BioOil is an alternative fuel made using Dynamotive’s pyrolysis process of biomass. It is a dark brown, free flowing liquid fuel with a smoky odour reminiscent of the plant from which it was derived.   BioOil is formed in a process called pyrolysis wherein plant material (biomass), such as sawdust or bagasse from sugar cane, is exposed to 400-500 degrees Celsius in an oxygen free environment.

BioOil contains up to 25% water. The water component in BioOil is not a separate phase and is important because it lowers the viscosity of the fuel.  BioOil is not a hydrocarbon-water mix like Orimulsion.  Another feature of BioOil is its propensity to change slowly over time. This is not to be considered an instability because it can take months.

BioOil is a fossil fuel substitute.  It pumps well, ignites, and burns readily when atomized.

BioOil has EcoLogo certification, having met stringent environmental criteria for industrial fuels as measured by Environment Canada’s Environmental Choice Program. The EcoLogo signifies that the manufacturing process of the product has been audited by a credible third party, and supported by empirical data on combustion tests conducted by both the company and authorized third parties.

Utility fuel, Power Generation

Dynamotive is working with manufacturers of gas turbines and stationary diesel engines to further test and develop BioOil fuels for heat and power generation. The first application was the installation of an OGT 2500 gas turbine with a combined cycle in Dynamotive’s first commercial BioOil plant in West Lorne, Ontario. Due to the high solid content in BioOil Plus, it cannot be used in a gas turbine and diesel engine.  Nevertheless, its higher heating value makes it a good fuel to be used in any heating application.

Industrial fuel, Cogeneration

Dynamotive’s successful burner tests have created opportunities for early commercial applications of BioOil as a clean burning fuel to replace natural gas, diesel and other liquid fossil fuels in the multi-billion dollar industrial boilers and kiln markets.

Lime kilns and lumber kilns

Field tests showed that BioOil and natural gas were equivalent in thermal performance and product quality.

Boilers

BioOil is an effective substitute for diesel, heavy fuel oil, light fuel oil, or natural gas in essentially any type of boiler where these fuels are fired or contemplated to be fired. These are relatively simple applications requiring basic modifications limited mainly to fuel nozzles and transport systems. Dynamotive already has demonstrated the successful burning of BioOil in a variety of boilers.   The most recent demonstration was in June 2005 and involved firing BioOil alone in a Dutch oven-type wood fired boiler at the West Lorne BioOil plant satisfying steam demand, production and pressure for over an hour as part of the demonstration phase of the West Lorne BioOil Cogeneration Project. The steam produced in the boilers was used to heat Erie Flooring’s lumber kilns.

Synthesis Gas Production/Gasification

Conventional liquid transportation fuels like diesel or gasoline are carbon based. But biomass is the only source of renewable carbon. While hydrogen is touted as the transportation fuel for the long term, it will require a whole new distribution infrastructure and new engines, e.g. fuel cells. Such changes will require decades to implement. It would be far cheaper in the short run to simply replace conventional fuels with equivalent fuels made from biomass derived carbon.

There is, at present, essentially only one known viable way to convert whole biomass to hydrocarbon fuels, namely by gasification and followed by Fischer-Tropsch conversion to liquids – the so-called BTL (biomass-to-liquids) process. Alternative biomass based fuels like ethanol or biodiesel, use only a fraction of the total plant biomass.

Economically practical plants for fuel synthesis will have to be of very large scale (several thousand tons per day of raw biomass required). This implies large costs associated with the transportation of large quantities of biomass; an intrinsically dilute resource. Dynamotive views BioOil as a key intermediate in the conversion of biomass to hydrogen or syngas since the volume reduction associated with the conversion of biomass to BioOil, BioOil Plus, and Char leads to enormous reduction in transportation and storage costs.

BioOil, BioOil Plus, and Char may be a suitable feedstock for the production of medium to high BTU synthesis gas via steam gasification. Successful lab-scale experiments have been performed at the University of Saskatchewan in cooperation with NRCan and CANMET labs. Additional successful gasification tests on BioOil/Char slurry (with 30% of Char content) have been performed by Dynamotive, Future Energy and FZK (research institute based in Germany) in September 2005.