EGIYON "Producing 'Eco-friendly Fuel' from Nut Shells... Improving Time and Yield"

The Korea Institute of Energy Research (hereinafter KIER) announced on the 17th that Dr. Youngchan Choi's research team at the Air Purification Laboratory has succeeded in producing eco-friendly biofuel from cashew nut shells discarded during the production of nut products.

The process of producing biofuel from cashew nut shells is already commercialized in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. However, the production yield is only 20% compared to the raw material, and more importantly, an additional chemical process using catalysts such as sulfuric acid and alcohols is required to convert it into bio-heavy oil, which causes environmental pollution.

Accordingly, the research team developed a core technology to produce high-quality bio-heavy oil through a medium-temperature pyrolysis method, overcoming the drawbacks of the existing mechanical pressing process. Using this technology, the production time of bio-heavy oil can be reduced to one-third of the existing process, and the production yield can be increased more than twice.

The existing mechanical pressing process requires pressing the raw material, separating it into solid and liquid, and then performing heat treatment and chemical reactions, which involves significant cost and time. In contrast, the developed technology can produce bio-heavy oil by performing only one pyrolysis process after raw material input without complicated procedures.

In particular, unlike the existing process carried out manually, the entire process up to bio-heavy oil production can be automated, reducing the system operation costs by half. Additionally, the non-condensed pyrolysis gas during the process can be reused as a heat source required for the process.

The research team verified the bio-heavy oil production performance by operating a pyrolysis facility with a daily capacity of 1 ton, achieving a bio-heavy oil production yield of 40%, more than twice that of the existing pressing process.

Most importantly, the sulfur content of the produced bio-heavy oil was 90 ppm, meeting the sulfur oxide emission regulations of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), demonstrating its potential use as ship fuel.

Bio-heavy oil is a type of biofuel, a heavy fuel that can be used for industrial boilers, power plants, and ship fuel. It is gaining attention as an eco-friendly fuel that provides energy similar to conventional heavy oil while emitting fewer greenhouse gases.

Dr. Youngchan Choi stated, “The eco-friendly biofuel production process developed by our research team enables mass production of bio-heavy oil and biochar, and the manufacturing process is simple, making commercialization in Southeast Asia highly likely. We plan to conduct pilot-scale facility research starting next year and enter the full-scale commercialization stage.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.