[Gasification] DOE's demonstration gasification project history

[LINVENT at aol.com]

The Ferco/Batelle Vermont facility is not as high as hyped. The manager of 
the facility spoke in Albuquerque a few years ago at a Research and Development 
summit. The facility was so expensive to operate, partly from political issues 
relating to having to use Vermont fuel and not being allowed to bring fuel in 
by rail, that it would go on line 15-25times/day to provide strictly peak 
power as it couldn't operate as a base load facility. 

After it was built, it was run for a while and then shut down to deal with 
serious abrasion issues from the high temperature sand eating up the pipes, 
valves and other components in the recirculating hot sand stream. 

Ferco filed bankruptcy during some of the process and one person who was 
familiar with the situation said that it was a planned bankruptcy. 

DOE has a list of gasification projects which were dismantled after their 
"demonstration" runs. This includes the Cool Water gasification facility in 
Dagget, California, a 144 megawatt coal gasification facility which has been moved 
to Coffeville, Kansas where it is being used to convert pet coke to ammonia 
(not sure if it is still operating or not), The Cinergy/Global Energy/Dynegy 
gasification facilities which apparently were operational for some time on coal 
as retrofits to existing coal fired plants owned by Cinergy, but once the DOE 
operating funds ran out, Global Energy failed and Cinergy bought out their 
portion and converted the power plants to natural gas, or at least according to 
the alternative fuels manager of Cinergy. It also includes the Hawaii sugar cane 
gasification facility and a lot more which were funded during the Carter 
administration. One can't forget the Molten Metal fiasco either, $98mm in DOE 
funding which lead to a congressional investigation. All of these have at least 
one thing in common, they were too expensive to operate without subsidy. 



Sincerely,
Leland T. Taylor
Leland T."Tom" Taylor
President
Thermogenics Inc.
7100-F 2nd St. NW Albuquerque, NM 87107
Phone:505-463-8422 Fax:505-268-9206 (call first)
Web:thermogenics.com




Sincerely,
Leland T. Taylor
Leland T."Tom" Taylor
President
Thermogenics Inc.
7100-F 2nd St. NW Albuquerque, NM 87107
Phone:505-463-8422 Fax:505-268-9206 (call first)
Web:thermogenics.com



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