United States of America, North America, Canada

KSMU Ozarks Public Radio, Friday, 14 August 2009

CU Burns 'Torrefied" Wood Instead of Pure Coal in Test

City Utilities of Springfield invited local journalists out Thursday to witness an experiment in burning something other than coal to produce electricity. KSMU's Jennifer Moore took them up on the invitation and headed out.

CU Experiments By Burning 'Torrefied' Wood

The monitors in the control room at the James River Power Station indicate whether the test burn is working. (Photo credit: Jennifer Moore)
Pictures

Reporter: "Right now, I'm at the James River Power Station, just southeast of the city limits, near Lake Springfield. I'm surrounded by rather large hills of black coal, and looming over my shoulder are four enormous smokestacks. This coal is obviously burned to provide energy for the city. But the reason why we're here today has to do with a much smaller pile of what looks like dark sawdust. This is torrefied wood. And City Utilities is doing a test today to see whether this torrefied wood could be blended with coal to provide an alternative source of energy."

"We're gonna burn some of the torrefied wood we made in a plant in Missouri for a test," said Andrew Livingston, president of Earthcare Products Incorporated, based in Independence, Kansas. His company designs and engineers biomass energy systems, including producing torrefied wood. He arranged for this pile of wood to be here today.

Torrefication is a process of “roasting,” if you will, wood chips in a large furnace to remove the moisture and make the product more brittle. This process changes the wood chips, so that they are easier to crush for burning in generators like the ones here at CU.

"It will grind the torrefied wood as small as coal, with less horsepower, and burn in suspension burners in coal-fired boilers. It will blend, or it can be fired to 100 percent of the fuel rates. This is being tested for the first time in North America in a coal-fired boiler with this volume of torrefied wood," Livingston said.

Livingston said torrefied wood is "CO2 neutral," and that the environmental benefits to burning it as opposed to burning pure coal are plenty. As reporters look on, CU employees flip a switch and the pile of torrefied wood begins to disappear, due to a hole that is opened up under the pile. This allows the wood to fall onto an underground conveyor belt and make its way into the plant.

OSHA CO Factsheet
Occupational Health and Safety Administration, US Department of Labor, 2002
http://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/data_General_Facts/carbonmonoxide-factsheet.pdf

Nexterra Energy Corp. Projects - Completed and Underway

JCI

Nexterra (www.nexterra.ca) is a biomass gasification company based in Vancouver Canada.

Tolko Industries - Heffley Creek BC

Nexterra's first commercial facility at Tolko Industries’ Heffley Creek plywood plant has been operational since May 2006. It produces 38 MMBtu/hr of net usable heat for their veneer dryers and log conditioning vats.

www.nexterra.ca/industry/tolko.cfm

University of South Carolina, Coloumbia SC

Johnson Controls has installed a Nexterra gasification technology at the University of South Carolina. The system will produce 60,000 lb/hr of high pressure steam and 1.4 MWe of electricity.

The system successfully completed performance and emissions test in 2009. The University is now building a renewable energy "living labratory" around the gasification plant.

http://www.nexterra.ca/industry/johnson.cfm

Biomass Magazine Article: www.nexterra.ca/PDF/BiomassMagMarch08FNLLogos.pdf

Dockside GreenDockside Green, Victoria BC

Dockside Green is a 1.3 million-square- foot residential and commercial development in Victoria’s Inner Harbour. The development, which received LEED® Platinum certification from the Canada Green Building Council, will be home to 2,500 residents. Nexterra’s biomass gasification system will provide heat and hot water for the community and enable the development to be carbon-neutral from an energy perspective. The 7 MMBtu/hr plant will be owned and operated as a neighborhood energy utility through a partnership among Vancity Capital, Terasen Energy Services and Corix.

The system is now operational.  www.nexterra.ca/news/090603.html

http://www.nexterra.ca/industry/dockside.cfm

Oakridge National Labs, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Nexterra, through its alliance with Johnson Controls, has been selected to build a 60 MMBtu/hr gasification project for the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the largest science and energy laboratory in the U.S. This system will convert wood into syngas and provide 60,000 lbs/hr of low pressure steam to heat the ORNL facility. Engineering and design of the system is underway. System start-up is scheduled for late 2009.

http://www.nexterra.ca/industry/ornl.cfm

Kruger Products Limited
Kruger has ordered a 40,000 lb/hr gasification and steam generation system for its tissue paper mill in New Westminster, B.C. The application showcases Nexterra’s ability to directly fire syngas into a boiler. The system will make the mill more energy efficient and competitive by reducing annual fossil fuel consumption. In addition, the mill’s greenhouse gases will be reduced by more than 22,000 tonnes per year.

Product Development

Nexterra operates an 8 MMBtu/hr Product Development Centre located in Kamloops BC and has a dedicated product development team.  At the Product Development Centre, Nexterra develops and demonstrates new applications and tests new fuels.  In 2005 Nexterra dramatically modified its Product Development Centre to demonstrate direct firing applications. Nexterra has demonstrated conveying of syngas and firing it directly into lime kiln burners or existing boilers.

Since 2007 Nexterra has been working with GE Energy to develop an application where Nexterra's gasification system and gas clean up technology will be combined with high efficiency GE Jenbacher engines.  This has the potential to make biomass CHP economic at a scale of 2- 10 MWe. The first demonstration of this application will take place later in 2009.  

Vidir Biomass Greenhouse Gas Displacement System
Vidir Manufacturing, Inc., Manitoba, CAN
Vidir Biomass

Pyrogas from Biomass (pdf)
F. Michael Lewis, July 14, 2007

Nexterra Gasifier at Tolko Featured in Biomass Magazine
Tom Miles, July 1, 2007

Tolko, Heffley Creek

NGen 5 kW Gasifier
NGen, Lakewood, Colorado June 16, 2007
NGen 5KW Genset

Commercial Operation of Thermogenics’ Model 103-2X-6 gasifier Update March, 2007
Leland Taylor, Thermogenics, Inc. March 2007
Model 103-2X-6 at Snyder, Texas