SynGas
Technology, LLC, (SGT) is a technology company that is developing, for
the purpose of licensing, pre‐treatment and gasification technologies
for the use in the production of synthesis gas (syngas) from biomass.
SGT has also developed and will make available for license a
patent‐pending integrated biorefinery process that combines the SGT
gasification technology with existing commercial thermochemical
processing technology which allows for the production of gasoline,
diesel fuel, and high value chemical products such as ammonia from a
variety of cellulosic biomass feed stocks. A
major advantage of the thermochemical processing approach developed by
SGT is that it is capable of producing full specification transportation
fuels (D‐4814 gasoline and D‐975 diesel) with proven commercially
available conversion technology. This eliminates expensive product
development testing and allows use of existing fuel distribution
infrastructure. However, until now, the cost effectiveness of
thermochemical technology has been a barrier to its adoption for wide
scale use in renewable fuel production, primarily because no reliable
technology has been available to produce refinery grade syngas from
biomass. It is a common misconception that all syngas is the same;
however, in order to economically produce liquid fuels, syngas must have
a specific H2/CO ratio, be available at high pressure, and be free on
contaminants which can foul downstream processes. | | |
Current biomass gasification technology suffers from the following issues: - Limited
to low pressure operation, resulting in high capital and operating
costs due to the need to compress syngas after the gasifier to high
pressure to be compatible with downstream processing technology.
- Typically
limited to air‐blown operation which further increases compression
costs and equipment costs of downstream equipment in direct proportion
to the nitrogen content of the syngas.
- Utilize feed systems that are mechanically unreliable and are design specific to the type of biomass being used.
- Suffer
from poor internal mixing due to large biomass particles in the feed
stock which causes soot, tar, and slag formation and results in lower
overall efficiency.
- Rely
on excessive use of steam to minimize tar and soot formation which
results in high H2/CO ratio syngas which reduces final liquid product
yield by as much as 50%.
SGTs
proprietary feed pre‐treatment and high pressure, oxygen fed,
non‐slagging gasifier design eliminates all of these problems to open
the path to the profitable production of transportation fuels that will
meet existing fuel specifications without the need for government
subsidies. This integrated approach significantly reduces the capital
and operating costs associated with thermochemical processing and
enables the production renewable fuels at costs competitive to petroleum
derived fuels. |