Bio-oil can be used as a replacement for numerous applications where fuel oil is used, including fueling space heaters, furnaces, and boilers.^[37] Additionally, these biofuels can be used to fuel some combustion turbines and reciprocating engines, and as a source to create several chemicals.^[38] If bio-oil is used without modification, care must be taken to prevent emissions of black carbon and other particulates. Syngas and bio-oil can also be “upgraded” to transportation fuels like biodiesel and gasoline substitutes.^[39] If biochar is used for the production of energy rather than as a soil amendment, it can be directly substituted for any application that uses coal. pyrolysis also may be the most cost-effective way of producing electrical energy from biomaterial.^[40] Syngas can be burned directly, used as a fuel for gas engines and gas turbines, converted to clean diesel fuel through Fischer Tropsch or potentially used in the production of methanol and hydrogen.^[41]

Bio-oil has a much higher energy density than the raw biomass material.^[42]Mobile pyrolysis units can be used to lower the costs of transportation of the biomass itself if the biochar is returned to the soil and the syngas stream is used to power the process.^{[43] [44]} Bio-oil contains organic acids which are corrosive to steel containers, has a high water vapor content which is detrimental to ignition, and, unless carefully cleaned, contains some biochar particles which can block injectors.^[45] The greatest potential for bio-oil seems to be its use in a bio-refinery, where compounds that are valuable chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals or food additives are first extracted, and the remainder is either upgraded to fuel or reformed to syngas.[46

Example of BioOil delivered from ABRI made from Conifer Wood Chips