Conversion of Biomass to Bio-alcohols

Abstract

There is an urgent need to develop technologies which enable the conversion of biomass into liquid biofuels to fill the gap between limited fossil fuel supplies and increasing worldwide demand. In order to achieve the EU 2030 vision of at least 15% of the fuels used in the road transportation sector will be biofuels derived from non-food biomass feedstocks, the R&D of clean, inexpensive, highly end-user compatible biofuels from a virtually inexhaustible source of biomass should be pursued to make breakthroughs in cost-effective biomass to liquid biofuels (BTL) technologies. Thus, an innovative, consolidated, and sustainable technology using a hybrid digestion-gasification process integrated with membranes to produce next generation bio-alcohols from different biomass feedstocks was designed. The proposed concept was theoretically estimated to achieve an overall BTL efficiency of 44% and a cost reduction for bioalcohol production of 18.6%. Moreover, this technology can potentially achieve an overall CO2 emission reduction of > 75% for road transport based on the preliminary analysis.