carbon sequestration/biomass fuel gasification

[Misternatural 0]

Here is a concept I wanted to put through the SC test

Biochar;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIp_0IVZ_MM&feature=related

http://www.eternagreen.com/biochar

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415

[billvon 3,118]

>I wanted to put through the SC test

What's that? Is that the "how soon will people argue over politics" test?

>http://www.youtube.com/...&feature=related

This is another way to produce cellulosic fuels (like ethanol.) It's a much, much better way of producing ethanol than using corn, and hopefully we will transition to it (or methods similar to it) soon. The other alternative is microbial breakdown of cellulose, which is also showing some promise.

[Misternatural 0]

>What's that? Is that the "how soon will people argue over politics" test?

well you have to moderate this place but
I actually get a fairly decent reality check by reading a wide spectrum of opinions here.

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415

[idrankwhat 0]

It looks like a nifty idea but you need to increase the temp to over 1000 degrees C to destroy the dioxins that are created in the 400-800 degree range they cite on their site. I certainly wouldn't want to cook my kids' dinner over that fire. And I damn sure wouldn't be doing it if the waste source was municipal waste water sludge.

[billvon 3,118]

>I certainly wouldn't want to cook my kids' dinner over that fire.

Eh, natural gas has all sorts of nasties in it as well. Hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide. Heck, utilities even add methyl mercaptan to natural gas, a toxic acid found in human stool. (It's what makes bad breath and farts smell so bad.)

But people cook their kid's dinner over that sort of flame all the time.

[idrankwhat 0]

Quote

>I certainly wouldn't want to cook my kids' dinner over that fire.

Eh, natural gas has all sorts of nasties in it as well. Hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide. Heck, utilities even add methyl mercaptan to natural gas, a toxic acid found in human stool. (It's what makes bad breath and farts smell so bad.)

But people cook their kid's dinner over that sort of flame all the time.

It's not the poop itself that's the problem. It's the all of the other goodies that run down the drain: brominated and chlorinated flame retardants, pcb's, musk compounds, anti-bacterials, surfactants......all sorts of good endocrine disruptors. Pretty much every compound we've looked for, we've found in sewage sludge.

[billvon 3,118]

>Pretty much every compound we've looked for, we've found in sewage
>sludge.

Right. And we've found a good number of them in natural gas, as well. But between the filtering that utilities do and the combustion process, it's generally not an issue. Both of those processes will apply to cellulosic fuels as well.

The primary issue, I think, is just going to be the "grossness" factor. No one wants to have anything to do with recycled water, despite the fact that it's cleaner than the water we pipe in from the Colorado (and has far fewer fecal contaminants.) I suspect the same will be true here. Which is no problem; most uses for syngas/methane/hydrogen will be industrial.

[idrankwhat 0]

Quote

Right. And we've found a good number of them in natural gas, as well. But between the filtering that utilities do and the combustion process, it's generally not an issue. Both of those processes will apply to cellulosic fuels as well.

The primary issue, I think, is just going to be the "grossness" factor. No one wants to have anything to do with recycled water, despite the fact that it's cleaner than the water we pipe in from the Colorado (and has far fewer fecal contaminants.) I suspect the same will be true here. Which is no problem; most uses for syngas/methane/hydrogen will be industrial.

My concern is not so much with the cellulosic energy products and by products. The problems with the yard waste would arise when additional materials such as plastics, bag of garbage, or the occasional old couch that was tossed in the wood pile. If you cook that stuff at an insufficient temperature, as they have posted on their website, you create dioxins and furans. Those have a tendency to bind to porous materials such as charcoal. So you're actually creating the dioxins in concert with a dioxin sink, where they will be sequestered until you burn the product. (one could argue that you might actually be producing hazardous waste) If you burn that product at sufficient temperatures, over 1000 deg C, then there's no problem. If you send bags of the stuff to third world countries so they can cook with it under an open flame then you would likely be doing them a disservice to put it mildly. That's why it would be extremely important to carefully monitor the source material. You could go from a great product to exporting hazardous waste very quickly.

I'm also not so worried about the idea of using sludge for energy production if, once again, it is burned at sufficient temperatures to destroy the compounds. The burned waste, now much lesser in volume, could be disposed of in a modern landfill. I like that idea much better than our current process of land applying (the dilution solution) half of our annual production of the stuff. The sludge of today is not the sludge of 50, or even 20 years ago. The philosophies used in disposing of it however are much older.

[Misternatural 0]

>you create dioxins....

http://dioxinfacts.org/sources_trends/sources.html

I have noticed new wood chip gasification facilities are being constructed frequently lately here and
this is a concern of mine also, I used to live near the Burlington Wood chip fired electrical generation plant and as clean and green as the facility was constructed to be, there was a groundswell of people who were worried about the dioxins being released into the air.

http://listserv.repp.org/pipermail/gasification_listserv.repp.org/2008-March/010255.html

Evidently one solution is to pyrolyse at a high temp 800- 1000 deg.C

Additionally much of the excitement about this new-{old} technology is the carbon sequestration aspect using the charcoal or biochar as a soil amendment, spreading it over vast agricultural lands and discing it into the soil. Tests have shown a dramatic increase in plant vigor when this is done. I plan to build a small gasifier but I don't yet feel comfortable adding charcoal to my soil for gardening until I know what chemicals are in that material.

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415