A Review on the Technical and Economic Prospects of Biofuel Production from Integrated Biomass Gasification and Fischer-Tropsch Processes

Abstract

Concerns in energy shortage and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions motivate the production of transportation fuel via a combined biomass gasification (BG) and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process. This review explains the basic background of the BG-FT process, including the gasification, gas cleaning, and FT processes. Numerous aspects of this process, such as the influence of the feedstock type and characteristics and the processing conditions, efficient process design, and FT-catalyst performance improvement, are reviewed based on laboratory-scale research reported in the literature. The tar removal process used to produce the synthesis gas satisfying the FT specification is also focused in this review. Moreover, the technical and economic prospects of the current BG-FT process to produce transportation fuels are reviewed and compared. Finally, trends in the future research of the BG-FT process are examined.