Torftech

When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine....

2011-07-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

….there is one British technology that can provide the ‘green’ backup power that is needed – the TORBED Energy Technologies.

There are more than 150 plants using this technology around the world in the process industries, now is the time to apply them to back up our British planned solar and wind resources.

The TORBED Energy Technologies have been adapted for:

* Production of a coal replacement (‘biocoal’) manufactured from organic wastes such as wood, agricultural residues and energy crops.

* Conversion of organic wastes directly to heat or useful gas for power generation and/or heating and valuable by-products.

* Drying of sludges, slurries and other wet solid fuels that otherwise cannot be usefully converted to energy.

Biocoal

Today, most electricity is produced from coal. We believe that in the future most electricity will be produced from biomass and wastes. This will cause a major leap forward in the decarbonisation of energy production while leveraging the enormous installed base of current power production assets and invested capital, making this major leap forward affordable and fast.

There is sufficient sustainable biomass in the world to turn it into the most significant and reliable source of renewable energy. However, when untreated, biomass is expensive to transport, store, and combust. Additionally, it can only be combusted (co-fired) to a limited extent in the current power plants.

These limitations are lifted when the biomass is first torrefied. Upgrading the biomass through torrefaction makes it cheaper to transport, store and combust, and enables large-scale co-firing (alongside fossil fuel such as coal or as a direct replacement) in existing energy plants without modification. Torrefaction is a necessary step to allow the large-scale, fast and affordable deployment of biomass as a fuel (‘biocoal’), so as to allow biomass to contribute meaningfully to the decarbonisation of the world’s energy supply.

After many years of research and development, the TORBED Energy Technologies have been put into full scale commercial production initially to produce 60,000 tonnes per annum output of biocoal per module.

Combustion and Gasification

The conversion of solid feed stocks to heat for heating and/or electrical power is a well served market at very large scale.

What the new TORBED Energy Technologies bring is true scalability from 1 to 20MW using combustion with the same fundamental technology. As gasifiers, this technology can produce up to 100MW of thermal output.

Converting this gas/heat energy to electricity, the output ranges from 0.25 to 25MW. These sizes suit distributed power plants – most wastes cannot be transported any great distances economically so local conversion of wastes to energy is most appropriate. Agricultural wastes such as straw are abundant and an ideal fuel for distributed heat and power generation.

Many industrial processes produce waste streams with energy that should be used. Paper recycling for example produces large quantities of waste sludge which is capable of being recycled to energy and recoverable solids.

Drying

Most sludges and slurries described above are too wet for direct combustion or gasification and a drying step is needed. The TORBED Energy Technologies are also in use for drying these difficult feed streams.

For further information, please contact us at sales@torftech.com

Chris Dodson, Chairman, receives OBE in 2011 Queens Birthday Honours

2011-06-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

Chris Dodson has been granted an OBE in the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to Industry. Chris commented that 'it was only possible to be given such an honour with the unfailing support of such a wonderful team of colleagues, family, shareholders and friends that I am privileged to have. I am very proud for us all.'

Ecocycle and Torftech Agree terms for Biomass Gasification Licence

2011-03-21T03:26:00.000-07:00

Ecocycle (Group) Ltd (“Ecocycle”) and Torftech Ltd (“Torftech”) are pleased to announce that they have executed a sole licence agreement for the application of Torftech’s TORBED^® Energy Technologies to the biomass gasification sector in the UK.

Kevin Thomas of Ecocycle said “We are delighted to be able to bring the proven TORBED^® Energy Technologies to the UK market. We have evaluated many different gasification technologies over the last 10 years - this is the first technology that we have seen that we have felt comfortable to invest in. The Torftech track record of over 150 reactors in operation around the globe speaks for itself, and with proven biomass gasification plants operating in Europe, we are confident in its capabilities within the UK market.”

Chris Dodson of Torftech welcomed conclusion of the deal saying “We are pleased to have executed this agreement with Ecocycle, we feel that their approach to the power markets is the correct one, Ecocycle has combined our TORBED^® technologies with proven power systems providers to produce a reliable integrated solution for their customers. Combined with our licence to Topell for torrefaction of biomass, we are now providing ground breaking technologies across the full range of biomass applications in the renewable energy sector.”

Ecoycle is currently developing the first two UK sites, with planning permission in place, and is looking to develop further sites; the technology provides more economic solutions for medium scale RDF operations, allowing clean efficient utilisation of these fuels without the need to build large scale incineration plant with the associated emissions and logistical problems.

Torftech wins Exporter of the Year award from British Polish Chamber of Commerce ('BPCC')

2010-05-07T04:17:00.000-07:00

David Thomas, BPCC chairman, Martin Oxley, the BPCC’s CEO and Roger Hogkiss, CEO of Link4 presented Martin Groszek, Group Managing Director of the Torftech Group, with the BPCC ‘Exporter of the Year’ award for 2010 at Warsaw’s Hilton Hotel on 29th April.

To quote the BPCC ‘Torftech is very much a company for our time. Having developed an innovative technology for the clean-burn of bio-waste through a system of gasification, the company settled on Poland as its manufacturing base. Over 100 of the bio-waste combusting boilers have been built in Świdnica and exported to countries such as Canada, Germany and Denmark. In June this year, the first commercial power plant in Poland using a Torftech bio-waste gasifier will open for business. Torftech's system of gasifying bio-waste such as straw reduces CO2 emissions by 92% compared with the burning of coal. The gasifiers produce between one and five megawatts of power as well as hot water for local housing. The potential for thousands of power plants like this across the agricultural areas of the world offers a sustainable alternative to coal powered generation.’

Mortimer Technology wins Queens Award for Enterprise in Innovation with TORBED Energy Technologies

2010-04-20T07:58:00.000-07:00

The Mortimer Technology group of Thatcham, Berkshire, with its Torftech subsidiaries in the UK and Canada, is the proud recipient of a Queens Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category for 2010 presented by the Hon Mrs Bayliss, Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen. The innovations that won the award were all based on a novel method of processing solids in gas streams invented by Chris Dodson and marketed under the trade name TORBED Energy Technologies. These are patented techniques for use in energy generation, mineral, chemical, petroleum and environmental process industries. More than 160 plants have now been installed internationally. These technologies have done for sections of the process industries what Sir James Dyson has done with the vacuum cleaner – revolutionised them!

Martin Groszek, Group Managing Director of Mortimer Technology, commented “We are delighted to have been selected to receive the Queens Award – as a small team, we have worked hard to anticipate the new emerging biomass and waste to energy markets and to develop appropriate technologies to meet what we anticipated to be rapidly growing demands. Our technologies are now ideally positioned to gain markets worth in excess of £700m for the applications that we have listed here.”

Mortimer Technology has been given the award specifically for developing:

- a new 'torrefaction' process for the conversion of biomass into a 'biocoal' in minutes (instead of 60m years!) which gives a 92% reduction in CO₂ emissions against conventional pulverised coal as a fuel.

- a novel modular biomass gasification conversion unit for industrial and commercial scale heat and power plant which in Poland, for example, can reduce emissions by 22m tonnes CO₂ annually with a 20% market penetration in their heating stations.

- a novel process for turning paper ‘sludge’ from paper recycling mills (1 tonne sludge for every tonne of paper processed) into steam energy for the paper mill and a valuable mineral feed for the cement industry.

- a new combustion process for rice husks to provide energy and a valuable amorphous silica as a cement displacement.

Topell Energy of Netherlands to construct 60,000 tonne/annum biomass torrefaction plant using TORBED Energy Technologies

2010-01-18T04:31:00.000-08:00

Topell Energy of the Netherlands was granted a worldwide license in 2008 to use the TORBED Technology for converting biomass into ‘biocoal’ pellets. A demonstration plant was established by Topell in 2009 and tonnage samples have been successfully produced. With funding from RWE Innogy, the first full scale production plant, with a production capacity of 60,000 tonnes per year, is now in manufacture for installation during 2010 at Duiven in Eastern Holland. Biocoal pellets have a very high energy density as well as significantly improved product properties and can be burned together with coal in conventional power plants (co-firing).

The process developed by Topell can be applied to various raw organic materials - even comparatively difficult biomass, such as roots and switch grass, are converted into pellets through mild pyrolysis, torrefaction, using the TORBED Reactor technology and finally, pelletisation.

The production process guarantees high flexibility with the regard to the raw material used; it is therefore unnecessary to draw on foodstuffs. Biocoal is also easy to transport. For co-firing with conventional coal, no further infrastructure measures, e.g. separate storage or crushing, are required.

TORBED biomass gasification technology selected for first Polish district heating station retrofit

2010-01-08T05:22:00.000-08:00

City Thermal Power Plant (MZEC) in Swidnica, Poland, has signed an agreement with a consortium of companies, MTS Energy Systems, to install a new technology that allows the heating station to generate heat from the gasification of biomass. The cost of this first plant in Europe amounts to nearly 7 million PLN. Although the gasification of biomass to produce heat energy is increasingly widespread, the ‘multi-fuel’ capability to be supplied and installed by MTS has not yet been used on any other heating stations. Planning work on the project has taken 2 years to date.

The MTS Energy Systems consortium of companies, Mostostal (Polish), Torftech (English) and SFUP Servis (Polish), is to design and construct the new biomass gasification facility to handle loose straw and wood chips. Installation is due to be complete in six months. It is the first stage of investment in the generation of electricity and heat from biomass.

Financial resources for the investment at MZEC, aside from its own capital resources, has been secured from a grant from the Foundation EcoFund and from the National Fund for Environmental Protection.

“The main objective of the new technology is heat production based on biomass gasification. We want to replace coal with oilseed rape and wheat straw, or wood and wood waste. Through this use of renewable energy sources we will limit air pollution in the city. It will not only be a benefit for residents in the form of cleaner air, but also a chance to limit price increases for their heating. Thanks to this new technology, our company will save on fees for release of CO2 into the atmosphere” - said Ryszard Sobanski, President MZEC in Swidnica, as quoted on the official site of the town of Swidnica.

Source: wnp.pl (Patricia Lash)

Industrial scale TORBED paper sludge combustor installed and commissioned at Atlantic Packaging Products

2008-10-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

The Torftech Group is pleased to announce the successful commissioning of a new process for the conversion of paper mill ‘sludge’ to energy and a valuable mineral stream. Utilizing their proprietary TORBED® process Reactor Technology, Torftech has developed a technique whereby paper sludge, containing 50-60% water, can be calcined at high temperature utilizing the calorific value of the waste wood fibre it contains to provide a significant portion of the process energy required. A conventional Heat Recovery Steam Generator, or ‘boiler’, is used to extract heat from the exhaust gases and produce steam for the paper mill. By this means:

Increasing disposal costs are avoided
Valuable energy is generated
Recyclable mineral filler is produced
Environmental emissions are reduced

With increasing disposal and energy costs typical straight payback of investment for such a plant can be less than 18 months.

This concept was conceived by Torftech (Canada) Inc to respond to the growing environmental and economic pressures on a well respected Ontario based paper recycling company to find an alternative to disposal for their process sludge. Atlantic Packaging Products Ltd supported initial trials of the process at Torftech Canada’s pilot scale facility in Mississauga. With the encouraging results from the pilot trials, Atlantic applied, successfully, to Sustainable Development Technology Canada (www.sdtc.ca) for funding support for a commercial demonstration of the concept. This facilitated the design, installation and commissioning of the demonstration facility sized to process all of the sludge generated at Atlantic’s paper mill in Scarborough, Ontario in Canada.

After extensive trials and process development, the 6 tonne per hour plant is fully operational producing more than 18,000 kg/h (42,000 lb/h) of steam and 1 tonne per hour of calcined mineral filler with a pale grey colour with potential for use as a partial substitute for cement in concrete or as a feed material to a cement kiln.

With ever increasing disposal costs for paper sludge, likely penalties for methane or CO2 emissions from decomposing sludge when land-filled or spread, steadily increasing energy prices, this new process will be most welcome to the paper industry.

First commercial TORBED gasification reactor installed and commissioned at Vlissingen in Holland

2008-08-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

This unit is has been installed as part of a system supplied by Polow Energy Systems BV who have many years experience from developing systems for converting various sources of organic resources such as poultry litter and wood waste into valuable energy. This first gasification reactor is capable of gasifying 750 kg/h of wood waste which produces some 3.5MWth of energy for the client’s drying system.

This application of the TORBED Process Reactor Technology represents a significant advance in the gasification of wastes such as wood. This new process, on which patent protection has been granted, provides dramatic improvements including:

Real time control over the process – no discernable lead/lag
High turndown ratio
Tolerance of wide range of feed particle size range and moisture content
Rapid start up/shut down
Low solids hold up provides protection from feed blockages or interruption

Wuhan and Beijing, China

2008-01-15T15:27:00.000-08:00

During 14-18th January, our chairman, Chris Dodson, was selected to represent our company on a seminar mission to Wuhan and Beijing in China, timed to coincide with Gordon Brown’s visit on 18th January. This timing allowed him to attend the business summit on behalf of British businesses.

The subjects on which this group of 12 companies gave presentations ranged from carbon capture, through CO2 credits to power production from rice husks using a TORBED® combustor. It was a very high profile ‘ministerial level’ mission and was well received by all levels of Chinese society that they interfaced with.

The mission was very professionally put together by UK Trade and Investment and British Expertise. They arranged and paid for the venues, meals and event dinners throughout the 5 day mission – all of which were to a very high standard indeed. The UK participants met or spoke with some 200 Chinese enterprises. The Chinese, whose ruling body are predominantly engineers/scientists, are taking climate change issues very seriously - whole cities have recently been designated ‘green/sustainable’ cities with funding allocated to go after these ideals.

Wen Jiabao, the Premier of the Peoples Republic of China, and Gordon Brown exchanged commitments to nearly double trade between China and the UK to some £60bn. It is hoped that this will include many rice husk and other biomass fired systems based on our TORBED® Technologies!