Not every industrial, commercial, or institutional business needs a biomass-to-energy facility, and Alternative Energy Solutions International (AESI) won’t try to sell you anything you don’t need.

The Wichita, Kan.-based company relies on referrals from satisfied customers and engineers or leads generated from the company’s robust website. “We don’t populate trade shows or push-sell strongly,” said David Daniels, CEO. “Our belief is that if customers can see the benefits of the system, we can supply it.”

AESI is a leading privately owned biomass-to-energy integrator in the US, offering proven modular biomass gasification applications. AESI provides turnkey solutions that produce thermal energy.

“There are too many stories out there about companies buying biomass systems and then fighting them over the life of the unit,” Daniels said. “That doesn’t add value, and, in fact, hurts everyone in this market. The problems stem from lack of front-end development and/or lack of training on unit operation.”

AESI’s systems are completely automated and often can run at the push of a button. The output is always thermal but can be oil, hot water, superheated water, hot air, or steam. Adding a turbine to the thermal output can produce electricity, although that isn’t always the goal. For many companies, the thermal output is used in manufacturing processes or for heating, which reduces dependence on fossil fuels.

Value proposition
Firms that produce lots of organic waste products can avoid landfill tipping fees by turning that waste into useful products. Each year, the Kentucky Horse Park generates tons of “horse muck,” wood chips and straw used for bedding that become mixed with horse waste. The park purchased an AESI system to turn that waste into electricity. “They make a modest amount of electricity, but the big savings is the avoidance of tipping fees,” Daniels said.

AESI is the OEM in the Americas for Uniconfort, an Italian company that has decades of experience in turning biomass into fuel. The European market for biomass is much more mature than it is in the Americas, although the knowledge gap is closing quickly, Daniels said. Additional vendor partners are brought in as needed to build tanks, control panels, and other componentry. AESI also has a developing roster of what it refers to as associate firms, including BeloTeq and WCI.

“We work hand in hand,” Daniels said of the relationship with Uniconfort and associates. “We do cross training, and there’s a real value proposition for customers with an experienced partner that’s been doing this for 54 years. The intellectual property we bring is beyond compare.”

The company offers three styles of biomass unit, but the system that’s chosen and the shape of the chamber where the gasification takes place depends on the type of fuel to be used. For example, horse muck varies in characteristics from forestry byproducts, food waste, or other organic materials.

“It’s a custom product made from standard components,” Daniels said. “What doesn’t work is one system design that tries to do it all.”

An engagement begins with a careful analysis of a company’s energy needs, including the type of energy required, the demand cycles, and available supplemental energy sources. The quantity and availability of the target opportunity fuel also will be examined, but AESI maintains biomass feedstock suppliers, if necessary.

AESI then investigates the potential savings from a proposed project. Those can be derived from reducing use of existing energy sources, reduction or elimination of tipping fees, transport costs, environmental penalties, and labor expenses, and (secondarily) the availability of grants or incentives from a green project. State and/or federal participation in alternative energy projects can reduce the cost of implementation by up to 30%, Daniels said.

These steps should provide enough information to determine whether the project has sufficient ROI, and a more precise determination can be made after AESI examines the particular biomass material that will be used. The company has a biomass test facility at its Wichita headquarters, where a multi-hour to one-day evaluation of the proposed fuel stock can be used in a production-model gasification unit.

From that test, AESI can derive specific measures of emissions, fuel performance, fuel feed demands, BTU value, and the ash characteristics of the fuel. This information also will be used to offer performance guarantees for the fuel. Facilities with wastes and continuous thermal demand that adopt biomass systems can generally recoup their investment within 24 months, Daniels said, and since the equipment has an effective lifespan of more than 30 years, the savings will continue to grow.

During the construction phase, the gasification chambers can be reshaped to be most adaptive of the biomass being used. AESI offers a one-year guarantee on the entire unit, including the performance parameters specified in the proposal, five years on the base unit, and 10 years on the heat exchanger. Depending on the size of the unit, equipment-specific training of multiple weeks is included so the client knows how to properly operate it. “We don’t leave a client until they are comfortably in control of the system,” said Daniels.

AESI offers preventive maintenance and remote monitoring to troubleshoot any problems that might arise. Daniels said that much of the time, issues can be resolved remotely, working with a knowledgeable operator on the ground.

Like many companies, the recession has caused a bit of a setback for AESI because capital has been hard for potential clients to obtain. But the situation has been easing, and the last six months finds the company back in a growth mode. AESI also has stepped up its involvement in industry affairs, joining the Biomass Thermal Energy Council, a nonprofit trade association dedicated to the use of biofuel for heat and other thermal applications.

“We do this because we love it,” Daniels said of his long association with the biomass industry. “Our system works, but it’s not the answer for every application. We focus on identifying this match because we don’t want to be associated with projects that don’t work for our clients.”

Grayson Walker, 
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, is a freelance writer based in Atlanta. This article published by Energy Today Magazine.

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