[Terrapreta] Fuel

[Michael Bailes]

http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2006/09/07/co2-helps-make-biofuel/

CO2 Helps Make Biofuel<http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2006/09/07/co2-helps-make-biofuel/>

If you believe too much CO2 is going to cause catastrophic climate change,
then you'll love this - we can use CO2 to increase the rate of plant growth;
biofuel plants in particular.

How this will work in practice isn't exactly clear.  As we have noted, it
will be a tragedy if we scrub CO2 out of our industrial emissions to
stop possible global warming, while leaving unacceptable amounts of other
airborne pollutants lower on the priority list.  If you're going to regulate
CO2, while you're at it, at least make sure you eliminate the
carbon monoxide, lead, ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and
sulpher dioxide, because we know they're bad.  Where I live in California,
the summertime air is filthy, and it isn't CO2.

In any case, one company that seems to have some good ideas as to how to use
CO2 to grow biofuel is GS-CleanTech <http://www.gs-cleantech.com/> (the GS
stands for "Green Shift").  On the page with their products and services
overview <http://www.gs-cleantech.com/product_desc.php?mode=3>, they make
several interesting claims.  Here's one:

"GS CleanTech's patented C02 Bioreactor reduces greenhouse gas emissions
while creating an additional feedstock for renewable fuel production. If
applied at ethanol facilities, it would boost fuel production by more than
15%, and if applied to coal fired power generation, it could produce more
than 200 million gallons of renewable fuel annually for every 1,000 MW of
electricity produced."

The devil is always in the details.  First of all, they probably mean "for
every 1,000 megawatt-years of electricity produced."  So how much energy is
in a megawatt-year, and how much energy is in 200 million gallons of
renewable fuel?

Energy in 1,000 megawatt-years:  Take 3,416 BTU's (British Thermal Unit, our
favorite way to do energy conversions) per kilowatt hour.  Multiply by 24
hours per day, and 365 days per year.  Now you have kilowatt-years.
Multiply again to get megawatt-years, and then multiply again by 1,000 to
get 1,000 megawatt years.  Result:  29.9 billion.

Energy in 200 million gallons:  A generous estimate of BTU's per gallon of
ethanol would be about 150,000.  Multiply by 200 million.  Result:  30
trillion.

More at
http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2006/09/07/co2-helps-make-biofuel/

-- 
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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