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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."
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.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
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.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
FYI: I worked at this company a couple of years back.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
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.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
GigaJoule Per Tonne
s .p df
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/calvalue
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
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.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
"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
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
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.
Why stick up for big business?
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.
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
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Oh wait... stop. This must be flame bait...
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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.
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/
http://www.windmeadow.com/