Archive for April, 2009

SynGest Inc. has secured a site in Menlo, Iowa, to build what it says is the world’s first biomass-to-ammonia plant, to help supply the U.S.’s 18 million ton per year ammonia market. The San Francisco-based company has developed gasification and syngas technology to deploy in its first plant. The technology will be used to annually turn 150,000 tons of corncobs into 50,000 tons of anhydrous ammonia, which is enough to fertilize 500,000 acres of land.

The process involves a pressurized oxygen-blown biomass gasifier operating in an expanding bed fluidized mode. The company’s patent-pending HarvestGas system gasifies biomass into a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and is optimized to minimize the formation of methane. After the gas stream is cleaned, the carbon monoxide portion is shifted to maximize hydrogen. The hydrogen is purified and catalytically reacted with nitrogen to make ammonia. The plant includes an air separation system to provide oxygen for the gasifier and pure nitrogen for ammonia synthesis.

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FirstEnergy Corp. plans to retrofit units 4 and 5 at its coal-fired R.E. Burger Plant in Ohio to generate power with biomass. The project will cost about $200 million and will not change the plant’s current 312 MW capacity.

FirstEnergy said the project will feature a closed-loop system, using biomass derived from an energy crop grown specifically for use as a fuel source. This energy crop would act as a carbon sink, removing as much carbon dioxide from the environment when it is growing as it releases when it is burned. The company found that burning principally with biomass would produce lower emissions overall than retrofitting the plant with a scrubber.

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Connecticut’s environmental protection department denied a motion made by environmentalists to reconsider permits for a 37 MW wood-burning biomass power plant planned by Plainfield Renewable Energy. The Plainfield Project that will use lumber byproducts, wood pallets and recycled waste wood as feedstock. The plant will use a fluidized bed staged gasification system that generates steam to drive a conventional steam turbine generator.

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Nexterra Energy has announced a development programme to commercialize a new application of its biomass gasification technology to generate power and heat from small-scale plants.The 2-10 MW systems will employ technology that directly-fires biomass derived syngas in high efficiency gas engines.

This initiative follows two years of work by Nexterra to upgrade syngas made by gasifying biomass so that it meets the fuel specification of GE Jenbacher’s internal combustion engines. GE has supported this work through its Jenbacher gas engine division. Once fully developed, Nexterra’s gasification technology is planned to be combined with GE’s Jenbacher gas engines to form modular biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plants.The scale of individual plants will range from 2-10 MW and will yield net efficiencies of up to 60% in cogeneration mode.

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