Dear Mark and Tom,
When one begins evaluating the process of developing these large
projects, the book of failures as appropriately called for, should be
mandatory tested reading for everyone involved in the project. It is
still being written. One of the problems with writing it is that no one
wants to be part of a failure, being unfathered. Trying to find out
what actually happened to these projects is really difficult. I have
gotten so many different stories about some of them, it is like trying
to reconstruct an elephant with a couple of toenails and a tail.
It is very difficult to foresee bad decisions when one is giddy
with optimism of the future and the prospects which gasification
offers. This is the drug which I believe causes most of the problems. I
have taken the very low key, almost depressing attitude that failure is
inevitable unless there is a monumental effort to overcome it. The rest
of the industry should adopt the same sobering attitude and a lot more
success would be out there.
HIstory is a great teacher. It is however, always incomplete. As
an example, the DOE is spending $1bn+ to compile a complete record of
all of the nuclear development efforts so that they can remember how to
build nuclear bombs. In my conversations with experienced folks, one
was a chemical engineer who worked on ROVER or NERVA which was a
nuclear rocket engine successfully tested in Nevada. It was a
spectacular success. I talked to him after he retired from Los Alamos
after 35 years, and was still vigorously researching on his own. His
comment was "It is doubtful if we could duplicate NERVA again, the
skills have been lost". This is a critical statement as "skills" are
also an art which is not fully documentable. If you remember the movie
2001, A Space Oddessy, the rocket ship which went to Jupiter was based
on the nuclear engine similar to NERVA.
I think that there are some basic formulas which can be used to
make projects more successful. Ignore the financial world's demands for
fast response and high rate of return. This probably leads to more
disasters and the industry would be better off without any more.
By the way, the gasification biz is not the only industry which
has had heavy duty failures. SASOL built a GTL plant in Qatar for $12bn
or so, and the catalyst failed. Now after decades with liquifaction
experience, probably the best in the business how does one anticipate
that? Sounds like a shortcut or two were made.
Sincerely,
Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
President
Thermogenics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark E. Ludlow <[email protected]>
To: 'Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification'
<[email protected]>
Sent: Sat, Jul 9, 2011 12:38 pm
Subject: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren
Hi Tom Taylor,
Yes, Range and Choren failed, quite spectacularly. Were those hundreds
of millions of investment dollars simply 'gasified' and made to
disappear? Perhaps.
When such failures happen and particularly when they involve public
financing, there should be a requirement that the last few bucks in the
bank be devoted to writing a thorough and, hopefully, self-critical
post-mortem of what went wrong. Was it technology? Execution? Project
management? Likely, a combination of these factors coupled with an
excess of hubris brought on by the giddiness of swimming in OPM (other
peoples' money).
Would analysis of failed projects (most projects fail) expose some
common reasons for failure that future enterprises may avoid? I suspect
so. Would this affect the financing of future projects? Maybe not. But
it should.
As you suggest, the failure of major gasification initiatives make the
road rockier for future attempts. But technology is just the tip of the
iceberg; technology management can make the difference between the
success or failure of technologically-sound projects, but,
unfortunately, it can't change the laws of nature to allow wrong-headed
technology to succeed.
If a project such as Choren failed because, as was suggested recently
on this list, it ran out of steam in the commissioning process, then
this is a management issue. There's lots of issues associated with
scale-up, and leadership is more important in this phase of project
development than it is during the design phase. You rightly suggest
that project designers and constructors (by the hundreds) may not be
the optimal team for dealing with start-up and operational issues.
Someone (maybe someone working for an advanced degree) will someday do
an in-depth analysis of biomass gasification project failures. This
could serve as an investor guidebook for future projects. I suspect
that investment capital disconnected from due diligence puts wheels
under lots of shaky technology and incompetent management.
Will we know the Real Thing when it comes along?
Best,
Mark Ludlow
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
[email protected]
Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 8:32 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren
Dear Tom Miles and the list:
One thing that should be learned is that when there is a lot of
money around, the tendency is to hire a lot of folks and then the
pressure is on to burn money fast. I also see "financing issues with
start up of commercial plant" to read, too expensive, has technical
issues, vis a vis Range Fuels and others. This is a repeat of even the
Downdraft system from Grabowski under Syngas co. This was even
partially funded in the 80's by a group which had provided funding to
Thermogenics and the lead financier called me several years after
funding Syngas to say that i was right, it would fail. They decided to
not fund Thermogenics because of the lack of PhD's who could argue that
their process was better. Not having a degree made my arguments not
listened to.
The question arises as to what to do with a large staff which
initially does engineering work, and then when the design is completed,
what are they doing next until the design is completed and operational?
This is why to some extent, this work being done by consultants may be
better of a business structure.
Unfortunately, the financial world relies on degrees for results
which paves the way downhill. A multiple PhD in mathematics who was
Sandia National Laboratories' lead mathematician, with Stanford and
Caltech on his CV, had a saying on his door "A thermometer is not the
only thing with degrees and no brains".
The more of these large operations to hit the walls, the more
difficult the field will be to get serious project financing and move
forward. There are others slated to fail in near term from what I have
been hearing, high profile supposedly "successful commercial
operations".
Sincerely,
Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
President
Thermogenics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Dl <[email protected]>
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
<[email protected]>
Sent: Fri, Jul 8, 2011 4:43 pm
Subject: Re: [Gasification] What happened at Choren
http://www.choren.com/en/information-and-press/press-releases/
Going into bankruptcy in Germany.
Dan Lacy
The best way to compile inaccurate information that no one wants is to
make it up.
Scott Adams
On Jul 8, 2011, at 3:25 PM, "Tom Miles" <[email protected]>
wrote:
This Google alert abut Choren should be on interest to anyone who has
follwoed biomass pyrolysis an dgiasification to syngas. See the Google
Alert link below. Tom News1 new result for gasifier What Happened
at Choren?
Consumer Energy Report
The gasifier would be scaled up from the pilot plant scale of 1 MW th
to 45 MW th . Shell's Fischer-Tropsch technology was being used in the
plant, ...
_______________________________________________
Gasification mailing list
to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
[email protected]
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
[email protected]
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
[email protected]
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
[email protected]
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
[email protected]
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/
