Fast Pyrolysis

Dynamotive’s Fast Pyrolysis process was developed by Dr. Desmond Radlein at Resource Transfroms International (RTI) of Waterloo, Ontario Canada. Dynamotive licensed the technology from RTI in 1996 and acquired all patents in February 2000. The technology is patent protected in the US under Patent No. 5,728,271 – “Energy Efficient Liquefaction of Biomaterial by Thermolysis”

Prepared feedstock (<10% moisture and 1-2 mm particle size) is fed into the bubbling fluid-bed reactor, which is heated to 450–500 °C in the absence of oxygen. This is lower than conventional pyrolysis systems and, therefore, has the benefit of higher overall energy conversion efficiency. The feedstock flashes and vaporizes like throwing droplets of water onto a hot frying pan. The resulting gases pass into a cyclone where solid particles, char, are extracted. The gases enter a quench tower where they are quickly cooled using BioOil already made in the process.

The BioOil condenses and falls into the product tank, while non-condensable gases are returned to the reactor to maintain process heating. The entire reaction from injection to quenching takes only two seconds.

One Hundred Percent of the feedstock is utilized in the process to produce BioOil and char. As the non-condensable gases are used as energy to run the process, nothing is wasted and no waste is produced. The uncondensed, flammable gases are re-circulated to fuel approximately 75% of the energy needed by the pyrolysis process.

Three products are produced: BioOil (60-75% by weight), char (15-20% wt.) and non-condensable gases (10-20% wt.). Yields vary depending on the feedstock composition. BioOil and char are commercial products and non-condensable gases are recycled and supply a major part of the energy required by the process. No waste is produced in the Dynamotive process.

A fourth product, BioOil Plus, can be produced by adding back the separated char into the BioOil, in a finely ground form of about 8 microns in size.

There are a multitude of  biomass sources that are compatible with the Fast Pyrolysis process, where over 100 different types of feedstock have been tested. These include hard and soft woods, and cellulosic biomass from other plants and agricultural residues. Dynamotive does not use any food crops as a feedstock eliminating the “Food or Fuel” dilemma inherent of many other biofuel operations such as ethanol.