Achievement

An economic analysis of biomass to liquid fuel was performed through interdisciplinary collaboration between Professors Wally Tyner, Rakesh Agrawal and SEIGERT Associate Fellow Dharik Mallapragada. The goal was to identify new pathways for the economical conversion of biomass to liquid fuel (Thrust IT2 of SEIGERT). An outcome of this study was that the novel pathway of integrating natural gas reforming with biomass hydropyrolysis/hydrodeoxygenation was economically superior to other alternatives such as biomass gasification followed by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Furthermore, under certain circumstances, the cost can potentially be competitive with crude petroleum derived fuel. These initial results from the analysis are exciting and have been submitted for publication to Biomass & Bioenergy.