Corrosion in biomass/fossil fuel co-processing: fundamentals and mitigation practice

目前，超过80%的能源和90%的有机化学品来自有限的化石燃料资源。新兴的生物质与化石燃料的共处理一直在增长，以利用可再生生物质作为燃料来源。由于共处理仍处于研究阶段，利用现有的炼油厂基础设施是一个有吸引力的初步选择。共处理对炼油厂的好处包括减少相关的温室气体（GHG）排放，使其逐渐独立于化石来源，并提供低碳高度可持续的燃料。所有这些好处都与加拿大的经济价值直接相关。为了应对碳税，温室气体排放越来越多地受到监测和定价。炼油部门的竞争力可能受到其温室气体排放水平的影响。另一方面，如今原油采购占炼油厂成本结构的90%以上，因此是实现盈利和降低成本的主要领域。与此同时，生物质共处理技术面临着严峻的挑战。特别值得注意的是，生物质来源具有高酸度和高浓度的有机含氧化合物，这可能导致腐蚀问题增加。虽然在炼油厂的操作中添加一小部分可再生原料听起来很简单，但生物燃料与化石燃料混合的比例必须受到限制。人们应该考虑可能的腐蚀风险，这些风险直接受到现有炼油厂金属结构的限制，这些炼油厂已经建造和使用了几十年。也就是说，对于可接受的腐蚀速率，某些生物质源的最佳混合比是多少？除了可以接受的，我们还能做些什么来保护这些现有的结构？探索创新涂层可能是一种有效的解决方案，因为通过表面改性保护金属免受腐蚀和氧化是废物处理等许多工业领域的关键技术。 使用现代表面分析和电化学技术对腐蚀进行了详细研究，探讨了废物转化能源行业中各种工程合金的腐蚀风险程度。该提案将讨论一项计划，以发现新兴化石燃料/生物质共处理技术中的腐蚀机制，并确定新的涂层和/或表面改性方法，以减少腐蚀并保持安全性和盈利能力。一个长期目标是设计一个试验/原型设施来处理生物质和化石燃料的混合物，以便解决诸如什么建筑材料对于新的共处理炼油厂单元在经济上是合适的和可靠的等问题。通过回答这个问题，该计划将解释腐蚀和表面改性研究如何彻底改变生物质共处理行业。

At present, more than 80% of all energy and 90% of all organic chemicals are derived from finite fossil fuel resources. The emerging co-processing of biomass with fossil fuels has been growing to make use of renewable biomass as a fuel source. Since co-processing is still in the research stage, leveraging existing refinery infrastructure is an attractive initial option. The benefits of co-processing for a refinery include reducing the associated greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, enabling the gradual independence from fossil sources, and rendering low-carbon-highly-sustainable fuels. All these benefits are directly related to the economic values to Canada. In response to the carbon taxes, GHG emissions are increasingly monitored and priced. The competitiveness of the refinery sector can be affected by its level of GHG emissions. On the other hand, crude oil purchasing today represents over 90% of the cost structure of a refinery and is therefore a major area for achieving profitability and reducing costs. In the meantime, the biomass co-processing technologies are facing severe challenges. Of particular note is that biomass sources have high acidity and high concentrations of organic oxygenates, which can result in increased corrosion issues. While adding a small percentage of renewable feedstock to the operations of refinery units sounds simple, there must be a limit to the ratio of biofuels mixed with fossil fuels. One should consider possible corrosion risks directly affected by this limit to metallic structures from the existing refineries which have been built and used for decades. That is, what are the optimum mixture ratios of certain biomass sources for acceptable corrosion rates? Beyond what is acceptable, what could we do to protect these existing structures? Exploring innovative coatings could be an effective solution as protection of metals against corrosion and oxidation by surface modification is a key technology for many industrial fields such as waste treatment. Detailed studies of corrosion, using modern surface analysis and electrochemical techniques, have explored the degree of corrosion risk to a variety of engineering alloys in waste-to-energy industries. This proposal will discuss a program to discover the corrosion mechanisms in the emerging fossil fuels/biomass co-processing technologies, and to identify new coatings and/or surface modification methods that will reduce corrosion and preserve safety and profitability. A long-term goal is to design a pilot/prototype facility to process a mixture of biomass and fossil fuel, so that questions, such as, what construction materials are economically suitable and reliable for new co-processing refinery units? By answering this question, this program will explain how corrosion and surface modification studies could revolutionize the biomass co-processing industry.