A promising way to store alternating electricity from renewable sources like wind and sun is to produce pure hydrogen via electrolysis and to use this hydrogen to synthesize liquid transportation fuels and chemicals. As presented in 2015, the Winddiesel project, carried out at Güssing, Austria, is a potential strategy to use surplus wind energy to produce hydrocarbon-based fuels, chemicals, and bio-waxes via water electrolysis and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS). By using Fischer-Tropsch (FT) diesel as a blending component with fossil diesel, a massive reduction of CO2 emissions within the transport sector can be achieved. The FT laboratory-scale plant at Güssing uses slurry reactor technology to produce hydrocarbons from biomass-derived syngas. A commercial biomass gasification plant using the dual fluidized bed technology produces the biomass-based syngas. To simulate the fluctuating hydrogen production from renewable energy sources, the load of the FT plant is varied from 70 to 150% of the standard base-load conditions. To gain comprehensive data concerning the plant performance under load-change conditions, experiments lasting 500 hours are performed with two different catalyst charges. First, a 500-hour experiment with base-load settings is carried out to obtain reference data. In the second experiment, load changes are performed using an equivalent catalyst charge. It was observed that, depending on the catalyst, almost equal results for product distribution and composition could be reached for base-load and load-change settings. Furthermore, catalytic attrition to fine particles (< 5 µm) was investigated. The amount of catalyst fines ranges from well below 20 up to 60 mg/kg of dry product wax. This means that 0.5 to 2wt.% of catalyst undergoes attrition to fines in one year.

Proceedings of the 25th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 960-966