Reading the web-site, I saw mentions to SSAS and I was, err, concerned.
SSAS is cool because its around half the energy of Haber Bosch, but its not cool because its still in development and we wouldn't get the waste heat. Iowa economic development centers around the creation of jobs - if we get 200 greenhouse jobs that is going to draw more attention than freeing the corn crop from fossil fuel inputs. Its weird, but this is where I live ...
Not a bit - the nearest coal fired plant is around thirty miles from here. I can't think of any industrial process we have locally that could use it.
Once the initial project is rolling the local econ development guys will start pondering that and figure out how to attract a local business that needs a lot of electricity, oxygen, ammonia, etc. I'm not sure what that will be ...
Pure oxygen is worth a lot.
You need to look into biomass and waste gasification and something out of the syngas. FT is too complex but more hydrogen from WGS to produce more ammonia would seem a very good idea.
The most efficient system for gasification is the oxygen-blown/high temperature auto-thermal reformer and it can yield very high quality, clean syngas with minimum gas scrubbing requirements. See Choren for a serious example.
The big, big benefit of a high-temperature ATR is that it nearly completely eliminates the formation of tars in the gasifier and tars are is the biggest roadblock for syngas from biomass. They form gunky deposits that plug and foul everything.
The big problem with high-temperature ATR is that it requires pure oxygen and the PSA or cryo ASU to produce high purity oxygen is one of the most expensive equipment in the plant (much more expensive to produce pure O2 than pure N2).
But there, you have O2 for free. 192 t/d O2 should be enough to process 360 t/d dry biomass and you'd get about 36 t/d of H2 (~1 t H2 for 10 t biomass) out of it and high quality heat to boot, boosting your NH3 production by 150%. And 360 t/d of biomass is not that hard to procure.
It would take about 1.8 t dry biomass per 1 t NH3. Let's say 2 to round things up. So, at $50/t, it would add $100/t NH3 at your production cost and a larger HB plant but with much better usage of the electrolysis front-end, which is, I guess, the largest cost driver of the plant by far.
This will be built in a town of less than 1,000 and its 20km to the nearest "cities" - one of 3,500 20km south and the other of 6,500 20km north.
So we have to talk to the ethanol plant to the south about their waste materials ... but I think policy will come around and whack ethanol ... hate to base a business plan on that being there.
60,000 tons of ammonia will fertilize 1,500 square miles
I take that the plant "ecosystem" is 1,500 square miles that is 960,000 acres. With 150% more production, it becomes 3,750 miles aka 2,400,000 acres. So we're talking about taking 0.05475 t/acre dry biomass. No needs for special energy crops or anything. The requirement for feeding the ammonia plant is very marginal compared to the production it enables.
As a matter of fact, ammonia from biomass though syngas may be a valuable proposition in its own right, independent of wind.
There are serious biological renewables efforts here - the Iowa State Energy Center does amazing things ... I would work for free as the director's receptionist, knowing what I could make doing commercialization of their stuff.
http://www.energy.iastate.edu/
Even so we need the wind - every lick of renewables are going to be developed just as fast as we possibly can. Seven more months before Bush's replacement is known and ten more months before he is gone. It seems like an eternity ...
After conversations today with the three industrial gas companies in the area it would appear the only economic use of the leftovers from this plants would be attracting a local business to use them, thusly avoiding the expense of liquefaction and transport.
We do have a ridiculously large county landfill here, which now towers above the landscape. A high performance incinerator might be nice, but those go over like the proverbial lead balloon. We'll stay silent about this until the rest of the process is moving, then let someone else dream that up and propose it.
I agree with you on the usefulness of the O2...but it could be a while in getting it used. Yes - great for biomass derived syn-fuels (as opposed to fossil fuel derived SIN-fuels). Great for industries that use O2 like making wind turbines, metal working, metal cutting, and also O2 based chemistries, like converting para-xylene to terephthalic acid. Also, good for retail O2 sales and also for hospitals, but that's a lot of hospital uses. So, if you need a place to put your industry that uses O2...this could be the place to go...
Nb41
Not exactly the most obvious green application but it's worth taking a look.
Problematic mixed wastes will always be around in some amount from urban or industrial sources, no matter what how efficient selective collection is and they are either disposed in specialized landfills or incinerated.
Air-blown incinerators have - deservedly - very bad reputation. They can release dioxins, NOx, etc. and the major reason for that is the variability of the fuel. It's very difficult to maintain the proper combustion and temperature profile to avoid forming pollutants and toxins when you don't know for sure what you're burning in the first place.
With pure O2, the story changes quite radically, the oxidant being - duh - nitrogen free. It's much easier to maintain high temperatures even with low grade wastes and the incinerator generates a much smaller volume of gas, in the order of 5 or 6 times less. An O2-blown incinerator can even operate "stack-less". After water condensation, the flue gas is nearly pure CO2 mixed with acid gas and trace contaminants. Very easy to clean thoroughly before release in the atmosphere (that takes a stack obviously so it's not really stack-less) or reuse to another facility. The clean-up rejects are re-injected in the high temperature furnace for fixing on ashes or added sorbents.
So, it there is a railroad nearby, it's a pretty good application. With 192 t/d of O2, we're talking about 150 to 200 t a day of high tipping fees wastes, not huge.
Just another market.
