[Gasification] What happened at Choren
linvent at aol.com
linvent at aol.com
Sun Jul 10 12:37:24 CDT 2011
Dear Thomas Koch,
I presume that you tried to relay your views to Vinod Kholsa, the
founder of Sun Microsystems and some thing with AMD. All successful IT
types that have not a clue about energy projects. There was a speech
given to a group of high powered financial types at an energy
conference once by a wise person who asked the audience who had
operated a power plant, negotiated a PPA, done due diligence on a power
plant project and out of several hundred or so, only one or two raised
their hands. The rest were refugees from the IT world,looking for the
next gold mine.
I have had many experiences with even my own personnel about how
things need to be done to work right. The heavy duty power struggles
within Ontario Hydro between engineering groups within OHT were
legendary and resulted in the project having 200% overruns in time and
cost, ultimately failing due to OH's loss of several nuclear reactors
and being broken up, canceling the project. The damage to Thermogenics
was irreparable. Whatever can't go wrong will.
Sincerely,
Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
President
Thermogenics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Koch <tk at tke.dk>
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
<gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Sat, Jul 9, 2011 8:35 pm
Subject: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren
I forgot a NOT - I did not see any evidence !!!
________________________________________
Fra: Thomas Koch
Sendt: 10. juli 2011 04:32
Til: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
Emne: SV: [Gasification] What happened at Choren
Dear Tom Taylor
I did see any evidence that steel was developed at Range - I
interpreted as one of the arguments that was used to fool them selves
and maybe the investors also.
I tried to communicate my views to the VC that provided the money to
Range - just to try to find out how they are thinking - but they did
not want to discus with me.
Did Shell report reasons why they pulled out of CHOREN?
Best regards
Thomas
________________________________________
Fra: gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] på vegne af
linvent at aol.com [linvent at aol.com]
Sendt: 9. juli 2011 22:17
Til: gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org
Emne: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren
Dear Mr. Koch,
I certainly appreciate your insight to the management and
technical issues at both Range and Choren. You know that Shell pulled
out of Choren some time ago because of these reported reasons.
A few years ago our government used the language "too big to fail"
when it bailed out financial institutions. This is the same problem
with these large projects, they convince themselves that because they
have so much money that they couldn't fail. They also believed it and
made decisions accordingly.
I appreciate the information on Range's development of a special
steel. I wonder where it is now? it is also interesting to see that
serious, seasoned project managers are not in sight, but come from the
IT world (as did Range's financing).
Of course, when Farmland Industries hired Texaco to refit the
Coolwater (originally near Barstow, California) coal gasifier to
petcoke, they fired them after 6 months because they didn't do much
besides spend money. Farmland took over the work themselves and made it
work, but it drove them into bankruptcy.
There are a few consultants out there who can do a productive
contribution, but they have to be very, very carefully managed or else
they spend lot of your money.
Sincerely,
Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
President
Thermogenics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Koch <tk at tke.dk>
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
<gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Sat, Jul 9, 2011 11:54 am
Subject: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren
It is a very interesting question you raise.
What can be learned from Range Fuels and from CHOREN
I have visited both companies trying to help them feeding biomass into
their reactors and spend quit a lot of brain work on both.
One common thing is that both did not answer simpel normal questions.
I did not understand the energy balance on Range and the Mass balance
on CHOREN.
And questions was ansvered by business development people.
I remember a meeting at CHOREN where I asked about the low melting ash
components - where did they go and how did it work?
The business development manager started a long specialtive explanation
about how they washed it out of the char - after it had been taken out
of the pressurised enclosure - and then the char was put back into the
process with out these troublesome ash components.
My business development manager had $$$ in his eyes - imagine all the
feeders we could sell - (we counted 7 pressurised in and outlet on each
gasifier!!!!) if we could just focus on this problem instead of
discussing ash and other irrelevant issues.
At the site visit 2 of their engineers told me that they had tried to
draw the attention of the management to this problem with little
succes.
My imagination tells my that you can identify 50 similar issues at
CHOREN.
Similar I had a discussion with a manager at RANGE - he had realised
that the complexity could potentially be a problem. He was a former
succesfull business man from Apple.
I tried to explain him the consequenses of thermal transient in a
startup situation when you have square hot geometries. He then
explained me that at Range they had invented a refractory steel that
could stand 100 degree higher temperatures than the most expensive
Haynes cobalt/steel alloy. I congratulated him with this invention and
predicted that he would be come a VERY rich man just by this singel
invention.
I dont think he understood one word of what I said to him.
The lesson I have learned is that all projects my full fill 5 rules.
1 First law of thermodynamics - Mass will not be made from nothing and
can not dissapear
2 Second law of thermodynamics - No matter what you do you make a loss
:-)
3 First law of money - Money will not be made from nothing but can
disappear
4 Common sense mut be applied to all elements in the process.
5 You can fool your selves but only others if you pay them their
salary.
And making projects by consultants - FORGET IT!!
Best regards
Thomas Koch
______________________________________
Fra: gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] på vegne af
linvent at aol.com [linvent at aol.com]
Sendt: 9. juli 2011 17:32
Til: gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org
Emne: 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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