RE:Cost analysis of Plasma torch systems vs Fossil-fuel burnersRegarding the bio-oil numbers (LKAB mentions this an alternate fuel for burners) in my earlier post, I made a mistake; the NREL lab estimate for minimum bio-oil cost of $1.28/gallon that I used was referring to transportation grade fuel (for vehicles), which requires a higher quality product. It needs to be upgraded chemically and thus costs extra. The actual production cost of regular bio-oil is much less.
Production costs of bio-oil for intended use in an industrial burner are between $0.50-1.10/gallon, depending mostly on the scale of the production. There will be significant additional costs associated with transportation, handling, and processing it in the iron pellet plant, because it is a very difficult oil to handle. All things considered, looking at annual operating costs, using bio-oil as fuel is probably more expensive than using a plasma torch (and I’m of the opinion that Pyrogenesis’ torches will be more energy efficient than the client is expecting).
Key point in all this, most iron pellet companies won’t want to build their own bio-oil plant to get the fuel at cost. Buying torches is simple, as the energy infrastructure is set – torches are ready to be connected to the grid.
Also, as Pyrogenesis has said and which is repeated here for good reason, the results of the first phase of testing showed absolutely no ancillary detrimental effects anywhere in the process or with the furnaces – and now many companies in the iron, metallurgical and steel industries are reaching out for modelling proposal requests. The word is spreading and that’s a great sign.
Looking forward to finding out the identities of those other companies!
MazerRR wrote: Bio-oil:
Let's take a look at bio-oil (also called Pyrolysis/Biocrude oil). This is the alternate fuel LKAB discussed in the first article (linked at the top of this post) as a potential replacement fuel for the fossil fuels used by burners.
The heat content of bio-oil (75,500 BTU per gallon) is about 55% as much as one gallon of #2 fuel-oil. Therefore, one must burn 1.82 gallons of bio-oil to obtain the same amount of heat released when burning one gallon of #2 fuel-oil.
Using the fuel oil price listed in the thesis paper ($0.5/l), the price of bio-oil would need to be less than $0.275/l to be cost-competitive with current fuel costs. The U.S. government’s NREL lab estimates the
MINIMUM selling price of bio-oil made from fast pyrolysis could eventually be made as low as $1.28 per gallon or $0.34/l. That’s the lowest number they believe is possible.
https://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2017/06/08/biomass-pyrolysis-comes-of-age/ That’s a 23% cost increase over fuel oil! Using bio-oil would therefore cost $1,144,290 annually per burner (at the minimum possible selling price per NREL) vs $638,000 annual operating costs of Plasma torches. Scaling that up for a full 50 torch plant, adds up to >
$25,314,500 in additional costs per year vs using torches.
Pyrogenesis’ torches handily win over bio-oil.
I may be missing other factors, such as the cost of the working gas for the plasma torches (and probably others things too - please indicate where the analysis is incomplete) but
all indications seem to point to Pyrogenesis’ plasma torches as being the best option for fossil-fuel burner replacement!
Even without the Carbon tax savings, as long as reasonably priced electricity is available, Plasma torch systems become a very promising solution!
Exciting times
Good luck to all and stay safe!
MazerRR