Carbon-Negative Energy Machines Catching On

An anonymous reader writes "All Power Labs in Berkeley, California has produced and sold over 500 machines that take in dense biomass and put out energy. What makes the machines special is that instead of releasing carbon back into the atmosphere, it's concentrated into a lump charcoal that makes excellent fertilizer. The energy is produced cheaply, too; many of the machines went to poor nations who normally pay much more per kilowatt. '[T]he PowerPallets are still relatively simple, at least as far as their users are concerned. For one, thing Price explained, much of the machine is made with plumbing fixtures that are the same everywhere in the world. That means they're easy to repair. At the same time, while researchers at the 50 or so institutions that have bought the machines are excited by opening up the computer control system and poking around inside, a guy running a corn mill in Uganda with a PowerPallet "will never need to open that door and never will," Price said.'"

Comments

Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

"Feed a bunch of walnut shells or wood chips into these $27,000 machines and you get fully clean energy at less than $2 a watt, a fraction of what other green power sources can cost."

A mere fraction ? Imagine that. And you get the bonus gasifier acid ash that you can use to destroy neighbors soil.

Re:Key phrase

[Zumbs]

Further down the journalist writes:

many energy sources in the developing world can cost 50 or 60 cents per kilowatt, a PowerPallet can do it for a dime

Which does not really add up with costing "less than $2 a watt", unless it should have said "a lot less" in which case $2 is just misleading. I would be interested to know which is true, though. The technology seems both interesting and useful.

Re:Key phrase

[Zumbs]

I found the answer on the producers home page. The "less than $2 a watt" is the initial expense when investing in a plant: A 10 kW plant costs $19,000 and a 20 kW plant costs $29,000, corresponding to $1.9 or $1.45 per watt capacity (source). So, it adds up.

Re:Key phrase

[bugnuts]

It's a 10kW system, and looks like it costs $27,000.
$27,000 / 10kW is $2.70 per watt, right? That's not less than $2/watt.

many energy sources in the developing world can cost 50 or 60 cents per kilowatt, a PowerPallet can do it for a dime

That was probably supposed to be 50 or 60 cents per kWh. 10 cents per kWh is not bad. You can probably even harness the heat from the unit, too.

Re:Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the 10 or 20 kW be kW/h? They do say "10kw" and "20kw" all over their site, but in this graphic they say that e.g. the "2-20 kW" power output is at "22 kg / 50 lbs per hour at 20KW" biomass consumption.

Re:Key phrase

[bugnuts]

10kW is essentially the "top speed", and the kWh is the "fuel economy" or more like the miles travelled. You don't have to go at top speed, and if you're going at half speed you're only putting out 5kW, but will still get the same amount of power after 2 hours instead of 1.

The fuel consumption is also important to compute cost. For the 20kW machine, it burns 50 lbs of biomass per hour, which means 50 lbs of biomass is converted to 20kW for an hour, or 50 lbs to get 20kWh. (You can probably burn this over longer times than an hour.)

That's actually a fair amount of power, and 20kWh can power several houses for that one hour. If it's linearly scalable to smaller numbers, that would be very good since a house might only use 20kWh over an entire day. It would allow someone to run solar power during the day, and this thing at night (putting out 1kW) and during rainy days, with only a small battery farm.

But there are too many unknowns in the article to make a good guess.

Re:Key phrase

[fatphil]

"less than $2 a watt" is about as meaningful as "less than 2 square steradians per kelvin-volt" in this context.

You're interested in producing energy. Watts are not a measure of energy, but of rate of change (production or dissipation) of energy.

For example, store all this unit's energy in the mother of all capacitors, and discharge that by shorting it, and you'll get a mind-boggling number of watts. So you would justifiably be able to reword the meaningless press-release statement as "less than a tiny fraction of a cent per watt", and maintain its truth. Which is none, as it's meaningless.

Re:Key phrase

[PopeRatzo]

And you get the bonus gasifier acid ash that you can use to destroy neighbors soil.

Please explain.

Re:Key phrase

[Joce640k]

And you get the bonus gasifier acid ash that you can use to destroy neighbors soil.

Summary says: "...concentrated into a lump charcoal that makes excellent fertilizer".

I wonder who's right?

Re:Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

"For example, store all this unit's energy in the mother of all capacitors, and discharge that by shorting it". exactly. you would then measure the cost per max output wattage of your capacitor, which is rated at much higher output than this generator. This generator however has a flat max power output of energy per unit of time, which we measure in something called watts. to find out the cost of the machine, per watt of it's max output rating, you do exactly the calculation in the article. hopefully i have adequately explained it in people speak, but you really should take a basic intro physics class - I am sure your local community college offers them quite cheap. it will clear things up so you can talk about them with others in terms of jewels and archours.

Re:Key phrase

[fisted]

For example, store all this unit's energy in the mother of all capacitors, and discharge that by shorting it, and you'll get a mind-boggling number of watts.

Yeah, 0W really is a "mind-boggling number". Maybe not as high as you expected, though.

Re: Key phrase

[FishTankX]

I think you're mistaken as all powerplants are judged by this metric. Dollars per watt is the cost to add x amount of generating capacity to your grid.

Re:Key phrase

[Hognoxious]

Don't patronize others by suggesting they need to take a course at a community college.

With writing like yours you wouldn't get in.

Re:Key phrase

[msauve]

Stop trying to be pedantic, you're failing. Joules aren't meaningful in this context.

They're interested in generating electricity. The things they'll want to run are measured by how much they consume instantaneously - watts or amps. A house with a 120V / 100 A feed can be accommodate with a 12000 W generator.

Watts make perfect sense.

Joules, OTOH, would be perfectly meaningless and misleading. The $10 solar cell which keeps my car battery charged (~14V ~.15A) could be sold as a "100 megajoule power source." I won't bother saying that energy will take many months to deliver.

You almost had it, but ignored yourself in your rush to correct something which wasn't wrong:

Simplifying one of your statements:"You're interested in producing energy. Watts are a measure of production of energy." Whoosh.

Re:Key phrase

[fast turtle]

any 3rd world home using 20kw per day isn't what these are for. My house in the United States with all the electronics (4 computers, 2tv's, Cable Modem, Wireless router and such) uses 44kw per day.

A 3rd world rural home would be lucky to hit 1kw per day unless they've got a regrigerator/freezer. Better to go with a commercial style unit with individual compartments for each family as it means a single unit for the village/government to purchase and power it using Photovoltaics (Solar). The benefit is the availability of lighting in the community kitchen and someone can the be assigned to ensure everything is cleaned. Hell washing pots/pans and scrubbing a kitchen is certainly better then the back breaking work of subsitence farming and it's an area where an older individual can supervise a bunch of children to keep em out of trouble nor does it have to be punishment.

Re:Key phrase

[MeepMeep]

Further down the journalist writes:

many energy sources in the developing world can cost 50 or 60 cents per kilowatt, a PowerPallet can do it for a dime

Which does not really add up with costing "less than $2 a watt", unless it should have said "a lot less" in which case $2 is just misleading. I would be interested to know which is true, though. The technology seems both interesting and useful.

another post cleared up the "less than $2 a watt" as being the initial machine cost

I suspect that the comparison in the developing world of "50 to 60 cents per kilowatt" is a typo, they probably meant "50 to 60 cents per kilowatt-hour" which is the cost of electricity. That the gasifier can do it for 10 cents per kWr is pretty amazing, I pay more than that...but I guess biomass\feedstock for the gasifer is probably super-cheap in the developing world

Re:Key phrase

[fatphil]

> Simplifying one of your statements:"You're interested in producing energy. Watts are a measure of production of energy."

That's not simplifying, that's removing any reference to a rate of change. And thus completely changing the meaning.

And if you think your solar cell is a power *source*, you are so freaking off base, there's no point in attempting meaningful scientific dialogue with you, you have no respect for terminology at all.

Re:Key phrase

[Nemyst]

Once again, the journalist messes up his units. He obviously meant to say kWh, kilowatt-hours, a unit of energy, instead of just kilowatt, a unit of power.

Re: Key phrase

[fatphil]

Any judgement that does not take into account how long the powerplant will run will one time dimension different from a measurement in watts (be they We or Wt, that's the same dimension, just a different scale factor). And any mention of one-time overheads (cost of production, decommissioning, etc.) of the facility only makes sense if you are taking into account how long the powerplant will run.

And one-time overheads *were* mentioned, therefore the more useful metric is the joule-based one, rather than the watt-based one.

I refer back to the example of incredibly high capacity that self-destructs almost immediately. Why does nobody use such mechanisms to add low dollar-per-watt capacity to their grid?

Re:Key phrase

[msauve]

Back to school for you.

Re:Key phrase

[Jackmn]

The watt is a unit of power, so it doesn't make much sense to speak of kilowatts per day. Did you mean kilowatt-hours?

Re:Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

They of course mean kWh/day - which does make sense, the standard for measuring energy usage @ the household or commercial level is kWh, but then they are talking over a day.

Re:Key phrase

[S.O.B.]

You seem to be hung up on the precise scientific terminology. But the metric used ($/watt hour) is not a scientific metric and doesn't pretend to be. It is a valid way of evaluating and comparing the relative financial viability of various technologies.

Being able to compare the startup and operating costs to produce a watt is useful. After all, isn't that's how consumers are charged for electricity?

Is it scientifically accurate? Probably not. Is it useful in the context it's being used? I think so.

Re:Key phrase

[tylikcat]

It's not exactly fertilizer, though I'd consider that an acceptable shorthand for a popular piece. Adding charcoal to soil can both improve nutrient availability and long term soil structure. (I'm including two link,s biochar being the general concept, and terra preta being a particularly interesting historical example.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

Re:Key phrase

[Will.Woodhull]

That quote cannot be explained because it's dead wrong.

Google on "biochar". That is what All Power Labs is producing. It is a soil amendment with remarkable properties.

Re:Key phrase

[marcosdumay]

The cost of eletricity generators are usualy measured over their peak power. $2/W is exactly the number you need to know for determining how much power you can buy, and exactly the number you need to compare with alternatives (for example, $2/W makes it a quite expensive power source to aquire - near double the price of photovoltaics).

Re:Key phrase

[mspohr]

The 10 kW system is $19,000 ($1.90/W), 20 kW system is $27,000 ($1.35/W).

I'm not sure why it costs anything to make electricity from this. It uses free agricultural waste (shells, chips, etc.) The electricity is produces should be free.
You may have to pay someone to run the machine and of course there is the cost of capital (figure 10%/year).
If you run a 20 kW unit full time for a month (24x30=720x20 kW=14,400 kWH). Perhaps they calculate this as the cost...14,400 kWH @ $0.10 is $1,440 which should cover costs of running the machine and the capital costs. YMMV

Re:Key phrase

[mspohr]

The cost of power plants are always quoted as $/W of installed capacity. Nuclear works out to be about $10/W, solar $3/W, etc.
The 10 kW system is $19,000 ($1.90/W), 20 kW system is $27,000 ($1.35/W). This is a low cost power plant.
Also, considering that the fuel should be free or very low cost since it is agricultural waste, the power produced should also be very low cost.

Re:Key phrase

[mspohr]

Solar panels are now less than $1/W but by the time you add in racks, inverters, installation labor, permits, etc. the cost is more like $3/W.

Re: Key phrase

[viperidaenz]

Time has nothing to do with grid capacity.
You can't call up your customers and tell them to turn half their lights off but let them turn them on for twice a long because you're provisioning your power output in W/h instead of watts.

Generation must be able to copy with peak demand.

Re:Key phrase

[viperidaenz]

So the power source for my car is a dinosaur? Or is it the other dinosaur it ate? Or the plants that one ate? Or the sunlight that the plant used in photosynthesis? Awesome! my petrol powered car is actually solar powered.

Dick.

Re:Key phrase

[amiga3D]

Actually I've noticed community colleges where the teachers wrote at about that level. Education isn't what it once was.

Re:Key phrase

[fatphil]

"It is a valid way of evaluating and comparing the relative financial viability of various technologies."

I.e. it's the correct thing to use in the context of this article. Which is why I used it. This idea of scientific units being multiplied together magically becoming unscientific intrigues me - please subscribe me to your newsletter.

Re:Key phrase

[fatphil]

If you are ignoring how long they will last, then you are not evaluating any useful cost.

Re:Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a comments section of a news aggregator. i don't use a spellcheck. i don't reread my comment before submitting. the style of writing appropriate here is the same as in a very casual conversation, so mine is appropriate. the guy i'm replying to is doing the actual patronizing, on what he thinks is a technicality, but he's also wrong in his technicality, and is one of those annoying nerd types who like to put spikes into the wheel of a conversation, which comes out funny in addition to being annoying, when that technicality is wrong. patronizing him is very appropriate. putting him down in front of others to the point where he becomes a basement shut-in is appropriate. you are also one of those annoying people, since you're saying a the comments section of this site should have journal publication grammar and expressions. while community colleges may be where people write at a shitty level, this isn't writing. if you want "writing", click on the article. if you want a natural quick comment, something someone would say at a bar over a beer, read the comments. you're both losers. go fuck each others with squeezed zit juice in his basement while i walk up to the hot blonde at the bar and start a conversation. does that grammar work for you annoying ugly little fucktard?

you should really try taking a course at a community college, any course. then start a conversation with some people in that class, and not be an annoying little shit in that conversation. it's what in a community college they call having social skills. not being an annoying little fuck is a much better social lubricant than your zit juice. tastes better too. tastes like clean pussy on a cute girl. much better than whatever fat/ugly bitch is willing to put up with the likes of someone like you. patronizing enough for you loser?

Re:Key phrase

[mrmeval]

The fuel will be free right up to the point there's a demand then it will go up. Turkey guts, fry oil, etc are no longer cheap or free. Hell I can't even get scrap or chipped wood like I used to from a landscaping company at the low price I was paying. They're selling all their scrap to a company making wood pellets for stoves.

Re:Key phrase

[galabar]

Labor and maintenance.

Re:Key phrase

[hairyfish]

50lbs an hour! That's a lot of stuff. Where do peasants in the desert a hold of so much stuff to use as fuel?

Re:Key phrase

[wagnerrp]

They they should fucking say kWh, and not kW.

Re:Key phrase

[kermidge]

Yes. Between batches the filters need cleaning, for one thing. Still, it's one nifty bit of kit, and these guys look to have done a fine job of it.

For feeding several homes or a small wood or machine shop, you'd want to have several machines, to run in relays to cover each other's downtime. Depending on where one lived, extra juice could be sold back to the grid. A few of these and a Bloom box or the like and one could be the neighborhood power company, if the local law didn't forbid it. For third-world neighborhoods, wherever found, and for supplemental power during natural and other disasters, this stuff would be golden.

Re:Key phrase

[kermidge]

I note in the article that many of the machines have been sold to places in the Tropics. If there has not been complete de-forestation, and if there are crops with a lot of waste - cane and sorghum come to mind, I'm having a brain-fart on recalling others - then these would fit right in. Plus, given the generally thin and often poor quality of native post-jungle soils, what hasn't been washed away could benefit nicely from the charcoal. (Conserving, building, and re-building soil is a big problem all over, including the U.S.)

I've noticed the same thing here in the Midwest, where wood and bark chips could be had for the asking, now not so much; you either know somebody or you buy it.

Re:Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

My, aren't you just a dandy.

Semantic games are clearly your specialty, you must be a gas at parties.

Re: Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

You do - its called demand side management. Usually done to defer investment because plant is sized for peak watts

Re:Key phrase

[S.O.B.]

This idea of scientific units being multiplied together magically becoming unscientific intrigues me - please subscribe me to your newsletter.

Now I understand your problem. Your think the numbers were being multiplied which I agree would be stupid. I thought you knew that "/" means division or in this case "per" as in "how many dollars will it cost me per watt hour produced".

Trolls and people under 5 years of age might not know this.

Re:Key phrase

[Muad'Dave]

A house with a 120V / 100 A feed can be accommodate with a 12000 W generator.

Close to true. With AC systems you have the additional worry of power factor, since the phase of the voltage and current do not have to be the same. For perfectly resistive loads, your simplification is true. For inductive loads (motors) and capacitive loads, the apparent power is very different from the 'actual' or 'consumed' power. You statement would be closer to true as "A house with a 120V / 100 A feed can be accommodate with a 12000 VA generator. " The difference between Watts and Volt*Amps is the power factor.

With a perfectly inductive load, I could require the generator to supply 100 VA, but actually consume 0 actual Watts!

Re:Key phrase

[marcosdumay]

Why? Is this machine going to last for more than the 30 years that most solar pannels last?

Re:Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... You have batteries for your solar system that last 30 years?

Re:Key phrase

[fatphil]

Are you a mathematical numbnut or something? Multiplication and division are associate operations. Every multiplication (by a non-zero value) is a division (by the reciprocal), and every division (by a non-zero value) is a multiplication (by the reciprocal).

And because of this, to a scientist, units, which is what was being talked about, are dimensioned in multiples of powers of fundamental units. E.g. the units for acceleration = m.s^-2

Re:Key phrase

[Hognoxious]

this is a comments section of a news aggregator. i don't use a spellcheck.

Or the shift key, apparently.

Re:Key phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

It does have some minerals in it, but it's not price-competative for that use. Main use is as a soil ammendment or soilless media component.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lump charcoal" is carbon that still has the chemical energy in it.

Re:Bullshit

[Smidge204]

Not ALL the chemical energy of the original fuel, though.

It's a gassifier and engine/gen pair. You heat the fuel in an oxygen-poor environment (the heat comes from burning a part of the fuel itself using what little oxygen is present) which releases volatile compounds and produces carbon monoxide. This syngas is then fed into an internal combustion engine where it's burned to completion to produce power.

Not groundbreaking technology... but proven to work and be a viable means of getting power, especially if you happen to have a lot of biowaste you can throw in there.

Sure, you CAN burn the charcoal leftovers. Might be useful as a cooking fuel, for example. Even if you did that, you're still only carbon neutral. It can also be used to improve soil quality to help grow food or cash crops... which seems like a better use IMHO.
=Smidge=

Re:Bullshit

[JaredOfEuropa]

Not groundbreaking, but the company claims that their machine is reliable and very easy to field-repair. For a small-scale machine used in developing countries, this is crucial. Farms or small businesses in those countries sometimes receive high tech equipment from well-meaning charities, only to have then break down, at which point they find they lack the skill, parts or money to keep the equipment in good repair.

Re:Bullshit

[vikingpower]

Operational research I did for a ( very ) large Austrian farm showed that carbon intake in the form of humus can be 100-200 kg / hectare / year, in pure carbon. Adding pure carbon ( without going through the humus stage by e.g. first producing compost ) to the soil can help farmers reach that number: bacteria will fix the carbon, plants - around their own roots - will form symbiosis with the bacteria, and when at harvest time the plant or its grain is harvested, the bacteria around the root will die and be turned into humic acid. The whole humus-as-a-carbon-sink thing is, climatically, all the more interesting as the carbon remains fixed in the soil for many 10,000s of years. Humus survives ice ages and periods of global warming.

Re:Bullshit

[VVelox]

Nothing about this machine is vaguely high tech or new. Linked to is a basic how to put together by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA208249

And during WW2, the were used in the US, UK, FR, and DE for were attached to vehicles to provide a fuel source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator#Origins

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, Smidge, first you infect Fark with your simple-minded crap and stupid signature, now you have to infect Slashdot, too? STOP THAT.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Humus survives ice ages and periods of global warming

It also makes a delicious dip!

Re:Bullshit

[PopeRatzo]

Humus survives ice ages and periods of global warming

It also makes a delicious dip!

It makes me a little gassy.

Re:Bullshit

[Joce640k]

"Lump charcoal" is carbon that still has the chemical energy in it.

They're not claiming to extract all the energy.

They're claiming to produce a useful amount of energy from widely available material and be carbon-negative, and help crops grow . Win-win-win.

Re:Bullshit

[Smidge204]

No.

Plus, I've been doing it on Slashdot much longer than on Fark. Neener neener.
=Smidge=

Re: Bullshit

[FishTankX]

Not quite. the innovations are in the control systems. that is what they have patents for. also standard gasification tech tends to convert the biomass to ash. this machine converts it into charcoal which both creates fertilizer and locks a portion of the carbon away mostly creating hydrogen and co. which are combusted into water and co2. the control over the combustion process that allows charcoal production over ash production is imporant as gasifier ash shakedown to make room for more fuel is the biggest problem keeping gasifiers from being used in diy stationary power generation. This tech they have developed dodges this problem.

Re:Bullshit

[swillden]

You heat the fuel in an oxygen-poor environment (the heat comes from burning a part of the fuel itself using what little oxygen is present) which releases volatile compounds and produces carbon monoxide. This syngas is then fed into an internal combustion engine where it's burned to completion to produce power.

So, not carbon-neutral, just carbon-reduced. And definitely not carbon-negative. Carbon-reduced can still be useful, of course.

Re:Bullshit

[Joce640k]

Whether it's a win or a lose depends on how much energy you need, now much fuel you have lying around and how much the "fertilizer" is worth to you.

A third-world farmer might see a win where a first world energy junkie doesn't.

Re:Bullshit

[pescadero]

Did you read the article? The creator says basically the same thing that you just did. They aren't claiming to have invented new technology, they are resurrecting old technology and turning it into an easy to use product.

Re:Bullshit

[tylikcat]

The points that aren't being stressed here is that the biochar sequesters a significant amount of carbon in the soil for the long term, and can significantly improves soil structure and nutrient availability. (It's not a fertilizer, though for a popular article I guess that might be a fine hair to split.) The terms to look up are biochar and terra preta.

I would still prefer to see their numbers, as whether they're "carbon" negative is almost certainly a matter of definition. My guess would be that they're sequestering more carbon than they're releasing into the atmosphere... which is at least arguable. Though only if they've made arrangments to dispose of their biochar in an appropriate way.

Re:Bullshit

[Will.Woodhull]

Batch biochar production has been steadily increasing for a decade, so that is not new.

But All Power Labs has developed a continuous flow process, and that is breaking new ground. These rigs could be quite useful in reducing the expense of waste management.

Re:Bullshit

[Smidge204]

So, not carbon-neutral, just carbon-reduced. And definitely not carbon-negative. Carbon-reduced can still be useful, of course.

Are you sure you know what those terms mean?

Burning biomass and having carbon left over means it's carbon negative. The carbon emitted as CO2 minus the carbon absorbed from growing the biomass is a negative number.
=Smidge=

Re:Bullshit

[foobar bazbot]

Yeah, no. The point is that you run it on biomass, so the whole cycle is carbon-neutral or carbon-negative:

CO2 + H2O --photosynthesis-> biomass --power-pallet-> CO2 + H2O + charcoal

Stop there, and you've got some energy out, and if you bury the charcoal, it's carbon-negative. Or use the charcoal as fuel, e.g. for cooking/heating (hopefully replacing fossil fuel currently used in those roles), and you get

CO2 + H2O --photosynthesis-> biomass --power-pallet-> CO2 + H2O + charcoal --charcoal-burning-> CO2 + H2O

Which is carbon neutral, bringing us right back where we started.

The only way you can call it "only carbon-reduced" is if you don't look at the whole cycle, or if you're actually feeding it fossil hydrocarbons instead of biomass, and not burning the coal that comes out -- and it's not clear that that would make any economic sense.

Re:Bullshit

[gregor-e]

Cool Planet is doing something very similar. They add an additional step wherein the carbon is treated to have a biofilm before using it as a soil amendment.

Re:Bullshit

[VVelox]

Did you even bother reading the comment I replied to? JaredOfEuropa was claiming that this is high tech and hard to implement.

Re:Bullshit

[mspohr]

TFA does point out that gasification is not "new" (used widely in WWII). This company has added an Arduino to monitor and control the machine so that is "high tech".
What is groundbreaking (so to speak) is that they are making a machine that you can just buy and run with minimal training (and is easy to repair).

Re:Bullshit

[VVelox]

My comment was in regards to that made by JaredOfEuropa.

These machines have always been easy to make, repair, and run.

Recent commercial manufacture in the US is the only interesting new point.

Re:Bullshit

[disposable60]

This charcoal-as-fertilizer part of the cycle seems a bit of a waste. Sure you go from carbon-negative to carbon-neutral, but isn't ash (nearly) as good a fertilizer as charcoal? It seems to me a stockpile of standby fuel could be an important safety net in areas where the biomass is seasonal.

Re:Bullshit

[swillden]

You forgot the carbon released by the burning of the methane gas, and the released carbon monoxide.

Re:Bullshit

[wagnerrp]

Apparently the porous charcoal helps promote bacterial growth in the soil, improving overall soil health rather than simply fertilizing it.

Re:Bullshit

[Immerman]

No, they didn't. The released gasses are part of the process - they are burned alongside the hydrogen that's powering the generator.

Basically in exhaustive detail the reaction is:
CO2 + H20 +energy (photosynthesis) ----> Biomass
Biomass --(oxygen-deprived heating)--> biochar + H2 (+ CO, CH4 and other trace gasses)
H2 + other gasses --(combustion)--> CO2 + H20 + heat

The released CO2 and H20 is then free to be reabsorbed by more plants, but most of the carbon ends up as biochar rather than CO2 as it would if you simply burnt the wood rather than gassifying it.

Re:Bullshit

[Immerman]

> whether they're "carbon" negative is almost certainly a matter of definition

How do you figure? If they were simply burning biomass directly as fuel, releasing all the carbon back into the atmosphere as CO2, then they would still be carbon-neutral, agreed? Since they are producing biochar, that is carbon that's not being released back into the atmospheric carbon cycle, hence they become carbon-negative, regardless of how much they produce. If they then burnt the biochar, sold it as cooking fuel, etc. then they would be only carbon-neutral again, but so long as the biochar is used for soil enrichment rather than as fuel they remain firmly negative. And that's not exactly rocket science, you just have to dig it into the soil. Our ancestors have been doing it for at least thousands of years.

Hell, even if they sell the charcoal as fuel the process is still potentially carbon-negative if that charcoal is displacing fossil fuels. More likely though it would be displacing burning wood or dried dung, which would still be of great environmental and social benefit as charcoal tends to burn hotter and cleaner than alternatives, with fewer health concerns - smoke inhalation related illnesses are one of the leading health problems in the developing world.

Re:Bullshit

[vandamme]

They can be pretty resourceful. I've seen guys change car struts with a bumper jack, and a sturdy belt as a spring compressor.

Fertilizer?

[jcr]

Since when has charcoal been something to bury instead of burn? Plants get carbon out of the air, they don't need to absorb it through their roots.

-jcr

Re:Fertilizer?

[lxs]

Charcoal appears to be a very useful soil addition.
For further reading look into terra preta and its modern incarnation biochar.

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not pure carbon, you get all the useful trace elements and minerals as well trapped in the carbon matrix and the ash.

Re:Fertilizer?

[burni2]

interesting point:

but it is indeed so that in the agriculture you burn plants on a field to fertilize the new crops, if you want to reduce your fertilizer-costs.

However this technique is used to increase the nitrogen, and other things level in the field.

Re:Fertilizer?

[gl4ss]

I guess since slash-and-burn growing was discovered.

which is like.. I don't know. couple of thousands of years at least..

Re:Fertilizer?

[jcr]

Slash and burn is more about clearing forest for cropland.

-jcr

Re: Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. Slash and burn is typical in rain forests where the soil is thin and light. Burning the forest not just clears it for farmland, but deposits the ash into the soil so that it be used for growing crops. Slash and burn is equal parts clearing for farmland and making the soil usable.

Re: Fertilizer?

[93 Escort Wagon]

But, in general, it's not the carbon in ash that's a fertilizer - it's potassium.

Re:Fertilizer?

[gl4ss]

maybe in amazon now, but that's not the general idea.

it's done for planting new forests too, after the sellable trees have been cut. but just clearing wasn't the point in many cultures.

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not you idiot. The GP is 100% correct - slash and burn works and this also is how forests rebound so quick after fires. Also your earlier post about carbon not coming from the roots? Wrong. It does. let alone the other trace elements and compunds ash has in it.

Re:Fertilizer?

[vikingpower]

See my comment above. Plants, indeed, can not absorb it through their roots. But the bacteria they live in symbiosis with, can. And that is of benefit to the plant ( its bacteria guests are healthier ), to the bacteria ( absorbing carbon from the soil is energy-cheaper than absorbing it from air ) and to the farmer ( the bacteria decompose into humus i.e. humic acid ) after harvest time . Win-win-win, so to say.

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slash and burn tends to produce quickly depleted soils because all the nutrients in ash wash away with the first rain. A modern improvement is slash and char, where the trees are stacked into heaps and covered during combustion. Partially combusted plant matter is tilled into the ground. This method is more labour intensive but crop yields are higher and the soil tends to stay fertile for much longer.

Re:Fertilizer?

[gl4ss]

the way it was done at a small forest clearing 20 years ago when I was a kid was that we would burn the leftover(from the trees that were sold) in piles. in the traditional finnish method you wouldn't generally just burn huge areas at a time anyways.

Re: Fertilizer?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Which is why it doesn't work all that well: the fields are in South America, while the potassium is in Kazakhstan.

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is slash and dot. Gosh, I figured people here would at least know the name of the website. And no, Slashdot hasn't been around for thousands of years (with the exception of Cowboy Neal).

Re:Fertilizer?

[PopeRatzo]

Its not pure carbon, you get all the useful trace elements and minerals as well trapped in the carbon matrix and the ash.

It's got what plants need!

But does it have electrolytes?

Re: Fertilizer?

[PopeRatzo]

while the potassium is in Kazakhstan.

And bananas.

Re:Fertilizer?

[RedBear]

Since when has charcoal been something to bury instead of burn? Plants get carbon out of the air, they don't need to absorb it through their roots.

-jcr

Uh... Since the dawn of time itself? Plants eat each other's bio-nutrients in an endless cycle. The decay of carbon-rich plant matter creates fertilized soil for new plants.

This post is a good example of how disconnected humanity has become to the way nature actually works.

Better yet, outfit these places with urine-diverting toilets and combine the urine with the pure carbon charcoal, maybe mixed with the fully composted solid waste and you'll end up with not just plant crack but plant super-crack. It creates a carbon-nitrogen-phosphorus fertilizer that's just as good if not better than the most expensive commercially-produced fertilizers, for a tiny fraction of the cost. Essentially, free.

If you think I'm just making things up you'll find if you do some research that many places are already using this process both to reduce dependence on commercial fertilizers and to reduce the energy and money required to process waste. Not just on small scales or undeveloped countries either. I'm now wondering how well this gasification process can scale up.

Re:Fertilizer?

[jcr]

Plants absorb CO2 from the air. What do you think that C is? Rotting plant matter fertilizes the ground when NITROGEN-fixing bacteria digest it. What plants get through their roots is water, nitrogen, and trace minerals.

-jcr

Re: Fertilizer?

[I'm New Around Here]

Don't be silly. There are no bananas is Kazakhstan.

Re:Fertilizer?

[GameboyRMH]

The charcoal should really be sealed off from the biosphere somehow, if you burn it or bury it the machine is carbon-neutral rather than carbon-negative.

Re:Fertilizer?

[IICV]

Actually, yes, it does have some electrolytes.

Re:Fertilizer?

[PPH]

Right. And the process of rotting (microbes and other small animals eating dead plant matter) releases much of the carbon as CO2 back into the atmosphere.

Re:Fertilizer?

[tylikcat]

*laughs* I was just linking to those above, having not seen yours.

Re:Fertilizer?

[tylikcat]

Well, modern, except that it seems to have been done widely in the Amazon in precolumbian times.

Slash and burn as practice more recently seems to be a more recent degraded form of the same, under pressure.

Re:Fertilizer?

[tylikcat]

Using biochar as a soil amendment does seem, at least in some environments* to sequester carbon for the long term. But I suspect that you are correct that whether this is carbon negative is largely a definitional thing.

* And maintaining soil fertility in tropical climes has historically been particularly difficult. Heck maintaining soil fertility anywhere has been problematic.

Re: Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean phosphorous. Traditional fertilizers are nitrates and phosphates, to provide the 'N' and 'P' that go into the mix along with the abundant C, O and H for building amino acids, proteins, DNA etc. (Adding large amounts of any salt to soil is not a great idea)

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

sure sure, burning the plants AND holocausting all microbes, mushrooms, worms , insects and whatnot in the top layer
of soil at the same time "IS A GOOD THING(tm)". slash and burn for the win ... as in windows. morons.

Re:Fertilizer?

[marcosdumay]

Too bad slash and burn tends to destroy the soil after some five or six cycles.

Re:Fertilizer?

[Khyber]

" Plants get carbon out of the air,"

Not entirely. The roots do intake raw elemental carbon as well, and this was proven by putting carbon nanotubes into soil mixes.

Re: Fertilizer?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Potassium carbonate.

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/wood-ash-can-be-useful-yard-if-used-caution

Re: Fertilizer?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Although, to be fair, wood ashes contain phosphorus as well (I think that's less true of soft woods, but I can't find that info right now).

http://umaine.edu/publications/2279e/

When I've used it in my garden, I was mainly thinking about it as a lime substitute. I live in the rainy Pacific Northwest, so the salts that are also found in ash weren't as big of a concern for me (but can be other places).

We don't burn much wood anymore, so I am usually buying lime nowadays.

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only Brawndo has what plants crave!

I need to watch Idiocracy one more time...

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

But carbon is not a fertilizer, as it's not soluble and not taken into the plant. All of the carbon in a plant comes from the atmosphere.

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hated that movie :P (obscure punchline)

Re:Fertilizer?

[mcgrew]

They were talking about this yesterday on the farming show that comes on early Sunday mornings. Farmers don't burn; you lose carbon and nutrients that way. What they do is after harvesting, they chop up what's left of the plants and let it rot in the fields, the microorganisms break it down.

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

And since when is a ten-hour run before requiring refueling "ideal for unattended operation"? Just another of their "claims"....

Re:Fertilizer?

[Reziac]

I expect the real benefit isn't the charcoal, but the trace minerals (which can make a huge difference in crop performance).

Re:Fertilizer?

[jwhitener]

And some bacteria take nitrogen from the air and give it to the plant. https://www.google.com/search?q=nitrogen+fixing+endophytes+soil+carbon

Re:Fertilizer?

[Immerman]

The carbon loss is irrelevant - plants don't absorb carbon through their roots. Biochar on the other hand promotes microbial soil health, which in turn promotes plant growth (most plants have symbiotic relationships with various soil microbes or fungi).

It's worth mentioning though that burning crops in the field will generally not produce significant amounts of biochar, instead you get ash + CO2, which does quickly return most of the nutrients to the soil, but doesn't promote microbial health. To get significant amounts of charcoal you need to heat the biomass in the absence of oxygen.

Re:Fertilizer?

[samwichse]

Carbon loss is not irrelevant since biomass breaks down in the soil to form humus (which is almost entirely carbon). It increases the soil's CEC (cation exchange capacity), which leads to greater soil nutrient holding, reduced leaching, better soil availability of macro/micronutrients and hence reduced need for fertilizer.

Biochar is just a product that essentially shortcuts a lot of the microbial respiration steps to reduce OM to humus by burning. In that way it's not as good as good old tillage with whatever biomass is left. Short term, yes biochar can cause a bloom in bacterial populations, but IMO it's like the soil biota version of refined white sugar.

Sam

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

add some sulphur and you've created a gunpowder making system.

I'd love a scaled down version...

[Electricity Likes Me]

$27,000 is pretty steep. If you could scale something down so you could say, dispose of household greenwaste through it and generate power to feed the grid for a few hours a week, you'd really be on to something. Though this is in a big part because I've always dreamed of having my trash go straight to an incinerator...

Re:I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you could always just get an incinerator.
I now of at least one design that passed a copper pipe through the flame bed to heat water into steam which then spun a turbine and generated electricity. This design should work regardless of if you need the steam for radiant heat as well.

The problem with gassifiers that they don't bother to mention is that the "syngas" is combusted in an internal combustion engine which then spins a dynamo. Besides the obvious losses from this system, it also produces exhaust as a byproduct and has the side effect of being much noisier than strictly nessecary if all you are trying to do is produce electricity,

A garbage fueled or even a natural gas fueled incinerator also has the advantage of being able to burn pretty much any kind of waste. However it may produce a mess in the process and a lot of toxic crap that needs to be captured or remediated.

Still for a small application like home use, one could easily build an incinerator / generator at home with a 50 gal oil drum, some copper tubing, a few readily available steam pressure valves and a generator/alternator.

If you wanted to get really fancy it shouldn't be too difficult to use the incinerator as the hot side of a sterling engine.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[FishTankX]

you would have to sort your trash into foodscraps and plastics as burning plastics could be harmful without catalytic converts and percipitators. and the cost of the control systems wouldnt scale. what would make more sense is the use of one of these units in a neighborhood where people drop off sorted foodscraps into a solar dryer to bleed off energy robbing moisture and are paid an energy credit. sort of like can deposit machines. this would amoratize the cost of the unit over the neighborhood and allow the economics of scale to still be realized. I'm sure a neighborhood could generate the 2000 pounds of foodscraps a day needed to keep this machine running.

Re:I'd love a scaled down version...

[rubycodez]

no, don't waste money on this stupid and inefficient early-1900s "wood gas" technology. just burn the biomass completely to make energy, it's carbon neutral process. these unscientific morons are wasting fuel with their "invention"

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[beltsbear]

With an Arduino I am sure a control system could be built inexpensively and open source, not that the company making this would like that. You would have to work around or invalidate their patent possibly depending on what they have patented.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[CrimsonAvenger]

I'm sure a neighborhood could generate the 2000 pounds of foodscraps a day needed to keep this machine running.

You might be amazed at how little food is considered "scraps" in a really poor neighborhood....

Re:I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just google "wood gasification boiler" and you'll find multiple companies out there that make these kind of units. Oddly enough though, very few of these companies want to give out any pricing. (Probably because the boiler units are just as expensive if not moreso than the unit featured in the slashdot article.) Most units they seem to sell are also limited in the form of biomass they use. It's either wood logs or pellets made from stuff like scrapwood, hay, or corn husks. Obviously you're not going to stuff crap or mulch in something made only to handle solid dry materials.

You could also build your own. It seems simple enough. There has to be at least 100 videos on YouTube about it.

Re:I'd love a scaled down version...

[marcosdumay]

Just buy photovoltaics for half that price, and use a bit of the half you saved to make compost out of whatever you would burn.

But I'd also avoid making compost in an urban environment. It's neither confortable nor healthy.

Re:I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'd also avoid making compost in an urban environment. It's neither confortable nor healthy.

...unless you live in the Pacific Northwest of the US where we have municipal compost.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have to do this and the city picks up all 3 (recycling, compost, landfill). (Seattle)

Re:I'd love a scaled down version...

[LoRdTAW]

The generator is quite costly. A 12kW Kubota diesel genset costs around $8000. Instead of a Diesel engine, they are using a spark ignition engine which probably costs just as much as they are built using the same block as the diesel.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is my understanding that normal patents do NOT protect against personal, non-commercial use. So if i use a patent to create a one-off that is significantly like the original, the author has no ground for suing for damages. It also looks like their using the "Open Source" tag line in their company, so it would be interesting to see how open source they are.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

With an Arduino I am sure a control system could be built inexpensively and open source, not that the company making this would like that. You would have to work around or invalidate their patent possibly depending on what they have patented.

Yes, you are correct--we use an Arduino control system on the Power Pallet

Re:I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why you would say making compost is neither comfortable or healthy. I've been doing vermicomposting and regular composting for years and it's easy.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[wagnerrp]

You would be incorrect. It's more of a cost issue. I would cost them more to come after you than they could ever hope to get from licensing you the tech, so there's no point to it.

Re:I'd love a scaled down version...

[wagnerrp]

They don't want to burn the biomass completely. This thing is dual purpose, producing "biochar" for soil enrichment, and generating some power in the process.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

ever seen how much yard mulch a suburban neighborhood produces in a year? These are energy-hog properties, too.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be amazed at how little food is considered "scraps" in a really poor neighborhood....

I wouldn't, because I grew up with chickens. Food scraps were chicken treats. I hear pigs are great for that too.

Re: I'd love a scaled down version...

[Neil Boekend]

Sorting trash is standard.
Here in the Netherlands most houses have 6 bins:
1. Kitchen waste (left over food, bones from meat and other stuff that biodegrades)
2. Plastic.
3. Drink cartons, tin cans and other stuff with thin metallic layers.
4. Paper.
5. Glass.
6. A small bin for the rest.
7. ...
8. Profit
This is feasible because we have to pay for the rest waste. All others, if properly separated, are collected free.

Kitchen waste and paper could probably be used to feed such a thing, although our biodiesel producers, compost producers and paper mills wouldn't like it.

How is this carbon negative?

[Anonymous Coward]

At best this can be carbon neutral.
Carbon negative would mean that it reduces the amount of carbon in the air, which this doesn't do.

Re:How is this carbon negative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. We need to cut down all the forests, replant them, and bury the dehydrated trees in a salt mine or a desert. That is carbon negative.

Re:How is this carbon negative?

[Dthief]

If you burn plants and release CO2 equal to the amount they needed to "breath" in order to build themselves, that is carbon neutral

If you instead of releasing that CO2 are turning the CO2 (directly or indirectly) into C you are removing all of that CO2 from the normal carbon cycle.

Imagine doing this to every plant for 1Million years. At some point all the carbon in the world would be in the form of charcoal, and there would be no CO2 in the atmosphere. Not advised, but thats how.

Re:How is this carbon negative?

[Gary van der Merwe]

It is carbon negative if you bury the waste charcoal.

Re:How is this carbon negative?

[Anonymous Coward]

The carbon that made this fertilizer that became plants initially came from plants. But energy was released, which means that some CO2 was produced. Nothing has changed. This would still be a carbon positive technology. If you instead buried the charcoal in a place where it couldn't erode and where organisms couldn't eat it, then you would have a potentially carbon negative technology if the amount of carbon from the buried charcoal was greater than the amount of carbon converted into CO2.

Re:How is this carbon negative?

[tylikcat]

And this is why it's important to understand that while biochar improves soil fertility, it is not fertilizer, and is a viable long term form of carbon sequestration.

no thats carbon neutral

[Anonymous Coward]

So it uses fuel but generates no carbon dioxide ?? Thats not negative thats 'neutral'.

If it captured EXTRA carbon dioxide from the air and added to that lump of charcoal then it would be 'negative'

Of course to be truely exact -- IF its manufacture and materials used to make it/transport it and its fuel were all 'neutral' then it would be truely neutral. What do you think the odds of that are???

Its like those electric car people who dont bother to mention that the carbon dioxide used to create that electric car (with their high tech batteries) is so far beyond a normal cars INCLUDING its burnt fuel for its lifetime, so that electric cars are actually significantly GREATER creators of 'green house' gasses (and that is BEYOND the fuel burnt to create the electricity for that electric cars charging which these liars also dont bother to mention)

Lets not get into the toxic waste from the batteries which have to be replaced every few years (and the energy any recycling process uses -- yep - more carbon dioxide from in that part too....)

Sorry eco-tards 'smugness in ignorance' doesnt actually help the environment.

Re:no thats carbon neutral

[Dthief]

It releases no CO2, while using a source which initially converted CO2 into other organic molecules (plants growing)

Imagine using this burn every plant for a lot of years. At some point all the carbon in the world would be in the form of charcoal, and there would be no CO2 in the atmosphere.

Re: no thats carbon neutral

[MSG]

If being wrong about electric vehicle pollution makes you an eco-tard, congratulations. You're an eco-tard.

Sierra Club

Popular Science

Or maybe we can all just conduct ourselves with a little more respect. That would be really nice.

Re:no thats carbon neutral

[fatphil]

By that standard, this device is also photosynthesising.
Just because a tree did it in the past, doesn't mean this device is doing it by using a tree.

Re:no thats carbon neutral

[Overzeetop]

Yes, but as soon as you cut down your source it no longer is converting, so if you are going to use the plant's CO2 in your favor, you must also include the loss of CO2 opportunity capture - all of the CO2 the plant DIDN'T capture if you'd let it run it's normal life course.

Re:no thats carbon neutral

[Anonymous Coward]

It releases no CO2, while using a source which initially converted CO2 into other organic molecules (plants growing)

Imagine using this burn every plant for a lot of years. At some point all the carbon in the world would be in the form of charcoal, and there would be no CO2 in the atmosphere.

Huh? It's got a fairly large internal combustion engine driving the generator. What happens to the exhaust from that engine?

Right. It goes into the atmosphere.

Re:no thats carbon neutral

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey 'tard, did you miss the fact that this machine is powered on waste?

There is no opportunity cost, since the plants are already dead and have achieved the maximum CO2 capture it is going to.

Re:no thats carbon neutral

[Dthief]

By that logic, bio-fuels would not be considered carbon neutral......

Carbon neutral and non-neutral relate to releasing carbon that is trapped (i.e. oil, coal) and doesnt participate in the "short-term" carbon cycle. You can plant and burn trees for eternity and the amount of carbon going into and from the air will be (almost) neutral. If you turn trees into coal, but can grow more trees, you will slowly deplete carbon from the atmosphere, and have it in your trunk.

If instead you take all the oil and coal and burn them you will be adding a lot of otherwise non-gaseous/non-carbon-cycle carbon into the carbon-cycle

Re:no thats carbon neutral

[Dthief]

Thats not true at all. When plants die, fungus and microbes eat them up, and re-release the CO2. In the normal course of events (non-human = "normal") there is a continuous flow to and from plants. Plants breath the CO2, make themselves grow, and eventually they are re-converted to CO2 through natural processes.

If instead when they die (at your hand or otherwise) you convert them to a block of Carbon then that CO2 is removed from the cycle.

Its true, not all carbon in the carbon cycle is in the atmosphere. A lot is trapped in plants and animals, but these are "short-term" not geological scale storage. Carbon neutral/positive/negative is talking about whether the cycle gains or loses carbon.

If you burned the coal that you made with this machine until it was all back to CO2, THEN it would be carbon neutral.

Re:no thats carbon neutral

[Immerman]

The engine is not running primarily on carbon-based fuel. The biomass is heated in a low oxygen environment to produce hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide (aka wood gas). the generator then burns those gasses with the exhaust being a mixture of water vapor and CO2. Yes, the carbon monoxide thus burned does re-enter the carbon cycle, but most of the carbon gets left behind as biochar rather than being released as carbon monoxide to be burnt (depending on the design of the gasification chamber).

It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[bugnuts]

If you do anything with the ash, it's carbon neutral. If you use it as fertilizer, it's essentially converted into wood mass which often ends back up into the atmosphere. Subsequent usage of the fertilized wood products in the "machine" would simply harness some of the solar energy and convert it back into a neutral.

The point is that if the charcoal by-product is used in any way, it's at best carbon-neutral. The only way it's carbon-negative is if the carbon is simply buried and never used as fertilizer or anything. In theory, burying it would be the opposite of pumping up oil to burn... you can harness the energy and sequester the carbon. But it's extremely unlikely the by-product won't get burnt directly or indirectly.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[Gary van der Merwe]

No. The process creates charcoal, not ash. When this charcoal is used as a soil amendment, the carbon is fixed for approximately 10 000 years. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[Overzeetop]

I thought the same thing. Unless you're pulling carbon out of the air and sequestering it, it's not negative. The amount of carbon burned or lost is probably negligible enough to call it "neutral" but it certainly isn't negative.

FWIW - this is similar to how amateur pyrotechnicians make certain types of charcoal for special firework effects. Most commercial charcoal isn't really speciated, so if you want willow charcoal, you have to make it yourself.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[Anonymous Coward]

10,000 years? So we're just passing this carbon problem on to the next generation (presuming their life span is really long.)

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[Anonymous Coward]

The trees pull carbon out of the air via photosynthesis. The device extracts energy from the trees. The remaining carbon goes in/on the ground. Thus, the cycle is net negative for atmospheric carbon.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[wagnerrp]

Nothing is preventing the production of an ever thickening layer of charcoal in which to store excess carbon. It just means it's an ongoing solution.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[wagnerrp]

Well if you want to get literal, all combustion is a carbon neutral process. Petroleum was originally biomass hundreds of millions of years ago. This is merely carbon negative on a relative short time scale (months to decades, depending on source of the fuel).

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. Humans are merely currently desequestering carbon (aka fossil fuels), that were sequestered by geological processes. We are not transmuting other elements into carbon.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[Immerman]

Well, a little longer timescale than that - biochar will remain in the soil not for months or decades, but around 10,000 years. Still not all that dramatic on geological timescales, but practically forever from the perspective of ecosystem cycles.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[wagnerrp]

I was referring to the time it took for the fuel source to pull the carbon out of the atmosphere.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[PaulHu]

...Unless you're pulling carbon out of the air and sequestering it, it's not negative. ...

The plants that you burn in the machine pulled the carbon out of the air for you while they growed. Therefore the process is carbon-negative.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[bugnuts]

Thanks Gary... so it is actually sequestering the carbon even when used as a fertilizer.

The OP was based on plants pulling carbon out of the ground in addition to the air, but it's obviously a much lower rate that doesn't creep for centuries.

The price is right?

[jamesl]

From the article ...
For now, All Power Labs is making only 10 kW and 20 kW versions, though the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Minnesota recently gave the company a grant to build a 100 kW version.
If this thing is the greatest invention since sliced bread, why does the company (selling $5 million worth of machines per year) need a university grant for product development. Something doesn't pencil out here.

Re:The price is right?

[Zumbs]

Assuming a 10% profit rate, a turnover of $5 million would result in a yearly profit of $500,000. While that is certainly a tidy profit, it is not much to both upscale their technology and expand their production facilities at the same time. On top of that, they may also want to improve and refine their technology.

building green equipment for 3rd world...

[Joining Yet Again]

...allows first world do-gooders to receive grants and make large profits to buy gas guzzlers and continue over-consuming.

But don't let the cognitive dissonance hit you in the face on the way out. This is our burden as white men: we must help to keep them going, by the rules we'd never live by, as long as we continue to benefit from unfair trade agreements, corrupt government, and worker mistreatment.

Re:building green equipment for 3rd world...

[Immerman]

The first-world mentality is unsustainable - it is based upon exponential growth and thus MUST change into something sustainable or collapse, and it's looking increasingly likely that this will be the century when it happens. Meanwhile projects like this will help the developing world to actually gain many of the truly dramatic advantages of the first-world, without incurring the unsustainable environmental costs. Our way of life in the first world is probably doomed, eventually we will be forced to dramatically reduce our ecological footprint, better for everyone if the technology to do so has already seen extensive development and deployment among those who are currently climbing to the places we will descend to.

And frankly technology like this is *exactly* the sort of thing we should be cheering for - based on simple technology and standardized components readily available around the world. This is the sort of thing that a African village could build for itself if it only knew how: once they buy one they can maintain it themselves, and assuming there's a couple clever people around they can build more themselves. Everybody wins. The first-worlders are making some profit while developing and refining sustainable technology, and the third-worlders are getting a sustainable power plant that's cheaper to own and operate than most of the alternatives, and doesn't leave them dependent on ongoing assistance from the first world. Which is a major problem with most imported technology - where is a third world village going to get reliable power for, say, a first-world anesthesia machine, much less the parts and knowledge required to maintain it? Or charge controllers and batteries for a solar power station? Or..., or...,or...?

So yeah, I'll tip my hat to these folks - this is a cobblestone on the path to an equitable future.

proven wood gas technology since 1839

[colordev]

It works. During the WWII there were around 700,000 wood gas powered automobiles in Germany, France, Sweden and Finland. As those were back then able to power buses and trucks, it's plausible to think modern designs also producing 20kW of bio power - as advertised.

Finland's eco-mobilist association has a gallery of hobbyist build wood gas mobiles, some even with designs specs and tips. Chairman on the Finland's currently most popular party, which unfortunately isn't The Pirate Party which among others has pirate bay and privacy activist Peter Sunde as a candidate in the coming EU- parliament election, has build his own wood gas automobile - " El Kamina" which by the way is build on top Chevrolet El Camino, which...

______________________
No, I didn't just wrote that

Re:proven wood gas technology since 1839

[hankwang]

It works. During the WWII there were around 700,000 wood gas powered automobiles

But those combusted all of the wood and did not leave carbon behind as charcoal.

Re:proven wood gas technology since 1839

[Reziac]

From your wood-gas article, I got the image of vehicles putting along, extruding little charcoal poops as they go...

About what I was thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder how they're taking care of the wood tar. But it makes sense: The size means it's easier to stuff in a barn than mount on a truck.

Re: About what I was thinking

[FishTankX]

wood tar can be captured and gasified if the non gasified portion is caoturedb in a filter medium made of fuel and cycled back into the gasifier. part of your fuel then becomes the filter.

You got Slash and Burn wrong.

[burni2]

Slash and burn will enrich the soil with nitrogen(fertilizer) and pottasium(fertilizer).
The CO2 will go directly into the atmosphere.

So is the charcoal worth more as a fertilizer?

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Because if it's worth more a fuel I'm pretty sure what the people running these things will do and it isn't use it fertilizer for the good of the planet.

Re:So is the charcoal worth more as a fertilizer?

[DerekLyons]

Charcoal is actually a pretty crappy fertilizer - it's very stable (I.E. breaks down very slowly even when finely divided), and doesn't release much in the way of materials that plants require. (Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium make up the bulk of modern fertilizers.) It's not even very good at altering the pH of the soil.

(Yes, I know ash is used as a fertilizer and to alter soil pH. Charcoal isn't ash.)

Re:So is the charcoal worth more as a fertilizer?

[wagnerrp]

Charcoal is not a fertilizer. It's basically used as a substrate in which to hold other nutrients in place so they don't wash away or leech out of the soil.

TIA

[ProfessionalCookie]

"a guy running a corn mill in Uganda with a PowerPallet will never need to open that door and never will"

I live in Africa and I can verify that this is a foolish thing to say. We have to open all kinds of doors never meant to be opened and fix thing using materials and tools that in any other place might seem like a joke. But we can, and we do, not because we don't know better but because the things we need to fix were engineered to be used in friendly climates by people who grew up with machines and who value the benefit of the machine more than the selling price of a part, even for scrap. They were constructed economically and without a clever friend they die much much earlier than they were intended to.

Re: TIA

[FishTankX]

I believe the intention wasn't that africans wouldnt repair the machine. rather that you wouldnt need to rebuild the computerised combustion control system which is probably environmentally sealed. which seems accurate. Am I wrong on that point?

Re:TIA

[Reziac]

You just described how it for farmers across the world. Even in rural America, a great deal of fixing happens of stuff that's not meant to be fixed, or is too expensive to replace. Unfriendly climate, of course, means lots more to fix. :(

Metric

[Anonymous Coward]

"much of the machine is made with plumbing fixtures that are the same everywhere in the world. "

1/2 " and 1" sizes are hardly 'the same everywhere in the world'
The world is metric.

Re:Metric

[gweihir]

Actually, plumbing fixtures are one of the (few) exceptions: Coarse treading on plumbing is not metric in most places. Fine threading is, but coarse threading with inch-sized pipes is available basically everywhere.

Re:Metric

[petes_PoV]

The world is metric

That's true. While only a tiny minority of the world is still stuck on imperial units, the plumbing fittings of those sizes seem to be standard. At least in (metric) europe - not just the UK, fittings are available in "inches". Since they're all made in china, it would follow that the sizes are also available globally, too.

Re:Metric

[GuB-42]

In metric countries 1/2" is called 15/21 and 1" is called 26/34 but othewise they are the same.
The two numbers correspond to the approximate interior and exterior diameter in mm.

Re:Metric

[jbengt]

1/2 " and 1" sizes are hardly 'the same everywhere in the world'
The world is metric.

Call it 1"NPS or DIN 25, steel pipe dimensions and threads are the same almost everywhere. (Note that the Nominal Pipe Sizes of common small steel pipes are not all that close to the actual ID or OD, anyway.)

Re:Metric

[Windwraith]

I live in metric world, and as a solar thermal installer, I can verify that all plumbing fixtures are indeed measured in inches. Knowing thermal installations made in the US, I can say we use the same copper fixtures.

Re:Metric

[Shinobi]

When I was doing some renovation, everything I bought was in metric units, including plumbing pipes, joints etc, as well as wood and other stuff. I live in Sweden though

Self inflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

"And the fact that last year, the City of Berkeley honored All Power Labs with a proclamation on its fifth birthday. The city didn't quite appreciate the irony of granting that honor given the company's origins, Price said. "

Irony is a bitch. It has lots of sisters.

Wrong Throusers

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he meant it in a bad way.

People in sometimes less wealthy , develloping nations can (and are) be very resourceful. Older technologies such as steam powered often coexist with newer one like solar powered ones, etc.

What the original post meant was its its requires little to no maintenance so that anyone can use one.

I don't know where to begin...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a a chemical engineer doing research into bio-fuels (especially in the fields of gasification and pyrolysis). We even have a few of the All Power Labs' Power Pallets.

There are so many factual problems with this article that I do not know where to start.

Perhaps the biggest error is the fact that there is a tremendous amount of carbon released to the atmosphere with this apparatus. Basically, all of the carbon in the biomass that doesn't remain as bio-char is converted to carbon dioxide inside of the generator's motor.

This is what happens when you let CNet report on science and engineering---they blew it.

Re:I don't know where to begin...

[Barsteward]

"Perhaps the biggest error is the fact that there is a tremendous amount of carbon released to the atmosphere with this apparatus."

where does it say this in the article. it appears to say the opposite. "...and most energy sources, even others based on biomass, contribute to the problem. That's because, Price said, burning the biomass releases the carbon back into the atmosphere. By comparison, because there's no combustion in All Power Labs' gasification process, the carbon isn't released into the air."

Re:I don't know where to begin...

[taiwanjohn]

I was wondering about that, thanks for clearing it up. But even if it's not as "carbon negative" as claimed, it's still a very useful technology with a large niche to fill, especially in the developing world. I'm curious though how it compares to methanol fermentation in terms of conversion efficiency. Both are fairly low-tech solutions, suitable for DIY in 3rd-world areas, and both can drive existing gasoline engines with minor modifications. But methanol can use a somewhat wider range of feedstocks, and has the advantage of being a liquid, which is a better fit with existing infrastructure.

There was a really good idea a few years back which unfortunately never got through Congress to become law. It was the Open Fuel Standard Act which would have required all cars sold in the USA to be able to run on any mix of fuels, including methanol (phased in over several years). Unlike ethanol, methanol can be made from almost any form of biomass, so it doesn't "compete" with food crops. Ultimately, this would break the monopoly of petroleum in transportation fuels, allowing true independence from "foreign" energy.

Re:I don't know where to begin...

[taiwanjohn]

It doesn't say that in the article. That's the point. The parent is saying the article is wrong because the thing does release some carbon into the air, and he bases this claim on the fact that he has done hands-on research with this very product. IANA chemical engineer, but I know enough about wood combustion to suspect he's right about this. It doesn't mean the apparatus is useless, it just means the person who wrote the article didn't do his/her homework well enough. (Yeah, I know... that never happens when journalism meets science...;-)

It's nice to see this old tech getting a revival. It certainly has a role to play in our future energy needs. But it's a stretch to claim it will contribute substantially to carbon sequestration. It's a step in the right direction, certainly, but not likely to make much of an impact on CO2 levels anytime soon. If anything can save us, the best candidate is reversing desertification through managed intensive rotational grazing and permaculture.

Re:I don't know where to begin...

[tylikcat]

And biochar is fertilizer *nods earnestly* (Though to be fair, for a popular article that bit at least might be a fine hair to split.)

My guess is the claim of carbon negativity is that they're sequestering more carbon than they're releasing. (I have no idea if this is true.)

Re:I don't know where to begin...

[wagnerrp]

Of course nothing is released during the gasification process. All the wood gas is collected, and subsequently burned to drive the generator and heat the gasifier.

Re:I don't know where to begin...

[wagnerrp]

That's because it's a retarded idea, made by well meaning politicians who have no clue about engineering matters.

• Diesel engines need auto-ignition, and thus do not operate well on high octane fuels like gasoline or alcohol.
• Gasoline engines cannot have auto-ignition, so the rated octane of their fuel determines their construction. An Otto engine designed for gasoline is going to have too low a compression to run efficiently on alcohol. An Otto engine designed for alcohol is going to have serious knock issues with gasoline, and will either blow itself up, or have to be run very rich.
• Gas turbines have no such issues running on multiple fuels, but their continuous operation and high power density leads to overheating issues that demand low compression, and thus inefficient operation. Large turbines can fit complex cooling measures to higher compression, and industrial units can afford the weight of recuperators, both working to bring thermodynamic efficiency up to parity with other internal combustion engines. Neither of these are an option for a small engine for a vehicle.
• External combustion engines like a Stirling engine similarly have no issues running on multiple fuels, but their low power density and need for large cooling systems makes them poorly suited for use on a vehicle.

Carbon negative my foot

[dutchwhizzman]

This device burns stuff, releases CO2 in the atmosphere that wasn't there before. It'd be carbon negative it if would take out CO2 that was in the atmosphere before. Misleading title, if this was carbon negative, all cars that run on bio diesel are carbon negative as well.

Re:Carbon negative my foot

[foobar bazbot]

Cars that run on bio-diesel are only carbon-negative if they're running rich, sequestering carbon as lovely black soot! Normally, they're considered carbon-neutral, because they release the same amount of CO2 that the soy plants just took out of the atmosphere and converted to soybean oil. Think of it as a short-term interest-free loan -- pull some CO2 out, convert the C in it to hydrocarbon fuel, then convert it back to CO2 in a diesel engine and release it; no net increase in CO2 levels.

Re:Carbon negative my foot

[Anonymous Coward]

Think it through a moment--biomass absorbs carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. Gasifier extracts energy, some carbon remains, and is put in/on soil. Net atmospheric carbon total is less than when you began. Thus: carbon negative energy.

Re:Carbon negative my foot

[Issarlk]

Well... let's see. Input:

Output:
- CO2 (there's an engine in that that burns CO from dead plant)
- Charcoal = Carbon.

So we input CO2 and it outputs CO2 and coal. Now unless you don't believe in conservation of mass, or that lumps of charcoal can floats in the atmosphere then it means there's less CO2 in the atmosphere as a result of treating the dead plants with this machine.

Re:Carbon negative my foot

[Anonymous Coward]

Biodiesel and ethanol are carbon neutral. All of the carbon it releases was carbon that was recently in the atmosphere. Making biogas + charcoal and burying the cahrcoal is carbon negative because it releases less carbon dioxide than the plant had absorbed out of the atmosphere while it was growing. Charcoal stays in your soil a lot longer than wood chips, logs, or crop residue. You wouldn't do this everywhere as a typical pH of biochar is 8.5, but is very useful in tropical areas you you generally have to add lime into the soil to raise pH anyways. Ad 20% by volume to the top 12 inches of soil (generally you don't plow deeper than this. At about 20 pounds of carbon per cubic foot, this would be (0.20 * 43,560 * 20)/ 2200 = about 80 metic tons/acre that can be sequestered, or 5000 metric tons per square mile. Not only are you sequestering carbon you are preventing a bigger release from natural gas or coal, so the total impact on the carbon balance may be 3-4 times that. It's not a big cure, but if you can fit all the pieces togeth on an industrial scale you should make a lot of money.

Smug hipster twat

[Hognoxious]

during World War II, a million vehicles utilized the technology. But after the war, it more or less vanished from the planet, for reasons unknown.

Actually, the reasons are known. Gas has a poor energy density. This is why you see those huge great balloons on top of WW2 vehicles. Price probably thinks they're to make bombs bounce off.

Compression requires specialized equipment and well made containers, which are expensive. The main active components of the gas are hydrogen (which leaks) and carbon monoxide (which is poisonous).

While it's possible to generate the gas on the fly it's not exactly convenient to warm up the generator in advance and it also makes your car look like that thing out of Wacky Races driven by a bear.

Re:Smug hipster twat

[PPH]

Why use this for cars? Fixed base load generation is a far better idea (assuming fuel supply and other problems have been solved). And then you can charge an electric car, if you really need one.

Re:Smug hipster twat

[Anonymous Coward]

Compression equipment isn't that specialized, nor are the tanks more expensive than say a battery.

Re:Smug hipster twat

[Hognoxious]

Compression equipment isn't that specialized

Yes it is. You don't have it at home, and neither do I or anyone I know. Also, hydrogen doesn't behave the same as oxygen or propane when compressed. You did know that, right?

nor are the tanks more expensive than say a battery.

Yes they are, because of hydrogen's properties. If you think you can use a bottle off an old camping stove you're literally dead wrong. And batteries aren't cheap anyway. Neither is even close to the cost of a jerrycan.

Old technoloogy, readapted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok folks this is not new technology. This is from prior to world war 1. If I remember it was used on trucks, and civilian people movers prior to wwI. I seem to remember a film, of a car, I think mercedes, with a giant bag over it, to hold the gas. They used it then, to bring crops to the market. I remember reading of the history of germany, prior to the war, thru the first, and thru the depression, where they were developing gassification for the masses. So this would have been one of the 1900-30 textbooks that used to read out of the GM School library back when I was a kid. God that was a while back...wonder where they shipped all that stuff when the library closed down. All that research that was done there destroyed. Damn.

Charcoal is a soil conditioner. Not fertilizer.

[quixote9]

If the writer of the article doesn't even know that, what else if he ignorant of? (Any potassium, phorphorus, and trace elements will act directly as fertilizer.) Furthermore, as soil conditioners go, you'd be much better off including it in a compost and then spreading the compost. Straight charcoal will make soil alkaline and plenty of crops wouldn't like that.

So this process is definitely not producing loads of free fertilizer. Energy? Sure. Gasification has been around for decades. And it sounds more carbon neutral than trying to convert bio-waste into methanol or ethanol. Plus the small fact that we're pretty bad at using waste to make ethanol. This sounds like a much more practical process to enable the use of agricultural wastes for fuel.

But spare us the ill-informed blather about fertilizer.

Re:Charcoal is a soil conditioner. Not fertilizer.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a horticulturalist who has worked at some of the nation's largest botanical gardens I'd like to backup quixote9. Biochar doesn't really add much in the way of nutrients to the soil. They are however very good at absorbing nutrients from composting manure, vermiculture and other sources and making them available over a prolonged period of time to plants. Mix it into your compost bins, etc., and let it mature. Once your done then you really will have "plant crack".

Instead of graveyards

[jennatalia]

We could use these plants. The dead bodies would produce a significant amount. They could convert rendering plants into it as well.

No such thing as 'man made global warming'

[Anonymous Coward]

So why is this article blabbering on about 'carbon'?
'Carbon',
'Carbon',
'Carbon',
'Carbon',

Are you sick of this nonsense yet?

www.climatedepot.com

There is no such thing as 'man made global warming', which is why the scammers involved renamed it 'climate change', what a joke, and the Slashdot cretins lap it all up...

Re:No such thing as 'man made global warming'

[Blaskowicz]

There is global warming and it hasn't even stopped for the past 15 years.

I like the idea of this....

[Anonymous Coward]

... but the problem is the same one that faces the guy that converts his car to run on the waste cooking oil of restaurants. What happens when the very-limited supply runs out because 'everybody' is doing it or because the source decides that this is an income stream and charges for the oil? It's a great idea until it isn't.

They're right, biomass is everywhere until 'everyone' needs it and then there won't be enough. Will this lead to pervasive stripping of the land of all biomass like what the Haitians did to the forests on their island looking for firewood? This biomass has to be brought to the machine. Imagine an ever-widening circle of bare land around the machine.

How are the people supposed to transport the biomass to the machine? At what point will the energy used to transport the biomass to the machine render the output carbon-positive? Gas engines need gas, draft animals need to be fed and suddenly the 'positive carbon negative' becomes the 'negative carbon positive'.

What happens if these poor regions start to develop an energy intensive infrastructure? There are cell phones everywhere. This implies all of the support structures -- towers, central processing areas, distribution etc -- will need power, not just for the phone chargers. Throw in lights in their huts, some modern electical conveniences (and the profit whores are lining up to exploit these areas), not to mention Zuckerberg's effort to 'altruistically' expand the internet to 5 billion additional people and you're looking at a nightmare as these poor, ignorant souls succumb to the predations of the profiteers.

If we, the modern, sophisticated people of this planet, can be seduced en masse to eat up Facebook and its lifeblood the advertising (with all of the consumption that that implies), what chance do these technically and psychologically unsophisticated people have against the onslaught of consumerism?

The problem, as I see it, is the 'white man's' religion. I mean not only the Krister religion that tells them their indigenous religions and practices that have supported them for eons is crap and now you need the new, impoved Jeebuz, but the 'evangelism' of consumerism where these hunter-gatherer and subsistence farming peoples just can't make it in this brave, new world without modernity's 'blessings'.

What happens when an ancient culture that tilled the soil with wooden plows and an ox are given a tractor? Now they need fuel and all of the infrastructure to supply it. They need parts and a means of repair. They need a transportation pipeline to the manufacturer. They'll need modern fertilizers and the pesticides as their success demands more success and the bounty starts to attract the crop-eating insects and pests. The huge demands on the the water supply in semi-arid regions will cause untold changes and damage to their lives. The support infrastructure for that one tractor is huge and destructive of a functioning, albeit ancient, society that was in balance with its environment.

What they get in return, if they do things right, is a crop so huge that they have an advantage over their neighbors that demands a response from the neighbors in the form of either more tractors and infrastructure to keep up or local conflicts arise because of the economic distortion. Now the original tractor necessitates the need for arms to protect their advantage. And it quickly goes downhill from there.

And when these dirt-poor people suddenly have a windfall of artificially created wealth what becomes of their culture that was in perfect harmony with their environment? What becomes of the inevitable pollution by a people so unsophisticated that they unknowing kill or cripple themselves and their kids? Do you think the profiteers care one whit?

Look at Nigeria and all of its oil wealth. The place is a shithole of extremely nasty pollution and environmental degradation they could not imagine when the first 'capitalist evangelical' pitched them 'an offer they couldn't refuse'. And we don't even need to address

Carbon makes terrible fertilizer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fertilisers are generally have high nitrogen levels because most plants cannot absorb nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. Those that do have symbiotic bacteria that so the hard work.

Charcoal?

[mark_reh]

mmmm fire up the grill!

economics generally don't work out

[supernova87a]

There have been lots of these gasification setups in the past. Two problems are always:

1) Aside from a colocation with an agriculture / waste facility, you will have to scour a large radius to get the amount of biomass to burn reliably. There is significant transport cost to that.

2) For low grade biomass that you're talking about, you're incurring additional fuel and $ to gasify the biomass, to then burn it. This doesn't really make sense. If you're just generating power, you would probably just burn the biomass material itself. Maybe a stirling engine.

Very few applications using gasification have gone anywhere.

The only thing ...

[PPH]

... that makes such a process carbon neutral or negative is the input of plant matter. The plant matter which, during its life, sequestered carbon from the atmosphere. In that sense, it is better than burning 'old' carbon, which we pump or mine from the ground. But it does introduce competition between food crops and energy crops into an economy.

The crop cycles into which this technology is introduced will have to be examined carefully to evaluate its impact. Is it better to burn or gassify the non-food parts of plants? Or till them back into the soil where microbes can act upon them in symbiosis with the next generation of crops. In the final analysis, we have to figure out how much energy is being diverted from biological (crop) cycles to power a more energy intensive lifestyle.

Puff piece

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys don't know when you are being sold a load of BS.

CLAIM: Carbon negative
1. They show some nice clean charcoal chunks, but the machine is all about gassifying carbon stocks. The charcoal is just some remnants that haven't been gassified yet! You could feed the damn thing charcoal (or coal) and it would use it up! You think that because some charcoal CAN be left over and then buried in the ground, that it is carbon negative?
2. The gas that has been released from cooking the wood now goes (after some cleanup) into an internal combustion engine. This engine combines that carbon-containing gas with oxygen (burning!) to produce -- what? Electricity and carbon dioxide.

Now you bunch of Einsteins, what have we just done? We took wood and burned it. Sound carbon negative?

CLAIM: Easy to repair
The gassification stage could be easy to repair. What about the generator? Does that use pipe fittings available at any hardware store?

I like gassification, but you guys need to put away your faerie stickers and fuzzy unicorn dolls. You need to be able to think critically.

Carbon neutral or negative? FOOLS! NO!
Useful? Probably in lots of relatively well developed places that have lots of wood, and no mains power.
Easy to repair? If you have auto parts and repair facilities.

MOD THIS UP, YOU BUNCH OF PANSIES!

No way ...

[yusing]

No way I'm going to believe any of this. There's no equations on that page, no PhD's are named, and no mention of any government grants. If it were so easy, it'd have been done already long ago.

TOK-a-MAK!! TOK-a-MAK!! TOK-a-MAK!!

Re:Not Bullshit... Hot TOTTI

[mspohr]

Here's the innovative high tech part:
"These smarts are further extended by a multi-stage gasification architecture, and an innovative “waste heat” capture and recycling system — what we call the Tower of Total Thermal Integration (Hot TOTTI). In traditional systems, hot engine exhaust and hot output wood gas have been “problems” requiring extra space and cooling components to counter. With the GEK Hot TOTTI, we’ve transformed these “wastes” into useful new inputs to the gasification process. It’s like adding a new “free” heat source to fix the old and well known thermal challenges of a gasifier."

Re:Not Bullshit... Hot TOTTI

[VVelox]

http://wiki.gekgasifier.com/w/page/6123834/Tower%20of%20Total%20Thermal%20Integration

You mean that? This is still not a high tech device nor from a design standpoint is this even ground breaking, maybe the first time it has been applied to this exact problem, but recovering heat like this is a fairly standard method if one has something they can apply it to.

Re:Not Bullshit... Hot TOTTI

[mspohr]

Whoosh....

BBQ!!!

[CHIT2ME]

I want one of these to power my house and to provide charcoal for my BBQ!!!