Biofuels and biochemicals production from forest biomass in Western Canada Susanjib Sarkar, Amit Kumar * , Arifa Sultana Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, 4-9 Mechanical Engineering Building, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2G8 article info Article history: Received 13 January 2011 Received in revised form 10 July 2011 Accepted 13 July 2011 Available online 23 August 2011 Keywords: Forest biomass Methanol Dimethyl ether Fischer-Tropsch Ammonia Techno-economic assessment abstract Biomass can be used for the production of fuels, and chemicals with reduced life cycle (greenhouse gas) emissions. Currently, these fuels and chemicals are produced mainly from natural gas and other fossil fuels. In Western Canada, forest residue biomass is gasified for the production of syngas which is further synthesized to produce different fuels and chemicals. Two types of gasifiers: the atmospheric pressure gasifier (commercially known as SilvaGas) and the pressurized gasifier (commercially known as RENUGAS) are considered for syngas production. The production costs of methanol, (dimethyl ether), (Fischer-Tropsch) fuels, and ammonia are $0.29/kg, $0.47/kg, $0.97/kg, and $2.09/kg, respectively, for a SilvaGas-based gasification plant with a capacity of 2000 dry tonnes/day. The cost of producing methanol, DME, F-T fuels, and ammonia in a RENUGAS-based plant are $0.45/kg, $0.69/kg, $1.53/kg, and $2.72/kg, respectively, for a plant capacity of 2000 dry tonnes/day. The minimum cost of producing methanol, DME, F-T fuels, and ammonia are $0.28/kg, $0.44/kg, $0.94/kg, and $2.06/kg at plant capacities of 3000, 3500, 4000, and 3000 dry tonnes/day, respectively, using the SilvaGas-based gasification process. Biomass-based fuels and chemicals are expensive compared to fuels and chemicals derived from fossil fuels, and carbon credits can help them become competitive. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Western Canada is one of the largest hydrocarbon bases in North America. Most commercially produced liquid fuels and chemicals are based on fossil fuels (e.g., natural gas, coal). Biomass is one of the main renewable energy sources that can be used to produce solid fuels (e.g., charcoal, pellets), liquid fuels (e.g., methanol, F-T diesel), gaseous fuels and chemicals (DME, H 2 ) [1e6]. The green- house gas (GHG) footprints of these fuels and chemicals are much lower than those of fossil fuels because biomass is nearly carbon neutral. Currently, in Western Canada forest residue is mostly collected along the roadsides and burnt to prevent forest fires [7]. Utilization of forest residue for energy production could replace the utilization of fossil fuel. Currently, around the world biomass feedstocks are used mainly as fuel for generating power and heat; mostly using small scale production plants (20e80 MW) [8]. This study is based on the utilization of forest biomass to produce fuels and chemicals, specifically to produce syngas through gasification. Biomass gasifi- cation is a thermo-chemical conversion of biomass to a mixture of combustible gases (syngas) by heating biomass feedstocks in the presence of insufficient oxygen and/or steam. Syngas is a blend of H 2 and CO gases. There are some small scale biomass gasification plants which produce syngas for heat and power generation [9,10]. On the other hand, the syngas produced by natural gas/coal-based plants is commercially used for producing liquid fuel [5,11e 13]. There is little data available on the techno-economic assessment of using forest residue for the production of fuels and chemicals. This study uses data from the Western Canada to develop techno-economic models. It integrates different technologies for producing fuels and chem- icals from forest biomass and compares the overall cost of different fuel- and chemical- production technologies. The data used in this study are specific to Western Canada. The key objectives of this study are:  Characterizing different bioconversion pathways in terms of their operating and investment costs.  Determining the cost of delivering forest residue to the syngas plant.  Developing techno-economic models for determining the cost of producing biochemicals using syngas.  Ranking biochemicals according to their cost of production.  Developing cost curves to show the impact of scale on the cost of producing biochemicals. * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 780 492 7797; fax: þ1 780 492 2200. E-mail address: Amit.Kumar@ualberta.ca (A. Kumar). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy 0360-5442/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.energy.2011.07.024 Energy 36 (2011) 6251e6262