Conversion of Biomass to Green Gasoline: Feedstocks, Technological Advances and Commercial Scope

Abstract

Biomass-driven energy has attracted considerable attention in recent decades as an alternative to petroleum fuel, particularly diesel and gasoline. Green gasoline production through the hydroprocessing of biomass/plant materials is one innovative approach that has brought biorefinery facilities to the forefront. Several biomass-based feedstocks, including wood chips, bagasse, vegetable oils and blends of bio-oil and petroleum oil, are being investigated for green gasoline production. Of these, vegetable oils produce kerosene and diesel-range hydrocarbons (C15–C20) along with gasoline, and the others mainly form gasoline. The aforementioned feedstocks are processed using a variety of techniques, such as gasification, pyrolysis, aqueous-phase processing, hydroprocessing, catalytic cracking and co-processing, to produce green gasoline that matches petroleum gasoline. Despite the availability of several options, only a few techniques have reached the pilot/commercial-scale level, hence a thorough understanding of the technologies involved along with their economics is needed. Biomass-based green gasoline production routes still require development and research leading to optimized conditions for handling most categories of feedstock. Conversion, operational, social and policy and regulatory challenges still exist for biomass-to-green gasoline conversion techniques. Only a few successful commercializations of biomass-to-green gasoline conversion have been proposed so far.