Taylor biomass project moves forward. (C&D News).

Taylor Recycling Facility LLC, Montgomery, N.Y., has applied for permission to expand its mixed C&D recycling plant to include an innovative biomass energy process known as fast pyrolysis biomass gasification.

Researchers from Batelle Laboratories and the U.S. Department of Energy have successfully run varied biomass materials through a 12-tons-per-day process research pilot plant for more than a decade.

Since 1996, the private firm now commercializing the technology, FERCO Enterprises LLC, Norcross, Ga., has operated a commercial-scale biomass gasification unit in Burlington, Vt., that has processed more than 400 tons per day in extended tests. Taylor Recycling is working with FERCO to bring the technology to the recycling industry nationwide.

According to Tom Kacandes and Jim Taylor of Taylor Recycling, the process offers several advantages: It creates a guaranteed market for scrap wood and other organic materials; the process releases fewer emissions and greenhouse gases into the air; and the energy that would be produced by such units throughout the U.S. would lessen the nation's dependence on high-sulfur oil and coal. "This technology has the ability to change the world," states Jim Taylor.

The biomass gasifier is unlike a boiler or furnace because it uses hot circulating sand to rapidly heat the biomass in the absence of oxygen, and converts the feed material into a synthesized fuel gas that can be used in a high-efficiency gas turbine or a stationary engine-powered generator.

Emissions are minimized by the removal of PVC plastics and CCA-treated wood during front-end separation and because wood and other biomass fuels have no sulfur. Additionally, the gas production process is not based on combustion.

According to a research report prepared by FERCO, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Burlington (Vt.) Electric Department, scrap wood and other materials traditionally found in the mixed C&D stream are ideal for the process. "The FERCO process takes advantage of the inherently high reactivity of biomass feedstocks," the report notes. Energy produced from the process could ultimately be tied to the electric grid or marketed as a separate product substitutable for natural gas.

Taylor Recycling and FERCO have been actively marketing the process, and the initial interest is starting to take a tangible form, according to Kacandes and Taylor.

So far in May, Taylor Recycling has received tentative approval for Empire Zone funding from the state of New York to set up a gasification unit in Montgomery and has become vendor of choice to build a plant in the Dominican Republic.

Also in May, Taylor Recycling was named vendor of choice for C&D operations for the Metro Waste Authority in Des Moines, Iowa. This project is presently limited to recycling C&D materials and producing aggregate and daily cover for use at the Metro Park East landfill.

According to Jim Taylor, the biomass gasification plants have met with few objections from power companies, regulators or manufacturers and engineering firms who have been allowed to learn about the process. "A lot of the companies we have been working with are eager to become partners or somehow get involved," says Taylor.

About the only problem Taylor Recycling and FERCO have encountered when marketing the concept is uncertainty from regulators on how they would classify and permit the plants, as they use such new technology.

Taylor predicts the plants have a chance to begin appearing soon throughout North America and the world, with each unit capable of consuming some 350 to 700 tons per day of scrap wood and other organic C&D materials.

The timetable for the Montgomery plant is moving forward, as Taylor Recycling has already presented a summary of its proposed expansion to village residents at a late April meeting.