A recent California Law is being cited by the Australian multinational company, Energy Developments Limited is explained below (Source: CALIFORNIA 2002 LEGISLATIVE SERVICE, CHAPTER 740, A.B. No. 2770 about WASTE--CONVERSION TECHNOLOGY)

This Amendment dated September 20, 2002 was made to the existing California Integrated Waste Management Act, which functions through the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB). Though the amendment does introduce ‘gasification’ in the category of ‘conversion’ technologies and not ‘transformation’ technologies, in order to qualify under the category ‘gasification’, several stringent aspects have to be met by the technology.

Primary among these are:

1. This new California law says that gasification technology should not use air or oxygen in the conversion process, (except ambient air to maintain temperature control) but in Australia where the EDL plant is apparently functional, this is defined contrarily.

2. The California law says that gasification technology should produce no discharge of air contaminants or emissions, including greenhouse gases, but by EDL’s own admission there are such discharges and emissions. (Please refer the ‘Standards Emission chart in the EDL presentation”)

3. The ash at the end of the gasification process should not contain any hazardous waste, under the California law.

4. The California law requires the facility operator to remove all recyclable materials and marketable green waste compostable materials from the solid waste stream prior to the conversion process and to certifies that those materials will be recycled or composted.

5. The California law further requires the facility to certify to the CIWM Board that the local agency sending solid waste to the facility has reduced, recycled, or composted solid waste to the maximum extent feasible, and the local agency has diverted at least 30 percent of all solid waste through source reduction, recycling, and composting. Will this be followed and enforced in Chennai?
On the contrary, by its own admission in its presentation, EDL is planning to send 20-25 percent of the waste back to the Chennai Corporation, apart from some 26.64 percent of the inert material.

6. According to the California law, as is the position in Indian law, the facility where the technology is used should be in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances, but in the case of Chennai, the facility will be in violation of Municipal Waste Rules, 2000 if it is introduced without source segregation or without following the Supreme Court guidelines which cautions local bodies not to adopt expensive technologies of power generation, and both Stockholm Convention and Kyoto Protocol of which India is a signatory.

However, the main argument remains that apart from redefining phrases such as ‘gasification’, the California law does not actually endorse the use of this technology and instead seeks a full report and study on the pros and cons of this technology over others. (emphasis supplied)

Below are the actual comments (Objects and Reasons) on the Bill as presented before the Califorina Senate.

COMMENTS: The CIWMB sponsors this bill for two purposes. First, it creates a new definition for "gasification" technologies and separates such technologies from the umbrella definition contained under the term "transformation," thereby removing such technologies from the apparent stigma of being considered transformation.

The second purpose is to require the CIWMB to evaluate and report to the Governor and Legislature on so-called "conversion" technologies for the purposes of determining whether the state should sanction their use. (emphasis supplied)

As such therefore California too is unsure if this is an appropriate technology at this point.


More comments on Gasification:

Indian experts like Professor Avinash Chandra, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi say, “Gasification process uses heat to produce gas for non-renewable energy generation but in the process it emits toxic contaminants.” “Both Pyrolysis and gasification technologies are in the development stage with a limited number of units in operation. Scrubbing the producer gas at high temperature is currently under research and the technology is yet to be demonstrated on a large scale. Besides the pyrolysis and gasifier streams may contain organic compounds of concern that are difficult to remove”, says Prof. T Swaminathan, Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai. Both

In fact it is technological astigmatism and a myopic political escape route. What this gasification technology does is that it delays solving the problem. Just few years from now when the volume of ash laden with heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants will become huge and unmanageable, as is the case with our present municipal waste, there will be no escape route.

Australian Government’s Position

The Australian government’s Greenhouse office defines Gasification as a form of pyrolysis, carried out with more air, and at high temperatures in order to optimise the gas production. The resulting gas, known as producer gas, is a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and methane, together with carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Biomass gasification is the latest generation of biomass energy conversion processes, and is being used at a scale of up to 50 MWe to improve the efficiency, and to reduce the investment costs of biomass electricity generation through the use of gas turbine technology. High efficiencies (up to about 50%) are achievable using combined-cycle gas turbine systems, where waste heat from the gas turbine is recovered to produce steam for use in a steam turbine.

However gas cleanup to an acceptable standard remains the major challenge yet to be overcome. The first gasification combined-cycle power plant in the world is a 6MW facility at Varamo, Sweden, which is fuelled by wood residues. The proposed 75MW alfalfa gasification combined-cycle power plant in Minnesota, USA, when completed, will be the first dedicated crop-fuel plant of its size in the world. Other installations have been built and tested but several have proven to be unacceptable.
Source:  http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/renewable/technologies/biomass/bioconversion.html