Enerkem is a Montreal, Canada-based company that designs, manufactures, owns and operates waste-to-biofuels plants.

Enerkem takes municipal waste and, through gasification and catalytic synthesis, converts it into advanced biofuels. The company calls its process “carbon recycling” to signal that it takes carbon that would otherwise stay trapped in the waste and converts it to useful fuels and chemicals.

Enerkem owns at least three international patent applications relating to its gasification technology, including Publication No. WO 2009/132449 (’449 Application), entitled “Production and conditioning of synthesis gas obtained from biomass.”

The ’449 Application is directed to methods of producing and treating synthesis gas, or syngas, in which a biomass-rich feedstock is passed from a conveyor belt (1) through rotary valves (2a, 2b) into a feed screw (3). (The ’449 Application contains only one figure, which is huge and incredibly detailed. I’ve reproduced a small portion of the figure below).

An oxidizing agent, such as air, is passed into the feed screw (3) from line (4). The feed screw (3) passes the biomass feedstock and the oxidizing agent into a fluidized bed section (7b) of the gasifier (7).

According to Enerkem’s web site, the technology is based on a bubbling fluidized bed reactor capable of handling fluffy material without the need to pelletize it. The gasifier can operate at low severities (i.e., temperatures of about 700º C and pressures below 10 atm), which reduces costs by allowing inexpensive construction materials to be used.

Solid residues that cannot be processed further are passed through line (8) and valves (9a, 9b) into a drum (1), and the remaining crude syngas is subjected to controlled oxidation in the freeboard section (7a) of the gasifier (7).

The crude syngas is then cleaned and conditioned in a cyclone (12), which separates out the char. The crude syngas exits the cyclone (12) through line (16) and is passed to a thermal reformer (18), where it is contacted with more gasification agents, and then sent to a heat recovery unit (20).

Ultimately, using a catalytic conversion process, the syngas is converted into fuels and chemicals, such as methanol, ethanol, synthetic diesel, synthetic gasoline, or dimethyl ether.

At least one major oil refiner likes what it sees in the Enerkem technology: the company recently announced a $60 million funding round from Valero (see Cleantechies article here).

Eric Lane is a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego and the author of Green Patent Blog. Mr. Lane can be reached at elane@luce.com.

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(Reuters) – The Toronto Zoo has a solution to global warming: elephant dung.

Canada’s biggest zoo is inviting bids for a gasification plant that will turn its elephant, rhino and other large animal manure into clean electricity and heat.

“No other zoo in the world is doing this,” zoo conservation program head Dave Ireland said on Wednesday.

The zoo produces about 1,000 tonnes of manure and other organic waste each year. This will be fed into the biogas plant, to be built on land adjoining the zoo, where bacteria will munch through the waste and excrete methane gas.

Leftover heat will be piped to the zoo to warm buildings and animal pavilions. Ireland expects this to substantially reduce the zoo’s natural gas bill of C$1.4 million ($1.3 million) a year.

Zoo waste will make up only a portion of the fuel needed by the 3 to 5-megawatt biogas facility, which will generate enough heat and electricity to power 5,000 homes. The rest will come from organic waste from restaurants, grocery stores and other industrial sites in the area.

Reporting by Nicole Mordant and Allan Dowd in Vancouver; editing by Chris Wilson.

Article appearing courtesy Reuters

photo: yasuhisa

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A colleague of mine said to me recently, “No energy is clean energy.”

Which got me thinking. Of course, Clean Coal comes to mind. And people love to say that “No coal is clean,” and “Clean Coal is an oxymoron.”

OK, OK. It’s not the best marketing term I’ve ever heard. There is a U.S. Department of Energy program that uses the term, and that program has funded gasification and carbon sequestration projects. So there is such a thing, whatever you want to call it. How about “Clean(er) Coal”?

Then I thought about wind. Big, majestic, white turbines … cutting up birds that fly into them. Whoops. That’s not very clean.

But you can lessen the impact of bird kills by making sure you don’t site turbines along migratory bird paths. Even the Audubon Society has come out in support of well-positioned wind.

Which brings me to radar — some bird-friendly technology now in the works.

Alternative Energy News reports that a new wind farm in Texas, operated by a Spanish firm, is using radar technology developed by a Florida firm called DeTect Inc. How’s that for collaboration?

The radar, much like a cop scanning the highway, looks for approaching birds, analyzes weather conditions and shuts down the turbines if necessary. The blades are reactivated once the flock has passed.

The radar is in use here, according to AEN, because the wind farm was constructed on the Central Flyway, a main route for migratory birds. Environmental groups are skeptical.

What do you think? Is using radar technology to save birds OK? Even if the technology is needed due to bad planning?

This radar could help spur more wind development and remove a barrier to breeze power. DeTect also makes bird deterrent devices for wind farms, including bioacoustics and propane cannons, according to the company’s Web site.

Bird kills are a controversial subject, so let’s hear it.

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