Organizing Committee Member
Johann Gruber-Schmidt
Founder
GS Gruber-Schmidt
Austria
Biography
Johann Gruber-Schmidt has completed his PhD at the age of 27 years from Technical University Vienna in 1992 in mechanical and chemical engineering. Then he started at Waagner Biro GmbH in Plant division. In the year 2000 he changed to the projects in renewable bioenergy in Lower Austria, where he worked in erection and commission till 2003. In the following years he designed and erected biomass and biogas CHP plants in Austria and turned to the field of small fixed gasification redesigning a prototype plant with mainly focus on gas cleaning and gas preparation and conversion for CHP Units. In the year 2011 he started biogas upgrading project to biomethane and syngas finished at 2013. From this time on he worked on the field DME and zero emission application in realizing projects in the power range up to 5000 kW till today and attend besides the projects congresses in agriculture and renewable energy and give oral presentations.
Research Area
In the project HAGENBRUNN we now show the combination of steam gasification and biogas to enlarge the production of Dimethyl ether. In turn the energy efficiency and the conversion efficiency in the production of Dimethyl ether are shown. In the project HAGENBRUNN we also have a combination of the Dimethyl ether plant with a biogas plant based on biogenic wet waste. At the end of the fermentation process in the digester the digestate is stored in a large normally open tank. In former times the digestate was used to fertilize the agricultural fields. Because of the high content on potassium, phosphate, metals, natrium and ammonium, using heat and electric energy from the DME plant, the digestate can be separated into the liquid phase and the solid phase