The article seemed oddly written. At least to me. That doesn't reflect on the process.

It would certainly be good to reduce biomass volume and weight right where it is grown.

I wonder about the emissions from the reactor.

Maybe they would pyrolyze the grass and ship the oil for FT processing. It would depend on the cost of one over the other. They have reduced the weight of the grass by making the oil, that saves shipping weight and bulk.

Who knows, with enough farms a pipeline for the oil may be possible. The good thing is that they can use the char to run the process...very good.

I would have liked more details on how close to biodiesel the output is.
Not related to biodiesel at all. Trust me, biodiesel is going nowhere, fast. You can get an idea of bio-oil properties here.

Somebody call the White House and inform un-Curious George that Cellulosic Ethanol has been canned.

Converting solid biomass to liquid biocrude close to where it is harvested makes sense from a logistics point of view. Seems wasteful to let all that heat just go to waste, though. For example, it could be used to dry a secondary wet biomass stream that feeds a separate BTL process.

The optimum of the sum should be greater then the sum of the optima. This matters because satisfying energy demand by capturing solar energy in real time (as it were) is much more difficult than doing so using fossil fuels that had millions of years to accumulate.

I agree, I don't know how FT got into the discussion. Bio oil can be refined like petro oil as far as I know. There might even be a lot less impurities to deal with. One way or the other, it seems like we can use switchgrass and other biomass for fuel. I have been reading how much VC money is flowing into renewable energy lately. It sounds like some of them believe that it may be possible to make a profit.

Oh yeah, I could see that. Farms could have acres planted in switchgrass to preserve the soil and rotate with food crops. The roots of the grass go very deep and prevent soil erosion. This would be another source of revenue to the farmer and might lighten up on farm subsidies a bit.

Fresh bio-oil can be used directly as a substitute for fuel oil in heating or for firing steam turbines. It can't be kept around very long, however. It's a witches brew of unstable hydrocarbons, which will slowly polymerize to form nasty tars and gums.

There's a decent case for converting bio-oil to synthesis gas for making any of the zillion things that can be made from synthesis gas. FT synthesis to produce diesel fuel is one possibility, but not always the best. Its energy efficiency is about 65%. The waste heat is evolved at temperatures of 250 - 350 C, which is too low for efficient power generation, but good for many other applications.

As long as FT synthesis is matched with one or more other application that can use its waste heat, its relatively low energy efficiency doesn't matter. All of the thermal energy in the feedstock will be used, one way or another, and the linear alkanes that FT synthesis produces make beautiful clean-burning fuels. They can be stored forever without degrading, making them ideal for emergency backup generators.

As for storable fuels, charcoal lasts thousands of years and does not evaporate.  Direct-carbon fuel cells are up to 80% efficient, and the charcoal can be produced by slightly different processing of biomass.  Torrefaction yields more energy than bio-oil (~90% vs. ~70%) and produces a more stable product too.

The ICE works fine and last a long time. Engineers and policy makers do not have the luxury of designing based on pixie dust. What works trumps efficiency.

Since the US and the EU are rich, we have the luxury of investigating pixie dust as energy source. With computer management systems, it may be much more practical to pre-process biomass at the farm to reduce energy used for transportation of biomass.

Direct Carbon fuel cells would be great, if we ever get them cheap enough and durable enough (especially considering contamination from almost all fuels). But we’re not near there yet – unless you have insider info. most of us aren’t aware of.

Bio-oil has a lot of fuel potential as it is. It does decompose over a couple of years, but add 10% ethanol and it lasts much longer.

Bio-oil can be used in slow diesels, but not directly in Otto cycle engines (i.e., with spark plugs). But during WW2, European cars without gasoline used portable charcoal gasifiers to generate CO as fuel. Bio-oil could be similarly partially burned into CO but that wouldn’t take advantage of another bio-oil property: High temperatures without extra oxygen quickly decomposes bio-oil into even lighter molecules containing C, H, and some O. So I expect that straightforward bio-oil fuel processing before cylinder injection would allow bio-oil to fuel Otto engines.

And so bio-oil could fuel either diesels or Otto engines of range-extending onboard generators (considering advanced lithium ion batteries could provide short-range energy and high power for acceleration and hill-climbing).

In summary, it’s conceivable that we could replace ALL petroleum-based vehicle fuels by using plug-in series-hybrid electric drives powered by our most advanced lithium-ion batteries along with range-extending gensets fuelled with bio-oil.

And for real 4-wheel-drive simplicity, consider using the range-extending engine to drive only the front wheels, with the battery-powered motor driving the back wheels. By doing so, only the road would be needed to link the engine to the electrical motor at the back (so the engine would not need a separate generator but instead would need a transmission to the front wheels).

Jay are you suggesting fuel cells are not practical for transportation? You are right and I will add that they are not very practical way to make electricity either. It is really hard to beat a steam turbine for practicality. It takes a large building to hold a 1600 MWe steam turbine generator, it will take a small state to hold the same amount of fuel cells. Or those pesky trad

Let me point out that there are many good ways of doing things. Motors works fine and last a long time. Steam turbines work fine and last a long time. The ICE works fine and last a long time. I can provide a long list of things that have been tried and do not work. Electric motors without electricity.

Okay now, who wants to plug a car into an extension cord and buy expensive dirty batteries to store electricity made from coal. Duh, no one!!! Who want to keep doing things the same way while farmers get rich instead of Arabs?

Does anyone know what you call bio-oil when it skilled on the ground?

The claimed scale of a 3 GW DCFC powerplant is the size of a 2-story office building".

Bio-oil consists largely of organic acids, such as acetic acid.  You spill it on the ground, and bacteria eat it.