Biomass Feedstock National User Facility Process Development Unit

Idaho National Laboratory

Description

The Biomass Feedstock National User Facility (BFNUF) offers technology and expertise to help the U.S. bioenergy industry overcome biomass challenges during scale up and integration of biomass preprocessing facilities. The BFNUF is a congressionally designated, national asset designed to help de-risk the scale up of bioeconomy. A reconfigurable preprocessing testbed that is utilized by both public and private sectors, the BFNUF can be utilized to rapidly scale up new processes. The BFNUF PDU allows industry partners to test a variety of size reduction, milling, drying, pelletizing, cubing, torrefaction, and mechanical and chemical separation options.

Capability Bounds

The BFNUF PDU processes a variety of feedstocks at up to 5 tons per hour and provides multiple scales of equipment for size reduction, milling, drying, pelletizing, cubing, torrefaction, and mechanical and chemical separation.

Unique Aspects

Feedstock supply sourcing and custom blends; Industrial feedstocks developed at commercial specifications; Validation and testing of third-party technology; Multiple sources of the same feedstock type for variability comparisons; Full-scale control and equipment test bed.

Availability

As a congressionally designated National User Facility, the BFNUF PDU is available to both the public and private sectors through the development of collaborative work scopes that utilize a variety of contractual mechanisms to meet the needs of the partners and funding agencies.

Benefit

The BFNUF PDU’s flexible configuration allows for insertion of third-party equipment and a wide range of process designs so biorefineries can minimize or eliminate feed handling problems before costly setbacks occur.