Thermal conversion does not make things, it really just breaks them down. This means if you want to make large sized chemicals or chemicals that don’t look like small pieces of lignin and cellulose, thermal conversion cannot be the only conversion utilized or shouldn’t be the conversion of choice. This is especially relevant with pyrolysis as the products look very much like small pieces of cellulose and lignin.

Pyrolysis Oil is often called bio-oil. This is a silly naming convention because pyrolysis oils look nothing like oils. They have an entirely different set of organic chemistries almost entirely the opposite of what oils like petroleum and vegetable oil have. The name bio-oil was coined because it was a thick, dark product that looked like oil, not because it actually was oil. Based on that kind of logic molasses and liquid chocolate should also be call oils. At this point we are stuck with the misleading name bio-oil, but it is important to remember it is only called oil because of how it looks sometimes, not because it has anything in common with real oils.

If you are interested in receiving the written slide notes for each lecture, please contact the USDA supported Advanced Hardwood Biofuels Northwest project at; [email protected]

An associated online E-campus course is also offered at Oregon State University; ecampus.oregonstate.edu/soc/ecatalog/ecoursedetail.htm?subject=BRR&coursenumber=350&termcode=all

Advanced Hardwood Biofuels Northwest is supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Competitive Grant no. 2011-68005-30407 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)

1. Early Bioenergy History
2. Recent Bioenergy History
3. Feedstocks Fossil Fuels
4. Feedstocks Forest & Field Biomass Sources
5. Feedstocks Aquatic Biomass & Urban Wastes
6. Carbon Feedstock Comparisons
7. Biomass Chemistry
8. Fuel Chemistry
9. Bioenergy Industry Overview
10. Mechanical Conversions Oil Extraction & Size Reduction
11. Mechanical Conversions Drying & Densification
12. Combustion & Gasification
13. Pyrolysis & Liquefaction
14. Biomass to Parts
15. Biomass Parts to Products
16. Oil Conversions & Syngas Conversions
17. Fermentations
18. Photosynthetic Organisms and Animals
19. Integrated Biorefineries
20. Biorefining in North America
21. USA Fuel Paradigm
22. Renewable Energy and Fuel Policy
23. Basic Energy Economics
24. Process Analysis with LCA and TEA
25. Emissions and Sustainability Considerations

This series contains 25 short lectures, each between 10 and 15 minutes long. The content in these lectures is flexible and can be used in a variety of ways to communicate bioenergy concepts to audiences from diverse backgrounds. An important objective of this series is to present facts about bioenergy and biofuels, and use them to explore misconceptions.