In EffiTorch, Tekniker, collaborating with the Spanish companies Empresarios Agrupados Internacional and SiCtech Induction, has developed a gasification system for bio-oils obtained from waste that uses the highly efficient generators for inductive heating at 400 kHz by SiCtech (used to heat metals)  to provide the energy required to heat the gasifying mixture to the 1500ºC required for optimum gasification.

The previous, non-green process used for high-temperature gasification that provides high-quality syngas is based on the semi-combustion of high-quality coal used as feedstock. Nevertheless, for the production of high-quality syngas from gasification, a green alternative should be developed that substitutes fossil coal with a non-fossil carbon source, ideally a material obtained from organic waste, for example, a bio-oil obtained from sewage sludge, as is the case in EffiTorch. The clear drawback of this green approach is that those organic materials obtained from waste always have a much lower heating capacity than coal, what makes impossible to reach the 1500ºC in their semi-combustion required for an optimum gasification.

The solution researched in EffiTorch is based on the addition of supplemental energy by means of induction heating of a plasma that is added to the gasification process. In our case, the induction heating is carried out at 400 kHz, that is, a very low frequency for a plasma, but has the very interesting property of being the highest frequency at which the energy efficiency in the electric generator reaches very high values, beyond  97%, instead of 70% obtained by generators at higher frequencies using other electronic technologies. The low frequency forces us to start the process with a smaller, high-quality auxiliary plasma that, in our case, is powered by microwaves at 2.54 GHz.

The plasma from the MW and the heating at 400 kHz are combined in a high-temperature reactor that is equipped with a specially developed method for the confinement of the plasma, which greatly reduces the contact between the internal walls of the reactor and the hot plasma, in order to avoid damaging the walls and to reduce the loss of energy through the walls. In that high-temperature reactor, the bio-oil and water are atomised and kept till both are converted to a mixture of H2 and CO (syngas), which can be used for the endothermic synthesis of fuels.