(271e) Continuous Calcination of Pyrolysis Oil Derived Renewable Coke in a Rotary Tube Furnace

The advancement of innovative pyrolysis methods has enabled flexible processing of pyrolysis oil (bio-oil), which could accelerate integration into a traditional petroleum refinery infrastructure. Both catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) and tail-gas reactive pyrolysis (TGRP) enable ease of distillation, leaving a solid residuum that is suitable for conversion into a renewable calcined coke (bio-coke), with potential to replace petroleum coke (petcoke) used in a wide range of industrial applications. For example aluminum smelting employs calcined petroleum coke to manufacture anodes for large-scale conversion of alumina into aluminum in the Hall–Héroult process. The industry faces ongoing coke quality issues associated with petcoke , such as increasing impurity content (sulfur and heavy metals), decreasing bulk density, and increasing concentrations of amorphous textures. The environmental impacts of the smelting process could also be mitigated from a reduction in CO₂ and SO₂ production via use of bio-coke. Production of calcined coke from bio-oil distillation residues could allow for production of coke with sufficiently anisotropic texture and low metal impurities. This talk will cover advances in renewable calcined coke technology. We employed a rotary tube furnace to mimic the processing and most phenomena that occur with renewable coke calcination in industrial rotary kilns. Bio-oil distillate bottoms were fed continuously into the tube furnace at fixed mass flow rates. Tube rotation speed and tube inclination angle are adjusted, such that both residence time and product morphology can be accurately controlled. Properties of the calcined renewable coke are compared with previously obtained results from batch processing.