Wood Biomass Gasification Combined Heat and Power in the UK

I pulled this from a Alfagy's website: They are developing wood mass gassification in a high heat low oxegen invironment, the burining the clean gas. Very interesting...

-CTE Editor

The range of fully automated Wood Gasified Heat and Power Plants are as follows:


The ENERCARB wood gas technology offers customers a turn-key automated solution for heat and power generation from wood. We can provide a complete solution covering the full value chain from wood preparation to power generation in the 250 kW to 1,000 kW range. This is a gap in the market where the company believes there is a potential £725m market worldwide.A full scale 500 kW wood gasification plant was built for a client and has been operating since April 2009.

Over the next 3 years sales of wood gasification plants are expected growing rapidly with the introduction of new support structures.

Biomass accounts for around 5 per cent of total energy consumption in Europe. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Austria its contribution reaches 15-20 per cent as biomass is supported with specific policies.

It is primarily used for both production of electricity and heat in cogeneration plants and as a fuel in municipal district heating facilities.

Biomass is likely to have an important role in Europe's ability to meet its targets for renewable use by 2020, according to Frost & Sullivan. There are five accepted technologies for converting biomass fuels into electrical energy; the Schmitt ENERCARB plant is focussed on addressing the second technology:

1. Conventional steam cycle – biomass is burned to produce steam which is then used to drive a turbine

2. Gasification – biomass is converted to a gas using a high temperature oxygen starved environment

3. Pyrolysis – biomass is converted to a liquid rather than a gas

4. Anaerobic digestion – typically sewage sludge is digested to produce methane

5. Landfill gas – collection of gas from landfill sitesGasification is possibly the most attractive of the technologies, but also one of the least developed.

There are a number of practical and engineering issues with gasification which, until now, have been a barrier to full commercial roll out of this technology.The particular issues are:

• Quality of feedstock – can a system be developed to work with a range of different biomass fuels.
• Supply chain – can the fuel be provided in an efficient consistent way.
• Consistency of gas produced – can a plant produce gas of a standard quality that can be burned cleanly.
• Tar free gas production – can the resulting gas have low tar levels which will allow it to be burned for extended periods without maintenance.

The gasification plant has been developed to address all these issues. The Alfagy gasified heat and power plant offers a highly efficient solution to producing electricity from biomass in the 250 kWe – 1,000 kWe range.

Through careful engineering of the gasifier and scrubbing of the gas output, Schmitt has developed a virtually tar free wood gasfier. Specific aspects of the Alfagy Woodgas CHP system that give us a competitive advantage include:
• Improved process for automated fuel feeding
• Effective automated gas scrubbing and filtering systems to produce tar free gas.
• Modular approach offering a simple scalable solution with operational security
• Well engineered, automated, turn-key product giving customers an easy to implement plant.The benefits of producing tar free wood gas include:
• Increased running time between maintenance, in some cases from 24 hours to 8,000 hours
• Higher Return on Investment (ROI)


The Rest @ Alfagy