Hi David,
Our experience is that energy conversion efficiency is often secondary,
or not even relevant at all due to other factors.
We are working with clients whose biomass is high in potassium and can't
be combusted cleanly in their boilers without creating excessive boiler
maintenance due to the deposits building up on the boiler heat exchange
surfaces. Gasifying this material then combustion of the clean gas can
solve this problem for them whilst giving much easier process control
and a higher value ash/char they can recycle through their compost and
farming operation.
We have others where contamination (pesticide/herbicide residues,
plastics etc) in their waste materials require high temperature
incineration for safe energy recovery and use (in essence not
practical). Again the gasifier not only addresses this issue but allows
conversion of a problematic organic waste to an easy to use gas for
their process heat needs and allowing straightforward co-firing with
their "business as usual" use of LPG burners for the same job. In fact
the highest economic return for the gasifier is in displacing the LPG
use (compared to say electricity generation, which in one particular
situation even runs third behind avoided cost of existing waste storage
and disposal)
Due to the large number of requests we have bit the bullet and built a
small scale round hearth system for individual users (from a design
kicking around in our heads for a while now) to complement our linear
hearth design which is better suited to much larger commercial
applications. The first prototype is undergoing commissioning trials at
the moment and is so far working very well, even using very ordinary
chip (looking more like coarse woody gravel with lots of fines!)
produced using a cheap Chinese PTO disc chipper. Well enough in fact
that we are now fitting automatic feeding and ash removal to allow
continuous run (multi day) trials.
We know where the ultimate configuration of such a system can end up
when you get it right, and is far superior in both fuel flexibility and
ease of use than any straight combustion furnace no matter the design,
even if you only use the gas for home heating and hot water.
As one poster to the list recently put succinctly "Fuel prep sucks!" and
in our view one of the biggest drawbacks for most conventional gasifier
designs that get talked about, along with most boiler designs that
likewise have very fussy fuel specs for effective use.
Cheers,
Peter
Real Power Systems Pty Ltd
On 14/04/2012 5:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Why would you want to make heating grade woodgas?
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