Swan Erickson Publishing Inc. / www.processwest.caCanada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40065542

March 2013Serving Western Canadian Processors

ALSO INSIDE

Geomatics industry finds its place

Where to start with hose selection

Monitoring small water systems

Clean SlateVancouver-based Nexterra Systems is proving gasification, and thus clean energy, makes economical sense, too

Firing upforestryEthanol offers industry its greatest hope

Non-contact meters are making big waves

Go withthe fl owGo withthe fl ow

Turning back clock on biolubricants

GreaselightningGreasedlightning

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Firing upforestry

try da oo sursfe trinirsffeffl nththE oo da e iEthanol offers industry g pa o eseets ht trtsi opag a eeeaiits greatest hope

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PROCESSWest March 2013 11

For most people, being told they are fullof hot air would be considered an insult.For the folks at Nexterra, it’s perhaps

the greatest compliment.For the past decade, the Vancouver-based

gasification company has been cleaning up in-dustry one gasification facility at a time.

The 50-person company recently made in-ternational headlines when it unveiled an en-ergy-from-waste combined-heat-and-powersystem (CHP) at the University of British Co-lumbia that uses the company’s gasificationand syngas conditioning technologies in whatNexterra is hailing as the first of its kind inNorth America.

Not bad for an outfit operating in an indus-try that arguably has more hype than most.

“(The gasification industry has) lots of promise, probably a lot of groups have had alot of hype, but not all that much substance.We like to think we’re in the substance busi-ness,” says Mike Scott, who replaced Jona-than Rhone as the company’s president andchief executive in October 2011.

“It’s really the platform that we startedwith that has made it possible for us to sur-vive and deliver in the real world.”

Nexterra in the beginning . . .Nexterra, headquartered in Vancouver, was

established as a private company in 2003.Over the next three years, the company de-veloped and tested its core gasification tech-nology at a product development centre inKamloops, B.C., before opening its first com-mercial plant in 2006,

Today, Nexterra is majority owned by ARCFinancial Corp, the Tandem Expansion Fundand Business Development Bank of Canada.Calgary-based ARC Financial has supportedNexterra with five investments totallingmore than $25 million over the course of itspartnership.

Over the past decade, Nexterra has left itsmark on a number of renewable energy proj-ects across North America.

In 2006, Nexterra made its first foray intothe gasification industry by developing a sys-tem that coverts low-value wood waste intosyngas that is then used to replace natural

gas at the Tolko Industries’ Heffley Creek plywood mill in Kamloops, B.C. The system reduces greenhouse gas emissions at the plant by 12,000 tonnes annually, and has displaced millions of dollars in natural gas during the course of its more than 50,000 hours of op-eration since it started.

“Getting that first customer signed up and delivering a system that worked, and has been operating for close to seven years, was certainly a big milestone,” says Scott.

A year later, Nexterra provided a gasifica-tion system for a cogeneration plant at the University of South Carolina. At peak capac-ity the plant generated 60,000 pounds per hour of steam used to heat the campus, as well as 1.38 megawatts (MW) of electricity before it shut down.

Some of the company’s biggest successes came in 2009, when the company opened

industry-first gasification projects in NewWestminster, B.C., and Victoria.

In New Westminster, Kruger Products be-came the first company in the pulp and paperindustry to adopt Nexterra’s gasification sys-tem. The system at Kruger’s mill converts lo-cally sourced wood waste into clean-burningsyngas to produce 40,000 pounds per hourof steam that is fired directly into a boiler inplace of natural gas.

Also in 2009, Nexterra made history withCanada’s first urban biomass gasification proj-ect: Dockside Green, a residential and com-mercial development located on the UpperHarbour in Victoria. The system produces heatand hot water for the entire development us-ing locally sourced wood residues. The systememits virtually no pollution, odors or noise.

In 2010, Nexterra completed a biomassgasification system at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George,B.C., that enabled the university to utilize lo-cally sourced wood biomass to produce clean-burning syngas, displacing the natural gasused for heating the campus.

Operational in 2011, the system has sincereduced UNBC’s natural gas consumptionby 89 per cent, lowered energy costs and de-creased greenhouse gas emissions by 3,500tonnes per year, equivalent to taking 1,000cars off the road.

More recently, Nexterra has been busy southof the border. In February 2012, the companycompleted work on an energy-from-renewable-waste system at the U.S. Department of Energy’sOak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Representing the cornerstone of the facil-ity’s $94-million project, the Nexterra systemreplaced the lab’s aging fossil-fuel heatingsystem, as well as upgraded the entire cam-pus to more energy-efficient electrical, waterand other systems. Nexterra’s system is re-ducing the facility’s greenhouse gas emissionsby an estimated 23,000 tonnes per year, theequivalent of removing 4,000 cars from theroad each year.

Nexterra is also nearing completion of an$18-million biomass heat and power systemat the U.S. Department of Veterans AffairsMedical Center in Battle Creek, Mich.

Nexterra Systems turns up the heat on gasifi cation commercialization

By Jamie Zachary

Nexterra's CHP system at UBC is thefirst energy-from-waste combined-heat-and-power system in the 2-10MWe-size range in North America. Photos courtesy Nexterra Systems.

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12 March 2013 PROCESSWest

Scheduled to open later this year, the Nex-terra system will provide clean, carbon-neu-tral heat and power to the campus. It willalso reduce greenhouse gas emissions by anestimated 14,000 tonnes annually and reduc-ing the facility’s carbon footprint by approxi-mately 80 per cent.

Nexterra and UBCNexterra’s most recent contribution came

closer to home at UBC, where it has created an energy-from-waste combined-heat-and-power system (CHP) that uses the company’sgasification and syngas conditioning tech-nologies in combination with partner GEEnergy’s high-efficiency Jenbacher internalcombustion engines.

The result is what Nexterra is hailing as NorthAmerica’s first demonstration of its kind.

“This project represents a significant mile-stone for Nexterra,” says Scott. “We are see-ing significant interest in the next-generationsolution around the globe.”

The system, dubbed the Bioenergy Re-search and Demonstration Facility, is housedin a building constructed of cross-laminatedtimber (CLT) and set in the midst of an “ur-ban forest,” as described by Nexterra.

It works by converting locally sourcedwaste wood into a clean, engine-grade syn-gas that is suitable for use in a high-efficient,industrial-scale gas engine – in this caseGE’s Jenbacher gas engine – to produce heatand power.

More specifically, renewable woody biomass– including City of Vancouver tree trimmings,clean construction and demolition debris andwood waste from local furniture manufactur-ers – is gasified and converted into syngasthat is used to produce hot water to heat thecampus and/or directly fire into the gas en-gine to produce electricity.

The UBC project requires about 12,500bone-dry tonnes of wood waste per year, av-eraging two to three trucks per day.

The result is Nexterra’s system can pro-duce up to 2 megawatts of clean, renewableelectricity – enough to power approximately1,500 homes – to offsets the university’s ex-isting power consumption, which is estimatedcurrently to be about 40 megawatts of electri-cal output (MWe) annually.

The Nexterra system also generates 3 MW

of thermal energy — enough steam to dis-place up to 12 per cent of UBC’s natural gas consumption. This is expected to reduce UBC’s greenhouse overall gas emissions by up to 5,000 tonnes per year, which is the equiva-lent of taking more than 1,000 cars off the road.

The CHP application offers 20 per cent high electrical efficiency and lower water con-sumption than conventional technologies, po-tentially transforming what Nexterra refers to as a “large niche market for small-scale (2-10 MWe) biomass CHP and power generation,” says Scott. Small-scale, in this case, refers to one-10th the size of conventional large bio-mass-to-steam power systems.

The benefits to the CHP system goes beyond its ability to displace grid-purchase electricity for use “inside the fence,” and save customers on electricity and heating costs, says Scott.

It’s also able to displace fossil fuels used to produce hot water or steam, offer com-pliance with mandated renewables targets like that in the U.K., open access to feed-in-tariffs and incentives, greenhouse gas re-mission reduction and/or value for carbon offset credits.

Nexterra and gasificationGasification is nothing new, dating back

more than 100 years.Where Nexterra’s niche lies in how its been

able to effectively commercialize it by devel-oping a technology that allows flexible fuel choices while delivering fewer emissions and requiring lower operating costs.

“The basics of gasification technology has been around for decades. The challenge is making it work with a variable feedstock in a real-world setting,” says Scott, noting the issue often lies with feedstocks that vary in moisture and size.

“Because the basics are simple, this is whywe’ve ended up with hundreds of companiesaround the world getting started but unableto commercialize it.

“We’ve taken a very step-by-step approachto commercializing the technology. We’veonly bitten of chunks that we though wecould chew.

“We started with arguably more straight-forward applications of gasification technol-ogy, but now we’re pushing into areas wherewe’re making the gas clean and suitable foruse in a big internal combustion engine toproduce power.”

Nexterra’s gasification technology operateson fuel with moisture content from six to 60per cent, and up to three inches minus par-ticle size. Comparative combustion systems,on the other hand, can often only process asmaller fuel particle, making it more expen-sive to users.

Fuel for Nexterra’s systems, meanwhile, hasranged from forest industry waste wood to, inthe UBC case, demolition debris. The com-pany is also exploring the possibility of usingdried sewage sludge.

By comparison, traditional combustion sys-tems generally operate with either wet or dryfuel, and some can only utilize a smaller fuelparticle, making it more expensive.

From an operational standpoint, Nexterra’ssystems have much lower concentrations of particulate entrained in the flue gas systementering the boil than other combustionsystems. The reduced particulate loading inthe flue gas results in reduced soot blowing,cleaning surface wear and downtime to main-tain the boiler.

Low particulate carryover also extends thelife of the components downstream of theboiler, including the flue gas ducts, ID fan ro-tor and electrostatic precipitator ash convey-

General Electric's Jenbacher engine at UBC uses syngas created by gasify-ing biomass to produce power and heat. Photos courtesy Nexterra Systems.

The UBC project requires two to three trucks of biomass per day.

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14 March 2013 PROCESSWest

5759 - 67 Street, Edmonton, AB T6B 0B4780.469.6002 Fax: 780.469.3257

pickford@pickford.com • www.pickford.com

ers.On the emissions side, Nexterra’s gasification technology

has a leg up on other gasification or conventional combustionsystems in that it produces lower particulate, carbon mon-oxide, volatile organic carbons and oxides of nitrogen, saysRaymond McAllister, communications and media relationswith Nexterra.

“Particulate, VOC and TOC emissions are equivalent toa natural gas boil system based upon EPA AP-42 data,” hesays, noting Nexterra’s systems consume all fuel, resulting inash with minimal carbon content.

“Lower emissions are easier to permit and more acceptableto local residents.”

And because Nexterra uses renewable biomass in its gasifi-ers, its technology is deemed greenhouse-gas neutral. Overthe past 10 years, the company has reduced emissions from

3,500 to 22,000 tonnes per year.

Nexterra and the futureWhile Nexterra’s technology has

seemingly hit new heights, natural gasprices have plummeted to new lows inNorth America.

Until the past two years, North Amer-ica represented the company’s majormarket. Yet the drastic drop in natural

gas prices from $8 to $2 MMBtu (onemillion BTu) has hurt many renewableenergy technologies, including Nexterra.

While the company continues to searchout new projects in Canada and the U.S.,its focus is on finalizing projects overseaswhere natural gas prices are still $8 to $14MMBtu and there are mandated renewableenergy subsidies, says McAlllister.

“The double whammy of bargain base-ment natural gas prices in North Ameri-can and a world recession has sent manyrenewable energy technologies to the

graveyard of great ideas,” he says.“While there are still some promising markets for Nex-

terra’s systems in North America, there is great interest inother jurisdictions which have high fossil fuels costs, abun-dant biomass wastes and regulations and investments thatfavour the production of renewable energy.”

Scott says Nexterra’s next step is in expanding to marketssuch as the U.K., Japan, Asia and Brazil.

The company recently signed a strategic alliance agree-ment with U.K.-based Stopford Projects Ltd., and plans toannounce alliances with additional companies in the U.K.and Asia over the coming year, according to McAllister.

Nexterra is also focusing on developing new, lower-costfeedstocks, particularly biosolids of sewage sludge fromwastewater plants. The company has already successfullyprocessed biosolids, and is now seeking a partner within thewaste-treatment industry to develop a full-scale commercialdemonstration of the technology.

“We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, but believethere’s lots more to do,” says Scott, noting the company isfurther testing the use of dirtier construction and demolitiondebris as a potential fuel source in the U.K.

“The technology, particularly in industrial clean tech, isprobably only 25 to 30 per cent of the battle. That’s justthe beginning. The 10 years that it’s taken us to continue toadvance the technology is a testament to, and evidence of,how much patience, time, determination and persistence itrequires to develop new industrial-skill energy technology.It’s not for the faint at heart.”

About the Author: Jamie Zachary is the editor of PROCESSWest.

"(We) believe there's lots more to do."Mike Scott

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