Review and Assessment of Commercial Vendors/Options for Feeding and Pumping Biomass Slurries for Hydrothermal Liquefaction

Abstract

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The BioSCWG Project: Understanding the Trade-Offs in the Process and Thermal Design of Hydrogen and Synthetic Natural Gas Production

“…%. This range falls within the existing commercial slurry pump-ability range [17,42,50] and based on recent life cycle assessment studies reported in literature for hydrothermal processing, would result in a net positive-producer/energy valorization system [12,42,[47][48][49][51][52][53][54].…”

“…Aside from eluding pumping challenges and clogging during slurry processing, the physical pretreatment steps lead to increased accessibility to the organic pores, and as a result enhanced hydrolysis and fragmentation. The slurry is then pressurized to 250 bar by means of a five stage rotary lobe pumping system, selected from a compiled list of commercial vendors available in literature [50], and then further preheated to 350 • C.…”

“…The inlet solid content for both cases was constrained by the operational limit of the selected slurry pump at 18 wt. % solid content [50]. In the second BioSNG case at 450 • C, the exclusion of the USC expanders in block A3 allows the assessment of the influence of power production within a CHP configuration on the internal heat recovery.…”

Techno-economic Assessment of Integrated Hydrothermal Liquefaction and Combined Heat and Power Production from Lignocellulose Residues

“…The AUXWATER stream is simulated as pure water, however, it is envisaged in the plant assessment as a mixture of recycled aqueous stream from the wastewater treatment plant (not modelled) and 10% make-up water. The plant input solid content is a conservative design condition, estimated for feasible pumping capabilities of lignocellulose slurries (maximum 18 wt.% solids) reported from commercial vendors and compiled in [36]. The mixture enters a pre-treatment step modelled in Aspen Plus ® as simply a mixer, while the overall plant evaluation accounted for the specified utility demands based on [37].…”

“…The pre-treated slurry is then fed into the pumping stage were the slurry is upgraded over five sequential stage pumps of maximum 50 bar each. The pump system design is based on the rotary lobe pump system developed by Zeilfelder Pumpen GmbH [36]. Advantageous features of the pump are the upper temperature limits of 350 °C, which would allow booster operation at reactor inlet conditions.…”