[Gasification] Biomass heated ethanol plants

[Mark Ludlow]

Thanks, Neal.

Your information is very useful (although the US Census Bureau has never
considered Kentucky and Tennessee to be part of the Midwest).

If your numbers are accurate it's a good deal for hog fuel. The
transportation costs must represent the best case for a truck and trailer as
well as for distance traveled. Plus, your raw materials must be kiln-dried
planer shavings.

So mess with the costs a bit and you can hit $0.25/therm pretty easy. This
is still much cheaper than most Natural Gas but NG burners are very cheap,
compared to gasifiers and there's very little in the way of supporting
infrastructure needed. Plus the capital demand for a gasifier system is
significant and if an ethanol plant only need 1MW thermal, payback could
take a long time.

One wonders why, if ethanol is being touted as a competitive fuel, it is not
used to fuel the process(?)

mark

-----Original Message-----
From: gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of CAVM at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 9:19 PM
To: gasification at listserv.repp.org
Subject: Re: [Gasification] Biomass heated ethanol plants


 
Boy you sure are asking a lot.  Let me simply the response though by  saying
that kiln dried wood waste of various kinds cost about $18-25/ton plus
freight.  As a dry commodity the shipping truck is filled with volume long
before 
it is filled with weight. It will have about 16-18,000,000 BTU/ton.
Roughly 
$1.00 per million BTU.
 
I don't know what you mean about hardwood forests lining the  waterways.
You 
may be thinking of Nebraska or South Dakota.   Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, 
Tennessee are reputed to have more forested land  now than when Daniel Boone
first set foot here.
 
As for transportation costs, that would be about $50 per trucking hour for
a 
short haul such as from my site to the ethanol plant 10 miles away.   Figure

one round trip per hour maybe.  $50 per 20 tons of fuel, or  320,000,000
BTU, for freight.  
 
For comparison sake, corn and corn stover have about 18-22,000,000 BTU per
ton.  They would be dried on the vine, so to speak, and raked, baled and
hauled from the field.  Keep in mind the required $30/ton FOB the field for
the farmer to engage in this exercise.  If these fields were likewise 10
miles from an ethanol plant, for agruement's sake, you would have
$30/18,000,000  BTU = $1.66/mm BTU.
 
Compare either of these to natural gas or propane.  Of course biomass  
requires a one time combustion or gasification capital cost for equipment.
Like I 
said earlier, does this give anybody any ideas?
 
Neal
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Thanks,  Neal.

Could you please work backward from the gasifier and compare the  net
heating value (as delivered, with possible fiber water saturation) and
include all associated costs among which transportation is likely
paramount. There's an old saying in the Value Recovery industry: "You can't
put waste on wheels".

Having been raised in the Midwest and grown to  middle age in the Pacific
Northwest, it's very difficult for me to accept  the assertion that the
Midwest is, "...big timber country". Yes, I am aware  of the hardwood
"forests" that line waterways but in general, its hard to  see the forest
for the trees.

mark


 
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