Fwd: Re: IEA workshop report: Small scale Commercial Gasification could be goldmine

[Lloyd Helferty]

International Energy Agency (IEA) says that any company that can commercialize affordable, small scale gasifiers for local decentralised energy production "could do very well".

"Whoever first gets a small-scale gasifier up that meets Knoef et al's proposed criteria on whether or not a gasification technology is commercial..."

Some possibilities:

• Nexterra “inside the fence” power plants?
• Phoenix energy?
• Octaflame?
• GTI (Des Plaines, Illinois)?

I would suggest that whomever can design a system that is affordable (for farmers/individual landowners), small-scale and efficiently makes high quality Biochar at the same time could truly be sitting on a "goldmine" once Biochar is widely recognized and utilized commercially in North America (and around the world).

Regards,

  Lloyd Helferty, Engineering Technologist
  Principal, Biochar Consulting (Canada)
  www.biochar-consulting.ca
  48 Suncrest Blvd, Thornhill, ON, Canada
  905-707-8754
  **NEW CELL: 647-886-8754 NEW**
     Skype: lloyd.helferty
  Steering Committee coordinator
  NEW Canadian Biochar Initiative (New CBI)
  President, Co-founder & CBI Liaison, Biochar-Ontario
    Advisory Committee Member, IBI
  http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1404717
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Biochar Offsets Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2446475
A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself.
 - Franklin D. Roosevelt

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: Gasification Digest, Vol 20, Issue 8
Date:	Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:08:56 +1000
From:	David Coote

On 17/04/2012 5:00 AM:

I'd just spent the day in the country near Melbourne chatting with a guy who runs a small sawmill using salvage logs from arborists, farms, housing development etc
We worked out roughly that he's generating about 1500tonnes/annum of waste.
He's very interested in using this for local decentralised energy production. There's an enormous amount of small-scale biomass assets dotted around the countryside.

Whoever first gets a small-scale gasifier up that meets Knoef et al's proposed criteria on whether or not a gasification technology is commercial could do very well.
From the IEA workshop report (Knoef, Buhler and Babu 2007, p5):

1.      Continuous integrated plant operation under commercial conditions for a minimum of 2,000 hours

2.      Plant availability of 80% or higher

3.      Profitable plant operation without government support; an example is the sustainable financial support from CHP operations with feed-in rate for electricity and heat

4.      Plant operation without major modifications during the first year of commissioning

5.      Process owners willing to specify investment and operational costs and offer or arrange performance, service, and maintenance guarantees

6.      Process owners ready to offer ‘turn-key’ plants

 Knoef et al also emphasise “that the development, optimization, and commercialization of first-of-a-kind BMG [Biomass Gasification] process are challenging and require substantial financial resources” (2007, p4) and that sale of “5 or more gasification systems of the same gasification island configuration” is a commercial criterion (2007, p1).

Knoef HAM, Buhler R, and Babu S 2007. Workshop No. 1 (2007-09): Situation Analysis and Success and Visions for Biomass Gasification IEA. Retrieved October 1, 2009 from http://media.godashboard.com//gti/IEA_BRU_11-07.pdf