[Gasification] What happened at Choren

Sat Jul 9 13:37:34 CDT 2011

Hi Tom Taylor,

Yes, Range and Choren failed, quite spectacularly. Were those hundreds of millions of investment dollars simply 'gasified' and made to disappear? Perhaps.
When such failures happen and particularly when they involve public financing, there should be a requirement that the last few bucks in the bank be devoted to writing a thorough and, hopefully, self-critical post-mortem of what went wrong. Was it technology? Execution? Project management? Likely, a combination of these factors coupled with an excess of hubris brought on by the giddiness of swimming in OPM (other peoples' money).
Would analysis of failed projects (most projects fail) expose some common reasons for failure that future enterprises may avoid? I suspect so. Would this affect the financing of future projects? Maybe not. But it should.
As you suggest, the failure of major gasification initiatives make the road rockier for future attempts. But technology is just the tip of the iceberg; technology management can make the difference between the success or failure of technologically-sound projects, but, unfortunately, it can't change the laws of nature to allow wrong-headed technology to succeed.
If a project such as Choren failed because, as was suggested recently on this list,  it ran out of steam in the commissioning process, then this is a management issue. There's lots of issues associated with scale-up, and leadership is more important in this phase of project development than it is during the design phase. You rightly suggest that project designers and constructors (by the hundreds) may not be the optimal team for dealing with start-up and operational issues.
Someone (maybe someone working for an advanced degree) will someday do an in-depth analysis of biomass gasification project failures. This could serve as an investor guidebook for future projects. I suspect that investment capital disconnected from due diligence puts wheels under lots of shaky technology and incompetent management.
Will we know the Real Thing when it comes along?

Best, 
Mark Ludlow

-----Original Message-----
From: gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org [mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of linvent at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 8:32 AM
To: gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren

Dear Tom Miles and the list:
      One thing that should be learned is that when there is a lot of money around, the tendency is to hire a lot of folks and then the pressure is on to burn money fast. I also see "financing issues with start up of commercial plant" to read, too expensive, has technical issues, vis a vis Range Fuels and others. This is a repeat of even the Downdraft system from Grabowski under Syngas co. This was even partially funded in the 80's by a group which had provided funding to Thermogenics and the lead financier called me several years after funding Syngas to say that i was right, it would fail. They decided to not fund Thermogenics because of the lack of PhD's who could argue that their process was better. Not having a degree made my arguments not listened to.
      The question arises as to what to do with a large staff which initially does engineering work, and then when the design is completed, what are they doing next until the design is completed and operational? 
This is why to some extent, this work being done by consultants may be better of a business structure.
      Unfortunately, the financial world relies on degrees for results which paves the way downhill. A multiple PhD in mathematics who was Sandia National Laboratories' lead mathematician, with Stanford and Caltech on his CV, had a saying on his door "A thermometer is not the only thing with degrees and no brains".
      The more of these large operations to hit the walls, the more difficult the field will be to get serious project financing and move forward. There are others slated to fail in near term from what I have been hearing, high profile supposedly "successful commercial operations".
Sincerely,
Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
President
Thermogenics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Dl <d0xunt at gmail.com>
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification <gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Fri, Jul 8, 2011 4:43 pm
Subject: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren

http://www.choren.com/en/information-and-press/press-releases/

Going into bankruptcy in Germany.

Dan Lacy

The best way to compile inaccurate information that no one wants is to make it up.
Scott Adams

On Jul 8, 2011, at 3:25 PM, "Tom Miles" <tmiles at trmiles.com> 
wrote:

This Google alert abut Choren should be on interest to anyone who has 
follwoed biomass pyrolysis an dgiasification to syngas. See the Google 
Alert link below.  Tom     News1 new result for gasifier What Happened 
at Choren?
Consumer Energy Report
The gasifier would be scaled up from the pilot plant scale of 1 MW th 
to 45 MW th . Shell's Fischer-Tropsch technology was being used in the 
plant, ... 

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