July 14, 2010

Bixby Energy Systems (Bixby) announced June 28 that a revolutionary process that efficiently converts coal into clean burning energy has been developed and is commercially available from the company.

The Bixby Process superheats coal in a closed-loop environment to produce high-quality syngas. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, utilities that run on syngas produce up to 65 percent fewer carbon emissions compared to those that burn coal. Unlike competitive "clean-coal" solutions, the need for an elaborate, expensive and unproven carbon capture and sequestration infrastructure is eliminated with the Bixby Process, the company said.

Founded in 2001 by lifelong visionary and entrepreneur Robert Walker, best known as the innovator of the "Sleep Number" bed made by Select Comfort Corporation, a company he founded more than 23 years ago, Bixby has been researching and testing clean energy technologies for nine years. The company believes that its technologies offer the potential to provide clean, inexpensive natural gas derived from one of the world's most plentiful resources - without the additional environmental damage generally associated with coal-based energy production.

The Bixby Process currently features a system called devolitization that superheats coal without burning it in a sealed environment which prevents carbon emissions from being emitted into the air. This separates the coal into syngas and semi-activated carbon without the heavy carbon emissions normally associated with current coal burning or other gasification technologies. The technology does not consume water (although it does use it), and creates no effluent or waste byproducts as a result of the process other than natural gas and semi-activated carbon.

Initial payments on three orders representing millions of dollars in revenue for Bixby's devolitization system have already been received from customers in China. The company is in the process of producing these units, the first of which is currently being readied for shipment.

Since Bixby's technology produces clean energy from coal - and ultimately any carbon-based material - it can use all coal types for its feedstock. This means that coal which cannot be used by coal-fired technologies today because of their high sulfur content, for example, are readily usable with this technology, Bixby said.

"The United States has centuries' worth of coal underground. Coal is thought to be a ‘dirty' source of energy. But, in reality, coal is not the culprit. The carbon-emissions problem actually stems from the process of burning coal to produce energy which was developed more than 80 years ago," said Walker.

"We are the only company to have developed a technology to tap into this energy source without creating significant carbon emissions and have proven it to be reproducible. We believe that the Bixby Process is the beginning of significant change to the way we retrieve, consume and price our energy needs."

Source: Zeus Syngas Refining Report, July 9, 2010