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EQTEC (AIM: EQT), last covered in TMS in November, designs and supplies an ‘Advanced Gasification Technology’ able to process more than 50 different types of feedstock to produce a high-quality synthesis gas called ‘Syngas’. The company sells its gasification reactors and engineering and design services to energy producers, local authorities and governments across the world.
The basic principles of gasification are well established: the process has been around for more than two centuries, often used, for example to make hydrogen from natural gas and methanol from coal. EQTEC’s 21st century technique employs a ‘fluidised bed reactor’ to apply heat, oxygen and pressure to feedstocks to transform them into a composite gas of sufficient purity for industrial use. It works with materials including olive stones, nut shells, straw, grape bagasse, wood chips, sawdust, pine cones, forestry clippings, lignite, sludge, rubber, demolition rubble, plastics, and plain municipal solid waste (known in the industry as refuse-derived fuel). Syngas can be turned into a synthetic natural gas through the addition of methane, and then injected directly into the electricity grid, and can also be converted into hydrogen or biofuel, making it suitable for fuel cells.
ECTEQ argues that Syngas represents a significant advance on the most prevalent form of waste-to-energy process, combustion, through which feedstocks are simply burnt. Combustion produces carbon emissions, and fly ash carrying toxins which must be removed through expensive filters. Gasification does produce some carbon – the process can’t work without it – but only a third of that created by incineration, and it generates no fly ash or other pollutants.
The company’s technology is exemplfied by its plant in Movialsa, Spain, which was originally designed to process local grape bagasse, and now takes olive pomace – a byproduct of local olive oil production. The resulting Syngas is converted into electricity that powers the plant and is sold on to Spain’s electricity grid. The plant has operated successfully for more than nine years with a capacity of 6 MW
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