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Gasification and Pyrolysis: Introducing Advanced
Technologies for Clean Sustainable Energy
Gasification with
pyrolysis are important technologies, which are about to
become much more important and are known as Advanced Thermal Treatment Technologies.
Stay with us while we try to bridge the gap
between the technical expert-only web sites/ manufacturer's jargon and acronym filled sites, and the superficial
treatment of these technical issues seen in the media generally.
Our aim is to enable the intelligent reader to grasp a
thorough understanding of these complex technologies.
"In the years to come society must develop new sustainable energy technologies, or
civilisation will surely not last long due to runaway climate change, and resource depeletion."
This web site is all about gasification and the closely associated process of
pyrolysis. These technologies are known
collectively as Advanced Thermal Treatment.
What are Gasification and Pyrolysis?
Pyrolysis and gasification, like incineration, are options for recovering value from
waste by thermal treatment. The basic technology concepts are not novel but, recently,
several new proprietary processes have been developed which hold promise for a huge
expansion of the use of these renewable energy technologies.
GASIFICATION is the breakdown of hydrocarbons into a
syngas by carefully controlling the amount of oxygen present (eg the conversion of coal into town gas).
PYROLYSIS is the thermal degradation
of carbon-based material in the absence of air to produce char, pyrolysis oil and syngas (eg the Conversion of
wood to charcoal).
These technologies are being used in two parallel markets, which are categorised as:
1. PROCESSES TO DIVERT MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE AWAY FROM
LANDFILL
2. PROCESSES TO UTILISE BIOMASS SOURCES TO PRODUCE ENERGY FOR
PROFIT
We shall discuss the application of Advanced Thermal Treatment (ATT) Technologies to process municipal solid
waste (MSW). In the UK the term excludes incineration of wastes as this is considered already to be a mature and
well established technology - and thus does not warrant the description of "advanced".Incineration nevertheless
may, we accept, be implemented in an advanced manner fully in compliance with the European Union Waste Incineration
Directive.
An Introduction to Gasification and Pyrolysis - a
brief description of each:
The gasification and pyrolysis of solid materials is not a new concept.
Both these related technologies have been used extensively to produce fuels such as charcoal, coke and town or
producer gas. in the case of charcoal for millennia and coke for something like the last 200 years.
Charcoal and coke are produced by pyrolysing wood and coal respectively and "producer or syngas" or process gas
is generated, this being a combustible gas produced by the action of gasification in the presence of air and/or
steam.
It is only in recent years that such pyrolysis and gasification have been commercially applied to the treatment
of MSW. The development of pyrolysis and gasification technologies is in its infancy in the United Kingdom, but
large scale plants have been built and are in operation in Europe, North America and Japan, and will soon come on
line in the UK as well.
Visit our other pages, as listed below for more information:
"Gasification is said to be the cleanest, most efficient combustion method known. This
is evident even for wood-gas stoves which can be started, operated and stopped with
very low emissions and can use a wide variety of biomass fuels."
THE MAIN COMPONENTS OF A GASIFICATION or PYROLYSIS PLANT
ATT facilities vary in their components. Each of the technology providers which offers these plants adopts a
slighlty differenet approach. However, an ATT plant will typically consist of the following key elements:
• Waste reception, storage, handling and pre-treatment;
• Thermal treatment reactor (where the gasification, pyrolysis etc process takes place);
• Gas and residue treatment plant (purification of syngas such as removal of corrosive substances before
combustion);
• Energy recovery plant (although in some process this might be on another site);
and
• Emissions clean-up to ensure that the gases discharged comply with all applicable air quality regulations.
Why Use Gasification?
Today, the world demand for renewable energy sources is the key factor in the revival of the use of gasification
systems, which has been was in strong decline throughout the age of cheap petroleum, which is
now in the past.
Gasification systems can be particularly successfully when applied to the production of energy from biomass.
They also represent an attractive alternative to the well-established thermal treatment systems for the recovery of
energy from solid wastes.
Gasification is particularly suitable to treat industrial wastes but there are some problems with municipal
solid wastes related to their heterogeneity.
What is the Advantage of Gasification?
The process of gasification is more efficient in producing
controllable energy than ordinary incinerator combustion, and can produce useful by-products, allowing the extract
of more useful energy and chemical compounds from carbonaceous materials and biomass, than would be available by
burning them.
Gasification processes can also be coupled up with carbon capture and storage, which cannot be achieved by
incineration, in the same way.
Exactly What is Biomass? - Watch this video and find out!
GAZPROM OAO : Gazprom allocates record amount of investments for Russian ... 4-traders (press release) As part of the Program, this year Gazprom is allocating for Russian regions gasification a record amount of investments - RUB 37.660 billion versus RUB 29.070 billion in 2011. Thus, the amount of financing for Russian regions gasification has been ...
Biowaste Gasification Process Produces Urea Based Fertilisers Waste Management World The biomass is dried, cleaned and ground to a consistent size and gasified. The resultant syngas then passes through a series of cleaning steps to remove any elements that could be detrimental to the downstream processing. The company said that the ...
Gasification with
pyrolysis are important technologies, which are about to
become much more important and are known as Advanced Thermal Treatment Technologies.
The gasification and pyrolysis of solid materials is not a new concept.
Both these related technologies have been used extensively to produce fuels such as charcoal, coke and town or
producer gas. in the case of charcoal for millennia and coke for something like the last 200 years.
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