Large amounts of biomass are used every year for different purposes, causing also the production of big volumes of biomass residues, that are today mostly unused. Another by-product that will be more and more present in the future is oxygen. Indeed, Oxygen is a byproduct in the production of green hydrogen, where for each kg of hydrogen, 8 kg of oxygen are produced. The aim of the BiOxyChar project is to transform these two by-products into useful resources.
The idea is to do so by combining two climate positive solutions. The first solution is production and permanent storage of biochar. Pyrolysis is the process used to transform the carbon contained in biomass into a very stable form that can be stored for hundreds of years. This process produces also a gas that can be further burned to produce energy. If this gas is burned using pure oxygen instead of air, the exhaust gas will consists of mainly CO2. These CO2 streams can be processed and stored (i.e., Bio-CCS, the second climate positive solution) with much lower costs than by burning the pyrolysis gas using air.
Contact person: Elisa Magnanelli