Substantial amounts of biomass are available in high-moisture or slurry waste streams generated by industrial and municipal activity. These include animal manures (especially dairy and swine), pulp mill sludges, food processing sludges, and municipal wastewater sludges. Sixty-million tons a year of waste sludges are generated by the agricultural and wastewater treatment industries alone. The high moisture content of these streams makes them problematic for conventional thermochemical conversion since water removal (either mechanical or thermal drying) puts a significant strain on project economics. The moisture barrier aside, there is substantial industry interest in thermochemical technologies to convert waste streams into added-value products.

Eastman’s Kingsport, Tennessee plant generates biosludges as a by-product of its process operations. Determining methods of incorporating these streams into the plant’s existing chemical production processes is a priority for the company. Antares is leading a technology development team comprised of Eastman Chemical, Galleon Engineering and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to economically convert the by-product into syngas using Low-Temperature Catalytic Hydrothermal Gasification (LTCHG), which can be further refined using cleanup and conversion processes Eastman has developed for its methanol synthesis process.

The objective of the project team’s Phase-I research and development effort is to advance a low-temperature catalytic gasification concept for use with wet biomass feedstocks, such as biosludges. The effort will leverage efforts already undertaken by PNNL in developing LTCHG and the endpoint of this Phase is the design of the first pilot plant for this process at the Eastman Chemical Kingsport Chemical Production plant. This work is expected to lead to the first chemical synthesis application for a broad class of biomass resources with very high moisture contents including biosludges and stillage from ethanol production.