L.E.A.F. (Low Emission Alternative Fuel) Generator

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It's an old technology that has long been forgotten. Highly dangerous because of the chemicals and by products it produces yet very effective in situations when alternative fuel would be needed. If you expect to use it during a doomsday event or some such other item, ensure that you have available fuel on your property (think rapid growing, woody plants but this will take work since most are invasive type species). Probably anyone on here could easily find instructions on how to make this product on the internet and construct something similar for a small scale, however again there is danger associated with it.

The technology sort of died out back at the end of WWII but there has been a TON of research done over the last 10 years to try to make it safer and utilize the concept in more effective ways.

 
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Interesting, how does this process using wood differ from the old school coal gasification process? Coal gasification was used for a century or more to provide gas for gaslights and cooking, until natural gas came along.

 
You can also do the same thing with solid waste. My take-away from research I did last summer for my graduate energy planning course was that gasification plants are still considered "experimental", although several are in operation around Europe and the U.S. using biomass (wood processing wastes mostly). The technology works, it's just that there hasn't been enough commercial experience with it to be considered fully "proven".

On the small scale, I don't know. I would only consider it if I was a nutty survivalist or super hippie looking to live off the grid. Otherwise I'd just stick with solar PV and simpler stuff like that.

 
We've discussed wood biomass on a large scale previously in some thread or another... Cpt was wholly against it based on his personal experiences. I worked on a project during it's inception attempting to determine which crops we could utilize to produce woody biomass ( http://www.esf.edu/willow/ ) on a larger scale so I had wanted to see something come from our (and the continued) work. I think this is one of those things that the science is there and while not proven, it can work, but the engineering needs to make it more cost efficient for it to be a viable option on a large scale.

 
The problem with gasification on a large scale is the solid waste. Instead of burning the organic material and the bad stuff going up in the air, you're left with the bad stuff in solid form and have to do something with it. We've had to dig up hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of coal tar from our old coal gasification plants (my company was a gas light company before natural gas) and put it in hazardous waste landfills. It's kept our remediation people busy; these plants were usually built along a river and that's were they buried the stuff.

 
mudpuppy said:
The problem with gasification on a large scale is the solid waste. Instead of burning the organic material and the bad stuff going up in the air, you're left with the bad stuff in solid form and have to do something with it. We've had to dig up hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of coal tar from our old coal gasification plants (my company was a gas light company before natural gas) and put it in hazardous waste landfills. It's kept our remediation people busy; these plants were usually built along a river and that's were they buried the stuff.
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not too far from our agency bldg they did a coal tar removal because it was oozing up to the surface. It was along a rail line that has been located there forever, just graded as the years went by.

 
mudpuppy said:
The problem with gasification on a large scale is the solid waste. Instead of burning the organic material and the bad stuff going up in the air, you're left with the bad stuff in solid form and have to do something with it. We've had to dig up hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of coal tar from our old coal gasification plants (my company was a gas light company before natural gas) and put it in hazardous waste landfills. It's kept our remediation people busy; these plants were usually built along a river and that's were they buried the stuff.
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But there is research working towards reducing the byproduct. It's already been observed that you can alter the tar production by adjusting the composition of fuel percentages (mixing wood and straw pellets), additionally, with the knowledge that we have now it can only require one person to figure out how to expedite the distillation process and create additional uses for it.

SIDE NOTE- on a small scale my "nutty survivalist brain" also knows that the wood-tar byproduct actually has meat preserving and medicinal uses where coal-tar can be used as a water sealant

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemper_Project

[SIZE=24pt]Kemper Project[/SIZE]

The Kemper Project, also called the Kemper County Energy Facility, is an electrical generating station currently under construction in Kemper County, Mississippi.

The station is scheduled to open in the first half of 2016, more than two years behind schedule, at a cost of $6.1 billion, making Kemper one of the most expensive power plants per kilowatt in the United States.

Kemper will use a technology known as "transport integrated gasification" (TRIG) to convert lignite coal—mined on the Kemper site—into natural gas. The natural gas will then be used to power turbines to production electricity, which will be shipped to customers. The integrated gasification combined cycle used at the plant will utilize clean coal technologies.

Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, is building this plant; construction began in 2010.

By adding coal to its sources of power, Mississippi Power will add balance to its fuel-source choices, and will be less reliant on any one form of energy. There is an estimated four billion tons of lignite available to be used.

The Kemper Project will be the second TRIG facility in the United States. Producing electricity from coal in this way produces tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide, and Kemper has stated that 65 percent of the carbon dioxide would be captured and sequestered.
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What was supposed to make this cost effective is the use of local lignite coal that isn't good for much else, not economically at least when compared to midwest coal.

 
Holy crap, $6 billion for 600 MW? You could get ten times the capacity in a natural gas facility for that price. Sounds like it might be even more expensive than nuclear.

 
Didn't Eustace from Mountain Men use this to power a truck he had? Granted his was a more home made, back of the woods version.

 
I'm surprised he hasn't killed himself or that guy who's always working alongside him yet.

 
I bet they could pass the PE without even studying.

 
mudpuppy said:
Holy crap, $6 billion for 600 MW? You could get ten times the capacity in a natural gas facility for that price. Sounds like it might be even more expensive than nuclear.
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Numbers Im seeing are 6.8 times more costly than a natural gas plant per kW and 23% higher than a nuke plant. The cost overrun was 3.4 billion Sounds like a clusterfuck to reduce co2 emissions using a still unproven tecnology. Hope it works.

 

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