of biomass gasification

Biomass is the only renewable carbon resource and expected to substitute gradu-ally a part of the fossil fuels. A high biomass share in our future energy mix must comprise the agricultural by-products, mainly straw, in addition to wood. Straw and other fast growing herbaceous biomass contains more ash, K and Cl than wood and suitable gasification technologies are not well developed. At the Karlsruhe research centre a two-stage process for biomass conversion into synfuel is being developed, acronym "Bioliq". The process pays special attention to the properties of straw and other dry, non-woody biomass feedstock. Small or thin dry biomass particles are first liquefied by fast pyrolysis in a number of regional plants. The pulverised pyrolysis char is suspended in the pyrolysis condensates to generate stable pastes, sludge's or slurries for storage and economic transport by rail to a large central plant for syn-thesis gas generation. Syngas cleaning followed by a selective, catalysed synthesis of organic chemicals or synfuels e.g. to hydrogen, methane, methanol or Fischer-Tropsch diesel are well known technologies from large- scale commercial coal and natural gas gasification plants. The Karlsruhe biosynfuel process allows an operation of very large and therefore more economic biosynfuel production plants with high ca-pacities of 1 Mt/a or more. The economy of many small-scale biosynfuel facilities is less favourable. 1