Fuel Made Of Straw and Wood

The race for a new fuel is on. Scientists around the world are testing products of every type in order to create a fuel of the future. What is the latest? How about a product called Bioliq?

Bioliq stems from biomass technology, which isn’t new in regards to taking masses of a substance and converting it to energy. But turning those masses into diesel fuel is something that is new. How does it work? To start, all one needs are the agricultural leftovers from farms or even the trees thinned from forests. Once gathered, the straw or wood is put through an intense heating process that changes the product into a new substance. This substance is then converted to fuel. Why is this important? For environmentalists, this means a fuel that doesn’t have to be extracted from a limited supply buried beneath the earth but is created from a renewable byproduct.

Still don’t understand how straw becomes fuel? This is how it works. First, the plant material, in the absence of air, is heated to around 500°C, a process known as pyrolysis. This produces a thick oily liquid containing solid particles of coke termed biosyncrude. The biosyncrude is then vaporized by exposing it to a stream of oxygen gas, before being heated at high pressures to a temperature of around 1400°C. known as gasification. This process transforms the liquid biosyncrude into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen termed syngas.

After any impurities are removed from this syngas, it can be catalytically converted into a range of different chemicals and fuels, including methanol, hydrogen and a synthetic version of diesel.

Members of the Karlsruhe research center have estimated that their processing could bring the costs of producing liquid biofuels down around $2.65 per gallon.

Bioliq is now taking its first steps towards commercialization. In conjunction with the German process engineering company Lurgi, the construction of a pilot plant based on the bioliq technology should be fully completed in 2012. Once the plant has been built, large amounts of fuel can then be created. The question will then be how best to distribute this new fuel in large scale so that it can effectively compete with fossil fuels. As fossil fuels decrease in supply and increase in price, tax incentives have been discussed as the answer.

So what will be the new fuel of the future? It is hard to tell at this point, but many good ideas are being tried and tested, which means hopefully they will soon be available to the whole public for use.