Biomass Gasification Technology Assessment

Overview: Gasifier Produces Syngas

This technology will enable electricity generation from various kinds of waste in a
compact system. The product under development is a feedstock-flexible reformer system for
solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC)-quality syngas. Syngas is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon
monoxide, typically including high levels of nitrogen. It is produced by gasifying carbonaceous
feedstocks in air.

Syngas
Feedstoc
Solid Oxide Fuel electricity
k Gasifier Reformer CO + H2
Cell (SOFC)
heat

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC)

A fuel cell converts hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the process it produces
electricity. It produces DC (direct current) voltage that can be used to power motors, lights or any
number of electrical appliances.

Reformer Removes Impurities in Syngas

SOFC fuel cells are more versatile than other types of fuel cells in the respect that they
can utilize both carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) as fuel, and have less sensitivity to
contaminants than other types of fuel cells. However, to achieve a sufficient efficiency, a
reformer is necessary to remove contaminants in the syngas. Without this intermediate step,
contaminants, such as sulfur, would render the fuel cell inoperable.
SOFCs operate at very high temperatures: 700-1000°C. The high temperature also
provides advantages: (1) the steam produced by the fuel cell can be channeled into turbines to
generate more electricity (2) the heat can be reused for gasification. This combination is called
co-generation of heat and power (CHP). It improves the overall efficiency of the system.

A New Reformer: Fuel-flexible, Portable, and Compact

 Both the gasification process and SOFC are relatively mature technologies. The addition
of a reformer to the system is intended to broaden the range of usable feedstocks, making use of
fuel cells for electricity generation practical in various environments, whether they are
temporarily or permanently detached from a natural gas infrastructure.
Current uses and productions of syngas are bulky, immobile and expensive. Current
reformers are capable of handling only the syngas produced from a single gasifier and feedstock;
therefore, a different reformer must be designed and installed for each individual generator. This
adds costs not only in the design and construction of the plant, but also through the immobility
and inflexibility of the system. If for any reason the system is no longer operable in a given
location (i.e. the exhaustion of the fuel supply, or the elimination of the need for the system) the
system is not easily transferable for further use in a new location.

Integrated System Supported by the New Reformer

It is the management team’s intention to package a gasifier, reformer and fuel cell into an
independent, self-contained system capable of generating electricity from a wide variety of
feedstocks in a wide variety of environments. It will be a compact system, about the size of a
refrigerator. A monitoring feature is also envisioned for the system, so that technical support can
be accessed remotely. This feature is important to making this complex system usable without a
high skill level.
The feedstock flexibility of the reformer system also creates flexibility in design,
production, and application. Through the production of a standard design, designing and
producing a new reformer for each individual application is eliminated. Additionally, the
flexibility of the system allows SOFC technology to be applied more broadly and economically
in areas that require temporary power generation, by allowing the system to be transported and
used in areas with different fuel stocks without alteration. The flexible system will also be
designed to be far more compact and physically mobile than current designs.

Paradigm Shift: Bringing Generator to the Fuel Source

The fuel-flexibility allows the utilization of entirely new sources of power. There are
currently many areas with sources of energy whose supply is not extensive enough to justify the
establishment of large and expensive equipment. The flexible feedstock reformer system will be
able to utilize low quality sources of power, be mobile enough to quickly and easily utilize the
power, and be cheap enough to allow the entire process to be cost effective. This expansion will
increase the total availability of fuel supplies and allow this product to break into a niche market
almost free of competition, a great advantage towards the commercialization of the product.
Ultimately, the technology can revolutionize worldwide power generation. It has
potential to bring power cost effectively to small unconnected communities without the means to
pay for the production of an expensive power plant, and allow individual farms to create
significant revenue through the utilization of their farm wastes. The compact, standard design
allows for great flexibility in the size of the system, and by combining together any number of
such systems each can be tailored exactly to the requirements of the user at the time he needs it.
The size of the system can be both scaled up and down along with the current availability of
feedstock.

Market and Competition

Potential applications include military bases, emergency situations, rural farms, and areas
without power grid in developing nations.
Competition in the future must be analyzed beyond the syngas/SOFC market. We expect
any commercialization of this technology to compete with other forms of stand-alone energy
generation, including small hydroelectric, solar power, wind power, and anaerobic digestion
(using bacteria to digest food or animal waste to produce biogas for heating or electricity). The
target production costs for the commercialization depends greatly on the costs of power
generation of other forms of rapidly developing technologies.

States of Development
An initial prototype of the reformer is being constructed starting September 2007. We
already secured $1.8 million of funding from Department of Energy, University of Michigan,
NextEnergy, and Energy Technology Consultants. Prototypes of complementary technology are
already available for Gasifier and SOFC. A compact reformer for gasoline and kerosene is
already developed. An integrated system of gasifier, reformer, and SOFC would require 5 more
years of development and $8 million more in funding.
Technical and Operational issues
Currently, there are a few major issues that need to be addressed with the future
development of the technology. Firstly, this type of fuel cell operates at very high temperatures
(700-1000°C). This high temperature makes reliability a problem, because parts of the fuel cell
can break down after cycling on and off repeatedly. SOFC durability suffers after the cell
repeatedly heats up to operating temperature and then cools down to room temperature. Solid
oxide systems also tend to have issues with material corrosion. Another major concern is seal
integrity due to mismatch of thermal expansion.