37 comments on Biofuel progress, a report from Dubuque
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I've just come inside from spraying a nasty chemical on a biofuel crop (synthetic pyrethrin on canola) and I'm wondering if it will even be possible Post Petroleum. The more I think about it the more I think the localised gasification/charcoal approach is best. Use not only garbage but roadside weeds that survive with or without FF input. Cook food and heat water with charcoal pellet stoves that work out a few cents per kilowatt hour equivalent, then put the ash on the garden. The really big hurdle seems not to be harvesting or charcoal making but gas-to-liquids technology. When that cost comes down I see at least a partial way forward.
The forest harvesting paper did mention that there is a liquid and gaseous product to the portable charcoal kiln, but gave no more details, and I don't know what they are, or what volume is produced. The problem with large scale burning of weeds is, as the switchgrass example noted, EPA wants an impact statement for the burning of each variety that will go into the furnace.
The liquid and gaseous products from the charcoal kiln are probably somewhere between the properties of bio-oil (a product of fast thermolysis at intermediate temperature) and the off-gas from torrefaction, with some tars thrown in. The process is going to turn carbohydrate into a product which is primarily carbon, so the byproducts will be rather wet.