An overview of biomass conversion to hydrogen

PETR 68

Yong Wang, yongwang@pnl.gov, Institute for Interfacial Catalysis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, MS K8-93, P. O. Box 999, Richland, WA 99354
Biomass is available from variety of sources that are highly diverse. These sources include animal waste, municipal solid waste, forest residue, and agricultural residue. Three main components of biomass include hexose oligmers, pentose oligmers, and polymeric phenolics. Biomass derived feedstocks are highly oxygenated compounds that have a high degree of functionality and low thermal stability. The challenge is how to economically convert the biomass resources into hydrogen that can either be used as an integral part of future biorefinery or for distributed fuel cell applications. Both biological and thermochemical transformation technologies are currently being developed in converting biomass to hydrogen. Thermochemical transformation includes gasification followed by water gas shift, fast pyrolysis followed by steam reforming, deconstruction of ligonocellulosic biomass followed by the reforming of monomers, or reforming of bio-ethanol or glycerol, a bio-diesel by-product. In this talk, the current status, challenges, and future research directions using thermochemcial transformation technologies will be discussed.