[Gasification] Spanner

[Fredrik Ek]

Hi Tom and all,



Personally I have visited about ten different Spanner installations during

the last years. Spanner builds the units in two versions, 45 kWe with

turbocharger and 30 kWe without. Most of the units that I have seen, have

been running and the owners more or less happy. Spanner uses a big size

chips feeding sluice that seems to work really well. The gasifier is rather

traditional with five nozzles, no constriction and a conical half fixed

half rotating grate. The primary air is heated by the leaving gas, but most

of the heat in the product gas is used for heating purposes via a

productgas/water heat exhanger. Spanner uses a fabric filter that is

cleaned with the help of a simple but clever pneumatic/mechanical

arrangement. No condensate is separated from the gas. The wood chips need

to be dry. In several of the installations I have seen, the air from the

room where the gasification unit and the genset are located, is used for

drying the fuel. I believe Spanner is one of the best working small

gasification units on the market.



In Germany the feed in tariff system is good and make these units

economical. In Germany you get between 160 and 200 €/MWh electricity

delivered to the grid from a wood powered CHP unit. In Finland units below

100 kVA are excluded from the finnish tariff system (83,5 €/MWh plus 20

€/MWh if certain requirement on total efficiency are filled). The exclusion

of small units means that the price you get for delivering electricity to

the grid is around 35 €/MWh (Nordpool spot - a margin). In practise this

means, that the only option for a small unit in Finland is to use the

produced power on site. The electricity price for an end consumer,

including grid fees and taxes, is around 120 €/MWh here. The price of wood

chips of reasonable quality is about 20 €/m3 or 25 €/MWh. With an assumed

electrical efficiency of 25 %, you get 0,2 MWh power from one m3 wood

chips. This means you can buy the fuel with the money you can save by not

buying power from the grid. For being economically possible in Finland, a

small CHP is dependent on that you can make full use of both the produced

heat and the produced power on site.



Driving on wood gas works here though. Winter and freezing condensates,

humid chips etc. makes it nice not to be dependent on driving only on wood

gas and every day.. But it does work.



Best regards, 



Fredrik Ek









On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:18:00 -0800, "Tom Miles" <tmiles at trmiles.com>

wrote:

> We have been hearing that Spanner in Germany has sold about 130

gasifiers

> for heat (to 10 kWth) and power (up the 45 kWe) for wood chips.

> http://www.holz-kraft.de/en/

> 

>  

> 

> Does anyone have direct experience with these gasifiers?

> 

>  

> 

> Thanks

> 

>  

> 

> Tom



-- 

Fredrik Ek

fredrik.ek at xylogas.fi

+358407547182