Energy and Fuel Production through a Combination of Thermochemical and Biochemical Conversion of Low Grade Lignocellulosic Feedstocks

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Food security, climate change and energy sustainability are the three major challenges in the 21st century. Among different renewable energy sources, bioenergy is one of the renewable primary energy sources, touching all three major issues due to its competition with food on land use, low net CO2 emissions and potentially sustainable if the economical, environmental and social impacts are properly managed. This proposal targets to carry-out fundamental research on development of renewable resource-based energy and fuel and their value-added product, to facilitate rapid transition to a biobased economy. The targeted research looks to develop and evaluate new or improved technologies to overcome technical hurdles associated with the conversion of Canada’s particular range of low grade fuels. These fuels range from woody biomass to agricultural and municipal wastes. Various challenges presently exist, which limit the economic viability and operational reliability of conversion processes for these types of fuels. Collectively these feedstocks have tremendous potential for the production of fuels (ethanol, syngas, torrefied biomass) and chemicals. Three sub-projects are proposed, each of which can contribute directly or indirectly to greater efficiency towards commercialization and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. These are (i) Development of a continuous HTC process to produce biochar from low grade feedstocks and characterize the products for various applications; (ii) Study the enhancement of CaO sorbents performance for cyclic CO2 capture during gasification of biochar; and (iii) Investigate the means to improve mass transfer of syngas to produce bioethanol through fermentation. This proposal relates these three sub-projects in querying several unanswered questions: Can we produce solids fuels from low quality lignocellulose biomass that will have similar properties of coal specially low alkali metal, higher HHV and grindability? If so, can we develop an scalable continuous process based on this investigation? What is the scientific principle underlying such improved behaviour of the product? Will that product help in increasing the reactivity of CaO sorbent that captures CO2 within the gasification process itself? Can we enhance the mass transfer of syngas in liquid solution to produce bioethanol through fermentation? The innovative and synergistic integration of design with process engineering through above projects are expected to result in sustainable biofuels and value added products. The resulting biochar can substitute fossil resources on cost-performance basis with the added benefit of eco-friendliness. This means a tremendous reduction in greenhouse gas emission through use of bioproduct.The use of hydrothermal, chemical looping gasification, and syngas fermatation techniques in the development and application of biofuels and products would broadly propel the reduced dependency on petroleum and a sustainable economy. One of the important goals of the NSERC-Discovery grant program is to deliver fundamental knowledge that will impact scientific community in a quest for innovations, for a decade to come. The out-come of this research will create new fundamental knowledge to stimulate additional research. The vision is to educate future students in driving-forward the emerging green technology innovation. The research will be carried out by doctoral, Master’s and undergraduate HQP who will gain valuable training directly applicable to work in industry or continued research. Therefore, this proposal is a cornerstone of scientific discoveries that will provide knowledge critical to advance the science in biochar production for various applications, and H2 enrich syngas for bioethanol through biochemical processing.