The purpose of this study was to assess the economic and technical feasibility of producing electricity and thermal energy from biomass by gasification. For an economic model we chose a large barley malting facility operated by Rahr Malting Co. in Shakopee, Minnesota. This plant provides an excellent backdrop for this study because it has both large electrical loads and thermal loads that allowed us to consider a wide range of sizes and technical options. In the end, eleven scenarios were considered ranging from 3.1 megawatts (MWe) to 19.8 MWe. By locating the gasification and generation at an agricultural product processing plant with large electrical and thermal loads, the expectation was that some of the limitations of stand-alone biomass power plants would be overcome. In addition, since the process itself created significant volumes of low value biomass, the hope was that most of the biomass gathering and transport issues would be handled as well. The development of low-BTU gas turbines is expected to fill a niche between the upper limit of multiple spark ignited engine set systems around 5 MWe and the minimum reasonable scale for steam turbine systems around 10 MWe.
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