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While Jim and Nick are in operating gasifiers in the Philippines, the rest of the APL team is here in Berkeley, CA holding down the fort and setting up the logistics for our upcoming series of workshop around the world.  Our date for the workshop in Germany is now set and Power Pallets now have a new, lower price.

Power Pallet Price Reduction

In response to the flood of interest coming in and our desire to make our products as affordable as possible to anyone interested in generating electricity from waste biomass – we are lowering the price of the Power Pallets.  Each size is now $2,000 off the base price, putting them in the $1.30 – $1.50 a watt range for the capital cost of the equipment.
2900 – 10 kW Automated and Assembled – $15,995
3001 – 15 kW Automated and Assembled – $20,995
3002 – 20 kW Automated and Assembled – $25,995

More details can be found here: http://www.gekgasifier.com/gasification-store/gasifier-genset-skids/

Jim’s report from Tuwa the Laughing Fish, an ecovillage a bit north of Manila in the Philippines


here’s some pictures from the power pallet set up and first day of the workshop. http://www.gekgasifier.com/gallery/browseimages.php?c=40

we have a very interesting collection of people from local govt, ag development agencies throughout the philipines, and business folk. about half of the audience is involved with other gasification projects in the philipines, most all rice husk gasification projects.

the big topic of concern is the waste water from wet scrubbing based solutions, and the large size of typical gasification plants. seems we’ve heard this theme before. most all the rice husk gasification systems are using open top downdrafts of one sort or another, feeding it with a low void space fuel, and thus getting a very dirty gas out of the reactor. the dirty gas problem is “solved” in the filtering, but at significant cost, size and disposal complexity.

the potential for a small compact system that can be made mobile and put along side threshing, drying or milling machinery, and moved from site to site, is of great local interest. new things are possible when you move a gasifier towards a washing machine size object, away from a typical industrial plant size.

of course the current gek reactor will not handle small granular fuels like rice husk. we have other ones in process that will, and do so with good tar conversion in the reactor, so the same minimized clean up system will still be possible.

currentely we are running wood chips made locally, at about 30% moisture content. the totti heat recycling systems are giving us much more tolerance to run higher moisture content fuels. everything here is extrememly wet. air drying seems to only get things into the mid 20s moisture. our moisture meter on the fuels we’re chipping is reading 30% on average. that is the driest we can find without purpose drying the fuel.

even with this 30% moisture fuel, the restriction in the hearth is staying at 850-930c on a 3kwe load. this corresponds to 1200c or so at the nozzles most likely (but unmeasured). these are the temps we want to see for full tar conversion. we had a white filter and unmolested sawdust after our first runs yesterday.

the chipped fuel we’re running looks like this. we’re also using it in the bottom of the filter, as you can see here. the rest of the filter is filled with rice husk and sawdust.

today we’re going to experiment with chipped bamboo, rice straw, and rice husk. the bamboo i expect will work ok. the straw and rice husk much less so. but it should be interesting learning.

the big issue with the rick husk is the over 20% silica content. at high temps this forms silicon dioxide, or crystobalite, which is a bad nasty. the particular dynamics of its formation and deformation, as well as the nature of its health issues, i have not got caught up on. i am not clear if our high temp tar conversion strategy is going to create silicon dioxide problems. as i’m internet challenged locally, if someone(s) could go figure out the dynamics of its formation, and summarize the issues here, it would be highly helpful.

i’ll report more as i can.

jim

Power Pallets in Farm Show

In the most recent issue of Farm Show Magazine there was a great article about the Power Pallets.  We spend a lot of time reading Farm Show around the shop.  Also included in this issue were some very informative articles on other topics of general interest including “How to Make Money With Skunks” and “Deer Urine Business Pays Off.”  If you are not familiar with Farm Show Magazine – we highly recommend it.


Upcoming Workshops Around the World

The dates for our workshop in Germany are set.  Kenya is soon to follow.

Rachael and the APL Team

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