Pyrolytic Conversion of Waste Bio-mass to Jet Fuel

Project goal: To design a process for converting guayule waste from biorubber production into bio-fuel in the form of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The guayule plant, which is used to make biorubber, doesn’t need much water to grow, which makes biorubber an increasingly popular alternative to petrochemical rubber. Much of the waste from biorubber extraction, called “bagasse,” is discarded or reprocessed into low-profit secondary products. This design involves extracting, upgrading and refining hydrocarbons from the bagasse into bio-fuels. Hydrocarbons are extracted by fast pyrolysis, which creates char (for fertilizer) and a bio-oil that is rich in hydrocarbons and unwanted oxygen. The oxygen is removed by hydrodeoxygenation using hydrogen gas, and distillation separates the upgraded oil by carbon-chain length to produce output streams of pure gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Steam reforming the waste products yields hydrogen gas that can be recycled into the hydrodeoxygenation process.