Siemens And USDA/ARS Partner to Cooperate on Pyrolysis Oil Research

24 November 2008

Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc. and the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) recently entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) that will improve the processes used to convert second generation, non-food-based, biofuel feedstocks, including perennial grasses, animal wastes and agricultural residues such as corn stover, into liquid bio-fuel intermediates, such as bio-oil (pyrolysis oil).

As part of the CRADA, Logical Innovations of Richmond, Va., (a solutions partner of Siemens) will work with researchers at USDA/ARS’s Eastern Regional Research Center (ERRC) in Wyndmoor, Pa., to improve on pyrolysis oil production via innovative control technologies.

They will install a distributed control system (DCS) based on Siemens SIMATIC PCS 7 Box technology on ERRC’s bench scale, fluidized bed pyrolysis system that heats the biomass in a reactor and converts it to liquid bio-oil, bio-char, and synthetic gas. The project will be commissioned in late 2008.

According to Dave Hankins, vice president of Siemens Chemical and Pharmaceutical Center of Competence, the PCS 7 Box technology provides a new level of flexibility to biofuels producers, as well as improves worker safety and equipment protection.