Gaseous emissions – one path to the future

By Andrew McKenna

Gasification is not necessarily something you get after Jerusalem Artichoke soup, but it might just be the appropriate technology to fill a few gaps in the brave new energy mix of our future world. And a Castlemaine inventor has invented it – or reinvented it. While he’s not quite from Castlemaine, we won’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. There are quite likely some big things in the pipeline for this kind of gasification.

‘People getting shot, blood and bullet holes,’ is how John Sanderson describes working on the first series of Underbelly in special effects.

The gun John is holding is one of several 'splurge guns' he built for the Castlemaine Theatre Company's production of Bugsy Malone (he says).

He also recently worked at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival on The Great Debate, The Super Show, and The Gala, where comedians raise money for Oxfam. But it’s Good News Week where he has been involved the longest, and has been helping out with their explosions and fiery effects since around 1997 when he first got involved in the special effects game. Besides GNW, he’s helped blow up cars, burn down houses, create million-volt lightning bolts and rainbow-coloured fire.

‘The day we did a tsunami in a restaurant – that was a fun day,’ he said.

He still works for television from time to time, and he finds it a bit of a holiday from his other work – energy auditing, environmental consulting and making stuff out of nothing.

‘A different part of my brain deals with the different working environments,’ he said.

‘So one job is like a holiday from the other.’

These days John is Principal Environmental Engineer with a company called Earth Systems, who do environmental consulting work and environmental impact assessments, which are about assessing the environmental impacts of new projects and planning how they will be remediated. The company are experts on acid mine drainage. When you dig up certain minerals and expose them to oxygen for the first time in millions of years, and then add water, you can get acid. Sulfuric acid. Strong enough to kill things, he says.

The process that’s happening at the mouth of the Murray is similar, where as we drink up the river, earth that has been covered by water for aeons is turning acid. Earth Systems is working on the mess at the mouth of the Murray as well.

John is originally from Adelaide although he’s quick to stress that we needn’t hold that against him. Someone has to come from Adelaide. He trained as a chemical engineer, got his qualifications from the University of Adelaide, then a PhD from Monash University through a scholarship. He must be smart, but he alleges the only reason he came to Melbourne was so he could follow up some job experience in special effects for film and tv. Stuff that goes bang. Probably not so far out of a chemical engineer’s domain when you come to think about it.

His speciality is greenhouse gas emissions auditing, energy auditing and renewable energy technology.

‘Larger organisations are now required by the Federal Government to report their emissions, and we often get called in to see it’s done appropriately and according to the regulations.’

They can audit anything from small businesses to larger companies and mining sites.

‘We like to see them reducing emissions, but we can also convince them they can save money,’ he said.

He says the more lucrative energy industries – such as the oil and gas industries – seek much higher returns on their investments and normally take more persuading that it’s worth their while.

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John and his business partner Mark Feltrin founded Gasification Australia in 2005, and incorporated the business in ‘06.

John and Mark on their prototype gasifier

‘We started it because CSIRO closed down their gasification research facility in Melbourne,’ he said.

‘I was working for CSIRO, and Climate Change and Global Warming had just hit the news big time. At the same time CSIRO seemed to be putting the emphasis on fossil fuels, which was peculiar to me.

‘We decided if a government research institute doesn’t feel it’s important for Australia, we’d do it ourselves.

‘We started to investigate whether gasification technology would allow us to produce high-grade electricity and transport fuel from waste, and how to incorporate biomass technology into forest restoration.’

And here CI started to get concerned – will this technology be turned on old-growth forests just so we wasteful humans can continue to drive to the corner store in the suburbs for a loaf of bread?

‘I would hate to see it applied to old growth,’ he said.

‘It’s a case where forestry wastes could be used, but you don’t want to go near old growth forests as they’re the best carbon sinks on the planet. It works best where you are restoring a forest and need ecological thinnings. If you’re going to gasify old growth, let’s just stick to burning coal; it’s much more environmentally friendly.’

There are plenty of locations around central Victoria, including near Fryerstown where John lives, where ecological thinning is required. Plenty of ironbarks have coppiced into two or more trunks, and would benefit from thinning. And that’s the kind of wood that works best to produce electricity.

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‘We were really interested in the sort of technology we ourselves would want to buy. We thought the least was that we would both end up with one each.’

They designed and built a small system that an individual could operate and enable them to generate electricity and drive a car. It is, in fact, an ‘old’ technology, as hundreds of thousands of cars were powered by gas, produced from charcoal, during the Depression and the war, here as well as in Europe.

He bought an old one, made in Carlton, from a farmer in Horsham for $50, and they pulled it to pieces to see how it worked. They built their own and connected it to John’s ute.

Other than disconnecting the petrol and sticking the wood gas hose into an air intake, with a couple of plumbing fittings from Tonks, they did nothing to the vehicle. And it drove. He does say, however, that driving a car on wood is ‘character building’.

A piece of 'biochar'

They aimed and achieved 15 kW units, and have now built a number of successful gasifiers. Simply put they turn wood to fuel gas, produce some alkaline water and charcoal (or ‘biochar’) as waste, and some CO2.

The gas is not ‘energy dense’, you get about half the power you would get from the same engine running on petrol. John reckons the machine’s application lies in being part of a mix of energy alternatives: solar, wind, biogas and biomass. The versions they have built to date are too large to be easily grid connected and are more suited to off-grid power, enough to run a household and workshop, at least some of the time.

‘They will be part of what I like to call a renewable energy salad, as opposed to the fossil fuel chocolate bar we are currently addicted to.’

He says to produce 15kW you require about 20kg of wood waste per hour, or around three or four 20L buckets-worth. The rate of consumption will vary depending on how much electrical power is used.

‘It has its applications in developing nations where there’s no grid,’ he says.

‘India is very supportive of this technology, and we see that as very promising. As far as transport goes, we wanted to prove we could do it and we did. The system turns wood into gas on demand. The harder you pull on the throttle the more gas is produced. In many ways it’s a natural fit with a piston engine.

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When it’s burning at optimum, the flame burns a purplish/pink. ‘The gas making process itself runs almost white-hot – ‘the colour of the sun,’ someone said. Gasification occurs at extreme temperatures.

They have also built a unit for a client who now runs it on peach stones, which are a perfect shape but a challenge because of peach pits’ high ash content. The units they’ve built so far would be suitable for a small village, and for now they’re looking into one for a household.

The Government is also reputedly interested in John’s work, and CI will keep you posted.