(328g) The Biofine Process: Carbon-Negative Fuels and Chemicals - a Status Report

The Biofine process allows conversion of a wide range of lignocellulosic or cellulosic wastes into fuels and commodity chemicals with huge markets. The process is based on the acid hydrolysis of the carbohydrate portions of the feedstock (cellulose and hemicellulose) under relatively mild conditions of dilute sulfuric acid and moderate temperature that dissolve and convert the carbohydrates but allow lignin in the feedstock to pass through the reaction relatively unchanged. Carbohydrates are converted simultaneously to the platform chemicals, levulinic acid, formic acid, and furfural. High simultaneous yields of the products are obtained by virtue of the stable mixing regimes established within a continuous back-mixed, steam-stripped, reaction vessel.

The biofuel of primary interest is ethyl levulinate (EL), the ethanol ester of levulinic acid suitable for both heavy and light fuel formulations. The initial market for EL will be commercial and home heating oil. The byproducts are levulinic acid, a versatile platform chemical that can be readily converted into monomers such as succinic acid, acrylic acid and 3-HPA, sodium formate, an environmentally benign non-corrosive airport and bridge deicer and a high-energy content, non-bio-degradable carbonaceous char consisting of unconverted lignin and reaction residue. Independent carbon dioxide life cycle analyses (LCA) have been carried out on production of both the fuel and the biochar using the “GREET” model developed at Argonne National Laboratory. These conclude that for both products the commercial scale process is carbon negative: The displacement of fossil feedstocks, avoidance of emissions from cellulosic waste and sequestration of carbon in the biochar residue results in the reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide by up to 20 Kg per gigajoule of biofuel.

The company in recent years has made major strides towards commercialization of the technology and is planning the start of construction of its first commercial plant in Q4, 2024. The process technology has been proven at large pilot scale for several years at the University of Maine (Orono) and has been validated as ready for scale-up in an independent peer review by an international independent engineering consulting firm. The company has entered a multi-year offtake contract with a large national fuel distributor and has verified the applicability of EPA-managed D-7 RINS (renewable Information numbers) for its biofuel product. It has also received a high degree of market interest in the deicer and the carbon sequestrant.

Biofine has also secured a site for construction of the first commercial plant at an abandoned pulp and paper mill in Lincoln, ME and is currently working with a large international EPC company carrying out detailed process design. This first plant will process a total of over 40,000 dry metric tons of waste wood and post-consumer fiber per year and produce over 10 million liters of fuel.

The economics of the process make it highly profitable even at small commercial scale. The primary markets being served, biofuel (EL), carbon sequestration (biochar) and runway and bridge deicers (sodium formate) are sufficiently large to absorb the output from dozens of large scale plants both domestic and international. The feedstock is extremely plentiful being derived in rural settings from forest slash and thinning and in urban settings from municipal waste. In the state of Maine this represents a classic example of economic circularity in either rural or urban settings where readily available waste feedstock can be converted into products such as heating oil and deicer with large market demand in the local region while contributing significantly to reduction of atmospheric carbon.

This presentation will discuss the process technology and its scale-up, products, feedstocks and economic projections.