The center, operated in conjunction with Renewable Energy Institute International, provides a site for evaluating the performance of renewable energy and fuels technologies with respect to robustness, safety, energy efficiency, environmental effectiveness and other key performance specifications. “If you don’t have the answers to those questions, you’re not going to get anybody to give you money,” says Jodie Crandell, senior project manager for Technikon. The four companies—Davis, Calif.-based Sierra Energy; PEAT International, which operates in locations such as Florida, India and Taiwan; Ternion Bio Industries, headquartered in San Jose, Calif.; and a fourth company that declined to disclose any information for this article—are working together on complementary and sometimes competitive technologies, even sharing expertise.
The center has been operating for about 1½ years and is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. Typically, the U.S. DOE solicits grant applications to build large-scale plants, but start-up companies that haven’t proven their technologies don’t often qualify. “The smaller guys, who don’t have any data or information or a place to have people come in and look at their equipment, really kind of get squeezed out of the process at this point,” says George Crandell, vice president of Technikon operations and Jodie’s husband. “We’re helping more and more small guys become successful.” Companies using the space save money on facilities, electricity and other aspects of research and development that are already available at the RETC. It’s a unique model of how to leverage government funding to accelerate the commercialization of pilot-scale technologies, Crandell says.
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The four companies together have made in-kind contributions of about $4 million in areas such as personnel and equipment, according to Technikon. Four projects are all Crandell can support on current funding, but there are four or five waiting to use space in the center. A formal group reviews projects and determines who will occupy the RETC, and Crandell has found that he doesn’t have to look far to find companies looking to use space. “We’re also finding that venture capitalist groups are circling like vultures around us,” he laughs. “They see us as a very good sorting and screening mechanism.”
Technikon also offers expertise in project management, finance, and chemical and mechanical areas, among others. The company does not have a large area for biomass storage and handling at this point because the systems currently occupying space are not big enough to warrant it. Process testing is also available for Technikon’s clients in the areas of throughput, scalability and capacity, among others, along with emissions and biofuels testing.
“We initially thought that we’d just open the doors and let people bring equipment in and we’d help them test it,” George Crandell says. “As we’ve been moving forward, we really realized that we wind up helping them do equipment development and modifications, so we’re getting more into that.”
Projects in the Center
Sierra Energy is using its space in the RETC to develop its patented Fastox gasification system that modifies iron-making blast furnaces, converting exhaust gases into nearly pure syngas. Currently, the team is using a blend of charcoal briquettes (80 percent), coke and limestone to simulate the waste and hopes to eventually use municipal solid waste (MSW), according to George Crandell. Sierra is not converting its syngas at this point, but has an agreement with a New Zealand-based company that produces ethanol from syngas. That company will set up its production system in the RETC after the Sierra system is scaled up from the current 1-ton-per-day input level to 10 tons per day, Crandell says. That scale-up should happen in about three months, but it may take longer for the ethanol system to move in. The gasifier is currently producing a syngas composed of 30 percent hydrogen and 70 percent carbon monoxide, by adding water and steam to the bottom of the reactor, Crandell says. An existing blast furnace could consume about 30,000 tons of MSW per day. “It’s very scalable because [the blast furnaces] already exist at the size [Sierra Energy] is starting with, all the way up to 30,000 ton-per-day sizes,” Crandell says. “The technology is textbook, except for their modifications to it.”
PEAT International is working on its plasma torch gasifier, feeding it mostly wood chips. “It’s a high-temperature conversion of pretty much anything to a synthesis gas,” Jodie Crandell says. An electricity generator with the capacity to produce 75 kilowatts of electricity is hooked up to the back end of the system. “We actually make more syngas than the generator can handle,” George Crandell says. The system is operating on about 1½ tons of wood chips per day and will use rice straw in the near future, but the company is also working with Sacramento County to permit plasma gasification of MSW or medical waste, he says. “The very interesting thing about that is the county wants that data as much as we do because people keep proposing plasma furnaces in our area and they feel uncomfortable that they don’t know anything about it,” he says.
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