Gasifier Experimenters Kit

Biomass Energy Foundation: HistoryCPC developed this gasifier with the aid of grants from the US DOE,Shell International, the California Energy commision ant others intofield gasifiers tested in Alaminos in the Philippines and the HoopaValley Indian Reservation in California.CPC is now quite active in many aspects of gasifier research andhas a dozen 15 kW "Turnkey, Tarfree" gasifiers in the field and usedby the US Forest Service and Others to turn forest litter andbiomass trash into heat and power. CPC is now also developing a 5kW heat/power and a 50 kW gasifier.THE DASIFIER FOUNDRY GASIFIERHere's a nifty gasifier developed by my colleague and co-author,Agua Das, for melting bronze and other metals with biomass. Builtfrom tincans and a refrigerator compressor, it burns all kinds ofbiomass trash. I also call it an "up-down draft gasifier. See thedescription at "Dasifier".BIG GASIFIERSI have lots of descriptions of large gasifier projects in my book"Survey of Biomass Gasification - 2000" (see Books). Here is thefamous Burlington Vt. 5 MW fluidized bed that makes a very richgas of 15 MJ/m 3. It is based on the double fluidized bed developedat Battelle and has been scaled up by FERCO and the US Dept. ofEnergy. It operates on wood chips from the Vermont forests. Ibelieve it is no longer in operation (July, 2004).The BEF is involved with research, design and construction of allgasifier sizes.GASIFIERS FOR FUELS AND CHEMICALSWhen biomass is gasified with air the resulting gas has ~50% nitrogen, and so is good only for useat the point of origin. For pipelines, for some storage or for chemical synthesis, oxygen gasificationproduces a gas with twice the energy (~12 MJ/m 3 ) while pyrolytic gasification can produce a gaswith 20 MJ/m 2 .In 1973 at MIT, I wrote the lead article for the journal Science, "Methanol: A versatileFuel for Immediate Use", (Vol. 182, pp 1299, 1973). Unfortunately, the USchose not to develop fuels alternative to gasoline and so has been exporting money for oil tofinance terrorists. Read the sad story at our Methanol page.In 1980 we built an oxygen gasifier at SERI/NREL which eventually was tested on pure oxygen atthe 25 ton/d level. This is discussed in our book FUNDAMENTAL STUDY AND SCALE UP OFTHE AIR-OXYGEN STRATIFIED DOWNDRAFT GASIFIER on the Books Page.http://www.woodgas.com/history.htm (3 of 4) [10/9/2008 08:23:07]