Re: Biomass co-firing certification

["Dick Glick" <dglickd@pipeline.com>]

Hello Fred and others --

 

I'd like to correct wide-spread misinformation regarding renewable energy in Florida and the Southeast.  The message: From: "Pletka, Ryan J." <PletkaRJ@bv.com>

<snip>

Contains this very incorrect statement:

"1.  Political Reasons.  Renewable energy resources are not evenly
distributed across the US.  States like Florida and others in the Southeast
have very limited practical options."

<snip>

 

The facts are -- nothing could be farther than the actual case.  I'll amplify -- hoping not to bore others in the list that might have seen this before.  Here I summarize a prior circumstance that had been fully engineered and prepared for financing:

1. In the middle eighties, one of the Corporation for Future Resources (CFR) companies obtained a 54 MW PURPA contract from the Florida Power Corporation.. CFR was to construct a gasifier based -- a tested and developed gasifier presented by Nouvelier and financed and represented by SNC and Hydro-Quebec and the Canadian government  that was pressurized and fed the combustor of a Brown-Boveri Type 9 gas turbine (at 10 atm and near 1000 F) that was theb matched with a steam cogeneration unit.
2. The fuel was to be wood chips -- and here's where the complete misunderstanding of fuel enters.  North Florida, South Alabama and South Georgia was then and continues today to be the source of at least 1 million tons per year of wood -- hardwood chips from Southern Pine Forests!  Most to the point, CFR had under contract with a highly qualified forestry group to receive -- delivered -- sufficient wood chips plus some sawdust at less than $13/ton -- without the sawdust, the price would have been slightly more than $14/ton.  The chips were to have a heat content, LHV, near 4500 BTU/lb or about 9 million BTU per ton.
3. The same would be available today -- and even if the price would double, the per million BTU price would be near $3/million-BTU.
4. There is a Gulf Power -- Southern Company -- coal generator appropriately located near Sneads, Florida -- 95 MW -- that could be easily served wood chips from this source.  Further there are, within easy barge reach from Apalachicola, Florida -- a deep port -- several thousand MW's of coal fired power generation operated by Florida Progress and TECO in the Tampa, Florida area.
5. Although CFR's gasifier project was not completed -- the contract was combined with another that, by a third party, is used at a 100 MW natural gas -- combined cycle facility near Bartow, Florida.
6. CFR's project failed for reasons that had nothing to do with the technology -- just terrible circumstances related to other aspects of the opportunity.
7. CFR's failure, therefore, had and still has nothing to do with the availability of wood fuel in North Florida, South Alabama and South Georgia.

CFR, however, has changed its focus -- biomass based renewables are converted by anaerobic fermentation rather than burning -- obtaining, thereby, not only energy -- at least equivalent to that from burning -- but also equally significant quantities of anaerobic compost-fertilizer that additionally is effective at carbon sequestration.  There are as many as 4 million acres in Florida that could furnish fuel for CFR's technology.  The production of dry biomass would be at least 60 million available tons of biomass that would yield some 420 million MCF equivalents of natural gas per year plus comparable -- energy and environmentally speaking -- quantities of compost-fertilizer.  Please see the URL's, below.

 

Best, Dick

Dick  Glick, PhD
President
Corporation For Future Resources
1909 Chowkeebin Court
Tallahassee, Florida 32301
Phone: 850-942-2022

Fax: 850-942-1967
Email: dglickd@pipeline.com
URL: http://CorpFutRes.com
http://wire0.ises.org/entry.nsf/E?Open&project&00031306