Solid fuels vary significantly with respect to the amount of CO2 directly produced per unit heating value. Elemental carbon is notably worse than other solid fuels in this regard, and since carbon (char) is an intermediate product of the combustion of almost all solid fuels, there is an opportunity to reduce specific CO2 emissions by reconfiguring processes to avoid char combustion wholly or in part. The primary goal of this one-year Innovative Concepts project is to make a fundamental thermodynamic assessment of three modes of solid fuel use: (1) combustion, (2) carbonization, and (3) oxidative pyrolysis, for a wide range of coal and alternative solid fuels. This period a large set of thermodynamic calculations were carried out to assess the potential of the three processes. The results show that the net carbon dioxide emissions and the relative ranking of the different processes depends greatly on the particular baseline fossil fuel being displaced by the new technology. As an example, in a baseline natural gas environment, it is thermodynamically more advantageous to carbonize biomass than to combust it, and even more advantageous to oxidatively pyrolyze the biomass.
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