Archive News
Syngas From Steel Mills
Sierra Energy says it can convert idled steel mill blast furnaces into trash-to-biogas reactors, saving on the cost of building a plant.
By Jeff St. John
Greentechmedia.com
Sept 16, 2009
Sierra Energy wants to turn laid-off steel mill workers into trash-to-clean energy workers.
The Davis, Calif.-based company says its FASTOX technology can convert steel mill blast furnaces into syngas factories. It works using steam-enshrouded oxygen, instead of regular air, to improve the efficiency and gas output from working blast furnaces.
That gas can be recycled to save energy throughout the rest of the plant, CEO Michael Hart – also head of parent company Sierra Railroad – said Tuesday at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference in Sausalito.
It’s a bit like the red-hot iron gasification technology that Ze-gen is developing (see The Iron Man of Greentech Gets $20M), but with a twist – Sierra wants to use furnaces that are already built. [Read more]
Davis firm develops system to streamline steel production
Sierra Energy’s technology can also be used to turn solid waste into fuel.
By Celia Lamb
Staff Writer
Sacramento Business Journal
Nov 7, 2008
A Davis startup wants to help companies turn garbage into energy and make steel more efficiently.
Sierra Energy Corp. has licensed a patent to make blast furnaces work better and hopes to sell the technology. The company is working on a deal to retrofit a blast furnace at a steel mill owned by Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp. in China. Sierra Energy needs about $3 million for the work; its president, Golden Capital Venture Funds partner Chris Soderquist, is recruiting potential investors.
Investors so far have put about $1.5 million into the company, founded by Sierra Railroad Co. president Michael Hart. [Read more]
Man of Steel
Steel manufacturing is just plain dirty, no matter how you cut it. But California entrepreneur Mike Hart thinks he can make it clean and green—in China of all places.
By Andrea Chalupa
Portfolio.com
March 7, 2008
A sign on the door of Mike Hart’s office in Davis, California, reads “6 percent of the world’s energy will come from this basement.”
It’s a bold statement from a bold guy, and it refers to Hart’s hope that his Sierra Energy Corp.’s system of turning landfill waste into clean-burning synthetic gas can one day provide a sizable percentage of the world’s energy. Considering that his startup has yet to get any of its alternative energy technologies into mass production, it’s an audacious, almost ridiculous, prediction. But Hart insists the goal is feasible. “The technology is dead simple,” he says. “It’s just a matter of access to capital.” [Read more]
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