Ablative fast pyrolysis - potential for cost effective conversion of agricultural residues

Biomass from agricultural residues and food production will become a major source for energy and chemicals production. Straw as an example of agricultural residues though abundantly available occurs sparsely distributed and its price is dominated by logistic cost. By converting straw into pyrolysis oil directly in the field, this logistic cost can be drastically reduced. A major outcome of the present study is that the intermediate product from ablative flash pyrolysis can be delivered to subsequent utilization plants at approximately the same price as baled straw, provided some underlying assumptions are met. One aim of the Fraunhofer innovation cluster »bioenergy« is to determine, whether the existing concept for an ablative flash pyrolysis process can be scaled-up to a capacity of 10 t/ h and still could be mounted on a mobile platform.