[Terrapreta] this is agood article I have not included comments therest is at:

[Adriana Downie]

Michael,
In the article it says that:
“One of the 2007 Ashden Awards
<http://www.ashdenawards.org/finalists_2007>  went to a company in India
making gasification / char systems in Kerala”
This project is actually a biodigestor, not a gasifier at all?
Regards,
Adriana. 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Bailes [mailto:michaelangelica at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2007 6:54 PM
To: Terrapreta
Subject: [Terrapreta] this is agood article I have not included comments
therest is at:
 

The rest is at http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007427.html

 

A Carbon-Negative Fuel

Jeremy <http://www.worldchanging.com/jeremy_bio.html>  Faludi
October 16, 2007 8:07 AM

 Article Photo
<http://www.worldchanging.com/postimages/article/7427_largearticlephoto_
1.jpg> 
"Impossible!" you say. "Even wind and solar have carbon emissions from
their manufacturing, and biofuels are carbon neutral at best. How can a
fuel be carbon negative?" But listen to people working on gasification
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification>  and terra preta
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta> , and you'll have something
new to think about.
We've mentioned <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004815.html>
terra preta before: it's a human-made soil or fertilizer. "Three times
richer in nitrogen and phosphorous, and twenty times the carbon of
normal soils, terra preta is the legacy of ancient Amazonians who
predate Western civilization." Although we don't know how it was made
back then, we do know how to make it now: burn biomass (preferably
agricultural waste) in a special way that pyrolisizes
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis>  it, breaking down long
hydrocarbon chains like cellulose into shorter, simpler molecules. These
simpler molecules are more easily broken down by microbes and plants as
food, and bond more easily with key nutrients like nitrogen and
phosphorus. This is what makes terra preta such good fertilizer. Because
terra preta locks so much carbon in the soil, it's also a form of carbon
sequestration that doesn't involve bizarre heroics like pumping CO2 down
old mine shafts. What's more, it may reduce other greenhouse gases as
well as water pollution: according to Biopact <http://biopact.com/> , a
network that promotes biofuels and biomass energy, 
Char-amended soils have shown 50 - 80 percent reductions in nitrous
oxide emissions and reduced runoff of phosphorus into surface waters and
leaching of nitrogen into groundwater. As a soil amendment, biochar
significantly increases the efficiency of and reduces the need for
traditional chemical fertilizers, while greatly enhancing crop yields.
Experiments have shown yields for some crops can be doubled and even
tripled. 
As it happens, the process of burning/pyrolisizing agricultural char is
also a way to produce energy. MIT Professor
<http://web.mit.edu/invent/a-winners/a-smith.html>  Amy Smith, a
recipient of the prestigious MacArthur
<http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.959463/k.9D7D/Fellows_Prog
ram.htm> "genius award," gave a TED Conference
<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/2>  talk in 2006 on using
agricultural char as fuel in developing countries. It works because the
chemical reactions that break down the long hydrocarbon chains also give
off hydrogen gas, methane, and various other burnable fuel gases. (As
well as tars and non-useful gases like CO2.) This is gasification. The
fuel gas can be burned for heat, or if it's pretty clean (that is, if
the tar levels are low), it can be used to power an engine.
I was first introduced to gasification by Jim Mason
<http://www.whatiamupto.com/>  at Foo Camp
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_Camp> , and helped a bit with his
Burning Man project The Mechabolic <http://www.mechabolic.org/> . It's
an art project designed to use gasification for motive power, electrical
power, and gas-powered lights and heat, all at the same time. The
Mechabolic is intended to run off of coffee grounds, or whatever
ground-up dried-out biomass can be fed to it, with its own "mouth" parts
to chop up and pulverize incoming material well enough to be fed into
its gasifier tank. Jim points out that gasification is not new -- in
fact, according to Professor Tom Jeffries
<http://www2.biotech.wisc.edu/jeffries/faq/literature.html>  at the
University of Wisconsin, "Over a million wood gasifiers were used to
power cars and trucks during World War II," when Europeans often lacked
access to oil. 
There are many kinds of <http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0512e/T0512e0a.htm>
gasifiers, each with advantages and disadvantages for different
conditions and input materials. Babcock & Wilson Vølund have a helpful
<http://www.volund.dk/layout/set/print/content/view/full/714>  diagram
(see below) with explanatory text that shows one kind in detail. The
locations and sizes of the different zones will be different for other
designs, but the sorts of chemistry described occur in all gasifiers. 
 gasifier_zones.jpg <http://www.worldchanging.com/gasifier_zones.jpg> 
Not all gasification is green. The coal industry routinely uses
gasification all
<http://www.peabodyenergy.com/Education/Gasification.asp>  around the
world to create syngas <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas>  (synthetic
gas) as a petroleum substitute of chemical feedstock. However,
gasification plus terra preta has potential to be revolutionary.

I can't promise that using gasification for energy and using the
resulting char as terra preta fertilizer will be a carbon negative fuel,
because I haven't seen a credible lifecycle analysis of it. (If anyone
has, please post it to the comments.) But it's quite plausible. Consider
that it takes a certain amount of CO2 to grow a crop, such as corn. You
harvest the crop and sell the food part, which leaves you with all the
agricultural waste. Instead of burning it in the open air, or
landfilling it (which is what's done today -- basically topsoil mining),
you gasify it. You then burn the fuel gas you get from gasification,
putting some fraction of that CO2 into the air; the agri-char (terra
preta) that you're left with contains the rest of the embodied CO2 which
the crops sucked up while growing. There's more carbon here than there
was in the fuel gas. You spread the terra preta on the fields as
fertilizer to grow more crops, and repeat the cycle -- and with each
repeat, you pull more carbon back into the soil than you burn, resulting
in a carbon negative fuel as well as crops fertilized with fewer
petrochemicals. It's a double win.

Energy Policy and Farm Policy
Gasification and terra preta as a means of sequestering carbon is far
cheaper than injecting CO2 into mine shafts, but it's still not cheap.
Biopact
<http://biopact.com/2007/10/towards-carbon-negative-bioenergy-us.html>
calculated that "under a basic scenario sequestering biochar from
biofuels produced by pyrolysis would be competitive when carbon prices
reach US$37 (carbon currently fetches €21.55 on the European market,
that is $30.5, and prices are expected to increase strongly in the near
future)." 
However, "[T]he great advantage of biochar is the fact that the
technique can be applied world-wide on agricultual soils, and even by
rural communities in the developing world because it is relatively low
tech." In fact, the guts of Jim Mason's Mechabolic was mostly built with
scrap steel tanks and whatever miscellaneous piping was handy, with
nothing but a couple welders and some power tools -- nothing a
well-equipped farm mechanic wouldn't have. 
One of the 2007 Ashden Awards
<http://www.ashdenawards.org/finalists_2007>  went to a company in India
making gasification / char systems in Kerala:
BIOTECH has succeeded in tackling the problem of the dumping of food
waste in the streets of Kerala through the installation of biogas plants
that use the food waste to produce gas for cooking and, in some cases,
electricity for lighting; the residue serves as a fertiliser. To date
BIOTECH has built and installed an impressive 12,000 domestic plants
(160 of which also use human waste from latrines to avoid contamination
of ground water), 220 institutional plants and 17 municipal plants that
use waste from markets to power generators. The disposal of food waste
and the production of clean energy are not the only benefits of
BIOTECH's scheme. The plants also replace the equivalent of about 3.7
tonnes/day of LPG and diesel which in turn results in the saving of
about 3,700 tonnes/year of CO2, with further savings from the reduction
in methane production as a result of the uncontrolled decomposition of
waste, and from the transport of LPG. 
While still under the radar of most policymakers, gasification and terra
preta are starting to appear on the scene. In the US this year, Senator
Ken Salazar (D-CO) is promoting legislation that would give subsidies of
up to $10,000 for farmers who set up gasifiers and use the terra preta
on their fields, and $100 million in related research grants. Biopact
has the full text of the bill online
<http://biopact.com/2007/10/towards-carbon-negative-bioenergy-us.html> ,
and Biochar International
<http://www.biochar-international.org/newinformationevents/newlegislatio
n.html>  has a summary of the bill.
Image: The Mechabolic at Burning Man. Credit: Michael P Byrne

-- 
Michael the Archangel

"You can fix all the world's problems in a garden. . . . 
Most people don't know that" 
FROM
http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/permaculture.swf 
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