 | Ghawar reserves update and revisions (1) | The Oil Drum: Europe | Do they have a 'responsibility' to supply us? |  |
41 comments on How a market for sustainable bio-energy is being developed
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
41 comments on How a market for sustainable bio-energy is being developed
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Personnel
Editors
Contributors
Peak Oil Primers
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
Vital Trivia
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Of course I like the sentiments in this list but how do you handle an industry in its infancy? Making a biomass-based industry adhere to these regulations may strangle a nascent industry that ultimately may surpass every one of the list items.
Interesting point about strangling a nascent industry.
Some people actually care about the long term with a different lens than that of profit.
Strip mining the soil is no less idiotic than strip mining anything else.
And the excuse of ignorance no longer applies. Expediency is still waiting its chance to show up center stage, though.
The regulations listed in the post address nearly all of my concerns as a rural land-owner. Although they are quite restrictive, the subsidy may more than make up for it.
This is an interesting way around the problems that fuel taxes face.
As another landowner, it has my vote too.
If anything we should be increasing soil organic matter and the North American cellulosic schemes based on agricultural biomass are very misguided in their calculations of sustainable biomass input material from agriculture.
I think flax in a minimum 4 year crop rotation with mobile pyrolysis has a lot of potential as a crop for fuel. The straw has to be burned anyway and the calorie level is high. Beyond flax, the amount of straw and stover that can be removed from cropland is very limited and the logistics of bailing and transporting straw to central cellulosic ethanol plants, plus the additional overhead of the process is questionable.
It's much simpler and has a better EROEI to grow flax in a rotation, kill it with preharvest Roundup (glyphosate) and convert it to woodgas, seed and all right on the stump. The compressed gas can then be transported to central processing plants and go through a gas-to-liquids process.
It's still very limited in scale, but it would be sustainable if the rotation was at least every forth year.
As a farmer (in Wales) with a medium sized hill livestock farm I manage about 60 acres of SSSIs
(a special protection classification termed "Site of Special Scientific Interest)
of which about 18 acres are under ancient oak coppice.
I see that the Dutch regime will, if the report is accurate,
block any usage of conservation designated coppice,
(or any land within 3.1 miles of such desgnated land)
for subsidized biofuels.
Given that such woodlands are plainly our oldest and most sustainable energy resource,
this seems to me sheer ignorant nonsense.
Almost as ludicrous a nonsense as proposing that the systematic use of Roundup
is sustainable when used to kill crops of flax.
Regards,
Billhook
I don't understand what you mean by this. My perspective is from Canadian dryland farming and my family owns two sections of dark brown soil zone land. What I am against is the proposal from Iogen and similar cellulosic ethanol ventures that wheat and barley straw and corn stover be used for biofuels.
My experience is north of the corn belt and with cereals and oilseeds. We also have a high enough organic content that wind erosion is not a problem. Cereal straw adds substantial organic content and shouldn't be removed, but canola and flax add almost none.
Although a crop rotation like this still has high fossil fuel input, I don't think it would cause topsoil degradation.
This would only be 1 in 6 years as a fuel crop with total biomass removal, otherwise all straw stays where it grew. In my location, unless land is fallowed every 3-5 years, perennial weeds (Quackgrass and Canada Thistle) start to become a problem. Summerfallow every six years with a preharvest glyphosate application in the rotation does a good job of controlling this. Putting the land through a additional 4 year alfalfa hay cycle prior to resuming the crop rotation is a sustainable plan.
You can do a much better job of soil stewardship by planting it into trees, but it's a little difficult to live on acorns.
one point
one in six years of fuel production, therefore 6 times the farmland would be needed for fuel.
I like eating at least 6 times more than driving. :)
There is no realistic way to scale biofuels to significantly offset fossil fuels in a sustainable manner. I would think that moving 1/6th of the farmland out of food production to fuel is a very high number.
People have to eat.
It makes more sense to have a fuel crop in a sustainable crop rotation than to intensively grow crops for fuel and degrade the organic content levels.
This is why I think the logistics of central processing plants for cellulose are difficult and not going to work. If you are going to harvest biomass for fuel from agriculture, it has to be in a sustainable crop rotation. This spreads out the crop over larger areas than the feasibility studies for cellulosic ethanol and other agricultural biomass schemes are accounting for.
The energy inputs of ethanol distillation from cereals are high, but at least it is less product to move to a central plant than the cellulosic-from-straw ideas.
I think that a mobile pyrolysis system that "upgrades" the biomass to a compressed wood gas in the field would make this type of idea possible in a sustainable crop rotation.
A farmer would have 1/5 to 1/6 of his land in a biomass-for-fuel crop and contract it out to someone with the specialty harvesting equipment to convert it to a higher grade fuel without transporting the huge volumes. Transporting compressed CO/H2 is much less expensive than moving millions of tonnes of straw to central plants.
It still doesn't scale very far compared to fossil fuel usage, but it's a better idea than central plants and intensive crop-for-fuel production in a limited area.
If you think biomass is too energy-intensive to transport, but you're going to ship wood gas to market (in what, tanker trucks?), you're not connected to reality.
For those who retain a solid connection to reality, I suggest reading up on torrefaction as a way to address the biomass-transport issues.
EP, be polite, these are just my ideas.
Torrefaction looks like a workable idea for reducing to a more energy dense solid. I was thinking about a gas-to-liquid fuel system or a combined cycle gas turbine. What do you do with the "enhanced wood pellets" after? Burn them?
I would think gas transportation to central processing could be pipeline or rail and managed the same as LPG or NG.
If you look at the composition of wood gas, you'll see that it isn't going to liquefy for you without huge capital and energy expenditures. The viable options are solids (charcoal, torrefied biomass) and liquids (bio-oil); I suppose that liquid fuels catalyzed from syngas might one day add to that list.
Anyone can have ideas. Perpetuüm mobiles are ideas. The problem is that the set of realistic, feasible ideas is much smaller than the set of nonsensical and foolish ones. If you won't vet your ideas against reality before posting, don't complain when your foolishness gets pointed out to you. You should be more courteous to others and do your own reality checks instead of expecting others to do it for you, or demanding respect for nonsensical notions.
EP: Thanks for your opinion.
What do you think about an idea like SHEC Labs Solar Hydrogen system that could be used for hydrogen->NH3/urea production?
I don't think that biofuels can scale much past being an energy source for agriculture. The gas wouldn't have to be processed to a liquid. There is nothing unreasonable about on-farm wood gas storage and compressed wood gas powered farm equipment. You might be right with the torrefaction idea if the biomass is going for heat/electricity, but I would think that CO/H2 in a combined cycle gas turbine CHP would be more efficient than moving pellets around and burning them in a traditional boiler. Something like flax when partially burned is a stinky sticky mess of linseed oil and resin and the straw would be difficult to handle if it wasn't reduced to a gas.
I think that solar energy for agriculture is a much better idea than biomass, but agricultural biomass can play a small role in meeting energy needs.
A report that claimed there is millions of tonnes of cereal straw and corn stover and that this can be taken from the soil and be sustainable doesn't make any sense. The USDA lowered those numbers, but they are still too high. The USDA comments and report that says: "Oh.. you don't just want your topsoil to not blow away, you want to actually be able to grow something on it?" "That changes our numbers, we'll have to study it for 5 years." isn't exactly useful.
Not having any understanding of the effort and energy required to bale and haul millions of tonnes of straw is understandable if you have never baled or hauled straw.
There is no cereal straw or stover available for consumer fuels. Especially for things like this:
(This was taken outside the SF Hilton just before it left for a tour of the wine country. Sorry, I couldn't get the whole Hummer into the shot)
Any excess straw should be staying were it grew, be used for bedding with manure going back to the land or be added to marginal land. At the very most it should be used for on-farm energy and heat and not consumer fuels. The sanest thing we can do as a society is improve soil organic content.
Growing a crop like flax or mustard with a high calorie content in a 5-6 year rotation explicitly for an on-farm fuel source is a good idea based in reality and running farm equipment on compressed gases is workable.
Making biomass fuels out of tonnes of government reports is another good idea.
Backstop is probably right and the best thing I could do with my 2 sections of farmland is plant it into trees and will it to my grandchildren with the condition they can't harvest the lumber and break it again until 2050 or so. When the oil, NG and topsoil are gone, 1200 acres of prime land with a couple of feet of topsoil will make a pretty decent inheritance.
I think you should target your link to the specific post (and preferably, an anchor inside it with the items of interest) rather than asking people to dig through your web site wondering what you're referring to. (The last time left me reluctant to bother again.)
Is there? Do you have any figures on:
In other words, have you done your homework this time?
You say you can remove grain, oils, and other products, but not stalks and leaves. Let's see facts and figures with cites to research papers, not your unsupported word.
I hope you haven't printed any of your own work on paper.
The original question had a link to the SHEC labs site. They built a pilot plant at the landfill a few miles from where I live.
Agri-Therm is the company I was refering to that is developing mobile pyrolysis on a trailer. All I was proposing was taking the pyrolysis right to the field. Obviously the lower the moisture content of the pyrolysis feedstock improves the pyrolysis efficiency and I have a lot of experience with pre-harvest Roundup application on cereals and oilseeds. The straw on a crop like flax can be killed and will dry to below 10% moisture standing. This low of a moisture content in the straw is difficult to accomplish once the grain is harvested and the straw is lying on the ground. If it isn't sprayed and direct harvested but swathed (windrowed) , you have to swath the crop relatively high to have enough stubble to support the windrow. The stubble would be left in the field and only the cut portion could be baled. If it's sprayed with a dessicant standing, it's vertical in the sun and wind and not lying and the ground and you can cut as low to the ground as possible. There are better dessicants than glyphosate, but it kills the perennial weeds not just the topgrowth. If the crop is going to fuel not food, there are many other dessicant options if perennial weeds aren't a concern.
I personally have grown many thousands of acres of oilseeds and cereals and custom sprayed over 75,000 acres. How's that for a figure?
Wood gas is not nearly as nearly as energy dense as fossil fuel products. Neither are torrefaction pellets or bio-oils. Gas turbines are very efficient engines and in the case of a combine harvester the drive system is diesel over hydraulic. Gas turbine over hydraulic or electric would be relatively easy to implement. We are talking about a $300k combine not a car, a gas turbine engine and compressed gas storage system isn't a high relative cost.
Are you serious? Every farm tractor we have bought in the last 30 years was ordered with at least the inside duals filled with fluid for added weight, even though the base GVW is 20 tonnes, they are never heavy enough for proper traction. A 200 HP 4wd farm tractor retails at close to $200k. The added weight or cost of a compressed gas storage tank isn't an issue.
A barely serviceable line of used equipment to farm two sections in Canada is a million dollar investment. A new combine is $300k, a tandem grain truck $80k, a bailer $40k, grain storage $1-$5/bu. Dealing with biomass in whatever fashion requires an equipment, energy and labor investment. You are arguing the wrong way by saying that moving the raw material around makes more sense than upgrading the material in the field.
The other major issue with moving raw straw around is weed transport. The mature weed seeds are going to be in the straw and if you bail it and transport it, you are moving the weed seeds. This is a serious issue. If the biomass is put through a pyrolysis process in the field and the char is left in place, there is no weed seed movement.
You have to remove the seed, otherwise I'm pretty sure the neighbors would laugh at you if you missed that part of grain farming. :)
I didn't say that you cannot remove any straw/stover, it is just much more limited than some of the reports floating around. In all cases composting biomass and adding to soil organic content should be the first priority, with fuel production only occuring on a sustainably limited basis.
I was proposing pyrolysis of the whole plant standing seed, stalk and all, but only in a sustainable rotation. If the seed is going to ethanol or biodiesel, I am proposing not going through the added energy and labour of harvesting the seed and then bailing the straw. You are probably right that torrefaction to a solid and bio-oils are a better idea than going all the way to wood gas, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make.
My point is that 10gal/hour of diesel in a $300k combine to harvest the seed, hauled in a $150k semi to an ethanol or biodiesel plant, and then bailing and hauling the straw to a cellosic ethanol or pyrolysis system is a lot of capital and energy investment. You cannot make up calories out of nowhere, there are only so many in the straw and seed. If both the crop and straw are going to end up as biofuel, simplify the system by "upgrading" the whole plant right where it is standing rather that adding a whole lot of processing.
Growing crops for food and composting the straw and then in a sustainable rotation growing a crop for energy and upgrading that biomass as close as possible to where it grew makes a lot more sense.
I have grown a lot of canola and flax. Some wet falls, the seed moisture is too high and we had to dry a lot of crop. With oilseeds in a 400bu propane batch dryer, you have to be extremely careful to not have the crop "lump up" and catch fire. I ended up doing a lot of custom oilseed drying (canola, flax, mustard) because of owning the equipment and having the experience. There were still many occasions where I almost turned a 400bu grain drying into a 400bu pyrolysis system. :)
As far as "doing my homework", my family has farmed for generations. My dad had a heart attack when I was 15 and I was farming 1500 acres on my own at that age. I also owned a custom spraying business and have worked for Agriculture Canada and in doing so have talked to a lot of western Canadian farmers.
If you want to discuss "homework", come up with $750k and I'll sell you my farm. Come up with another million or so for some serviceable equipment, $150k for first year inputs and $50k to cover fuel and a few prayers that it rains. Repeat for for 25 years with fixed market price and all inputs inflating. I'll wait for you and we can discuss the practical value of research papers you armchaired off the Internet when you get back.
Oh, SHEC. I had forgotten that I wrote about them a while back. I'm not sure that their sequestration scheme makes more sense than boosting the energy content of the gas before using it. Which one is best depends on the price of carbon emissions and the cost and carbon output of the avoidable emissions from the extra energy.
Bio-oil has roughly half the bulk energy density of fuel oil; call it 18 MJ/l to oil's 36 MJ/l. Torrefied biomass pellets have about 5 GJ/m^3 undensified, 20 GJ/m^3 densified (5-20 MJ/liter). Wood gas is in a class by itself... the slow learners. To start with, the combustible constituents only have about 300 BTU/ft^3 to methane's 1000+. On top of this, the product is only about 40% combustibles. If you are going to use a fuel gas with lots of nitrogen in it, you may as well get the nitrogen from the air around you instead of squeezing it into a tank and then then shipping it.
Quick calculation:
120 BTU/ft^3 = 4.5 kJ/l
At 200 atmospheres and assuming an ideal gas, this would be about 900 kJ/l. Even undensified torrefied biomass is almost 7 times better than that, and can be poured into a hopper.
It's strange that you would argue for pyrolysis in the field (emitting low-BTU gas where it either has to be used, stored or discarded) but then you talk about making wood gas remotely so that the gas has to be shipped. It's like you have no idea what considerations are important, even in your own proposals.
I don't have time to pick apart the logical inconsistencies, appeals to emotion, appeals to authority (your own over published papers) and other nonsense in your post, because I'm already late trying to pack for a trip. For that same reason, I won't be back to this discussion before it's closed. I did want you to know that you've come nowhere near satisfying a skeptical reader that you're any more than a crank, and your personal family tragedies have no bearing on your rectitude.
You are rude and obnoxious and go off on side points that make no sense. You have been advocating baling and moving millions of tonnes of straw and then berate me for the energy density of wood gas. That wasn't even my point, but if you want to get out your calculator, compare the energy density of straw bales to wood gas.
If you weren't functionally illiterate and actually read what I wrote, my point was in not baling and transporting straw and upgrading the biomass close to where it grew. Torrefaction pellets or bio-oil+gas are a good idea, depending on the fuel use, but I said that earlier. The Agri-Therm fluid bed pyrolysis system that I originally quoted is a BIO-oil plus gas system. In pellets, you are talking about moving all of the carbon off the field and then burning it to ash in another location or hauling char back to the fields. Reducing the biomass to char, harvesting gasses and leaving the char in the field lowers the output fuel, but it leaves the carbon in the field in a stable state which has value in carbon sequestion and soil fertility.
My statement on farming at 15 wasn't an emotional plea (besides my dad is now 75 and healthy), it was a statement that I have 25 years of practical farming experience, and you probably have never seen a baler or a combine up close, never mind owned or operated one. And beyond that, I later put myself through college while working a full time night shift at NorTel. You have an assumption that a lack of university degree implies a lack of intelligence, which is a very narrow view and one not shared by my current or previous employers.
You have no concept of the energy or effort involved in baling and loading millions of tonnes of straw and your armchair farming document misses this completely and although the concepts you present look good from your armchair, they are totally disconnected from reality.
Besides that, what point are you making with wood gas density anyway? It's not difficult or very expensive to have large tanks. It's certainly easier than baling and moving straw to a slow torrefaction process or a central boiler. Dropping charcoal in the field and not burning it all the way to ash in a central location is a better idea for carbon capture, regardless of the energy density of the fuel product.
In whatever case, I spent a couple of hours last October on biomass and realized that although there is a small scale potential if the system is very efficient, it won't scale very far while maintaining proper soil stewardship and certainly not to the level you are claiming.
expat said,
"Strip mining the soil is no less idiotic than strip mining anything else."
Well, since you brought up the comparison, how long do you think the coal industry (strip mining in particular) in the U.S. would survive if it had to conform to the above set of rules?
This once more, seems comparable to the whole EROEI argument: You make the newest youngest industries conform to standards that the oldest industries, which by the way have vast amounts of both energy and capital already invested as sunk costs over the last 8 or 10 decades, comply to arcane standards which the oldest will never have to comply with.
It could be called "protection of the status quo" legislation, or "kill the newcomers in their crib" protocols, but that would be cruel (the truth usually is....)
RC
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Since this is European legislation, it is a bit different than protecting the status quo - though Europeans enjoy their status quo very much.
Instead, it is an attempt to set up a process which will function over a longer term than someone cashing out for personal profit. It likely won't work that well - cashing out for personal profit regardless of any other consideration seems to be the dominant metaphor of our world over the last two decades. Or last two centuries - it just seems somehow more respectable in the age of ExxonMobil CEO retirement packages and climate change denial.
As the Dutch are a bit more worried about rising sea levels than most, their idea of both status quo and expediency has a different framework.
Actually, there was a bit of a pun hidden in that stripmining the soil - the Albertan 'soil' is being stripmined right now for oil, as that was considered a more practical alternative than scaling back transportation and using realistic approaches for fueling transportation for a longer time frame.