Info

Primenergy, L.L.C. is an Oklahoma corporation founded in 1995 with principal offices located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Our primary business is engineering, procurement and construction of turnkey, biomass fueled energy conversion and recovery facilities. Our primary products are a unique and proprietary thermal oxidizers, gasification technology and gas cleaning processes. Primenergy has extensive and successful experience in the gasification and conversion of biomass feed stocks to recovered energy in the form of heat, steam and electricity. The gasification technology employed by Primenergy is air blown, updraft, fixed bed and operates at sub-atmospheric, sub-stoichiometric conditions. Solid fuel feed rate into the gasifier is modulated based on an energy demand or may be manually controlled. Air flow into the gasifier is controlled to maintain a pre-set optimum operating temperature. Negative pressure within the gasifier is controlled by an induced draft fan that is located down-stream of heat recovery. Our commercial systems vary in size (converting from 70 to 550 tons of biomass per day) and purpose (providing hot air for drying or steam for various process applications and producing up to 12.8 megawatts of electricity). At our Tulsa headquarters, Primenergy has a fully functional, commercially sized, gasification test facility complete with a low-pressure boiler and spark ignited internal combustion engine generator. This demonstration complex has the capacity to gasify up to thirty tons per day or a nominal gross heat release of about eighteen million Btu's per hour. To date, we have successfully tested over twenty-five different feedstocks. Some of these feedstocks have been recognized as the most difficult to convert to energy including rice hulls and straw, sugar cane bagasse, poultry litter, refuse derived fuel, paper plant pulp sludge, sewage sludge (biosolids) etc. For each new biomass gasification test, Primenergy employs a third party testing company to conduct stack compliance testing in accordance with U.S. EPA test methods and reporting protocol. For all biomass materials tested to date, the process is autogenetic, requiring no auxiliary fossil fuel to maintain continuous operation. There are many possible equipment configurations which can be designed by Primenergy and utilized downstream of the gasifier. The synthetic gas produced by the gasifier may be used as boiler fuel and the flue gas directed to a boiler to produce medium or high-pressure steam. Medium pressure steam has been used for various processes; i.e. rice parboiling or soybean processing. High-pressure steam has been used to drive steam turbines for the production of electricity. For some of the systems, all or a portion of the flue gas has been used both directly and indirectly to provide dry heat for material drying operations. Primenergy has developed and patented a method of cooling and cleansing the synthesis gas to a specification necessary for use as a fuel source in an internal combustion engine. Our process is called PARSÔ that stands for Particulate and Aerosol Removal System. Coupled to an electrical generator, this method of electrical generation requires less capital investment and is more efficient than electrical production using steam for applications under five megawatts. The wet scrubbing of the synthesis gas does not recover the thermal energy of the gas in usable energy output, but this sacrifice is offset by the reduction in capital expense of the internal combustion engines. A second use synthesis gas produced by the gasifier and cleansed by PARSÔ may be the production of synthetic organic liquids such as ethanol, acetic acid or synthetic crude oil stocks by either fermentation or catalytic conversion. A third use may be as a fuel for gas turbines. For large-scale energy production, the use of a synthesis gas fueled turbine may offer increased efficiency in energy output. Feedstocks that have undergone some type of post-harvest processing, such as poultry litter, or animal waste, human waste, paper pulp sludge, and refuse derived fuel, often contain contaminants, which potentially limit their use as fuels. For the past several years, Primenergy has invested heavily in research, development and testing of gas treatment technologies. One of these processes allow the gasification technology to be employed for biomass fuels that would otherwise not be acceptable fuels. In an intermediate step between the gasifier and a thermal conversion system, the hot synthesis gas is dry scrubbed in a process, which is called Synthesis Gas Scrubbing Systems or S3 Technology. After hot cleansing, the synthesis gases from contaminated biomass may be safely and cleanly burned. Examples of these fuels and their markets are poultry litter - poultry integrators; sewage sludge - municipal wastewater treatment; and co-firing of refuse derived fuel in electric utility boilers - electric utilities. Primenergy is one of three companies privately held under common ownership. Through our inner corporate relations, we offer a full range of engineering, project management, procurement, manufacturing and field construction services. Steel fabrication, selection and installation of refractory are done by Heater Specialists, Inc., Primenergy's sister company. HSI specializes in the fabrication and refractory installation of fluid catalytic cracking systems. HSI has graduate ceramic engineers on staff that are expert in difficult refractory applications. Primenergy offers domestic on-site equipment installation services through our other sister company, Mohawk Field Services, Inc. Both of these corporations have lengthy records of successful installations of capital equipment, primarily in the hydrocarbon process industry.