Perspectives for pyrolysis oil production and market in Scandinavia

Commercial power production from biomass is mainly based on various combustion technologies, new gasification technologies being on pilot and demonstration scale in Europe. From the market viewpoint, there will be an attractive and large market volume for small and medium-scale combined heat and power production (CHP) and for liquid bioenergy products in order to meet the Kyoto challenges in Europe by the year 2010. Biomass pyrolysis technology offers a novel method of converting solid biomass to a liquid product which can easily be transported, stored and utilised for electricity production by diesel engines and gas turbines. The overall efficiency in pyrolysis oil production can be in-creased from 65 to 90% (LHV) by integrating the bio-oil production to a con-ventional boiler plant, the system identified by VTT. A modern diesel power plant has an efficiency of 40 - 44% with a high power-to-heat ratio. Parallel to diesel power plants, the bio-oil can be used in existing heating oil boilers with minor burner modifications. The paper comprises an overview of market as-sessments in Scandinavia and a summary of pyrolysis oil production, stability and properties tests. The challenge of today is to understand and improve the properties of pyrolysis oils in order to reach a 12-month storage time without any changes in the homogeneity of pyrolysis oils. Reliable operation of oil-fired boilers and diesel power plants has to be demonstrated. As soon as these problems have been solved, biomass pyrolysis technologies will offer new attractive bioenergy market opportunities where a huge potential can be reached by con-verting existing petroleum-fired boilers, 0.1 - 10 MW to bio-oils and followed by combined heat and power production with high-efficiency diesel power plants in 0.1 - 10 MW scale. Pyrolysis technology is clearly the most attractive method for producing liquid biofuels, compared to bioalcohols and biodiesel. With the present price structure, pyrolysis oil can be competitive with light fuel oil in Finland, with light and heavy fuel oil in Sweden, and in CHP production in Denmark.