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APL is proud to be one of the recipients of a California Energy Commission grant to develop Modular Bioenergy Systems for Forest/Urban Interface Areas. Right up our alley!

Logging slash
Chipping Logging Slash

We will be using the grant to continue our development of our PowerTainer Project to deploy it here in California to convert forest conservation waste into power near the location of the forest waste. Overall this is to solve a serious problem that has been created by our modern fire suppression policies, in which our increased presence in wild areas means we can no longer allow sustaining wild fires to burn through our forests, thinning the trees and renewing the ecosystem. To solve this, the foresters manually thin and chip the trees (necessary to prevent blooms of destructive pests) resulting in enormous quantities of wood chips. If left to decompose, these would release their carbon into the atmosphere not only as CO2, but also as Methane (CH4), which has twice the greenhouse effect of CO2.

Read our proposal narrative for this grant or click on an image below to learn more about our Power Pallets already at work in waste management applications.


Regenitech, Whitefish, Montana – March 2022

Regenitech added a PP30 to their regenerative agriculture project in NW Montana. They will be testing the Power Pallet inside one of the greenhouses at their Earth Power Lodge (EPL) location. It is an addition to their EPL biorefinery system of integrated components which they hope to be able to deploy on other small farms and homes. The biochar it produces will be used for the production of their soil regenerating biostimulants.


Masarang crew

Masarang Foundation – Jan 2020

Two of the last PP20s we manufactured were installed at the Masarang Foundation. They have been an early adopter of APL technology which they have deployed to sites where power is needed to support their biodiversity activities. These two PP20s will be using biomass waste as feedstock collected as part of Masarang’s reforestation projects in Indonesia. Masarang is committed to finding solutions for the most urgent global problems of our time: deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, poverty, and underdevelopment, goals that are strongly supported by APL.


University of Parma Aerial Photo

 Siram, Parma, Italy – November 2019

APL provided a new PP30 to the Siram Group. Siram S.P.A. provides energy management services. The company offers utilities and industrial fluids management, operation of urban heating, and air-conditioning networks. Siram serves customers throughout Italy. Their expertise in heating and cooling makes their integration of a PP30 with its standard Combined Heat and Power system a particularly good match. We look forward to their help in deploying APL systems within the feed-in tariff markets in Europe.


Ambermacs, Mpumulanga, South Africa – October 2019 

Ambermacs added one of our upgraded PP30s to their nut processing facility. Its heat and power they will be using to support their privately-owned macadamia processing plant situated in the heart of South Africa’s largest macadamia growing region. Their factory dries, processes, packs, and supplies raw macadamia kernels for international export to customers in the UK, Europe, and North America.


2 men install a power pallet

 Sierra Resource Conservation District – June 2019

The Sierra Resource Conservation District (SRCD) had us install a PP20 in foothills of the Sierra Nevada where they are the entity responsible for managing and protecting more than 3000 square miles of forest and oak savannah found there and in the Central Valley. SRCD operates the gasifier in wooded areas that have experienced wildland fire and insect infestations to demonstrate the PP20’s capacity to reduce forest fuel loads and wildfire risk while sequestering carbon and generating on-demand electricity. These activities are part of SRCD’s recently launched Carbon Management Program that aims to understand and manage the carbon cycle for both ecological and economical benefit. APL and SRDC were awarded funding for these activities by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.


DeNova, Frederiksværk, Denmark – June 2018

This PP20 was purchased by DeNova, a waste recycling and reuse yard at the port of Frederiksværk, about 50 km northwest of the capital city of Copenhagen. They see it as a challenge to find value in what others may think is just trash, using modern techniques to sort waste into fractions that can be recycled or reused. One way they hope to reuse biomass waste is by gasifying it. They plan to use their PP20 to explore how our efficient CHP systems can best fit into their mission to mine potential resources from the waste stream, trying to save the environment at the same time that they grow a successful waste-based business. Adding value by offsetting waste-disposal costs is an important part of APL’s design strategy.


PP30 crew at University of Guyana

The University of Guyana, Greater Georgetown, Guyana – June 2018

 The University of Guyana installed a PP30 to use for research in their Forestry and Agricultural schools on their Turkeyen Campus in Greater Georgetown. The staff and students of the schools aims to contribute to generation of knowledge and develop policies, techniques and skills to make a positive contribution in the management of forest and related resources and support the creation of innovative businesses in the sector.


Cirad Crew

CIRAD, Montpellier, France – April 2018

CIRAD, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development, is an organization working for the sustainable development of tropical and Mediterranean regions. We installed a PP20 at their Montpellier campus in the south of France to advance their mission with their partners in the global South to generate and pass on new knowledge to support agricultural development.


PP20 installation at Rwanda Girls School

Rwanda Girls School, Gashora, Rwanda – Dec 2017

The Rwanda Girls Initiative operates the Gashora Girls Academy of Science and Technology – an upper-secondary girls’ boarding school located in Bugesera District an hour south of Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali. APL’s tapped into its long-established relationships in Africa, especially with the Booker Washington Institute in Liberia, to place a PP20 at the Gashora campus. The school has an active agricultural program, operating a successful 14-acre farm on campus where they hope to perfect techniques for running the locally plentiful macadamia nutshells as feedstock.


Zero Waste, Bangkok Thailand

Zero Waste Co., Ltd., Bangkok, Thailand – Jul. 2015  

Thailand’s waste disposal system is organized nationally by the Royal Thai Government, resulting in a very comprehensive nationwide emphasis on recycling and waste reuse. Zero Waste Co., Ltd, installed a PP20 at their Bangkok facility to help expand the research and development of their refuse derived fuel (RDF) program. They specialize in waste to energy projects, using Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), Landfill Waste and Industrial Waste, in an effort to fulfill Thailand’s aggressive and ecologically enlightened waste management policies. Zero Waste shares APL’s mission of converting waste to power, and we will continue to work with them to advance this vital technology sector.


Biodico, Redrock Ranch, Five Points, California – Mar. 2015

Located at Redrock Ranch in the heart of the almond capital of the world: California’s San Joaquin Valley, Biodico is working in partnership with the ranch, APL and the California Energy Commission to study a wide range of alternative energy solutions. With easy access to diverse and plentiful agricultural waste, Biodico has installed a newly upgraded PP20 Power Pallet v5.0 at this project site. This PP20 also has the earliest prototype version of our combined heat and power (CHP) option. This project was the result of their effort to convert into energy byproducts such as inedible seed meal from their biodiesel production. ALL Power Labs actively supports Biodico’s efforts at Redrock Ranch toward sustainable agriculture and energy innovation.


GEE Energy PP20 installation

Green Energy GEE, China – Nov. 2014

Using a PP20 v5 and working with university partners, Shenzhen Green & clear world Environmental Engineering (GEE) is developing a syngas-to-liquid reactor. Focusing on the commercialization of environmentally responsible projects, GEE’s Power Pallet is part of a program to process municipal solid waste (MSW) into a transportation fuel. They are working to integrate their system into the solid-waste disposal chain of a large Chinese city to develop a product based on its specific local needs. GEE is using a proprietary catalytic system that promises to increase the yield of syngas and lower the temperature needed, while minimizing tar and other by-products. The ability to process MSW in our gasifiers is a long standing, but still remote goal for APL, and we welcome GEE’s efforts to solve this difficult problem.


Powertainer

University of Minnesota, Morris, Minnesota – Jun. 2012

In a partnership with Cummins Inc., APL worked with University of Minnesota in Morris to develop a prototype shipping-container-based 100 kW genset running on Minnesota’s plentiful agricultural waste corn cobs. With the help of a grant from the California Energy Commission, APL is currently partnered with University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Forestry and their Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory to develop this unit as a commercial genset: the 150 kW Powertainer. Our goal is to incentivize forest fire and bark beetle remediation in the Sierra Nevadas by creating a market for the forest waste as an energy resource.


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