[Terrapreta] Catching Carbon

[lou gold]

What's interesting to me is the way the various technologies appear to be
converging. Fossil and solar approaches have typically seen as separate.
Here we have the notion of them working together in synergistic ways. For
me, it another example of how "competition" is moving toward "mutualism" on
many fronts. This is the practical reason that we are going to have to open
our minds beyond old biases about what's good and bad in the context of a
more connected world. We really are all traveling in the same boat.

However, I do think that the fossil giants  will be able to take care of
themselves and that they would love to make money doing good things which
they will do as soon as the science and technology and public support turn
it into a viable economic enterprise. But there is are huge parallel
lower-tech realms of impoverished agriculture and people. I'm not sure that
the giants will be much concerned, so these are the ones we should be trying
to assist.




On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 12:57 AM, Sean K. Barry <sean.barry at juno.com> wrote:

>  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) 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 <Jkirk3279 at qtm.net>
> *To:* 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
> 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
> >>
> >> 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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