[Gasification] Economy for CHP on Biomass

Rolf Uhle energiesnaturals at gmx.de
Fri Dec 31 02:49:48 CST 2010











Hallo all-or those which still read, anyway !

Could we please stop giving words more importance than facts ?

Which really interested investors could be scared off by definitions if we 
show them a well working system?

Let's do this:
Build and operate good systems and they shall make their way , find their 
niches and at a given time become mainstream.

Let's not spend our energy on little wars

Do we really have all that time?

( Jim, you could have answered my questions in a fraction of this time !)

Let's begin 2011 in a more efficient way !

Rolf





Am Freitag, 31. Dezember 2010 04:19:56 schrieb jim mason:
> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Thomas Koch <TK at tke.dk> wrote:
> > Tom
> >
> > I have been looking for niches for my gasifier technology for 10 years
> > without identifying any.
> >
> > The question that i ask myselves is: Why did I develop this technology?
> >
> > The only reasonanble answer i can give is that there was a lot of public
> > support money available and it was good fun.We all (us that spend public
> > money with out thinking about market possibilities) believed that as soon
> > as something would be working support structures would be implemented and
> > our technologies would be sold at the price level it had. Like it
> > happended to the windmills and Stirling now selling electricity at 270
> > EUR/MWh ~ 350 $/MWh.
>
> i feel your pain thomas.  this is one of the unfortunate downsides of
> public money.  it can distort the underlying economics of an endeavor
> and prevent the ultimate value reckoning the technology will receive.
> physics and economics will eventually hold court, no matter how much
> we try to prevent the reckoning.  both are brutal jurors.  seldom does
> one get an appeal and retrial.
>
> if we conceive and engineer from the beginning with these realities in
> mind, the end of public money does not end the endeavor.  in fact, it
> is not even needed to start.  one of the biggest "blessings" of our
> endeavor is that we had none.  we had to start and continue with
> reality in the facility.  this forced us to do things differently.
>
> working up from junk, with the important help of everyone here, we've
> been able to produce a fully automated system with integrated
> industrial type engine and genhead for $1700/kw.  this is at 10kw,
> where meeting price points are even more difficult.  i think we need
> to get this to $1000/kw for the real calculus to work out for general
> use.  that's where we're going.  we are far from done.
>
> you cannot reach these price points starting with traditional designs
> and adding band aids to fix problems not well solved in the reactor.
> you need to do some rethinking about the total system.  you need to do
> much more with much less.  you need to not create problems in the
> beginning needing more eq and space to solve downstream.
>
> you can not assume the basic engineering in this endeavor is already
> done and all we need are slight tweaks around the edges.  it's not.
> you can't simply complain that people won't run things correctly and
> they should better prepare their fuel.  they won't.
>
> getting to an actually relevant and meaningful small scale
> gasification solution is a multi-fronted product design problem.  it
> is not simply a reactor design problem, with the rest left to other
> "departments" to work out the details.  if you didn't consider
> manufacturing and distribution from day one, you are likely going to
> return to day one after x years of engineering, and start again.
>
> until we deal with the full suite of issues that contribute to the end
> price and user experience, we are not going to create the "lift lid,
> put in junk, out comes useful things" washing machine type appliance
> that the world really wants this tech to be.  or in other metaphor, a
> "PC of personal scale energy".  that's what i'm trying to make.
>
> i gently suggest the syngas/producer gas debate might really about
> whether one thinks the old designs have already solved the problem, or
> whether one thinks we can and need to do fundamentally better.  not
> incrementally, but exponentially.  i of course argue the later, and at
> times this seems to upset those who want to protect the former.
>
>
> jim
>
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