Project: Liquid fuels from lignin by hydrothermal liquefaction and deoxygenetion

The overall goal of the LIGNOHtL project is to study the potential compatibility of different lignin sources for the production of second generation biofuels, as a concept providing complementary sources of bio-carbon to refineries, and to estimate its technical potential in Europe. the concept is based on the co-processing of crude oil distillates in conventional refineries together with blended bio-liquids obtained from various lignin-based conversion processes. the process includes separate or co-upgrading of pulping black liquor with lignin residues from e.g. bioethanol plants into higher value biofuels and chemicals. this will be achieved by integrating the pulp mill recovery cycle with a hydrothermal liquefaction process. We will identify a complementary route to low cost biofuels to mineral oil refineries based on experimental data generated in this project and other sources. the overall conversion process which will be investigated in this project consists of three steps: hydrothermal liquefaction, catalytic hydrodeoxygenation and co-processing with a petroleumbased feedstock to a final fuel product. Hydrothermal liquefaction will be used for converting black liquor together with other lignins into an intermediate biocrude. In the second step, the bio-crude will be catalytically hydrotreated to form an upgraded bio-crude with varying degrees of deoxygenation. In the final step of the process, the upgraded bio-crude will be blended with a petroleum-derived feedstock, and the blend will be further processed using conventional oil refinery process technology. the experimental data generated in this project will be used as an input for techno-economic evaluation of the proposed process concept.

Acronym	LIGNOHTL (Reference Number: n/a)
Duration	01/02/2014 - 30/06/2017
Project Topic	Wood fibre-based materials and processing
Project Results (after finalisation)	N/A (project still running)
Network	WoodWisdom-Net+
Call	WW-NET+ Call for Proposals

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland	Coordinator	Finland
2	Thünen Institute	Partner	Germany
3	IRCELYON	Partner	France
4	Leibniz-Institut für Katalyse e. V.	Partner	Germany