Development of alternative energy sources

Speaker abstracts and biographies

As Director of the Enterprise Connect - Clean Energy Innovation Centre Tristram leads a network of advisers across Australia focused on assisting Australian small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to boost productivity, improve innovation and increase competitiveness.

The Clean Energy Innovation Centre works at both an enterprise and industry level linking SMEs involved in the Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency and Water Efficiency sectors to new ideas, technologies and markets. 

Prior to joining Enterprise Connect Tristram Travers carried dual roles within Austrade being both State Manager, Tasmania and National Manager, Clean Energy and Environment. He came to Austrade from the private sector where he held General Management positions in large, export oriented, enterprises. He has twice worked to restructure companies in financial stress and return them to trading entities.  

Originally from a production and engineering background he spent several years with roles in export market development, research and development, production management and delivering technical services. 

Tristram Travers attained an MBA from Curtin University after studying civil engineering.
 

Algal synthesiser technology and transport fuels 
MBD has taken one of nature’s oldest processes – photosynthesis, and created a new technology that may hold the key to rapid, large scale CO2 emissions reduction from existing coal and gas fired power stations and other smoke‐stack industries such as smelters and refineries. 

Algal Synthesiser technology captures flue emissions at the source, harnessing waste greenhouse gases as growth‐promoting feedstock for conversion into oil‐rich algal biomass for the production of oils suitable for plastics, transport fuel, and for nutritious, protein‐rich stock‐feed for farm animals.

MBD Energy Limited has successfully partnered with one of the world’s leading algal research teams, based at Australia’s James Cook University, to develop a 5,000 square metre test facility capable of producing 14,000 litres of oil and 25,000 kilograms of algal meal from every 100 tonnes of CO2 consumed.

MBD plans to roll out a 10,000 m2 (1 Ha) Display project at three of Australia’s largest coal fired power stations. These “proof of concept” project will take greenhouse gases from the power station’s emission chimney and produce oil and meal. The project will then be operated for 6 – 12 months prior to being scaled up to commercial production through 2012 and 2013. 

MBD Energy Limited is a cornerstone member of the BIO CCS program.  The program is a number of regional projects each targeting 50 Million tonnes of greenhouse gas sequestration per year by 2020.

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Tony St Clair, Agri Business Manager, MBD Energy Ltd
Tony St Clair was Chief Executive of Federated Farmers of New Zealand for eight years (1997-2005); the organisation had approximately 19000 farm members at the end of Tony’s tenure. He has been on multiple committees at CEO level within New Zealand which have involved international trade, food safety, human capacity building, farm safety, various emergency response groups for both adverse events and biosecurity. 

Over this time in New Zealand he has also represented the Agriculture Sector in W.T.O forums (Seattle, Cancun) and International Federation of Agricultural Producers ,Cairns Group Farm leaders and CER Ministerials. He was Chair of the Australian New Zealand Business Council in 2004; Tony also attended the COP 15 in Copenhagen in late 2009.

Prior to his time in New Zealand he was Executive Director of the Victorian Farmers Federation (1990-97) and had extensive commodity trading and commercial background in the agricultural production and processing industry. This included terms as a livestock auctioneer, Commercial Manager for Uncle Ben’s of Australia (1978 -85) and D.R.Johnston /Conagra (1986-1990).

Joint AutoCRC and Air International Thermal Systems

Recent focus on energy efficiency and decreasing the environmental footprint of industries worldwide has had a large impact on the automotive industry in Australia. Whilst “cleaner and greener” hybrid and electric technology is being developed and employed in vehicles, the source of fuel remains an issue. To address this, the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology (AutoCRC) conducted a four month study into unused thermal energy in Australia.

The motivation for this investigation was to understand the opportunity for technology such as the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) to convert currently unutilised heat energy into electricity. The size of the thermal energy opportunity is directly related to the availability of heat energy in the Australian market place, and an AutoCRC Industry Participant, Air International Thermal Systems, is currently in the final stages of constructing an Australian-made 100 kW ORC system. Our conference presentation will outline some of the findings of the AutoCRC study and the capabilities of the Air International Thermal Systems ORC.

Our research showed there were large sources of unused heat available for electricity generation. Minerals Processing (Iron and Steel, Alumina, Aluminium, Base Metals), Domestic Applications and the Food Processing Industry were briefly researched, however the focus was on Cement, Solar, Geothermal, Bagasse and Wood Waste sectors.

Of the five main target sectors studied, notable opportunities in the woodwaste and cement sectors for ORC applications were discovered. Significant potential was also found in the sugarcane (bagasse) industry and to a lesser extent in solar and geothermal industries. Based on literature research, the food processing industry and minerals processing industry (iron, steel and aluminium in particular) could also be further explored.

The Air International ORC will have the ability to convert heat from medium grade heat sources into electricity. The amount of electricity generated will depend on the quantity and quality of the heat source.

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Fiona Kan, Project Co-ordinator, AutoCRC
Fiona is a final year Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering and Bachelor of Science student at Monash University. Apart from studying abroad in Sweden, she has undertaken vacation work at Airservices Australia, marine company AMOG Consulting and military gas turbine maintenance, repair and overhaul company Tasman Aviation Enterprises.

 

Integrated renewable energy system based on energy storage in the form of hydrogen
Electrolytic hydrogen offers a promising alternative for long-term energy storage of renewable energy (RE). A stand-alone RE system based on energy storage as hydrogen has been developed and, and successfully tested for autonomous operation with developed control system and power conditioning devices. The excess energy produced, with respect to the load requirement, has been sent to the electrolyzer for hydrogen production.

When energy produced from the RE sources became insufficient, with respect to the load requirement, the stored hydrogen was fed to a fuel cell to produce electricity. The RE system components have substantially different voltage-current characteristics and they are integrated through power conditioning devices on a dc bus for autonomous operation by using a developed control system. The developed control system has been successfully tested for autonomous operation and energy management of the system. The experimental results clearly indicate that a stand-alone RE system based on hydrogen production is safe and reliable.

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Dr Mohan Kolhe, Director of Programmes, UCL School of Energy Resources Australia
Dr. Mohan Kolhe has joined University College London as Director of programmes for the UCL School of Energy & Resources Australia. Before this, he was faculty in renewable energy at the University of Dundee, Scotland, UK. Dr. Kolhe was working as a Research Director, Renewable Energy Technologies at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland for 3.5 years. His academic work at Finland ranged from developing the integrated renewable energy system for hydrogen production and fuel cell applications for small car and teaching renewable energy courses (e.g. fuel cell technology, wind energy, solar engineering, energy economics etc). Before that, he worked at the Hydrogen Research Institute, QC, Canada on the renewable energy system based on energy storage in the form of Hydrogen.

Dr Kolhe has widely published his research work in peer reviewed journals and presented in many international peer reviewed conferences, lectured in many international universities on hydrogen technologies.