Collaborative Actions to Bring Novel Biofuels Thermochemical Routes into Industrial Scale

BioTheRoS Project aims at developing a holistic methodology that will boost the scale-up of sustainable biofuels via thermochemical conversion technologies. These are pyrolysis upgrading through hydrodeoxygenation and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis from biomass gasification. The project will bring together key actors at a both European and International level, such as technological and social experts, renewable energy-oriented associations along with industrial experts that will bring and exchange their knowledge in order to reach the project targets. Within the project, several non-food biomass feedstock will be analyzed and optimized across their entire value chain. Barriers linked with the selected feedstocks supply and pretreatment will be identified. Furthermore, AI-based predictive models will be developed, in order to be adapted to the scale-up cases. Then, the most promising biomass feedstock will be tested experimentally in the studied thermochemical reactors. At this point of the project, technical constraints and opportunities for the scale-up of the sustainable biofuels thermochemical processes will be identified. Possible synergies of blending pyrolysis oil and gasification based advanced biofuels will be investigated by a potential end-user (petroleum company). The selected data will be used as an input for advanced modelling tools, including process modelling, CFD tools and LCA/LCC/sLCA tools results of which will feed a multi-criteria analysis to derive generalized up-scaling rules and guidelines of the produced biofuels. The engagement of several stakeholders in the planning of the scaling-up of sustainable biofuels production will be crucial at this point, since they will review the project results and assess if a biofuel production technology can be delivered from the lab/pilot to a larger-scale, by taking into account operational difficulties, plant cost and plant capacity limitations (technological barriers).