Lecture Description
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)
Course Index
- Early Bioenergy History
- Recent Bioenergy History
- Feedstocks Fossil Fuels
- Feedstocks Forest & Field Biomass Sources
- Feedstocks Aquatic Biomass & Urban Wastes
- Carbon Feedstock Comparisons
- Biomass Chemistry
- Fuel Chemistry
- Bioenergy Industry Overview
- Mechanical Conversions Oil Extraction & Size Reduction
- Mechanical Conversions Drying & Densification
- Combustion & Gasification
- Pyrolysis & Liquefaction
- Biomass to Parts
- Biomass Parts to Products
- Oil Conversions & Syngas Conversions
- Fermentations
- Photosynthetic Organisms and Animals
- Integrated Biorefineries
- Biorefining in North America
- USA Fuel Paradigm
- Renewable Energy and Fuel Policy
- Basic Energy Economics
- Process Analysis with LCA and TEA
- Emissions and Sustainability Considerations
Course Description
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.