[careinke]

National Geographic Explorer Culhane Shows Garbage-Energy Isn't Science Fiction

Year after year, Culhane has been one of the most riveting storytellers of the extended Explorer family that National Geographic Society brings together at its Washington, D.C. headquarters each June.

Graeme should be banned from the forum for doing nothing but spamming press releases.

I'm pretty sure you can "ignore" him if you want. But that would involve some action on your part. It's always easier to control your own actions, rather than impose your view on others, and expect them to change.

I like the way he does it. I can read his one sentence post and decide if I want to read it or not. So banning him, takes a resource away from me, when you can fix the problem yourself and not affect me.

[Graeme]

Biomass remains a 'very very good deal' says Pentland director Macmillan

Installing biomass is still "a very, very good deal for nurseries" despite ongoing cuts in subsidies for further smaller installations, says Pentland Biomass director Shiona Macmillan

Commercial biomass below 200kW is the first Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) to have its rate reduced.

The rate received a 10 per cent cut in October 2014 and a further 10 per cent cut on 1 January 2015.

Macmillan expects the Department of Energy (DECC) to cut the rate by as much as 20 per cent at the next quarterly review on 1 April.

But Macmillan admits that the digression is a well-managed process and that it is imperative that it should happen because of the "massive scale" of applications received for small installations.

This means subsidies could fall to 5.4p an hour, which would extend pay back time. She added: "It's just 'less too good to be true'".

She said categories over 200kw/h have stayed the same or improved and that most nurseries and garden centres" of any scale" need over 200kw/h boilers.

Sister company Pentland Plants has 2MW with Pentland Biomass recently having installed a 999KW system.

Larger systems have always had lower rates but they have remained stable.

hortweek

[isgota]

Graeme, haven't I already lectured you on the fallacy of "renewable" biogas?

Conversion of landfills, sewage, farm waste and food waste into fuel is at best a waste-mitigation strategy, a way to avoid garbage disposal costs. The energy collection/processing btus are greater than output btus. Zero energy returned.

More carbon is released into the atmosphere than before. And no energy remains to drive Mom, Dad, Biff, and Babs on their shopping trips to the Mall. It is a GREEN LOSER.

Any sources? Because a quick "biogas EROEI" search yields this paper showing exactly the opposite.

Same problem with the paper. The paper sited is very detailed explaining the energy costs for processing, transporting, and digesting various farm products (grasses, residue, and manure) but fails to include the very important cost of methane collection, compression, and distribution. Methane is not like diesel. You can not just simply pour it into a red jerry can, or a big shiny fuel truck. One must build the digester/pipeline infrastructure and compressing system.

The study is correct in one simple aspect; there is plenty of agriculture waste, especially manure, that requires disposal. Disposal by digestion makes sense, it is a simple perfected methodology that is mostly self-operational . . . the stuff rots and gives off stinky gas. However the gas must be trapped.

Here's a though experiment. We already collect animal manure in vast quantities and convert it into methane. The collection/transport exists, is maintained. The methane digestors are operational, have been for generations, the energy-cost (in expensive concrete/steel) amortized decades ago. No need to study or quantify the EROEI for the resulting methane because it is FREE. Yet we continue to power the digestors with expensive fossil-fuel electricity. WHY? We continue to flare off the methane daily. WHY? We don't use the methane to run our cars. WHY?

We must be NUTZ. Do we hate the environment? Have the evil oil companies poisoned our minds? Should we rise up and destroy the evil oil companies? Graeme, help me here. Do they control our minds?

Though experiments are nice, but don't beat doing actual math.

You think compressing biogas is energetically expensive? Let's calculate it. CNG for fuel consists of compressions from 1 atm to about 250 atm. I will use the most inneficient way to compress a gas, an isentropic compression.

R is the gas constant ( about 8.3 J/mol K)
T1 is taken as 25 ºC (about 298 K)
and Cp/Cv = k taken at 300 K and 0.1 MPa (about 1 atm) with the data on page 636. The value is about 1.3

Inserting all the above in the equation of isentropic compression, the work (energy) necessary for compression equals to about 28,000 J/mol of methane.

But how much energy a mole of methane release at burning? about 800,000 Joules. So compression only consumes about 3.5% of the methane (biogas) fuel. And reduces the final EROEI in the same magnitude. It's almost irrelevant.

Many of these "WHYS?" you are asking are based in economic constraints, not physical constraints. And the last one it's starting to happen more and more in many places around the world, it's North America the one is lagging.

http://www.iangv.org/current-ngv-stats/

[Graeme]

Big Biomass 101: When Burning Wood for Energy Makes Sense

The great boreal forest straddles the country and provinces from Nova Scotia to British Columbia have ample forestry resources. In a place like Canada biomass to energy can make a lot of sense. So we headed to the largest, closest biomass operation we could find -- the Alberta Pacific Forest Industries (ALPAC) pulp mill.

It is North America's largest single line kraft pulp mill and back in the 1990s these projects were the environmental flash point of their time. But out of that strife ALPAC got FSC certified for progressive forest management and in 2009 they installed a condensing steam turbine to make green electricity from waste wood.

The mill is located near the small town of Boyle, Alberta in northern Alberta. Aside from serving their own power needs with their waste they have a 32-megawatt power plant that contributes power to Alberta's grid.

huffingtonpost

[isgota]

Algae? Pstarr, stay on topic please.

Developing that biomethane infrastructure would be less complex than the Natural Gas distribution infrastructure already in place for homes, offices and factories, so I suspect it's going to be EROEI irrelevant as well. Anyway, maybe you should try to estimate it.

Because, unlike algae biofuels, biomethane production & distribution is already commercial. Even biogas has it's own section in specialized publications.

http://biomassmagazine.com/tag/biogas/

[Graeme]

Colorado lawmakers introduce biomass, energy bills

Several energy-related bills were introduced in the Colorado Senate in early January, including one that aims to create an incentive program to promote the use of woody biomass in public buildings.

On Jan. 7, State Sen. Matt Jones introduced SB15-009. The legislation aims create a wood biomass grant program to promote the use of woody biomass as a fuel source for public buildings. According to the text of the bill, the program would be funded by an annual $1 million transfer from the state’s general fund for five fiscal years. The Colorado Department of Natural Resources would be tasked with awarding grants to a public entity that would “use woody biomass as a fuel source for a public building’s biomass energy system when either the use of the grant allows the public building to be cost-effective when compared with other fuels or the executive director reasonably believes that making the grant provides other substantial benefits as specified in rules.”

The legislation explains that preference would be made for projects that use a woody biomass energy system for two or more public buildings located near one another. The legislation also specifies rules for the grant program would include criteria to evaluate grant applications, in part, based on an analysis of whether the building is located within a reasonable distance of a forested area of the state, as determined by the state forester.

biomassmagazine

[isgota]

Merely referring to your lousy record on algae. It'll be no different with biomass.

LOL! Or merely trying a distraction from your statement about biogas being a "Zero energy returned" fuel.

By the way, biomass is already different, it's the largest renewable energy source in the world, remember?

How could you possibly justify compressors/collection pipelines from dairy digestors that produce mere thousands of cubic feet per day? I have estimated these costs many times here. Do a bit of research, man!

It's a matter of size.

For small/family farms I agree cleanup/compression doesn't make economic sense, so the biogas produced will be burnt in-situ for heat and maybe electricity.

But for big farms or pools of farms, it's a whole new ball game.

[isgota]

Because cows don't flush the toilet after making "poo poo"

Seriously, all the extra water is what makes sewage biogas such a bad deal. But this is the exception, not the norm.

[Graeme]

'Green' biomass boilers may waste billions in public money

Over £10bn could be paid in incentives for non-domestic biomass boilers despite a government study showing they are less efficient than thought and won’t help the UK meet clean energy targets

Billions of pounds of public money is to be spent supporting ‘green’ boilers, despite evidence from the government’s own experts and industry that they will do little to help the UK meet its clean energy targets.

A study by the Department of Energy and Climate Change found that biomass boilers in the non-domestic sector were around 10-20% less efficient than expected. Those boilers account for 90% of payments under the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), the government’s flagship scheme to encourage a shift to low carbon heating.

The UK has pushed biomass boilers as a technology to help meet an EU target of getting at least 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, incentivising businesses and individuals to switch to them in return for payments under the RHI.

But “under-performance appears widespread in the UK biomass heat sector,” the paper admits, adding that the efficiency shortfall “also means emissions will be higher than laboratory test results suggest”.

theguardian

[Graeme]

They're talking about boilers for heating in the non-domestic sector not the power sector.

[Graeme]

Which Country Leads the Way in Installed Biomass Capacity?

To promote the launch of its now freely accessible platform RESource, the International Renewable Energy Agency dropped some knowledge in infographic format about which country is leading the way in biomass generation.

"REsource, the online knowledge platform launched this week by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), enables users to easily find country-specific data, create customized charts and graphs, and compare countries on metrics like renewable energy use and deployment," the group wrote in a press release. "It also provides information on renewable energy market statistics, potentials, policies, finance, costs, benefits, innovations, education and other topics."

So, check out this infographic on biomass and applaud Brazil in being a world leader. Rad!

energydigital

[Graeme]

Agenda announced for 2015 International Biomass Conference & Expo

BBI International has announced the agenda for the technical sessions of the 8th annual International Biomass Conference & Expo, North America’s largest and fastest growing biomass conference, taking place April 20-22 in Minneapolis. The 2015 agenda—featuring four comprehensive tracks—is tightly focused on leading edge developments in the biomass industry, from feedstock cultivation, harvest and storage to conversion technology, project finance and regulatory guidance.

The 2015 main program will include 30-plus panels and more than 100 speakers, including 90 technical presentations, all within the structured framework of four informative tracks:

Track 1: Pellets & Densified Biomass
Track 2: Biomass Power & Thermal
Track 3: Biogas & Landfill Gas
Track 4: Advanced Biofuels & Biobased Chemicals

"Our agenda already boasts nearly 100 of this industry’s sharpest minds and we still have yet to publish the agenda for our co-located event, Heating the Midwest that will take place the Monday preceding the event. With the addition of Heating the Midwest, we are expecting this to become the largest biomass event in the world. We’ll have more than 150 speakers and moderators on our various agendas and nearly a total of 1,500 attendees," says Tim Portz, vice president of content and executive editor for BBI International. “I’m grateful for the incredible biomass experts that continue to support this event and share their knowledge with attendees.”

biomassmagazine

[EileenBlankenship]

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