Member Info for 30silver

No worries Red -happy to help. Yes there are gate fees depending on what the material is, generally:

MSW (unsorted black bin bag waste) is about £120/tonne,

Refuse Derived Fuel, or RDF for short (sorted residual and Industrial & Commercial waste with some, but by no means all of the recyclates removed) is about £80-90/tonne,

Solid Recovered Fuel or SRF for short is a more processed version of RDF, tighter controls on certain troublesome elements (such as metals and chlorine in particular) and often a finer shred - this goes loose for £40-50 per tonne, and pelletised for £20-30 per tonne.

Biomass is much more difficult given all of the various grades, generally the clean stuff (virgin and Grade A) you pay for, Grade B can be free tip and Grade C you get paid to take as it's basically sh*te. Grade D is hazardous so only specialists are allowed to take it and they charge like a wounded rhino.

Tyres are a funny one, but the rule of thumb for a while was 50p per car tyre, and £2 per truck tyre, paid as a gate fee to the party receiving the tyres. It's been a while since I looked into tyres after we abandoned a project for Pyrolysis of tyres, mainly due to extremely hazardous byproducts and difficulty in producing clean, pure Carbon Black which is what everyone is really after.

@Stophe - the big issue with trying to put solutions in place in some of Asia and Africa is that the gate fees simply don't exist to allow for the economic operation of the plant, generally waste issues arise where infrastructure and legislation is poor, so there's usually nobody to pay for the solution.

I was talking about W2E for India and the issue was that the landfills were a source of income (for survival) for thousands of children who would scavenge for anything of value, therefore there was a massive unintended consequence of improving waste management processes.

Just watching the presentation - the COO - Stephen Easton is impressive.

@Red - I may be able to help on gate fees, as I'm in that industry - it depends heavily on the material spec and purpose. What you need to know?

Legislation is meant to enforce the Waste Hierarchy, which shows the order of preference for waste treatment being Reduce (ideally no waste), Reuse (as is), Recycle (think plastic, glass), Recover (energy from waste / anaerobic digestion), Dispose (Such a shame they couldn't come up with another R for what is effectively landfill).

@Castle - I'd take some of that with a pinch of salt. I know of the scandals where plastics have been sent overseas for recycling, but the countries they sent it to just dump it / burn it, but that's a waste crime. Over 93% of the plastic in the oceans comes from 10 rivers, 8 of which are in Asia, and the other two are in Africa. The UK is in no way a major cause of ocean plastic, the lack of infrastructure in Asia and Africa is, as plastic left lying around will blow in the wind, end up in the river and then flow unabated into the sea.

All plastic is recyclable, in theory - the problem is that when it's mixed with other materials or contaminated (for example with food waste) then it often becomes uneconomical to recycle, and it should then be sent for energy recovery, and into landfill as a last resort, as per the Waste Hierarchy. Unfortunately any plastic in your residual waste bin at home (i.e. black bin bag waste, often called Municipal Solid Waste or MSW for short) is sent directly to a mass-burn incinerator like the one at Runcorn, or Redcar with no attempt whatsoever to recycle it. Even in the co-mingled recycling bin (mine has paper, cardboard, metal, glass and plastic all in one) a lot of that ends up being rejected by the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and sent for energy recovery or landfill.

@StockCheque - good to hear that there's support from the Brokers, Institutions and HNW's as they'll be the ones the company needs to go to in the future for funds, in my experience of AIM it's never the PI's who fund the big raises. It's really interesting, I was initially concerned about it being a threat to something I'm involved in, but they are clearly going after the diesel generator market, and that's go to be a good thing.

@Snork - I think that's always the way isn't it, such a shame but then I find watching complete strangers shouting B*LL*CKS at each other on the internet quite amusing, it's all water off a duck's back to me.

One thing that I'd like to know, is with the Ammonia Cracker - once the Hydrogen is cracked from the Ammonia, what happens to the Nitrogen? Presumably it's compressed (to liquid form) and then sold?

Hey @Gitfinger - thanks for the info, I'll defer judgement on the CEO just yet, although I'm currently watching the YouTube clip from a month ago, and f**k me if he doesn't use 200 words when 5 would do.

StockCheque - cheers for the links, I'll take a look now.

hey bert - thanks for the correction. i'm actually from a finance background, but i've been looking at att (advanced thermal treatment - basically everything that isn't incineration) for a long time so i've picked up a fair bit of knowledge, but i'm by no means an expert. what i have been able to do is to quickly filter out the usual bs, and there's a lot of it about.

@a*** - you'll get co2 plus all sorts of other emissions from pyrolysis and gasification also, on the basis that the resulting gases are burned (sometimes referred to as "oxidised") in a secondary chamber, either for heating or for the production of power (be that from sterling engine, orc, steam turbine etc). where a pyrolysis or gasification unit incinerates the syngas from the process they have to conform to the exact same ied emissions regs as incineration plants of the same scale. i'm also looking at eqt and have met with their chairman in the past (introduced my a family friend who was a former mp).

@divvyup - i'll have to look into the process more, but biochar to be used as a soil enhancer is only possible where the original feedstock is 100% clean biomass (i understand some of the feedstocks being used are, so that's good) but the quality, and therefore the use options for the resulting char depend heavily on the careful management of the thermal process, i've heard of pyrolysis for char production (see pyrocore, they are doing a trial with mersey biochar right now) but gasification specifically for char production isn't something i've seen much of, mostly the use of biomass in gasifiers is for waste management and heat / power generation, rather than specifically going for biochar.

Hey Toltorisk - I'm new here and looking to find out a bit more about Ceres - I've had experience in the past with Bloom Energy, this seems to be something similar, solid oxide fuel cells, running on natural gas but hydrogen-ready, is that right? The issue we had with Bloom (granted that was 15 years ago) was that they were just so expensive, and the efficiency : cost ratio just didn't make sense when using natural gas vs reciprocating engines such as MAN, Rolls Royce or Jenbacher.

Hey all - new here, I'm looking into all of the AIM Alternative Energy Companies looking for areas where I can add value or spot an opportunity, as this has been my general sector of experience for 20yrs. Can someone point me to the best / most useful source of info, barring the website and the RNS's? Looks to me like relatively small scale hydrogen fuel cells for off-grid applications, along with some very interesting "X to Hydrogen" kit to allow users to produce their own H2, which is good because it's not widely transported at economically viable levels just yet (the UK's Hynet network might help eventually).

Hey all - I'm going through the list of AIM Alternative Energy companies (it's my sector of experience) and wanted to see if there was anything interesting / potentially useful - this one looks bloody horrific to be honest. I don't see me investing at any point soon, but I'm genuinely interested to hear from those who know it best. From what I can tell this CoalSwitch stuff looks like biomass based charcoal pellets, so in theory it's a competitor for N+P's SubCoal, which unlike CoalSwitch, is made up of general non-recyclable waste (a lot of it is plastic).

@Testpack - by DMG I'm guessing you are referring to Direct Melt Gasification? Nippon Steel have a VERY high temperature Direct Melt Gasification tech. Gasification is hotter than pyrolysis anyway, but Nippon Steel's DMG is 1,800*c which is potentially 300-600*c hotter than some gasification systems.

Essentially pyrolysis and gasification are very similar, the main difference is the level of oxygen in the process, in gasification (DMG or otherwise) it's very little, in pyrolysis it is Zero. Technically the first phase within a gasifier is pyrolysis, but then oxygen, air or steam are used a gasification agents.

Both processes create Syngas.

Gasification will create ash, Pyrolysis will create char. Pyrolysis char of plastic heavy waste is hazardous, and will most likely fail WACC (I've had a sample tested and was informed by Whiteness that they wouldn't even accept it into their Hazardous landfill).

Hi Divyup, happy to help. The 24-48 hour time was a reference to a specific piece of plant, not related to PHE in any way.

I was providing an example of how test and demonstration plants aren't as reliable a source of operation as a 3rd party commercial plant (the operator in my example only had this single plant, which they were using a sales tool trying to get a £multi million 50% deposit from prospective customers.

So we now know who's been gobbling up at least some of this volume - ODD Asset Management, now at over 5%. Anyone have any idea who this lot are? Seems that the ODD bit comes from the family name, which is a little unfortunate if you ask me. Alexander (Alex) Odd is also CEO at Tyndall Asset Management - now sure if they're a long time holder here? He's ex M&G and Jupiter, so should be no mug.

@SteamingEagle - I'd not heard of Compact Syngas Solutions, however I do know some of their board from their previous positions, particularly the Commercial Director who I've done work with on ORC units for power production. He's also pushed another system, Pyrocore (well worth a look, it's good kit, just very expensive and very particular about feedstock).

The CEO is formerly of RefGas - another failed Gasification company, founded by his father, George and one that also claimed a patented process for gasification.

Downdraft gasifiers are great, as they do produce a lower tar gas (because the tars crack down through the oxidisation zone) and this is very useful where you are using biomass as a feedstock, as that will naturally produce more tars. The issue is when someone wants to put plastic containing waste into a downdraft gasifier, because the main drawback of downdraft gasifiers is ash bridging / clinker formation especially from low ash melt point materials such as, you guessed it - plastic.

One thing on their website set of a massive red flag - this quote:

"CSS’ innovative patented processes, enables us stand out from the competition, add to this our seven stages of syngas cleaning and cooling this ensures that our product gas is not just ultra clean but of the highest quality. In fact, the syngas produced by our system has been proven and accredited to be cleaner than natural gas, making it one of the purest fuels available for generating power."

The second half of that statement is patent BS - there is no way any syngas can possibly be "cleaner than natural gas" and most Syngas is completely unsuitable for use in an engine, many have tried, all have failed (when you're looking fro 8,000 hours per annum run time - not a demo plant that can run ok for 24-48 hours to show how great it is, only for the unit to be shut down the minute the clients leave the site, lest it burst into flames. Then starts a 3 week maintenance period before it's ready for another 2 day run.

It’s done it again. Directors talk no space

the *s are in the place of ************* not sure why it seemed to be filtered out. if you remove from https, to .net and put the rest in google you will see the article pop up.

Tyres are often the feedstock for those looking to use pyrolysis to create "carbon black" because it goes for something like £5,000 a tonne (not checked for a while) but the whole process ends up creating all sorts of other nasties, and I've seen half a dozes attempt, and fail. Tyre crumb can be re-used, but what I wouldn't be doing it trying to use it for fuel to create power - apart from anything else the CV is sky-high, which is bad if you're being paid gate fees to take it.

Grade C waste wood is filled with all sorts of horrible stuff, people seem to think it's clean biomass, but it's filled with all sorts of plastic coverings, rubber, nails, varnish, glue and who knows what else. I've seen Grade C waste wood analysis that came back as less than 60% biomass FFS.