At the recent Have Your Say event at Salesian School in Chertsey,The Leader of Surrey County Council, Dr Andrew Povey said that he did not support the use of incinerators in the County. A LOSRA member having researched the term 'gasification' has concluded the following in this edited article:"The gasifier is only half the process which allows the process subsequently to make some electricity from Syngas on the side with no other external effect. What comes out of the plant is the result of Syngas burning, not the intermediate gasification.
Gasification is a process to produce gaseous fuel and char from carbon based fuels. It produces a synthetic gas - Syngas - composed of Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen, which may also contain Methane if steam and or fossil fuel is added to the gasification process as well as Oxygen.
"This is called Syngas and has about half the calorific value of natural gas. The Syngas from this intermediate stage is now burnt to make electrical energy.
"When this happens the original carbon in the intermediate gasification products is converted to CO2.
"The overall (input/output) effect is incineration with full oxygenation and more or less the same input and output. The gasification in the middle is irrelevant because that's a meta state inside the plant.
"On EU criteria it is also classed as incineration; and also as disposal not recovery because it is under 65% efficient and has to have significant amounts of fuel added to its primary purpose. For it to be classified as recovery it needs to be 65% efficient and that is not in the plan."
In short, "Its not a gasifier as far as any layman may understand the term. Carbon goes in and Carbon Dioxide comes out. Its a fully oxygenated incinerator that makes some electricity as a byproduct, and rather inefficiently at that."
The Leader of Surrey County Council and the other naysayers at local and County Councils must be lobbied to respond to this claim. The mythology fast taking root about the benign implications of 'gasification' must be challenged at every opportunity.
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