Came Across this on AtlantaBioFuels.org

http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/09/14/daily35.html


Thoughts?

The vapors produced rapidly condense into a bio-oil

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The ultra-low-sulfur biofuel does not require additional refinement or processing before blending with biodiesel and petroleum diesel

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Well, those are the two biggies aren't they? Is it an oil? Is it a fuel? How indistinguishable from ULSD is it? If you can produce a fuel that is identical to ULSD from bio-mass, you have a solution to the biggest problem in biofuels.

And then you have to solve the one that determines viability: how much does it cost (time, materials, energy)? Can it be made profitably?

I think $$$ is what is always comes down to. BioDiesel here is about .20 cents higher here than ULSD from Premium stations, making it .30-.40 cents higher than the average Mom and Pop Station, When a home producer can make Bio from around 1.00-2.00 depending on how creative they are on processing equipment and time gathering oil. I think the answer is in the local community where it has always been, localizing cost and lowering overhead. I mean I am just speculating.

I worked for a company a few years ago that was developing a similar technology. Same process, but slightly different mechanicals in the plant basically... and the fuels we were making a couple years ago were very far from a transportation fuel. Basically the output bio-oil was a blend of HC compounds ranging from waxes and tars to alcohols. While UGA has probably refined the process, and yield of something similar to a diesel should be increased with finer control of temps and reaction durations, the amount of biomass converted into something useable as a transportation fuel would still be fairly low (I could see 10-15% as being a very high but achievable yield). Unless they're doing some kind of after-the-fact cracking process after the pyrolysis... I dunno. Anyways, it's a sound technology and I'm happy to see it still being pursued.

Here's a link to my old company's website explaining the process:

http://www.advbiorefineryinc.ca/technology/