The PIPE™ reactor. Continuous process. Very few moving parts. Industrial-scale throughput.
The patented PIPE™ reactor operates as a horizontal version of a refinery cracking tower, built as a pipe-in-pipe design that gives cellulosic feedstock the extended process path and dwell time required for clean, complete conversion. Recycling heat-transfer fluids propel, torrefy, and pyrolyze biomass at controlled temperatures ranging from 300 °C to 850 °C.
With very few moving parts, the reactor enables continuous, precisely controlled time, temperature, and feedstock flow, drawing its process heat from perpetually self-generating syngas produced inside the reactor itself. The result is industrial-scale, sustainable throughput — measured in millions of tons per year — from a platform that obsoletes every legacy carbonization technology against which it competes.
How the platform works.
Biomass feedstock enters the pipe-in-pipe reactor, passes through a torrefaction stage at 300–350 °C, then a pyrolysis stage at 500–850 °C. Syngas produced along the way is recycled as process heat. Four GRC88® product streams emerge. Co-processing configurations make the minerals in red mud faster and cheaper to extract, and upgrade sour heavy crude and lignite.
Ten- to twenty-minute pre-pyrolysis at 300–350 °C.
Torrefaction by Permanente is a ten- to twenty-minute, lower-temperature (approximately 300 °C to 350 °C) pre-pyrolysis process that “cooks” cellulosic biomass in the PIPE™ reactor under controlled time and temperature to yield high-energy-dense biocoal, biocoke, biochar, wood vinegar, and biocarbon — all through a continuous process in an oxygen-free environment.
The reactor's serpentine pipe-in-pipe configuration accepts a wide range of cellulosic feedstocks and delivers industrial volumes that can exceed 1,000,000 tons per year per reactor. Conventional torrefaction is conducted at 200 °C to 300 °C; Permanente's torrefaction is conducted at an engineered 300 °C to 350 °C band that improves energy density without sacrificing continuous throughput.
Second-stage pyrolysis at 500–850 °C.
Pyrolysis by Permanente is the oxygen-free thermal decomposition of cellulosic biomass and torrefied biocarbon in the PIPE™ reactor's second stage, at higher temperatures (approximately 500 °C to 850 °C) under controlled time and temperature. The process produces biochar and pyrolysis vapors. Most of the vapors condense into bio-oil; the remaining non-condensable syngas is recycled as process heat.
A portion of the syngas is used as a self-generating recycled heating fuel to perpetuate both torrefaction and pyrolysis, so that once the process begins, no other fuels are required. Excess syngas and heat can generate further heat and power; the condensed bio-oil feeds the liquid-fuel side of the platform.