Any experience with Fluidize reactors ? I like to try save our coal industry in Alberta . It’s tough times here with oil prices collapsing I lost my welding business , my live-hood , and would love nothing more than to get this gasification thing going .
It’s being done large scale . but, would like it available to all . you know …screw the man !
I feel for anyone loosing their jobs in the FF industry. I want to make that understood upfront.
But instead of trying to bring back coal it would probably help more to focus on a next generation I guess you could say green energy source. We all know the issues with FF so I won’t rehash that we have a long thread all about climate change.
I think Matt with his wood pellet gasificer work or Koen and Gary Gilmore with their charcoal gasificer work all have some good designs that could be marketed to a larger market as part of a new local energy market.
I left a company that wasn’t proving a product which I could feel good about being involved with myself and moved back to the family farm with a focus on small scale local food production. I haven’t gotten it turning a proffit yet and it has been hard but I sleep better and am healthier then I was.
For me it feels better to be proactively working to build the economy I think we need. I don’t think my one small family farm will change the world. But I know growing local and trying to do it with all local inputs (something I am just getting started with) will help in a small way.
What I did before wasn’t directly causing the major problems of our times but I definitely wasn’t make it any better.
OK I will stop preaching now. Just trying to provide a little insight into where I am comming from when I ask is there a more environmentally friendly local resources you can help to develop.
Why can’t coal be gasified and made green ? clean coal technology…It’s abundent and where i live we have the best grade of coal on the planet . for $40 year i could probably take care of all my energy needs
Because all FF is taking carbon that is locked up in the ground and putting it in the air. Trees are taking carbon from the air and putting it into the tree if you burn the tree you don’t add carbon from the ground into the air and the next tree you grow to burn takes the carbon back out of the air. The next chunk of coal you burn just adds more carbon to the air.
I understand your position and respect it , and wish you respect mine but, I’m not a huge believer in this whole man made global warming thing ,…I want to create energy for me and my family ,where it’s affordable .
Coal will destroy most systems being built today. Back in the day there were some small scale designs and you will have to dig on the net to find them. I think what is out there is also very vag and much of it will be left to the imagination. Biomass is just a lot easier, you see a lot of the people that are interested in this technology want it because you can legally create your own fuel and make energy with it. Coal would bring a very niche market to a market that is already nich. So your just not going to see to many folks messing with coal simply because they will have to buy it. This goes for pellet operated machines and is why we build chip machines. I do offer smaller versions that run on pellets specific and I can also set up larger versions to run them. But most clients get the Chip versions. In the future however we will shift to pellets as this will be the standard and this is coming. We will need a standardized fuel if your going to play in this market. So we will also have to develop and offer the pelletizing equipment and processing the make this fuel viable.
at $6 CAD for a bag of pellets cant do. not when a ton of coal cost $40 and produces way more energy
Thats why you make chips for free and build a chip fuel gasifier 
practical for the woods / rural guy…im kinda stuck in the city like most . I need to be practical and where to scavenge resource. With that said I have deals to pick up pallets and scrap wood from construction sites etc…But coal would be soooo much easier
My point was just to the comment why can’t it be made clean green. Can you make a coal system that will have a complete combustion cycle and not pump out black smoke that is a different question. Yes it could be done like Matt said. But coal no matter how completely burned is not green. Sorry if you feel I am not understanding your position. But it bugs me when people talk about green coal because it is still centuries old carbon being added to the air. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking anything can make coal a good thing for the environment it can only be made less harmful.
As I said at the start I feel bad for people who make their living by coal and hope them the best in transitioning into a different industry. But I honestly feel all FF is a industry that will phase out in our lifetime or our children’s.
Didn’t make my living by coal but by the oilsands or the greeny’s call Tarsands. I’m not going to stand and say it’s most ethical of industry’s for it’s not , very polluting. …But, a guys gotta do what a guys gotta do or starve
Sorry but everyone called it the tarsands until the oil industry rebranded it as the oil sands 10 years ago dont hang that one on us greenies. I don’t begrudge you your career and as a Canadian I’ve made my peace with Canadian oil development as being more good then bad. You would probably run into a lot of slagging problems and all the impurities would make up drafting it impossible without a lot of filtering. I remember reading even the coal to fuel companies would burn off the impurities before using it to produce Syn gas. Maybe someone knows something on site but it’s mostly all biomass for us country guys with wood. If you are urban ask yourself do you really want to be screwing around with coal gas emissions in close proximity to others? You are talking mercury sulphur and God knows what else it’s been sucking up for millions of years. Coal burning appliances are available but are licensed as such or else bye bye insurance. I think coal is dead myself but I feel for you on the economic side.
Best regards, David Baillie
While most do…I don’t take offense for if you look at the property’s of Alberta’s oil, it’s a bitumen , or a tar. It’s ,mostly used for taring roads, ashfault etc. It takes several levels of upgrading and refining to becoming oil…to call it oil is misleading IMO…It’s like calling wood a house
Out of curiosity what is the feeling about the future of the industry out there. I have friends who have been out and it sounds brutal even now. The tarsands only make sense in a high cost oil world which seems to be gone as every third world country pumps it as fast as possible to avoid their own financial collapse. I wonder if it ends up being a stranded resource myself. We should have been shipping it out east to our own refineries twenty years ago but that’s another story. Someday provinces will stop bickering like little children.
Best regards, David Baillie
Dependent on the project . The bigger established players like a Suncor or syncrude can be profitable at $35, but most of the projects need at least $65. Can’t say good or bad but a lot of us are starving and even after busting my hump for the last 20 years , educated, skilled …Can’t find a job at even Walmart…lost my welding business and seriously looking at Trump land , he seems to care about jobs
Tesla is looking for skilled labor to build batteries at the new factory in Nevada. It is warm enough there you can ride your bike year around probably…
Moving isn’t easy but sometimes it is what you have to do to find work. I switched jobs about every 5 years myself mostly because I worked at small companies. They have a tendency to come and go around here even in high tech stuff.
Seriously I think if I was a good welder looking for work I would find the nearest farm community and start going from farm to farm. Farms almost always have a need for good welder to fix something. Look for the people like me running old equipment. It isn’t fun to fix but those of us who need it and can’t weld well have to pay somone. I happen to be lucky that I have a good friend who welds for a living. But a good welder who can also look over something and fix it so it doesn’t break again is hard to find on a farm.
I think a global economic cycle is bigger then any single country can counter even if he’s “Huge”. All I’ll say on that one for fear of breaking the no politics rule. China slowed down oil prices went down end of story. Things are brutal here too. Rural Ontario has been hammered flat for 20 years.
I played around with coal for a few years. My dislike was that it is on the acidic side and tends to rot/rust stuff out. Plus it is expensive to buy and I cannot grow it. I was using anthracite coal to boot. In the past all town gas was made with coal in addition to a lot of pollution. But now a days the tar pollution could be cleaned up. The other thing that I hated was the fine ash dust.
Putting coal aside, the down side of a forums is that someone itching with an idea will get shoot down possibly without knowing all the fine details.
Good luck.
Welcome Craig, Come on down we can use skilled workers here, there is a shortage of welders because for the last 40 years kids have been pushed to go to college, but not trade schools. Here in this area of PA. WV Ohio natural gas has gone crazy, companies are all looking for any skilled workers.
Sorry about your business, but you are nuts to even think about coal, when Alberta is giving rebates. The Rebate Program Will Pay 75 Cents Per Installed Watt, Up to 30 Percent of Cost.