Philippines: Sugar firm adopts innovative renewable energy system

Philippines: Sugar firm adopts innovative renewable energy system

A sugar company in Negros Oriental has adopted an innovative technology that
will utilize biomass to produce renewable energy.

The Raw Brown Sugar Milling Company Inc. in Pamplona, Negros Oriental has
adopted the Fluidized Bed Gasification (FBG) System where agricultural
wastes are "burned" when a limited amount of oxygen or air is introduced
into the system to produce carbon dioxide and energy. This drives a second
reaction that further converts waste material to hydrogen and additional
carbon dioxide-this is the gasification stage.

"I see several advantages to powering our turbines with synthetic gas
produced by ITDI's FBG System. These are 100-percent reduction of our
agricultural wastes, production of our monthly electricity requirement at no
cost, and significant reduction of gaseous pollutants due to the near-zero
combustion process of the FBG System," said lawyer Alejandro Florian
Alcantara, president and chief executive officer of Raw Brown Sugar Milling.

The technology was developed by the Department of Science and
Technology-Industrial Technology Development Institute (DOST-ITDI).

The system is expected to provide around 40 percent of the company's total
electricity requirement. The plant produces nearly 1,100 tons of pure, whole
and unrefined muscovado annually. Muscovado is produced from fresh sugarcane
juice without using bleaching agents.

DOST-ITDI's Engr. Apollo Victor Bawagan said the gasification of biomass,
such as sugarcane bagasse and sugarcane trash, is "most interesting" because
the produced synthetic gas has a near-zero combustion. Bawagan led the
DOST-ITDI team that modified the biomass carbonizer technology for sugarcan
bagasse to support the setting up of the a co-generation facility at the
plant.

The DOST Region VII through the Negros Oriental Provincial Science and
Technology Center provided P990,000 for this Grants-In-Aids project.
Components include among others the design, fabrication and installation,
testing and debugging of the 50 kilogram per hour batch-type biomass
carbonizer.

The adoption of technologies to produce renewable energy from biomass is
slowly taking root in sugar-producing areas. When sugar cane is processed
into sugar and other products, a large amount of biomass or agricultural
wastes are produced. These were traditionally burned that only contributed
to air pollution.

Support from IFC

In August, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the
World Bank Group, with support from the government of Canada and the Clean
Technology Fund (CTF), announded it was investing around $161 million (P6.47
billion) for the construction of three biomass power plants in Negros
Occidental.

The three biomass power plants are expected to generate 70 megawatts of
clean renewable energy for the country.

The power plants are being built in the towns of Manapla, San Carlos and La
Carlota and will convert sugarcane waste to electricity using a low
carbon-emitting process called circulating fluidized bed boiler technology.

The three power plants are expected to qualify for the biomass
feed-in-tariff of the Philippines' Energy Regulatory Commission. The
feed-in-tariff is available to energy producers with up to 250 megawatts of
biomass generating capacity.

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Ref:
http://www.manilatimes.net/sugar-firm-adopts-innovative-renewable-energy-sys
tem/292159/

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com