Synthesis Energy Systems, developers of the revolutionary U-GAS® single-stage, fluidized-bed gasification process that can utilize a wide array of biomass feedstocks and coals, is reporting today, in conjunction with subsidiary of globally recognized industry giant General Electric, an application marketing agreement to jointly pursue evaluation of a small-scale power generation unit based on the company’s technology.
The proposed solution would fuse the company’s gasification technology and GE’s fuel-flexible LM-2500+G4 aeroderivative gas turbine systems to yield a platform product targeted at regions on earth where abundant, yet underutilized non-conventional feedstocks exist. China is a good example of a huge market where this product could see runaway traction, but anywhere that low grade coal like lignite or coal wastes are in abundance offers the potential for energy producers to economically bypass natural gas, fuel oil, and other conventional gas turbine sources with this new system.
Today’s announcement comes after a full year of work by the two companies on a preliminary evaluation of the combined systems, and the framework of this agreement provides a non-exclusive umbrella for covering market prep and initial sales. The marriage of these two technologies was a natural fit really, with U-GAS being able to handle such a wide range of inputs and the LM-2500+G4’s being perfectly suited to using the resulting syngas. The solution puts ultra-low quality coals, coal wastes, and even refuse-derived fuels comfortably on the table and, given the scale of the targeted design, the execution should see rapid uptake as smaller-scale project demand (50-100MW) is enormous.
President and CEO of GE Power & Water’s Aeroderivative Gas Turbines unit, Darryl Wilson, expressed the overwhelming enthusiasm from GE to continue working hand-in-hand with Synthesis Energy Systems to realize a combined implementation of their respective technologies, confident in the knowledge that syngas for distributed power generation from unconventional sources represents a huge future market. Wilson underscored the advantages of the LM2500+G4 turbine for efficiently utilizing even low-quality coal derived syngases and pegged the GE hardware as “the ideal engine choice” for this type of plant design.
President and CEO of SYMX, Robert Rigdon, called this development an important vertical for the company on their quest to fully commercialize the U-GAS technology, which not only reigns in the underutilized fuel sources mentioned, but can process coals into energy and high-value chemical products without the harmful emissions normally attributed to using coal. Rigdon telegraphed the excitement buzzing back and forth between the two companies over their joint effort’s potential, clearly looking at the long-term impact for SYMX when it comes to delivering their design, equipment, and services to even wider end markets via this and other efforts.
More information on Synthesis Energy Systems is available at www.SynthesisEnergy.com
Let us hear your thoughts below:
