Page 179 - Advances in bioenergy (2016)

In November 2002, the foundation stone was laid for the construction of the first industrial-
scale Carbo-V prototype plant (f-Plant) with a capacity of 45 MWth at the Freiberg site.

3
It was planned to produce 18,000 m of FT fuel per year. Investment costs were more than 100
M. 59

Choren Industries filed for insolvency in July 2011. Choren's biomass gasification technology

was sold to Linde Engineering Dresden, who will further develop the Choren Carbo-V ®
60
technology used to produce syngas. The EE-Plant in Freiberg is still not in operation and
here also no investor was found till now, who takes over this demonstration plant for FT
synthesis. Recently, it was announced by Linde that they had licensed the project to the Finish
Forest Biofuels project, one of the NER 300 contractors.

Large Scale of Alcohol Synthesis (Range Fuels)

Range Fuels tried to develop a technology that converts woody biomass into ethanol over the
thermochemical pathway. The technology was based on staged pressurized gasification of
biomass, syngas purification, and its catalytic conversion. The aim was to produce up to 100

million gallons of biofuel per year as well as green power. 61

The Soperton site, where the technology should be installed is located in a region rich in
biomass resources in the United States. Test plots of high-yield energy crops on the plant site
demonstrated the potential this feedstock has to supplement the woody biomass already
available in the region.

Woody biomass was delivered by trucks to a wood yard, where the biomass was processed
and stored prior to conversion. The biomass passed through a pressurized gasifier, where it
was converted to a gas and residual char and minerals. The product gas from gasification
passed through a reforming section where it was converted to syngas. Finally, the syngas was
cleaned and compressed before injection into a catalytic converter that performed the final
transformation into ethanol.