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Using waste and biomass for gasification can produce low carbon power efficiently - ETI report

Energy Technologies Institute

3 min read

A new report published today by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) has concluded that using waste and biomass for gasification can produce low carbon power efficiently particularly at the town scale.


The ETI’s latest report “Targeting new and cleaner uses for wastes and biomass using gasification” sets out why it believes the technology could be so important to a future low carbon UK energy system, what the current UK landscape looks like along with analysis of earlier ETI research into waste gasification technologies.

ETI analysis of the UK energy system indicates that bioenergy should be a crucial part of the UK’s future energy mix as it can reduce the cost of meeting the country’s 2050 carbon targets by more than 1% of GDP.

Gasification, which can use a variety of feedstocks, is a key technology for delivering low carbon energy as electricity, heat and power as well as chemicals and other materials. This is because it  converts the energy held within a difficult to use solid fuel into an easier to use gas which we can then go on to use as a building block to make, for example, electricity, hydrogen or jet fuel.

It is especially useful when operated at a town scale because the waste heat generated can be used in district heat networks to provide heat and power for commercial operations.

Currently, the technology and commercial risks are too high for typical investors and developers.  To accelerate the technology to the point where these risks are more acceptable, the ETI is investing £5m in the construction of a 1.5 MWe waste gasification demonstration project incorporating an engine fuelled by “ultra-clean”, tar free syngas.

The 1.5MWe facility being built in Wednesbury in the West Midlands will produce enough electrical power to supply 2,500 homes and will use gasification technology to produce power at high efficiency and high reliability from sorted and processed municipal waste.

The Wednesbury plant will convert about 40 tonnes a day of post recycling, refuse derived fuel (RDF) produced locally into a clean syngas. The syngas will then be converted into power using a modified high-efficiency gas engine, and waste heat generated from the engine will be made available to heat a local swimming pool.

It will also incorporate a unique test facility which will allow the testing of new engines, turbines and upgrading processes which produce products from waste derived clean syngas including a proprietary methanol production process which boosts product yield significantly over rival technologies.

Geraint Evans, ETI Bioenergy Programme Manager and the report’s author said:

“Our analysis work has shown that gasification projects with integrated syngas clean-up have the potential to be competitive with other sources of renewable power, but support will be required to enable their early deployment.

“That is why we are investing £5m in the 1.5MWe gasification project incorporating syngas cleaning and tar removal in the West Midlands to help accelerate the development of the technology, build confidence in it and bring it to market earlier than it otherwise would.

“The plant will be more compact than many other energy from waste designs currently available and this new compact design could be suitable for providing heat and power to factories, hospitals as well as being suitable to integrate with heat networks in towns and cities.”

Further details on the waste gasification plant can be found at http://www.eti.co.uk/news/work-starts-on-eti-backed-innovative-waste-gasification-commercial-demonstration-plant-in-the-west-midlands

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