Re: GAS-L: Oh!! -- that small steam power plant ---

[Andrew Heggie <andrew.heggie@dtn.ntl.com>]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2000 22:12:51 -0500, Alex wrote:


>
>Peter,
>What do you think about the gasifier for this power plant producing a 
>valuable co-product like charcoal. Ofcourse it may depend on your 
>fuel, but  the total return from tri-gen (electricity, heat and 
>charcoal) might make an attractive package in your part of the world.
I attempted to respond to the thread Joacim and Tom Reed posted about
the Kalle gasifier:
"On Sat, 4 Mar 2000 20:03:48 EST, Tom Reed wrote:

>  Charcoal is incredibly easy to gasify.  We always start our gasifier on
>charcoal until it is hot enough for wood."
Fine this is point one in favour of the proposition!

On the stoves list Tom has not been in favour of charcoal as a
co-product. The IDD stove clearly demonstrates clean burning (in an
urban environment this is possibly a bigger factor than outright
efficiency) but has the "drawback" of producing 25% by
weight of charcoal fines as a residue. To me a rural community
depending on wood for cooking may well welcome the ability to use a
by-product to power a machine cheaply.
>
>Does anyone have good data (energy content, gas composition, efficiency) on
>charcoal gasification.  (Not in Gen Gas.)
Yes I am still waiting for response on this!

Peter and Skip are looking at the small scale, I guess Alex is also
looking at a similar scale. I was considering a micro scale, in the
absence of an electricity grid with cooking taking place on idd
woodstoves (essentially small hybrid pyrolyser/gasifiers with a large
char residue) the char being utilised in cheap small gasifiers with no
(or small) problems of gas cleanup in standard spark ignition engines
to produce power.

AJH

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