[Gasification] Gasification Digest, Vol 22, Issue 8
Toby Seiler
seilertechco at yahoo.com
Sun Jul 1 08:26:11 CDT 2012
If you've been successful at working with the Woody Biomass Utilization program...well, your one of the very few. Seems like another way to spend some government money, but chasing that money will be a full time job with near zero chance of becoming a reality.
Toby
Seilertechco
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Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 3:00 PM
Subject: Gasification Digest, Vol 22, Issue 8
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Today's Topics:
1. Forest Understory (Kenny Redd)
2. Re: Forest Understory (linvent at aol.com)
3. Re: Forest Understory (linvent at aol.com)
4. Re: Identifying and fixing technical and commercial
roadblocks to commercial small-scale CHP gasifiers (Peter & Kerry)
5. Re: Forest Understory (Kenny Redd)
Are there data regarding harvesting forest understory and very small trees for biomass and as an adjunct to wildfire treatment programs? Seems like a perfect fit to me.
Thanks,
Kenny Redd
inovaenergy.com
USDA, US Forest Service has done tons of work on this, has special long term incentives for those who set up to harvest. The best solution is a mobile or semi-mobile biomass to synfuel or chemical plant as it is the only method which makes sense for chasing the harvested areas
Sincerely,
Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
Thermogenics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kenny Redd <kenredd at gmail.com>
To: Gasification <Gasification at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Fri, Jun 29, 2012 1:52 pm
Subject: [Gasification] Forest Understory
Are there data regarding harvesting forest understory and very small trees for biomass and as an adjunct to wildfire treatment programs? Seems like a perfect fit to me.
Thanks,
Kenny Redd
inovaenergy.com
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USDA, US Forest Service has done tons of work on this, has special long term incentives for those who set up to harvest. The best solution is a mobile or semi-mobile biomass to synfuel or chemical plant as it is the only method which makes sense for chasing the harvested areas
Sincerely,
Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
Thermogenics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kenny Redd <kenredd at gmail.com>
To: Gasification <Gasification at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Fri, Jun 29, 2012 1:52 pm
Subject: [Gasification] Forest Understory
Are there data regarding harvesting forest understory and very small trees for biomass and as an adjunct to wildfire treatment programs? Seems like a perfect fit to me.
Thanks,
Kenny Redd
inovaenergy.com
_______________________________________________
Gasification mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address Gasification at bioenergylists.org to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Gasifiers, News and Information see our web site: http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/ Excellent summary Tom, and I like Thomas's pragmatism voiced from real experience. We are continents apart yet have had many similar experiences. Davids suggestion of a study sounds good, so long as the system developers tell the truth about their failures (allowing for the fact many don't understand what these really were and the rest is proprietary) and the person doing the study is knowledgeable and experienced enough to understand the difference. Still such a study would be a good title for a grant application somewhere...
On Thursday I had a great day, not so much the start as the morning was spent in paperwork till after lunch, but then I got to travel 80 minutes from where I live to the gasifier near Canberra to meet someone who had asked to see it, and to give a small demonstration.
I don't know what the chaps real interest was, and I don't really care, it was an excuse to get away and play with the system for a couple of hours. We have been way too busy on other aspects of the business.
In the last few months operational runs have been managed by my sons as I have a couple of crook knees that prevented me from climbing up and checking how things were going inside (it is a development unit), which was frustrating as we had changed our normal fuel preparation to something more likely to be found in the real world. This day I was on my own, when I got there, at the same time as the visitor, I realised that on the last run 10 days earlier the top hopper door had not been closed properly and the rain, frosts and heavy fog in between had soaked much of the fuel bed that had been left inside, with the hopper 3/4 full of now damp wood chips. I explained the situation and he was very understanding and said he didn't really expect to see it running.
Getting it running though was not my concern, I lit her up on the top of the fuel bed instead of where we would normally, it merely took an extra 15-20 minutes compared to the usual start-up before we had a a self sustaining flare at the gas burner, running at 180Nm3/hr. We had watched as the steam plume diminished and finally disappeared as the unit came up to stable operation with fresh fuel at about the 35 minute mark, with the flare transition to fully transparent (colourless) with no sign of soot or tars. Our visitor was gobsmacked and confessed to having forgotten all the questions he had been going to ask, they were in any case redundant, he was amazed at the low smoke levels before flare ignition even with the wet start up. He did volunteer as he was vigorously shaking my hand on leaving that he was someone very influential (who knew?) and that what he had witnessed gave him hope for the world in our rapidly changing and carbon constrained
future...
The point of me relating this story is this; we have been able to do exactly the same thing on a wide range of fuels for the last three years. It does not make us commercial, and the visitor may well be important in some way, but this will not speed up our progress.
Yes there have been many technical barriers along the way but these have been overcome, I was really pleased to see Thomas's list here and on an earlier post to cross check against our own. Thomas, any time you down in the antipodes we would be pleased to show you some innovations working...
The real barriers begin after this, and are more to do with human systems and greed. We have even had to fight a court case against a public authority following a successful project with them where they have then withheld lawful payments in order to ensure they "secured" our IP for themselves through unilaterally reissuing amended contracts after the event and requiring us to accept these before being paid for what had already been done.
I have lost count of the number of "engineers" who have turned up offering to take and "fix" our system and distribute it to the world.
Then there is the seemingly economically bizarre decisions, like clients who have allocated sufficient funds to put a system in, are stalled on their essential business expansion due to local grid constraints, but are still waiting for the outcome of grant applications to give them the same amount of money as would have been saved in avoided energy costs over the same waiting period if they had just gone ahead with the project alone in the first place.
Do we blame clients for our failure to launch? Generally no (the exception is those who having confirmed the feasibility then engage in corrupt practice to gain advantage), there is so much bastardry and false claims in the industry ordinary clients are justified in being cautious. It is ultimately up to us to prove ourselves worthy and there is little alternative other than to work slowly but surely towards operation goals with every risk management strategy in place. This cannot help but take time.
There is another fundamental aspect to this illustrated in the reverse by some of the comments on this thread. Successful implementation of the technology must seamlessly integrate with the clients "business as usual". We are yet to find anyone running successful lives or businesses who are "lazy". There is some education required, particularly in transitional thinking from "I have a waste stream I have to deal with" to "I have a resource that enhances my business". In this context they will accept extra labour input, but only if it turns a clear profit. However the best implementation of systems simply redirect existing labour.
We are well over the thousand hour mark on one of the hearths, with a rebuild initially after only 100 hrs because we found issues ultimately traced back to material substitution by the fabricator. Did we blame the fabricator? No, we saw this as a failure of our own quality control systems and amended these accordingly, allowing for the fact that this will be tried from time to time by people who "think they know better" but do not understand the impacts of their decisions, and also by the unscrupulous who do not care either way.
We are expecting problems at the 2000-3000 hr mark as some components degrade over time in the harsh conditions they operate under (no sign yet). Is this a show stopper? No because this has been catered for in the system design which allows replacement and restarting of the whole hearth assembly in under 4 hours. The "old" hearth assembly can then be shipped back to the workshop for refurbishment. Yes this has all been catered for in our economic model and is part of the anticipated maintenance schedule and cost. If this does eventuate (at whatever regular interval) does it then matter at 15,000 or 30,000hrs?
I have a mate who laughed at this approach as he said it reminded him of the story of the old axe near the wood heap at the back of the farm house. It reputedly had been in the family for generations, of course the handle had been replaced a few times along with the steel head at least twice over the years...but it is the continuity that matters.
Over the next twelve months or so we will crack the 3000hr and +7000hr milestones in commercial type operating conditions. We might then advertise our success, but this will not be because we need to drum up business, the level of word of mouth enquires we deal with on an almost daily basis is why we don't have a website for tyre kickers to flutter around. It is no wonder the scam artists do so well, we do not seek investor finance yet still have to turn down offers on a regular basis. Why turn them down? because money is not a substitute for time and operational experience. Money can assist getting the latter started, but if you are already on the path why dilute ownership?
Before anyone feels jealous, calls us liars or pronounces us "lucky" to be in the above position it took more than two decades of sacrifice and unpaid work whilst surviving being ripped off by scam artists along the way (some lurking on this list) to arrive at this happy circumstance, and we are still not commercial, which we define for ourselves simply as returning a profit on our investment and labour without resulting in unhappy customers, the rest is just academic.
Cheers,
Peter
Thanks Leland,
It's called the Woody Biomass Utilization (WBU) Grant program.
http://www07.grants.gov/search/search.do?&mode=VIEW&oppId=130235
very interesting...
Kenny
On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 2:10 PM, <linvent at aol.com> wrote:
USDA, US Forest Service has done tons of work on this, has special long term incentives for those who set up to harvest. The best solution is a mobile or semi-mobile biomass to synfuel or chemical plant as it is the only method which makes sense for chasing the harvested areas
>
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
>Thermogenics Inc.
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Kenny Redd <kenredd at gmail.com>
>To: Gasification <Gasification at bioenergylists.org>
>Sent: Fri, Jun 29, 2012 1:52 pm
>Subject: [Gasification] Forest Understory
>
>
>Are there data regarding harvesting forest understory and very small trees for biomass and as an adjunct to wildfire treatment programs? Seems like a perfect fit to me.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Kenny Redd
>inovaenergy.com
>
>_______________________________________________
Gasification mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address Gasification at bioenergylists.org to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Gasifiers, News and Information see our web site: http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/
>_______________________________________________
>Gasification mailing list
>
>to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
>Gasification at bioenergylists.org
>
>to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
>http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org
>
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>http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/
>
>
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