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Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and/or scrap. In steelmaking, impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon are removed from the sourced iron, and alloying elements such as manganese, nickel, chromium, carbon and vanadium are added to produce different grades of steel.
The Hacienda is the current name for a hotel in Monterey County, California, that was completed in 1930 for use by William Randolph Hearst as temporary housing for his employees and guests and headquarters for activities taking place on the surrounding land. The lodge building, designed by architect Julia Morgan, replaced and expanded upon an earlier wooden structure known as the Milpitas Ranch House which was destroyed by fire in the 1920s. The 1930 hotel has also been known as Milpitas Hacienda, Hacienda Guest Lodge and Milpitas Ranchhouse, under which name the property was placed in the National Register of Historic Places on December 2, 1977.
Gasification is a process that converts biomass- or fossil fuel-based carbonaceous materials into gases, including as the largest fractions: nitrogen (N2), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), and carbon dioxide (CO2). This is achieved by reacting the feedstock material at high temperatures (typically >700 °C), without combustion, via controlling the amount of oxygen and/or steam present in the reaction. The resulting gas mixture is called syngas (from synthesis gas) or producer gas and is itself a fuel due to the flammability of the H2 and CO of which the gas is largely composed. Power can be derived from the subsequent combustion of the resultant gas, and is considered to be a source of renewable energy if the gasified compounds were obtained from biomass feedstock.
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. Blast refers to the combustion air being supplied above atmospheric pressure.
In industrial chemistry, coal gasification is the process of producing syngas—a mixture consisting primarily of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapour —from coal and water, air and/or oxygen.
FINEX is the name for an iron making technology developed by former Siemens VAI and POSCO. Molten iron is produced directly using iron ore fines and non-coking coal rather than traditional blast furnace methods through sintering and reduction with coke. Elimination of preliminary processing is claimed to make the plant for FINEX less expensive to build than a blast furnace facility of the same scale, additionally a 10-15% reduction in production costs is expected/claimed through cheaper raw materials, reduction of facility cost, pollutant exhaustion, maintenance staff and production time. The process is claimed to produce less pollutants such as SOx, NOx, and carbon dioxide than traditional methods.
Refuse-derived fuel (RDF) is a fuel produced from various types of waste such as municipal solid waste (MSW), industrial waste or commercial waste.
Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from the primary treatment of waste, or the processing of waste into a fuel source. WtE is a form of energy recovery. Most WtE processes generate electricity and/or heat directly through combustion, or produce a combustible fuel commodity, such as methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels, often derived from the product syngas.
Fort Hunter Liggett is a United States Army base in Jolon, California, in southern Monterey County, California. The fort, named in 1941 after General Hunter Liggett, is primarily used as a training facility, where activities such as field maneuvers and live fire exercises are performed. It is roughly 25 miles northwest of Camp Roberts, California.
Plasma gasification is an extreme thermal process using plasma which converts organic matter into a syngas which is primarily made up of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. A plasma torch powered by an electric arc is used to ionize gas and catalyze organic matter into syngas, with slag remaining as a byproduct. It is used commercially as a form of waste treatment, and has been tested for the gasification of refuse-derived fuel, biomass, industrial waste, hazardous waste, and solid hydrocarbons, such as coal, oil sands, petcoke and oil shale.
Kaiser Steel was a steel company and integrated steel mill near Fontana, California. Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser founded the company on December 1, 1941, and workers fired up the plant's first blast furnace, named "Bess No. 1" after Kaiser's wife, on December 30, 1942. Then in August 1943, the plant would produce its first steel plate for the Pacific Coast shipbuilding industry amid World War II.
The Isle of Wight gasification facility is a municipal waste treatment plant in southern England. It entered the commissioning phase in autumn 2008, and will be replaced by a new moving grate incinerator in 2019
Covanta Holding Corporation is a private energy-from-waste and industrial waste management services company headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey. Most of its revenue comes from operating incineration facilities that serve a secondary purpose as power plants that burn trash as fuel. Covanta charges a fee for waste disposal, sells electricity produced in the process, and recovers metal for recycling.
Camp Roberts is a California National Guard post in central California, located on both sides of the Salinas River in Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties, now run by the California Army National Guard. It was opened in 1941 and is named after Corporal Harold W. Roberts, a World War I Medal of Honor recipient. Nearby communities include San Miguel, Heritage Ranch, Oak Shores, and Bradley, all unincorporated. The nearest incorporated city is Paso Robles. Camp Roberts is roughly 25 miles southeast of Fort Hunter Liggett.
Combustion Resources, Inc. was a consulting company based in Provo, Utah, United States. It provided consulting services in the fields of fuel and combustion, such as testing of flow and mixing systems, reactor design, gas and particle sampling, gasification modeling, and shale oil extraction design and testing. The company was incorporated in 1995 as a spin-off from the Center for Advanced Combustion Engineering Research, joint collaboration between Brigham Young University and the University of Utah.
Rancho Milpitas was a 43,281-acre (175.15 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Monterey County, California given in 1838 by governor Juan Alvarado to Ygnacio Pastor. The grant encompassed present day Jolon.
Ze-gen, Inc. was a renewable energy company developing advanced gasification technology to convert waste into synthesis gas. Founded in 2004, Ze-gen was a venture-backed company based in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Kemper Project, also called the Kemper County energy facility or Plant Ratcliffe, is a natural gas-fired electrical generating station currently under construction in Kemper County, Mississippi. Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, began construction of the plant in 2010. The initial, coal-fired project was central to President Obama's Climate Plan, as it was to be based on "clean coal" and was being considered for more support from the Congress and the incoming Trump Administration in late 2016. If it had become operational with coal, the Kemper Project would have been a first-of-its-kind electricity plant to employ gasification and carbon capture technologies at this scale.
Plasma gasification is in commercial use as a waste-to-energy system that converts municipal solid waste, tires, hazardous waste, and sewage sludge into synthesis gas (syngas) containing hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be used to generate power. Municipal-scale waste disposal plasma arc facilities have been in operation in Japan and China since 2002. No commercial implementations in Europe and North America have succeeded so far. The technology is characterized by the potential of very high level of destruction of the incoming waste, but low or negative net energy production and high operational costs.
All Power Labs (APL) is a renewable energy company based in Berkeley, California. The firm designs and manufactures biomass gasifiers and builds and markets small-scale (15–150 kW) electrical generators fueled by these gasifiers. By 2013, they reached an installed base of 500 machines in approximately 40 countries; As of 2015, APL employed 30 staff, including engineering, manufacturing, management, sales, and technical support staff, on the site of the former Shipyard, an approximately 20,000 sq.ft. facility that includes APL’s offices, R&D, manufacturing and production facilities.
References
- 1 2 3 "Sierra Energy wins federal grant to test trash-to-hydrogen technology". bizjournals.com. 8 October 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2023. (subscription required)
- ↑ "Sierra Energy refines garbage-to-fuel system". 16 March 2015.
- 1 2 Tullis, Paul (17 August 2013). "Trash into Gas, Efficiently? An Army Test May Tell". The New York Times.
- 1 2 3 Wilser, Jeff (December 4, 2019). "Recycling: Turning Trash Into Energy". Comstock's magazine . Retrieved 26 May 2023.
- ↑ "The future of waste-to-energy technology". CNBC . 8 February 2020.
- ↑ "This Davis company has raised a major financing round for its clean-energy technology". bizjournals.com. 15 June 2016. Retrieved 26 May 2023. (subscription required)
- 1 2 "U.S. Army is teaming up with a Davis startup to turn trash into energy". The Sacramento Bee. 26 March 2017. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
- 1 2 "Sierra Energy Closes $33 Million Series a Funding Led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures" (Press release).