[Gasification] What happened at Choren

linvent at aol.com linvent at aol.com
Sat Jul 9 18:01:03 CDT 2011 

Dear Tom Reed,
       It is not clear to me how the economic issues of coal cause the 
technical failure of biomass projects. I should think that whoever 
invests hundreds of millions in any energy project has a spreadsheet in 
front to look at and has done the homework to make sure the numbers are 
correct. If this spreadsheet doesn't look good, then maybe the investor 
would put it into a coal project instead?
       The issue is that the spreadsheet isn't correct and the investor 
will take a hike when some of the numbers do not match what was 
presented to him. They have some degree of tolerance, but that % is 
getting smaller and smaller as the investors get wiser and wiser.
      This is precisely what happened to Syngas Corp,, Choren, and 
Range. The reasons are very similar in all three cases. I can cite many 
others of similar demise. Biomass project developers, managers, 
engineers are their own worst enemy. Some of the engineering mistakes 
are that of a freshman chemical engineer student.  Coal is a well 
seasoned, experienced industry, but there isn't one coal to liquids or 
chemicals plant in the US, except for Eastman. The Chinese are way 
ahead of us on that.
Sincerely,
Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
President
Thermogenics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Reed <tombreed2010 at gmail.com>
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification 
<gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org>; Cliff Hooper 
<c.hooper at enviracarbon.com>
Cc: gasification <gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Sat, Jul 9, 2011 4:30 pm
Subject: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren

Dear Tom Taylor

You bring back many sad memories of sad projects that I was peripheral 
to 1990-2000.  i suppose one reason for the failure of biomass projects 
is that coal is standing in the wings setting an economic floor that it 
is hard for wood to beat.

A second reason is that al is a very direct benefit to anyone owning a 
mine and the downside of coal vs biomass

Global warming from recycling sequestered carbon

Toxic emissions of mercury etc. are passed on to the world at large 
which cant defined itself.

Tom Reed

Dr Thomas B Reed
President, The Biomass Energy Foundation
www.Woodgas.com

On Jul 9, 2011, at 11:32 AM, linvent at aol.com wrote:

> 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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