David, There are many commercial gasifiers in operation in Europe and North America. Most are in heating applications. Several in the US were built in the 1980s and 1990s with biomass energy incentives. There are more than a dozen updraft gasifiers burning fuels like wood waste or rice husks. There are a few fluidized bed gasifiers. Many of the heaters could be called staged combustors since they are close coupled to boilers or air heaters. These are generally small (<30 MWth) boilers used in industry and institutional heating. Most people don't recognize that incorporation of principles of gasification has improved combustion of dirty fuels like poultry litter to be burned without severe slagging and fouling. There are only a few commercial gasifiers that generate power in the US. In most cases our electricity is too cheap and biomass fuels are too expensive to generate power commercially via gasification. I know of a few downdraft gasifiers that are used to generate power commercially. Two plants in California use the Ankur Scientific gasifier (500 kWe and 1 MWe). http://www.phoenixenergy.net/ Production of biochar as a co-product is important source of income for these plants. There are other plants at this scale that prefer to stay "under the radar." Caterpillar engines are used primarily in the plants that I know. I understand that Cat is very interested in the producer gas applications. Jenbacher, which has more than 100 MWe of gensets fired by gasifiers, has a 2 MWe genset at University of British Columbia. That installation is based on fuel savings for heat and carbon sequestration (BC has a carbon tax on natural gas), not on electricity. Extra money was spent on the educations functions of the facility. Cummins has supplied small engines (100 kWe) to demonstration projects.
We haven't seen many commercial small scale systems. As Tom Reed mentions Community Power Corporation built about 40 gasifiers, many of which have been used by research organizations but some are operated commercially. I don't know how many are still in use. http://www.gocpc.com/ Harrie might be able to provide better numbers for Europe. You can find lists of gasifiers and suppliers in his book. I don't know the circumstances of the installations in Europe to be able to determine which are commercial and which are for research and demonstration. There are reportedly more than 150 small scale (80 kWe/100 kWth) Spanner gasifiers in operation on farms in Germany. I have read site visit reports for several of these. They are sold primarily as a means of generating heat and secondarily for power generation. Tom -----Original Message----- From: Gasification [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Coote Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2013 1:13 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Gasification] Commercial gasifiers in Europe Hi Tom, Would you say there are any commercial gasifiers in operation in Europe or North America? Thanks David On 2/12/2013 6:00 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Message: 8 > Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 16:53:55 -0800 > From: "Tom Miles"<[email protected]> > To: "'Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification'" > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Gasification] Fluidised bed reactor > Message-ID:<[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Thomas, > > Third parties or associated organizations are beginning to solve some of > Ankur's problems, including the nozzle issue. Like them or not they sell a > lot of systems so people are finding ways to improve them. > > Europe continues to be one of the most progressive regions for gasifier > development. We look forward to seeing more commercial installations. > > Worldwide there are more than 450 organizations that are working on the > production of synthesis gas for liquid fuels or chemicals. > > As you well know it all takes time and money. > > Tom > _______________________________________________ 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.bioenerg ylists.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/
