Home Biomass Power Generators

TLouden writes "The Rocky Mountain News had an article today about Community Power Corp. and its new BioMax unit which uses renewable resources such as corncobs, sawdust pellets, and coconut shells to produce electricity. This gasifier unit isn't commercially available yet but we might be seeing it sometime in 2004."

Comments

Always a catch.

[Torgo's Pizza]

Coconut shells? Darn. Too bad that in North America we don't have enough African Swallows to supply them.

Re:Always a catch.

[Unregistered]

maybe 2 European swallows carried it

Re:Always a catch.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they'd have to have it on a line.

Re:Always a catch.

[BadluckShleprock]

Maybe it could grip it by the husk

Sounds like..

[erpbridge]

Yes, I think it might be...

Mr Fusion!!!

Re:Sounds like..

[marko123]

To make more sense, you might like to show them the rest of the bike

Re:Sounds like..

[Anonymous Coward]

Interface looks the same, but as for function only if F-u-s-i-o-n is spelled like m-o-z and both will be ready ( low beta ) in 2004 or realsoonnow ... hehe

Re:Sounds like..

[Xaoswolf]

What is the world comming to when a Monty Python joke beats the obvious Mr. Fusion joke?

Corncobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corncobs eh? Will there be a kernel patch to support this type of power?

Re:Corncobs?

[Gherald]

> Will there be a kernel patch to support this type of power?

Yes, but you'll want to load it as a module because corncobs aren't allways in season.

Re:Corncobs?

[marko123]

Patch Installed

Wait a minute.

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have a home biomass generator. Oh, you mean a home biomass power generator....

Hello, McFly?

[mopslik]

...corncobs, sawdust pellets, and coconut shells to produce electricity...

Prior Art?

Practical?

[The Eye of the Behol]

It may be clean and efficient, but is it practical? Will it provide enough energy to fuel America, and will we be able to produce enough matter to fuel it?

Re:Practical?

[Gherald]

> Will it provide enough energy to fuel America, and will we be able to produce enough matter to fuel it?

Nothing so grandiose. Its for people really paranoid about blackouts who just can't survive for more than a day without a microwave and dishwasher.

Re:Practical?

[bobbozzo]

Dude, you're talking about methane emissions (surplus methane generated by other processes).

This would be BURNING the methane, which would produce CO2 and H20, similar to burning natural gas.

I have never heard that burning methane is any worse than burning any other carbon-based fuel.

Re:Practical?

[ed333]

So how much energy does it take to heat 60 pounds of wood chips to 800 C? What kind of efficiency can this thing possibly have?

Re:Practical?

[Gherald]

You are correct, bobbozzo. Isn't it funny how people get modded +4 or 5 insightful for making bogus claims?

Re:Practical?

[lucifer_666]

it's about energy self-sufficiency and the whole middle-easter instability thang.

middle-easter.... hehehehe :-)

Re:Practical?

[Gherald]

> What kind of efficiency can this thing possibly have?

Well according to the article 60 pounds of wood chips is turned into 20 kilowatt-hours of energy, which is enough to run an average home for about a day.

Re:Practical?

[benjamindees]

The gasifier, along with the engine's coolant and exhaust, produces thermal energy, which can be used to heat water or dry grain.

This is a cogeneration unit that uses the excess thermal energy to heat your home or whatever. Such systems can be very efficient when designed as heaters, with the side benefit of producing electricity.

All we need now is a residential ammonia-absorption cooling system so that it can be used in the summer as well.

Re:Practical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes. All those leftover chocolate bunnies are one of the free world's primary sources of (caloric) energy...

Re:Practical?

[rgmoore]

Not only that, but biomass is essentially a closed cycle. All of the CO2 that you're generating is coming from plants that recently took that same CO2 out of the air, so there's no net addition of greenhouse gasses. This is a direct contrast to fossil fuels, where the carbon was previously buried in the ground for millions of years.

Re:Practical?

[Dashing Leech]

> All of the CO2 that you're generating is coming from plants that recently took that same CO2 out of the air, so there's no net addition of greenhouse gasses.

And, it can apparently reduce your garbage output unless (a) you are already composting, or (b) you only use woodchips instead of food leftovers (assuming you don't normally eat woodchips).

Re:Practical?

[Cumstien]

I agree, I did not see that the gasifier could produce enough energy to power itself. If it could eventually power itself, then you would still need to give it an initial additional energy source, perhaps another gasifier. Yes, that's it, you simply need a large chain (or grid ;) ) of gasifiers. That and you need to ignore the laws of thermodynamics.

"Lisa! in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics."

Re:Practical?

[warpSpeed]

Not only that, but biomass is essentially a closed cycle. All of the CO2 that you're generating is coming from plants that recently took that same CO2 out of the air, so there's no net addition of greenhouse gasses. This is a direct contrast to fossil fuels, where the carbon was previously buried in the ground for millions of years.

Burning fossil fules is closed cycle too, it is just that the time line for the cycle is much much longer...

Re:Practical?

[b-baggins]

So explain to me why it is OK to put carbon back into the environment that was trapped for 5 years in a tree, but it's horrible to put carbon back into the environment that was trapped for a million years in an oil field?

Was the Earth a seething runaway greenhouse ball of scathing heat before all the carbon was miraculously extracted out of the environment and safely buried into coal beds and oil fields?

Burning oil doesn't add NEW carbon to the atmosphere, it simply restores carbon that used to BE in the atmosphere.

If you think about it, the whole logic of burning fossil fuels making the world uninhabitable is flawed logic. That carbon was out in the atmosphere before the oil and coal formed, and the Earth was quite habitable at that time.

Re:Practical?

[jutulen]

As methane is far worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2, it seems better to burn the methane and get the lectricity than simply let it contribute to our already plentiful supply of greenhouse gases.

Re:Practical?

[drjzzz]

That carbon was out in the atmosphere before the oil and coal formed, and the Earth was quite habitable at that time.

Sure, but inhabited by what? Many organisms also survived meteor impacts, etc., but humans wouldn't. Do you dispute that the oxidizing atmosphere that we enjoy and require was produced by relatively simple organisms that reduced atmospheric CO2 to form hydrocarbons (CH2)?

Re:Practical?

[rgmoore]

That carbon was out in the atmosphere before the oil and coal formed, and the Earth was quite habitable at that time.

The question is not whether the Earth would be inhabitable in the sense that life would still be possible; it clearly would be. The question is whether the climate change would be so disruptive that it would cause us major problems, which it also clearly would.

If we were to burn all of the fossil fuels in the world, there's good reason to think that this would raise global temperatures by about 5-7 C (9-13 F). That's a huge change, and would be enough to make life very unpleasant for a lot of people. In France right now, for instance, they're blaming a recent heatwave for over 5000 deaths; having weather even hotter than that every year would not be a good thing!

And that's just the direct effect of things being warmer. There are all kinds of nasty indirect effects, like changes in global weather patterns. Some areas that currently get plenty of precipitation might rapidly turn into deserts, and vice versa. Even if that didn't decrease global food supplies, it would probably force large-scale shifts in the global economy with all the upheaval that implies. And then there's the risk of melting the polar ice caps, which would be terrible for costal areas. A comparatively small rise in sea level would completely devastate a country like Bangladesh, for instance.

Re:Practical?

[hesiod]

> The new site will feature one or two normal Slashdot stories, followed by ten daily articles about , and SCO related information.

So, how does that differ from Slashdot now? I don't get it.

Re:

[Corporal Tunnel]

I have a much more fun way of generating bio-mass heat without polluting.

Will it?

[insecuritiez]

Burn AOL CDs or will we have to wait for the upgraded toxic waste burning model?

Re:Will it?

[filesiteguy]

Acutally AOL CD's are hanging from my fruit trees to ward off birds. They work great and are much cheaper than mylar strips. Bring 'em on AOL.

Sooner then later

[mao che minh]

This is probably where things are going (albeit in the distant future). Most of our power comes from sources that aren't feasibly replenishable, such as coal and oil. There aren't a whole lot of huge waterfalls around or places to build dams, so hydro-electric plants aren't going to solve the problem. Solar power is a way to go, but it is rather expensive. Wind power is always uncertain.

In short, natural sources of energy aren't enough. We will have to start getting creative soon.

Re:Sooner then later

[sllim]

You are a sucker.
There is an enormous amount of Oil waiting to be dug up. Hell, the US is sitting on an amount that could keep us independent for quite some time.

In fact, there is some speculation that we may be wrong about how oil is made. There have been some observations made in the ocean oil feilds that suggest old and used up oil reserves are somehow being replenished.

It isn't that I (or anyone else for that matter) is against different forms of energy.
Oh sure, the liberals like to paint us like that, but it just isn't the case.
It is that we are kind of in a 'The Devil you do know is better then the devil you don't know' mentality.

Solar, Wind Power, Garbage Power (try saying that with a straight face), hydro-power, hell even nuclear power; we just don't know nearly as much about these forms of energy as we know about Oil, Gas and Coal.
And that is where I get worried. We have all these people just screaming there foolish heads off that we are in some sort of crisis. Truth is, we are not in any sort of crisis. You enviromentalist nuts out there have created an unintended safety for us. Because you are so stubornly against us drilling for oil in the US our country is in a position where the oil fields of the world could dry up, or OPEC, Russia, South America and Iraq could decide to stop selling to us and we would be able to pump our own oil on our own soil and be fine!

I say we should sit tight and allow technologies to improve. Let's learn about all the nasty effects of these alternate sources of energies.
Lets get them to where they are equal in the efficeincy of Oil, Gas and Coal and then we can allow the market to absorb the newer forms of energy production.

No need to panic.

Well now that I am done that, it is time for some bonehead that isn't capable of considering an opposing viewpoint to moderate me 'troll' or 'flamebait' status.
What if the children hear what I have to say?

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Solar power at the moment is a waste of energy. It takes about 15years for a solar cell to reach the break even point; where the energy it cost to make the solar cell equals the energy it produced. That doesn't mean you can't make energy from it in the meantime, but does mean your solar cell was subsadised by some other electrical generation system.

Also there's a butt load of coal on this planet, but most people wouldn't really want to live in a world that's been powered by only coal for a few generations. At least a quarter of the energy in the US is produced by coal. (BP has the official numbers for the curious ~ 570million tones of oil equivalent from coal, and a total consumption of around 2,350)

As for wind power it is always left up to weather, but more than that it tends to have a destructive effect on the rest of the power grid. You can look up on google why a lot of the wind farms are paid by power companies to keep broken wind generators off (the law only requires that you so many built, but doesn't require that they be operational).

Re:Sooner then later

[jtroutman]

Conversions of solar power to electricity through photovoltaic cells is quite expensive.
One company, Energy Innovations, has an interesting new approach using a Stirling engine and solar mirrors. This could prove to be a cheap way to bring solar energy directly to your home. As long as certain engineers don't start getting mysteriously shot in the head that is.

Re:Sooner then later

[DakotaSandstone]

Could we keep using oil forever? Sure. Heck, even if we ran out of traditional oil, there'd be almost limitless oil shale deposits. We'd just need to get an economy of scale going to make them cost effective.

But should we continue using oil, coal, etc? When we have purple air quality days in cities where it's unsafe even for olympic atheletes to exert outdoors? I sincerely hope you aren't so blind to the effects oil and gas consumption have on our air that you have never noticed how the air sometimes turns yellow in some cities??

"Not in some sort of crisis?" I suppose next you'll tell me fresh drinking water isn't a big 21st century issue, since "I can obviously just go turn on the tap and get clean water."

Open your eyes. It's a big world out there.

Re:Sooner then later

[ncc74656]

One company, Energy Innovations, has an interesting new approach using a Stirling engine and solar mirrors.

UNLV has similar solar-power rigs at the far northern edge of campus. This page has more info, and some pictures...they're two different designs from different companies and can supply up to about 50 kW for the pair. Some solar A/C info and other stuff is further down the page as well.

Re:Sooner then later

[heli0]

"at least a quarter of the energy in the US is produced by coal"

Actually it is over 50%.

Total Electric Power Industry Summary Statistics

Energy Production (Thousand MWh)
All Energy Sources: 303,091
Coal: 154,690

Re:Sooner then later

[kilgore_47]

I say we should sit tight and allow technologies to improve. Let's learn about all the nasty effects of these alternate sources of energies.

Please, go on, tell us what kind of "nasty effects" wind and solar power have in store . . .

(I know, I know, IHBT :)

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't that I (or anyone else for that matter) is against different forms of energy.

no, just against good grammar :)

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

"tell us what kind of "nasty effects" wind and solar power have in store . ."

They consume 2x as much energy(produced from coal most likely) to build as they ever produce in a decade. Solar cells also require toxic chemicals to build which then have to be stored in barrels underground for 10,000 years.

Re:Sooner then later

[Waffle Iron]

Check out the hydrogen-fueled V8 bus engine towards the bottom of that page. I think that people would gladly pay a premium for alternative fuel vehicles if it meant that they could have that kind of intake manifold sticking out of their hoods.

Re:Sooner then later

[dupper]

(screen lights up)
(flickerflickerflickerflickerflickerflicker)
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...
(black)

Scientist: Hello, and welcome to Larami Children's Fun Sticks presents 'Our Friend, the Atom'

Etc...

Re:Sooner then later

[toddestan]

Most of the power on the planet comes from solar energy! Where did all that coal and oil come from? Plants. Where do plants get their energy? The sun. Wind power and hydro power are also just solar energy, as they depend on weather patterns, which of course only happen because of the sun's energy. There are few sources of energy that aren't from the sun - nuclear, geothermal, and tidal are all I can think of. Only one of those sees much widespread use.

All this talk about biomass is just another way to harnass the sun's energy indirectly, as all pretty much all life on the planet gets it's energy from the sun, either directly (plants) or indirectly (animals that eat plants, or animals that eat animals that eat plants, etc.). The idea is let mother nature do some of the work of gathering and storing the energy for us, in a manner that's relatively clean and environmentally friendly - because using the solar energy she stored in coal and oil will not last forever and has taken a huge toll on the environment.

Re:Sooner then later

[G-funk]

Please, go on, tell us what kind of "nasty effects" wind and solar power have in store . . .

Apart from the horrid chemicals involved in solar panel production?

Imagine the fucked up effects wind power would have on the weather if we had enough generators to actually be useful?

The short answer is, unless there's a MASSIVE breakthrough in solar technology, nuclear power (fusion or fission) is the only long term answer.

Re:Sooner then later

[afidel]

Bullshit!
Photovoltaics have a payback time in energy terms of around 1-1.5 years. Economic payback comes much later of course. See This and This one

Re:Sooner then later

[mao che minh]

A sucker would be a person that would plan their future upon the assumption that our natural resources are somehow magically regenerating at a rate faster then we are depleting them. It is also quite a feat to ignore the effects of their pollution.

As it stands, no good evidence concludes that relying on coal and oil for energy is a good long term bet. That is why I leave such decisions to scientists that know better. They tell us that oil won't last forever.

I am not ignorant enough to even consider politics in the equation.

It must be nice to be stupid enough to place one's future in opinion and fancy, though. It must a be a comfortable place you dream (and live) in grasshopper.

Re:Sooner then later

[jtroutman]

Yes, I've seen these before. I believe something like this is currently being used for power at Los Alamos. The difference is scale. The power generators being proposed by Energy Innovations are much smaller, only generating a proposed 250 watts (vs 50,000). They expect to be able to market this for only $250 per unit though, so it will be feasible to string 4-6 across your home's roof and get off of the grid (as long as there is sunlight)... I don't know if they have made provisions for power storage in case of inclement weather, but I do know that some power companies work on a "credit" type of scheme. If you pump more power up the grid than you are using you get credit for it and can draw power back down for free later.

Re:Sooner then later

[sllim]

Ummm wind power is only good as long as the wind is blowing.

Seriously, most parts of the country do not have a guarenteed constantly blowing wind.
Then there is the land area needed to sit the windmills on. Windmills are not really that efficient. It takes many of them (running consistantly as well, see my first point) to replace a decent size power plant. You are talking about enormous tracts of land that could be used for many, many things.

Course before you put up the windmills you have to deforest that tract of land....

And solar power...
Same problem really. Overcast days are as bad as night time. If you want to guarentee a consistent energy supply from the sun then you must also guarentee consistant access to it.

Once again it isn't that I am against any of this stuff. Hell, that wind farm they want to build off Martha's Vineyard is perfect in so many ways. Take a look at the hypocrits that are against that....
I am for building wind farms and solar farms in areas that can support it.
I am against these structures in areas where the justification is political and not scientific as well as in areas where the land can be put to better use.

Re:Sooner then later

[sllim]

On the contrary.
Those 'scientists' you refer to are for the most part politicians.

Do you care to submit to us for review information that supports your claim that the Earth has a big gas gauge on it and it reads 'E' for Empty?

Go looking for it and see where you end up.
My thing is that I am distrustful of pretty much everyone as a rule.
Take the greenhouse theory.

Just in the last month the claim was made that South Africa is hit hardest by the greenhouse theory (I will not call it an 'effect' until I see proof).
Let me get this straight, the US is the biggest consumer of 'evil' energy. We won't sign the Koyoto accords and we are huge polluters.
Why isn't it us?
For that matter why is it on pretty much the other side of the globe?

Something occured to me about the greenhouse theory a long time ago.
If you really wanted to nail this thing as either existent or non-existent and if you wanted to measure it and be spot on and defining then there is only one place to start...
The last Ice Age.
Think about it, that is what we are talking about. The Earth does have trends where it is sometimes cooler and sometimes warmer.
In order for the greenhouse theory to hold water, and especially if you want to blame it on humans and not, say cow flatulance, then you must demonstrate that any temperature fluctuations you are recording are not part of the natural order of the earths environment.

So the last Ice Age was what, something like 20,000 years ago?
How long have human beings been taking accurate and consistant recordings of our weather patterns?
Like 100 years now. And how long have we been taking super-duper accurate readings of our oceans? Something like 20 years now.

So you are telling me that in a 100 year period you have this data that shows a bit of a spike in temperature trends and that you can compare that with a 20,000 year period in our history and that is conclusive of anything?

Just who do we think we are? I am no statician, but I don't believe that those numbers can show any meaning.
Hell, just 20 years ago Spock was on TV telling us that the Oceans were going to freeze over and NYC was gonna have ice bergs in Times Square.

How in just 20 years did we get from ice bergs to the obliteration of the polar caps?

When I want to see the science of this stuff all I ever end up being presented with is some kook that is more political then scientific reffering to a study that someone that he/she/it knows once read on the internet about this stuff.

I have yet to see these things with my own eyes.

A couple years ago /. had a story about a distributed computing project that was going to forecast the weather out like 500 years.
I was very, very curious about this thing.
And at first it had potential. Hell, I still think it was a good idea.
They were going to come up with a zillion global weather models and run them all at least twice.
The first time they would use data that was designed to generate a prediction for years 1900-1950.
The second time was going to be the weather much farther out.
The logic is obvious, if the computer nails the 1900-1950 then you put more faith in the farther out results.

There were technical problems with this project, but they are not really important. Nothing that could not have been cleaned up in revisions of the client.

However when I read the web site in detail I came across some disturbing things. The people putting out the project said that they were paranoid that the oil industry had a lot to fear from there project. They felt that the distributed computing model was open to sabotage from the oil industry. They said that they pretty much already knew what sort of results to expect, and no matter how accurate the 1900-1950 predictions were if the latter results didn't fall in line with there expectations then they would throw those results out. Obviously the oil companies had sabotaged there work.

Re:Sooner then later

[sllim]

Actually I have never seen the air turn yellow anywhere.
What exactly are you smoking?

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't LA have a huge smog problem in the 70's? Haven't they come a very long way towards fixing it?
How do those people in LA get around since they outlawed automobiles?

Is it possible, that maybe, just maybe, technology was the answer to LA's problems?

See there are other solutions.

As for your yellow air, I do believe you need your eyes checked, or a drug screening.

Re:Sooner then later

[pigscanfly.ca]

Its called nuclear . Nice , clean [most of the time] . Nuclear truly is the "waive o the future" . Most other power generation methods arent reliabile (wind , solar only provide power at certain times and are prohibittively expensive) other more traditional methods (hydro , coal , oil) have a more finite supply than nuclear . Despite all of the propoganda from both sides , I would look at it this way . If nuclear is realy as dangerous as the activists say then we are f*cked allready . If its as safe as the companies say then get cracking . I want more power :-)

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

you start out by calling someone a sucker and indicate that someone who isn't capable of considering an opposing viewpoint is a bonehead?

I suppose it takes on to know one.

The "sucker" said it is time to start getting creative about energy sources. How are we going to sit tight and let technology improve if there are no 'creative' technologies to let improve?

The "sucker" said we are depending primarily on non-renewable resources...and this is true, except for some 'speculation' that there 'might' be some replenishment.

I don't think there is an immediate crisis. In fact I'm a chemical engineer whose career pretty much depends on oil refineries. I also don't think that oil will be replenished at a rate equal to our current or future consumption (if alternative sources of energy are not found). So that means we WILL run out. Maybe not in our lifetime or even the next generation, but some people tend to think ahead. Sorry that you can't.

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

Man lay off the dope. Yellow Air? In Las Vegas NV? Never!

Las Vegas? Talk about a total WASTE of energy resources. The power required to keep that town lit at night is a serious crime against humantiy. People who live there are weapons of mass distruction and should be put on trial in international courts of law as war criminals and for crimes against humanity. Your personal choice to live in Las Vages is killing the Amazon basin single handedly. You are a international war criminal and dispoiler of the environment do you know how many baby seals and dolphins are killed every day so you can live there? Do you!

LA still has a huge smog problem but that is to be expected from the second largest mexican city on earth. Look how much better it is air quality wise than #1 Mexico city. It will be better when Cruz Bustamante is our new governor and gets all that good enviromental advice from Nancy Pelosi. Hell. Pelosi is so good at voting for and getting exemptions of Air Quality Standards for the San Fransisco Bay area she can give him the best advice. He will have no problem not complying with federal clean air (and water) mandates with her expert help in weasling out of having to comply. Being a radical left wing democrat helps her more than you can imagine. Those laws are just for republican administrations anyway everyone knows that. Just ask the people who drive SUVs in Marin county that bankroll and elect her.

Face it Mr. and Mrs. Limpdick, nuclear power is comming to a location near you. The people of the US will not put up with not having a better or seeing a decline in the quality or quanity of their lives. No amount of chicken little propaganda or healy feely mumbo jumbo or rock rubbing is going to stop it. The US will see an increased use of oil and gas. Bush is talking about fuel cells. Has anyone checked out what CheveronTexaco wants to fuel them with? Thats right children GASOLINE. So do you think the sheeple will object to more exploration and drilling as it becomes more obvious that having a bunch of folks who might be unable to provide oil when they have a Islamic revolution in their counrty? Or they just decide they don't like the US. They already did that once before, remember? Hell ask anyone from the middle east "George Bush is a jew and the all the US congress and senate is Jews. Jews run the US and own all the business." That is what passes for "fact" in most middle eastern media. They make sure to repeat this several times each day. If you have not noticed they have really bad religous issues with jews. Selling the US oil is not what they want to do. They would just as soon we all die. Europe doesn't have to worry as they know Europe hates jews as much as they do. ( They may be right too. )

Nuclear Power NOW. Neveda is only good for storing nuclear waste and mob run gambling industry. Start looking for Oil NOW. Lets not wait until we have a real crisis. No way we are going to have space travel with out depending on Oil and nuclear power in the short term to get there.

IF all you can do is complain about the spelling a grammar we will assume you agree with all the above.

Re:Sooner then later

[bhima]

You're so wrong I don't even know where to begin. But I'll start here: once it takes more energy to extract the oil from where ever it is and what ever it is in than you get out of it, who cares how much is in 'reserve'? It a loosing proposition. As far as 'replenishing oil fields':

Oh wait... stop. This must be flame bait...

Re:Sooner then later

[Hektor_Troy]

Then there is the land area needed to sit the windmills on. Windmills are not really that efficient. It takes many of them (running consistantly as well, see my first point) to replace a decent size power plant. You are talking about enormous tracts of land that could be used for many, many things.

Maybe someone could come up with a brilliant plan to not use land for windmills. Maybe they could be placed out to sea. Someone could probably even figure out how to place entire windmill parks out to sea. Maybe they'll place them tens of kilometers from the shore, so as to avoid the "eye sore" freaks. Who knows what people will come up with? Maybe they'll even figure, that you can use much BIGGER mills out to sea. Maybe someone should patent those ideas.

No, wait - it's been done for quite a while now. Who'd have thought it ...

Re:Sooner then later

[Rostin]

When I worked for A Really Big Oil Company Which Shall Remain Unnamed I was presented with a statistic that said that more bald eagles died in (I think) 2001 b/c of collisions with wind generators than were killed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear fuels take a lot of energy to mine, process and transport securely and safely. Nuclear plants cost more than other plants to build and maintain. More precautions need to be taken against accidents and attack (which would require some sort of military defence), and that costs more money. Nuclear waste remains radioactive for millions of years, and so needs to be stored securely and safely for this amount of time. Can you guarantee that the waste will be safe and secure for millions of years, against human and natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes)? At present there is only one permanent storage facility for nuclear waste in the whole world, and it was opened only last year. Most nuclear waste is either stored on-site (which is unsafe) or shipped/trucked to another location. What if there was an accident during transportation, or even a terrorist attack? What if terrorists got a hold of this nuclear waste and decided to use it in a 'dirty bomb'?

Older reactors should to be decommissioned for safety reasons, but it is far cheaper to keep them running. Decommissioning is very expensive, and to date only one reactor in the world has been successfully decommissioned. The plant site needs to be protected from human contact for millions of years to prevent radiation exposure.

Re:Sooner then later

[bear_phillips]

You are talking about enormous tracts of land that could be used for many, many things.

The land that windmills are on is usefull for farming. Many farmers make more by leasing their land for windmills, than the make on crops. The bonus is that the windmills can go on the land, plus cows can still graze on the land around the windmill. The land footprint of a windmill is relativly small. http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/06/14/wind.power/

Re:Sooner then later

[sllim]

Which is true, but it also comes back around to my original point about windmills, there are plenty of places in this country that cannot support them.

I live in Pennsylvania. Where I live the land is drammaticly different from the West Coast where these wind farms are popular. We have a greater population density then you do.
Where I live there isn't enough land to build houses and commercial areas. Zoning laws are all that keep people sane about building commercial properties.
Having wind farms competing for that very scarce land area, wow it would just be a bad thing.

I support it in areas that can support it. But I am a realist and there are places in this country that can't handle them.

Re:Sooner then later

[jallison]

Yes Los Angeles had a huge smog problem in the 70's. We have a huge smog problem now. It's gone from insufferable to just terrible. If you think that terrible is an acceptable level, then good for you. I don't. And it just gets worse as more and more people spend more and more time in their cars. Cars -- and other pollution sources -- are cleaner than they were 30 years ago, but there are vastly more of them. So to answer your question, "was technology the answer to LA's [sic] problems?": no. The problem has not been solved.

Re:Sooner then later

[bear_phillips]

I support it in areas that can support it. But I am a realist and there are places in this country that can't handle them.

That is the attidue to take. Windpower should just be in the mix with everything else. Too many people harp on the fact that wind (or solar, or biomas etc.) can't produce 100% of our electricity needs. You never hear anyone say "don't do coal/nuclear/natural gas research, because it can't supply 100% of the worlds electricy."

Re:Sooner then later

[b-baggins]

It isn't flamebait. Go talk to some oil geologists. The capped wells in the gulf ARE filling back up.

You do realize that oil is formed from marine life, not dinosaurs, right? Maybe it doesn't take as long to form as we thought.

Re:Sooner then later

[evilviper]

Solar power is a way to go, but it is rather expensive. Wind power is always uncertain.

Solar power, I'm afraid, just isn't feasable on a large scale. Wind power also doesn't provide enough power, unless there's some new technology I'm not aware of, and like solar, needs lots and lots of space, so it's not really feasable either.

In short, natural sources of energy aren't enough. We will have to start getting creative soon.

There is one source of energy that can supply all the electricity people need, without requiring oil or coal. Unfortunately, nuclear power is a big taboo, as if we have to put bombs in our back yards.

I really don't see any way around it. There are going to have to be more nuclear power plants, unless there is a major technological breakthrough rather soon.

Re:Sooner then later

[evilviper]

I agree with you for the most part, that wind power isn't really feasable, but you have many mistakes in the logic of your comments.

Seriously, most parts of the country do not have a guarenteed constantly blowing wind.

Is it necessary for any single form of power to be feasable through out the entire country? Hey, not everywhere has a big river, I guess hydro isn't feasable.

The truth is, there are plenty of places within the US that have an incredible supply of wind. Just like electricity, you just have to run a lot of wires to get the electricity from where it can be supplied, to where it is consumed.

You are talking about enormous tracts of land that could be used for many, many things.

You must live in the Eastern U.S.. Out here in the west, there are HUGE ammounts of completely unused land. Thanks to the Mojave Desert, much of it has daily, hurricane-force winds.

Currently, it doesn't seem to be feasable because they require many of them to generate a little bit of power. Sure, it works, but you can't get it to generate enough electricity per the price of setting up the wind-generators (not windmills, there's no milling involved) to produce electricity at as low a price as coal.

And solar power...
Same problem really. Overcast days are as bad as night time. If you want to guarentee a consistent energy supply from the sun then you must also guarentee consistant access to it.

Again, Mojave Desert... It's a desert, which means you barely ever have an overcast day. Plenty of land too. Currently, it isn't feasable, simply because solar panels aren't effecient enough. Large setup costs, large maintenance costs, and can't produce enough electricity to compete with coal.

As a matter of fact, I happen to know someone who lost their job at a military solar installation for that very reason. They couldn't produce electricity for prices as low as the grid, so they were shut-down. Ironically, that was here in CA, and just before the power problems, so, at one point, after it had been closed, it would have been temporarily profitable. But, under normal circumstances, solar just isn't feasable.

I've seen and heard of lots of reasearch, and strange products that claim to be more effecient solar generators, and I hope that a few of them do become feasable in the near future. Until then...

Re:Sooner then later

[ralphdaugherty]

I am for building wind farms and solar farms in areas that can support it.
I am against these structures in areas where the justification is political and not scientific as well as in areas where the land can be put to better use.

I'd like to see large areas in the US desert southwest covered with solar panel grid arrays to become solar power plants. The insecurity and trade balance deficit costs of being dependent on imported oil needs to be factored into the cost justification for this.

As for windmills, I've read in the past about adding them to transmission lines and having them supplement the power transmission. I have never believed in the concept of randome feeds into the power transmission system, either from windmills added to the lines or from excess home generation. However, I can see a collector transmission grid from homes and private generation enterprises with windmills added to the collector transmission lines which would all be aggregated at utility plants and fed into the system in a controlled manner by the utility.

I also would like to see large quantities of the Mississippi at the Gulf diverted to land in Texas to form swamps to grow biomass and then feed the filtered water into water tables in the southwest. The biomass would then also be used for producing energy.

We will always need all the oil and gas we can produce naturally or from coal, but it is becoming increasingly rare and expensive and if we don't act now, we will go through an energy shock from an unexpected disruption of oil imports that will make the oil embargo of 1974 seem like a picnic.

rd

Re:Sooner then later

[luckyguesser]

natural sources of energy aren't enough

I think that the real solution is to figure out how to use less energy to do the same thing. Not find more and more (probably) expensive and creative ways to power things.

Re:Sooner then later

[luckyguesser]

Haven't they come a very long way towards fixing it? Yes, and one of the biggest ways they started fixing this problem was to cut back on activities that cause pollution! (gasp)

Re:Sooner then later

[ralphdaugherty]

Its called nuclear . Nice , clean [most of the time] . Nuclear truly is the "wave of the future"

We in the US already don't have the intelligence and willpower to deal with all the radioactive waste created since the beginning. It is sitting outside every nuclear plant, dangerously close to rivers. Out of sight, out of mind. Not my problem. yada yada yada. When it gets into a river, those downstream are hosed, or more accurately, can't be hosed from that river water again, ever? Pandora's box will be opened and can never be closed. It is seeping through the groundwater even as we dither the decades away. You ask for more, and we can't even deal with what we have, unfortunately.

rd

Re:Sooner then later

[luckyguesser]

Its called nuclear I'ts nucular, stupid. The S is silent.

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew this whinging anti-nuclear shit would crop up. Please get a life. The only reason this stuff has piled up outside of reactors is you and your friends have sued to stop it from finding a safe repository. Obstructing and delaying such a thing from happening in everyway. Oh I forgot according to YOU ALL there can be no safe repository. Seeing how you have a monoploy on the truth (my ass) we are all supposed to freeze in the dark. The truth is you would love for a accident to happen so you could be right for once. I don't put it past you types to actually help an accident along a bit. STFU and get out of the way. You folk are the modern equal of the luddites.

Re:Sooner then later

[kilgore_47]

Windmill bird deaths are rare, you're repeating an urban legend someone told you. If you're going to argue, please bring facts.

Re:Sooner then later

[hesiod]

> Maybe someone could come up with a brilliant plan to not use land for windmills

Hey, waitasec... I must be brilliant then.

How about we use these windmills under water to harness the power of the tides! Whales? Dolphins? Fuck 'em if they can't swim around the spinning blades of progress! :)

(I'd like to point out that this is a joke, not a troll)

Re:Sooner then later

[phossie]

hey. i could address you point by point, but then maybe you'd miss *my* point. regardless of whether any of the science in any of these debates is correct (or presented correctly), it's a good idea to behave conservatively. and i mean to use "conservatively" in its denotated meaning, not in any politically-charged connotation.

the idea here is to make it as likely as possible that we, as a species, will continue to thrive. unfortunately, all our experience up until the last millenium or so has been with small scale, decentralized, organic production. we've done well enough.

now that we're using highly energetic fuels -- as opposed to lower-energy new-biomass fuels -- we get more done faster. we can make more with fewer people. all sorts of cool stuff.

BUT.

we have no idea how to do the accounting. by accounting, i mean getting a good idea of the energy input and output of our hypothetical system. (if this is over your head or seems irrelevant, you shouldn't be arguing economics... you just don't get it yet.) and if we can't do the accounting, we can't judge the sustainability of what we're doing.

if we can't develop a good understanding of the sustainability of what we're doing now, the safe move is to wait until we can. that doesn't mean calling a halt to capitalism, though it does mean reigning in reckless waste of resources. we're riding a vector, in a historical sense, and trying to change it too much would also require vast quantities of energy. so we need to moderate. to conserve. to take care. to give a shit.

we're only *really* in a crisis if everyone believes those fucking nutcases screaming "there is no crisis". take the long view, and realize that there very well could be a crisis. we just don't know yet. isn't that reason enough to take a few easy conservative steps?

seriously.

wildly different, widely distributed technology and associated effects: 100 years. last 100 years taken against last 20,000: a blip. you're telling me everything is fine, don't worry my pretty little head? that's as much a bullshit response as anything else. it's going to take a lot more time to verify any of this.

the thing i'm really curious about is the point at which many scientists seem to have stopped doing science as soon as a technology was derived. all i'm asking here is that you and everybody else pretending a rational approach actually follow one. remember how science works. remember that when you change a system, you change a fucking system -- it is no longer the system that produced your assumptions.

with love,
your friends at Monsanto

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, it's settled then. We will store all the nuclear waste next to your house.

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU are the luddite. There are plenty of technologies that are far cleaner and safer, yet you still pine for the days when nuclear energy was seen as the world's saviour.

Go back to 1950, please!

Re:Sooner then later

[Thing 1]

This is totally off-topic, but in regards to your signature:

COME ON FHQWHGADS

I was just shown the HomeStarRunner site last night and it's rather amusing. In case anyone else wanted to know what it's from, here are two links. The first is of Strongbad reading an "I Love You" email (ostensibly the virus, but that's not mentioned and I don't know how old the clip is). The second is a "music video" he made called "Everybody to the Limit" where he says "come on Fhqwhgads" a lot in it.

Strongbad reading email

Everybody to the Limit (Come On Fhqwhgads)

Re:Sooner then later

[bhima]

Reference? everything I've read pointed this concept to extremist ideology rather than consistent phenomena, but I'm open to new idea's.

However every one should realize that dependence on export of any valuable product from unstable totalitarian regions / regimes is a bad thing. Trade with them, sure, but don't depend on them.

Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case the sites are slow, here are mirrors for link 1 and link 2.

Take the red pill...

[cloudless.net]

... and realize you are the battery.

Sounds familiar...

[Corporal Tunnel]

Give him wood chips, coconut husks, corncobs, even chicken litter, and Robb Walt will turn it into electricity and heat

Wood chips, schmood chips. Humans are the way to go.

The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body-heat. Combined with a form of fusion, BioMax would have found all the energy they would ever need!

Re:Sounds familiar...

[toddestan]

The only problem with the Matrix world using human bodies for energy is how do they feed all these humans? Humans are not just free energy, we generate that bioelectricity and heat from energy found in food. Our food supply is dependent on the sun, as all links of the food chain ultimately lead back to plants, which live off the sun's energy. With no sun in the Matrix world, there wouldn't be much food. Liquidifing the dead is not going to be anywhere close to cutting it.

Really biomass in some ways is not that different from what they did in the Matrix world - they just get the energy directly from the body while we are discussing getting energy from the human body's waste. The big difference is that we have not yet scorched the sky.

Re:Sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is of course that the AIs grow the food from their fusion energy, which is more than abundant enough to keep both themselves alive and grow foods to keep humans alive.

Humans aren't batteries. They only think they are. AIs keep humans around because they were programmed to care for humans. The AIs are still trying to do so, and the Matrix is the best they came up with.

Anything to the contrary is mere lies. ;)

Re:Sounds familiar...

[Channard]

The only problem with the Matrix world using human bodies for energy is how do they feed all these humans?

On strawberry jello if the movie, by the look of the tanks they're all submerged in. In the future, apparently everyone loves Jello.

Re:Sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

I though the Matrix recycled the old and dead humans by chopping them up and feeding them to the rest of the battery cell...

Great for...

[Black Parrot]

Great for disposing of bodies, too.

Re:Great for...

[heli0]

Maybe that is why they have 300 pre-orders in New Jersey?

Re:Great for...

[kfg]

No, no. First you feed the bodies to the pigs. Then you collect the excrement for fertilizer for your corn. Then you eat the corn and use to cobs to generate electricity. Then you roast the pigs in your electric oven. If you don't roast the pigs properly you then have a fresh supply of bodies to feed to the remaining pigs.

It's the food chain/carbon cycle gone horribly awry.

KFG

Re:Great for...

[WoTG]

Ouch... sorry, not really funny for folks from BC. I couldn't help but think about the charges laid against Robert Pickton. A local farmer (including a few pigs) who is accused of killing several prostitutes from Vancouver. A reference for the interested.

Re:Great for...

[bakes]

Great for disposing of bodies, too.

Well, it might be, if the bodies were not already being used to make Soylent Green.

Re:Great for...

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's what this soylent green thing is that I keep hearing about.

Re:Great for...

[Spunk]

or he could be making a movie reference.

Distributed Energy

[heli0]

The California Energy Commission has some info on different types of distributed energy resources from solar/wind/fuelcells to good ole ICE and turbines; listing their fuel sources, efficiency, environmental hazards, production capabilities and current availability; along with best applications, costs, performance, strengths & weaknesses, future developments, and where to buy them.

The page for microturbines is currently down, but the rest are up.

Re:Distributed Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! But do not confuse sunlight/wind/gas/oil/coal (which are fuels) with solarcells/windmills/other assorted turbines/fuel cells (which are energy conversion devices).

Fuel cells bring it all together by making hydrogen the common denominator; all those fuels can be converted into hydogen: reformed into hydrogen (when using a fossil fuel source), or using electrolysis (solar/wind/turbine powered something besides wind).

Fuel cells Cleanly and (relatively) efficiently convert between hydrogen and elecricity (and back)! Fuel cells are the indispensible component for our energy needs.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Then this machine is perfect for you. It can use that bio-mass to create electrical power, unlocking your true potential!

in the old daze

[Anonymous Coward]

some remember what folks used corn cobs for? this isn't much different. like 8$/gal. petrol? it's just not worth it.

More for niches than mainstream

[gloth]

As the article mentions, this is problably not for everyone. Not for most, actually.

Skeptics of wood gasification argue that it devours too much of a not-so-easy-to-replenish natural resource. Walt acknowledges that his BioMax machines aren't for every home or town but that they make most economic and ecological sense in areas where there's plenty of wasted wood that would otherwise be left to rot or tossed - at a cost - in landfills (producing methane and other greenhouse gases).

Rape is probably a more viable source of energy for the masses, growing much faster than wood, and also used successfully for power generation, though also on a relatively small scale yet.

Of course, my dual Athlon produces a lot of heat; there should be a way to make use of that. Uhm, well, ok, forget that :)

Re:More for niches than mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, my dual Athlon produces a lot of heat; there should be a way to make use of that. Uhm, well, ok, forget that :)

Was that a shameless "My dual athlon is better than your pentium" drop?

Re:More for niches than mainstream

[barryfandango]

Rape? Oh man, the AC's are just bursting to reply to this one. Could you explain? (I only know one definition for that word, but it seems you're using another.)

Re:More for niches than mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a yellow plant that grows in fields alongside roads where hay fever sufferers driving along inhale its pollen, have an allergy attack, lose control of their vehicle and crash into something.

That's ALL!?!

[dubbayu_d_40]

"60 pounds of wood chips morphs into 20 kilowatt-hours of energy - sufficient to run a typical three-bedroom home for a day."

That's only 21900 pounds of wood per household per year!!! Yay!?!

Re:That's ALL!?!

[asdfx]

Idiot. He's not suggesting you cut up 60 pounds worth of trees a day. You have to eat 60 pounds worth of corn and coconuts a day.

Re:That's ALL!?!

[dubbayu_d_40]

Upon reflection, this approach puts a quantifiable measure on how much forestation we need.

Re:That's ALL!?!

[syphax]

That's only 21900 pounds of wood per household per year!!! Yay!?!

That's about 100 trees per year per house (assuming 10m height, 15cm diameter, dry density of 500 kg/m3). Not exactly something you can do in your back yard (at least, my back yard).

Nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the coal, oil and natural gas are depleted we will either have to give up most of our electrical devices or build lots of new nuclear plants most likely using PBR's. France already has 60 of them.

Re:Nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

The sooner we start building nuclear power plaNTS the better. We need to save our Oil and Coal for other uses than making electricity.
I am suprized that the parent and this post haven't been modded -1 YET. Just wait till all the enviro wackos get posint you will be modd so for clear thinking and not giving into their chicken little fantasies and one world goverment agenda.

posting AC so I don't get a permante -1 attached to myself.

One thing I don't get....

[retro128]

So how does Community Power's BioMax work? In one end you pour a sack of wood chips, nut shells or pellets (considered the optimal fuel because they are small and dense) into an oxygen-starved tank- shaped gasifier, which heats the solid fuel until it forms a combustible gas (up to 800 degrees Celsius, or 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit). The so-called producer gas is a mixture of fuel gases such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane.

Where exactly does the energy come from to generate a temperature of 1,472 degrees?

Re:One thing I don't get....

[Corgha]

Where exactly does the energy come from to generate a temperature of 1,472 degrees?

The answer lies within the article:

The household machine's generator need not run more than five hours a day, thanks to a battery bank that stores the energy.

More for niches than mainstream-Jumpin jack snatch

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rape is probably a more viable source of energy for the masses, growing much faster than wood, and also used successfully for power generation, though also on a relatively small scale yet."

Yes, but hookup's a bitch, and the penalties are severe.

Delorean?

[Lord_Dweomer]

Now I just gotta hook this sucker up to my Delorean and I'm good to go......oh.......and the flying bit.........err....and the time travel thingy-majig too.

Re:Delorean?

[kUnGf00m45t3r]

"and the time travel thingy-majig too"

I think you mean the flux capacitor!

Sawdust

[FooAtWFU]

How many corncobs, how many coconuts, and how much sawdust stuff does the average American consume daily? ...
I don't see this being in every home. Stick it in the feed processing plants, though...

Could we feed this puppy hemp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is hemp woody enough? It grows like a... well... a weed, one might say.

CosmoFurthur

Re:Could we feed this puppy hemp?

[hydrino]

Hemp has higher concentrations of cellulose than Rosy O'Donnells ass. This makes it a very attractive.. unlike rosy O'Donnels ass.
Burning hemp-extracted fuel carries another benefit. It processes the same amount of CO2 (into Oxygen)that it emits when burned. It also creates a "closed loop" against greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere. Rosie's ass just emits large amounts of methane.

Sooner then later-Waste-ful reading.

[Anonymous Coward]

"In short, natural sources of energy aren't enough. We will have to start getting creative soon."

Junk Mail.

Time travel...

[spac]

But the real question is... can i use it to turn my Corolla into a DeLorean?

Cars?

[Gherald]

Since this thing can power an average home for a day with 60 pounds of wood, I wonder if someone could make a practical car engine out of it?

Not commercially available?

[Snoopy77]

... but they've had these on Gilligan's Island for years!

Re:Not commercially available?

[agrippa_cash]

corncobs, sawdust pellets, and coconut shells to produce electricity You beat me to the punch but here are my runners up. 1)Sure, but they can't build a decent raft. 2)Isn't that that Charles Lindberg used to win the civil war? 3)PROFIT Thanks folks, I'll be here all week.

Why biomass isn't feasible

[sssmashy]

I use biomass energy all the time... whenever I go camping, the burning wood in my campfire provides energy for cooking and warmth. The problem is, this is one of the only scenarios in which biomass energy is practical.

Generally speaking, biomass is one of the least environmentally-friendly sources of energy. The combustion of biomass generates more pollutants per kWh of electricity than a coal-fired generator due to small-scale inefficiencies and the uncontrolled release of COx, NOx, and SOx gases.

Re:Practical?-OH S***T!

[Anonymous Coward]

> all the people who said America's going down the crapper, didn't see this one coming

You mean it can burn cow chips as well?

Just like the good ol' days...

(Uncomfortable pause. I wonder if anyone here has actually read Little House on the Praire...?)

Ahhhh

[SuperBanana]

I already have a home biomass generator. Oh, you mean a home biomass power generator....

Yeah, but who wants power, when you can get screaming, shrieking, temper tantrums, insane financial draining capabilities, scary girl/boyfriends, rebellion...?

In full scale use in many countries

[vinsci]

These guys developed waste treatment to commercial scale years ago, and it's successfully deployed in full scale in several countries.

The WAASA PROCESS, developed by Citec, has a reputation for being the most wide-ranging digestion experience in the world.

The WAASA PROCESS is in operation in Mustasaari outside city of Vaasa, Finland and in Kil, Sweden and in Tokyo, Japan. One of the largest MSW digestion plants in the world is a WAASA PROCESS in Groningen, Netherlands.

FYI: I worked at this company a couple of years back.

Re:In full scale use in many countries

[the hermit]

Is that where those thin styrofoam like crackers come from!? I was wondering how they made them!

-the hermit

Re:In full scale use in many countries

[pwiebe]

In the Netherlands, at the plant in Groningen and many others, biomass plays an important role not only in the energy production in the Netherlands but also in waste management. Most of the household waste in the country is burned to generate electricity.

The problem comes when you burn the wrong thing, for example PVC plastic can turn into PCBs and common batteries can give off heavy metals when they burn. This is a problem for the companies that operate these plants, and a lot of effort has to go into risk management.

If personal biomass units become popular, and people use them to burn the wrong things, it could become a major source of pollution.

Re:In full scale use in many countries

[Anonymous Coward]

India and nepal have their own version too...

Cars?-"Pioneer" power.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Since this thing can power an average home for a day with 60 pounds of wood, I wonder if someone could make a practical car engine out of it?"

Looks like Jed's going to carve us an au-to-mo-bile en-gine.

Re:Cars?-"Pioneer" power.

[Anonymous Coward]

um... okay.

Al Qaeda Claims Responsibility For Power Blackout

[Dennis Halsey]

http://english.daralhayat.com/arab_news/08-2003/Ar ticle-20030818-14bdd659-c0a8-01ed-0079-6e1c903b755 2/story.html

Calorific Values Of Fuels

[heli0]

GigaJoule Per Tonne

chicken shit: 8.8
wood: 10.0
meat & bone: 18.6
coal: 30.0
tires: 32.0
diesel: 45.6
propane: 49.4

----

http://www.lowpay.gov.uk/energy/inform/calvalues .p df

Re:Calorific Values Of Fuels

[Anonymous Coward]

tires: 32.0

I wonder if Mr. Burns considers Springfield's tyre fire a potential threat to his business.

Re:Calorific Values Of Fuels

[DaedalusLogic]

Man, there go the plans for my chicken shit powered car and generator. Well... the problem was never really getting the engines to work. It was the massive distribution network and infrastructure needed so that next time you pull up to the pump:

Regular
Plus
Super
Chicken Shit

In all seriousness now... the next comparison needs to be a cost to joule ratio. Then you have to factor in availability of the fuel. Not to mention many other engineering decisions and constraints.

I'm wanting to eventually incorporate new unobtrusive solar into my home to lower my dependence on outside energy... I think that's eventually were we'll shift. The grid will be a backup battery of sorts for our own homes that have a form of generation installed... Kinda like a reversion to the days where the wood fired stove meant everything to the home. Heat, Light and Cooking.

Re:Calorific Values Of Fuels

[phossie]

uh, don't forget that some of these fuels are the result of other fuels, and that energy is required to produce the fuel itself. the stuff with lower energy output also take significantly less energy to produce, ie the production cost (in energy) of the energy itself is lower. less efficient fuel, more efficient production.

restated, it requires energy to concentrate energy. this is to my mind an important point in a discussion of sustainable energy.

Why you didn't read the article?

[benjamindees]

Or even the summary?

This is a gasifier. It doesn't burn the biomass directly. It converts the biomass into clean gas fuel just like it would naturally decompose. It's actually more enviromnentally responsible because it supposedly makes use of excess materials that would otherwise be left to decompose into the atmosphere.

Coconuts? Bah!

[Guano_Jim]

Everyone knows the future of renewable energy is in chicken guts!

Seriously though, what a great use for all the agricultural waste sitting around the planet. Process the waste on site and use it to drive equipment.

Check out this book: Cradle to Cradle, also reviewed on Slashdot. It'll give you a great overview of the waste == food concept.

Growing power

[aashenfe]

I'm thinking that in the future a lot of our energy will be grown.

Farmers with large biomass generators, biobatteries, methane tanks will grow energy crops or raise animals. Woody crops for things like biomass generators, carrot or potatoe like vegatables for biobatteries. Animal waste will be used for methane.

Maybe small consumer versions will be available to help dispose of lawn waste. Extra energy could be sold back to the grid.

Another nice outcome would be less need to subsidize farms, because of high demand for energy. The electric companies would be more a distibuter, and less a producer.

Heat energy

[Virtex]

The technology I'm waiting for is something that would efficiently convert heat energy into electricity. If you think about it, heat is an abundant source of energy during the summer months. If we could harness that energy, it would go a long way towards providing additional electricity. Plus, extracting the heat energy from the air has the effect of cooling off the air; hence, our air conditioners could generate electricity instead of consuming it.

Unfortunately, current technologies leave a lot to be desired (but there may be hope). So for now, I'll continue to wait.

Re:Heat energy

[Loosewire]

The technology I'm waiting for is something that would efficiently convert heat energy into electricity.
The way you say that is like its just another cool technology but infact its the holy grail of power generation.If someoen could find a way to turn ambient heat into energy the world power problems would be instantly solved

Re:Heat energy

[way2trivial]

ever here of a Stirling engine? go research it.

Re:Heat energy

[Anonymous Coward]

The way you generate electricity is by having a potential based on the difference in temperatures between two areas. That difference needs to be in the range of 100Kel+ minimum. Just because it is hot outside does not mean there is some energy going to waste. The only way to harness all of those faster molecules in the summer months is to either have an even hotter source then you would need to have in the winter, or to have something around 200K.

Re:Heat energy

[Mawbid]

A Stirling engine works across a heat differential. It can be viewed as being driven by the flow of heat much like a turbine is driven by the flow of water.

The parent poster is talking about harnessing ambient heat, where there is no differential and the heat isn't flowing anywhere. That's an altogether different problem.

Re:Heat energy

[ramk13]

I think you are missing part of the electric power generation equation... If you were on the the surface of the sun (which is pretty hot) it doesn't necessarily mean you can create tons of electricity. You need a temperature difference and a 'heat engine' to turn the the temperature difference into useful work.

The Sterling engine that the sibling mentions is an example of one that uses even small temperature differences to create reciprocating motion (which can be turned into rotary motion for electricity generation)

Also you can't 'extract heat' from the air and make it cooler without expending energy and dumping the waste heat somewhere else. See Second Law of Thermodynamics...

Re:Heat energy

[Anonymous Coward]

There will generally be some kind of heat gradient between the earth and the air - since the ground acts as an heat resovoir of sorts. One could harvest that for energy.

Re:Heat energy

[Anonymous Coward]

and if someone could similarly construct a perpetual motion machine - well you wouldn't even need the heat to begin with!

Re:Heat energy

[ajs318]

There is a device for converting heat to electricity in your gas central heating boiler. You know how you have to hold in the knob after you have sparked the piezo? You know why? The pilot flame is heating a thermocouple probe -- a heat-to-electricity converter. The current from the thermocouple passes through a bimetallic strip switch {over temperature cutout} to a solenoid valve upstream of the one which the time clock operates. The safety solenoid isn't powerful enough to pull in from rest {and it never will anyway, if you think about it} but will hold it there if it's already been pushed there by hand. If the pilot blows out, or the overheat cutout opens, the gas is shut off. Then when the time clock comes on, nothing happens until you repeat the lighting cycle. {OK, modern boilers have electronic ignition and no pilot light, I used to make the electronic controls for 'em, but there are many, many older ones out there}.

Unfortunately, you need a temperature of about 1000C and you get less than a volt out of the thing {plenty milliamps though}. One flame will heat several thermocouples, but the problem if you connect several thermocouples in series is that you need to keep the non-generating junctions cold relative to the generating ones {otherwise they generate an equal voltage but trying to push the current in the opposite direction, which doesn't help}. You need a large temperature difference over a short distance {otherwise you get voltage drop} and that goes against the natural tendency of temperatures to equalise.

If you want to use the heat chucked out by an air conditioner, I reckon the best bet would be to find a way to use it to heat your domestic hot water. I use my air con's exhaust hose as a hair drier, BTW ..... of course, it means I have to put some shorts on after getting out of the shower .....

Re:Heat energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, sorry. The only way to generate power from heat is to exploit a temperature difference between the heat source and the ambient surroundings. You cannot use hot summer air for energy because it is the same temperature as the surrounding environment. In order to cool this air by extracting energy from it in the form of electricity, you would have to reduce the total entropy of the thermal system, which is prohibited by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Re:Heat energy

[evilviper]

The technology I'm waiting for is something that would efficiently convert heat energy into electricity.

Well excuse me while I pull cold fusion out of my ass...

More seriously though, you don't need heat, and you don't need cold to generate electricity. What you need, is controlable difference between hot and cold. In other words, you need to be able to put heat on one side of a generator, and cold on the other side... If you can do that, and in large enough quantities, then you are all set. Unfortunately, nobody has any feasable way to do it.

Of course, the point is that, no matter how much heat you have, you can't accomplish anything with it, unless you can control and focus it.

Instead of burning fossil fuels, you could just as well ship ice from the Artic to the deserts, where they can be used to generate electricity instead. Fossil fuels are just cheaper for the power you can get out of them.

Re:Heat energy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an altogether impossible problem, according to thermodynamics, but hey, who's counting.

Re:Heat energy

[ramk13]

Soil is a poor conductor of heat. So even if you went down 10 feet into the ground, you'd warm that up, but it wouldn't pull much heat in (unless you had a huge surface area (expensive) or large temperature gradient (the problem in the first place).

Re:Heat energy

[Anonymous Coward]

energy input is required to refine the form of a fuel energy. everything has a price.

Re:Heat energy

[jbayes]

You're going to be waiting quite a while. Ever hear of the second law of thermodynamics?

Now, if what you want is something to convert a difference in temperature into electricity, well, that's just a turbine, and we have those. The difficulty lies in finding temperature differences large enough to make the construction of a turbine worthwhile.

A nuclear (or coal) power plant is just one way of creating such a temperature difference.

Agricultural surplus

[2toise]

There is a huge amount of federal money that goes into maintaining a massive agricultural surplus here in the states - this could easily be switched over to subsidies for fuel crops instead of (for example) tobacco, as is presently the case.
It would not supply all the needs by any means, but would help.
At present much is shipped overseas as 'aid', but rarely is this the most cost effective way to get food to war stricken areas.

Re:Agricultural surplus

[Quill_28]

You do know that subsidies for tobacco is going away. The government is buying up all the tobacco base.

Re:Agricultural surplus

[St. Software Enginee]

There is a huge amount of federal money that goes into maintaining a massive agricultural surplus here in the states - this could easily be switched over to, say, buying a nice new home for myself, or maybe that new Linux PDA.

Wait, you mean the government won't give it back to me? Damn

Assistance only

[miknight]

I think this form of power could only be supplementary to an alternative, more powerful supply.

Re:I'm waiting for the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll? Oh please, imagine the day when you don't have to run expensive water treatment plants at as high a capacity as they run now, imagine a day when you get more from your food. The human body does not extract 100% of the potential energy out of input, generating power using fecal matter is a step closer to maximizing efficieny. Shesh troll my ass :rolleyes:

mr fusion?

[EngMedic]

Roads? where we're going we don't need ...roads.

I think its the decentralization thats the kicker

[mary_will_grow]

I, for one, think that this is a GREAT idea because it helps decentralize energy production. That way we dont have a few people feeding ALL INDUSTRY, getting BUHZILLIONS of dollars, and the totally obscene amount of influence such money grants you.
Then, we wont have our country's policy being written by people who have been hammered by lobbies representing people with endlessly deep pockets.
Of course you can pick flaws in this. Maybe the corn co-ops will become the next big bastard. Whatever. If you think people becoming empowered to power their homes themselves is a Bad idea, you are on crack.

Think of the web buttons!

[SnappingTurtle]

I want to be the first hacker to have a server powered by one of these things. Then I can have a great web button: "Powered by Poop".

Re:I think its the decentralization thats the kick

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is economies of scale. A giant plant producing energy for a whole city is probably 10x more efficient then a biomass generator in someones shed. This means that if energy production is limited to this small units we will need 10x as many resources to burn to produce our energy.

Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

To quote PDQ Bach:

"And her breath is like down (...wind of a compost heap on fire!)"

Most biomass per sec. winner = hemp?

[xejlod]

Giant stomachs digesting biomass, producing fuel gas. And now this Invention providing an "alternative" source of energy yet again fueled by generic biomass. so here's my generic pot-head rant: Just another reason besides the fact that it's the most reliable natural fiber, oil, medecine, food, soil-depoluter & recreational substance some political-industry-lobby made it illegal in the U.S. during the 1920's... (wonder why petrol, pharmaceutic, weapons-business & banks are doing so well!) Just my thoughts, but do not take it from me! If you read /. you must be able to make some kind of research about cannabis-laws yourself. (with some historical references)

Same to you, buddy!

[sssmashy]

The so-called producer gas is a mixture of fuel gases such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane.

Large coal-powered generators are required by law to take steps to minimize the release of NOx (a major pollutant and inevitable product of combustion in a nitrogen atmosphere). They are also designed to maximize combustion efficiency and thus prevent the release of CH4 and CO directly into the atmosphere due to incomplete combustion. Some of the newer ones incorporate technologies to reduce CO2 emissions through sequestration techologies.

Coal power may be dirty, but the combined pollution of a thousand small biogas combustion generators is much worse than a large coal generator with equivalent power output.

Re:Same to you, buddy!

[Dashing Leech]

> Coal power may be dirty, but the combined pollution of a thousand small biogas combustion generators is much worse than a large coal generator with equivalent power output.

Except that you are missing one important point. Coal (and other fossil fuels) release CO2 (and other gases) that are currently stored in the ground, so they are added to the environment. Biomass gases are created from the very plants that use them within the environment, so there is no net gain of gases in the environment.

Re:Same to you, buddy!

[Graymalkin]

Along with the point the sibling reply makes you're also forgetting output of a generator is not as important as the yield delivered to the end user.

If a coal plant is producing 50MWh but transmitting over lines with only 20% efficiency the end usable amount of energy out of burning 50MWh of coal is only 10MWh. Subtract inefficient transformers in the loop and you might only see a total yield of 8MWh out of the 50MWh worth of coal burnt. If each of those 4,000 homes were running their own small generators the total amount of energy they would need to run would be the 8MWh worth they were receiving from the 50MWh burned at the coal plant.

By moving the power generation closer to the end users less fuel is needed to provide the same usable power yield. That is not to necessarily say that biomass gasifers are some magical answer to the nation's power needs. It is however a salient point that a coal plant many miles from its customers is producing way more power than they are capable of receiving from it.

Coal plants take carbon that's been out of circulation for millions of years, put it back into the carbon cycle, and waste a lot of energy on inefficient transmission. Coal plants no matter how many regulations mandate cleanliness are problematic sources of energy. Coal isn't getting more plentiful nor are there any extra carbon sinks popping up to absorb the carbon released by burning coal.

Re:Same to you, buddy!

[tmortn]

one nit.. thats true only so long as biomass consumption of Co2 remains equal to or greater than our relase of Co2 from Biomass... otherwise we create the same problem we have now, net increase in Co2 emmissions.

Re:Same to you, buddy!

[Dashing Leech]

True, thanks for adding that. I guess the actual point is that all CO2 from fossil fuels is added to the environment. In terms of CO2 output, biomass energy would have to produce a significant excess (above the biomass usage) of CO2 before fossil fuels would become a better approach.

Re:Same to you, buddy!

[ajs318]

Well, since the amount of CO2 produced by burning any plant is exactly equal to the amount of CO2 consumed by the plant in its lifetime, I don't think it's too much of a problem. As long as you keep the amount of live plants near enough constant. If you're using them up faster than you grow them, it's a problem ..... but thanks to private ownership of land, that's unlikely, since you can make money out of land just by growing stuff on it ..... but you stop making money if you don't replant it.

Re:Same to you, buddy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Treehuggers in Ca want land to go falow. Farming is a threat to endangered critters. They sue the state and farmers every chance they get. Their idea is you freeze in the dark and starve. You don't need biomass or commercial power since all power generation is evil and can't ever be done in a way safe for the "enviroment". It's not about generation of electric power or oil based power it's all about them being in power while you live in 3 world poverty, do what you are told to do and they have all the political power.

Re:Same to you, buddy!

[Anonymous Coward]

MMMM, logic of the right. Did you ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, environmentalists just don't want their kids to get lung cancer from playing outside? Or rain so acidic that eats away at buildings? Or clouds so toxic that birds fly in and fall to the ground.

all I can say, - Back to the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Fusion, anyone?
soon we'll have them on flying car time machines ^_^

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

It only takes the equivalent of 3 to 4 gallons of oil to make a solar panel. Yet in it's lifetime it will generate many times more energy.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

No it won't. That's the point. In its lifetime it will likely never generate as much energy as it required to manufacture -- unless you get a good'un. PVs are a losing game.

We don't need biomass ...

[Bellhead]

... we can just strap an electric outlet to my son's head: he's got enouch energy to power a small city.

But seriously, if you've ever done "hot" composting, you know that this really can work - there's an astonishing amount of energy in a pile of grass clippings or a little cow manure.

You know, I think the Amish have it right - they don't use electricity unless there's no other way to do a job, and even then they won't rely on the power grid (it requires people to work on Sunday).

Biomass is just one way to (excuse the pun) take back power from the megacorps that dole it out in the current system. We can return to the Edison model of local power plants, local consumption - small scale, small bills.

Assuming, that is, that we're all willing to go on a power diet.

Bellhead

Re:We don't need biomass ...

[MotherInferior]

Then we can further use the Edison model and use stray cats to fuel the biomass engine. No thank you on the DC-based Edison model.

Re:I think its the decentralization thats the kick

[mary_will_grow]

I dont think you can really demonstrate (conclusively) that power generation is always going to be significantly more efficient when done in One Big Place. I'm quite sure if you can extract X% of the energy from something in a Big Plant you can at least get damn close to that in a smaller one.
All you can really say is having Less People Profiting From It allows One Big Place to sell their energy off cheaper than if they were 10 separate places with totally separate staffs and blah blah blah. But if NO ONE is profiting from it, then your "economies of scale" stuff is not even relevent. As long as they all extract X% of the energy from their fuel, just like the Big Plant (which neither of us can really say is possible or impossible) then it really doesnt matter.
Economies of Scale, and just about everything in Economics, rarely applies directly to Real World stuff. People think it does, its their little religion thingy, but IMHO, its mainly crap.

All jokes aside --

[nmaeone]

I am absolutely beside myself due to the fact that I haven't seen a single "Back to the Future" crack yet -- and unfortunately I'm not in the mood to witty-one-up myself [Sigh].

-A

Re:All jokes aside --

[RevSmiley]

Wrong you didn't read far enough. There are plenty.

Let's be creative.

[LiberalApplication]

Toss out a couple of kooky ideas. IANAS(cientist), IANAE(ngineer), but I am fairly kooky.

1) How about a large array of solar arrays in orbit above the planet. They could soak up pure sunlight, and fire it down to the earth in the form of a laser at ground-bound solar arrays waiting for bursts of light. Of course there would be drawbacks: Birds flying through the beams would be vaporised, as well as any aircraft which accidentally strayed off course, and there's always the chance that something might hit a satellite, shifting its aim to target a busload of nuns.

2) Combine power generation with them space elevators we keep hearing about. Aren't those supposed to generate some huge amount of static electricity? You know, giant metallic strand kilometers in length, raking the sky all the way up to zero atmosphere... Why not harness it? I have no idea how we'd get the power back down to the ground, but hey. I'm just a kook.

3) Um... geothermal taps at active volcanoes? Not necessarily a *smart* investment, but it's hot, and we know how to get electricity from hot dirt.

4) Electroactive polymers. If we can find a way to manufacture these little pads inexpensively, then why not have them running under sidewalks, highways, stairs, bowling alleys, basketball courts, train tracks, treadmills, carpets (especially at your local all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet)... They *have* to be pretty resilient if the military is planning to stick them in troops' boots. Every time a car rolls by or a pudgy fellow trundles over to get a fifth bowl of kung-pao chicken, you'd be getting something out of it.

5) Put great big magnets on top of cars, and run large coils of wire around all highways. Okay, that was stupid.

6) Attach generators to doors. All doors. Turnstyles.

7) If only there were a way to safely transmit power. Wouldn't it be great to have all of the icky nuclear power plants to the moon and just have them send the energy home? Maybe something with quantum-entangled pairs of stuff? Like have one member on the moon being jiggled like a maraca by a nuclear furnace and the other half on Earth having its quantum-jiggles somehow harnessed for its energy?

Probably not, huh?

Re:Let's be creative.

[Exiler]

Hrm, you're right, how would one go about getting power to be transfered that's generated on a long, metallic, circular object?

Re:Let's be creative.

[LiberalApplication]

Right, right.

All we'd need is to dig a giant hole somewhere on the surface of the planet and have the space elevator keep pounding into it until mother Earth achieves a bloody-screaming orgasm, at which point all of our teeth would shatter.

Re:Let's be creative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea conventional nuclear power is good and well understood. Too bad the anti-nuclear propaganda that isn't based on science or reality but chicken little crap will never allow the US to be energy self sufficent by using it.

But that is exactly what the enviromental facists don't want. A energy self sufficent US. If it wasn't they would not poohpooh many very promising ideas or sue any attempt at any new power generating implementation into oblivion. Enviromentalists don't want you energy self sufficent. Hell they don't want you to have any energy. Everytime any project to provide a new source of power or a transmission line to deliver it is attempted they and their lawyers kill it in court. Radical Enviromentalism is all about control. If you can't get it at the ballot box or there are not enough of you to get it with the bullet box a law degree and suit will do it seems. It's to bad the USA is as hostage to these fucks as it is to arab oil and the middle east.
By blocking all progress towards any slight success at home grown energy reliance the enviro facists hope to cause colapse of the US political system. Then their enlightened facist political system could be forced on the people. They are as bad as aryan racisists skinheads. They just wear suits and speak in a calm tones in public. If the people of this counrty had any balls they would start sueing back. Moris Dees did that against the aryan nation and he got results.

BTW wouldn't call anything that consumes 60 lbs of wood chips per day enviromentally friendly. The by-products of combustion are going to foul the air.

The time for nuclear energy is now. It's the solution to cheap electric cars, clean electric heating and a well lit progressive future free of want.

I think I'll post AC so I can get modded -1 by some radical anti freedom enviromental facist again.

Re:Let's be creative.

[cens0r]

Some people consider themselves environmentalists but welcome Nuclear Power. I would count myself among them. Those of us with a brain realize that a coal power plant actually releases more radiation into the enviornment than a nuclear plant will. However with the coal plant we can't collect it and dispose of it properly and we're releasing tons of other toxins as well.

No shit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hang on, yes shit, I suppose, it's biomass.

Bullshit...

[qtp]

Well it's actually Cowshit, but close enough. Biomass is efficient, cheap, and practical as has been proven at this farm, and this one (which was discussed here back in March.)

Re:More for niches than mainstream-Jumpin jack sna

[kapok_tree]

I suspect he was referring to rapeseed - known as canola in the US.

RTA please

[Anonymous Coward]

this is nothing more than an improvement of a system used in WWII, to power vehicles. the article mentions this. the basic technology has been around for a long time, the only real difference here seems to be a better way of filtering the gas, and some efficiency improvements.

Re:RTA please

[Gherald]

I did RTA, just wondering if with this new technology it would be practical and fuel efficient by today's standards...

Mr. Fusion

[Latent Heat]

But Mr. Fusion only powers the time machine, but to use the time machine you have to get the DeLorean up to the critical speed, and if the Indians shoot an arrow in the tank of the DeLorean you are hosed.

On Giligans Island

[Soporific]

They might have an ample supply. Or the professor could bio-engineer them with his coconut bio-lab. All that techonology they had and still couldn't fasion any tubes to make a two way radio...

~S

Re:On Giligans Island

[stretch0611]

Maybe this is why they always had enough power for the radio.

hmmm

[KMonk]

I was getting sick of walking the cat droppings all the way out to the yard... where do I sign up?

Vegetable oil-burning furnace

[Latent Heat]

At one end you have complete utilization of biomass and at the other hand you have this business of corn ethanol with questions about whether you get more energy than you put in. Somewhere in the middle is bio-Diesel, where you make a Diesel fuel out of vegetable oil -- I think canola gives something like 100 gallons per acre.

There are Web sites telling how easy it is to make bio-Diesel. The process involves 10 parts vegetable oil plus 2 parts methanol plus some lye to make 10 parts Diesel-usable fatty esters plus 2 parts glycerine that you need to do something with. The process seems intermediate in complexity between soap making and running a meth lab, and these hippie types who say how easy it is to make bio-Diesel probably have some other mid-level process experience involving some mildly dangerous chemistry.

There is talk of running Diesels on straight vegetable oil, but there is caution that you can shellac up the rings and ruin an engine. Forget about Diesel engines -- the other big use of Diesel is in oil furnaces: apart from the road tax, #2 Diesel is the same as #2 home-heating oil.

What would it take to run an oil furnace on straight canola oil? An oil furnace repair requires a $100 service call, but it is nothing like rebuilding an engine, so could vegetable oil be burnt in an oil furnace if you could put up with more maintenance. I think the resale value of my house would increase if winter visitors were greated with the smell of french fries.

Re:Vegetable oil-burning furnace

[tiled_rainbows]

This was popular for a bit in Wales (Britain). People were converting their deisel-engined cars to run on cooking oil. They weren't so concerned with the environmental footprint as the massively reduced cost (diesel and petrol being massively taxed in the UK).

However, the stupid stupid government said that if they were using cooking oil as a motor fuel then they had to pay tax on it, same as if they were using diesel, and threatened to charge them with tax evasion.
So everyone stopped. And, yet again, I found myself shouting at my TV, consumed by incoherent rage at the stupidity of our laws and the people who enforce them.

Re:Vegetable oil-burning furnace

[Anonymous Coward]

But isn't this the same kind of government so many /.ers wish to require of all on the planet? Obey, pay your tribute or face the gulag or worse?

Bird strikes.

[mellon]

Bird strikes are a serious problem with big windmills. I'm a bit skeptical about another person's claim in a nearby reply that wind generators would have a serious effect on the weather, but they do kill a lot of birds. On the other hand, so do cell phone transmitters, so I suppose this is already a problem. Sigh.

Biomass energy is already here and practical...

[qtp]

Well maybe it is in Iowa and Minnesota, but it has proven to be both efficient and profitable for small scale producers, as discussed here back in March.

The systems described in the main article do not sound very practical to me (800 degrees F. takes a lot of energy to maintain), but they are not the only example of biomass energy being put into practise, and they might be the right choice if you already have a lot of sawdust on hand (like in a lumberyard or a furniture fab).

Anything that reduces the dependency on foreign oil is good for the economy, and less dependency on large energy companies is good for the consumer. That these technologies allow small business to reduce thier cost of operation (or increase thier income) and are environmentally sound is good for everyone.

What about human waste?

[mellon]

One of the puzzles about this article is that this biomass generator doesn't use one of the most significant sources of biomass in a typical household. I know it's icky, but there's energy in it. Plus, if you live in a place with a serious septic problem, extracting gases and composting what's left would be big win.

Re:What about human waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Hook the sewer line directly from the toilet to the machine's holding tank. If you use a septic tank, use it to hold overflow only. As needed, operate a sludge pump to transfer from the septic tank to the machine. Now you have a automaticaly fed liquid slurry rather than having to hump wood chips...

Re:What about human waste?

[MannyDixn]

The biggest waste regarding human excrement comes from flushing it away with water that is fit for drinking, wasting all of the energy that was spent purifying it. Drinking water is a precious resource. Forget extracting gasses from it, if you just manage to compost your shit, you are well on the road to sustainability.

Apparently it's easily done using sawdust, check out The Humanure Handbook.

Re:What about human waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah ..... only, absolutely don't feed anything grown using human shit to human beings. Spongiform encephalopathy and all that. Food chains are long for a reason .....

Re:What about human waste?

[evilviper]

So when you aren't regular, your electricty goes out?

Sounds like a good slogan:

Prunes. Keeping the lights on.

Re:What about human waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually compost the human shit then it gets eaten several times and has been heated up enough to kill any bacteria or virus that could live in a human being.

blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, gasification technology already exists and has for a while. SenreQ already has a plant running in Barrow, Alaska, on the north slope, and is talking with cities in Ontario, Illinois, and New York state. SenreQ is focusing on larger scale application (a unit for an entire town, for example) and considers waste disposal the greater benefit of gasification, but the technology does produce the clean-burning flammable gas energy source and it can gasify a lot more than just biomass...try anything besides rock, glass, metal, and bone, so the body disposal application one of you mentioned is a little flawed.

This is old news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this on Gilligan's Island decades ago.

Reminds me of weekend update...

[Cyno01]

"New Scientist magazine reported that in the future, cars could be powered by hazelnuts. That's encouraging, considering an eight-ounce jar of hazelnuts costs about nine dollars. Yeah, I've got an idea for a car that runs on bald eagle heads and Faberge eggs."

This is a good trend...

[WebCowboy]

Innovations like fuel cell and biomass generators aren't only beneficial because they use renewable energy sources and/or produce less pollution. I think that there is an even more intriguing aspect--the implemetation of these new technologies in small-scale units. The possibility of a truly distributed power generation system is very appealing.

I look forward to a time when millions of homes/farms/factories/villiages have their own refrigerator-sized, low-cost, efficient heat/electricity generation units connected to the existing power grid. People could choose to buy electricity off the grid from any number of sources or produce their own power and sell the excess to the grid (imagine getting a cheque instead of a bill every month!).

Such a setup would make blackouts like the one on the US eastern seaboard and southern Ontario much less likely--less dependence on massive, central generation means less disruption due to a failure cascading through the grid.

More sources of generation might also make the electric energy sector truly free market. Deregulation was supposed to make the scenario I described possible, however so far it has been a disaster in its implementation--governments all over the continent lifted regulations, sold off government owned utilities where they existed and handed the whole market over to lumbering old monopolies to mismanage, while at the same time leaving barriers to entry for new players and technology. Politics royally shagged a potentially good idea--hopefully over time it all works out.

Re:I think its the decentralization thats the kick

[sllim]

Now you are injecting politics into this.

Look, profits are good. With profits come Research and Devolopement.
Those people funding the biomass research, when they are finished what do you think they are going to do with the results?
I bet they don't open source the results and give it freely out to the world.
My money says that they will try to patent as much of there research as possible and either sell it to another business or start one up themselves.
It is the promise of profits that has motivated them to do this.

Profits are not bad. With Profits come capitilasim. With Capitilism comes research and with research comes solutions to the problems that you believe exist.

Got a question for you, have you ever refused a raise?
Ever told your boss that you do whatever you do for the good of humanity and he should put your raise into something better?

Next time you get a raise have you given any thought to titheing the entire thing in perpetuity to a charity?

For me the answer is no. And it is the thought of being able to make more money and work in a more comfortable environment that brings out the best of me at my job.

Energy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheers to slashdot for keeping our energy needs in mind.

As the article points out, a good way to use the results of the gasification is to convert to electricity with fuel cells. Fuel cells convert between hydrogen and electricity (and back). With fuel cells, you can use biomass, or any other hydrocarbon (reformed) or any source of electricity (that can't be used immediately) and convert it to hydrogen, for clean electrity whenever you need it.

Fuel cells for clean reliable power!
(Hmmm... not spewing noxious fumes when creating electricity... that has value, doesn't it? We can't just let the people who make electricity do it the dirty way (subject to stodgy legislated emissions cap), can we? If we do we're subsidizing pollution!!!!)

[Compact Flourescent Lightbulb floating overhead]
Let's create a freely traded 'eco currency' which represents Pollution/Useful Energy! So when ANY power producer (big plant, my house, your car) produces electricity, they are credited (when doing it cleanly) or debited (when doing it the dirty way) units of this currency (freely marketable for cash). Then there will be an ECONOMIC motivation for EVERYBODY to choose clean ways of converting fuel to power (electric, motive, heat). Non-pollution will have a market price! The government won't need to try (deperately and poorly) to tell anybody what to do... A multitude of regulations would be obsolete. No telling car companies "make it go more miles with same fuel" (to which they respond with LIGHTER cars!! Hello??? That's not greater efficiency, that's just doing less work.) No telling power plants how much of various pollutants they can emit... They'll just make the smart ECONOMIC decision! Everyone will make the clean energy decisions themselves because it effects their pocketbooks DIRECTLY. Put another way, polluters won't get a free ride, but they won't just be regulated to death either.

Won't you feel bad if I'm Anonymnous Al Gore and you don't mod up my far-too underrepresended ideas ?

But this is slashot... people already know this stuff so I guess it doesn't matter much. So tell your friends who don't already know!

To power NYC would be one hell of a shitload

[lukme]

It probably is not practical everywhere.

Think about it, 17000 gal. of manure is enough to power 100 houses. This might be a small town in Iowa, but most places I know have more houses, and many fewer cows. I bet that this will not be practical outside of small farming communities, with a waste production issue.

1.21 Gigawatts????

[borgasm]

But can it generate the 1.21 Gigawatts necessary to enable time travel?

biomassing WOOD? how about ALGAE, or GRASS?

[the_REAL_sam]

what's the point of touting a new excuse to chop down trees?

how about biomass consumption of hemp? or grass / lawn clippings? leaves? or seaweed? or cornstalks, or wheatstalks? (NOT COBBS, which need to come off your damn dinner plate, and find their way BACK to the biomass center)

you know, the whole OCEAN lives on SEAWEED!

to be helpful, this biomass thing would have to consume a waste product which couldn't be used in any better way.

so. does the gassifier FART after wasting 60 lbs of tree?

yellow air

[beernutz]

No, yellow air DOES happen. As recently as 5 years ago i saw it myself. A yellow/brown haze all over Las Vegas. It was disgusting. Once you got into it you could even feel your eyes sting from it. This is REALITY.

The question is...

[eluusive]

Can this generate enough electricity to power harvesting of the plants? Or will we need to end up burning tons of diesel to furtilize and harvest the biomass used to generate power.... *snort*

Re:The question is...

[dman123]

Mods... this should be insightful or interesting, not funny. It's a real concern. However, in this case, it seems the fuels are waste products from other sources of processing. Therefore, the energy to fertilize and harvest them has already been spent. There is only the monor detail of the energy for the waste processing/burning itself.

Re:The question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be very useful for anyplace that already has tons of organic waste on hand, such as paper mills, wood mills, furnature factories, pig farms, chicken farms, dairy farms and the like.

It would allow the tons of material that would otherwise go to waste be used as an energy source to power those concerns.

And if these businesses could also feed power onto the grid it can be another source of income and make that business that much more profitable, or even make things profitable that would have ran at a loss otherwise.

I was in LA.

[Tediak]

I was in LA just a few weeks ago. A dull grey band stretches for 20 degrees high into what would normally be a clear blue sky. Thick clouds of black and grey smog hang oppressively in the air, drifting down over what might of once been beautiful land. I lived in New York City for many years and am used to a high level of pollution, but you could not pay me enough money to ever live in LA. I have never in my life seen a more compelling argument for enviromentalism than Los Angeles. Please don't tell me the world is nothing but blackness simply because your eyes are squeezed shut.

The issue here is control. Energy, excluding the methods for harvesting it, is for all intents and purposes free. Oil and other fossil fuels however are controlled by a group of elite people with alot of money (or oil, it's interchangeable these days) who would do almost anything to make sure that their fortunes aren't in any way devalued. Fortunately, technology will soon liberate us from their greed.

Re:I was in LA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunatly you have no idea who those elite people are. You THINK you know who they are.
But in reality you don't. If you think they are going to allow you to use technology to get "free" you are mistaken.

That Smog that is so evident is not caused by those people anyway but by the majority of persons who drive around in a car with one person in it. They have no desire to be "liberated". All they desire is lots of money, a newer car and larger home. In New York they at least ride the bus the subway or take a cab. New York has real public transportation. LA is totally un-interested in public transportation. In fact you have many people who will drive 2 hours one way in a single occupant car to get to work living down there. Explain how you will liberate them from their own greed? With a gun? With the threat of jail. Will you just exterminate them? We are talking about a hard sell here. Short of those things we are talking about a hard sell to such individuals.

Re:I was in LA.

[sllim]

I have never seen this 'yellow air' you are describing.

Pick up a map. Find Harrisburg Pennsylvania, now find Baltimore Maryland. Now take a guess at what the half way point is between the two. That is where I live, the half way point. Check out how close I am to Philadelphia and New York City.

I have been to Philadelphia and New York maybe a dozen times each. I spend considerable time in Baltimore (my family is from there) and Harrisburg is so close to me it is a joke.

LA must have some sort of geographical difference from the area I live in. Because it isn't 'one person riding in a car'. That is just a dumb thing to say. I am telling you that on the East Coast we don't give a rats ass about how many people are in cars.
We like trucks, big SUV's and motorcycles out here.
And I have never seen what you are describing.

I still point out to you that LA has improved. Do some research on LA and look at how the smog has improved between the 70's and today.
The 70's was something stupid like 1/3 of the year. Today it is something like 10 or 20 days a year.

Technology helps. It really does.

Re:I was in LA.

[aminorex]

You've seen yellow air. All of your life.
You've just never seen real air to compare it with.

I live in Minnesota. I've been to Philadelphia
and NYC more than I would like, and, yes, the air
is yellow. It also tastes like a mix of battery
acid and phlegm.

Re:I was in LA.

[hesiod]

> Check out how close I am to Philadelphia and New York City.
> And I have never seen what you are describing.

(to start out, I am on "your side" of this argument, just wanted to point out a flaw)

The reason you don't see it is because the pollution emitted in gaseous form usually goes up (due to the heat & updrafts, I guess) quite a ways before coming down again. Most weather moves in an eastern (and northern) direction, so the pollution would be moving away from you. There's a very large area in the middle of the country that doesn't have huge populations, so the pollution getting to your city/town that is visible & dense is very little.

California, OTOH, has the Rockies blocking the way, so the wind is blowing east, but the cold ocean air makes the pollutants cool faster & drop faster, they get blocked by the mountains & collect in the valleys (Chile has terrible problems with this IIRC, because they have HUGE valleys).

Oh, and the Appalachians don't count as mountains, (I live in WV; I know) they aren't big enough to block anything too serious.

Re:I was in LA.

[Tediak]

You're making the issue far larger than it is. The average idiot consumer doesn't care if his car is powered by gasoline or hydrogen fuel cells. How many people do you think actually stare at a lightbulb in their house and wonder where the power comes from? Even IF people are mindless and greedy as you say, assuming that improvements in technology become standard, within the scope of this issue their greed is rendered harmless. They will be liberated not from their own greed, but from the greed of others who impede progress in order to possess more than they could ever need, simply through technological progress.

And people don't need any help being exterminated, they're doing themselves in just fine.

Ah yes...

[CGP314]

The good old shit and piss factory that is the human body.

The dead giveaway

[panurge]

Is the $5 million of federal funding. Given who pays to elect the government, I suspect that federal funding currently goes into any alternative energy project that has a low chance of success, is small scale, cannot deliver reliable continuous power but, above all, doesn't threaten the oil industry.

A related question: the article refers to wasted coconut shells. What does a coconut shell do to get wasted? After the robot Kama Sutra, coconut shell cocaine orgies?

This isn't an advance. Talk with any farmer!

[dacap]

Compare the machine to your average bovine gas generator. The bovine version:
- requires no input of inergy for hot composting
- can accept a wider range of biomass
- has a multistage biomass conversion mechanism
(i.e. multiple stomachs)
- requires no biomass harvesting and preprocessing
- produces firtilizer
- produces milk (with proper prep & handling)
- is self repairing
- is self propagating

All we need now is a way to harness bovine gas production! I can see it now! So we back the cattle into their stalls and shove the ... uhm, never mind.

Biomass=Round-about solar power

[Mr.Sharpy]

When you think about it, fuel crops are actually just storage devices for the energy of the sun. When you burn them, most of the energy released was collected from sunlight. I wonder what the efficiency numbers for this would be in that respect. Hmmm....

But on another note, there is a huge amount of agricultural waste here. I have personally seen huge quantaties of wheat buried in holes in the ground to dispose of it for the sake of subsidies. If we could use that material, it would be fantastic.

Besides excess finished crops, there are all sorts of byproducts that go to waste. For example, when cotton is ginned, literally tons of nasty waste containing mostly cotton seed hulls and leaves is produced. They just pile the stuff into mountains around here, some of it is used as fertilizer (it is an extremely rich fertilizer) and then most of it is just carted off to some land fill (i think, it just sort of disappears). When it is in large piles and damp, the decomposition of it produces enough heat to set itself on fire, lol. It's great to have random and spontaneous combustion.

But that is just one example. Every agricultural process (horticulture and livestock) we currently use produces huge amounts of waste in addition to the finished product. If we could recycle just a little bit of that waste into useable energy, we would be doing ourselves a huge favor. Solar power doesn't have to be high tech, nature has been doing it for a long time.

Efficiency!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The NUMBER ONE issue never really mentioned with regards to distributed power generation is increasing electrical and heat efficiency and lowering power usage concurrently with any form of alternative power.

This includes, but is not limited to: passive solar heating/cooling, going for fluorescent and LED lighting over incandescent, very high insulation of buildings (min. is typically R13 or so for walls currently), energy efficient appliances, and finally a less energy intensive lifestyle. This means no energy used to melt the snow off of driveways, no massive floodlights lighting the house at night, no running PCs when not in use (gasp!), and so on.

Once you've mastered all that, then consider alternative energy such as adding solar hot water heating (typically resulting in free hot water after a few years), solar or wind electricity, and so on. That 20 kW for a day cited in the gasifier article is huge! That should be enough for several days of use in an efficient home.

Sandia Natl Labs estimated a year or three ago that US energy use could drop by 25% using off-the-shelf tech available NOW.

Re:Efficiency!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, a house with R50 walls and an R100 roof would hardly need to be either heated or cooled. I would throw in a heat/air exchanger to keep the air in the house good and fresh and possibly have a dehumidifier to get rid of excess moisture.

Throw in perminate LED lighting along the trim of every ceiling.

Use solar water heaters to not only heat the water you use, but to also heat the floors of the house during the cold months. Radiant floors are 3 times more energy effiencent than any other method of heating a house.

Use the newer engergy efficient washer, dryers, refrigerators, heat pump, and stoves. Get rid of the old convection oven and use a newer model that cooks food in half the time as the old models with a 10th the waste heat. Vent any waste heat outside during the warm months at the source.

Have one very powerful machine as a central computer for the house, and only it runs all the time, but build it so that it only typically uses a hundred watts during operation. Use LED screens instead of CRT's and use small 30 watt X terminals as client machines for the main house server.

The cool thing about this is that you can design a UPS system into the house for main server, the cable modem, the network switch panel and the telephone system to protect everything and keep everything running no matter what the power in the rest of the house is doing.

I am going to build my own house in 10 years and am looking at all this stuff. :D

Re:Creative soon..

[ajs318]

I wouldn't call anything that consumes [27kg] of wood chips per day enviromentally friendly btw. The by-products of combustion are going to foul the air.

No they aren't. The products of combustion are carbon dioxide and water, which plants - the replacements you are already growing for the plants you got the wood from - turn by photosynthesis into glucose and then by polymerisation into cellulose.

I only have one thing to say: Fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is here.

Or do it this way, and get a net reduction

[Anonymous Coward]

Current issue of Analog has an interesting idea: take all those corncobs and other agricultural leftovers and bury them at sea, thus removing carbon from the atmosphere.

Of course, now you need more energy, so you have to burn something else...but different fuels release different amounts of carbon for the same BTUs, and biomass is about the worst in this respect. So if you bury the biomass and burn oil instead, then instead of just breaking even, you have a net reduction in atmospheric carbon.

Our current practice is to let most of our agricultural waste uselessly rot (releasing the carbon)...doing this with most of it would be enough to meet Kyoto targets. You just need a market for CO2 credits, and you can make it work.

Re:Or do it this way, and get a net reduction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, uselessly rots back into humus: a soil conditioner that is nutrient rich, increases water holding capacity, harbors beneficial microorganisms, etc, etc, etc...

In some places, the farmers actually burn the "waste" instead of letting it be recycled back into soil.

Re:Or do it this way, and get a net reduction

[Anonymous Coward]

Farmers do use some of it for fertilizer. Note my use of the word "most," not "all." Fact is, *most* of it is not used for fertilizer, it gets dumped in a ditch somewhere. Which does benefit the soil in the ditch, you just have to decide whether that's your most important objective.

Favorite Quote

[SlipJig]

"...wood and other forest residues..."

The article mentions Bush's plan to thin the forests as impetus for the development of this device. I think we can see the mindset here ;)

Peopleshit too...

[qtp]

and they shit alot.

The same techniques can be applied to sewage treatment, and the energy produced can reduce or eliminate the cost of sewage treatment, and may possibly produce enough to create a revenue stream for whatever municipalities go this route.

Sewage is not the only source of biogas produced by New York, there is also the 2100 acre Fresh Kills Landfill. Landfill to electric programs are being implemented, as seen by this report on renewable energy sources in Pennsylvania.

As for the proximity of farms to large cities, you'd be surprised, there are large agricultural areas in New York (State), New Jersey, and Connecticut that are much closer to New York than where most of the city's power now comes from.

Renewable resources are never going to eliminate the energy conglomerates, but they may take away a little of thier business, reduce the cost of energy, and possibly help municipalities to balance thier budgets (ie: reduce taxes).

Burrito Power!

[Quixadhal]

So, if this device were integrated into an ergonomic chair, and the local mexican restaurant continued to deliver, would this be the perpetual bowel motion machine gamers have dreamed of?

European Diesel Cars

[Latent Heat]

Diesels are a real big deal in Europe right now while the combination of memories of the Olds and Rabbit Diesels together with environmental authorities more concerned about local particulate emissions than global CO2 admission combine to make Diesels a real minor player in the U.S.. I know, European low-sulfer Diesel fuel, blah, blah, but those are the facts on the ground.

European Diesel is a lot cheaper than gasoline at the pump, but they have a couple-hundred-a-year extra tax on Diesel cars (or at least in Austria and Germany). An Austrian was explaining to me how progressive this policy was -- people who drove few miles used gasoline cars while people like salesmen who were always on the road paid the yearly tax on a Diesel and then made up the difference at the pump -- the purpose of the policy was to put the most efficient cars in the hands of the high-mileage drivers.

Hah, don't start thinking that Germans and Austrians are ahead of the curve of dumb laws with unintended consequences. Watching TV, looking at newspapers, and using my limited grasp of German, I figured out that Diesel is much less heavily taxed at the pump on account of the trucking lobby. Since Diesel has less tax, Diesel car owners reap a windfall. To make up for this, the authorities slapped on a high annual license fee on Diesels. I learned about this because the politicians were trying to raise the Diesel pump tax and getting the truckers mad.

So here I thought German politics was so enlightened and that they were so progressive, but then I found they used just as much patchwork legislation as everyone else, and the end result of making Diesels cost effective for high-mileage drivers was just an accident of this process.

Re:I think its the decentralization thats the kick

[aminorex]

Power generation is much more efficient on a large
scale, but not distribution.

If you could eliminate global transmission losses,
you could power North America.

anything into oil

[besfred]

I read about turning anything into oil a few months ago. Gregor wrote about it in his blog @ http://greg.abstrakt.ch/archives/000118.html If this works, it would actually solve a few problems at once, but as it always happens with disruptive innovative technology: its killed by conservative lobby with big dollar. Its attempted with OpenSource Software, alternative energy, independant art / content creators, ...

Re:anything into oil

[Anonymous Coward]

> its killed by conservative lobby with big dollar

Oh yes, it is only the conservatives who kill innovative technology.

I wonder what it is like in your world.

Re:anything into oil

[besfred]

i didnt mean the people from the conservative parties, but the people with conservative attitude, i.e. those who want to keep the status quo. they do that because they are better off now (i.e. they make more money, have more power) than in a future sees all those new developments becoming reality.

Home Biomass Power Generator

[hesiod]

Damn! I was so happy when I saw the headline -- I figured "Hey, that's a GREAT way to dispose of the bodies."

Figures it's just corn & veggies.

Re:I think its the decentralization thats the kick

[sllim]

This whole bit has drug on way, way too long.
However I found a website that illustrates my point much more eloquently then I can manage.

Go here: http://www.denbeste.nu

Don't worry, I swear on my best friend's lesbian sister's sexuality that this isn't pron or goatse.

It is a sight called USS Clueless and the guy talks a lot about why we are in no position to replace large generators with small home size units.
He makes a smart and compelling argument.