WORK PACKAGE 4
This update is by Lydia Fryda, leader for WP4, Protocols & Benchmarking. Lydia is based at ECN>TNO, the Netherland’s Organisation of Applied Scientific Research, which merged with Energieonderzoek Centrum in 2018.
LNEG focused on gathering and preparing protocols for the datasets ( round robin activities) in tasks 6.1 Advanced Gas measurement techniques, 7.2 Biomass pre-treatment/fractionation and 5.2 Determination of kinetic parameters of pyrolysis, oxidation and gasification of biomass, while CENER took care of the benchmarking activities regarding these datasets. Questionnaires were sent around the participating partners in order to gather data in a consistent manner on the benchmarking of these round robin activities.
ECN>TNO is finalizing the new upgrade and update of the new Phyllis website. It has proven to be a challenging task – to categorize biomass resources and include all physico-chemical properties in such a way that provides valuable assistance to bioenergy and biofuels researchers. A demo is due out soon, but several functions are already in place (downloads in Word and PDF formats of multiple entries).
As WP4 also aims to propose new standards, the team members are following the CEN TC groups: CEN TC 411 – Biobased products and CEN TC 454 – Algae and algae products standardization. In the frame of WP4, the BRISK2 consortium will evaluate the opportunity for new standards.
WORK PACKAGE 6
This report by Andrés Anca-Couce focuses on a round robin of the sampling and analysis of producer gas composition from biomass gasification, including impurities. It took place in May 2019 at TUG, and was organized by Lukas von Berg and Andrés Anca-Couce.
Members from BE2020+, ECN and CERTH participated in this activity. The producer gas composition of a lab-scale fluidized bed gasifier operated continuously steam was measured, using wood pellets and Miscanthus pellets as a fuel.
The targeted compounds to be measured were main permanent gases (H2, CO, CO2, CH4, CxHy), tars with a high interest in light tars, S-compounds (H2S, S-tars as thiophene, mercaptans, dibenzothiophene), N-compounds (NH3, HCN, N-tars as pyridine) and other compounds such as chlorine.
Several methods were employed for sampling and analysis, including continuous gas analysis, micro-GC, tar protocol (standard and with modifications from partners), SPA, FTIR or wet chemical methods (for H2S, NH3, …). Furthermore, obtained samples were distributed to BE2020+, ECN, CERTH and CENER for further analysis. Results will be made available in the following weeks.
WORK PACKAGE 7
This joint research update comes from Carl Safi and Wim Mulder from WP7, Biorefining Approaches. Carl and Wim are based at the Wageningen University & Research Centre in the Netherlands. WP7 has recently been focusing on investigating new pre-treatment and fractionation processes for lignocellulosic biomass, herbaceous biomass and marine biomass (macroalgae). These processes will be evaluated mainly by a round robin study using the three types of biomass and the application of a variety of fractionation processes. In addition, several partners upgraded and/or modified their existing infrastructure to expand the capabilities for fractionation and downstream processing of the extracted products beyond the state of the art. The round robin study will provide a basis for looking at current performance, variations and important factors that influence the fractionation of biomass, as well as the relevance of the fractionation methods for different valorisation routes of the biomass components. Furthermore, the study will allow for benchmarking the standard protocols available for the characterisation of solid biomass-derived samples. In addition, similarities and differences in performance will be assessed for the same fractionation process using different biomass types.
These advances – beyond the state of the art – can also be used to assess the needs for international standardisation of the fractionation and analysis methods under development to obtain more comparable results. It is noted that the selection of a promising fractionation method is strongly interlinked with subsequent questions on the feedstock selection as well as products that need to be obtained in the downstream processing after fractionation. The data and information obtained from this study will be gathered together as a report, and will help the scientific community to elucidate the new findings in a comprehensive and consistent experimental framework. They will also be a basis for creating more standardised procedures in biorefinery activities.
