Nexterra biomass deal pushes thermal advantages

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Nexterra Energy has signed a $10 million-to-$15 million deal with Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI) for a new biomass gasification system to be installed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee.

Nexterra’s biomass agreement is part of an $89 million contract with Johnson Controls for energy conservation and building management systems efforts at ORNL (see Johnson Controls, Nexterra in biomass alliance).

The Nexterra system will replace ORNL’s existing natural gas steam plant. It converts woody biomass products into clean burning syngas, which is expected to produce 60,000 pounds per hour of saturated steam to displace 75 million British thermal units per hour of fossil fuel traditionally used to heat the campus.

Once operational, the system is expected to reduce fossil fuel consumption at the national lab by as much as 80 percent, according to Nexterra.

“Our thermal systems are competing in the market with combustion technologies,” Jonathan Rhone, president and CEO of Nexterra told the Cleantech Group. “The lifecycle and maintenance costs are much lower for our system, and our technology approach allows us to scale down to the 2 to 10 megawatt range.”

Nexterra is supplying the complete gasification system, which includes fuel handling, storage and the exhaust stack. Nexterra expects to deliver the system in late 2009.

Rhone said Nexterra’s biomass gasification systems could be put to use in roughly 400 universities in North America that use on-site natural gas or coal fired co-generation systems.

“Nexterra has just finished development on a direct-fire kiln and boilers which can be placed at a customer’s existing natural gas or fuel oil plant,” Rhone said.

“We can take a variety of wood fuels and wet fuels and produce the steam,” he added. “Because we convert the biomass into a synthetic fuel, we have low air emissions by contrast to oil and coal based systems.”

The Johnson Controls contract for ORNL was among the first awarded as part of the Department of Energy's Transformational Energy Action Management Initiative, which aims to reduce energy waste and greenhouse gases at DOE facilities nationwide by 30 percent. It also calls for those sites to use at least 7.5 percent of all energy from renewable sources by 2010.

The DOE and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have outlined how 1.3 billion tons of biomass could be produced exclusively for energy production in the United States each year with only modest changes in terrestrial crop practices.

Lately, there’s also been great interest in biomass research efforts. And some of that research is receiving federal support. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the DOE have announced joint efforts amounting to $18.4 million in 21 projects.

The funding will go into biomass research and development and demonstration projects over a three-year period (see USDA, DOE to invest up to $18.4M in biomass research). There are several biomass companies in the market today, including Alstom, Areva, Babcock & Wilcox, E.ON and Ensyn (see Covanta buys two biomass plants in Maine).

Rhone said Nexterra is currently finalizing new gas and internal combustion systems, which will be 45 percent efficient, compared to 20 percent to 25 percent efficiency typically found in fuel oil and natural gas cogenerators.

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