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Lima Plant's Technology Has Roots in Scotland

Posted on: Sunday, 5 March 2006, 13:01 CST

By Jim Sabin, The Lima News, Ohio

Mar. 5--KINGDOM OF FIFE, Scotland -- People in the energy industry have long understood the need for an alternative source of energy.

Jim Scott knew it back in 1960. Scott, the chairman at Fife Energy's plant in Kingdom of Fife, Scotland, just north of Edinburgh, was there when the plant first opened. He was there when the plant, then owned by British Gas, started looking into gasification as a solution for hundreds of small coal-fired power plants in the mid-1970s.

Scott's career in the energy industry actually started in 1945, and he's effectively been the general manager of the Westfield plant there since it opened in 1960. It was then that the plant started exploring gasification to supply a synthetic natural gas to provide power, he said.

"I started in 1945, when industry in the UK, and particularly in Scotland, consisted of a lot of small carbonizing plants," Scott said via telephone. British Gas, which then owned the plant, wanted to consolidate those. "In the late '60s, they decided to build four of these gasifiers to satisfy that."

It worked. The plant provided 25 percent of the gas needed to power that region of Scotland, and dozens of the small, inefficient plants were closed.

But in the 1970s, a new option presented itself, in the form of large natural gas deposits in the North Sea, he said.

"The industry decided in their wisdom to transfer to natural gas, and the 20-year life of Westfield unfortunately became 14," he said. Westfield closed as a power generator and became a research and development center, and stayed that way until it closed in 1990. The reason? Projections showed the natural gas would work until 2040.

And when British Gas began breaking up into smaller pieces, a small American company slipped in and bought the portion that included the gasification method that had been scrapped.

That company was Global Energy, and while the gasification technology being developed today in Lima isn't the same as British Gas' ideas, it was something of a beginning for the company.

"Now, history can tell us that the year they needed that (synthetic) gas was 2005," Global Energy president and chief executive Harry Graves said. "Now, the United Kingdom is subject to massive amounts of (natural gas) imports or being at the end of the Russian supply line.

Global Energy first formed in 1988, and today is made up of executives from a host of other major companies -- Procter & Gamble, British Petroleum, B.F. Goodrich, Cincinnati Bell, Convergys, General Electric, Rolls Royce, and more.

Global bought the British Gas technology in 1992 and reopened the Westfield plant, now known as Fife Energy. And today, the company for the first time is building its own power plant, Lima Energy, at the former Lima Locomotive Works. The plant will use synthetic gas to create electricity, but there are many more possibilities.

The gas could be enhanced with methane and sold through standard natural gas pipelines, though that's not in the works yet. Hydrogen will be pulled out and sold, too.

And it's all done by converting coal and petroleum coke into gas, not by burning it as traditional coal-fired plants do, but through the gasifiers.

Today, the company's senior staff is gradually expanding. Senior Vice President Dwight Lockwood has been with the company since the 1990s. The former BP Lima Chemicals employee has been the project manager for the Lima Energy plant since it was first discussed in 1998.

There's also Senior Vice President Richard Bailey, a former General Electric engineer and business developer who also spent time with Rolls Royce. Chief Financial Officer Steve Rolls joined the team in early February; he worked with B.F. Goodrich and was the chief financial officer at Cincinnati Bell and Convergys before joining.

Lee Reichart is the most recent addition. Reichart is the first president of Lima Energy, and started Feb. 13. He worked for Scots and Miracle-Gro before joining Global.

Even as the staff takes shape, the first foundation is well under way at the former Lima Locomotive Works. The first building will be the storage building for the coal that will be hauled in by trains. It will stand 100 feet tall, with a base 200 feet by 500 feet, and is expected to dwarf the nearby Metcalf Street Bridge.

"This project is the flagship project for our company, and it's the flagship project for the United States," Graves said. It was delayed for several years while permits were acquired, and funding was somewhat delayed after the Enron scandal scared off investors.

Graves said he expects to have the bonds in place by the end of this year. Meanwhile, construction has already started, and will intensify from here, Graves said.

"I think you'll see ever-increasing construction activity from here on in," Graves said.

The technology to be used in Lima isn't the same as the gasification used in Scotland, but it's the same idea, Graves said. Fife Energy now has power generators to produce electricity, powered by synthetic gas like Lima's will be.

Scott's long history with the technology has been a big help, Graves said.

"Every once in a while, you come across a captain of industry who's been around a long time," Graves said. "We have one of our own."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Lima News, Ohio

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Source: The Lima News

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