[Gasification] Making char vs producer gas

Peter Davies idgasifier at gmail.com
Tue Mar 18 22:10:08 CDT 2014


Hi Doug,

Sorry if the slowness of my own response makes the conversation a bit 
disjointed but I have other priorities taking up my time. To be clear 
our system produces both engine grade gas at the top end of the heating 
value range for naturally aspirated down draft gasifiers AND 
concurrently a useful high quality char output, there is no "perhaps" 
about it. The systems gas outputs were independently collected and 
tested on several occasions and I have provided you with copies of lab 
certificates as courtesy in the past. I respect the right of others to 
doubt, and understand your own commercial interests here, but I only 
make comment where I feel it can add some value and to encourage others 
to question old narrow system specific wisdom's and explore for themselves.

In regard your suggestion of a conflict with some other person you don't 
publicly name you overstep considerably in any understanding of my 
circumstances, nor do I appreciate attempts at lumping me in with the 
same behavior I abhor. Raising such red herrings in the middle of a 
discussion has no place and only detracts from it.

In regard "cheap" words this is why we spent considerable time and money 
traveling systems 7500km to successful public demonstrations since 2009 
including one on the lawns of Parliament House Canberra, not a venue for 
the feint hearted or place for a system that did not work. Running a 
small second hand 16hp twin cylinder engine on the gas whilst operating 
a concurrent smokeless flare and producing charcoal, all with a gasifier 
tied on a trailer that only had crude gas cooling and no filtering! A 
notable comment from one of the pollies present at the time (now the 
Federal Minister for Industry) was that "...you are a brave man, running 
a old Briggs Stratton engine in preference to a new reliable Honda!" I 
am sure yourself and many far less honorable would wish for us to reveal 
intimate details of our designs, however I cannot be goaded into it.  
There are many on this list who have genuine and commercial gasification 
technologies who do not always contribute to discussions and certainly 
don't share proprietary information.

As for due diligence we expect and encourage it always and in our own 
case are commercialising our systems in the first instance through 
leasing or JV arrangements where we take the financial risk, no 
performance no pay. As this is being done through our own resources, not 
sucking in mug investors or otherwise ripping people off it is 
necessarily a task requiring patience, but we now have >1.2MWe worth of 
systems being prepared right now, the first of which have successfully 
gone through commissioning testing (including cold starts on dry wood 
chip) and will now be deployed over the coming weeks into a range of 
commercial settings.  It is not important to us whether commentators on 
this or any other list believe it to be true.

I respect your knowledge Doug, in the past it has given me insights that 
when working with our own designs have led to break through in 
understanding and ultimately a different way of doing things that has 
substantially improved performance at every level. I don't pretend to 
know everything about gasification, but my own experience over 30 years 
is that I don't know anyone who does. This is what makes the journey of 
discovery exciting and if our own success has taught us anything it is 
that there is much more yet to learn, and other people sharing their 
failures does indeed help with this. Happily gasification wins are coming.

Kind regards,
Peter


On 3/16/2014 3:37 PM, Doug wrote:
> Hi Peter and Colleagues.
>
> Sorry for the delay in this reply:

-- 
Peter Davies
Director
ID Gasifiers Pty Ltd
Delegate River, Victoria
Australia
Ph: 0402 845 295





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