There has been a recent surge in interest in the production of fuels and renewable chemicals from biomass feedstocks. The pyrolysis pathway produces a liquid “bio-oil” product, which must be processed further, or upgraded, to ultimately produce fuels or chemicals. Bio-oil is an extremely complex and unstable mixture, and research and development on upgrading processes requires reliable analyses of bio-oil. In particular, chemical characterization techniques are needed that quantify both functional groups and individual compounds present in bio-oil. Reliable chemical characterization of bio-oils will enable upgrading research and allow for detailed comparisons of bio-oils produced at different facilities. Reliable analytics are also needed to enable an emerging bioenergy industry, and processing facilities often have different analytical needs and capabilities than research facilities. Furthermore, data from reliable bio-oil analyses are needed to define the quality of bio-oils. Quality metrics are needed to assign a value to raw bio-oil, and will help inform process conditions for bio-oil upgrading. While analytical standardization for bio-oils has a rich history, the majority of standardization efforts to-date have tested only physical characterization techniques (e.g., elemental analysis, viscosity). In this presentation, results will be presented from recent standardization activities, including the development of a new ASTM Standard Test Method, the first of its kind for the chemical characterization of pyrolysis bio-oils. The newly standardized analytical methods presented represent some of the first examples of successful validation of chemical characterization techniques for bio-oils. These standardized analytical methods have led to additional insights into the nature of bio-oils, such as a new way of determining the aging behavior of a bio-oil sample. Furthermore, these standardized methods have been used to successfully predict performance of a downstream upgrading process.

Pyrolysis bio-oil: Standardized analytical methods enable new insights in research and processing

256th National Meeting (2018)

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