DanaTech, now in its 26th year of business, is diving headfirst into the new decade with Green Energy Technologies. The following advanced energy projects are currently being developed by DanaTech or co-developed with DanaTech.
This project involves the construction, operation, and maintenance of a medium-sized modern waste-to-energy facility in a major mid-America city. The project will take pre-processed garbage from an existing transfer station and further process it to produce an engineered fuel. This fuel will then be converted to electricity in a gasification process. The power will be sold to a local utility. The project is expected to cost $188m to build and will make approximately 30MW of electricity. If private money is used to finance this project, it will qualify for the 30% Federal grant program, plus a 10% tax incentive program from the DOE for qualifying combined heat and power projects. A long term contract would remain for the operation and maintenance of the plant. From the solicited bids from qualified bidders, a team that included Dana Technologies has been short listed. Dana Technologies is the technology supplier and Engineer for the proposed project.
DanaTech has been developing a new technology for reducing pollutants from combustion effluent gases. This technology relies on a narrow controlled wavelength band of ultraviolet energy that causes two pollutants in the gas stream to react together. These pollutants are classified as reactive organic gases (ROG) and oxides of nitrogen (NOX). These pollutants are found in flue gases from engines, boilers, and other combustion devices. Some ROG species have been found to be toxic and cancer promoters and they are of great concern to regulatory authorities. In addition, many ROG compounds are precursors to aerosols which are very fine particles that are also highly regulated. NOX molecules are known smog precursors and continue to be highly regulated.
Testing at a cogeneration plant in Los Angeles has shown that this process could reduce NOX to less than 1 ppm in certain effluent gases. Kinetic research conducted so far concludes that the UV technology converts the reactants to nitric acid which can be easily scrubbed out with sodium hydroxide to form sodium nitrate, an important nitrogen bearing fertilizer. The market strategy with this technology is to destroy two pollutants in effluent stack gases to make fertilizer. It will have application on a world scale.
Dana Technologies proposes to build, own, and operate a biomass cogeneration project for one of its major clients. The project would be located adjacent to one a major foods processing plant in Central California. The project would produce steam and electricity for sale to foods facility and to an adjacent food processing plant. Surplus electricity may be sold to a nearby municipality and an irrigation district. Energy would be sold on a long term contract. The project would acquire waste biomass from a nearby transfer station. The waste biomass material would be gasified, blended with natural gas and burned in a small combined cycle power plant.
This renewable energy project will use locally available waste biomass fuels to make process steam and electricity for two adjacent foods processing facilities. Currently these facilities burn coal and natural gas to make the steam needed for process operations. These facilities are large, long-established key manufacturing plants for these companies. The project will sell steam under long term contracts. Depending on final negotiations with the serving utility, some electricity may also be sold. The addition of the power sales would qualify the new energy plant for a 10% Federal tax credit. The energy plant and steam delivery piping system is estimated to cost approximately $60 million to build.