[Gasification] Tar Processing

[Thomas Reed]

Dear ADK and all

AD KARVE has an interesting idea here.  I doubt if he or I have the equipment to follow it up, but hope some others here may do so. 

When you tear the lignin and celluloses in wood apart during pyrolysis, you briefly have a lot of VERY reactive species (free radicals) desperately looking for partners.   

If they were supplied with a surplus of attractive partners, they would make many attractive combinations, some commercial today, and probably many others that would be attractive if available.

If the diluent partner was methanol or ethanol, they would form esters (perfumes) ethers, and many other interesting compounds that I'm not enough organic chemist to list.  

I hope someone will give it a try...

Tom Reed

Dr Thomas B Reed
President, The Biomass Energy Foundation
www.Woodgas.com

On May 16, 2011, at 10:55 AM, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Tom,
> the word used in those days was dry distillation of wood. I feel that
> the process is analogous to distilling petroleum. In petrolium
> distillation, use is made of the so called cracking catalysts. By
> playing around with these catalysts, one can change the proportion of
> different fractions that one gets from petroleum. Perhaps one can do
> the same with wood tar.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
> 
> On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 9:03 PM, Thomas Reed <tombreed2010 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear Vikrant and all
>> The dreaded word "TAR" evokes nasty images of stuck valves on engines.  It
>> has not always been so.  The CSM library has a 1920 book extolling the
>> virtues of wood tar.
>> Wood (and coal) tar was a major source of organic chemicals - practically
>> all organic chemicals -  wood alcohol (methanol), acetone, vanillin, acetic
>> acid (wood vinegar) all about 4%, and several hundred others) for a century
>> until the synthetic chemists began making them cheaper and pure.
>>   The last plant, operated by Henry Ford, was closed in 1950.  I believe
>> charcoal kilns produce large quantities, like it or not, and the EPA wont
>> like flaring them.  I believe you get several layers of water solubles and
>> tars.
>> I once visited Prof. Othmer (of Kirk Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical
>> Technology fame) at NYU and we discussed the value of wood tars.  He said
>> that wood tar was his family business until synthetic sources were
>> developed.  He said forget it!
>> You would need a distillation column to exploit these, but if you are
>> producing them in quantity, it might be fun to separate them, and they are
>> all useful chemicals.
>> 
>> I hope someone follows this up...
>> Tom Reed
>> Dr Thomas B Reed
>> President, The Biomass Energy Foundation
>> www.Woodgas.com
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gasification mailing list
> 
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> Gasification at bioenergylists.org
> 
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org
> 
> for more Gasifiers,  News and Information see our web site:
> http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/