Here Ben from Victory Gasworks explains the advantages of biomass as a fuel source. Here is a quick summary of the comments included in the video.

Biomass is a wide range resource, from wood, to purpose grown energy crops and waste streams. So in almost every area of the world there is some form of usable biomass, and in regards to waste biomass it must be disposed of anyway, so why not use it to generate energy.

As biomass is part of the carbon cycle, using and burning biomass is regarded as carbon neutral, as it does not add any extra carbon to the cycle unlike fossil fuels. Also the by products from burning biomass are useful, as they can be used as soil amendments to grow the next crop of biomass.

Biomass is almost always readily available, making it a stable fuel source. Particularly with small-scale pellet production using the PelHeat Mobile Pelletizer there is a shorter distance to the end user. This means lower fuel costs and a lower carbon footprint due to less transportation.

Through gasification and other processing, biomass has the potential to produce gaseous and liquid fuels for current transportation vehicles.

Another key point, which is even more relevant in today’s economic climate, is the economic support that biomass fuel could provide. Small-localised biomass energy production from growing to processing could provide jobs and economic benefits on a local and national scale

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In module 4 of Gasification 101, Ben from Victory Gasworks talks about the origins of gasification and the rise, fall and rise again of this technology.

The first large scale use of gasification was for towns gas at the beginning of the 1900’s, which was produced form coal. This gas provided heat and light, however was also used to power vehicles. These vehicles carried the gas in balloons attached to the top of the vehicles.

In the 1920’s the introduction of natural gas pipelines began to replace towns gas, as well as cheap electricity and oil. This began a downward trend in the use of town’s gas and gasification in general. Taxes here in England affected the cost effectiveness of gasification, as road tax was based on weight.

In 1923 the first patent was applied for a down draft gasifier. Between the 1920’s and 30’s there were 12,000 gasification units for stationary power generation operating in Canada and the US.

In the 1930’s Germany was seeking to be energy dependant, and gasification as an automotive fuel began to surge. As with many technologies, the event of war drives technologies further. Again with world war two, the lack of petroleum forced a massive adoption of gasification.

Gasification use peaked during the war, however due to post war cheap oil and gas prices, gasification became a forgotten technology. Between the 1950’s and 1970’s gasification falls further into obscurity, only remaining in developing countries.

As environmental awareness grows during the 1990’s, gasification begins a come back. Today gasification is growing particularly as a means for small-scale operators to produce energy.

As with the PelHeat Mobile Pelletizer, we believe in small-scale production of biomass pellets. The reasons for this are better utilization of resources, fuel independence, price stability and environmental concern. Biomass pellets are currently predominantly used for heat, however small scale gasification offers the possibility to use biomass pellets to generate electricity for personal use, and to sell back to the grid.

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Miscanthus is a warm season perennial grass. Miscanthus is a rapidly growing energy crop, which is currently mainly used by large-scale power stations in co-combustion with coal.

Miscanthus Advantages
Miscanthus has a very high productivity of 10-20 tonnes per acre. It can be grown in a wide range of climates, even in cooler climates like here in the UK.

Miscanthus Disadvantages
Miscanthus is purely an energy crop, and therefore does take up land that could be used for food crop production. Also Miscanthus does not grow from seed, it grows from purpose planted rhizomes. These rhizomes can be expensive to acquire and does increase the initial setup costs of installing the crop, also specialised equipment needs to be used to harvest the crop.

Pellet Production
Through our own experiences with Miscanthus, it is not the easiest material to pelletize, and productivity is closer to high-density materials such as wood as apposed to low-density materials such as straws and other grasses. Also we have experimented burning 100% miscanthus pellets, and we found it was harder to get the fire up to temperature compared to wheat straw pellets for example, however there was far less clinker with Miscanthus pellets.

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