Carbon-containing materials, such as biomass (e.g., plant biomass, animal biomass, and municipal waste biomass) or coal are processed to produce useful products, such as fuels, carboxylic acids and equivalents thereof (e.g., esters and salts). For example, systems are described that can use feedstock materials, such as cellulosic and/or lignocellulosic materials and/or starchy materials, to produce ethanol, butanol or organic acids (e.g., acetic or lactic acid), salts of organic acids or mixtures thereof. If desired, organic acids can be converted into alcohols, such as by first converting the acid, salt or mixtures of the acid and its salt to an ester, and then hydrogenating the formed ester. Acetogens or homoacetogens which are capable of utilizing a syngas from a thermochemical conversion of coal or biomass can be utilized to produce the desired product.

The present invention provides a process and apparatus for converting feedstock comprising biomass and/or carbon-containing solid waste material to synthesis gas. The process comprises supplying a densified and pressurized feedstock to a gasifier comprising a fluidized bed zone and a post-gasification zone and contacting the feedstock with a gasification agent. Recovery and purification of the synthesis gas is then carried out involving the recycling of CO.sub.2 back to various stages in the process. The apparatus is configured to carry out the process and comprises transport lines to recycle the CO.sub.2. The synthesis gas can be further processed to form renewable synthetic products and/or chemicals.

A process for preparing methanol by a methanol synthesis reaction of carbon dioxide with hydrogen may involve a distillation step and a condensation step following the synthesis of a crude methanol. A volatile component and water may be separated off from a methanol-containing product stream, and a gas stream containing a volatile component that has been separated off may be discharged at least partially as offgas. At least part of the gas stream that has been separated off may be recirculated into the methanol synthesis reaction. A plant for preparing methanol can store or utilize electric power generated from renewable energy sources and provide facilities for discharging the offgas stream, which can be purified by catalytic after-combustion. Alternatively, the plant can be configured without discharge of an offgas substream, or the offgas streams are so small that they can be released without treatment into the environment at a suitable position.

A system for using carbonaceous material includes a steam reformer, a hydrocarbon reformer, and at least one gas-cleanup system. Also described are methods of producing liquid fuel and/or chemicals from carbonaceous material.

A method of diverting municipal solid waste (MSW) from a landfill that includes receiving, at a MSW processing system, a quantity of MSW, gasifying the quantity of MSW in a gasification unit to yield a syngas stream and biochar stream, converting at least a portion of the syngas to mixed alcohols in an alcohol synthesis unit, separating the mixed alcohols into one or more alcohol products, and determining a carbon offset for diverting the MSW from the landfill to the MSW processing system.

Carbon-containing materials, such as biomass (e.g., plant biomass, animal biomass, and municipal waste biomass) or coal are processed to produce useful products, such as fuels, carboxylic acids and equivalents thereof (e.g., esters and salts). For example, systems are described that can use feedstock materials, such as cellulosic and/or lignocellulosic materials and/or starchy materials, to produce ethanol, butanol or organic acids (e.g., acetic or lactic acid), salts of organic acids or mixtures thereof. If desired, organic acids can be converted into alcohols, such as by first converting the acid, salt or mixtures of the acid and its salt to an ester, and then hydrogenating the formed ester. Acetogens or homoacetogens which are capable of utilizing a syngas from a thermochemical conversion of coal or biomass can be utilized to produce the desired product.

The invention relates to an energy supply system (2) having a first energy supply network (4) including a power network (36) for transporting electrical energy (46), and a second energy supply network (6) having a transport system (60) for fluid operating materials (56), said energy supply system comprising at least one energy-generating unit (8), and through electrical energy and carbon-containing material (50, 54, 58) the fluid operating materials are produced and fed into the second energy supply network, and further comprising at least one local energy management unit (10), by means of which fluid operating materials extracted from the second energy supply network can be converted into electrical energy (74, 76, 78) and can be fed into a local power network (90). The second energy supply network (6) has a transport system (62) for the return transport of carbon dioxide-containing residual gases (58), which are incurred during the energy recycling of the fluid operating materials (56) by one or more energy consumers (11) and/or energy management units (10).

Disclosed herein is an integrated plant including, in some embodiments, an interconnected set of two or more stages of reactors forming a bio-reforming reactor configured to generate syngas from wood-containing biomass. A first stage of the bio-reforming reactor is configured to cause a set of chemical reactions in the biomass to produce reaction products of constituent gases, tars, chars, and other components. The first stage includes a fluidized-bed gasifier, a fluidized-bed combustor, and a moving-bed filtration system, each of which includes media inputs and outputs to respectively receive and supply heat-absorbing media to another operation unit for recirculation in a media recirculation loop. The moving-bed filtration system includes a tar pre-reformer configured to capture and reform heavier tars into lighter tars for subsequent processing in one or more fuel-producing reactor trains. Fuel products produced by the one or more reactor trains have a biogenic content of between 50% and 100%.

Multiple stages of reactors form a bio-reforming reactor that generates chemical grade bio-syngas for any of 1) a methanol synthesis reactor, 2) a Methanol-to-Gasoline reactor train, 3) a high temperature Fischer-Tropsch reactor train, and 4) any combination of these three that use the chemical grade bio-syngas derived from biomass fed into the bio-reforming reactor. A tubular chemical reactor of a second stage has inputs configured to receive chemical feedstock from at least two sources, i) the raw syngas from the reactor output of the first stage via a cyclone, and ii) purge gas containing renewable carbon-based gases that are recycled back via a recycle loop as a chemical feedstock from any of 1) the downstream methanol-synthesis-reactor train, 2) the downstream methanol-to-gasoline reactor train, or 3) purge gas from both trains. The plant produces fuel products with solely 100% biogenic carbon content as well as fuel products with 50-100% biogenic carbon content.

[Problem to be Solved] Provided is a method for producing a non-petrochemical-derived conjugated diene polymer using an alcohol derived from a non-petrochemical raw material. [Means to Solve the Problem] In the present invention, the method is characterized in that a non-petrochemical-derived conjugated diene polymer is produced using an alcohol derived from a non-petrochemical raw material having an iron content of 0.0001 mg/L to 2 mg/L.