Peter Ashman

Biography

Professor Peter Ashman is Head of the School of Chemical Engineering and also leads the South Australian Coal Research Laboratory (SACRL). He is also a senior member of the University of Adelaide’s Centre for Energy Technology (CET) and the School of Chemical Engineering’s Microalgae Engineering Research Group (MERG) During 1999-2006, Prof Ashman was Key Researcher and Program Co-Leader with the Cooperative Centre for Clean Power from Lignite, leading a large group at the University of Adelaide focussing on the fluidised-bed gasification of Victorian and South Australian low-rank coals for the high-efficiency generation of electricity via Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) and on fundamental research questions related to this technology. This work is continued by the South Australian Coal Research Laboratory (SACRL), based at the University of Adelaide’s Research Park at Thebarton. SACRL, established in 2007, has a strong focus on the utilisation and performance of South Australian low-rank coals and other solids fuels, including biomass and waste fuels. SACRL includes a team of researchers with extensive industrial and research experience in the fields of combustion science and technology, particularly in relation to solids fuel combustion. The laboratory has facilities for the preparation, characterisation and handling of solid fuels and a range of laboratory-scale and semi-industrial equipment suitable for fundamental and applied research, process development, and process verification and troubleshooting. SACRL recently completed a program of work with Hybrid Energy Australia (a wholly-owned subsidiary of ASX-listed Strike Energy Limited) to successfully demonstrate fluidized-bed gasification technology associated with their FuturGas coal-to-liquids project based on their high-sodium, high-sulfur coal deposit located at Kingston in South Australia. Other recent research has investigated the pyrolysis of Automotive Shredder Residue (ASR), thermal processing (combustion and gasification) of winery biomass residues, and gasification of algae biomass, algae/coal blends and algae/wood blends. Prof Ashman is also active in research leading to the commercial exploitation of microalgae for the production of renewable biofuels. With his colleagues, A/Prof David Lewis, Prof Michael Borowitzka (Murdoch University), and other partners from Australia, India and China, including SQC Pty Ltd, he has been involved in a large program of work to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of a fully integrated process for biofuel production from microalgae in saline water. This research has led to the establishment of a joint venture company, Muradel Pty Ltd, which is responsible for the commercialisation and further development of this technology. As part of this work, he is investigating the thermal processing of algal biomass as part of an ARC Linkage project in collaboration with SQC Pty Ltd. He also collaborates with James Cook University, Monash University, Zhengzhou University (China) and Umea University (Sweden). This work is undertaken using SACRL’s fluid-bed combustion and gasification facilities at Thebarton and the entrained flow reactor at Moansh University. Prof Ashman, with other colleagues in the Centre for Energy Technology, is also active in the developing field of solar gasification. This group has been assessing process options for the production of sythetic transport fuels using solar gasifiaction with both coal and biomass as feedstocks. They are also conducting experiments to assess the impact of intense solar radiation on the pyrolysis and gasification of solid fuels and planning larger-scale experiments which will make use of a unique 50kW solar simulator which is currently being constructed.

Research Interest

solar gasification