Torftech Energy to supply combustion technology for 200 MWe Rice Husk powered generation plants

08-Oct-2013 - Hau Giang Power Plant Joint Stock Company and CHE Group Malaysia entered into a joint venture collaboration on September 24th to supply a total of 200 MWe of energy using biomass power plants located in the south western part of Vietnam. There will be 18 to 20 Biomass power plants constructed in strategic locations of which Hau Giang province will be the first to “host” the construction of a 10 MWe power plant. The power plants that will supply the 200 MWe of power will be located in 6 Provinces and installed over the next 5 to 6 years; the construction of the first plant will commence at the end of 2013.

Torftech Energy is supplying its “state-of-the-art” TORBED based combustion system utilizing rice husk as fuel to generate electricity at all of these new plants. These TORBED combustion systems will be manufactured and supplied through the CHE Group from Malaysia under licence from Torftech Energy. This is the 'first of its kind' power plant to be located in Vietnam - one of its unique features is the ability of the process to produce a non-hazardous high quality ash. The production of such an ash provides considerable advantages over conventional combustion plants as the ash can be used as a cement substitute for enhancing concrete strength. The ash generated, using the proprietary TORBED combustion technology developed by Torftech from United Kingdom, has the trade mark ‘Agrisilica’ that guarantees its quality and enables the export of the ash to major economies in the region. This is one of the key factors that permit the additional investment costs that result when using more advanced European Technology.

Mr Douglas Barnes, HM Consul General and Director of UK Trade and Investment in Vietnam, attending the signing ceremony commented “I am absolutely delighted that a British technology has been instrumental in the award of this contract. The emerging biomass and waste to energy markets in Vietnam show enormous potential and it is encouraging that British, Malaysian and Vietnamese companies have collaborated to develop appropriate technologies to meet the anticipated rapidly growing demands in this market sector. This project is a first class example of how innovative UK companies like Torftech are developing their global business through international partnerships”.

Torftech Energy Ltd launched

12-Sep-2013 - The race is on for a more efficient, clean and sustainable use of energy. The energy mix is changing towards a greater use of renewable energy sources, including biomass and non-recyclable organic matters from waste.

Wherever possible, closed-loop energy management will prevail, driving smaller scale, community based energy generation. Where energy sources cannot be found locally, efficient feedstock supply chains must be further developed.

Backed by more than 30 years of R&D investment, project delivery experience, patented IP and know-how within the Torftech Group, Torftech Energy has been established to exploit opportunities within the energy sector. This will be done by building on an existing portfolio of licence, collaboration and joint venture agreements.

Torftech Energy offers unique and innovative biomass and waste, multi-fuel energy solutions at system or plant turnkey level, namely:

·  Feedstock upgrading, including drying and torrefaction

·  Conversion of feedstock to heat and syngas through pyrolysis, gasification or combustion

·  Production of heat, electricity and other valuable by-products from syngas

The enabling technologies are underpinned by Torftech Energy having acquired the global rights for exploitation of the TORBED reactors for biomass and waste processing within the energy sector.

Over the past 3 decades, the generic TORBED reactors have been well proven in more than 160 commercial plants in a range of industries - and in more recent years - within the energy sector. The technologies have long range protection through a substantial and actively maintained global portfolio of patents and trademarks and delivery is supported by in-house specialist experience and know-how.

Torftech Energy is ready to play a significant role in shaping the new energy future.

Royal visit to Cambodian TORBED Rice Husk combustor

19-Jul-2013 - King Sinamoni, Queen Mother and Samdech Hun Sen visit TORBED rice husk combustion plant on their visit to Angkor Rice, Cambodia. See photos from the visit here http://angkorrice.blogspot.com/2013/07/king-sihamoni-queen-mother-and-samdech.html?m=1

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

12-Jul-2011….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

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

07-May-2010 - 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

20-Apr-2010 - 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

18-Jan-2010 - 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.