G.S. Varma, Hyderabad, India, September 2005

One of the first gasifier installations of our company.  The plant is of 250,000 kcal/hr capacity.  This plant was supplied by ‘ANKUR’.	Another view of the gasifier. Notice the forced draft cooling tower.

Close-up view. The plant is still operational after 7 years of installation. Most of flexible pipelines have been since replaced. The force draft cooling tower has also been replaced.	Fuel Handling System for conveying paddy husk into the gasifier.

Biomass Gasifier along with the structure. The checkered brick work is a natural draft cooling tower to provide cooling water for scrubbing. Gasifier capacity 625,000 kcal/hr. clear=all>	Char removal.  In this project char is removed manually.  The water in the system needs to be changed every 200 hours of operation.  Notice the dirty black colour of char  in the plant area.

This plant supplies gas as part fuel to a 60 tons / day reheating furnace of a steel re-rolling mill.	A view of the re-heating furnace along with gas burners.
The gasifier plant supplies 130 litres per hour equivalent of gas for the furnace. This plant operates for 16 hours/day 26 days a month.

Single gasifier unit of 5,00,000 kcal/hr.  This is one among the five units installed to replace LDO as fuel for drying.  The plant has 17 dryers and these gasifiers now replace LDO from the plant.	A view of all the gasifiers installed in the plant

This gasifier plant supplies gas to fuel a down draft kiln at clay pipe manufacturing unit. The temperature is 1100 Deg C. Coal was being used as fuel in the past.	A View of the DD Kiln	A view of the burner.

We are an eight year old Energy Services Company based in Hyderabad , India and have been operating gasifier based plants for meeting the thermal and power needs of our industrial customers on a shared savings basis for over 4 years. We own and operate the gasifier plants. Our revenues come from the net savings (75%) derived from the operation of the plants. Our customers keep 25% of the net savings.

Gasifier Installations in India have largely driven by the government subsidies. There was never an incentive for most manufacturers to involve themselves in the actual operations of gasifiers (either for thermal or for power use). I am not sure of the exact status of size and number of gasifier plants operating .... most of the plants are in -operative. However, I present the following figures of the plants that are owned and operated by us:

1. Modern Roofings Limited 100 KW (Thermal mode)

Bio-mass gas from the gasifier is used to replace Diesel (25 litres / hour) in a furnace. Fuel for the gasifier is rice husk. The plant was commisioned in November 1998, and commercial production began in April 1999. The plant has been operating since then with average of 575 hours per month. In April of this year the ownership of the plant was transferrred to the use and he is operating the plant since then.

2. Sai Roofings Limited 200 KW (Thermal mode)

Bio-mass gas from the gasifier is used to replace Diesel (50 litres / hour) in a furnace. Fuel for the gasifier is rice husk. The plant was commisioned in May 2000, and commercial production began in August 2000. The plant has been operating since then with average of 550 hours per month.

3. Paragon Printers 200 KW (Power Mode)

Gasifier in this plant generates gas from rice husk to replace 70% of diesel in a 250 KVA generator when producing 170 KW of power. The plant was commissioned in Jan 2002 and has been operating since then. The average operating hours are 300 as the plant operates only 12 hours in a day.

4. Model Steels Lmited 400 KW (Power Mode)

Gasifier in this plant generates gas from rice husk to replace 85 litres/hour of diesel in a 2500 KVA generator when producing 1600 KW (consumes 485 litrs / hours when operating in 100% diesel) of power. The plant was commissioned in May 2002.

We have recently aquired a 1 MW gasifer based power plant to supply power to the State electricity board. The plant has two slow speed generators. Two 500 KW gasifiers supply power to each of the DG set. The fuel in this plant is wood (eucalyptus) cut into small pieces (6" long and 1 to 2" in dia). We have been operating the plant 24 hours a day since August 2002.

G.S. Varma

President

Agni Energy Services (P) Ltd

B-76 Madhuranagar,

HYDERABAD - 500 038.

Phone /Fax: +91 40 2381 7927

mobile: +91 98662 48384

e-mail: hyd2_agniesco@sancharnet.in

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