Gasification of Invasive Species
This type of gasification can be utilized very efficiently in areas were plant growth is not controllable, causes havoc on surrounding ecosystems or business environments. For example, certain invasive species(which may grow all over the world: Lantana in Israel, Centaurea in Eastern Europe, Johnsongrass in the Mediterranean area, etc.) can be in an area that a people want to inhabit because of population increase in their hometowns. It will be a tremendous hassle for these people to clear these areas by themselves (wasting energy, resources, time, and risking health in some areas/instances), then have to go through the process of utilizing this huge supply of plant (which is not feasible in some cases, as these plants may not be very user-friendly, or substantial enough to be made into some other material/tool), which in many cases will result in an environmentally unfriendly method of ridding themselves of this burden (slash and burn methods of clearing land, landfilling and eventual flaring, or old-fashion piling and burning of the material). Instead, some companies use this opportunity to provide businesses with a feedstock for their biomass gasification processes.
Although the company willing to gasify this material now has the responsibility of handling this material, many of the government standards on emissions and the progressing technologies in this industry will help to ensure that: an environmentally friendly method of converting this material to useable energy (for these people and others, as well as jobs, economy stimulus, opportunity for political harmony, etc.) will be used rather than a rash and damaging, more crude method, and more importantly, this produced energy will help to fuel other processes that are vital to the surrounding area. Much like any other gasification process, the feed will most likely go through some pretreatment process that will allow for a better conversion of the material. This will include: drying, shredding/cutting, grinding/pelletization, and even addition of acidic solutions. This type of feedstock will be most efficiently converted to syngas in a circulating-fluidized bed gasifier or a plasma gasifier (since this type of material will yield a lot of tar product and ash).
Flow Diagrams
Equipment
Heat Recovery Steam Generator
Steam Turbine
Combustion Turbine
Water-Shift Reactor
Videos
Biomass Gasification
STAK 30K Biomass Gasifier Demo
PHG Energy Industrial Grade Biomass Gasifiers
References
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPS9mPNT5t8
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YACc6GmOOho
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ghw_okucKM
- http://stlenergy.org/?attachment_id=461
- http://www.chuden.co.jp/english/corporate/press2006/1108_3.html
- http://www.ika.rwth-aachen.de/r2h/index.php/Thermochemical_conversion_of_biomass
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species
- http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/plants/johnsongrass.shtml
- www.nariphaltan.org/gasbook.pdf