A PROCESS for converting biomass into clean, combustible gaseous fuels that can generate continuous electricity has won the 2010 Curtin Commercial Innovation Award.
Among a room full of academics and potential investors last week, Professor Chu-Zhu Li and his team from Curtin University’s Centre for Advanced Energy Science and Engineering won the top award for their work delivering sustainable energy generation.
Curtin’s Office of IP Commercialisation director, Rohan McDougall, who runs the annual awards, said the winning innovation was a great advance.
“The gasifier that Professor Li and his team have developed is able to convert raw solid fuels like biomass into clean gaseous fuel in a highly efficient and economical manner,” Mr McDougall said.
The process utilises mallee, which is abundant in WA and farmed to minimise dryland salinity.
Other low-rank fuels such as lignite, brown coal and peat can also be converted.
WA Sustainable Energy Association chief executive Ray Wills said improvements in biomass-based renewable energy were critically important in light of regional Australia’s potential to be self sufficient on energy from renewable sources as well as the growing energy needs of many developing nations.
Biomass to power is the world’s third largest form of renewable energy after wind and solar.
Investment in new capacity in this sector was $10.4 billion in 2009, up 16 per cent on 2008.