Location: Sustainable Biofuels and Co-products Research
Project Number: 8072-41000-111-001-R
Project Type: Reimbursable Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2024
End Date: Jun 30, 2027
Objective:
The overall goal of this project is to achieve a reduction in the carbon intensity (CI) of corn-based ethanol biorefinery process through the production of a mixture of fuel gases from thin stillage to substitute the use of fossil natural gas used in ethanol manufacturing process. Specifically, the proposed project objectives are to (i) generate fuel gas from thin stillage through a low-temperature (~200 C), catalytically facilitated, hydrothermal process without hydrogen addition; (ii) synthesize and characterize precious-metal-free catalyst, perform, and determine the efficacy and stability of the catalyst in the conversion of thin stillage to fuel gas; (iii) integrate the developed technology into current ethanol manufacturing flowsheet; and (iv) perform techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle analysis (LCA) to assess sustainability comprehensively.
Approach:
This proposed work improves the production efficiency by (i) developing a noble catalyst with high carbon conversion efficacy and thus (ii) lowering reaction temperature and time in the energy intensive hydrothermal gasification process, and improve the capacity of biomass, biofuels, and renewable energy by producing high yield of the selective fuel gases that can be used as renewable energy source in the current bioethanol production process. This work expands utilization of byproducts that are derived from the bioethanol platform into value-added renewable energy sources in a less carbon intensity fashion.
The project team will conduct following tasks:
Task 1 Thin stillage fractionation to improve feedstock quality and reduce catalyst poisoning;
Task 2 Catalytic hydrothermal gasification from thin stillage fractionation to fuel gas using metal exsolved tandem catalyst;
Task 3 Catalyst hydrothermal gasification from thin stillage fractions to fuel gas in pellet form with a Parr reactor and a continuous flow reactor system; and
Task 4 Technoeconomic analysis (TEA) and life cycle analysis (LCA) of the process integrated into an ethanol plant. USDA-ARS scientists will leverage their expertise in Task 1 on Thin stillage fractionation and Task 4 on TEA.