Bio-oil from rice straw by pyrolysis: experimental and techno-economic investigations.

The use of biomass as a source of energy is gaining increasing interest in both developed and developing countries as a renewable source of energy and to avoid the environmental hazards associated with open burning of ligno-cellulosic materials. This work is concerned with the fast pyrolysis of rice straw which is generated seasonally in enormous quantities to produce biooil which could replace fuel oil #2. Experimental investigations on a pilot- scale in an entrained flow reactor demonstrated that the biooil produced is of acceptable characteristics and has a calorific value of about 29kJ/kg. Process design has been developed for a 200 ton/day commercial facility. Material and energy balance and basic engineering have been accomplished using ASPEN PLUS. Techno-economic investigations have been conducted and financial analysis has been performed using ASPEN ICARUS. Results indicated that for a Base Case, the Fixed Capital Cost is about US $ Million 7.6 and for a pessimistic selling price of US $ 0.13/kg, the Internal Return of Return (IRR), exceeds 43%. Sensitivity analysis indicates that even for increase of the Fixed Capital to about US $ Million 10.9 the IRR still exceeds 30%. Further work is needed for technological development and for ensuring processing over the year round using other ligno-cellulosic materials. (Shadia Tewfik, Mohamed Sorour, Abdelghani Abulnour, Hala Talaat, Nihal El Defrawy, Joseph Farah and Ismail Abdou. Bio-Oil From Rice Straw By Pyrolysis: Experimental And Techno-Economic Investigations. Journal of American Science 2011;7(2):59-67). (ISSN: 1545-1003). http://www.americanscience.org .