The Abrams Clean Tech Report

 

C2L Development Center Update: Carbon to Liquids (C2L) Development Center is Commissioning a Unique Municipal Solid Waste Management System in May

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Have you ever thought about how to solve the municipal solid waste issue? — The use of land fills – landfills, which contaminate groundwater? The elimination of methane emissions that come from municipal solid waste – dumps, landfills, and such?

Well, there is one organization I’ve found that is doing some really interesting work in this area. I had the opportunity the other day to speak with the man leading the organization’s efforts in this area, Stephen Piccot, director of the Carbon to Liquids (C2L) Development Center, Southern Research Institute, North Carolina, to learn more about a project the organization began working on back in September of ‘06. At stake? The commissioning of several new biomass and waste gasification energy conversion technologies not to mention the creation of a new and independent energy lab that can help small to medium-sized developers quickly and cost effectively commercialize C2L technologies.

About the Carbon to Liquids (C2L) Development Center
The Carbon-to-Liquids Development Center provides independent technical support to clients who are developing and integrating advanced energy systems and transportation fuel production technologies. The facility, a unit within the Southern Research Institute, was established in April 2007 to facilitate the commercial acceptance of environmentally superior technologies that convert domestic non-petroleum and non-food crop carbon resources into high value products like clean diesel, jet fuel, methanol, ethanol and electric power. The C2L Center is currently developing a number of pilot-scale energy plants which are used to optimize system performance, integrate advanced energy technologies in new ways, demonstrate technology concepts, and develop the data needed to scale-up to full-sized commercial operations. The Center’s current clients are focused on gasification of biomass and waste fuels, syngas cleaning and conversion as well as CO2 control. The Center’s own goal is to provide independent support for development and integration with the help of a staff of scientific and engineering experts and unique facilities made up of high-bay and lab space for pilot and bench-scale process development. The C2L Center is located on 28 acres in the northern Research Triangle region of North Carolina. It maintains 32,000 sq. feet of high bay process and laboratory space, and 10,000 sq. feet of office space and meeting facilities which can be used to showcase client technologies.

Beginning in May, the Center will commission a system that will convert municipal solid waste from landfills into clean synthesis gas (syngas). Syngas is a basic energy building block produced from a class of technologies known as thermo-chemical processes. Once produced, syngas can be converted into clean transportation fuels like ethanol and other alcohols, Fischer Tropsch (FT) diesel, FT jet fuel, other fuels, chemical feedstocks, and/or electrical power. Thermo-chemical processes can convert carbon containing materials like trash, animal or agricultural waste, industrial or commercial waste, energy crops, and forest waste into valuable end-products.

The pilot plant at the C2L Center will use a unique thermo-chemical process designed for converting municipal solid waste which is now being mostly land filled. Once the pilot system is proven and optimized, work will begin on integrating processes for converting the syngas into end products.

This is the first pilot commercial project to be commissioned at the center since it opened in May 2007, and the pilot system will process up to nine tons of municipal solid waste per day. After commissioning, performance testing will be conducted and scale-up potential will be assessed. The system could potentially scale up for commercial landfill operations processing 100 to 1000 tons per day, though Piccot says they won’t know the quantity until after the system is commissioned and tested. “But it appears scalable and we believe it has unique advantages that may make it more environmentally-friendly and commercially-viable than standard waste-to-energy processes,” says Piccot.

Changing the Face of Municipal Solid Waste Management
The potential of such systems? Huge. And surprisingly, I’m seeing little about it in general ‘green business’ news, but perhaps I’ve missed something. That said, for small to medium sized organizations, such as energy conversion technology developers, technology-focused government groups, municipal entities, solid waste management firms, research groups, and others, the future for municipal solid waste management control looks very promising.

How It All Began
Piccot explained, “Back when I was doing energy forecasting modeling — in the 80s particularly — our energy-economic projections showed the economies of India and China would require staggering amounts of fuel to support the economic expansions we saw coming. When we added up all the fuel needed it was big – clearly there would be a strain on world energy supplies. That forecast model sat unused on an old computer in my attic for over 15 years, until I recently went back and ran it. I compared the old energy demand forecasts we made for current times with the actual energy use occurring today. What I found was pretty scary. What appeared to be huge fuel use forecasts for the 21st century made back in the 1980’s turned out to be under predictions of what actually has occurred. It’s much worse than we thought – bad news for global stability, global climate change, energy prices and environmental protection efforts. It was then that my colleagues and I at Southern Research realized global demand for energy was accelerating at unprecedented levels and that it was time we did something about it. So the idea was to try to develop technologies that would use our domestic carbon resources to create domestic fuel supplies but to do it in a way that was much cleaner than what we’re doing now. So that’s how we got started (with the Center). We bought this building and we are up-fitting our energy lab with the idea of creating a pilot plant “motel”. We’ve already had a fair amount of interest, mainly from small to medium sized folks that have new technologies to develop; but one client happened to be interested in municipal waste as a fuel; so municipal waste turned out to be one of our first projects. They want to make power by gasifying trash into syngas, and then use that syngas to make electrical power; of course, that trash-based syngas can be cleaned further and used to make liquid transportation fuels, just as other wastes could be, like animal waste, crop waste, forest waste, biomass, food waste, etc.”

One technical challenge inherent to the process of gasifying such diverse waste streams, Piccot noted, was how to create an ultra-clean syngas so that clean fuel end products are developed that are much more environmentally friendly than current crude oil based fuels. As of this writing, Piccot and his team, along with a consortium of partners, are working to address this. The effort has DOE funding, and that’s about all I can say at this point. Stay tuned for more.

Pipeline Activity
Investments by Southern and partners thus far total approximately $25m, I’ve been told, with client commitments for an MSW Gasifier, Biomass Gasifier, FT Line and a DOE-supported Syngas Clean Up system. Investors should be looking closely at the Center, as continued funding will only support additional research and projects in this area. Some of the Center’s clients look to the Center to locate investment support and partners, who if they join will gain a stake in either future commercial operations and/or IP. And it’s looking like the faster such technologies can get to market, the better off everyone will be, environment included.

Interested Investors/Potential Clients should contact:
Stephen Piccot, Director
Advanced Energy & Transportation Technologies
Southern Research Institute
919.282.1051

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