Coal and fossil fuels. Biomass and waste stream fuels.

The Competition

Coal and Fossil Fuels

Coal briqueting is the closest comparable industrial process. It uses coal fines and binders to produce uniform sized briquettes, but demands much higher capital investment at commencement (factory premises / planning permission) and requires significantly higher labour and on-going energy consumption. Briqueting utilizes heat and pressure with bonding agents to create briquettes, whereas the AST FuelForm® system uses inherent chemical processes, with minimal physical action in the agglomerator, and fractional consumption of energy to create a similar, if not better, end product.

Biomass and waste stream fuels

Biomass waste technologies are currently based around heat and pressure pelletisation processes similar to briqueting. The AST system is far ahead of any competing technologies in this niche field.  The costs of an AST centric solution are a fraction of the costs incurred using other biomass waste to energy capital investment projects with similar capacity. For example, the production of wood pellets can use up to 200kW hours of energy to produce 1 tonne of product, in comparison to 5-15kW hours (depending on grinding requirement) using the AST BioForm system.

A comparison of the up front costs of the AST centric system shows that the technology can deliver greater than 75% capital cost savings to users, as well as lower operating costs (energy running costs are significantly reduced). The impact of this technology on the economics of a major biomass project (rate of return on capital investment) for potential users of the BioForm system has and continues to attract burgeoning interest from industry sources.