Biomass to liquid

Biomass to Liquid (BtL) or BMtL is a multi-step process which produces liquid biofuels from biomass:

The process uses the whole plant to improve the carbon dioxide balance and increase yield.

The Fischer–Tropsch process is used to produce synfuels from gasified biomass. Carbonaceous material is gasified and the gas is processed to make purified syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen). The Fischer-Tropsch polymerizes syngas into diesel-range hydrocarbons. While biodiesel and bio-ethanol production so far only use parts of a plant, i.e. oil, sugar, starch or cellulose, BtL production uses the whole plant which is gasified by gasification. The result is that for BTL, less land area is required per unit of energy produced compared with biodiesel or bioethanol. Also, fuel production need not compete with food production - edible parts of plants can still be used for food, while inedible parts (such as stems and leaves) can be used to make biofuels.
Flash pyrolysis - producing bio-oil (pyrolysis oil), char and gas at temperatures between 350-550°C and residence times < 1 second (also called anhydrous pyrolysis).
Catalytic depolymerization — using heat and catalysts to separate usable diesel fuel from hydrocarbon wastes.

Reference

Andrei Y. Khodakov, Wei Chu, and Pascal Fongarland “Advances in the Development of Novel Cobalt Fischer-Tropsch Catalysts for Synthesis of Long-Chain Hydrocarbons and Clean Fuels” Chemical Review, 2007, volume 107, pp 1692–1744. doi:10.1021/cr050972v

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