Toward Success in Biomass Conversion to Affordable Clean Energy

Stephen K. Ritter, Dennis N. Stamires

Description

Toward Success in Biomass Conversion to Affordable Clean Energy highlights the history of KiOR, a startup bioenergy company that sought to become a commercial success, but failed.

Toward Success in Biomass Conversion to Affordable Clean Energy highlights the history of KiOR, a startup bioenergy company that sought to become a commercial success … but failed.

Starting in 2007, until declaring bankruptcy in 2014, KiOR spent close to $1 billion to prove that single-reactor thermocatalytic conversion of organic materials such as wood chips, grasses, and even waste plastics to transportation fuels using conventional oil-refinery catalyst processing is not scalable to commercial-size plants, and in fact is not economically feasible using current technology.

This case study provides historical perspective and insights on government oversight of transportation fuels, development of refinery catalyst technology, and criteria for developing sustainable commercial-scale biomass-to-fuels technologies. Along the way, the authors, who are experts in catalyst and refinery processes as well as environmental sustainability and natural resource management, propose feasible solutions to help alleviate catalyst and other technology limitations in biomass conversion.

Their intent is to help science and engineering researchers, business leaders, investors, government officials, and the general public negotiate the challenges of using biomass crops, waste wood and other plant materials, and waste plastics to create a sustainable supply of clean and affordable energy, transportation and heating fuels, and specialty chemicals on a global scale while helping protect the environment.

Sujets

• Renewable energy
• Bill Gates
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 25 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665743228
• Langue: English

Extrait

TOWARD SUCCESS IN BIOMASS CONVERSION TO AFFORDABLE CLEAN ENERGY
The Story of KiOR and the Merits and Perils of Developing Economically and Environmentally Sustainable Biofuels to Chase Down Global Warming and Limit Destructive Climate Change
DENNIS N. STAMIRES and STEPHEN K. RITTER
 

Copyright © 2023 Dennis N. Stamires and Stephen K. Ritter.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Interior Image Credit:
Figures courtesy of Dennis Stamires, with exception of Figure 9A reprinted with permission from Ind Eng Chem Res 2008;47(3):742-747.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4320-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4321-1 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4322-8 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908128
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 07/19/2023
CONTENTS
1.0. Introduction
1.1 Historical Perspective
1.2 Technology Solutions
1.3 Terminology
1.4 Motivation for Continuous Improvement
2.0 KiOR’s Story: A Case Study and Rearview Analysis of a $1 Billion Gambit
2.1 Due Diligence: Technical Aspectsof Commercial Process Development
2.2 Due Diligence: Importance of Establishing a Performance Baseline
3.0 Commercial Process Development Challenges and Corporate Integrity
3.1 Catalyst Design and Development
3.2 Commercial Reactor Design
3.3 Heat Transfer Deficiency,Catalyst Limitations, and Some Remedies
3.4 A Two-Reactor Biomass Conversion to Liquid Fuels System
3.5 Bio-Oil Upgrading to Fuels and Chemicals
3.6 Choice of Biomass Starting Material and Other Nuances
4.0 A Goldilocks Approach to Successful Biomass Conversion
4.1 Optimizing Catalyst Selection
4.2 “Just Right” Options
5.0 What the Future Holds for Biobased Fuels and Chemicals
5.1 Relying on Lab Data to Gauge Commercial Biorefinery Performance
5.2 Economic Outlook
5.3 Lessons Learned from KiOR’s Experience
5.4 Postmortem Analysis
5.5Comparison of Biomass-to-Biofuels Companies
6.0 Summary
References
About the Authors
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The oil crisis in the 1970s had us all driving a little scared. Long lines waiting to fill up your car with gasoline seemed anti-utopian, especially for a country like the U.S., given the American love affair with the automobile and the necessity of vehicles of all types for transportation and commerce. The crisis revealed in very real terms our growing dependence on energy production and supply. However, that period was just a stitch in time, and we endured.
Now, 50-plus years on, we look back at those days and they do not seem so remarkable. We have since experienced significant global fluctuations in the availability and cost of energy, in particular transportation fuels, for a number of reasons: supply, demand, geopolitical tensions, and—most important—access to economically and environmentally viable technology.
The 1970s oil crisis did achieve one thing: It helped rekindle interest in using dedicated or waste biomass, directly or indirectly, as a fuel or to produce transportation fuels, resulting in a number of public and private research initiatives to develop technoeconomical solutions. Some of these efforts have come to fruition in the form of bioethanol derived from corn, sugarcane, and other crop sugars and biodiesel derived from methanol or ethanol combined with soybean oil, other vegetable oil, or animal fat.
Yet, the efforts of chemists and chemical engineers in enabling a biobased industry to compete against fossil fuels and Big Oil have been limited so far. The infrastructure for obtaining raw materials such as crude oil and natural gas, processing it in established high-capacity refineries, and distributing it quickly in pipelines and by other high-volume means is too well-established. In fact, in the past decade we dipped into a fear-factor lull because petroleum and natural gas production found new life, driven by advances in technology, including hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” defying the odds that fossil fuels will run out. In the U.S., domestic crude oil and natural gas production actually increased enough so that in 2020 the U.S. became the surprising global leader and a net exporter of fossil fuels, a far cry from the 1970s. The current availability and, in reality, modest cost of energy have kept thoughts of practical biobased production of fuels on the back burner, though ongoing interest fluctuates with energy prices and other variables.
Still, the fact looms that crude oil is eventually going to become scarce enough or too costly and/or environmentally unfriendly to procure and process, making biomass conversion technoeconomically favorable. Another mitigating factor concerns whether we should be burning our fossil fuels at all to produce energy—and unwanted carbon dioxide, methane, and other emissions—or whether we should be using these resources to make commodity chemicals instead [ 1 ]. At some point, bioenergy will be the most attractive option, if not for energy security and affordability then to meet the demands of a world population that is consuming more energy per capita. One variable that will influence the use of biobased fuels is the expectation that by 2050 solar-energy/solar fuels technology and electric-vehicle technology will be advanced to the point for substantial or even complete replacement of combustion-engine vehicles. Even so, transportation fuels will still be needed for mass transportation in airplanes and delivery of goods by long-haul trucking, trains, and ships. Biobased fuels could meet those reduced needs without using fossil fuels. We should not discount either that environmental stewardship stemming from human impacts on pollution, greenhouse gases, and global warming with destructive climate change, associated with extracting raw materials, processing them, and producing and consuming energy, will one day rank at the top of global society’s to-do list.
Where does that leave us? No matter what the future holds with regard to globally sustainable, affordable, clean, and low or net zero or negative carbon energy, it is imperative that we keep in mind the availability and cost lessons learned thus far about bioenergy production and decarbonization. We need to seriously consider where we stand at present with economically feasible and environmentally responsible scalable-to-commercial technologies without government subsidies or tax incentives, and act accordingly.
1.1 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In this account, we focus primarily on the U.S., as it is the most significant consumer of energy in the world, for now. The biomass-to-fuels conversion that the 1970s oil crisis started driving us to was not a new idea, even back then. Humanity had relied on wood and other biomass for millennia, to produce energy and feed animals that provided transportation. During the Industrial Revolution, virtually all raw materials were derived from renewable natural plant or animal sources or natural mineral resources in seemingly inexhaustible supply. Scientists and engineers over the past century and longer have tinkered with how to use cellulosic materials and plant sugars to synthesize fuels and chemicals; making ethanol and producing naval stores (turpentine, rosin, tar, and pitch derived from pine forests) go back quite a bit longer.
The concept of a biobased industry nearly caught on about 90 years ago. In May 1935, approximately 300 industrial, agricultural, and scientific leaders met in Dearborn, Michigan, as part of the of the Chemurgy movement—that is, the promotion of chemical and industrial use of organic raw materials. One outcome was the “Declaration of Dependence upon the Soil and the Right of Self-Maintenance.” The goal was to express the “inalienable right” to explore a new frontier for the industrial utilization of agricultural crops [ 2 ].
Yet, as new technologies developed, we turned to coal and eventually started refining petroleum. Chemurgy lost out to petrochemicals during and just after the Great Depression and World War II, although the concept of energy independence has remained active in political circles. Then 50 years ago Earth Day was celebrated for the first time, and spurred by the oil crisis, brought renewed public attention to human-driven environmental degradation and finite fossil-fuel supplies. But by the 1970s, petroleum refining was well-developed, and the challenges of mass production of liquid fuels from biomass at an affordable cost and requiring no new infrastructure or new type of automobile engine just never worked out. Oil was too plentiful, easier to proc