Bio-carbon for metallurgical industry

Research overview >

In this area, we are

• developing novel pyrolysis technologies for biocarbon production and bio-oil valorization

• investigating the effects of raw materials and operation conditions on pyrolysis processes

• investigating biocarbon properties in detail for the application in metal, iron, and steel production processes

This work aims at developing a very detailed knolwedge required to design efficient pyrolysis processes for biocarbon production. The main target of biocarbon application is dominantly metallurgical industry such as iron, steel and metal (Si, Al, Mn) producers. 

Currently, most metallurgical processes consume large amount of fossil coal. One of the reasons why we use coal in metallurgical industry is "reduction", which is the process to remove oxygen atom from ore, MxOy (for example, Fe2O3, SiO2). In reality, most of such reactions happen via either H2 or CO as:

MxOy + yCO => xM + yCO2 or MxOy + yH2 => xM + yH2O.

One most recent development in metallurgical industry is the use of H2 from renewable electricity and replace the use of coal all together.

However, we still need certain amount of solid carbon sources in various metallurgical processes, which comes from carbon-neutral, fossil-free sources. To achieve that goal, we are developing a process to produce coal-like material, biocarbon, from sustainably-sourced biomass like by-product from forest industry.

Several PhD students have been carrying out laboratory scale experiments to assess various process alternatives, and participating in the experiments in a pilot and demonstration scale pyrolysis plant. 

We are thriving to find the optimal procedures and conditions for pyrolysis process to produce as much biocarbon as possible at various qualities, based on requirements in each utilization options (such as the chemical composition, reactivity, mechanical strength, density, and pore structure).

To source sustainably produced biomass,  raw materials tend to be a mixture of very different biomass types, often in raw quality (bark, forest residues, agricultural waste, etc.) to fulfill the amount necessary to satisfy the demand from the industry. This results in the heterogeneous feedstock with high concentration of critical elements (e.g. K and P) that are harmful for the industrial processes or product quality. That means we need to develop the pyrolysis process flexible enough to be adoptable to the change in feedstock quality. In addition, the development of effective pre- or post-treatment processes (such as leaching) will be necessary to remove critical elements.

Pyrolysis process itself has also many issues. One of the biggest issues is the tradeoff between product quality and yields. Since pyrolysis process produces three distinct products (carbon, oil/liquid, and gas), it is essential to valorize at least two, and preferably all three products.

Finally, we also need to overcome the fact that biocarbon properties are not directly compatible with industrial processes (e.g. metallurgical processes) for many reasons. This requires close collaboration with the specialists in metallurgical processes to optimize the whole valuechain.

Publications

• Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik, Nils Johnson, Norbert Kienzl, Christoph Strasser, Kentaro Umeki, Self-heating of biochar during postproduction storage by O2 chemisorption at low temperatures, energies 15 (2022) 380 [link to the article (open access)]. 

• Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik, Markus Bäckbo, Ryan Robinson, Kentaro Umeki, The significance of intraparticle and interparticle diffusion during CO2 gasification of biomass char in a packed bed, Fuel 310 (2022) 122302 [link to the article (open access)]. 

• Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik, Ricardo Vila, Norbert Kienzl, Liang Wang, Ali Hedayati, Markus Broström, Kerstin Ramser, Klas Engvall, Øyvind Skreiberg, Kentaro Umeki, Gasification reactivity of char from high-ash biomass, ACS Omega 6  (2021) 34115–34128. [link to the article (open access)]. 

• Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik, Liang Wang, Henrik Romar, Norbert Kienzl, Markus Broström, Kerstin Ramser, Øyvind Skreiberg, Kentaro Umeki, The effects of pyrolysis conditions and feedstocks on the properties and gasification reactivity of charcoal from woodchips, Energy & Fuels 34 (2020) 8353–8365. [link to the article (open access)] 

• Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik, Tobias Wretborn, Kentaro Umeki,Increasing efficiency of charcoal production with bio-oil recycling, Energy & Fuels 32 (2018) 9650-9658. [link to the article] 

• Najibeh Toloue Farrokh, Hannu Suopajärvi; Olli  Mattila; Kentaro Umeki; Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik; Henrik Romar; Petri Sulasalmi; Timo Fabritius, Slow pyrolysis of by-product lignin from wood-based ethanol production- A detailed analysis of the produced chars, Energy 164 (2018) 112-123. [link to the article] 

• Hannu Suopajärvi, Kentaro Umeki, Elsayed Mousa, Ali Hedayati, Henrik Romar, Antti Kemppainen, Chuan Wang, Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik, Sari Tuomikoski, Nicklas Norberg, Alf Andefors, Marcus Öhman, Ulla Lassi, Timo Fabritius, Use of biomass in integrated steelmaking - Status quo, future needs and comparison to other low-CO2 steel production technologies, Applied Energy 213 (2018) 384-407. [link to the article]