Preworkshop Tutorial: Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Fundamentals of Gasification

Gasification is a thermochemical approach to convert solid fuels to the basic feedstock chemicals required for many synthetic processing technologies. Investors, commercial developers, research scientists, academia, and government agencies are currently investigating gasification as a pathway for converting biomass to electricity, ethanol, green diesel, and other products. This course is geared toward anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of gasification technologies and how they can be applied.

A registration fee of US$150 (separate from the Biomass ’09 Technical Workshop registration) is required for this tutorial. University/college students will be allowed to attend this tutorial free of charge with current student identification.

Tutorial Coordinators
Bruce Folkedahl, Senior Research Manager, EERC, and Phil Hutton, Research Manager, EERC

	Bruce Folkedahl is a Senior Research Manager at the EERC with 15 years of experience, including 3 years at 3M. His work focuses on the use of biomass for production of fuels, chemicals, and power, including work on biorefineries and lignocellulosic ethanol. Dr. Folkedahl currently has several projects involving Fischer Tropsch conversion of syngas to products including distillate fuels and alcohols. He is also involved in projects related to power generation, fundamental mechanisms of ash deposition and fouling during cofiring of biomass fuels with coal, and corrosion and development of high-temperature materials to withstand aggressive combustion environments.
	Phil Hutton is a Research Manager at the EERC with10 years of experience. He leads an interdisciplinary team to develop distributed power systems and hydrogen-related technologies and applications, with an emphasis on integrating biomass and coal conversion technologies for use in high-temperature fuel cells and microturbines. He recently completed a multimillion-dollar effort to build an integrated solid oxide fuel cell–gasification power system that resulted in the patent of a thermally integrated gasifier and is currently leading a multimillion-dollar effort to integrate biomass gasifiers with microturbines.
	Paul Pansegrau is a Research Scientist at the EERC, where his work focuses on process chemistry and chemical synthesis related to developing advanced catalytic technology and thermochemical conversion technologies for coal and other hydrocarbons, such as biomass to fuels and chemicals. Dr. Pansegrau’s principal areas of expertise include gasification of lignite and other low-rank fuels, flue gas desulfurization, and related environmental technologies. He has over 25 years of experience in gasification and chemicals development, having worked at Dakota Gasification Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, and Monsanto.
	Nikhil Patel is a Research Scientist at the EERC with over 15 years of experience working on the combustion and gasification of biomass, coal, and difficult-to-burn liquid and solid industrial wastes. His work focuses on designing, developing, and integrating enabling technologies for the conversion of carbonaceous fuels to heat, electricity, hydrogen, liquid fuel, and chemicals, including a mobile truckmounted biomass-to-liquids production system. Dr. Patel is developing innovative next generation gasifiers that can achieve seamless integration with technologies for the production of electricity and liquid fuels.
	Michael Swanson is a Senior Research Manager at the EERC, where he is currently involved in the demonstration of advanced power systems such as pressurized fluidized-bed combustion (PFBC) and integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) systems, with an emphasis on hot-gas cleanup issues. Dr. Swanson has over 25 years of experience in developing new concepts for systems related to PFBC, IGCC, hot-gas cleanup, coal reactivity in low-rank coal (LRC) combustion, supercritical solvent extraction, and liquefaction of LRCs.