Monday, January 03, 2011

Center & NACF Moving Forward on Biomass Electricity Project

Breakfast meeting: John McCormick, Norris McDonald,
 Maurice Stone, Derry Bigby
The Center staff and National Clean Fuels (NACF) held their bimonthly breakfast meeting today to review plans to build a 10-megawatt biomass powered electricity power plant.  The Center was represented by President Norris McDonald, Vice President Derry Bigby and consultant John McCormick.  NACF was represented by Maurice Stone.  The meetings (see also Center HQ meeting) have been held for the past 3 months and will continue until project completion.  Mr. Stone is based in Houston, Texas and flies in for the bimonthly meetings, which are held in Alexandria, Virginia.

We envision a ten megawatt, wood chip/sawdust syngas turbine power plant that will operate as a base load unit. We expect of capacity factor of above 90 percent. It is anticipated that the plant will consume approximately one ton of wood chips per hour. We expect the plant construction and engineering services costs to be approximately $10 million. The plant will need a Clean Air Act permit and a Clean Water Act permit. The facility will need an interconnect and purchase agreement with the local utility, Southwest Mississippi Electric Power Association. We have a Letter Of Intent from the City of Port Gibson to proceed with development of the project.

The power plant will couple a wood gasifier to a turbine, which will more than match the efficiency (30-35%) of conventional coal-fired power stations in converting fuel to electricity. Potential benefits include worthwhile cost savings as well as the "greenhouse-friendly" replacement of fossil fuels with a renewable energy source. A key requirement in developing a practical unit that will run with minimal attention, will be devising an automated handling system that provides a constant supply of chipped wood to the gasifier. Gasifiers generally run on a portion of the supplied feedstock as well as converting the balance of it to a fuel for other applications.

Biomass-To-Electricity Plant

Scoping Visit 1

Stone & McDonald at Center HQ in Washington, DC
Scoping Visit 2

Scoping Visit 3

Green Catalina Island

Scoping Visit 1

Green Kogelo, Kenya

Project Description

No comments: