Coal Under Attack on All Fronts . . . Plots Comeback

Coal is the second-most plentiful hydrocarbon resources on the planet, second only to gas hydrates. Yet, increasingly, coal is being displaced by natural gas power plants across North America, and is being threatened with replacement by new generations of safe, clean, affordable, small modular nuclear fission reactors.

Is coal taking all of this lying down? No. In fact, in many ways, coal is the rising star of global energy production.

image via GWPF

BP’s annual statistical review reports that global coal production increased 6 per cent last year, twice the celebrated rate of increase in global natural gas production. This most notorious of fuels now accounts for 30 per cent of global energy consumption – the highest percentage since 1969. It will almost certainly account for more in the years ahead. It is, after all, one of the cheapest primary sources of energy in the world. And its reserves are, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible.

...Americans themselves are consuming less coal – 5 per cent less in the past decade. As U.S. electrical producers shift from cheap coal to cheap natural gas, more coal will be released for export to other countries (where demand for coal increased by almost 50 per cent in the same decade, the energy equivalent of 23 million barrels of oil a day). Already the world’s fourth-largest coal exporter, after Australia, Indonesia and Russia, the U.S. could plausibly become the world’s largest exporter in coming years. The United States possesses more coal reserves, after all, than any other country.

How much more? Energy analyst Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, says U.S. coal reserves contain nearly as much energy as the proven oil reserves of all 12 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries combined. U.S. coal deposits, he says, hold the energy equivalent of 900 billion barrels of oil. The OPEC countries have proven oil reserves of one trillion barrels. _Globe&Mail

We know that new, super-clean coal plants using IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle) and CHP (combined heat and power) technologies, are both very efficient and very environmentally responsible. But science and engineering have just begun to start cleaning up coal's act:

One of the new technologies, which involves pressurizing the oxygen, is being developed by a partnership between ThermoEnergy, based in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the major Italian engineering firm Itea. A version of it has been demonstrated at a small plant in Singapore that can generate about 15 megawatts of heat (enough for about five megawatts of electricity).

The technology simplifies the clean-up of flue gases; for example, some pollutants are captured in a glass form that results from high-temperature combustion. It also has the ability to quickly change power output, going from 10 percent to 100 percent of its generating capacity in 30 minutes, says Robert Marrs, ThermoEnergy's VP of business development. Conventional coal plants take several hours to do that. _TechnologyReview

Coal is a massive and affordable source of energy that is begging to be produced and utilised in a clean and responsible manner.

While everyone from gas advocates to nuclear advocates to green dieoff.orgiasts rail against coal as the mineral from hell, more responsible energy analysts understand that we will need to learn to utilise all sources of energy in clean and responsible ways, if we are to transition smoothly into the age of advanced nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

Domestic Fuel Cells Make More Sense than Big Wind & Solar

Imagine if each home were able to supply its own electric power, hot water, and space heat from one simple appliance -- the domestic fuel cell? Such a development would go further toward "disaster-proofing" your home than virtually any other single change you could make. Whether you chose to go off the grid, or to remain grid-intertied, a home fuel cell along with a backup fuel supply, could keep your home warm and well-lit during even extended power outages.

More on domestic fuel cells:

According to The Japan Times, demand for the fuel cell units has grown since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, which severely impacted the supply of power in Japan.

Toho Gas sold 220 units in 2009, the first year on the market, and a further 515 last year.

Now, having already delivered 283 systems, the firm expects to sell 900 units this year, according to the newspaper.

"Since the March 11th disasters, more people have been revisiting the way they use energy at home and paying attention to the combination of electricity and gas for their use," Hironari Tachi, senior manager for marketing, told the news provider.

According to its makers, a household with an Ene-Farm system can save 50,000 yen (£425) a year in energy bills, and reduce CO2 emissions by 1.3 tonnes annually.

"The co-generation system offers the superb functionality of fuel cells in a compact and easy to use form, and can even provide you with hot water from the heat it generates producing power," they explain. _PlatinumToday

This unconventional fuel cell approach uses your home wastewater to generate power and fuel

One reason why power utilities have not objected more to having big wind and big solar crammed down their throats, is that even though big wind and big solar are very difficult to deal with technically, at least the utilities will still control end-user access to power. With the rise of home-scale generation of power, the big utilities will begin to lose a lot of support.

More:

Fuel cells generate electricity and heat as a by product. The advantages over stirling CHP are no moving parts, less maintenance, and quieter operation. The surplus electricity can be delivered back to the grid.[2]

As an example, a PEMFC fuel cell based micro-CHP has an electrical efficiency of 37% LHV and 33% HHV and a heat recovery efficiency of 52% LHV and 47% HHV with a service life of 40,000 hours or 4000 start/stop cycles which is equal to 10 year use.

United States Department of Energy (DOE) Technical Targets: 1–10 kW residential combined heat and power fuel cells operating on natural gas.[3] _Wikipedia

As long as utilities can pass the exorbitant costs of unreliable green fairy dust power schemes -- such as big wind and big solar -- along to their customers, they will play along with incompetent and ideologically bound governmental bureaucracies.

But you, as a free citizen, can do what you want.

Industrial Scale Bio-Butanol Production w/ Clever Co-Processing

Cobalt’s technology converts sugars from non-food feedstock, such as forest waste and mill residues, into biobutanol. Cobalt’s continuous butanol production system is based on advancements in biocatalyst selection, bioreactor design and process engineering, resulting in a productive, capital-efficient, low-cost solution. This foundation ensures the production process is able to scale up quickly while maintaining capital efficiency. _GCC

GCCButanol is a four carbon alcohol which possesses much superior properties over ethanol for burning in modern gasoline engines, or for combining with diesel in modern diesel engines.

Cobalt Technologies is partnering with American Process Inc. to build an industrial sized bio-butanol plant. In addition, the partners are joining with Green Power + to include a clever carbohyydrate extraction system and alcohol processing module to a biomass power generation system (see image below).

Under the agreement, Cobalt Technologies and American Process will integrate Cobalt’s patent-pending continuous fermentation and distillation technology into American Process’s Alpena Biorefinery, currently under construction in Alpena, Michigan. Slated to begin ethanol production in early 2012 with a switch to biobutanol in mid-2012, the API Alpena Biorefinery will produce 470,000 gallons of biobutanol annually, which will be pre-sold to chemical industry partners.

Funded in part by an $18-million US Department of Energy (DOE) grant and a $4-million grant from the State of Michigan, the API Alpena Biorefinery will demonstrate the conversion of hemicelluloses extracted from woody biomass to fermentable sugars that can be used for production of ethanol. Meanwhile, Cobalt’s technology will demonstrate that these sugars can also produce butanol.

Greenpower+. GreenPower+ utilizes a module in front of the biomass boiler that utilizes steam extract hydrolyzate as feedstock and an ethanol extraction module. Dewatered solids are then returned to the biomass boiler. The process significantly increases overall profitability by converting low BTU hemicelluloses into high-value ethanol. The process enables cost-effective cellulosic ethanol production at a small scale of 10-20MMUSG/year, with an ethanol production cost of around $1/gallon US, API says.

The process significantly increases overall profitability of the site by converting hemicelluloses into fermentable sugars, which can be converted to high value biofuels and biochemicals. The GreenPower+ technology is applicable in any industry employing biomass boilers or having organic effluent. _GCC

GCCAs you can see, by combining cellulosic power and heat generation with cellulosic alcohols production, a company is able to increase revenue streams while providing its own process heat and electric power.

Another Possible Use for CO2 Produced from CTL and BTL

NewEnergyandFuelThe best use for CO2 was evolved over eons by biological life on Earth. Humans have many uses for CO2 in chemical and beverage plants as well. With a recent concern for the CO2 generated by biomass / fossil fuel use, researchers have been looking at new uses for excess CO2 produced by human activity.

University of Illinois’ scientists Dr. Paul Kenis and graduate student Devin Whipple are developing a number of catalytic conversions of CO2 to useful chemicals. Another team on a similar quest is led by Liviu M. Mirica, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. Turning CO2 into useful products requires a lot of concentrated CO2, a lot of energy, and the proper catalysts. The approaches taken by the two research teams above are are detailed by Brian Westenhaus at the links provided.

It is useful to look at such research, since there is a convergence of sorts developing. First, cheap, reliable, and safe nuclear power is being developed via factory-built small modular fission reactors. These can easily provide the energy needed for the reaction, and can be co-located with a variety of CO2 - producing industrial plants. Second, there is a growing societal interest in recycling waste products -- including CO2. While CO2 is not properly thought of as a "pollutant", it is certainly a waste product of industry and power production. Third, there is a need to develop the vast coal, gas, heavy oil, oil sands, and biomass resources around the world, to supplement the energy needs of emerging nations such as China, India, and California.

The graphic below looks at carbon which might be retrieved from various carbon energy and fuels production processes, using various technologies.

GCC

A detailed study by researchers from China and the US has concluded that Fischer-Tropsch synthetic liquid fuels (FTL) are typically less costly to produce when electricity is generated as a major coproduct than when the plants are designed to produce mainly liquid fuels.

Furthermore, coproduction systems that utilize a co-feed of biomass and coal (CBTL) and incorporate CO2 capture and storage (CCS) in the design offer attractive opportunities for decarbonizing both liquid fuels and power generation simultaneously. Such co-production systems, when considered as power generators, can provide decarbonized electricity at lower costs than is feasible with new stand-alone fossil fuel power plants under a wide range of conditions, according to the study by Liu et al. published in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels. _GCC

If one's goal is to sequester CO2 from carbon (fossil fuels plus biomass) power plants as economically as possible, then Liu et al. may be onto something. Certainly if one had an economic use for the CO2 being sequestered, the entire combined process would provide a better return.

In reality, IGCC + CHP -- integrated gasification combined cycle + combined heat and power -- of coal and biomass, is more economical than IGCC plus carbon sequestration. But as the methods of making use of concentrated CO2 from power plants, cement factories, etc. become more economical, perhaps carbon sequestration will begin to make sense, economically.

The US EPA and Interior Department under President Obama, are full of carbon hysterics. The same is true for other governments of the Anglosphere and governments in the EU. As long as these fools have any influence on industrial and energy policy, carbon sequestration -- as uneconomical as it is on its own -- may well play a part in energy policy. If that is the case, one may as well develop as many technologies as possible to mitigate the economic harm that these idiot policies are certain to bring.

Biomass Substitutes for Coal

Several US coal-fired power plants are learning to co-fire biomass with the coal. The long-term goal is to substitute biomass for coal altogether. One Ohio project intends to retrofit a coal plant to run on 100% biomass.

The biggest problem with the plan is that it is not designed to capture waste heat. In other words, for every "tree's worth of energy" the plant recovers in electricity, 3 or 4 trees are being wasted, producing heat that is not recovered or used. That is a pathetic waste of resources, regardless of how economic it may seem in the short term -- considering government incentives, mandates, and carbon rules. Combined heat and power (CHP) provides both electricity and useful heat. Designers must learn to integrate the more efficient approach into their plans.

Converting a coal-fired power plant into one that uses biomass is precisely what First Energy plans to do. Last April the utility announced plans to repower its coal-fired R.E. Burger Plant Units 4 and 5 using biomass. Ultimately, the plan is for the 312 MW plant to be powered by up to 100 percent biomass. However, the plant also is being designed with co-firing up to 20 percent coal.

...When complete, the Burger plant will be among the largest biomass power plants in the U.S. Since a project of this size hasn’t been done in the United States, challenges do exist, said Durbin. While the company already has in place equipment and systems to monitor particulates and nitrogen oxide emissions, it will need to solve a number of problems before getting the project off the ground. One problem is storage.

“Coal can get wet, get snowed on,” said Durbin. By contrast, biomass needs to stay dry. Durbin said the company plans to source biomass much in the same way it sources coal: from the best supplier. That may involve using wood chips and/or waste wood and processing it in a manner similar to the way coal is processed, or it may involve sourcing pellets. It’s also possible the company would use organic material such as switchgrass. “We are still working through the logistics,” said Durbin.

...For now, First Energy Generation plans to use the biomass to produce electricity alone and not harvest waste heat for cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP). And that’s a problem, according to Dan Richter, professor of soils and forest ecology at Duke University.

“If we burn wood for electricity only, about three to four logs need to be burned to recover the energy contained in one. If heat and electricity are recovered with advanced wood combustion (AWC) technology, we can capture three to four times the energy that is recovered when burning wood solely for electricity,” he said.

Richter said AWC technology is widely deployed in Europe with plants achieving up to 90 percent efficiencies from burning biomass. Interestingly, four of the five plants that First Energy Generation engineers visited in Europe are combined heat and power (CHP) plants, even though the Ohio plant will generate electricity only.

Richter and a consortium of experts in the forestry and energy industry believe that burning wood solely for electricity wastes sizeable amounts of thermal energy.

“When we do calculations on how much wood is available in the nation and we look at potential supplies for energy we find that there’s just not enough of it to waste,” he said. “But if we can use it efficiently — capturing 70, 80, 90 percent [of the embodied energy in wood] — then wood does become a pretty interesting source of renewable energy that the country isn’t really aware of yet.” _Bioenergy

There is nothing wrong with co-firing coal and biomass. Using gasification technologies -- such as integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) -- you can utilise even dirty coal, without producing significant pollution in the exhaust.

The biggest hangups to using new technology, are government rules, regulations, mandates, and incentives -- most of which lead away from economic efficiencies altogether.

20 KW Gas Fired CHP Furnace in Your Basement?

Lichtblick and Volkswagen are pushing a plan to install 100,000 20KW gas fired CHP furnaces in the basements of Hamburg residents. The furnaces would provide hot water, space heat, and electricity for the homes. Any excess electricity produced would be shunted to the power grid.

Although the generators are not a new concept, the project is novel in that Lichtblick would retain control over the plants after their installation.

Households would pay around 5,000 euros (7,250 dollars) to have the generators set up along with an appropriate heating system.

But individuals would then pay a lower price for heating and receive a modest "rent" for hosting the generator, as well as a bonus at the end of the year calculated on electricity revenues that resulted from Lichtblick's sales. _PO_via_Impactlab

Perhaps a better approach would be natural gas powered fuel cells for homes, functioning as CHP devices. They would produce plenty of heat, and considerably more power than the less efficient combustion furnaces. Several Japanese companies are pursuing the home fuel cell approach.

Gasify Garbage On-Site to Make Electricity

Image via Ecoworld

Converting municipal waste / garbage to syngas and electricity is preferable in many ways to landfills and simple combustion disposal. But collecting the garbage and shipping it to a central gasification plant costs time and money. Why not gasify the waste on-site, then use CHP to maximise efficiencies? Preferably using combined cycle turbine electrical generation. Ecoworld took a look at one such on-site gasifier by IST Energy.

...campuses, military bases, hospitals, and other institutions or commercial complexes can install a waste-to-energy solution from IST Energy, available in modules so it can be scaled to whatever waste processing requirement may apply.

During an interview last week with Stu Haber, CEO of IST Energy, he said the unit they are developing is 30′ by 8.5′ by 8′ high, able to fit in a standard shipping container for intermodal delivery anywhere. Into this volume, the system IST Energy has designed includes space for 3 tons of MSW storage at the front end (so it only has to be fed once per day), with a shredder, dryer, pelletizer, zero-emission gasifier, and internal combustion engine electricity generator that runs on the syngas extracted from the MSW.

...IST Energy intends to sell these units for about $850,000 each, meaning for that price you could process about 1,100 tons of waste each year, generating about 1.3 million kilowatt-hours, along with co-gen heat. At $.15 per kilowatt-hour, you would recover $200K per year just in electricity, plus you would harvest the heat, and presumably, save money on garbage collection fees (only about 5% of the volume of the waste material input remains as ash). If IST Energy can deliver this unit in large quantities according to these specifications, they have a very disruptive technology. _Ecoworld

IST will market this technology to "campuses, military bases, hospitals, and other institutions or commercial complexes". A similar system has been in use at a US base in Iraq since summer of 2008. These systems are relatively small, and shippable via standard shipping container.

But for the big garbage producers -- cities and towns -- a larger facility located at the garbage disposal site should incorporate IGCC technology for CHP production. Pretreatment is key to efficient gasification, and the jury is still out in regard to optimal pre-treatment for municipal waste. Stay tuned.

Cogeneration, CHP, Heat Recovery

A typical coal plant has an efficiency in the low 30% range, meaning 65% or more of the energy is wasted. CHP can improve the plant efficiency to the 60%-80% range._Source

Excess heat production in US industry could potentially provide up to 20% of the nation's electrical power. For now, most of that energy goes into the atmosphere and is lost. With increased heat recovery methods, that heat will be converted to useful power. Some new plants, such as a Hormel meat processing plant in Texas, and other new plants are beginning to salvage waste heat for useful purposes--including electric power.

More than half of the energy potential in traditional power generation goes up the stack as waste heat. In contrast, the UTC Power fuel cell power system converts heat exhaust into heating and cooling, turning potential waste into useable energy. While central powerplants achieve conversion percentages in the lower 30s, the PureCell® system can attain energy conversion efficiencies up to 90 percent. High system efficiencies translate into greater fuel utilization, thereby conserving natural resources and energy. _Source

Here is more on co-generation, or Combined Heat and Power (CHP):

Any place energy is wasted, there's a chance to capture it and do useful work. The scale of waste heat in a steel mill, cement plant or silicon plant makes the potential obvious, but there are a few other types that take a sharper eye.

The heat from a power plant, instead of being lost in a cooling tower or surrendered to the atmosphere, can be used for local heating via underground hot water or steam pipes to nearby businesses, homes or industry. There's a limit on how far the heat can travel, hence the name, district heating. Once more common, today in the US this is mostly limited to college campuses and a few old downtown neighborhoods.

Anytime there is a pressure drop in a pipe, a backpressure turbine generator can capture the lost energy. For example, long distance natural gas pipelines operate at high pressure and when the pressure is reduced for local distribution, some of the significant energy originally used to pressurize the pipe can be recovered. This is sort of like regenerative braking for gas lines. An investment of $8 to $10 billion could capture 6.5 GW, another bargain at $1,250 to $1,500/kW. Steam pipelines are more numerous and have even more potential. The college campuses with district heating mentioned above could also be producing some fuel-free power where ever the steam pressure is reduced from transmission pressures to the pressure used in buildings.

Many industrial processes have leftover gas or create some low quality gas that can be burned. Quite often, this is simply flared ( that is, burned ) at the top of a smokestack. I watched flaring gas coming off steel mill blast furnaces for years as a kid in Gary, Indiana without knowing what it was. In any event, I was awed by 15 foot high tongues of flame dancing on top of a 300 foot high stack. Other sources are oil refineries, auto painting plants, carbon black plants and ethanol refiners.

One more advantage of CHP is that the electricity usually doesn't have to travel far and rarely requires new transmission lines. Unlike many large utility plants sited far away from population centers, most CHP installations are already where there are people and power demand. _Co-Generation

Technically, co-generation is the combined generation of useful heat and electricity. CHP is an equivalent term. Heat recovery, on the other hand, can refer to the retrofitting of heat recovery technology to previously wasted process heat, to yield electric power and/or other productive energy from waste heat. The distinction may seem too fine after the fact, but is quite meaningful at the design stage.

Combined Heat and Power for Food Plants

Many types of food processing plants including sugar and starch refiners, breweries, cereal makers, potato processing plants, etc. can use the organic waste byproducts of their normal operations to create fuel that will both provide process heat and generate electricity for plant operation--CHP. If they are truly thrifty, they can then mine the waste heat from processing to generate yet more electricity, and sell it to the utility if it exceeds their needs.

The Royal Brewery CHP plant will produce 7.4 megawatts (MW) of thermal power and 3.1 MW of electricity, fueled by a mixture of spent grain left over from the brewing process and clean wood waste. Wood is required due to insufficient quantities of spent grain.

Before the spent grain is fed to the boiler, the moisture content is reduced from 80 percent to 60 percent, Kuitunen explains. “That is good enough for our combustion system.”

Food processing giant Tate & Lyle PLC is installing a biomass-fired CHP system at its east London sugar refinery. Wheat husks, a byproduct of flour production, will fuel a $41.4 million, 65-MW biomass boiler. Using biomass will slash energy consumption from fossil fuels by 70 percent, with a corresponding 70 percent reduction in carbon emissions. Steam produced by the boiler will generate electricity and satisfy the refinery’s process heat requirements. Excess power produced by the system will be sold to the National Grid.


McCain Foods in Whittlesey, U.K., constructed an 828,000-square-foot covered anaerobic lagoon to process wastewater from the U.K.’s largest french fry factory. Wastewater containing potato starch generated during processing is piped to the lagoon and produces more than 400-standard-cubic-feet per minute of biogas. The firm may add other potato wastes, such as peels and nubbins, to increase biogas production.

Initially, the biogas fueled a boiler to produce steam but an engineering study determined that more value could be derived from the biogas by producing electricity, explains Carmine Fontana, vice president of gas processing for Ontario, Canada-based Eco-Tec. The biogas now feeds a General Electric Jenbacher reciprocating engine that produces more than 1 MW of electricity, satisfying 10 percent of the plant’s electrical requirements. Heat generated by the engine warms the lagoon.


Austria-based Agrana, one of Central Europe’s leading sugar and starch producers, recently installed a $10.5 million AD system at its sugar refinery in Kaposvár, Hungary. The digester processes spent beet pulp and beet syrup to produce almost 3.9 million cubic feet of biogas a day.

The biogas feeds the plant’s boiler to produce steam, which drives a turbine generating electricity and is used for process heat. The biogas replaces 60 percent of the plant’s energy requirements and cuts carbon emissions by 10,000 tons.

Insource is focusing on six sectors in the food and drink industry that are well-suited for waste-to-energy systems: distilling, brewing and soft drinks, red meat, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, frozen and chilled foods. “We are looking for high volumes of consistent types of wastes, which work best with the technologies available,” Coate says.

The company is currently working with five major U.K. food and beverage companies. “In many cases, AD and CHP are the most appropriate technologies,” Coate says. However, the company can deploy a wide range of technologies since no single technology can treat all wastes.

Recently NISP started working with Severn Trent Water, the U.K.’s largest independent water company, to divert industrial food waste from landfills to STW’s AD plants across the U.K. “There is a big move in the U.K. for companies to build new AD plants to process food wastes,” says James Woodcock, NSIP practitioner. “Being familiar with STW and the water industry in general, I thought there are a lot of these plants in existence already treating sewage mixed with industrial waste.”

STW utilizes AD to treat more than 700,000 gallons of wastewater and sewage a day. Biogas produced by the digesters fuels CHP units generating 154,000 MW hours of electricity, representing 17 percent of STW’s electrical requirements. Thermal energy is used in the treatment process.

Adding industrial organic wastes to STW’s AD systems will increase biogas production and renewable energy generation, improving the sustainability of the treatment process. Industrial food waste producers will benefit by cutting waste disposal costs by as much as two-thirds over landfill costs, Woodcock says. __BiomassMag

Most large plants have the ability to either cogenerate heat and power, or the ability to mine significant amounts of waste heat to create electrical power. Being able to use waste products as fuel to power the CHP is an added dividend.

Ethanol biofuels makers have been learning critical lessons about resourcefulness in the face of rising fuel costs. The ones who succeed will be the ones who take advantage of every source of energy they can find--particularly energy that once was considered "waste."

Portable Biomass Gasifiers on the Move

Image Source

Biomass gasification to syngas is becoming the most efficient means of turning waste biomass and garbage into electrical energy. In Iraq, portable gasifier/generators will be undergoing field tests by the US military throughout the summer until August. The use of portable on-site gasifier/generators in Iraq should cut down on the military fuel convoys that have been subject to ambush and deadly IED attacks.

In Washington DC, Auburn University students have been demonstrating their own portable gasifier-on-a-trailer system to the public and hopefully to clueless US legislators.

Auburn University is showing off its mobile bioenergy unit in the nation’s capitol this week, converting wood chips into electricity on the back of a truck near the National Mall.

The mobile unit, used to promote awareness of biomass energy technologies, converts wood chips, switchgrass and other agricultural byproducts into gas, which can be used to generate electricity or converted into liquid fuel. __Source

The synthetic gas can then be used to fuel an engine that can produce electricity to power and heat remote operations such as poultry houses, green houses or other comparable business operations. The unit can be fueled using wood chips, but AU researchers want to see if other feedstocks, such as poultry litter, and a variety of woody residue materials can also be used.

In addition to demonstrating concepts for generating electrical power and heat, using renewable resources abundantly available in Alabama, AU’s Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts will work with Alabama Power and Community Power Corporation to identify possible economic improvements of this distributed gasification capability as a supplement to more traditional energy sources, such as coal and water.

The use of small gasifiers, like the AU unit, distributed to poultry farms, saw mill operations or other operations where renewable resources are plentiful and do not have to be transported long distances can help power companies meet their renewable energy goals. Both in the field and on campus, the unit becomes a real world classroom helping to train engineering students to form a pool of gasification-trained engineers ready to enter the workforce in this critical energy area. __Source

Gasification of waste biomass and garbage creates H2 and CO, or syngas. Syngas, once cleaned, can either be:

1. burned in gas turbines to generate electricity
2. fired to create steam--which can then be used to drive steam turbines to generate electricity.
3. fermented to make alcohols
4. run through a F-T process with catalysis to make a wide range of hydrocarbons.

The most economical and high yield methods of performing all of the above tasks--and likely others--are being intensively worked out by scientists, engineers, and inventors around the world.

Heat Recovery: 20% of US Electrical Energy Possible Without Burning Any More Fuel

...it’s estimated that energy recovery systems installed in the U.S. industrial facilities could produce up to 20 percent of the country’s electricity needs without burning any additional fossil fuel. Source

Recovering electrical energy from industrial waste heat is a growing enterprise. Gigawatts of energy are escaping into the atmosphere as waste heat, when they could be recovered and turned into much needed electrical power--to power the new electric vehicle fleets and to empower economic growth.

China Energy Recovery Inc. is taking advantage of this valuable niche in China and Southeast Asia and Africa.

China Energy Recovery Inc. has announced the completion of two major waste-heat recovery systems in China, as well as plans for others in Malaysia and Congo. The company has also identified business development potential in the emerging biofuels industry that runs parallel with heat generation.

...The energy recovery systems installed by CER in China are capable of generating approximately 14 megawatts of electricity and nearly 27 megawatts of directly usable heat energy through the capture and harnessing of waste-heat, the company said in a press release. The Malaysian project is intended for a biofuels combustion system with a planned production of 3 megawatts of electricity and 2.9 megawatts of heat energy, according to the company.

Qinghuan said CER has extensive experience in installing and operating systems in various industries, such as steel manufacturing, cement, paper mills, and petro-chemical. “Our systems have proven effective under extremely demanding circumstances and in many different types of industries,” he said. “We’re looking forward to these opportunities to expand our services into new regions and to further demonstrate to the global community the advanced solutions for heat energy recovery CER has achieved.” __Biomass

The ability of a society to make productive use of waste is a good measure of its level of evolution.

Recovery of Waste Heat Biggest US Renewable

The US government has estimated that waste heat recovery could easily become the largest source of renewable energy in the country. Combustion generators are rarely more than 30% efficient in doing work or generating electricity. Most fuel used in combustion goes to waste heat and emissions--entropy. Although the US Congress is asleep at the wheel, savvy entrepreneurs and engineers are busy designing ways to tap into that huge potential resource of waste heat recovery.

"ElectraTherm has unlocked the power of recycling the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S. - waste heat," said ElectraTherm CEO Richard Langson. "This technology has the power to increase electrical output at every fossil fuel burning power plant without burning oil, gas or coal, and without further pollution or damage to the environment."

...ElectraTherm estimates that its units have a subsidy-free payback period of three years or less, and company officials claim "the implications on the world stage of a modular, scalable (50-500kW output) unit making electricity from unused, accessible heat are huge."


The company's patented Twin Screw Expander enables the ElectraTherm Green Machine to do its work. The expander is one-tenth the cost of a turbine as the energy block, according to ElectraTherm. Since the energy block generally constitutes 30 to 40 percent of the cost of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system, the ElectraTherm Green Machine will cost approximately 30 percent less than turbine ORC systems.


The unit operates without gearboxes or the high end electronics required to synchronize a turbine to a generator. Inline process lubrication eliminates oil pumps, filters, separator tanks, parasitic loads and maintenance issues usually associated with lubrication. ElectraTherm officials say the technology reduces maintenance and extends the life of the ElectraTherm Green Machine compared to turbine-based energy solutions. __EC__via__NEN

In other energy news, a Kentucky inventor claims to have devised a way to make gasoline from coal for a cost of US $1.15 a gallon.

"We can make this the equivalent of 25 dollars per barrel of oil, which will come out about $1.10 gasoline at the pump,".

If companies buy it, the idea could take 20 years to become reality at pumps. The U.S. Department of Energy wants to make sure it won't pollute the atmosphere. __NEN

Expanding Use of Bio-Coal, Torrefied Biomass

The process of biomass torrefaction is an excellent way of concentrating the energy of biomass into a smaller bulk. The simple heat processing of solid biomass allows much easier use of such "bio-coal" in coal-fired boilers and CHP systems.

FRANKFURT (Thomson Financial) - RWE AG. said it is taking a 25 percent stake in the Netherland's Topell, a company which converts biomass into coal pellets....The German utility's renewables unit RWE Innogy is seeking to take stakes in start-ups that develop new renewable technologies, and has to that effect budgeted funds of 50 million euros for 2008.

Topell has developed a technology to convert biomass such as roots and grasses to coal pellets that can be co-fired in coal-fired power plants.

The company plans to start operating a site for the commercial production of biomass-based coal pellets in 2009. __Forbes

Biomass is a sustainable form of solar energy, with its own built-in storage. By torrefying biomass-including wood, straw, grass, waste, etc--small regional processing plants can provide a high energy, renewable source of heat and power to local, regional, and more distant energy consumers. The more compact form of energy allows for easier and more economical transportation to point of use.

Adding Biomass to Coal in the UK

One of the easiest ways to utilise biomass to produce energy, is to partially substitute biomass for coal in a traditionally coal-fired power plant. Yorkshire based Drax power plant intends to do exactly that, making Drax the largest biomass producer of electricity in the UK.

Executives from Yorkshire-based Drax signed a deal with Alstom to build a processing plant that could prepare 1.5m tonnes per year of biomass for use in the power station. Under the plans, biomass would be ground into a fine powder and injected directly into the power station's coal-fired furnaces. Building work for the processing plant will start later in 2008 and the first part of the facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2009.

...Neil Crumpton, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said that using biomass in power stations or combined heat and power schemes is a better use of the resource than, for example, turning it into liquid biofuels for use by diesel-engine vehicles. "Co-firing with biomass is a reasonable way forward - it's a logical extension of what Drax is already doing and I've got no qualms with it on that score. If it helps build the sustainable biomass market in the UK, then all well and good."

...To test whether co-firing would work, Drax has used a 2-3% mix of biomass in some of its coal-fired furnaces for several months already. In their current experiments, the biomass fuel is mixed directly into the coal as it burns but this technique would not work for larger quantities of biomass.

"When you burn just a few per cent of biomass, you can afford to use exactly the same lines as coal," said Patrick Fragman, managing director of Alstom, the company that will build the biomass processing plant at Drax. But, for a higher percentage, he said, dedicated infrastructure is needed.

Peter Emery, production director at Drax, said that the new processing plant was a crucial part of the power station's attempt to scale up their biomass usage. He also added that it would be able to handle a wide variety of biomass fuels.

Different biomass materials burn in different ways, so the processing plant needs to be able to handle the materials accordingly. The resulting fuels then need to be inserted into the coal-fired boilers at different positions to ensure they burn properly. Engineers at Drax estimate that it will take 1.5m tonnes of biomass to replace the energy that comes from 1m tonnes of coal. __Guardian

Biomass CHP or cellulosic electricity, is clearly the most efficient way of producing energy from cellulosic biomass. The only reason for taking the less efficient route of producing liquid fuels (BTL) from biomass is that most of the transportation infrastructure cannot run without liquid fuels, at this time. It will likely require 20 years or more to achieve significant conversion of transportation from liquid fuels to electric drives running on stored electricity. Even fuel cells will probably need to run largely on liquid fuels such as methanol, for the next 10 to 20 years minimum.

Biomass on the Rise in N. America, Europe, UK

New projects for biomass gasification to generate power and CHP (combined heat and power) are being installed in the US, Europe, and the UK, as the possibilities of this technology are growing more clear to municipalities, utilities, power co-ops, and independent entrepreneurs. Biomass gasification can be used to drive steam turbines for power generation, or it can be used to create bio-oils, synthetic gasoline/diesel, and bio-alcohols--as well as synthetic chemicals for the chemical, plastics, and cosmetic industries. The versatility of this process combined with the near-ubiquitous nature of feedstock, makes it a logical approach to power, CHP, bio-fuels, and bio-chemicals over large parts of the Earth.

While biomass can be treated by the torrefaction process to create bio-coal--replacing coal in power plants--biomass can also be used for remediation at the sites of former coal mines.

Todd's proposal outlines four stages of recovery and development. In the first, healing is the primary focus. Drawing on his extensive experience with "living machines"—biological technologies that echo natural systems to produce clean water and environmental clean-up—Todd foresees plant-based systems that will detoxify the vast lagoons of coal slurry in the region, build new healthy soils, and yield raw products for economic purposes.

"Coal miners and some of their machinery could be employed in the process," he notes.

In the second stage, reforestation begins. Some reclaimed land will be dedicated to short-rotation fast-growing woody crops to be harvested for biomass. Other long-standing forests will capture carbon from the atmosphere, slowing global warming.

In the third stage, the economic benefits of the biomass emerge. "Already suitable Appalachian wind sites have been discovered that can provide competitive sources of energy," Todd writes, "paired with another renewable energy source like woody biomass from willows and poplars, a viable energy system can be developed."

And this biomass can be used not just for electricity but for "refining fuels, and manufacturing a wide range of products ranging from plastics to polymers and adhesives," he says.

In the fourth stage, succession is at work not just in the land but in human communities and management of the land. Initially, philanthropic organizations would purchase damaged sites and shepherd their recovery. These restored lands would be passed along to new capitalized corporations that would develop forestry and other businesses there. ___Source

There are many approaches to biomass and bioenergy that have yet to be explored. Some of these unexplored approaches will probably work well for your locality or region.

The greatest promise of bioenergy is the economic and eco-regenerative promise to small localities and regions. By keeping economic control of their own energy economy, local regions in both the third world and the developed world can create more of their own destinies. A movement from central control of energy and bio-resources to a local control of those resources is a movement of political and economic power from the big to the small.

US Bio-Energy Funding Picks Up

In the US both the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy are beginning to infuse much-needed basic science funding into the bio-energy sector. The grants span a wide range of topics in bio-energy.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that combined, USDA and DOE will invest up to $18.4 million, over three years, for 21 biomass research and development (R&D), and demonstration projects that will contribute to creating the bioeconomy. These projects specifically aim to address critical barriers to making production of biomass based products - electricity, heat, biofuels and bio-based products - more efficient and cost-effective.___Source

The projects range from studies of rapid-growing biomass plants, to cellulosic ethanol systems, to micro-wave pyrolisis and thermo-chemical processing of biomass to combined heat and power (CHP) biomass. Additionally, various industrial processes for non-energy chemical uses of biomass are also being studied.

Frankly, industry itself has taken the lead in cellulosic ethanol production, so the US government should not be financing that sector. But the other projects mentioned at the Biopact article linked above appear to open doors to significant energy and industrial projects in the future.