On 24/01/2012 5:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Re: [Gasification] lanzatech buys closed range fuels plant for
5.1mil
Hi all, been a long time since I posted to this list....
Range Fuels is yet another example of the strange due diligence process
that seems to inform Private and Government investment. Who actually
ends up with this "lost" money? Wouldn't that be a fascinating and
probably enlightening investigation.
What did Lanzatech actually get for their 5.1 million? They clearly
don't want the thermo chemical catalyst technology and the gasifier by
all accounts is not suited to purpose. Sounds simply like a strategic
move to attract more investment by seeming to take on failed work of others.
A little of our own history: Lanzatech were introduced to us by
Bluescope Steel following a successful charcoal research project we
helped on with the steel industry here in Australia. The Chief Research
Scientist for Bluescope was aware that we had a working linear hearth
gasifier that had been independently validated and which met the
necessary criteria for either catalytic or biological conversion of
syngas to liquid fuels, and more crucially as a modular system could be
assembled into a plant to suit industrial scale. Lanzatech never
responded to us despite this referral, but continued to promote their
technology as being game changing despite clearly having only half the
equation (who cares about details when a multi billion dollar market is
in the offing?).
The bottled producer gas thing they apparently had Doug do is a
nonsense, any competent lab can simulate any tested producer gas ratio's
by blending readily available and specified lab gases already in
certified high pressure cylinders. After compression and storage in a
cylinder of "real life" producer gas any condensates present are hardly
going to jump out in subsequent testing through the gas being drawn off
in low volumes at the top of the bottle, and in any case the researchers
with their microbes are more than likely to do additional filtering when
working at lab scales.
If this company was genuine they would have a properly operating
gasifier module of at least 200kg/hr and do their commercialisation
work directly from this gas. That they never took up this offer drops
its own red flag.
We were referred to Khosler Ventures by someone else whom we can't
remember at the moment, we do however remember Khoslers reply: They were
not interested in Biomass technologies but only wanted truly renewable
technologies instead....enough said.
In terms of advanced ethanol catalysts one supplier out of Canada has
estimated from an independent gas analysis taken from our gasifier that
the two systems in combination could yield 400 litres per tonne of wood
chips of industrial alcohols being predominantly ethanol with methanol
and some propanol with a few percent butanol thrown in....a yield which
the industry road map is aiming to achieve by 2030. They even offered
the catalyst to allow independent testing and validation by qualified
researchers here in Australia, despite this and a matching offer by
ourselves to supply the gasifier being widely disseminated to all likely
parties including leading Universities and Australian Government there
has been no interest. The only feed back at all was from the leader of
the CSIRO Biofuels Flagship who told me directly that they knew what we
had but were not allowed to assist us...since no other explanation was
offered we can only assume this was because their core business was
doing research, not solutions.
Good luck to them all... Our response is in the company name and the
success we are quietly achieving.
Cheers,
Peter Davies
Real Power Systems Pty Ltd
Australia
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