Estimation of the production cost of fast pyrolysis bio-oil

J.G. Rogers*, J.G. Brammer

Bioenergy Research Group, Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 21 April 2011
Received in revised form
11 July 2011
Accepted 21 October 2011
Available online 9 November 2011
Keywords:
Fast pyrolysis
Biomass
Techno-economic
Bio-oil
Bio-char
Energy crops
a b s t r a c t
A number of papers and reports covering the techno-economic analysis of bio-oil
production has been published. These have had different scopes, use different feed-
stocks and reected national cost structures. This paper reviews and compares their cost
estimates and the experimental results that underpin them. A comprehensive cost and
performance model was produced based on consensus data from the previous studies or
stated scenarios where data is not available that reected UK costs. The model takes
account sales of bio-char that is a co-product of pyrolysis and the electricity consumption
of the pyrolysis plant and biomass pre-processing plants. It was concluded that it should be
able to produce bio-oil in the UK from energy crops for a similar cost as distillate fuel oil. It
was also found that there was little difference in the processing cost for woodchips and
baled miscanthus.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The need to reduce our consumption of fossil fuel for both
environmental and resource scarcity reasons has led to
interest in the use of bio-oil produced by fast pyrolysis of
biomass for electricity generation, heating and chemical
production. Pyrolysis is the process of thermal degradation in
the absence of oxygen. If biomass undergoes rapid pyrolysis it
produces a mixed liquid product (bio-oil), non-condensable
gasses and a high carbon char. This process has been studied
for around 20 years and a few commercial plants have been
constructed. There are a number of different basic designs of
pyrolysis reactors and these have been reviewed elsewhere
[1,2]. It was decided to concentrate on bubbling uidised bed
reactors in this paper as they are realisable at a commercial
scale and have been widely studied.
Anumber of techno-economic studies of bio-oil production
and use has been published [3e7]. They use different meth-
odologies, plant sizes, extents of supply and feedstocks. This
paper collates data fromthese to develop a consensus techno-
economic model of a pyrolysis plants. This is a comprehensive
model which takes into account the value of the surplus char
by-product, the electrical consumption of the process and the
thermal requirement of the plant. The model also covers the
biomass handling and pre-processing plants. A later paper
will cover the use of bio-oil for electricity generation.
Although the processes considered are generic the costs
relate to a UK application. All costs in this study have been
converted to Pound Sterling at the exchange rates at the base
date of the publication they were taken from, and inated to
2009 values using the Chemical Engineering Plant Cost Index
or other appropriate indices. The exchange rates in 2009 were
1 $1.567 V1.123.
The UK does not have large areas of forest; consequently
this study has concentrated on the use of energy crops. Short
rotation coppiced willow and miscanthus are both grown on
a limited commercial scale in England, and both are consid-
ered here.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 44 (0)1225383057.
E-mail address: J.G.Rogers@bath.ac.uk (J.G. Rogers).
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ht t p: / / www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ bi ombi oe
b i oma s s a nd b i oe ne r g y 3 6 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 2 0 8 e2 1 7
0961-9534/$ e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.biombioe.2011.10.028
2. Background to fast pyrolysis bio-oil
This paper is only concerned with bio-oil produced by fast
pyrolysis of biomass. This process is optimised to produce the
maximum liquid yield. This is an emerging technology and
a range of different plant congurations has been tried at
laboratory and prototype scales [1,2]. Pyrolysis plants can be
split into 3 generic types: uidised beds, mechanically mixed,
and ablative. The majority of operating experience with
commercial scale pre-production plants is with uidised bed
reactors; consequently this paper will concentrate on these. A
basic owdiagramof such a plant is shown in Fig. 1. The heart
of the system is a bubbling uidised bed which is indirectly
heated to 500

C by exhaust gases from a combustor that
burns pyrolysis gas and some of the by-product char. Milli-
metre sized particles of dry biomass are fed into the uidised
bed and rapidly break down into the pyrolysis products. The
pyrolysis products (ne particles of solid char, vapours, aero-
sols, and gasses) leave the reactor with the circulating gas. The
char is removed by one or more cyclone separators. The
remaining pyrolysis products are then quenched with cool
bio-oil which coalesces the aerosol droplets and condenses
the vapours to form bio-oil. The non-condensable gases are
then blown back into the reactor as uidising gases for the
uidised bed. The gases leave the quench at around 50

C. It is
advisable to reheat them to near the bed temperature before
they enter the pyrolysis reactor to avoid local cooling of the
reactor and bed. This is done in the gas reheater, a non contact
heat exchanger which heat up the circulating pyrolysis gases
while cooling the exhaust gases from the pyrolysis reactors
heating jacket. The pyrolysis gases add to the mass of the
circulating gas and the surplus gas is bled off to be burnt in the
combustor. A biomass dryer is used to dry the biomass to an
acceptable level for pyrolysis (less than 10% moisture
measured on a wet basis); this is heated by the exhaust gas
from the gas reheater. The dryer also has a separate char
combustor for use if the biomass moisture level is above the
designed value.
It has been established [1,2] that the following conditions
are required to maximise the yield of good quality bio-oil:
Rapid heating of the biomass to 500

C
Vapour residence times of less than 2 s, with rapid subse-
quent cooling and condensation
Feed moisture content of the feed less than 10%
Particle size of less than 2 mm.
The pyrolysis process is endothermic, with the necessary
heat provided by combustion of the non-condensable gases
and some of the char. Any char that is surplus can be sold as
a high carbon fuel, upgraded to activated carbon for use in
waste water or gas purication application, used as a chemical
feedstock, or a soil improver and carbon store (bio-char).
Bio-oil is a complex mixture of oxygenated hydrocarbons,
some of which are water soluble, and has the following
characteristics [8]:
Immiscible with mineral oils
Lower heating value 13e18 MJ kg
1
Fig. 1 e Flow model of fast pyrolysis plant.
b i o ma s s a nd b i o e ne r gy 3 6 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 2 0 8 e2 1 7 209
pH 2e3.7
Kinematics viscosity 10e80 cSt @ 50

C
Ash content 0.01e0.02 wt% (dry)
Density 1110e1300 kg m
3
Moisture content 20e30% by weight
Tends to separate into light and heavy phases at higher
moisture contents.
Deteriorates if stored at elevated temperatures or exposed
to oxygen
These characteristics mean that it can not be used in
existing fuel oil applications without modifying the plant.
These modications usually involve a new fuel system for
the bio-oil and an auxiliary fuel system to allow the plant to
be brought up to working temperature using an auxiliary
fuel. Bio-oil has been used in furnaces and gas turbines [9e11]
and modied diesel engines using a pilot fuel to aid
ignition [12e14].
3. Performance model of fast pyrolysis plant
3.1. Yield model
Experimental mass yields from uidised bed test rigs oper-
ating with similar conditions to those identied earlier have
been published [8,15e19]. Data from these papers have been
plotted in Fig. 2 which shows organic liquid (i.e. the bio-oil
minus its water content) and char yields against biomass
ash content. The data cover a wide range of woody biomass
and grasses. The yields are the mass of each product
expressed as a percentage of the dry ash free biomass feed.
The organic liquid yield falls off and the char yield increases
with biomass ash content. This is a widely reported observa-
tion with the drop in organic yield being considered to be the
result of the alkaline metals in the ash acting as catalysts
which promote secondary reactions in the bio-oil [19,20].
In practice there will be some moisture in the feedstock.
This will reduce the mass of dry biomass in each tonne of feed
causing the yields to be lower than those shown in Fig. 2. Any
residual moisture in the biomass will be evaporated in the
pyrolysis process and condensed in the quench. Water vapour
is also one of the pyrolysis products; this reaction water also
ends up condensing with the bio-oil. This results in the bio-oil
yield being higher than the organic yield. The water lowers the
heating value and viscosity of the bio-oil. Bio-oil is a mixture
of compounds some of which are water soluble. If the mois-
ture content is too high the density of the water soluble
fraction reduces and the bio-oil can separate into a light
aqueous phase and a heavy water-insoluble organics phase. It
has been found that this can occur if the water content is
above 17e35% (depending on the biomass feedstock used) [8].
Ringer et al. [6] use Brigwater et al. [3] estimate for organic
yield of 60% with a reaction water yield of 11%. This organic
yield estimate was based on a 65% yield from clean debarked
wood with the presence of bark causing an estimated 5% drop
in yield. This is consistent with the yield estimate for low ash
biomass shown in Fig. 2. Other authors have quoted wet bio-
oil yields rather than organic liquid yields, these are re-
ported to be in the range of 60e79% [4,5,7]. Without details of
the ash content and feed moisture levels it is not possible to
compare these yields with the organic liquid yields in Fig. 2.
However if reasonable allowances are made for reaction water
and residual moisture it is likely that the organic yields will be
some 14e19% lower than the bio-oil yields, so bio-oil yields of
60e79% should correspond to organic yields of 41e65% which
is consistent with the range of yields shown in Fig. 2.
In addition to organic liquids and char the pyrolysis
process also produces a mixture of non-condensable gases
including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane,
hydrogen and traces of hydrocarbon gases. There is little
published data on how the yields of these individual gases
change with feedstock ash content. However the total gas
yield can be inferred from the organic and char yields.
Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) willow and spring harvested
miscanthus have ash contents in the range 1e3% [21]. A
commercial pyrolysis unit will purchase biomass from
a number of different sources so it is likely that its ash
contents will vary. It has been assumed that these variations
will average out over time so the average yield predicted for
2% ash biomass will be used in this paper.
3.2. Energy yield
As both bio-oil and biomass are fuels it is useful to know the
energy yields of the conversion process. The average dry gross
heating value of the organic liquid has been reported as
23 MJ kg
1
[8] and that of energy crops 19 MJ kg
1
[21]. Using
the mass yields in Fig. 2 this gives an energy yield of 51e77%
with a typical value of 64% for a 2% ash energy crop.
Some of the char and pyrolysis gases are burnt to provide
heat for the pyrolysis process with any excess being available
for sale. The elemental composition of biomass and the
organic portion of the bio-oil are relatively consistent so for
a given organic yield it is possible to calculate the total carbon,
oxygen and hydrogen content of the char and gas products.
This was done for 7 different gas mixes which represent the
range of gas compositions reported in the literature [2]. The
average value and standard deviation for the energy in the
Fig. 2 e Pyrolysis mass yields for different biomass
feedstock.
b i oma s s a nd b i oe ne r g y 3 6 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 2 0 8 e2 1 7 210
char and gases for SRC willow woodchips calculated on a dry
ash free basis are shown in Table 1. It was found that for
practical purposes the total heating value of the gases plus the
char was independent of the composition of the gases.
3.3. Surplus char yield
The thermal requirement of the pyrolysis plant will vary with
the plant design and the moisture content of the biomass. A
generic bubbling uidised bed pyrolysis unit like that shown
in Fig. 1 is likely to have the following heat loads:
The enthalpy of pyrolysis, this is the heat required to raise
the biomass to 500

C and decompose it. It has been
measured in a fast pyrolysis test rig and been found to vary
with biomass type and have an average value of 1.5 MJ kg
1
of dry feed [22].
The heat required to evaporate any residual moisture in the
biomass and raise it to 500

C. For an8%moisture feed this is
0.3 MJ kg
1
feed.
The heat required to raise the uidising gas up to 500

C
from the 50

C quench temperature. This is design depen-
dent but was estimated to be approximately 0.6 MJ kg
1
feed.
An allowance of 3% of heat input to the pyrolysis reactor to
cover radiation, convection and conduction losses from the
plant.
Heat required to dry the biomass to a level where it can be
used in pyrolysis. This will depend on the moisture level of
the stored biomass.
The heat for the pyrolysis process needs to be supplied at
a temperature above 500

C; consequently the exhaust
temperature of the gas heating the process must be at least
500

C. This means that when it is exhausted from the heating
jacket it has a signicant heat content that can supply some of
the other thermal loads. Any additional heat must be provided
by a separate combustor. The total heat requirement for the
pyrolysis plant and dryer has been calculated for different
biomass moisture levels andthis has beensubtracted fromthe
total secondary product energy yields from Table 1 to nd the
excess char that is available for sale. This is shown in Fig. 3.
As will be discussed further in Section 6.1 it is likely that
energy crops will have been stored for some time before use.
Provided good storage practices are followed the biomass will
loose some moisture with storage. The moisture level for
miscanthus and woodchip after storage should be around 15%
and 30% respectively. From Fig. 3 the excess char is around
2500 MJ odt
1
(oven dried tonne) for a 2% ash miscanthus with
a 15% moisture level and 2% ash woodchips with a 30%
moisture level. This is around 13% of the energy input of the
biomass feed.
4. Biomass handling and pre-treatment
plants
A signicant part of a commercial bio-oil production plant is
the biomass handling and pre-treatment plant. Energy crops
will be grown at a number of sites. After harvesting the crops
will be stored close to where they are grown and transported
Table 1 e Energy contents of secondary pyrolysis products.
LHV energy contents of secondary pyrolysis product MJ kg
1
of dry feed
Ash content Char Gases Char plus gases
Average Standard deviation Average Standard deviation Average Standard deviation
1% ash 4.70 0.12 0.77 0.14 5.47 0.02
2% ash 5.91 0.14 0.94 0.16 6.85 0.03
3% ash 7.11 0.16 1.12 0.88 8.22 0.03
Fig. 3 e Excess char production.
b i o ma s s a nd b i o e ne r gy 3 6 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 2 0 8 e2 1 7 211
to the plant when required. The basic requirements of the
handling and pre-treatment plants are:
1. To reduce the biomass to small particles suitable for
pyrolysis,
2. To dry the biomass to less than 10% moisture,
3. To provide an adequate buffer store for the pyrolysis plant
to cover, periods of non operation of the size reduction
equipment,
4. To provide sufcient storage for periods betweendeliveries,
5. To unload trucks in an acceptable time (assumed to be
around 20 min total turn round time on site).
Requirements 1 and 2 are inherent to the pyrolysis process
where as 3 and 4 are likely to be the result of operating
restrictions imposed by the planning authorities. Require-
ment 5 is an assumed commercial constraint. It has been
assumed that noise limitations will restrict the operations of
hammer mills or tub grinders to 12 h a day and road deliveries
to 12 h a day 5 days a week. Four days onsite storage has been
assumed so that deliveries are not required on public
holidays.
There is always a trade-off between capital intensive
automated systems and labour intensive manual systems for
handling bulk materials. This means that the reported capital
cost for different plants can vary for reasons other than plant
size. To overcome this problem sets of generic biomass
handing plants were assumed for woodchip and miscanthus
and the cost for each major component taken from the liter-
ature rather than using the reported cost of complete systems.
4.1. Woodchip handling plant
Seasoned woodchip can by dried using a conventional drum
dryer [23]. The dried woodchips are then reduced to ne
particles of 1e2 mm by hammer mills. Belt conveyors can be
used to covey the dried woodchips to the feed hopper for the
hammer mills. Enclosed screwconveyors are probably needed
to avoid a dust hazard when transporting the ne particles
from the hammer mills. Simple systems based on front end
loaders and hoppers were found to be cost effective for
handling the woodchips for plants with up to 100 odt d
1
capacity. For larger plants a semi-automated system becomes
cost effective. In this system the delivery trucks unload
directly into a ground hopper which has a screw conveyor in
its base. The screw conveyor discharges on to belt conveyors
which either carry the woodchips directly to the dryer feed
silo or if the dryer feed silo is full to a boom stacker which
builds a stockpile. Should the level in the dryer feed silo get too
low it is lled from the stockpile using a front end loader
though a separate hopper and conveyor. This arrangement
minimises the amount of double handling of the woodchips.
It was decided to use self unloading trucks rather than
whole truck tippers as this is the lower cost option for
a dedicated eet of trucks that make at least two deliveries of
biomass per day.
It is possible to fully automate the stocking out and reclaim
operation, but this only become economic when the reclaim
rate exceeds the handling rate achievable with a front end
loader (around 100 t h
1
).
One or more weighbridges are needed to weigh the trucks
as they enter and leave the site.
4.2. Bale handling plant
The DEFRA best practice guide for miscanthus [26] suggests
that miscanthus should be stored in large compressed bales.
In plants which need less than 12 deliveries a day these can
normally be handled using forklift trucks, but automatic
cranes are needed to achieve higher delivery rates. These
handle one layer of bales at a time and have been used in
a number of strawred power stations. The miscanthus needs
to be ground to small particles before being fed into the
pyrolysis reactor; this can be done by a tub grinder [33].
Although stored miscanthus has a moisture content of around
15%it will need further drying to make it suitable for pyrolysis.
It is not practical to do this when the crop is in bales so it must
be done once the miscanthus has been ground. It has been
assumed that band dryers are used for this function as they
are more suitable for handling light particles than the more
common rotary drum dryers [23].
Automatic cranes weigh the bales as they unload them so
a weighbridge is only needed for the smaller systems.
5. Electricity consumption
It has beenreported that bubbling uidised bed pyrolysis units
would consume between 179 and 278 kWh of electricity for
each odt of biomass processed [3,5,6] depending on plant size.
An allowance of 200 kWhodt
1
has been used in this paper.
The biomass handling and pre-processing plant will also
consume electricity. Although some electricity is used by the
conveying plant the bulk of the electricity is used by the mills
and drying plant. These loads are relatively independent of
plant size and have been estimated to be 40 kWhodt
1
using
data from [23,32,34]. This would give a total electrical
consumption of 240 kWhodt
1
.
Using the yield data in Section 3.2 this gives a typical
electricity requirement of 20 kWhGJ
1
of bio-oil (or 72 MJ of
electricity per GJ of bio-oil). If some of the bio-oil were used in
a diesel engine with an efciency of 40% to generate the
plants electricity requirement, it would use around 18%of the
total bio-oil production to power the plant. This would reduce
the yield of marketable bio-oil to 52% of the biomass energy
input.
6. Cost of production of bio-oil
6.1. Biomass cost
A detailed study of the production cost experienced by energy
crop growers in the UK was undertaken in 2005 for DEFRA
(Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs) [24].
This has been used with an estimation of commercial yields
[25,26] from mature plantations to calculate the cost of
biomass production. As discussed in Section 3.2 higher
organic yields can be achieved by using biomass with lower
alkali metal content. The alkali metal content is at its lowest
b i oma s s a nd b i oe ne r g y 3 6 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 2 0 8 e2 1 7 212
when the plant is dormant. This mean that willow is har-
vested in the winter and miscanthus in the early spring before
there is any new growth. As the crops are harvested once
a year some of the crop will need to be stored for up to a year.
Some dry matter is lost during storage. The yields have been
reduced to allow for 6 months storage losses [27,28]. The
following costs have been used in this paper:
Short rotation coppiced willow yielding 9.4 odt ha
1
(oven
dry tonne per hectare), 56 odt
1
or 2.96 GJ
1
Spring harvested miscanthus yielding 13.5 odt ha
1
,
44 odt
1
or 2.30 GJ
1
The costs from the DEFRA study have been indexed
with the other industrial crops index from the DEFRA web
site [29] and include subsides made under the EU single
farm payment scheme but exclude specic energy crop
subsidies.
The transport costs for different sized plants have been
investigated [30] and are shown in Table 2. These transport
costs are based on expected commercial crop yields with 6%of
land around the plant used to grow the feedstock.
6.2. Capital cost
The capital cost of all plant is expressed as the Total Plant Cost
(TPC); that is all the costs that an owner would pay to have the
plant designed, built and commissioned excluding site
purchase, ground clearance, site access and consenting costs.
These exclusions are considered to be functions of the specic
site rather than the technology employed.
6.2.1. Pyrolysis plant
As this is a new technology there are not a lot of cost data
available. However some cost estimates are available from
surveys of potential suppliers of equipment [31] these were
used to produce a sizing curve for pyrolysis plants. This has
been updated by a number of researchers at Aston University
and was used by Bridgwater et al. [3]. It was decided to bench
mark this curve with data from Farag et al. [5] whos report
was written in collaboration with an equipment supplier
(Dymamotive) and Peacock Bridgwater and Brammer [4] who
used component data to calculate the plant costs (which was
then commented on by an equipment supplier). The Farag
et al. report did not give a separate estimate for the woodchip
handling and pre-processing plants so estimate for these
plants were takenfromthe other studied and used to calculate
the TPC for the pyrolysis plant. The sizing equation covers
plants up to 100 odt d
1
but it was decided to use it for plants
up to 120 odt d
1
. All the cost estimates were updated to 2009
prices and the results plotted in Fig. 4. Given the diverse
nature of the sources the estimates are in reasonable agree-
ment with each other.
The cost from Ringer et al. [6] has not been included in this
comparison as the plant they consider is twice the size of any
included in the other studies.
These costs only relate to the pyrolysis plant and cover the
reactor and the bio-oil collection system. The cost of the
biomass pre-process plant is also needed.
6.2.2. Biomass pre-processing plant
Costs from studies on straw co-ring schemes and straw-to-
ethanol plants [32e34] were used as the basis for TPC esti-
mates for suitably sized miscanthus handling plants.
Costs for the woodchip plants were calculated from
installed equipment costs given in a survey of US timber red
power stations [35].
There are limits to the size of tub grinders, hammer mills
and dryers. It was found that for both miscanthus and
woodchip simple plant streams of one grinder and one dryer
per pyrolysis reactor could be purchased for throughputs of up
to 200 odt d
1
. Larger plants would need to have a number of
identical parallel plant streams. The cost estimates for various
plant sizes are shown in Fig. 5.
6.3. Labour cost
There are no established models for stafng levels on pyrol-
ysis plants so the following scenario was assumed:
All sizes of pyrolysis plant would require a control room
operator and one plant attendant while they were running.
Small plants that used forklift trucks or front end loaders for
biomass handling would require two materials handling
plant operators for shifts when the plant is receiving
deliveries.
Larger plants with automated materials handling plants will
require one materials operator for shifts when the plant is
receiving deliveries.
There would be a day team to cover routine maintenance
and commercial maters. The team would have 3 members
for the small plant increasing to 6 on the larger plants.
A staff member works 206, 8 h shifts a year once allowances
are made for holidays, training and sickness.
As this is a rough scenario it was decided to cost all staff at
the average rate for male skilled workers [36], this has been
increased by 48% to cover employers national insurance cost,
employers pensioncontributions, anti-social hours payments,
training and administrationcharges. This gives anannual cost
of 38k per employee.
6.4. Cost of electricity
A pyrolysis plant operator could generate his own power or
buy it from the grid, but for bio-oil to be considered as
a renewable fuel the electricity needed to produce it should
come from renewable sources. In the UK renewable
Table 2 e Biomass transport costs.
Baled miscanthus Woodchips
Annual demand
kodt y
1
Transport
cost GJ
1
Annual demand
kodt y
1
Transport
cost GJ
1
800 0.48 689 0.50
209 0.31 212 0.33
57 0.23 76 0.25
11 0.18 27 0.20
b i o ma s s a nd b i o e ne r gy 3 6 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 2 0 8 e2 1 7 213
generation is supported by the Renewable Obligation Certi-
cate (ROC) scheme. Under the scheme each renewable
generator receives a number of ROCs for the amount of elec-
tricity they produce, these are then sold to the electricity
retailers who are obliged to purchase a number of ROCs that
equal a xed percentage of their electricity sales. The average
auction price of a ROC over the period 2007e2009 was
50 MWh
1
[38] and the average quarterly retail price for the
same period was 65 MWh
1
[37]. So a renewable energy
generator receives the market price of the electricity plus the
sales price of the ROCs this gives an average income of
115 MWh
1
. This value has been used as the cost of elec-
tricity in this report.
6.5. Other operating costs
Again there is little established practice to quantify these so
an allowance of 4% TPC per year has been made to cover
repair, maintenance, insurance and business costs. This is
consistent with other studies.
7. Selling price of bio-oil
The minimum selling price required to cover cost (the Break
Even Selling Price) for bio-oil has been calculated using the
following base case assumptions:
The capital cost has been calculated from date given in
Section 6.2. The 400 and 800 odt d
1
plant consists of
multiples of 200 odt d
1
plants on the same site. A 10% cost
saving has been assumed for the second and subsequent
streams to take account savings in engineering costs and
shared services.
The capital cost is assumed to be funded by a 20 year
annuity charge at 5%real interest rate a year (i.e. the interest
after an allowance has been made for the impact of
ination).
The plant uses miscanthus or SRC willow as a feedstock
with a 2% ash content.
The surplus char is sold for the same price as is paid for the
biomass.
The plant operates at an annual capacity factor of 85%
(availability 90%, average load factor 95%).
The break even selling price (BESP) for the base case is not
a realistic selling price. To be viable the selling price must
cover credible risks and provide a prot to the operators. The
operators risk is any increase in cost that they are unlikely to
be able to pass on to their customer. The nature of the risks
and likelihood of them occurring need to be known to calcu-
late the annual risk that the operator is carrying. The data to
carry out this calculation is not readily available for this
Fig. 4 e TPC for pyrolysis plants from three sources.
Fig. 5 e TPC for biomass handling and pre-processing plant.
b i oma s s a nd b i oe ne r g y 3 6 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 2 0 8 e2 1 7 214
technology; as an alternative the BESP was calculated for the
following risk events happening in isolation:
1. Biomass price increased by 50% (the difference between
projected yields and low recorded yields).
2. Staff cost increased by 20%.
3. Other operating cost increased 5%.
4. Electricity cost increased by 20%.
5. Bio-oil yield reduced to 54% (equivalent to using 3% ash
biomass rather than 2%).
6. Capacity factor reduced to 75%.
7. Real interest rate increased to 10%.
8. TPC increased by 40%.
9. TPCincreasedby 40%and the interest rate increasedto 10%.
These were calculated for plants of 50e800 odt d
1
capacity. It was found that the risk event that produced the
highest cost varied with plant size. The risk event that had the
highest BESP for a particular size of plant was considered to be
the minimumviable price for that plant. This has been plotted
along with the base case for SRC willow and miscanthus in
Figs. 6 and 7. It would appear that for plants over 200 odt
1
selling bio-oil at the viable price the operator could survive
one of the worst case risks without losing money and make up
to 20% prot on turnover.
Bio-oil has been considered to be a replacement for distil-
late fuel oil. However distillate fuels are required to have
minimal ash content. Pyrolysis takes place at a temperature
that is below the melting point of biomass ash so all the ash
ends up in the char. If the char separation is carried out by
cyclones it is likely that around 10%of the char could end up in
the bio-oil. In this case bio-oil from a 2% ash biomass could
have up to 0.4% ash in it. Consequently it may be more
appropriate to consider bio-oil as a replacement for residual
fuel oils which have higher ash contents. The 3 year average
market price [37] of both distillate and residual fuel oils has
been plotted in Figs. 6 and 7 so that they can be compare with
the viable bio-oil price.
The fraction of the annual costs that is attributed to each
major cost is shown in Fig. 8.
8. Discussion
It would appear that it should be possible to produce bio-oil for
a similar price to mineral oils. Currently there is very little oil
red power generation in the UK but as pyrolysis based
systems attract double ROC payments it is likely that
combustion of bio-oil would be economically viable.
Fig. 7 shows a considerable cost benet in building larger
plants. This comes from the advantages of scale in reducing
capital costs and improved staff utilisation. Capacities above
200 odt d
1
are achieved by adding additional 200 odt d
1
steams. There are some reductions in costs for the later
Fig. 6 e Break Even Selling Price of bio-oil from SRC willow.
Fig. 7 e Break Even Selling Price of bio-oil from miscanthus.
b i o ma s s a nd b i o e ne r gy 3 6 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 2 0 8 e2 1 7 215
streams but it is unlikely that there would be any signicant
cost reduction from building plants above 800 odt d
1
.
Fig. 8 shows the diminishing signicance of nance and
stafng cost with plant size. For the 800 odt d
1
plant 75% of
the cost is for biomass and electricity. The pyrolysis plant
owner may have limited control over these.
In this analysis char has been considered to fetch the same
price as biomass. There is interest in exploiting bio-chars and
it is likely that this price assumption is low. However char can
be made by relatively low cost slow pyrolysis plants with bio-
char yields of 50%. If it is assumed that such plants have much
lower capital and operating costs (they would not need
grinders or dryers) they could produce char for around
5e7 GJ
1
. If this higher price is achieved the BESP for the
miscanthus base case for 800 odt d
1
plant becomes 6.8 GJ
1
.
Similarly if there is no market for char the BESP the mis-
canthus base case for 800 odt d
1
plant would be 8.3 GJ
1
.
From Figs. 6 and 7 it would appear that it would be cheaper
to use miscanthus than willow. From analysis of the cost data
in Ref. [24] and the pre-processing and handling plant costs it
is clear that this advantage is due to the higher crop yields that
should be achieved with miscanthus rather than differences
in processing costs.
9. Conclusion
It has been show that it is possible to produce a comprehen-
sive cost model using published data that takes into account
the production cost of bio-oil, sales of surplus char and the
internal electrical loads. The electricity consumption of
pyrolysis plants is signicant and needs to be considered
when examining costs, energy balances and emissions. The
source of the electricity will impact on the costs and overall
CO
2
emissions of the plant. Char sales could reduce the
productioncost of bio-oil by up to 18%but this is dependent on
a market for char developing.
This model is based on the premise that the bio-oil and bio-
char yields canbe predictedfromthe biomass ashcontent. The
relative proportionof the constituent gases inthe pyrolysis gas
may not be predicted from the biomass ash content; however
the total heating value of the char and gas by-products can be
predicted fromthe model. As all the pyrolysis gas is consumed
by the plant the only exportable by-product is the char. It is
recognised that the ash content of the biomass used by the
plant will vary but it has been assumed that the production
plant will have sufcient storage capacity to smooth out the
variations in bio-oil and bio-char production.
It was found that pyrolysis plant that use miscanthus are of
a similar capital cost to those that use willow woodchips and
have similar conversion efciencies so the lowest BESP will be
achieved by using the lowest cost biomass available to the
plant. Unfortunately it is not possible to use the same pre-
processing plant for miscanthus and woodchips so the fuel
must be decided at the design stage.
The model predicts that if relatively large plants are used it
should be economically viable to produce bio-oil if it sells at
a price below that of distillate fuel oil but above that for
residual fuel oil. Much of the cost will be made up of the
purchase of biomass and electricity. This does increase the
risk that the operator is carrying unless they are biomass
producers or electricity generators. This paper has concen-
trated on the use of energy crops grown in the UK it is likely
that the costs will be lower in countries where there are low
cost sources of biomass.
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by EPSRC as part of the SUPERGEN
Biomass and Bioenergy programme. The authors would like to
thank the members of the Biomass and Bioenergy consortium
for their help and advice through this research.
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