[Terrapreta] A fantasy

[Biopact]

1. grow algae in salt water ponds in the desert, we don't need oil-rich algae, just algae that produce a lot of biomass
2. use the biomass of the algae as a feedstock for solar pyrolysis and solar thermal gasification
3. use the resulting char to turn desert soil into fertile soil
4. use the syngas from the solar thermal gasification to generate electricity with which to desalinate water
5. use the water to drip-irrigate crops that grow on the biochar-improved desert soil
6. solve climate change by sequestering carbon in deserts
7. feed the world

The Sahara is 900 million hectares large. Turn it into farmland... Duh. 

But then, seriously, I heard there was some growing interest in solar thermal gasification. 

Recently, there was this:

March 5, 2008: CU-Boulder Awarded $1 Million From USDA, DOE For Solar-Thermal Biomass-To-Gas Conversion Project 
http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/b2c793926edeef9a44779029d525bad4.html

This is flash-pyrolysis, but I'm sure you can lower temperatures a bit (like in a solar cooker) and build a slow-pyrolysis concept around it.

Anyone else tracking developments in this technology? 

If you want solar gasification, you need deserts. But then you can't export electricity or gas to end markets, because nobody lives in deserts (unless you build some very expensive infrastructure). So better embed that energy into desalinised water, artificial soils and eventually food, which you can indeed transport and export to populations.

Cheers, Lorenzo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20080530/31f39830/attachment.html