RAPID Funded Projects

A significant portion of commodity products are manufactured in large facilities that operate at steady state. In many ways, the traditional chemical industry has reached a plateau in terms of productivity and energy efficiency in such facilities. Improvements based on existing technologies and unit operations are mostly incremental and unable to address fundamental transport limitations that drive process efficiency. Process intensification, largely based on reducing transport and transfer limitations, has the potential to take bulk and specialty chemical production to new levels of economic efficiency. However, process intensification has thus far largely focused on the redesign of process hardware, requiring significant capital investments to realize benefits. This project looks to use modeling and optimization to define PI opportunities in existing hardware. In particular, it takes a general look at dynamically forcing a process to take advantage of non-linear systems responses. In certain cases, this mode of operation can deliver significant improvements in performance. The goal of the project is to provide a general theoretical framework for dynamic intensification, as well as using divided wall column operation as a test case to practice dynamic intensification at the pilot scale.

This project is looking to address the primary challenge we see in the module manufacturing space – how we can significantly improve the Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) of a high Technical Readiness Level (TRL) technology to open the door for broad deployment. In particular, the team at PNNL and OSU is carrying out a cost/manufacturability study on the piloted STARS technology for solar steam methane reforming. The results of this study will define key economic break points in the production number of STARS process modules that point to “best” methods of mass manufacturing (such as additive manufacturing for production runs on the order of 100 -1000). Within each of these target methods, a cost analysis is carried out to determine where the largest cost drivers exist (e.g. raw material costs) and then modified production approaches are proposed to address these issues and move toward desired production cost targets.

Deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass into fermentable sugars is among the major challenges in producing cellulosic biofuels and biobased products. Current pretreatment methods to liberate solid cellulose are expensive, accounting for as much as 30% of the cost of producing cellulosic biofuels. Most pretreatments do not completely fractionate cellulose and lignin, the latter of which interferes with enzymatic hydrolysis. The goal of this project is to develop a pyrolysis-based Modular Energy Production System (MEPS) for the thermal deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass into cellulosic sugars and other value-added products. Thermal deconstruction uses thermal energy instead of enzymes or chemicals to fractionate lignocellulose into solubilized carbohydrate and phenolic oil. It has the prospects for intensifying and modularizing biorefineries, especially through pyrolysis innovations including biomass pretreatments to increase cellulosic sugar production and autothermal pyrolysis to simplify design and increase feedstock throughput. Modular Energy Production Systems configure unit operations as modules sized to fit in standard shipping containers, mass produced and integrated in the field to form fully operational biorefineries at a smaller and on-demand scale. Distributed processing with modular pyrolysis units deployed at multiple locations decreases logistical hurdles/costs for both feedstock and products.

Low permeability natural gas reservoirs are being developed across the world using fracturing technologies. The most common approach for fracturing uses water with friction-reducing agents and thickening polymers. However, this approach requires approximately 400 tanker trucks to bring millions of gallons of water to a wellhead and results in millions of gallons of contaminated water that must be treated before going back into the natural water cycle. A second approach to fracturing uses high-pressure gases such as nitrogen or carbon dioxide. The use of energized fluids such as N2 or CO2 offers the potential to carry out fracturing without the negative aspects associated with water-based fracturing. This approach, however, often requires producers to divert initial gas production to a flare until N2 / CO2 gas concentrations in the “flow-back” drop below allowable limits for feeding into the natural gas pipeline network. This project aims to address the loss of hydrocarbon energy and the associated CO2 emissions related to N2 fracture operations by utilizing a new adsorbent developed by Praxair in a modular Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) system capable of recovering N2 from produced gas at wellhead locations. Technology development in this area will address the specific problem described above and will shed light on the challenges of modular processing of distributed resources in general.