Syngas or bust (continued)

The Japanese are taking the lead on gasifying municipal solid-waste because they don’t have any land for landfills, Childress goes on, and because they take air emissions more seriously than Americans do. When air pollution becomes a more prominent and actionable issue than it currently is, Childress says, "That’s what’ll drive" solid-waste gasification in the United States.

Weaver’s more bullish about the economics of his brainchild. "There is huge business potential in Maine to go into syngas," he says, listing energy possibilities in the paper and solid-waste industries, the conversion of Maine’s dirtier power plants like Wyman to syngas fuel, and the possibility of increased manufacturing of gasifiers and related equipment. A conversation with Lloyd Weaver is like a tour through 20 years of a committed engineer’s ruminations about how to make the world a better place. He’s working on other inventions as well: A fuel-efficient train system designed to run on the rights-of-way along interstate highways and a new design of aerodynamic tractor-trailer are among his other projects.

But it’s syngas that really, um, lights his fire, and the way he talks about it, the sky does seem to be the limit. What if you really could plug any carbon-rich feedstock into a gasifier, add heat, water, and oxygen, and get pure hydrogen plus carbon monoxide — with the only bulk residue a kind of slag that, if clinkered without water, can be used as cement? Is this really possible? And if it is, how come nobody’s thought of it before? As Weaver points out, top engineers at every energy company in the world have been thinking about the problem. How could a lone guy working out of his house in Maine have come up with a workable idea that eluded the pocket-protector brigades at GE and ExxonMobil?

"That’s what invention is all about," he says, "being able to see those unique combinations."

In this case, the unique combination involves two modifications to the standard gasification process: using a molten slag bed instead of a bed of bentonite sand or other solid material, and adding a state-of-the-art laser spectrometry apparatus to monitor the relative levels of carbon and oxygen in the igniting mixture. The slag bed is grafted on from the steel industry, and Weaver believes that it will result in more efficient removal of ash produced by the cracking of molecules in the feedstock (or burning, if you want to put it that way, although the whole point of a gasifier is to break up big molecules without fully combusting the feedstock). Current gasifier designs churn up a red-hot bed of sand or some other substance to make sure that the injected feedstock isn’t clumping, and all of this turbulence throws ash up and out with the syngas; in Weaver’s design, the slag bed absorbs the ash, and as all of the useful carbon is drawn out of the feedstock, the slag is drawn out of the crucible and air-cooled for later use as construction materials. Most gasifiers quench their slag with water, meaning it has to be ground up and reprocessed before it can be put to any further use; air-cooling slag means that it can go straight into the construction industry as concrete mix or roadbed material.

Weaver points out that many of the gasifier designs and proposals announced by energy players are pretty vague about what they’re going to do with their slag. This is where he thinks he’s made the most progress over existing designs, since in grafting the steelmaking process back into gasification technology, he’s ensured that the slag doesn’t go to waste.

The spectrometer control system is another departure from the standard process. Most gasifiers are run at extremely high crucible temperatures to make sure that all of the feedstock is broken down. This increases energy costs, as well as wear and tear on the machinery. Weaver envisions a scanning nuclear gauge constantly monitoring the crucible’s internal temperature and the amounts of carbon and oxygen so that the crucible can be kept at the lowest possible temperature needed for full reaction of the feedstock. If it works, this would result in a dramatic increase in energy efficiency and working life of the gasifier, as well as decreased use of raw oxygen, which is expensive.

But does he know it will work?

"Yes and no," Weaver says. "Yes because there’s a steel process that’s similar, and it’s working. No because I haven’t built it yet. I would have high confidence," however, because the technology is well-tested in the steel industry — and, he says, he called the system OptiGasOptiSteel because with different feedstock, it can also be used to make steel. If this actually works, it would give heavy manufacturers unheard-of flexibility.

His struggle is happening on two fronts. The first is getting some funding for the bench-scale model, and the second involves getting "six or eight" patents, which is a labyrinthine and endless process that appears to be getting even slower. It takes years to get a patent, and many thousands of dollars; if you want your patent to extend worldwide, the process can run as high as $300,000 — "of somebody’s money," Weaver laughs, acknowledging the plain fact that this financial barrier is much too high for an individual inventor to cross without some kind of corporate or institutional support.

The state of Maine has a couple of programs designed to assist inventors with the patent process, such as the aforementioned Maine Technology Institute and the Maine Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which puts idea people in touch with manufacturers.

Sharon Malm of the Target Technology Incubator at the University of the Maine, who also works with the Maine Patent Program and the Maine Inventors Forum, says the Maine Patent Program is "a no-fee service that will do much of the initial patent searching for the client" and "make a recommendation on whether they should pursue a patent." Weaver has a private attorney who handles this, but Malm says the Maine Technology Institute (MTI) offers a seed grant of up to $10,000 for patent work and "research and development that leads to commercialization. This is for job creation in Maine."

This sounds like it’s right up Lloyd’s alley, but he says he’s tried to get money from MTI before. "They just don’t like to give money out for patent work," Weaver says, or didn’t when he was looking for help before. "More recently," he adds, "they saw the writing on the wall that if you didn’t protect the idea," Maine innovators didn’t have a lot of reason to innovate.

"I could possibly get some patent help now," Weaver concludes.

What about trade groups like the GTC? Its 40 members include all of the American energy industry’s heavy hitters — including Constellation, who provides your electricity unless you’ve opted out of CMP’s standard plan — and the composition of the membership points out the degree to which innovation in the energy field requires deep pockets. "The mission is to promote gasification in general, and primarily it’s the larger companies with the longer-lived technologies" who form GTC’s membership, says executive director Childress.

Childress has seen Weaver’s OptiGas/OptiSteel proposal. At first glance, he says, "the concept looks valid." But, Childress says, echoing Uldis Vanags, "He’s not going to get a penny from anybody if this is all the information he has. I’m hoping he’s got good numbers on the design of this thing," Childress goes on, adding that typically when something like a model gasifier gets built, "it’s done with a technology development firm like GE or ConocoPhillips, and they build their own stuff at this scale." This reinforces Weaver’s characterization of the problem: Without money, you can’t get into the conversation.

How does an individual get an idea moving?

"That I don’t know," Childress says. "Most of the companies that I work with, they’ve already been through this stage. I couldn’t give advice on where to go to find investors because I don’t have that experience."

Weaver’s take on the GTC is simple: "They don’t give a crap about little guys like me," he says, noting that membership dues are thousands of dollars annually. But he keeps on keeping on. He’s tried to get Regional Waste Systems interested in retrofitting their incinerator to slag, clinker, and reuse their ash instead of trucking it to landfills; they weren’t interested. Now he’s got meetings scheduled with CMP and several Maine-based investor and manufacturing groups. "I like to think that I’m on the cusp here," he says, but he’s still got a long way to go. "By acting locally, we might be able to put something together."

And you know what they say about acting locally and thinking globally.

Alex Irvine can be reached at airvine@phx.com