Sludge Watch ==> Energy to Burn - The Kiwi - the Native - the gasifier - the sludge - the story

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin:

This story shows that sludge management technologies must be tested tried 
and true...'robust' as word often used.

......................................................................................................

http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/203/features/6071/energy_to_burn.html;jsessionid=2D6DC02F5360E2A866BA1A99DE67DF04


New Zealand Listener
May 13-19 2006 Vol 3444 No 203

Energy to burn
by Hamish McKenzie

A fast-talking Kiwi claims that his invention, which he says converts 
rubbish and sewage to electricity and clean water, will revolutionise the 
world. And although some people, including chemical engineering experts, are 
deeply sceptical, others are fronting up with support and cash.
It’s a cold November day in a Washington DC parking lot, and Simon Romana 
from Te Hapua is standing beside the machine that he says will change the 
world. Mounted on a trailer unit stabilised by blocks, it’s a maze of pipes 
and chimneys, fans and engines, knobs and dials. One of the handful of 
reporters present, the Washington Post’s Eric Weiss, says it looks like a 
locomotive with its cover ripped off.

Fifty-year-old Romana, in dark glasses and with his black hair falling onto 
the shoulders of his tan jacket, tells the crowd of about 50 that the 
machine is a “gasifier” that can convert trash and sewage into 
pollution-free electricity and clean water.

Understandably, it has some powerful support.

Former mayor Marion Barry, the man once caught on camera smoking crack in a 
hotel room but now a popular councillor for this economically troubled city 
ward, tells the crowd that this is “the real stuff”. “This is not a sham, 
not a game.”

Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who in 1968 attracted 
47,097 votes in a run for President, stands in front of the machine and 
announces, “You’re looking at something that is going to revolutionise the 
whole world.”

Romana’s business partner, Windell King, wants to name the machine “The 
Simon”, after its inventor. King, a Native American from Akwesasne – a 
territory that crosses the borders of New York State, Quebec and Ontario – 
is the president of First NRG, the all-indigenous energy company running 
this show.

Unfortunately, the machine isn’t in action today. The pastor from the church 
across the street, Willie Wilson, a former friend of Barry’s, objects to its 
unsightly presence and is apparently afraid the machine will blow up if 
turned on. Looking at it, that seems a distinct possibility.

In the meantime, Barry wants the city to adopt Romana’s technology. That 
makes sense. If the machine is as wonderful as Romana makes it seem, it 
could solve waste-disposal problems and generate precious electricity in one 
fell swoop.

But that’s a big if. Romana has a history marked by overblown claims and 
false promises. His gasifier sounds too good to be true. If that’s the case, 
New Zealand’s reputation for innovation and its treasured clean green image 
could be compromised. And that’s to say nothing of the investor dollars 
being gambled on this Kiwi’s unproven technology, which, after all, is 
predicated on hot air.


Four months later, King and Romana, both dressed tidily in blue jeans and 
smart sports coats, are sitting in a truck-stop restaurant just outside 
London, Ontario. It’s after 10.00pm, and the two entrepreneurs are fresh 
from a business meeting with the Oneida Nation on nearby native reserve 
land. They’re hoping to build a gasification plant there that will generate 
electricity for the native people. All going to plan, spades will be in the 
ground by July. The contract, Romana says later, will be worth between $30m 
and $40m.

But that’s small beer. Despite only being in business for 15 months, they 
already claim to have an $85m contract with a Toronto garbage disposal 
company, and in December, they say, they signed a $300m deal with a 
Malaysian contractor, Nusantara Eco Management, that will see them pro-cess 
20 million tons of trash from Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital city. They’re 
also awaiting budget approval for a 30-day demonstration of their 
gasification technology for Washington DC’s Water and Sewer Authority to 
process some of the city’s sewage sludge – or “human manure”, as biosolids 
manager Chris Peot calls it.

“We think it has promise,” Peot later says of Romana’s gasification machine. 
So far, though, Peot has only seen a small version of the machine in action 
for an hour, “not nearly enough to satisfy us”.

One Malaysian source familiar with First NRG thought it very unlikely, 
however, that the company would have won such a large-scale contract from 
Jakarta; and the Toronto disposal company would neither confirm nor deny any 
contract with First NRG.

King, First NRG’s chief financier, who made his money in “native cigarette 
manufacturing”, was convinced of Romana’s technology within 15 minutes of 
meeting the Ngati Kuri Maori at Canada’s Assembly of First Nations Christmas 
party on December 10, 2004. “I don’t think anybody would be going around 
saying they could do something like that if they couldn’t do it,” he says 
later.

Romana presented documents and newspaper clippings as proof of his 
credibility, and explained the troubles that he’d had with the “white man” 
in Manitoba continually shutting doors on him. King called a business 
contact in Michigan and asked him to draw up a letter of intent by Monday to 
start work towards an electricity plant. He had it by Tuesday.

“The doors just didn’t open – they blew off the hinges,” King remembers. 
“Simon Romana and I could write a book from that morning to this moment and 
nobody would believe it.”


Gasification isn’t a new technology. For years, people have gasified oil, 
wood, coal, garbage and even chicken manure to generate energy. But it has 
its problems. It’s usually expensive and it’s often not energy-efficient. 
The process uses heat, steam and pressure to convert the raw material to a 
synthesis gas, consisting of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, as well as lower 
levels of methane and carbon dioxide.

There are four basic steps to take before that gas can be burnt in some kind 
of turbine or engine to generate electricity. Each step adds to the cost. 
The fuel has to be processed to a certain size – for instance, First NRG 
plans to compress rubbish into pine-cone-sized pellets – then you have to 
dry the fuel before cooling and cleaning the gas that it produces. Hot and 
dirty gas will clog or damage the engines or turbines where it is burnt to 
generate electricity.

Romana, who modified existing technology to produce his gasifier, says his 
machine has an advantage because it runs hotter, at 1760˚C, and cleaner 
than others, while producing byproducts of clean water and non-toxic ash. 
But he’s cagey when it comes to discussing just how it achieves this, 
preferring instead to say it’s his “magic” secret.

Back in the restaurant, a hungry Romana is slurping chicken soup from a 
small bowl. A video playing on a laptop beside him shows a gasifier in 
action in Manitoba, Canada. The shaky, handheld camerawork shows a small 
pellet being fed into a large metal contraption where it disappears for a 
while, then transforms into first steam, then a large flare from a chimney. 
The gas that fed that flare could power five or 10 homes, Romana says.

He speaks with enthusiasm and a twinkle in his eye that suggests both 
friendliness and a lively spirit.

Machines like the one in the video will help First NRG generate thousands of 
megawatts of electricity around the world, he says. He and King have met 
interested officials from Cuba, Hawaii, Tahiti and Malaysia, as well as the 
vice-president of Sudan, an adviser to a Saudi Arabian prince, and 
Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, whom they spoke to via video while 
visiting his palace in Caracas. By any measure, that’s a lot of power.

“First NRG has more power to produce in the world than all the supply of 
power in the New Zealand grid,” Romana enthuses. The company plans to build 
a number of mobile and permanent gasification plants capable of producing up 
to 50MW of electricity. First NRG would own and operate the plants.

The company has been negotiating with indigenous people to build 
gasification plants on native reserves. And now they say they have more work 
than one can imagine. It is, Romana says, the world’s first indigenous power 
company. “This is about indigenous people having the green power of the 
world.” He characterises the gasifier as a “humanitarian machine” that will 
benefit the poor. “The rich countries can pay for us to remove the garbage; 
the poor countries can use the thing to better themselves.”

He says some in the energy industry don’t want them to succeed. “They’re 
jealous. They hate it. It’s going to take a lot of money off people.”

Later, back at his hotel, Romana produces a spreadsheet from a valuation 
company that purportedly shows First NRG to be worth $3b.


The former MP John Tamihere remembers Romana well. “Has he set up shop over 
there?” Tamihere asks down the phone from New Zealand. Tamihere has known of 
Romana since 1992, when the two attended the same Maori community meetings 
in West Auckland. He didn’t hear of him again until 1997, when Romana 
resurfaced in Invercargill as chief executive of the Uenuku Murihiku Urban 
Authority, which Tamihere was involved with while chief executive of the 
Waipareira Urban Maori Authority.

Romana had great marketing skills, Tamihere remembers. “He’s got a blessing 
in that regard. He could sell ice to the Eskimos,” he says with a laugh. 
“But whether it’s ice or coal when it arrives, I couldn’t tell you.”

First NRG had considered patenting its technology, but ultimately decided 
against it because it didn’t want anyone to know how it worked.

At least one gasification expert finds that suspicious. The fundamental 
trade for getting a patent is that people know about the technology and you 
get a licence to use it, explains Otago University’s Dr Eric Scharpf, who 
has a PhD in chemical process engineering from Princeton University and 
extensive experience with gasification in Europe and the US. “They’re 
unwilling to make that trade – and that says something about their 
technology.”

He doesn’t believe these types of claims until he sees the technology in 
action, unless there is more than $100m behind the project and significant 
brain power – from a major university, national government or large 
commercial institution – with a name and reputation on the line.

Paul Watkinson, emeritus professor of chemical engineering at the University 
of British Columbia in Canada, also doubts First NRG’s claims. He’d be 
surprised if anyone had come up with a gasifier that bettered existing 
technology, some of which has been developed by major oil companies, such as 
Shell. “I guess anything is possible, but I’d be sceptical.”

Such scepticism is well-founded. Romana has a history of playing fast and 
loose with facts.

He left New Zealand eight years ago, after his wife chucked him out. He now 
lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is married to a Canadian. He has nine kids 
and four grandchildren.

He excelled at the Uenuku Murihiku Urban Authority. Win Murray, the chairman 
who appointed Romana to the job, says the authority paid him $300,000 – 10 
percent of the $3m he generated for the authority through property 
negotiations with the government. Murray, now a minister who prescribes 
nutritional programmes based on the Bible, was disappointed when Romana 
resigned, but says he left on good terms, telling Murray that he wanted to 
help disadvantaged people overseas. “He said, ‘I want to go and help the 
Indians.’”

Murray has known Romana for 20 years and describes him as intelligent and 
hardworking. But that doesn’t mean he is without flaws.

In a 1997 Southland Times article, Murray was forced to defend Romana’s 
appointment. The newspaper had brought to light Romana’s criminal record, 
which included assault and fraud charges dating back to the 1970s. Murray 
told the newspaper that he was fully aware of Romana’s history and that he 
had the authority’s full support.

For his part, Romana told the paper that he was pardoned by the 
Governor-General, Sir Keith Holyoake, on a 1978 fraud charge, and that, when 
convicted of a separate fraud in 1988 relating to the illegal installation 
of a telephone, he was actually taking the rap for his family. According to 
Government House, however, the only pardon Holyoake granted was in 1979 – to 
Arthur Allan Thomas.

In 1997, Romana was charged with several offences relating to a domestic 
dispute and was convicted of assaulting his flatmates in Queenstown. He said 
that assault was a result of his schizophrenia, which he had since brought 
under control with the help of medication.

But Romana’s troubles didn’t end there.

Aucklander Doug Williams, who says he taught Romana everything he knows 
about gasification, declares that Romana has made outrageous claims about 
the technology in the past.

“Simon became convinced that this technology was so wonderful he could do 
anything with it,” says Williams, on the phone from Northern Ireland, where 
he has been overseeing the work of Innovations Technologies Ireland Ltd, a 
licensee to the gasification technology that he developed at his company, 
Fluidyne Gasification.

Williams closed Fluidyne’s doors in 1998 because it was no longer 
commercially viable. He and the company had been developing gasification 
technology since 1976.

He first met Romana in 1995, when the two worked on an unsuccessful bid to 
use gasification to resolve West Auckland’s rubbish-disposal problem. After 
that, the two lost contact for five years, until, in 2000, Romana called 
Williams from Manitoba to tell him of the tremendous potential for gasifiers 
there. Reluctantly, Williams agreed to offer his assistance again and the 
two worked together on plans to build a large gasifier.

Things went to plan, more or less, until 2003 when Williams received a call 
from Romana’s then-business partner in Manitoba, Arthur Zegil, asking for 
help. Romana had resigned from Zegil’s company, SunGas Energy, and left 
behind a large gasifier that no one else knew how to operate. When Williams 
arrived in Manitoba, he found Romana’s gasifier had 28 major points of 
deviation from the plans. His heart sank. “It was so awful.”

Williams says Romana’s recent claims are “sheer fantasy”. “As long as your 
bum points to the ground, you couldn’t do anything like that.”

Romana’s former colleagues in Canada also express doubts.

Darren Schmidt, energy research manager at the University of North Dakota, 
in the US, says one of his staff members listened to Romana make such claims 
at a gasification conference in Manitoba in 2004. “We were unable to find 
any documentation to back up the claims.”

Home Farms Technologies, also based in Manitoba, employed Romana for a short 
time, but soon parted company with him because of questions over who owned 
his technology, and the fact it was unproven. “Certainly, there was 
definitely a credibility issue,” says Andy Butler, the company’s 
vice-president of engineering.

Dick Maxwell, the company’s president, couldn’t verify any of Romana’s 
supposed credentials or work history, and Romana didn’t provide proof of a 
work permit, despite requests. Says Maxwell, “Anything he said, I couldn’t 
get anybody to confirm it.”

When asked to respond to the doubts raised by scientists and his former 
colleagues about his technology and credibility, Romana told the Listener, 
“They can say whatever they want, I don’t care.”

He said he does have a work permit, and dismissed the criticisms as 
commercially motivated. “There’s a lot of money here at stake, and that’s 
what it’s about.”

He also suggested that they might be racially motivated. “Doug Williams is 
an Englishman, okay? And Englishmen have a long history of trying to f--- 
indigenous people.” Same for Maxwell, he said.

Maxwell provided the Listener with a copy of Romana’s resumé. On it the New 
Zealander claims to have a doctorate in physics, acquired some time between 
1974 and 1985 from Texas State University and Ben Gurion University in 
Israel. There are several problems with that. The first is that Texas State 
University didn’t exist until 2003. Before that, it went by the name of 
Southwest Texas State University. The second is that Texas State only offers 
up to a master’s degree in physics. As well, Ben Gurion University in Israel 
has no record of his enrolment under any of three names he has been known to 
go by – Simon Romana, Simon Norman or Simon Phillips – and its physics 
department couldn’t remember anyone of those names.

Romana told the Listener that he did, in fact, have a doctorate in physics. 
When asked where from, he replied, “If you’re going to write a story that’s 
just slanderous and trash … I won’t answer your telephone [number] again. 
Because I won’t put up with it, mate.”

Referring to the doubters, he said, “If they want a fight, they’ll get it.”


Under the heading “Interests” on his resumé, Romana listed his children and 
grandchildren, alongside playing piano and guitar and dreaming of a world 
without oil.

Williams sees sadness in Romana’s story. “On one hand I feel sorry for 
Simon, because he had a dream. There were people all around him helping him 
to make it happen, and he couldn’t help himself.”

He says Romana, suffering from a psychiatric illness, was offered help by 
his Manitoba partner Zegil and others, but he wouldn’t accept it. “They 
couldn’t control Simon. Nobody can control Simon.”

Romana’s vision could quickly turn to a bad dream – not only for his 
investors, or New Zealand’s reputation, or the Native Americans whom First 
NRG has been working with, but also for anyone involved with gasification, a 
promising technology that could do without the trappings of overzealous 
hype.

The final line in Romana’s resumé, under the heading “Tips”, offers an 
insight into his mind. Written there in plain black type are the seven words 
he lives by: “Anything you can imagine you can do!”