Gasifier Application

Gasifier Application can be categorise into 3 broad category :

1 ) Thermal Application

2 ) Power Generation

3 ) Chemical Production

We will only delve with thermal application here .

This is a summary of article from India on ' Scaling up Biomass Gasifier use : an application specific approach ' at page 7 which I have link at the sidebar .

A partial extract of the document ,

" A large number of SMEs require substantial amounts of process heat as part of their industrial operations . These include chemicals manufacturers, large brick kilns, steel rerollers, foundries, limekilns, rubber driers, and ceramics manufacturers, to name a few categories . A number of these rely on liquid fuels, such as diesel and furnace oil , to meet process-heat requirements, thereby adding significantly to production costs due to high costs of fuel . Those enterprises that do not use liquid fuel use biomass, albeit in an inefficient manner. A shift from inefficient biomass burning to biomass gasifiers can increase the overall efficiency of the heating process substantially, often by as much as a factor of two . Our analysis shows that a replacement of either liquid-fuel combustion or solid biomass burning by gasifier-based system would lead to substantial economic and monetary benefits for the enterprise owner " .

Brick & Ceramic Industry

In many tunnel kiln , gas is used to fire the green dried brick or tiles in the process of making it hard and gives the brick or tiles strength . In this case producer gas from gasifier can be used to replace gas which are more expensive . Due to the nature of tunnel kiln which operate continously , 24 / 7 , investment in gasifier can be recoup in less than 6 months .

Steel Industry

Annealing is a heat treatment process that is used to change the properties of metal . Typically , annealing is accomplished at temperatures ranging from 760 to 910 ° celcius . These process use a lot of fuel and syngas can be use in replacement of gas or diesel fuel .

Aluminium Melter

Aluminium recycling does not damage the metal's structure and it can be recycled indefinitely . Recycling aluminium also takes a lot less energy at only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium . As aluminium melt at around 800 ° celcius , syngas from gasifier are ideal for this purpose as syngas combustion flame temperature can reach 1,200 ° celcius .

Furnace , Dryer & Boiler

Dryer can come in many type , rotary drum dryer , conveyor dryer , tunnel kiln dryer and flash dryer to name a few .

These dryer can gets it heat from steam , hot water or hot air from combustion of fossil fuel . In place of the burner burning diesel , fuel oil or gas , syngas burner can be channel to replace this burner .

These application is very wide as there is a lot of industries using process heat for their drying , heating , cooking and steam production .

These picture show a gas burner firing into a furnace for heating purpose . The hot air is used for drying . Similarly Syngas Burner can be used in it's place for the same purpose .

Hot Mix Asphalt

Asphalt is produced by mixing bitumen , sand and aggregate together in a drum that is heated to 200 ° celcius . Consumption of fuel oil used to heat the mixture are often in the range of 5 to 7 liter of fuel oil per ton of hot mix asphalt .

In short , syngas produce from gasifier are suitable for the above application and often the replacement cost are only a fraction of fossil fuel .

Gasifier - Simple & Efficient

I was just back from a trip to study a gasifier from rice husk .
Great job by the designer , simple unit , scalable , smoke free , blue flame and etc , etc .
This unit and other that they have , have very good design which I will try to explain as below :
Simple
The design was simple and easy to fabricate if you have the drawing and knowledge of gasification . Thus the cost of this gasifier will be in the range of half the cost of other gasifier I have seen .
Depending on how much automation you need which will increase the cost of the gasifier , a simple one will do for normal small scale industry cooking , heating and drying .
Scaleable
Normal 1 stove gas cooker produce about 10,000 KCal / hour themal output .
In the above video slides the gasifier produce about 25,000 KCal / hour thermal output .
For this type of gasifier it is possible to scale up to 1,500,000 KCal / hour .
This size of gasifier will save around 160 liter of diesel per hour if a diesel burner is used for thermal purpose . WOW , for some area which the rice husk is free ( you still need tranportation ) , savings from diesel fuel is 160 liter X RM1.60 per liter = RM256 per hour , RM2,048 per day ( 8 hours shift ) , RM53,248 ( 26 days working month ) . Price for this range of gasifier are around RM0.40 to RM0.50 per KCal / hour . Thus payback is in 1 year at current diesel price of RM1.60 per liter .
Smoke Free and Blue Flame
This designer method of tar cracking have manage to bring down the tar level produce in the gasifier to very minimal thus very high level of bluish flame are attained which is not normally possible for rice husk gasification .
etc,etc
Among other pros of this rice husk gasifier are
simple design - no moving parts , less breakdown , simple to operate , continous mode of gas production , easy ash disposal , cheap to fabricate , low cost , interchangeable from stove burner to jet burner , explosion proof , high efficiency and ????? cannot recall so many more !!!!!

Thank you for reading ,

I am ready to take comments ,

pls go ahead .

HURT no more for NOW !!!

It have been 3 months since the last posting and oil have peak at USD147 per barrel and now hovering around USD40 per barrel .
What happen to the prediction that it could fly to USD200 , who knows ?
Today I got to take out the main picture of " Yep's It's gonna hurt " for now until the time comes by again .
Many prediction have been made on oil with most of the consumption of world oil being as per chart below :

Part of the prediction in the chart is true but due to US recession occuring now demand for oil have drop thus bringing down the price of oil .

The low oil price is not good in a sense that companies will curtail the spending on R & D to find source of renewable energy therefore slowing down the efforts of reducing the effect of Global Warming .

I remember being to a few companies which are heavy user of diesel fuel for heating purposes and gather that when Nymex oil future were above USD100 per barrel all are gearing up to change to biomass due to its lower price and insignificant fluctuation in prices . I would guess as of now none is intending to do so as price of diesel have drop back to RM1.50 per liter for industrial usage .

When will this industrialist change their mind set as oil will not continue to be low and continous burning of fossil fuel is not helping the humane cause of reducing global warming .

In short , Malaysians are not only short sighted but reluctant to move out of their comfort zone as compared to Europeans which have been changing to wood pellet heating instead of gas for the last 10 years or so .

The encouraging change over to biomass heating in house hold in Europe are due to a few factor list as below :

1 ) high government tax on fossil fuel , noticeably Europe Gas Price is over double the Rest of The World, click Link : " Gas Prices Around The World " on the sidebar

2 ) availability of convenient automated heating stove and proper fuel in wood pellet

3 ) the caring way of Europeans which are moving to complying to KYOTO PROTOCOL even though price of wood pellet are just a fraction cheaper than Heating Fuel

None of the above factor exist in Malaysia ( or even outside Europe ) thus making it difficult to convince consumer to change over to biomass for heat and power .

Malaysia Government are at least now holding the price of Industrial Diesel at RM1.50 per liter to encourage industrialist to find ways to reduce fossil fuel consumption although Nymex oil at USD40 per barrel would translate to RM1.10 per liter . These is an encouraging effort by the Government which should be applauded .

The government should do more by using the tax collected on the diesel by giving grant to companies which change from fossil fuel to biomass . These is widely practice in Europe and even Japan to encourage usage of biomass .

Here is a link to Peak Oil cartoon .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jriYKmMN8_I

Don't worry it did not happen as yet .

CHEAP OIL

OIL price per barrel have fall to USD50 per barrel now which work out to around RM1.40 per liter for industrial diesel user . These is only a fraction of the peak price of around RM4.00 per liter in June 2008 .

Today we will talk about oil .

I append a few chart on oil .

Worldwide oil consumption have been stabilising at 80 million barrel per day for the last 5 years and yet there is no more significant new oil reserves found in the last 2 decades .

Although currently the price of oil have drop significantly due to recession in the USA , China and India are continuing with annual GDP growth of over 8% . Imagine this 2 country compounding growth of cars alone will consume all the supply available in a few years time .

In fact now , China monthly vehicles sales nearly top 1 million unit per month .

Therefore " PEAK OIL THEORY " are very real in time to come .

Energy & Peak Oil

ENERGY AND PEAK OIL

The last few decades of mankind progress depended on oil and gas .

Over 80 % of the world energy needs are generated from oil and gas which is categorised under fossil fuel which is non renewable . Fossil fuel which takes 150 million years to be generated will be consumed in our life time and future energy needs will come from renewable sources such as solar , wind , hydro and biomass .

Many journals on energy are convinced that current oil production at around 80 million barrels per day are peaking and the spike of oil to USD147 per barrel are due to simple mathematics where demand exceed supply . Although currently oil have turn bearish to USD80 per barrel it will peak again in the future as oil are a finite resources .

A lot of hype on peak oil subject when oil shoot over USD100 and many documentaries have been made on the matter . Some even predicted it will go to USD500 per barrel !!! . It might , in the future go to this price especially when China and India have GDP growth of over 8% per annum .

High oil prices will encourage government and business sector to find ways to reduce fossil fuel consumption and spend on R & D to find alternatives . The growth of oil consumption to these level are due to low oil prices during the 1970s to 1990s where it hover below USD50 per barrel . Thus the low oil price have cause other problem such as excessive carbon dioxide emission which bring to global warming .

Earlier last month the north pole are accessible by ship for the first time due to melting ice .

High oil prices in Europe ( due to taxes by govenrment ) have created more advance technology and more changes to usage of renewable energy . Currently a high percentage of winter heating in Europe home is by biomass such as wood pellet or wood chip . A power plant in Holland even import Palm Kernel Shell from Malaysia for the combustion in their power generation plant .

In Malaysia where there is abundance of biomass but due to lack of Research and Development, biomass is only being used by certain industries which have biomass at their door step . Most other industries are using diesel or gas for their thermal needs as it is more convenient to do so .

There will come a time when oil peak again , many industries which are caught napping will file for bankcruptcies especially if their portion of energy usage are high .

And if you or your company are a high user of fossil fuel please try to change to renewable energy as global warming are real and it will affect us and our children in the future .

The famous quote :

We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children

Type of Gasifier

Basically Gasifier are categorised based on the reactor design . Two main category of gasifier are fixed bed gasifier and fluidised bed gasifier .

Fixed bed gasifier then can be differentiated according to design of gas outlet which are namely :

a ) down - draught

b ) up - draught

c ) cross - draught

The different design of the gasifier cater for different kind of fuel , size of fuel , calorific value of fuel and etc . The most advance type of gasifier in the market now are mostly down - draught gasifier as it have more benefits compared to the others and therefore more research have been done on it compared to others .

In this post we will not touch on fluidised bed gasifier due to the application which are normally for bigger capacity , difficulty in controlling load changes and etc .

The main benefit of down - draught gasifier is that it produce very low tar level of syngas . These low tar syngas can therefore be use even in engine , clean combustion in furnace and lower chances of burner choking . The low tar level are due to gas produced from the reaction in the reactor need to pass through hot glowing bed of charcoal at the bottom of the reactor before exiting the reactor . The tar in the gas is therefore nearly fully combusted thus giving much more lower tar syngas . These process is called ' tar cracking ' .

The exiting syngas is further clean by a few number of filter depending on the usage of the gas .

The selection of gasifier is a very important decision as it involve many parameters that need to be taken into account . There are no gasifier that can run all type of fuel as each different fuel have different characteristic of size , moisture content and calorific value .

Factors that need to be considered are as follows :

a ) Fuel type to be used for the gasifier , these will include moisture content of the fuel , normally it must be below 25 % , rate of combustion of the fuel so the movement of the fuel from top to bottom can be calculated for the height of the reactor , calorific value of the fuel where this determine the quantity of syngas output , and etc .

b ) Current consumption of heat by diesel or gas , this factor determine the size of the gasifier so that the replacement gasifier fabricated produce the equivalent of syngas to fire the furnace with equivalent thermal energy . Mistake in determining size will end up with under size gasifier which produce smaller amount of syngas which might not be able to replace the diesel burner heat requirement thus lowering the drying or heating process of the factory . Over sizing will cause inefficiency of the gasifier and increasing the cost of the investment .

c) Integration of gasifier with the current system of the factory . Most potential client of the gasifier are reluctant to have big changes to their existing system . Therefore the new gasifier system must be able to be integrated to existing process flow without much changes and also must have the option of going back to diesel burning if needs arise . This is to ensure choices when price of diesel is low and also during maintenance of the gasifier .

d ) Automation of the gasifier are important as most current industries using diesel burner are used to automatic modulating adjustment of burner heat output . Normally there is still need for at least 1 human intervention in gasifier operation if the gasifier are automated enough . Below is a photo of fully automated gasifier producing syngas to run a generator set . This is a very small unit .

We are able to advise potential client on their need to change to gasification . Just give us a call or drop us a line through our e-mail .

Remember , Savings is over 70 % ............ and you can do your part in helping Reducing Carbon Emission .

Malaysia Biomass & Calorific Value

Choose Biomass that is low in $ / kCal instead of $ / kg .

Malaysia Biomass

Malaysia Biomass . Biomass Calorific Value are very important in the selection of fuel for combustion and gasification . This is due to Energy content per kg of biomass . You can have very cheap biomass such as EFB but due to it's Moisture Content of 65% and so Calorific Value will be low at 1,400 kCal / kg . Moreover during combustion , silica ash will scale the tube causing reduction in efficiency of boiler and fly ash is a concern with Environment Authority .

Typically there are plenty of biomass materials in Malaysia which are able to be used to replace fossil fuel . Malaysia Biomass material available are as follows :

Material Calorific Value Moisture Content
1 ) Woodchip 3,500 Kcal / kg 25 %
2 ) Sawdust 3,500 Kcal / kg 25 %
3 ) Empty Fruit Bunch 1,400 Kcal / kg 65 %
4 ) Rice Husk 3,000 Kcal / kg 10 %

The above Malaysia Biomass is among the lowest in $ / kCal ( high in energy density per RM ) and available in abundance in Malaysia .

I did not include wood pellet as it is to my knowledge still not available in Malaysia ( I would like to know who have it ? ) . This biomass will be in the future replace wood chip due to very standardise size and quality of heat output .

The above mentioned biomass are which I will elaborate more due to current available technology for full combustion which will emit no smoke . These is done by converting the said biomass to syngas .

The problem for these change over to biomass thermal application is the lack of suitable biomass material , inconsistent quality supply of biomass , system for combustion , high delivery cost , long perceived thinking that biomass emits heavy smoke , storage problem for user and etc .

For the record , the favourite , Diesel ( Calorific Value - 8,770 Kcal / liter ) was the thermal fuel in Malaysia which is widely available and cheap for the last decades . As it is now a heavy burden to many industries , it is time to change to biomass not only that it is green , it will also enable industries to save on high fuel cost .

Here I will go into details for Wood Chip as the preferred biomass due to reason i will mention below .

Wood Chip

is a product derived from sawmill waste . Quite recently in the last 1 year or so , plenty of wood chip production come on stream due to demand from MDF and Particle Board Manufacturer . But now due to it's limited supply , price have moved up and stablilised at around RM150 / ton to RM200 / ton depending on delivery cost . I am suggesting this biomass material ( Wood Chip Only ) to be used as fuel for gasifier due to

a ) year round availablity

b ) easy delivery

c ) lower cost of transportation

d ) ease of handling

e ) lesser contamination at user factory

and etc .

At the price given it will work out to RM0.061 per mmCalorie ( RM15.47 / mmBTU ) compared to diesel when price is RM3.20 / liter at RM0.354 per mmCalorie ( RM89.18 / mmBTU ) . From this comparison you can see that wood chip is only 17 % of diesel .

WOW , did anyone realise this ???

Yes , I did claim that there is 70 % savings only for change over to gasifier , this is due to some loss of heat during gasification process , in some unefficient gasifier you might get even lower savings in the range of 50 % to 60 % only .

The reason I did not elaborate on EFB ( Empty Fruit Bunch ) eventhough it is cheap is because it need to be further process and the calorific value is very low . Another reason is that my proposed gasifier system might not be able to take these fuel or I would rather say efficiency will be very low . There is Ah Niau and Ah Kau that would say , what savings of 70% , mine can do at least 90 % savings with EFB as it is cheap , HAHAHAHHAHAH , BE CAREFUL .

But I promise you if you can wait a few years ( or your factory can wait for a few years ) I will try to bring 90 % to you . These is when Oil at USD200 per barrel and EFB can be use .

So the saying goes like this , YOU GET WHAT YOU PAID FOR !!!

ACT NOW !!! AND GET BACK YOUR INVESTMENT WITHIN 1 YEAR ..........

The next blog will be on choosing the right gasifier . Am I up to it ???

Bye for now .

What is Gasifier

Gasifier have been in used since a century ago but it's interest diminish due to the cumbersome of the system and the cheap oil era .

With oil price escalating over USD100 per barrel and global warming bring about by burning of fossil fuel which release carbon dioxide , gasifier have been look into again as a way of reducing global warming effect .

Gasifier are basically made up of 2 component namely the ' Reactor ' and ' Gas Cleaning Equipment ' . Syngas are produce in the Reactor by combusting biomass in an Oxygen starved condition . The resultant gas produce are mostly hydrogen and carbon monoxide with a calorific value of around 1,000 kCal / Nm3 . The Gas Cleaning Equipment are use to clean the gas produce by removing tar & ash .

To reduce affect of global warming , syngas which is generated from solid biomass fuel , carbon neutral and does not bring about increase in carbon dioxide into the air can be use to generate heat , thermal application & produce electricity in place of diesel or fuel oil . The burning of biomass fuel just release back the amount of carbon dioxide it absord during it's lifetime whereby the burning of fossil fuel release carbon dioxide which was captured millions of years ago thus increasing the quantum of CO2 ..

"The Inconvenient Truth" movie by Al Gore gives a very good explanation to these effect of burning fossil fuel .

New gasifier system are automated and able to produce much bigger power for industrial use . It is very efficient , clean and cost effective where it is possible to save over 70% on fuel cost compared to diesel fuel .

Environment & Gasifier

!!! HELP SAVE THE EARTH !!!

If we continue to burn fossil fuel like the photo on the left , climate change will accelerate and damage to earth will be beyond repair .

Let's give the earth a helping hand to recover so that we can slow Global Warming , breath cleaner air and bring down the price of oil by using more biomass fuel as alternative source of energy instead of fossil fuel .

Fossil fuel emits much higher CO2 ( Carbon Dioxide ) which is the main culprit of Global Warming as compared to Biomass which is carbon neutral .

Biomass combustion in it's crude form can be very dirty which emits thick smoke especially in an uncontrolable situation . This is due to the reason that complete combustion ( thus less smoke ) would need "Excess Air " . That is the reason when you see burning leafs or even forest fire there will be thick smoke as it do not have excess air to fully combust the biomass .

A cleaner method of utilising biomass solid fuel is by gasification , whereby biomass solid fuel are partially combusted in a gasifier to produce syngas which can be use as alternative to diesel fuel or fossil derived gas .

Gasification have been used widely since World War II when oil are not being able to be transported due to war .

I have identified a Gasifier System that could replace diesel burner which is widely used in Malaysia . This Gasifier System are clean , fully automated , cost effective and green .

Payback for this investment are normally within 1 year due to very low price of biomass fuel in Malaysia compared to diesel .

Link on the right will help in understanding gasification better . Additional link will be added from time to time .