Tackling the environmental cost challenge of biomass coking, Qiyuan is seeking financing.

The Qiyuan Biomass Resource Utilization and Carbon Asset Demonstration Project is seeking RMB 1.5 million in angel round financing. This round of financing is not intended for developing a brand-new technology from zero, but for re-engineering the previously verified biomass utilization technology for industrial reproduction in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region. Through transformation of existing systems, installation and commissioning, and continuous operation, it will form a currently accessible demonstration project that supports on-site visits, data collection, and third-party verification.

The project party plans to divide the financing into two phases: the RMB 1.5 million being raised at present is mainly used to complete the industrial reproduction; after the successful reproduction, an additional financing of about RMB 3.5 million is planned to cover longer-cycle operation data collection, third-party testing and certification, and applicable international carbon standard certification. On the basis of completed engineering reproduction and certification, larger-scale financing and market replication will be further promoted.

Biomass utilization is not only about "whether it can be burned", but also needs to address stability, environmental protection and cost issues

Agricultural and forestry wastes such as straw, rice husk, shrubs and wood chips have energy utilization value, but compared with highly standardized fuels like coal, biomass has more complex composition and morphology.

The traditional direct biomass combustion route usually sends raw materials into a single high-temperature zone for combustion. According to the technical documents provided by Qiyuan, in this process, alkali metals such as potassium and sodium in biomass ash are prone to volatilize under high temperature conditions, and migrate to the low-temperature heating surface with flue gas, causing coking, ash accumulation and high-temperature corrosion problems, which affect the continuous operation of equipment and increase maintenance costs.

In some gasification technology routes, the problems appear in another form. For example, raw materials need to be crushed and dried, and the generated crude syngas also needs further treatment to remove impurities such as tar, dust and alkali metals, which adds pre-treatment and back-end purification processes.

This means that the actual industrial problems faced by biomass energy projects are not simply "to get biomass burned".

For industrial steam, biomass heating and existing boiler users, what really affects the economy of the project is often a set of interrelated problems: whether it can operate stably for a long time, whether the maintenance pressure caused by coking, ash accumulation and corrosion can be reduced, whether the environmental emissions can meet the standards, and how much equipment and operation cost is required to meet the environmental protection requirements.

What Qiyuan is trying to solve is exactly this set of problems.

Its core technology is "biomass cascade pyrolysis - resource multi-generation system". Different from the process that sends all materials into the high-temperature zone for treatment at one time, this system sets up different temperature zones in the continuous furnace body, so that gas-phase components and solid-phase components are transformed and separated step by step according to their respective pyrolysis characteristics.

According to the technical principle, the upper temperature limit of the first stage zone is controlled at about 550℃ to complete preliminary pyrolysis and gas-solid separation; the solid phase is then further carbonized in an anoxic environment at about 450-550℃, and the separated crude gas phase enters the high-temperature zone of about 950℃ for further pyrolysis.

The purpose of this design is to prevent solid materials from staying in the high-temperature environment that easily causes a large amount of alkali metal volatilization for a long time, and reduce the risks of coking, ash accumulation and high-temperature corrosion from the source. At the same time, the dependence on complex end purification equipment is reduced through gas-solid separation and subsequent gas phase treatment.

Therefore, Qiyuan positions its own technology not as a simple solution to boiler "coking", but as a way to improve continuous operation, environmental management and comprehensive economy at the same time by changing the thermochemical conversion process of biomass.

Shift from end-of-pipe treatment to process control, one system produces heat, gas and carbon simultaneously

Environmental protection cost is another problem Qiyuan hopes to solve.

The traditional idea is usually to add corresponding treatment equipment for flue gas and pollutants after combustion, while Qiyuan's technical route emphasizes controlling the generation conditions of pollutants during the combustion and pyrolysis process.

The early technical assessment report of the project shows that the technical problems targeted by its "stack combustion gasification and combustion technology" include volatile matter combustion, NOx emission, furnace coking and soot particulate emission, and it also emphasizes reducing equipment construction and operation costs through process design.

In addition to operation and environmental protection issues, the project also tries to change the single product structure of traditional biomass projects that mainly rely on power and heat income.

According to the current technical scheme, after the biomass is subjected to cascade pyrolysis, two main types of products can be formed: part of the gas-phase products form syngas, which can be further used for power generation, heat supply or chemical utilization; the other part of the solid-phase products is retained to form biochar or carbon-based fertilizer.

The system can also use its own waste heat to complete part of the subsequent drying process, and recycle water and some substances to reduce the external energy demand for additional processes.

This extends the business logic of the project from a single "selling steam" to combined revenue from energy and resource-based products.

Carbon asset is another layer of revenue that may be added to this model in the future, but the project party does not take carbon revenue as a necessary condition for the establishment of the RMB 1.5 million demonstration project at this stage.

The first thing the project needs to verify is the independent economy of the energy end and the resource product end. After the successful industrial reproduction, a continuous data collection and third-party certification system will be established through subsequent financing to assess the value of carbon emission reduction or carbon removal that meets the corresponding standards.

This is also the reason why the project splits the financing into two phases: use a small amount of capital to prove that the engineering can run successfully again, and then invest more capital to complete data collection and certification, instead of bearing all certification costs directly before the engineering reproduction.

With completed engineering practices and expert reviews, the RMB 1.5 million will be used to verify "whether the technology can be replicated again"

Different from early-stage technology projects that move from the laboratory to industrialization, this round of financing for Qiyuan is not intended to complete the first engineering verification.

Project documents show that the relevant technology has been previously applied to engineering projects in three scenarios: industrial steam, municipal central heating and rural livelihood heating.

This technology has also been reviewed by expert panels.

On November 18, 2020, the Beijing Energy and Environment Society organized experts to review the "Engineering Technology for Environment-friendly Comprehensive Utilization System of Biomass and Wastes in Towns and Townships".

The technical assessment report provided by the project shows that the expert group is led by Academician Du Xiangwan, former vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and deputy led by Academician Ni Weidou, former vice president of Tsinghua University, including Academicians Jiang Yi, Hou Li'an, Ye Qizhen, Su Wanhua, Chen Niannian, Han Buxing, as well as experts in the fields of energy and environmental protection.

The assessment opinion holds that this technology has "reliable theoretical basis, mature individual sub-system technology, and clear industrialization path". The expert group unanimously passed the review, and suggested carrying out the construction of demonstration pilot projects to facilitate large-scale promotion.

The project party believes that these historical engineering practices and expert reviews can prove that the technology is not just at the conceptual stage, but cannot replace the continuous operation data that investors and industrial partners need to see today.

After some historical projects are completed, put into trial operation and handed over, due to reasons such as changes in operating entities, long-term data has not formed the complete data chain required for current financing and carbon certification. Therefore, the core obstacle faced by the project at present is not "whether the equipment has been manufactured before", but whether the previously verified technology can be reproduced again under the current industrial conditions, and form new, continuous, third-party verifiable data assets.

This is also the main purpose of this RMB 1.5 million angel round of financing.

The project plans to select existing systems for transformation in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region, with cooperating boiler manufacturers and engineering parties responsible for equipment manufacturing, installation and subsequent services. The Qiyuan team is mainly responsible for providing core technical solutions, furnace body and process parameters, engineering commissioning and subsequent carbon asset related technical work.

Under this model, the team does not plan to build a heavy-asset boiler manufacturing system by itself, but hopes to form a standardized transformation scheme through cooperation with existing boiler manufacturers and engineering enterprises, and then replicate it to industrial steam users, biomass cogeneration projects, industrial parks, and county-level energy projects with available agricultural and forestry waste resources.

The team is led by Che Zhanbin, the technical inventor, as the overall project leader. It currently adopts a lean team configuration, with members having experience in the boiler industry responsible for channel expansion, and business personnel responsible for financing and industrial cooperation.

If the RMB 1.5 million financing is completed, the project first needs to answer a relatively specific question: whether a technology that has completed industrial engineering verification in the past can be stably reproduced again in a new industrial scenario at a low cost.

After reaching this milestone, the project plans to raise another RMB 3.5 million, focusing on continuous operation data collection, third-party testing and certification, carbon accounting boundary sorting, and applicable international carbon standard certification.

For Qiyuan, these two phases correspond to the elimination of two different types of risks: the RMB 1.5 million solves the engineering risk of "whether it can be replicated again"; the subsequent RMB 3.5 million solves the data and marketization risk of "whether it can be standardized verified and certified".

Only after completing these two milestones can the previously verified technology be further transformed into a commercial product that can be replicated in a standardized way.