The Oil Drum

Thanks for picking up on the electrical power output. I completely missed it on the chart. Something doesn't quite add up, though, as my ballpark numbers now suggest that an efficient wood-burning power plant could produce at best about 139 GWh hours/year with 65,000 metric tons of dry wood. That would put the power value at about $6.9 million.

Assumptions:
65,000 mt = 65,000 x 2,200 = 143,000,000 lb wood/year
8,300 BTU/lb higher heat value
40% power plant thermal efficiency.

That depends.

If you let it grow freely and burn it in place, you get all the heat with zero diesel energy input ;-)

That should be mostly determined by the mode of transportation. Cheapest would be using waterways. I assume that the seeding, is a negligible expense, considering the high plant/seed weight ratio.

Then what's the point in existing if we are doomed to never get to days better than today?

There is no point. The universe is ateleological. No meaning or purpose or point whatsoever. It just is. Whatever inspired people to believe or expect otherwise is beyond me. Just accept the pointlessness and get on with your life.

Then what's the point in existing if we are doomed to never get to days better than today?

Is it really impossible to imagine a better life than today, without ruining our habitat or denuding it of energy?

By oxidizing organic substances that could be sequestering carbon in the soil as refractile humic & fulvic substances, you contribute to atmospheric warming...

Actually, I sequester carbon for a living. I suspect that my own carbon footprint looks better than yours...

Are you truly evil or merely a fool, Robert?

While I prefer to think of myself as truly evil, it could be that you just don't know what you are talking about. And in fact, that is the case. (That doesn't mean I am not truly evil, though).

Carbon contained in biomass comes mostly from the air, not the soil. It is possible to grow it in a sustainable manner. I have seen it done - with the residual ash returned to the soil. In fact, I recently stood on top of a pile of biomass 100 feet high, and a football field long. It contained almost no nutrients, and the owner was asking me to please help him find a way to get rid of it - other than just burning it. But there will always be impotent hand-wringers who don't understand the difference between strip-mining soil - which I have argued strongly against for many years - and the possibility of sustainable biomass.

Perhaps you could critique more effectively if you commented on what has actually been said, rather than your own distortion of it.
The proposals Robert has put forward clearly state that this is a solution which is limited in scope, appropriate to provide power where the use of electricity is difficult, for instance to power agricultural machinery which would be very difficult otherwise, thus providing more of the food you are ostensibly concerned about.
The use of animals for the same purpose would use far more cropland, around a third of all agricultural land.
He also clearly stated that the production of biogas and biodiesel would be acceptable only if done in a sustainable way.
You are obviously unaware that many sources of biogas currently produce only pollution, for instance the effluent both from humans and intensively farmed animals.

You, on the contrary, propose nothing of any worth to help.
Giving up is apparently your preferred option.
Before you make false accusations, perhaps you would present your own proposals.

darwinsdog, grow up. Get off your flippin' high horse, already.

I know nothing about you, but based on your postings here on TOD in the last couple months, I'd guess you are a university student, probably in ecology or related science, and definitely no older than your mid-20s. Your perspective is so extreme, it speaks of a profound immaturity. You remind me of that character in the "Twas the Night Before Christmas" (1974) cartoon special: the precocious, mechanically gifted mouse Albert, who spends so much time telling other people how little they know. Albert was smart, but he was not wise. And that's what he learns about himself in the course of the story. The jury's still out on you.

Look in the mirror, boyo: you're an "ecocidal ape" just like the rest of us. How much non-renewable energy do you eat up using the Internet? Even if all your tech is plugged into robust solar energy systems, or some treadle-driven mechanism you pedal as you type, all the infrastructure that traffics your thoughts into the glowing pixels we read is not only built on non-renewable energy, most of it is made with highly toxic materials that will not break down into more "natural" states until long after even our culture is no longer remembered.

You're deeply embedded in the system you profess to hate -- to varying degrees whether you want to be or not.

If you're so hard core and so pure: log off, stop using any cultural artifacts made of non-renewable/toxic molecules, then either go join the Old Order Amish or move into a forest and live off the land like a sannyasin.

If you're not willing to do that, then at least spare us all your insufferable editorializing. I, for one, already share your sense of eco-crisis and concern, and wonder if Homo sapiens will turn out to be no wiser than yeast in a jar of grapejuice. But I don't make the mistake of thinking that I am so much better than everyone else.

Robert is one of the most lucid voices on the web when it comes to Peak Oil and related issues. He is deeply concerned about the challenge represented by peak oil, yet thoughtful and measured in his responses. He spends a great deal of time, time taken away from his family and the rest of his life, sharing the fruits of his highly trained thinking and considered perspective with the Internet community. He is a valuable member of the TOD community. You, on the other hand, are so far little more than an extremist gadfly (if a well-educated one).

Quite simply there are too many people on the Earth.
They are only being maintained by industrialized agriculture.
By your reasoning it's a catch 22.
Since we are depleting the soil by our unsustainable practises then we're doomed.
BUT
If we try to maintain the soil then our productivity will drop so much that we're doomed too.

Which choice do you make Hobson?

I don't believe we have to scrub the gas, but there will iterations on the design. Looking at the Choren process, ours wouldn't require all the stuff to the right of the HTV for syn-gas production. Our gas is dry and clean right out of the box. There is no Fischer-Tropsch required. Some hydrocracking may be required for treatment of the liquids. I am simplifying somewhat, but comparatively the process is much simpler. It could still be considered neutral because the carbon emitted would be taken up by the new growth feed stock.

I think the trick may be to de-emphasize liquid fuels for transportation and think about the products for core energy uses mentioned in this thread such as farming, central heating, etc. That way we don't keep trying to force a feedstock into a less than ideal use and suffer the lower efficiencies and pollution.

A forestry note I got from a Forrester, young trees fix far more carbon than older mature trees. (Just watch your teenagers eat and you'll get the idea). This doesn't mean we should mow down the older forests. I am only bringing to light an uncommonly known scientific fact so we don't delude ourselves with delusions of Middle Earth Elvish utopias.

EP - could you run an energy balance on this process?

My energy balance of this system just isn't matching up with 45 MW of electric power output at all. It looks more like it may be 45 MW of thermal heat rejection, which makes comes out to a closer balance.

Some of the data in RR's stuff suggests it may actually be thermal heat. The summary says "45 MWth", and one of the graphics has 45 MW thermal tucked in the lower left hand corner. If this is the case, it does't necessarily produce any electric power at all unless you add another undocumented system that can extract electric power from the thermal heat. (low/med. pressure steam turbine, Rankine-cycle, etc.) The amount of power you would extract would depend on the temperature you can get it, but I'm guessing you'd be looking at about 30% thermodynamic efficient cycle at best, or 13 MW of electrical power output. Also, I didn't notice any data on internal parasitic electrical loads for the pumps, blowers, etc.

That is an odd statement to make since you know nothing of the particular project that he is engaged in.
Whatever may be the general state of the industry and it's practises, you are writing this accusation without any knowledge at all about the case in point.

Take a look at the Mountain Pine Beetle kill in the province. A 1/4" bug has done far more damage than we ever could. Because it was nature, does that make it acceptable?

If I surmise your points correctly and come to the logical conclusion, I would imagine the only solution would be to all gather at coastal locations, hold hands and take a long walk off a short pier and drown ourselves - all except one, which would be you so you can enjoy your environmental paradise.

Be part of the problem or else you are just noise.

There you go again spewing verbal hog crap. I'm grew up in the PacNW close to the timber industry. The salmon plight is due to damning spawning streams and over fishing, not logging. Not only that it has been proven time after time that younger forests not only sequester more C02 than old growth, but it also provides a much more robust habitat for the regional fauna. Oregon is already on it's THIRD cutting of MANAGED forests and the flora and fauna are thriving (except as you pointed out the salmon killed by falling old growth)...

They would use far less in total materials weight than current cars, so in fact large amounts of steel should become available for other uses, such as building wind turbines as the old SUV's are scrapped and the iron becomes available.
Most of the specialist bits in an ICC are not needed, EV's are far simpler, although not plug-in hybrids to the same extent.
The biggest difference is of course in the battery.
One of the variants of lithium is the current preferred choice, although there is a lot to be said for advanced lead acid batteries.
Substantial discussion of lithium reserves here has established that resources are entirely adequate to support a major switch to EV's, so the short answer to your question is no, there are no show stoppers.
Cost for the lithium batteries is still an issue, with even the relatively small batteries in the Th!nk costing perhaps half of the £14,000 price and giving far less functionality than an ICC.
Still, the cost is affordable to many, would maintain personal mobility with perhaps the occasional hire of an ICC for long trips, and batteries have very good potential for further improvement.