Miscanthus as a crop can be grown in quite a large range of areas, including Europe, Asia and North America. The plant is more suited to temperate climates, where in warmer drier climates it is more suitable to grow sugar cane instead of miscanthus. So really Miscanthus is more suited to cooler and wetter climates.
Miscanthus can grow in marginal soils, however obviously the more productive the soil the more productive the crop. So the balance has to be made between the fertilizer input costs for the productivity gains.
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Miscanthus can be harvested with standard equipment, but when is the best time to harvest Miscanthus? Well basically once the plant has turned brown and the leaves have fallen of the crop, and back to the soil. The reasons for this are:
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is an unwanted element in a fuel source as it causes complications during the combustion process. The plant also needs Nitrogen to grow, so by letting the leaves die off and return to the soil reduces the fertilizer input the crop requires.
Moisture
As the Miscanthus goes from green to brown it also dries out. Obviously as a fuel it needs to be dry, so harvesting a dry fuel reduces the energy inputs required compared with other resources to turn it into a viable efficient fuel source. Also with regards to pellet production the material needs to be dry, for example between 10-20%. Miscanthus at harvest time is between 10-20%, so is ready to be upgraded into pellets.
Corrosion
The video does not mention the corrosion aspects of the fuel, but it definitely should be considered. Miscanthus is more corrosive than say burning wood, and depending on when you harvest the crop depends on how corrosive it is. Harvesting a crop after winter leaching or washing removes some of the corrosive elements.
Harvest Window
The window between the crop dying down and next springs growth is between November and April. Again to reduce the corrosion elements the crop should be harvested as late as possible. However the longer the crop is left the lower the tonne per acre because of crop loses.
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TRECO are the company we purchased our Tatano pellet boiler from, and they have just updated their website with lots of new and interesting information.
Boiler Products Section
There is a now a detailed products section including their range of Guntamatic boiler, Tatano boiler and Ecotek pellet boiler. There is also information on their boiler pods and boiler fuel stores.
Biomass Boiler Technology
The website now gives more of an overview of how and why biomass should be used. Tables are included to give examples between the different energy contents of different biomass materials. For example the increased energy density of pellets over logs and wood chip.
Fuel Comparator
This is one of the best features of the new website. In the fuel comparator you enter the following information.
The size of your property (50m2 to 300m2)
How well insulated it is (3 Options)
Estimate how much you use the boiler (Hours, Days, Months)
Enter the price you pay for Pellets
Then enter what the current Oil, LPG, Electricity or Natural Gas prices are
Once you have entered this information into the simple form, it will calculate how much you can save on using a pellet boiler.
Please visit the TRECO website to find out more: www.treco.co.uk
Below is a picture of our Tatano boiler purchased from TRECO
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The video below gives an explanation of how Nitrogen is deposited back to the soil every fall as the leaves fall from Miscanthus back to the soil. Unlike food crops, which extract Nitrogen from the soil, as energy crops deposit Nitrogen, this reduces their fertilizer demands.
As stated this does not completely resolve the need for fertilizers, however it does reduce the amount needed. Remember, once biomass has been burnt the ash can be used as a soil amendment to get Nitrogen back into the soil. Bio char produced from gasification, is a particularly good soil adamant.
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Hemp is currently the most under utilized biomass crop we currently have. Hemp can be used to produce textiles, plastics, food and fuel among many other uses. Please view the video below for a brief summary on the history of Hemp.
Hemp has been stigmatized because of the association to marijuana, however they are not the same plant. Comparing Hemp to marijuana is like saying poppies are heroin and all mushrooms are magic.
From a biomass pellet perspective, Hemp should be a priority fuel. Firstly hemp produces some of the highest yields of any crop, can grow in almost any climate and can be grown from simply planting a seed. The biomass pellet side of Hemp would be left over dust, basically what is left after all the seeds, fibre and oil have been extracted.
Hemp dust pellets are a quality fuel. Firstly for pellet production the material is already dry, so drying for pellet production is not required. Secondly the material contains high percentages of lignin, therefore forms strong, compact pellets. Also these pellets are low ash and low corrosion and could be burnt in a pellet stove designed to burn premium wood pellets. We hope to try some Hemp dust in the near future, and test how the material pelletizes and how well it burns.
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We were asked to perform a test for a potential customer on water reeds. Due to the nature of their project the water reeds must be maintained and cut thee times a year.
Once the reeds have been air dried, they are then used for thatched roofing, one of the oldest roofing methods, and very efficient at keeping heat in by the way.
However there is roughly 30% of reed waste left over after the reed has been sent for roofing purposes, and we were asked to do a trial on the material to see if we could produce some pellets for use in boilers and stoves. The pictures below are of the 6mm reed pellets we produced.
After a few tests and experiments we found the reed produced their best pellets between 13-15% moisture. The pellets were produced with no additional binder, and are hard, shiny and dense. We hope to produce some more reed pellets in the future and conduct some test burns in our pellet boiler.
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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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Below is a video from Ben at Victory Gasworks and he is calculating the moisture content of his raw material for the gasifier. The test Ben is carrying out is called the dry weight test. In this test the dry weight of the material it taken away from the original weight, the difference is the materials moisture percentage.
Drying Temperature
When conducting a dry weight test the material must be dried at a constant rate, at a relatively low temperature. If you attempt to dry the material at high temperatures more than just moisture will be released from material, and this will give an inaccurate figure for moisture percentage.
Knowing a materials moisture percentage is important for gasification and pellet production. For pellet production the material moisture content is required to be between the ranges of 10-20%. Generally for most materials the best average moisture content for producing pellets is around 15%. This will give a quality pellet with a moisture percentage at around 10%. Therefore conducting a dry weight test on a raw material will indicate if it is suitable for pellet production.
Pellets for Gasification
As Ben explains in the video, moisture content is important for a gasifier to operate properly. Pellets are a high-density fuel with a uniform shape and low moisture content. This makes pellets ideal for gasification as they produce an efficient and predictable burn.
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