The Gasifyer Blog

Environment consciousness has been growing steadily all over the world and different industries are taking steps to decrease their dependency on the fast-depleting fossil fuel reserves. Steps are also taken to decrease the harmful emissions especially those from cars.

Automotive companies are also developing ways to further clean the emissions produced by their cars and not only to comply with government standards but to also help protect the environment. Different alternative sources of energy or fuel is being studied. Volvo is one of these companies which have taken steps to help in saving the environment from destruction. Their Flexifuel system that is already used in three of their car models and such a system allows a vehicle to use bio ethanol for fuel. This is indeed showing their dedication not only in producing safe cars but clean cars as well.

Volvo?s studies on renewable and cleaner fuels do not start and end with their development and subsequent employment of their FlexiFuel system. The company announced that they are investing in Chemrec AB. This Swedish company has developed a technology in producing synthesis gas which is an important component in the production of various types of alternative fuels. The technology that Chemrec has developed is the first step in extracting alternative fuels from biomass. This renewable source of energy if further developed will help not only the company but the whole industry to lower its dependency on fossil fuels. The study in this field has been underway for more than fifteen years and this breakthrough brings the company closer to producing alternative fuels that will have less damaging effects on the environment compared to currently employed fossil fuel based products.

With the development of the technology to extract synthesis gases from biomass, Chemrec has shown that there is an efficient process in converting biomass into renewable fuels. Their chosen biomass is black liquor which is a residual product from the pulp industry. The common practice to recover the chemicals from this waste is to burn it up on soda furnaces. However, a disadvantage of this is that the recovered chemicals have a low efficiency rating.

But Chemrec has developed a technology that instead gasifies the black liquor from which comes out different by-products including synthesis gas which has a higher efficiency rating. From this, alternative fuels can be extracted with already developed techniques to get vehicle fuels such as bio-diesel, hydrogen gas, synthetic diesel and DME which are all cleaner burning fuels compared to pure gasoline or diesel.

The investment of Volvo on the Swedish company does not mean though that the company has a plan to become a fuel supplier, but they are working on ways to utilize the technology in the development of newer and cleaner engines. This move on the part of the Volvo group shows its dedication to not only protect its consumers via their safe cars but also help to protect the environment through the development of cleaner and renewable vehicle fuels. While this development cannot wipe away the world?s dependency on fossil fuels like a Volvo wiper blade can efficiently wipe raindrops from a windshield, but this is certainly a step forward in the right direction.

Whether this technology will be employed in the near future to replace the pure gasoline fuel employed by cars still remains to be seen. But with the dedication of Volvo to help in the development of new processes for the production of alternative fuels and companies such as Chemrec, a cleaner future is quite possible. A future that would see us not totally dependent on fossil fuels for our energy demand, while this may seem far off, the automotive industry is making a good step forward.

Soon your old and worn GMC condenser won?t be just another junk in somebody?s junkyard.

Gershow Recycling, one of the world’s largest recyclers, has reportedly agreed to receive the world’s first 100 percent emission- and pollutant-free green recycling machine for auto shredder residue (ASR). Global Resource will supply Gershow with its proprietary technology to reduce landfill waste by approximately 65%, recover extra metal for profit, and the process will generate virtually no emissions linked to global warming.

Global Resource Corp. (GBRC) has a patent pending process that allows for removal of oil and alternative petroleum products at very low cost from various resources, including shale deposits, tar sands, waste oil streams and bituminous coal with significantly greater yields and lower costs than are available utilizing existing known technologies.

Invented by GBRC, the revolutionary ASR conversion machine — the HAWK 10 is set to feature a cutting-edge system using high microwave frequencies to convert “autofluff” — textiles, foams, plastics, rubber, and light metal content extracted from cars — into oil and gas. This process significantly reduces the amount of waste that Gershow will send to landfills, and it is conducted in a closed-loop system that eliminates pollutants.

Located on Long Island, N.Y., Gershow Recycling collects and processes ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, and paper products from scrap suppliers, and turns them into high quality scrap products. Most of Gershow’s scrap comes from automobiles. Obsolete automobiles are the most recycled high-volume consumer product in the US. About 18 million tons per year of ferrous scrap, mostly from shredded automobiles are recovered by the scrap industry. The HAWK 10 will allow Gershow to scrap more metal from materials that were difficult to separate before, enabling them to reduce waste by 65%.

For each ton of steel that is recovered, between 500 – 700 pounds of automobile shredder residue (ASR) is produced. ASR contains plastics, rubber, wood, paper, fabrics, glass, sand, dirt, ferrous and non-ferrous metal pieces. The current ASR disposal technology is land filling. When ASR is landfilled, many high-priced materials with significant embodied energy are lost. This loss, combined with the cost of landfilling, more stringent regulations and shrinking landfill space require new alternatives for ASR.

The HAWK 10 is reportedly set to eliminate these costs and environmental hazards by breaking down the autofluff with its patent-pending high-frequency microwave technology. The microwaves gasify the materials — a process also known as “cracking the hydrocarbon chain” — and convert them into 80 percent light combustible gases, and 20 percent oil. The gas is then cycled in a closed-loop system to fuel the next round of material breakdown, without emitting any harmful waste.

The alternative renewable energy system will deliver cost-efficiency in four ways:

Combustible gases and fluids to energy

Approximately 65% reduction of land fill tipping fee

Additional metallic material captured

Alternative energy tax credits

“We expect Gershow Recycling to capture a full return on their investment within one year of use, thanks to HAWK 10′s incredible efficiency, and its ability to lower expenses and recover profit,” says Frank Pringle, CEO of Global Resource Corp. “Gershow’s agreement to implement the HAWK 10 is an excellent example of their forward-thinking, tech-savvy approach to recycling — one its entire industry should emulate to fight global warming. We’re on the cusp of an energy revolution in our country, and alternative energy technology such as ours offers a clear way to cheaper, cleaner fuel, and higher profits.”

Pyrolysis is an emerging technology and its green credentials when the feed is biomass are top notch. Everyone who has lit a wood or coal fire and watched it burn has seen pyrolysis. Pyrolysis is usually the first chemical reaction that occurs in the burning of many solid organic fuels, like wood, cloth, and paper, and also of some kinds of plastic.

In a wood fire, the visible flames are not due to combustion of the wood itself, but rather of the gases released by its pyrolysis; whereas the flame-less burning of embers is the combustion of the solid residue (charcoal) left behind by it.

Although the basic concepts of the process have been validated, the performance data for an emerging technology have not been evaluated according to methods approved by EPA and adhering to EPA quality assurance/quality control standards.

Waste is converted to a fuel by heating the waste which burns just as coal or wood does under the right controlled conditions. Whereas incineration fully converts the input waste into energy and ash, these processes limit the conversion so that combustion does not take place directly.

Waste Plastic under pressure and catalytic cracking produces fuel and can be used as a fuel source. Under certain temperature conditions the plastic macromolecular chains are broken down into small molecular chains (simple hydrocarbon compounds) and those small molecular compounds contain C4 to C20, this compound is a component of petrol, coal oil, and diesel.

Anhydrous pyrolysis can also be used to produce liquid fuel similar to diesel from solid biomass.

Fast pyrolysis occurs in a time of a few seconds or less. Therefore, not only chemical reaction kinetics but also heat and mass transfer processes, as well as phase transition phenomena, play important roles. Fast pyrolysis is a process in which organic materials are rapidly heated to 450 – 600 degrees C in absence of air. Under these conditions, organic vapors, permanent gases and charcoal are produced.

Researchers at Virginia Tech have identified pyrolysis as a potential technology for disposing of poultry litter. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop transportable pyrolysis units to process the waste from poultry growers within one locality, thus reducing transportation cost. Researchers believe that the char, an inert and highly porous material, plays a key role in helping soil retain water and nutrients, and in sustaining microorganisms that maintain soil fertility. Researchers have obtained from wood – initially beech and then coniferous species – oils with almost ideal characteristics. Straw, which has a lower energy yield – 50% as opposed to 70% for wood – is also due to be analysed in the near future.

Bill Gates? personal investment vehicle, is reportedly backing Sapphire Energy, a start up working towards a commercial-scale facility to produce oil from algae, but we think he would do well to look at gasification and pyrolysis as his energy technology because there are so many possibilities in this technology.

Gasification technology also offers the possibility to create a new domestic supply of gas. It works by converting the hydrocarbons in coal, biomass and waste petroleum products into a gas called “syngas” that can be used in place of natural gas to generate power, or used in manufacturing as fuel or feedstock. Gasification avoids many problems which can occur in biogas digesters, and is also able to process lignin and cellulose, which are hard to ferment.

1.0??? Introduction

?

The search for a better managed human society and what brought human today threshold of civilization is as whole as man himself. The triple bottom factors of quest for knowledge, the need for production exchange, organizing power of social community ? these factors have equally become interrelated and self reinforcing with each advanced technology and organization, scale, trio of energy, economy and environment and matter remaining keys to human civilization; followed by invention of language or ability to communicate, and facilitation of his mobility. All of which went through their course slowly through building stones out of stumbling blocks and some actually amazingly came out through extraordinary revolution. Likewise, all this dynamic changes through differential approach and methods which can be categorized as conventional methods of idea, hypothesis, experimentation and observation.

Over the years, time needs, growth, speed, and knowledge and of course scarcity and competition have created demand that necessitated man to build complex institution- all of which require energy to move them. Likewise vast range human development has flown precise measurement of energy and manipulation of delineated discrete object all which has no doubt reduce the crushing boarding of physical work and freed man for other pursuit. ? Today pollution from energy carry a very large percentage and as the carbon release has exhaust the little oxygen we are sharing and the ozone later that is protecting us from mother naturedue to lack of cogent risk assessment on systems we have been building. More so, because conventional assessment focus more on economics while environment and its associated cycle is put in oblivion, probably because of difficulties associated with uncertainties. For years many think that everything that run air is infinite, the atmosphere and the ocean is providing us source of freshening, winds and current are far more vulnerable to polluting activities that have run off into them too many poisons that the air and the ocean may cease to serve more purpose if care is not taking to prevent pollution. To this end the challenge of air emission is recognized to:

?

• Be ?main inherent consequence of powered shipping
• Have link to fuel oil burning as main source
• Have links with continuous combustion machineries – boilers, gas turbines and incinerators

?

This paper will discuss how the challenge climate change, ozone depletion , global warming touched engineering including engineering requirement of ship operation and the impacts of? emission from ship, rising egalitarian techno economic and environmental sustainable abatement method to reduce and control emission. As well as matching development and improvement necessary for energy efficiency and performance of new propulsion system ( all electric ship for short sea shipping? and hybrid gas electric system for high sea shipping) through comparison and simulation of extreme conditions.

?

2.0??? Emission Ride on Ship Technology

?

This issue of environment become so sensitive recently with respect to infrastructure development and most especially in everything we use energy for because most of the past polluting activities has turned into poison through point form? effect and are? presently? having? advert effect on our in quality of air and water. In a nutshell, the three worlds we live are currently are out of balance and in potential conflict and man is in the middle. Historical records of number of calamity that has resulted to heavy lost and pollution are calling for news and philosophy of doing things through assessment of economics and environmental issue relating to energy, without compromising to the later has a lot of case have been based. This is already equally calling for a number of regulations, that will subsequently affect, policies change and procedures relating to the above and their effect to design of new systems and modification of existing one.

?

In regards to energy, It all started with environment natural source of energy,-animal, windmill, watermill, then steam, electricity and nuclear, with so much water and wind and even the sun all of which are the primary source of energy that goes through natural circle to support human life and the planet, the remain the leanest inherited? resources, new technology has not turn this vast potential income into usable supplies- for years the

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

? ?

Figure 1. -? Global warming potential

?

Cleanest and the safest are among the inexhaustible, the use of energy is likened to reckless try and error, experimentation, and age that discover the big gap between renewable and non renewable energy, and how human have adventurism has lead to replacing renewable natural given of nature by non renewable and associated backlash has called for new ways to do things and importance of using advantage of nature and its given. Renewable source of energy range from energy from the sun, hydrogen and biomass- as for the later, using waste to produce biomass is very. reasonable than growing crops that suppose to be used for food to produce energy or else we end up breaking the food chain and when scarcity of products involve come we all have to pay for it anyway. I am not going to discuss much about renewable source of energy or green house gas today. ?Land based technology will required to be transfer sympathetically to the marine industry via availability of engines, systems and technical assistance. Marine craft operation in inland water operation requires fuel supplied in bulk rendering the NG distribution viable. The use of an alternative fuel for vessel propulsion will leads to a design review of Power plant, associated fuel system and propulsion train; effectively reshaping areas such as Machinery Arrangement, Hull Form, Compartmentation, Cargo Deck, Payloads, Superstructure, Interior Layouts, Escape