A gasifier machine that will provide renewable bioenergy to a section of the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen campus and which will be used to train students in bioenergy technology, was commissioned by the institution yesterday.
The gasifier, designed by Dr Lawrence Lewis and team, took three years to develop and is now in its test phase. It will have the capacity to produce 10-12kWatts of clean energy.
A release from the university explained that the gasifier should provide clean and renewable bioenergy to the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, which could enable a significant reduction in the university’s electricity bill once it becomes fully operational. It noted that this could also contribute to the reduction of the university’s carbon footprint by utilizing a significant amount of biomass found on campus.
The gasifier is expected to produce bio char, which, used as a soil ameliorant, can aid Guyana’s international commitment to mitigate climate change and contribute to the Green State Development Strategy (GSDS) by storing carbon in the soil in a stable form, the release said.
It will also be used for research in other biomass materials (e.g. grass pellets, coconut shells, rice-hull pellets, among other biomass sources, to produce bio char and electricity). It will also be used for training other stakeholders in organic agriculture and power generation using biomass, and students in bioenergy technology in the BSc programmes of Agriculture and Forestry and in the Masters’ in Energy will also receive training using the unit.
The release stated that the testing and application phase of the project will be executed over the next 12 months, during which the gasifier will be tested under different conditions and using chips from several types of wood to make pellets that act as fuel for the unit.
“Weather conditions this morning created a slight delay in the machine’s start up during the simple commissioning, but the machine did fire once the damp conditions began to improve. The Faculty is in the process of creating a Facebook page on the University of Guyana’s FB page from which those interested in the project may follow its progress over the next 12 months as part of the public knowledge aspects of the science experiment,” it was related.
It was noted that General Manager Rod Henson of ExxonMobil, a major donor in the venture, was on hand to celebrate the moment.
The university said that the project is part of its major orientation toward a more robust research agenda in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
