Re: GAS-L: maximum pressure

[Reedtb2@cs.com]

Dear Leland and all:

Many projects have gone belly up because of feeding problems (ie Hawaii, cost ~ $50 M and 15 years of wasted technical effort, sunk by bagasse feeding problems). 

If we pelletize all biomass for high pressure use first, it can probably be fed using the reliable coal pressure feeding technologies that have been standard for 100 years.     

While most pelletizing today is for sawdust for the new automatic pellet stoves, there is also significant pelletizing of peanut shells and bagasse - both excellent candidates for high pressure feeding.  

Onward...     TOM REED          BEF GASWORKS


In a message dated 2/1/02 12:25:08 PM Mountain Standard Time, LINVENT@aol.com writes:


> Dear Bill,
>     The high pressure gasification of biomass has been done on a large scale 
> at the Hawaii project where sugar cane bagasse was fed into a high pressure 
> system with oxygen feed. The recent offerings from the DOE have requested low 
> pressure gasification technology to deal with the material handling problems 
> into and out of the gasification system at pressure. Considering that the DOE 
> was a major sponsor of the Hawaii project, this is an interesting 
> philosophical change. 
>     The major benefit to high pressure is not having to compress the gas to 
> feed into a turbine which operates at 150-350 psi. Compressing the gas after 
> gasification is a significant parasitic load. 
>     There are ways to deal with the power generation without having to worry 
> about pressurized systems which work out very economic. 
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Leland T. Taylor
> President