XCrude™ by XFuels | Technology

XCrude™ – Made Possible By Two Revolutionary Advancements:

Nebula Reactor™: Electrochemical Molecule Dissociation

XFuels is able to derive electricity and petroleum-equivalent fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from any carbon-bearing material in existence (e.g., waste wood, agricultural biomass, garbage) – without the need to drill for crude oil. The technology – XCrude™ – has been developed over an 18–year process, through four generations of technology scale-up and development, and six independently validated investment-grade technology studies.

The roots of the XFuels technology date back to the 1920's, when the process of converting carbon-based solids (such as coal or biomass) to liquid fuels was first accomplished in Germany by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch. While the "Fischer-Tropsch" (FT) process has been applied on a large scale in the industrial sector (South Africa gets the majority of its diesel fuel from FT), its popularity to date has been challenged by high capital, operations, and maintenance costs. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 60% to 70% of the cost of traditional industry-standard FT technology configurations lies in the step known as "gasification" of the biomass feedstock material.¹

XFuels has significantly reduced the cost of syngas generation from biomass (by replacing high-cost thermal gasification), with low-cost non-thermal Electrochemical Molecule Dissociation – a MARKET-DEFINING advance.

ANY carbon-bearing feedstock material (e.g. biomass, garbage, etc.), is either ground and dried, or delivered in a liquid slurry, into the XFuels electrochemical reforming vessel, the Nebula Reactor™. Inside, a "cold plasma" electrochemical reaction occurs (verses the thermal reaction used by traditional combustion or gasification technologies like pyrolysis and plasma), which breaks down the feedstock via molecular dissociation into Hydrogen (H₂) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) – commonly known as syngas.

Traditionally, "plasma" technologies are classified as (A) THERMAL, and (B) NON-THERMAL – or "cold", based on the relative temperatures of the electrons, ions and neutrals. (Thermal plasmas' electrons and heavy particles are the same temperature, i.e. they are in thermal equilibrium.)

XFuels technology maintains the ions and neutrals at a much lower temperature (≈ room temperature), whereas only the electrons become "hotter" – from 10,000 to 100,000 °K (1–10 eV). The cold-plasma effectively acts as a catalyst, in conjunction with a cyclonic vortex created in the chamber, allowing XFuels to access the resident energy within the feedstock to dissociate the individual molecules by naturally "breaking" covalent bonds (bonds which share electrons) in the material.

XCrude™ Input Materials:

The XFuels patented XCrude™ process allows us to profitably convert virtually any carbonaceous feedstock in existence, including EVERYTHING below:

Advanced, low-cost, readily available, non-food and non-sterile lignocellulosic biomass solids¹ as broadly defined by the U.S. DOE:

Forestry wood waste

Agricultural waste

Urban-derived waste

Non-biogenic Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) including "black-bag garbage" (think – everything that goes in your kitchen trash can), and all plastics, foams, and tires:

Mixed or sorted Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)

Waste Plastics and foams, etc. (ALL types)

Waste Tires

And everything else, including medical waste and other toxic waste, used batteries, used motor oil, sour crude (oil), new energy crops in development such as algae and jatropha, ad infinitum.

BioSolids (processed Municipal Sewer sludge)

Woody Energy Crops

Coal (and any other "long-dead" carbon-bearing fossil type inputs as well, i.e., natural gas & oil)

Throttle Reactor™: Hydrocarbon-Enhancing Catalysis

Fischer–Tropsch (FT) conversion of syngas from biomass, requires the use of a "catalyst", which converts the syngas into liquid hydrocarbons (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc.). According to the U.S. DOE, conversion of biomass derived syngas to liquid fuels, is primarily challenged by poor and inefficient reactor design, and the lack of viable catalysts for efficient conversion of the corresponding (hydrogen deficient) syngas.² For the past 25+ years, the FT industry has chiefly concentrated on conversion of stranded natural gas (as a feedstock), to liquid fuels. The syngas in a natural gas plant consists of mostly methane (CH₄), meaning the feedstock has a very high hydrogen-to-carbon ratio (H:C = 4:1). As the price of methane has grown, and supplies and sustainability of fossil fuels have come into question, new feedstocks with lower H:C ratios have been sought. However, the introduction of new feedstocks has presented a significant market barrier to the economics of successful commercialization. The reason is, alternative feedstocks like biomass (and coal, garbage, etc.), have a very poor H:C ratio of only 1:2 (a serious hydrogen deficiency) – resulting in a significant drop in "pull–thru" conversion to hydrocarbon fuels.

XFuels has transformed biomass conversion to liquid fuel, with ultra low cost Hydrocarbon–Enhancing Catalysis, which adds a hydrogen molecule to hydrogen deficient syngas (i.e. from biomass, garbage), enabling XFuels to produce 85 grams of C5+ liquid hydrocarbons from 1 cubic meter of syngas.

Virtually every known competitor in the biomass gasification / FT sector leases an (extremely expensive, and only available from a few sources) FT catalyst formula. Furthermore, the known catalysts on the market today do not address the poor H:C ratio present in biomass–derived syngas, leaving companies with either an extremely low net production of liquid hydrocarbons, or forcing them to spend significant money to supplement the process with (relatively very expensive) liquid hydrogen. XFuels combines its proprietary catalyst, with XFuels' proprietary reactor design, for efficient conversion of a wide range of pressures and temperatures in both gas and liquid form; enabling XFuels to produce a broad range of petroleum–equivalent fuels including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, at a fraction of the cost of known competitors.

Next Generation Hydrocarbon Biorefinery Roadmap (Feb 2008), Pages 108-109, sponsored by: The National Science Foundation, American Chemical Society, and The Department of Energy (DOE);
http://www.ecs.umass.edu/biofuels/Images/Roadmap2-08.pdf

See 1 above,(Pages 110-115).