Lockheed Martin, Concord Blue to deploy waste gasification

By Anna Simet | October 10, 2013

Lockheed Martin and Concord Blue USA Inc. have teamed up to deploy a waste gasification technology that converts waste products to electricity, heat and synthetic fuels.

According to the agreement, Lockheed Martin will provide its engineering, program management, procurement, manufacturing and integration experience to globally apply Concord Blue’s patented, closed-loop steam thermolysis technology globally in the waste-to-energy arena.

Concord Blue has had several commercial facilities operating since as early as 2006 and more under development, mostly in India, Japan and Germany, including a Prune, India, plant that is the largest steam thermolysis waste-to-energy plant in the world. Operational since March 2012, it processes 700 to 1000 tons of untreated municipal solid waste per day, producing 25 to 30 MWth, or 10MWel.

The partnership with Lockheed Martin will aim to expand deployment of the technology, including in North American and the U.S. “It’s really a good partnership from that perspective,” said Paul Klammer, director of bioenergy programs at Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems and Training business. “[Concord Blue] needed a global commercialization partner, somebody who had the reputation for delivering on technology projects, so it was a really natural fit from that perspective. They brought the core technology to the table, and we brought all of the integration and business development skills to help them scale and deploy on a global scale.”

Lockheed Martin, a global security and aerospace company that employs about 116,000 people and does much work for the U.S. Department of Defense, entered the bioenergy arena about seven years ago, according to Klammer, beginning with development of its own biomass heating facility in Owego, N.Y., which uses wood chips to fuel two wood-fired boilers that generate steam to provide heat to the 1.8 million-square-foot site. Currently, a great deal of Lockheed Martin's bioenergy work is in Canada, Klammer added, where federal incentives for renewables are strong.