[Terrapreta] Catching Carbon

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi William,

I think this is an excellent idea.  The best part would be to involve the coal fired power companies in actually doing something other than only continuing burn coal.  Use flue gas to promote the growth of algae and harvest solar energy, squeeze oil out of algae, dry the leftovers in the sun, pyrolyze the leftover carbon bearing biomass into charcoal.  Charcoal has about the same BTU content as coal.  They can burn the charcoal to run the power plant instead of coal.  They can use the SARTEC process (see http://sartec.com<http://sartec.com/>) to make bio-diesel out of the algae oil in seconds.  This would turn coal fired power plants into "breeder reactors", making new fuel (biodiesel and charcoal) in the process rather than only waste.  The new fuel would be biological sourced carbon rather than fossil sourced carbon.  If there is leftover charcoal, then it could be sold as agricultural use biochar to be used in making Terra Preta soils.

The main point I am trying to make here is that we can HELP the fossil coal industry to change the way they do things so that they get beenfits (economic ones) and we get the benefits of helping them clean up their act.

Regards,

SKB



----- Original Message ----- 
  From: William Carr<mailto:Jkirk3279 at qtm.net> 
  To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
  Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 10:24 PM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Catching Carbon



  On May 25, 2008, at 1:00 PM, terrapreta-request at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta-request at bioenergylists.org>  
  wrote:

  >> I know that scrubbing the CO2 out of coal burning is an extremely
  >> controversial idea. I'm not a supporter but I found this article very
  >> interesting:
  >>
  >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/24/carbonemissions.climatechange1<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/24/carbonemissions.climatechange1>
  >>
  >> It triggered a question: if such a technology were to become  
  >> feasible,
  >> might it be possible somehow to convert the scrubbed CO2 to char for
  >> soil rather than deep-burying it in the ground?
  >
  > Yes, this can be done. It just takes energy to do it. A lot of energy.
  >
  > The cute way to do it is to plant stuff, and when it grows, using free
  > solar energy, you then char it.

  Actually, this isn't so difficult.   The oil from algae process has  
  shown that algae can be grown in Lexan tubes, and it seems to love  
  flue gas.


  Squeeze the algae for the oil, and char the leftovers.





















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