If the world has learned anything from the ongoing war in Iran, it’s that countries must continue to seek to develop sources of fuel that don’t depend upon transit through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s effective closure of this critical shipping lane in response to bombing by the United States and Israel has caused inflationary ripples around the world affecting everything from the price of fuel to the availability of a wide range of products like fertilizer and pharmaceuticals.
For years now, the go-to sources of so-called alternative energy have been wind and solar power, neither of which need to be transported via tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. But are these the only options? Not if a new German company and a small town in Wisconsin have anything to say about it.
In a recent Wisconsin Public Radio article, author Robin Washington reports that German company Synthec Fuels is partnering with Wisconsin company Johnson Timbers on a project that could turn biomass, including “timber and forest byproducts,” into sustainable jet fuel.
Wisconsin legislators recently “passed an incentive package called the Forestry Revitalization Bill” that would provide $120 million in tax credits to build a new facility in the small town of Hayward. According to Bill Johnson from Johnson Timbers, the new plant “would convert woody biomass into sustainable aviation fuel” using a “100-year-old technology known as gasification and Fischer–Tropsch.”
According to ScienceDirect, “Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis is defined as a method for producing liquid hydrocarbons from syngas, primarily converting biomass or coal into high-quality diesel oil and other hydrocarbons. The FT process operates under specific temperature and pressure conditions, yielding products similar to petrodiesel, with applications in both fuel and chemical production.”
The FT process involves three steps: “(1) biomass gasification leading to syngas generation; (2) FT reaction for the conversion of syngas to higher hydrocarbons; and (3) product separation and refining to produce useful products.” Johnson notes that his company has experience with this process already, having “worked with this technology in the past during both the Bush and Obama administrations and [having] built a pilot plant utilizing similar technologies down in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, using biomass from Wisconsin.”
Of course, getting such an operation off the ground will take many highly skilled workers with not only oil and gas experience, but also skills related to advanced automation and the latest process control and instrumentation technologies.
Unfortunately, these workers may be difficult to find, given the ongoing skilled labor shortage that has plagued manufacturers for decades now. Synthec Fuels and Johnson Timbers will need to work closely with local industry and educational institutions to ensure a steady stream of talent for its new plant.
When it comes to training the next generation of workers, educators and industry partners alike would do well to partner with experts in technical training, such as DAC Worldwide. For example, Synthec Fuels and Johnson Timbers could benefit from DAC Worldwide’s Smart Process Plant Training System (603-SP), a fully-functional, industrial-quality fluid process system that provides hands-on training in the measurement and control of five of the most common process variables: level, pressure, temperature, flow, and pH.
The system groups these process control elements into one complete piping system, which allows it to teach multiple configurations of flow loops, controls, and communications. The system incorporates both new and legacy technologies so that users are prepared for anything they might encounter on the job. These technologies work together to form a 3-level communication architecture:
- Device Level: Smart sensors monitor Level, Flow, Temperature, Pressure, and pH. They are connected via either IO-Link and Ethernet communication or HART communication.
- Control Level: A DCS and various PLCs and PIDs allow for operation and control of the system’s components.
- Enterprise Level: The DCS software provides Supervisory Control with data analytics for monitoring smart production, smart maintenance, etc.
The Smart Process Plant uses a Distributed Control System (DCS) that features Supervisory Control software. This software is Rockwell Automation’s PlantPAx, and it acts as the backbone of the system. It gathers and organizes data and creates dashboards that represent the real-time status of the processes being carried out by the system.
The Smart Process Plant Training System features a wide variety of common, industrial-quality components and instruments to provide learners with a realistic training experience that will build skills that translate easily to the workplace. The Smart Process Plant also includes multiple experiments, which simulate both continuous and batch process control loops that are widely used in many process industries. These experiments include:
- Basic and Advanced Bioreactor Applications
- Clean-In-Place (CIP) Skid Application
- Boiler Drum Level Application
- Wastewater Treatment Application
With these experiments, learners will explore a wide variety of fundamental process control topics, including: temperature, level, flow, pressure, and pH ratio control; agitation; sequence control; continuous control; 3-element control; feed forward/cascade control; and pump lead/lag demand. The Smart Process Plant Training System is only one of DAC Worldwide’s many process control and instrumentation training systems. Visit DAC Worldwide online to learn more about its many other training systems, as well as advanced chemical engineering training systems from its partner, Pignat SAS!
