General European Strategic Invt's Inc (GESI)

[wangdo]

Flat Foot....Gasification

http://www.xylowatt.com/en/Dernieres-Actualites/gazefication-de-traverses-de-chemin-de-fer-un-nouveau-succes-pour-xylowatt.html

Gasification of railway sleepers: a new success for XYLOWATT!
Railway sleepers are heavily contaminated waste for which there are few disposal solutions.XYLOWATT’s gasification technology has passed the strictest emission tests, well beyond incineration standards.An initial project to process 5,000 tonnes of railway sleepers per year will begin in Brussels in 2013, transforming the timber into green energy.


NOTAR®: creosote destruction
Creosote is a tar-based product historically used to extend the lifespan of railway sleepers. When treated with creosote, timber sleepers receive lasting protection against humidity and bad weather. However, during their forty or so years on the railway, they tend to accumulate heavy metals from the overhead cables. This means that at the end of their lifespan, railway sleepers have to be disposed of rather than recovered via combustion, as their heavy metal content and creosote treatment make it impossible to use them in traditional boilers.

Since 2007, the company has been selling the gasifier NOTAR®, specially designed to destroy tar and produce clean gas when it leaves the facility. This technology, exclusively developed by XYLOWATT, also destroys the creosote during the gasification process and concentrates the heavy metals in the ashes.

The NOTAR® gasifier has now proved itself in an industrial setting and undergone scientific studies, the results of which have been presented at international conferences.

XYLOWATT’s gasifiers are the only ones in Europe to offer industrially proven technology that combines both heavy metal capture and creosote destruction.

In order to prove this experimentally, railway sleeper gasification tests were performed at the Test Gasification Plant of Université Catholique de Louvain (a complete gasification facility on a small scale, but fully comparable to a XYLOWATT industrial facility). During the tests, measurements were taken to prove that the emissions comply with European Directive 2000/76/EC on incineration.

The study, certified by an independent inspection body, demonstrated that emissions only reached 10% of the maximum value set in the standard for the overwhelming majority of the specified contaminants (including dioxins).

These results have been validated based on the European Directive on waste incineration, one of the strictest in the world!

This study officially validates the advantages of NOTAR® technology over and above any other method of reclaiming railway sleepers. It also opens up the scope of application of NOTAR® gasification to contaminated biomass types seen as difficult.


http://www.rta.org/Portals/0/Documents/Research%20Paper%20&%20Articles/RTA%20Sponsored%20Research/Creosote%20Tie%20Evaluation%20Article%20_4_.pdf


Used ties have value as a source of energy. The heat value of wood varies generally from about
4,500 to 8,000 BTU per pound (9,000 BTU per pound at zero percent moisture), depending on
moisture content. Creosote adds to the heat value with approximately 12,500 BTU per pound.
Thus, each tie offers approximately 1.4 million BTU (MMBTU) of heat energy.
Ties may be used as fuel in a facility designed specifically to burn ties, in industrial wood fired
boilers, in utility boilers co-fired with coal, or other solid fuel combustion systems, such as
cement kilns. With new technology, ties are being used in gasification facilities to produce
electric energy or liquid biofuel. In a cogeneration (also called combined heat and power)
facility, ties and other fuel, as applicable, are burned to produce high pressure steam that drives a
turbine to produce electricity while some or all of the low pressure steam from the turbine is used
for process heating, thereby increasing the overall thermal efficiency of energy conversion.
When ties are burned beneficially as fuel, they offset fossil fuel that would otherwise have been
used to produce the same energy. The energy value of one tie is approximately equal to that of
125 pounds of coal.
Since the wood fuel is carbon neutral, for each tie burned for energy recovery, only the creosote
portion is considered a fossil fuel that results in the addition of approximately 39 pounds of
carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide from burning coal of equal energy would
be approximately 288 pounds. Thus, each tie used for energy results in a net offset of carbon
dioxide emissions of approximately 249 pounds.

http://www.gasification.org/page_2.asp?a=2

Gasification Technology Members

ABB, Inc.
Air Liquide and Lurgi
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
ALSTOM Power Energy Recovery GmbH
Alter NRG Corporation
Aramco Services Company
Bechtel Corporation
Black & Veatch
BP America
Burns & McDonnell
CH2M HILL
ConocoPhillips
Dow Chemical Company
Duke Energy
Eastman Chemical Company
EmberClear Corporation
Emerson Process Management
Emery Energy Company
Fisher-Klosterman, Inc.
Fluor Corporation
Foster Wheeler Energy International Inc.
Gas Technology Institute
GE Energy
GS Engineering & Construction
Haldor Topsoe A/S
HPD, LLC
Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.
Jacobs Engineering
Jindal Steel & Power Limited
Kellogg Brown & Root
Leucadia National Corporation
Linc Energy
Linde LLC
MaxWest Environmental Systems, Inc.
Mitsubishi Power Systems, Inc.
Mogas Industries, Inc.
Noblis
Pall Corporation
Peabody Energy, Inc.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
Praxair, Inc.
Reliance Industries Ltd.
Rentech, Inc.
RTI International
Saipem S.p.A.
Schlumberger Carbon Services
SFA Pacific, Inc.
Shell Global Solutions B.V.
Siemens Power Generation, Inc.
Summit Power Group, Inc.
Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc.
Tennessee Valley Authority
Uhde Corporation of America
UOP
WorleyParsons Group, Inc.
Ze-Gen, Inc.
Zero Emission Energy Plants (ZEEP)


Gasification Facts

One of the most compelling challenges of the 21st Century is finding a way to meet national and global energy needs while minimizing the impact on the environment. Gasification can help meet those challenges.

•Gasification is a time-tested, reliable, and flexible technology that converts carbon-containing materials, including waste and biomass, into electricity and other valuable products, such as chemicals, fuels, substitute natural gas, and fertilizers.

•Gasification does not involve combustion (burning), but instead uses little or no oxygen or air in a closed reactor to convert carbon-based materials directly into a synthetic gas, or syngas. It is this intermediate product, syngas, that makes gasification so unique and different from combustion.

•The gasification process breaks these materials down to the molecular level, so impurities like nitrogen, sulfur, and mercury can be easily removed and sold as valuable industrial commodities.

•Gasification can recover the energy locked in biomass and municipal solid waste, converting those materials into valuable products and eliminating the need for incineration or landfilling. Biomass can also be blended with coal as a feedstock for electricity generation to lower its carbon footprint.

•Gasification has been reliably used on a commercial scale for more than 75 years in the refining, fertilizer, and chemical industries, and for more than 35 years in the electric power industry.

•Gasification produces electricity with significantly reduced environmental impact compared to conventional technologies.

•Gasification plants bring good jobs to a community – construction jobs needed to build a plant, and well-paying permanent jobs needed to run the plant. Compared to the old coal-burning plants, gasification can capture carbon dioxide much more efficiently and at a lower cost. This capture technology is being successfully used at gasification plants in the U.S. and worldwide.

•World gasification capacity is projected to grow by more than 70% by 2015. Most of that growth will occur in Asia, with China expected to achieve the most rapid growth


•Gasification is an investment in our energy future.