By 2013, the company has achieved several additional milestones using downdraft gasification, including:

Power Generation: Developing a system in conjunction with General Electric to power GE’s Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) generation equipment for the first time ever with biomass-produced fuel gas
Municipal Plant: Designing and installing its first municipal gasification facility to cleanly convert wood and biological waste to electricity
Cleaner Syngas: Successfully cleaning syngas in an R&D project, powering a 1 MW Caterpillar generator and selling that power back to the grid through TVA
Feedstock Research: Testing and collecting gasification performance data on a wide array of biomass-based materials including municipal solid waste, scrap tires, and purpose grown crops

Larger System Deployment

In 2014, we constructed and field tested the world’s largest downdraft gasifier, giving the company’s offering economies of scale to better assure positive financial returns for customers. With five times the processing throughput and fuel output capacity of earlier equipment, the new unit was a major breakthrough for both technology and market penetration.

The initial deployment of that system is now operating in the City of Lebanon, Tennessee, and converts a blend of commercial wood waste and biosolids into electric power. Click here to view a case study and ongoing results of that project.

Market Integration

In 2015, the acquisition of assets and patents from MaxWest, a fluidized bed gasification company, opened new waste disposal markets, including municipal and industrial sludge disposal.

Investment Partner Spring Lane Capital

In January 2018, Aries announced that it has issued approximately $21.4 million of new equity led by existing investors and received additional capital commitments from Spring Lane Capital of $25 million for equity in future gasification projects. Spring Lane, a private equity firm based in Boston, focuses on project finance investments for smaller-scale solutions in the energy, water, food and waste industries. This financing marks a significant milestone for the emerging set of municipal- and industrial-scale solutions providers in the waste management industry, which has been historically challenged to access affordable financing tailored to the needs of sub-utility scale projects in the industry.

Bioenergy Insight 2018 Biochar Opportunities Knock UT Research Brochure