Genifuel — Catalytic Hydrothermal Gasification
For quite a while, I helped to promote a client back east and their solution to processing the manure that comes from our nation’s 7.6 billion chickens. The problem I had, in retrospect, was the technology, which was garden-variety (pardon the pun) anaerobic digestion. AD, a process in which waste is converted to methane and other products biologically, has been around for thousands of years. It’s slow, and worse, incomplete, leaving a huge portion of the incoming mass as sludge.
The other day I had lunch with an old friend who’s become quite an expert in biomass. When I told him that I was on a quest for the best technologies, he suggested that I check out Genifuel.
This looks really attractive to me. Pyrolysis and gasification are thermochemical processes that have the potential to be far faster and more complete than AD. I’m going to call them Monday and try to visit one of their customers if I can find one locally.
Let’s use that process on DC the s**t there is rich in Gas and in need of removal.
Hi Craig.
Having studied most biomass to energy technologies for my Buffalo dung project in Pakistan, CHG was among them, I concluded that the complexity of the whole CHG process excludes it at present from practical application. While technically sound (once impurity and clogging problems are solved),the main/only product -low methane gas, is not worth very much, and likely to cost less in the future, especially in your country. (10% pa potential investment yield in 2009 may now be less than 5% at current gas values)
If we look at the value chain in developing countries, the main fiscal value is in the compost and fertilizer, with the biogas as a very useful but minor income stream. For this reason it will be hard to beat the benefits of prioritizing soil amendment/improvement benefits over energy benefits,and with modern Anaerobic digestion of dung liquid after separation, and composting the solids you can have both. However I’m very supportive of new technology advances and always delighted to be proved wrong, or premature in my assessment of new approaches.
Hi, Robert. I’ll certainly let you know what I find out from these people as I more about their specific approach to CHG.
In this article you say: Anaerobic Digestion is:”…slow, and worse, incomplete, leaving a huge portion of the incoming mass as sludge.
Slow it certainly is, but although in the industrialised nations he value of the sludge as a fertilizer has yet to be realised, I think it will in the end be seen as equal to the biogas. It is good that this point is made, but at the UK ADBA exhibition and conference earlier this month I was struck by a presentation by an agriculturalist who has carried out field trials on AD sludge from large on-farm digesters, he trotted through all the usual and not terribly spectacular data about the chemistry of the digestate – all the usual guides to chemical fertilizer efficiency without hardly a pause. But, then he started to talk about the positive effect on soil fungi and bacteria, and other biota and that’s when he became excited. The clincher seemed to him to be the clover growth it promotes.
Farmers are holding out against paying for digestate (your “sludge”, but I doubt they will be able to resist buying it for very long when guys like him are praising it so much.
Thanks for letting me give my comment.
Quite a number of those who see the value of agri-products rather than just energy products are pretty excited about digester outputs-liquid and sludge – its a no brainer when they are worth much more than the gas produced!