[Gasification] Small steam systems plus gasifiers for electricity

Sun Dec 1 17:03:56 CST 2013

Thank you everyone.   Many experts have responded, and the responses 
have been singularly against using steam for small electricity production.

Paul

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype: paultlud      Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.com

On 12/1/2013 1:57 PM, Tom Miles wrote:
>
> Thomas,
>
> We have seen four or five biomass fired Stirling companies fail in the 
> last 15 years. Successful Stirling engine companies  supply the solar 
> and recreational markets with very small systems and run mostly on LPG.
>
> Stirling DK had the potential to fill an important niche. I liked 
> their 9 kWe and 35 kWe units. It seems likely that they failed for 
> business reasons as much as technical reasons. They were very slow to 
> get organized and capitalize on the early experience of the DTU units. 
> It is not clear why they charged so much.
>
> We have a few small scale 50 kWe Organic Rankin cycle (ORC) generators 
> in operation in the US. They seem to work very well for clean waste 
> heat like exhaust from diesel gensets or biogas. One of my clients is 
> testing one on diesel exhaust. http://electratherm.com/
>
> The owner of a poultry farm tells me that his ORC unit works fine but 
> the heat exchanger from his poultry litter fired gasifier keeps 
> plugging up. (We have been there before.)  He gets 20-30 kWe from the 
> $280,000 machine. The gasifier and ORC system cost $1 million. There 
> seem to be conflicting reports about how much the system is actually run.
>
> Steam systems suit district heat or industrial settings where much 
> more steam is produced than needed for electricity otherwise load 
> balancing is a problem. We have seen a 1 MWe wood boiler and steam 
> turbine system fail at a prison due to the inability to balance 
> heating and electrical loads. We saw many small turbines in the 250 
> kWe-1.5 MWe range installed in the wood industry in the 1970s and 
> 1980s. It was common to see a sawmill generate higher pressure steam 
> and use a 500 kWe backpressure turbine to reduce the pressure for 
> distribution to a large number of lumber dry kilns. We have lost most 
> of our sawmills in our region and electricity is cheap so we haven't 
> seen any new systems installed. I visited a 600 kWe Russian turbine at 
> a district heating plant in Hjordkær, Denmark in about 2004. At the 
> time they had been running since 1997 and were happy with it. They 
> were serving about 700 homes and a chocolate factory. It seemed like a 
> good match.
>
> In recent years we have seen a couple of small scale steam systems in 
> the 250 kWe to 2 MWe range. One supplier will provide a 1 MWe modular 
> fluidized bed steam system for $5 million. These need to be installed 
> in industrial or utility setting for reasons cited by others.
>
> We were disappointed last year not to find more gasifiers with 
> demonstrated performance in the 2 MWe scale for the Alaska project. 
> Nexterra was just installing their 2 MWe Jenbacher system at 
> University of British Columbia. Babcock Volund gave us a budget price 
> but didn't think putting a unit in Alaska was interesting to them. 
> Kawasaki Heavy Industries seems to have abandoned their program that 
> was based on the CarboConsult downdraft gasifier. Their principal 
> proponent of the system retired. Etc. And we didn't want a gasifier 
> with a wet cleaning system. We did receive budget proposals from some 
> companies that had 150 kWe to 250 kWe gasifiers but that didn't have 
> field performance data to demonstrate their production with multiple 
> units.
>
> We still need to demonstrate more viable small scale systems with any 
> technology.
>
> Tom
>
> *From:*Gasification 
> [mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] *On Behalf Of 
> *Thomas Koch
> *Sent:* Sunday, December 01, 2013 9:42 AM
> *To:* Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
> *Subject:* Re: [Gasification] Small steam systems plus gasifiers for 
> electricity
>
> Jeff
>
> Striling.dk just went banckrupt -- and gasification gas is Dynamite.
>
> Thomas
>
> *Fra:*Gasification 
> [mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] *På vegne af 
> *Jeff Davis
> *Sendt:* 1. december 2013 18:37
> *Til:* Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
> *Emne:* Re: [Gasification] Small steam systems plus gasifiers for 
> electricity
>
> I would have to agree with Steve. Steam is a lot like playing with 
> dynamite. A gas producer and an off the shelf engine is the system to 
> beat.
>
> Too bad nobody is working on a Stirling engine for using excess heat.
>
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
> On 12/01/2013 11:29 AM, sabbadess at aol.com <mailto:sabbadess at aol.com> 
> wrote:
>
>     I found that small steam at the residential scale is just a bad idea.
>
>
>
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