High-Octane Gasoline from Biomass: Experimental, Economic, and Environmental Assessment

Highlights: • Syngas compositions, heating values, and yields were independent of feedstock. • Syngas from blended feedstocks follows a linear mix of the constituent feeds. • Miscanthus is the most cost-effective feedstock to produce high-octane fuels. • Forest residues has the lowest associated life-cycle carbon emissions. -- Abstract: Five economically-advantaged biomass feedstocks identified in the United States Department of Energy's 2016 Billion Ton Study were gasified and the syngas was reformed at the bench scale to study the feedstock price-performance relationship. The distribution of reformed syngas compositions, heating values, and yields were similar across the different feedstocks and blends thereof, which ranged from inexpensive residual wastes to more expensive and higher quality biomass, revealing that feedstock performance was mostly insensitive to its price. Custom blended feedstocks produced syngas with characteristics resembling linear combinations of syngas from single-component feedstocks, supporting the ability to customize and predict blended properties based on single-feedstock data. The experimental gasification data informed a techno-economic analysis of specific feedstock costs for producing high-octane gasoline, and the results showed that miscanthus and forest residues were the most cost-effective. A field-to-wheels life-cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions showed that forest residues was the most environmentally benign feedstock of those studied.