New Technology for Obtaining Biofuel from Wood and Plant-Based Raw Material

Yury Bodrov , Russia

The proposed innovation is interesting for me because there are enormous source of raw material and ready market with great demand. Thus there are a good economical viability and possibility to build factories with large manufacturing capacity up to one million tones of biofuel per year.

I had made my graduate studies in organic chemistry in Saint-Petersburg Institute of Technology (Russia) in 1992. I have worked many years as researcher in governmental research center as developer of different chemical technologies. Then I have worked for six years as R&D consultant for Lesokhimik company, Saint-Petersburg. Today I develop my own projects in three more progressive fields: biotechnology, nanotechnology and biofuel.

Biofuel gains wide attention last two decades. Today biofuel plays important role in world economics and it will attract more and more interest. In country with developed timber industry like Canada, Russia, Sweden, or Finland wood and particularly wood wastes could to become attractive raw material for manufacturing of biofuel.

However current wood-made biofuel products: wood brick fuel and pellets have many disadvantages. Main one is low calorific value if to compare with black fuel which is made from petroleum. The other one is difficult using because of solid aggregative state.

The solution could be found by obtaining wood-based liquid biofuel. It has calorific value similar to black fuel oil and it can be used as main fuel in heat power plants. Wood liquefaction is already known process but existing technologies have some key disadvantages which brake its wide application. The existing technologies need many external resources and raw materials: organic solvents, electricity, industrial gases etc.

My idea consists in creation of new technology which would be “self-sufficient”. It will be completely new, “green” and prospective method to obtain biofuel from wood. The desired fuel plant will “swallow up” wood (wood wastes are preferable) and to give out ready liquid wood-based biofuel. The desired process should not to consume external power (e.g. electricity) or raw material (e.g. hydrogen gas).

The main considering raw material for the new technology is wood, however I plan to consider other plant derived materials which exist in huge quantities in the world and they are in field of interest also. Today it has found theoretical basis for creation of the new technology and me and my partners are going to start the lab stage soon. After the lab stage and patenting we plan commercialization of this new technology.

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