"Waste" to oil, gift of biomass energy

Agricultural waste, trees and their residues, animal manure These seemingly inconspicuous and intractable things are important sources of biomass energy Biomass energy is the same as solar energy, wind energy and geothermal energy as renewable energy, but biomass energy is the only renewable energy that can be stored and transported, which is one of the key areas encouraged by the state According to the outline of national medium and long term science and technology development plan (2006-2020), in the field of agriculture, "comprehensive development and utilization of agricultural and forestry biomass" is the priority theme But how? What technical bottlenecks need to be overcome? This is a long-term research project of Jiang Jianchun, a researcher of the Institute of forest chemical industry, China Academy of Forestry Sciences It is reported that in January this year, the project of "key technologies for the directional conversion of agricultural and forestry biomass to prepare liquid fuel multi generation" presided over by Jiang Jianchun won the second prize of 2016 National Science and technology progress award Recently, reporters from China Science Daily interviewed the team In the daily life of a green energy, there are many biomass resources, including residues of crops, trees, grains, feed crops, trees, animal manure and other organic wastes It is the only renewable carbon resource, which can be converted into conventional liquid and gaseous fuels and other chemical raw materials or products According to statistics, biomass energy has great potential The total amount of biomass energy generated by solar photosynthesis of plants on the earth is about 144-180 billion tons every year, about 10 times of the total energy consumption of the world "There is an inexhaustible material basis for the development and utilization of biomass energy." Jiang Jianchun told China Science Daily that the liquid fuel made from biomass through energy conversion can not only make up for the shortage of fossil fuel, but also protect the environment As the only renewable resource that can be converted into liquid fuel, biomass has attracted worldwide attention because of its huge output, storability and carbon cycle For example, Japan's "sunshine plan", India's "green energy project" and Brazil's "alcohol energy plan" all take biomass energy as a national strategy China is rich in biomass resources, such as crop straws and forestry cutting and processing residues each year up to more than 1 billion tons Taking crop straw as an example, some scholars think that the total ecological amount of straw that can be used for new energy in China is about 86.6131 million tons after considering the soil ecological conservation and the main use of straw "It is generally believed that about 100 million tons of forest cutting residues and processing residues can be collected, more agricultural straws can be collected than forestry, and the total amount of agricultural and forestry residues can be collected is more than 200 million tons." Xu Junming, a team member and researcher of the Institute of forest products and chemical industry, Chinese Academy of forestry, told China Science Daily In the outline of national medium and long term science and technology development plan (2006-2020), low-cost and large-scale development and utilization of renewable energy, such as biomass energy development and utilization technology, has been taken as the priority theme in the energy field According to reports, the development focus of biomass energy technology has changed from the first generation of biomass fuel to the second generation of biomass fuel with lignocellulosic refining as the core The process technology mainly focuses on biological transformation and thermochemical transformation Jiang Jianchun has been engaged in the research of biomass energy conversion in the field of chemical processing of forest products since 1996 He led the team to carry out the basic theoretical research on the directional transformation of wood fiber and vegetable oil in view of the complex components of degradation products, low conversion rate of raw materials, unstable product quality, high energy consumption and other problems in the conversion process of agricultural and forestry biomass The reporter learned in the interview that after more than 20 years of continuous research, Jiang Jianchun's team has broken through the key engineering technologies such as directional control of degradation products, continuous production process and Value-added Utilization of multi joint production, and has made a number of innovative achievements It has been introduced that all kinds of biomass energy must be transformed when they are used Due to the differences in physical and chemical aspects of different biomass resources, the ways of transformation are different Xu Junming said that thermochemical conversion can directly convert solid biomass into liquid, which is an important way of biomass energy conversion, with the advantages of high efficiency and low cost Taking lignocellulosic resources as an example, it is a complex supramolecular complex formed by the combination of high molecular compound cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin with complex spatial structure, and the degradation of its biomass is the basis for the efficient utilization of biomass Jiang Jianchun's team innovated and developed the directional thermochemical transformation technology of agricultural and forestry biomass, revealed the basic laws of the directional degradation process of different raw materials such as wood fiber and vegetable oil, and successfully developed a set of Engineering Key Technologies for large-scale application for the first time At the same time, the team invented a new kind of special catalyst for the degradation of wood fiber in the ionic thermal system, realizing the one-step conversion of Pentacarbon glycoside and hexacarbon glycoside into levulinic acid and ester, the conversion rate increased by about 30%, and the purity of the product reached over 98% In view of the problem of high energy consumption in the conversion and utilization of agricultural and forestry biomass, Jiang Jianchun's team innovated and developed the engineering technology of continuous methyl esterification to prepare fuel oil, and pioneered the engineering technology of continuous esterification and transesterification of high acid value oil to prepare biodiesel "Energy consumption is 20% lower than that of domestic traditional biodiesel production technology, 9.8% lower than that of foreign similar technology, and the comprehensive production cost is saved by more than 15%." Jiang Jianchun said that this solved the problems of complex raw material pretreatment process, high energy consumption of intermittent reaction process, poor safety, catalyst recovery and environmental pollution in the current biodiesel production process In addition, the team innovated the key technologies of high value utilization of agricultural and forestry biomass, such as the key technologies of lignin replacing phenol to prepare phenolic plastics Lignin is a kind of natural polyphenol compound widely existing in plants In nature, the reserves of lignin are second only to cellulose, and it regenerates at a rate of about 50 billion tons every year But at present, more than 95% of the isolated lignin has not been utilized The team also revealed the structure-activity relationship between activation control and adsorption performance of agricultural and forestry biomass activated carbon, and created the regulation method of micropore and mesopore structure of activated carbon It was found that the mechanism of catalyst increasing the activity of lignocellulosic reaction, the rate of temperature change during the high temperature reforming process and the directional control mechanism of the activation medium on the microporous structure of activated carbon were found Jiang Jianchun said that this technology realized the continuous production of lignin modified phenolic foam, solved the problem of low utilization value and low reactivity of lignocellulose liquefaction process, reduced the cost of phenolic materials, and realized the high value utilization of wood fiber resources The comprehensive benefits are obvious The project belongs to the category of technology development It integrates the key technologies of directional conversion of agricultural and forestry biomass to produce liquid fuel and multi generation It has independent intellectual property rights and the overall technology has reached the international advanced level 47 invention patents were authorized and 1 industry standard was formulated According to reports, the project has reached the international leading level in key technologies such as selective conversion of levulinic acid and its esters in the full use of wood fiber raw materials, continuous conversion of vegetable oil into high-quality fuel oil and CO production of environmental friendly plasticizer Up to now, the results have been extended to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Anhui and other regions A continuous production line of processing 80 thousand tons of lignocellulosic cellulose for the production of levulinic acid and its esters and annual production of 100 thousand tons of biodiesel has been built, and the world's largest annual output of 5000 tons of catalytic cracking for the production of hydrocarbon fuel and the first demonstration line for producing 60 thousand cubic meters of lignin phenolic foam at home and abroad It is worth mentioning that in the past three years, the newly increased sales revenue and profit of the achievements reached 3.15 billion yuan and 407 million yuan respectively Among them, levulinic acid and its esters, biodiesel and other products occupy nearly 30% of the domestic market "The promotion and application of the achievements have significant economic, social and ecological benefits for the efficient utilization of agricultural and forestry biomass energy, reducing the impact of agricultural and forestry waste resources on the environment and effectively replacing fossil fuels." Jiang Jianchun said (BIOON Com)