Biomass to liquid

Biomass to liquid (BTL) is a (multi step) process to produce liquid biofuels from biomass:

The process uses the whole plant to improve the CO2 balance and increase yield.
 * The Fischer Tropsch process is used to produce synfuels from gasified biomass. While biodiesel and bio-ethanol production so far only use parts of a plant, i.e. oil, sugar, starch or cellulose, BTL production uses the whole plant which is gasified by gasification. The result is that for BTL, less land area is required per unit of energy produced compared with biodiesel or bio-ethanol.
 * Flash Pyrolysis - producing bio-oil, char and gas at temperatures between 350-550°C and residence times < 1 second (also called anhydrous pyrolysis).
 * Catalytic depolymerization - using heat and catalysts to separate usable diesel fuel from hydrocarbon wastes.

In the news

 * Sept 18, 2006BBC:Biofuels look to the next generation

BtL-Kraftstoff Biomass to liquid