SHARE THIS SHOW:
RELATED CONVERSATIONS:
RECENTLY ON TOL:
The TOL Blog
TAGS:
The Switch: Biomass
The latest in our Switch series takes us to our own Pacific Northwest backyards, and looks at biomass as a source of electricity. Technically, this means generating energy from various organic materials. But the big discussion around here is about "woody biomass," i.e. trees and byproducts from wood products manufacturing.
Greg Walden recently grilled Al Gore on why trees from National Forests aren't considered renewable resources in the current cap and trade legislation. And biomass advocates say that burning wood can be cheap, clean, and efficient — if we manage it correctly. But some environmentalists worry that relying on wood for energy will lead to more logging than forests can sustain.
Do you live or work (or look for work) in a timber county? What would biomass electricity mean for your local economy — or your own bottom line?
How much emphasis should be on electricity generation? What about the generation of old fashioned — but still pretty efficient — plain old heat?
If much of our global conversation these days is about how we can wean ourselves from dirty-burning fossil fuels, how clean is burning wood?
And if biomass generation really does take off, can we grow trees fast enough to burn them?
GUESTS:
- Kyle Freres: Vice president of Freres Lumber
- Kevin Boston: Associate professor in the department of Forest Engineering and Resource Management at Oregon State University
- Doug Heiken: Conservation and restoration coordinator for Oregon Wild
Tagged as: biofuel · forest · the switch
Photo credit: Esagor / Flickr / Creative Commons
-
i like the analogy, but really worry about suppressing the natrual role fire serves in a thriving and diverse ecosystem.
-
Specialmaggic,
Since we've impacted Oregon's natural environment radically already, I'm not convinced people would allow natural fire cycles to occur. Either fires occur too close to poorly-situated homes and property, or the burned trees represent lost profit.
Either way we manipulate forests without fully appreciating, understanding or caring about their inherent complexity. We tend to mow everything down in our arrogant and short-sighted belief that we can manage forests better than Nature. But I digress.
I'm intrigued by the temporary forests I've walked through along highway 30 near Clatskanine. Paper manufacturers lease land from farmers to grow fast-growing trees used for paper production. Would this technique be adapted for biomass fuel generation?
Do we need biomass energy generation at all? Biomass appears to be an inefficient method to generate energy because it requires a lot of energy to harvest and process whatever fuel is used. Furthermore, burning stuff releases Carbon which is currently expensive to sequester.
At least with temporary forests the land is already processed. There are roads and rail that make accessing the biomass easier. I'm not against learning everything we can about forests and biomass energy generation, but I do oppose large scale production done incompetently and for short-term profit.
-
Biofuel can mean a GREAT many things.
Even here in the Northwest I think its a bit narrowminded to focus on forest debris as a sustainable feedstock (has biodiesel taught us nothing !!) when in the urban areas 440,000 tons of leaves, grass clipping and yard debris are generated each year, which is likely to increase with the climate change action plan to cover 1/3 of Portland with trees.
Gasification can yield fuel, which can be used either as heat, elecrticity, or transportation fuel.
What we really need is a first generation Mr. fusion. The closest thing I have seen is a device called an EcoKAT KDV http://ecokat-at.com/. A device which converts any biomass feed stocks and breaks it all down to bio-crude. This raw material can be then used to create a wide variety of substances from renewable plasitcs to jet fuel grade renewable diesel.
-
Specialmaggic,
I'm interested in your rhetorical "Has biodiesel tought us nothing!"
What, in your mind, is the lesson of biodiesel — how would you apply that lesson to biomass like forest debris?
Thanks for the comments,
Dave
-
This could be an interesting debate. I was recently discussing a different biomass technology breakthrough with Joseph Dahmen (Bodega Algae) and he brought to my attention a tactic being used by oil/gas lobbyists to have 'Alternative Land Use" included in costs for proposed 'green' energy proposals.
I pointed out that such a thing might be fine if 'true costs' of any energy production across the board were factored in.
In this case, I wonder what your guests think of not only the alternative land use matter, but also the alternative waste use. Biomass, is after all, what's needed to create sustaining topsoils for our food.
Zaph Mann
The Energy Framework
PS:The New Fuels Alliance (NEFA) is the organisation tackling the alt land use obstacles in California.
-
trur19
There a lot of things that I believe we should be doing to be more respectful of the natural world, allowing controlled burns is one (obviously I agree we have done to much to just to let it burn). In regards to the homes and properties, how often that houses that are burned by wildfires are rebuilt in the same spot. I have very little sympathy for anyone who builds close to dense forest or in flood plans as it is the consequence of short sighted planning bumping up against natural carrying capacity.
Dave
My concept of the "lessons of biodiesel" as it can be applied to the biomass discussion is simply this. Biodiesel went through a huge boom and then bust because of restrictions on feedstock such as corn or soy. There is not enough waste vegetable oil to meet the demand, but in my mind the biomass discussion is the evolution of the biodiesel discussion because the key to success in nature is diversity. our propseperity requires a high level of biomimicry, which in the context of this conversation is the exploration of the best use of the wide variety of biomass energy feedstocks such as waste water treatment plants, leaves, food waste, and general yard debris.
I honestly think we need to stay out of the forests. All those roads break apart ecosystems and has a huge impact on biodiversity. Hemp can provide ALL of our lumber, and paper needs with a drastically reduced environmental impact. It seems common sense to me that the lumber and timber companies would catch up to the 21st centrury and shift there business models to hemp production. This is a huge source of "bioenergy" which is being ignored because of poor politics.
So the lesson is we need to recognize the power of diversity in meeting our energy needs
-
In Eugene, the newest proposed Seneca Cogeneration Biomass Plant is planned to run 24-7 and create enough electricity to power something like 11-13,000 households.
Our concern here at the lower end of the valley, is that we will be getting a constant supply of new pollution in our often air-inverted area. We are already non-attainment for EPA's particle matter 10, and near non-attainment for 2.5, which is the size that damages lungs.
With field burning, slash burning, uncontrolled wood stove smoke, vehicle and other industrial pollution already affected our air quality, many of us believe there should be some serious mitigation required before this project is permitted.
Another potential concern is long-term dependency on biomass for electricity. We already have clean hydroelectric and maybe we should stop shipping that to Montana and California.
Will the biomass folks be able to jack the price up? Will the higher value of the energy and the lower value of timber (due to the economy) mean that more than by-products will be burned? Will the National Forests be appropriated for energy? How big will the logs really be?
There are many concerns surrounding biomass burning that need to be addressed, not the least of which is the pollution created by them.
-
There's a part of this that even the greenest of us seem forget. There is no such thing as wood "waste", or crop "residue". Carbohydrate is the currency of life. Every calorie of carbohydrate that we use to satisfy our energry needs is a calorie that would otherwise have been used for the metabolic energy of some other living thing. With all biomass schemes, we are mucking about at the very base of the food chain, ultimately risking the productivity of the entire system. A writer above mentioned the clean swept German forests. The cliff notes version of that story is that deprived of the organic input it depends on, the forest soils are dying. The cold truth is that human appetite for energy is large enough for this to happen everywhere. It's a wise thing to eat low on the food chain, but in general, it's a stupid place to get our transportation and industrial energy.
-
Biomass will and should be part of Oregon's future energy mix. However, there is a very unfortunate bill to promote biomass being considered by the state legislature that will undermine Oregon's ability to grow its renewable energy economy and reduce global warming pollution: HB 2940.
in 20076, the Oregon legislature adopted its "renewable energy portfolio standard" or "RPS," which requires 25% of our new electricity come from 100% clean, renewable energy by 2025. With the latest and best climate study (by MIT) finding there is a 90% likelihood the Earth will warm 9 degrees in the next 90 years, we must meet and exceed our RPS.
Unfortunately, HB 2940 takes us in exactly the wrong direction by allowing pre-1995 biomass and hydro energy into the RPS. In effect, this waters-down the RPS by 10%. In addition, biomass is not a 100% clean, renewable energy like wind and solar are, so the RPS is actually watered-down even more.
Not only is this bad for the environment, but also bad for the economy.
Thanks to the RPS, wind projects in rural Oregon provide clean electricity to 300,000 households, providing economic benefit to counties and cities, rural farmers and landowners, and workers. The $2 billion of capital investment for wind projects produced approximately $225 million in rural property tax revenues and community service fees. Rural farmers, ranchers, and landowners receive $4 to 8 million in annual payments from wind companies. And wind farms have created 1,650 construction and operations jobs. The RPS has been a true success.
Currently there are wind projects permitted for development in rural Oregon to serve nearly 600,000 more households. These wind projects would provide an additional $319 million in rural property tax revenues and community service fees; provide an additional $8 to 15.5 million in payments to farmers, ranchers, and rural landowners; and generate 3,000 more jobs in rural counties with record high unemployment rates.
By undercutting the RPS, the Oregon legislature will put these projects at substantial risk – potentially depriving Oregonians of needed economic opportunity. And HB 2940 will put our climate at further risk as well. So let's have biomass, but let's not water-down our renewable energy targets in the process.
-
It's clear by some of the comments posted so far, that there are people out there curious about energy from wood and biomass gasification.
Wikipedia is a good source for some of the basic information about this type of renewable energy, and the carbon cycle.
We help host the Gasification Discussion Mailing List, which is an active list, running since 1998, of a global group of experts, and tinkerers in the field, and a good collection of current information on the topic ( http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/ )
Using trees to fix carbon, and then burning them in controlled way is a proven carbon-neutral technology, and there are people right now figuring out how to burn tree wast in a way that fixes some of the carbon into charcoal, often called biochar.
Biochar is important because it uses simple and proven technology to fix some of the excess carbonin the atmosphere, and the soil scientists are telling us that while charcoal doesn't have any nutrients in it, it provides the type of environment that soil micro-organisms really like to to grow in. A lot of this is an area of current research and development, but the preliminary results are very exciting. There are a number of web sites that track information about this project, one of them is (http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/)
-
Erin,
Charcoal not only has nutrients, it has all the roughly 15 essential nutrients that higher plants need, (minus the ones that are provided by water and air).
All higher plants need these essential nutrients, albeit in different ratios.
Still, biochar is a great idea that would be even better for agriculture if we found a way to make it out of more diverse plant matter that paid attention to the ratio of the essential mineral nutrients they contained relative to the crops we expected to harvest from them.
And then there is the benefit to soil texture of this broad spectrum, slowly time released package of potential life, especially in heavy soils.
Not only are the nutrient in the charcoal, they are dispersed and protected from easy, (and sometime counterproductive), interaction by the Carbon 'matrix'.
Put marure in a clay soil and it improves the soil texture for a season. Put sawdust in a clay soil and it disappears in 2-3 years. Biochar, if it starts as coarse sawdust size pieces, will likely be around for decades, wasting little of it's treasures to reactions outside the life processes in the soil.
-
I'm glad your discussion is about using woody biomass to generate power. Back when Oregon was primarily a timber based economy, and my grandfathers were coaxing both heat and power out of wood fired boilers, there was a great reserve of engineering knowlege gained about how to capture energy out of wood very efficiently, and it it's clean burning.
When your wood stove or power plant is operating efficiently, it is burning all of the available carbon in the fuel, and there is no smoke. The white puffy stuff you see at the top of stacks is water vapor. If there is smoke, there's a problem with the equipment, and in an industrial environment, that is often resolved very quickly because it's really expensive to operate otherwise.
In addition to that, there are often scrubbers and other techniques used to clean up the outflow air from a power plant, which usually exceeds current environmental regulations.
Wood is a nice fuel because it actually contains much less of the minerals and other chemicals which are important nutrients for the plant, but are problematic in a power plant environment.
Nitrogen and potassium which help the plants grow (you often buy them in fertilizer) can help make big huge deposits (or rocks) on the inside of your power plant or heating boiler. The rule of thumb is that you need to install more powerful tools to clean the outflow air when you ar burning non-woody biomass like agricultural wastes and residues.
-
Biochar sidesteps the issues you raise with fused ash in boilers. What would be ash, (elements the plant has harvested from the soil), remains in the charcoal.
Boilers operate at a yellow white heat i.e., 2300 - 2500 degrees F. [This is the same temperature we fire Stoneware and Porcelain glazes.] In contrast, Charcoaling is done more in the much lower range of 500- 700 degrees F. Little is lost beyond what is easily vaporized, i.e., assorted hydrocarbons with some Nitrogen and Sulfur.
-
It is useful to think about the idea of waste biomass.
In fact I think in forests there is what I think most of us would call waste. If natural fires were actually operating we would probably never see the build up of biomass in forests that we see now. That can never really happen again because those fires ran across area that today are farmland and urban land. These natural fires kept the biomass build up much lower than it is today.
So it may not be appropriate to call that excess biomass as waste but when this burns the vast majority of it goes into the air as smoke so removing it for use makes very little impact on the long term viability of the forest.
The one part of the excess biomast that we don't want to remove is all the leaves and needles because this is where photosynthysis occurs and most of the important nurtients are quickly recycled as these leaves are recycled naturally as they relatively quickly decompose.
So if we take excess wood buildup from the forest that would normally have burned (avg every 10 to 15 years east of the monuntans) we can use this as biomass with virtualy no impact on the long term fertility of the forest. Of course we must not start harvesting all of the forest unsistainabley for fuel if we do we are back where we were in the 60's.
=============
It seems to me the discussion about biodiesel is really the ethonol issue. Ethonol is sure not a valuable solution to since it takes as much energy to produce it as is produced and as noted uses food crops which makes no sense in this world.
==============
-
Plants do indeed use the approximately 17 essential elements in different proportions in different parts of the plants. The Cobalt in an alph alpha plant mostly ends up in the blossom. But unless you can point me to some recent research; the specifics of what many of the micro nutrients do in different parts of diffent plants is still a long way from being well understood.
Ideally, we would be able to understand the function of, as well as track all of the essential nutrients when we move them around.
The last time I checked, the state of the art is still that: when we start with distilled water in a hydroponic growing medium, and include purified sources of the essential elements; any one of them can limit the use of the others if its' level falls too low. And if it is absent, the plant dies.
In other areas of agriculture we have had the luxury of being able to put the full weight of our technologies and science into wringing out every last bit of productivity in our cultivatable soils. This has often been a process of finding the limiting nutrient by cropping. Then, in a flurry of generalized testing and over kill, we have added enough fertillizer containing some of the limiting element, that we were back in production. This is an often wastful and imprecise process. It is also more difficult on lands that are not easily accessable/ammenable to soil manipulation. This does not even address the complexity of the cycling of nutrients in natural soils that depend on relationships between living things in the soil. This is something we have been abel to ignore/destroy in soils where we could cultivate and add what ever was needed on a regular basis.
Forest soils are still mostly self sustaining. So were the prairies, before we started cropping them. -
Finally as to the issue of using biomass from the forest as weather it is profitiable. First if we can accept the fact that removing these fuel from the forest that are unnatural because of the lack of natural fire there are ways to use it to increase food production and produce fuel. We the current concerns about carbon dioxide it is probably inappropriate to remove the excess fuels by burning especially if that burning is a crowing forest fire. In the long run we may be able to burn if climate change is under control.
So I have been working on a process that will make what is called "biochar". We would take a biochar plant up into the forest and make biochar right on site where fuels reduction projects are being accomplished. We will take the wood and chip it and put it into the plant using 10 to 15 Dry Tons Per Day (running 24hrs). Our intial estimates are that this is profitable.
The great thing about this process is that it produced a from of biodiesel that is carbon negative. What the biochar plant producs it three products.
One is "Biochar" which is simply charcoal which will then be incorporated in the soil. This uses about about 40% of the carbon in the wood and is sequestered in the soil for 1,000 to 10,000 years. Fortunately this addition of charcoal was discovered many uears ago in the Amazon and the soil with charcoal there is almost 9 time as fertile as that not treated. We are still learning how that will be work with lots of testing going on now.
Two is "BioOil" which can be used to make biodiesel and other valuable products. It is produced by cooling the smoke which is turned into the oil. This uses another 40% of the carbon in the wood. So this is a carbon negative fuel because in the process of making it as much carbon is sequestered as is used in the oil. The may be the only carbon negative fuel we know how to make. This is an old technology actully used in the past but replaced by petrolium because it was cheeper.
Three "Symgas" this is the part of smoke that dose not turn into oil when cooled. That is burned to dry the chips, heat the char chamber and finally run the generator that runs the augers that run the plant.
-
So the entier process is run on the chips that are loaded into the plant. And almost no smoke or polution comes out of the plant and only a small amount of the total carbon in the wood is released in the process of making biochar and biooil. This process makes lots of sense as long as we need to remove that excess wood because we can't have natural fires if this large fuels buildups are in place and we don't want to burn this excess fuel in the process of fuels reduction and produce all that carbon dioxide in this time of climate change.
-
I know there have been some feasibilty studies done around the state (of Oregon) to determine whether it would be cost effective to use some of the 'waste' wood from fire suppression projects and other sources to make power, but i'm not sure whether the results of those studies have been made publically available.
Informal conversations with experts in this area suggest that small timber operators could effectively operate on this basis, but larger ones would be hard pressed to find enough work there to justfy the effort. -
Hmmmmm, Biomass eh?
I wonder approximately how many metric tons of English Ivy, Scotch Broom, and Himalayan Blackberry there are in the region? Man, those invasives sure grow FAST!!
:^)
I'm just sayin'
-
This discussion so far has been remarkably respectful. Let's keep it up.
Carbonfish and at least one prior poster tickle an important idea: what we humans do is subject to the large-scale accounting of energy flow. Sunlight might fall on healthy tree leaves, on the blackberry leaves, or on the ground.
Sunlight on leaves creates carbohydrates. Sunlight on fir, hemp, bamboo, oak or maple puts those carbos into forms we can readily use. Sunlight on big trees creates a lot of wood fiber. (The bigger a tree grows, the more fiber it adds each year.)
Blackberries, while yummy, are an inefficient soil builder. Scotch broom practices chemical warfare. Those species thrive on clearcuts.
Perhaps it is time to reconsider the economics of clear cutting.
-
Why doesn't anyone ever discuss the fact that producing ethanol consumes more imported petroleum/natural gas than it produces in domestic energy? Also, why has Thermal Depolymerization been discarded in these discussions?
-
The argument that there is a "surplus" of woody forest material because of modern fire supression is really only valid for the dry forests east of the Cascades. There's a lot of argument about the roll of fire West of the mountains where the vast majority of Oregon's forest biomass is located, but the trend is away from the notion that natural fire cycles were the norm. There is some evidence that the giant, stand replacing fires of the past were an anomaly, that very small, very infrequent fires were the rule in the ancient forests before white settlement. Again, there is no, or very little "waste" in natural systems. There is no vast pool of untapped energy out there in the forest. It's mostly spoken for already by the great myriad of organisms that make the existance of the trees possible in the first place. We usurp those claims at our great peril.
-
Personally, I would like to see us use any or all of our true "waste" in some sort of productive way. When we get to the point where NOTHING is landfilled, then we will be truly on the way to sustainability.
My concern is in the ramp up. Biodiesel was a good idea when it was small and usedwaste materials, or land that was underutilized. The problem happened when it started to upscale. Suddenly biodiesel was taking food corn, etc.
So once wood upscales as an energy source. The tendency will be to start sucking up wood that is currently being used in other ways, OR to overuse the resource, which will either push up costs in other areas, or reduce the quality/quantity of the resource.
Our best option, in the end, is to reduce our need for power to more reasonable levels.
-
My 2 cents is to suggest that engineering design should mimic existing natural processes so as to speed up the development of a variety of biomass fuel sources.
Rather than aiming at producing ethanol for cars, perhaps the goal should be the production of methane (natural gas); given that livestock already produces methane as a byproduct of digesting food.
Processes based on the natural digestion of cellulosic material might allow for the development of fuel stocks from anything that livestock can eat.
Such "natural technology" might be simple enough to scale-down as well as to scale-up; with the goal of "back-yard" energy production from yard-debris, etc.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could use Engish Ivy & other invasives as a fuel source? This might add the "profit-motive" to our eradication efforts.
-
Mr. Frere states that it is a very clean technology, but is 75% efficiency really that efficient?
The Oregon Toxic Alliance has published this about the Seneca facility in Lane County:
-
As proposed, the power plant would be the 2nd largest emitter of NOx and CO in Eugene, the 4th largest emitter of NOx in Lane County, and the 7th largest emitter of CO in the County.
- The power plant would be Eugene’s single largest emitter of styrene (a carcinogen), acetaldehyde (a carcinogen), hydrogen chloride (causes respiratory illnesses), and napthalene (a carcinogen). Furthermore, all of the existing sources of those toxics are located in one neighborhood - West Eugene.
- At 1.7 tons, the proposed plant will be Eugene’s 3rd largest emitter of formaldehyde (a carcinogen). All 9 existing sources are located in West Eugene.
- At 1.4 tons, Seneca will be the 4th largest emitter of toluene (a carcinogen). 19 of the 21 existing Eugene’s toluene sources are in West Eugene.
- A natural gas power plant of the same capacity would have significantly less emissions (Appendix A).
-
-
I find it interesting that your graphic is cord wood and you aren't talking about residential wood heating. Modern wood and pellet stoves are dramatically cleaner burning than non EPA certified stoves. The Hearth Industry held a symposium in Salem on residential heating with biomass in April. Also, there are tax credits for using high efficiency biomass heaters - federal and through Oregon Dept. of Energy. Checkout http://www.renewableresidentialheating.org/
-
How do we get these materials out of the forest? Well, we have a very high population of non-violent offenders in our corrections system that could probably use a little fresh air and the chance to do something productive with their time.
How about getting some of them out in the woods to collect these materials (including invasives) and get them to areas where they can more easily be transported.
Win/win. (Maybe a little tongue-in-cheek, but we have to think out of the box, no?)
-
I recognize this conversation is talking about biomass on a large scale, but I wish there were also more discussions about burning wood on a smaller scale - as in home by home.
Masonry heaters have been used in Europe in many forms for thousands of years. They are very efficient, both in terms of heat produced per amount of wood burned, and as far as the minimal amount of air pollution produced. See http://mha-net.org/ and www. tulikivi.com for additional information.
-
What about using this waste biomass in biogas digesters which produce methane in anaerobic decomposition. That methane can be burned cleanly to heat a turbine etc. The waste water treatment plan in Portland does this, then takes the remaining solids and trucks them out to Eastern Oregon to fertilize grass fields for grass-fed beef. Seems like a neater cycle than just burning.
-
What a sad discussion.
The current science shows that virtually every intact natural ecosystem loses sequestered carbon to the atmosphere when it is disturbed.
Make no mistake, and mark my words:
Burning of forest biomass is ultimately a huge, destructive timber industry scam.
First, converse energy. Second, develop actual clean energy sources. Third, save forests for carbon sequestration, not to cut down for "products" the biosphere can no longer afford.
-
A possible addition to the raw material for woody biomass might be filbert wood from that industry. Oregon has some 30,000 acres of orchards situated all in the Willamette Valley. As the entire production area is being infected by a fungus called Eastern Filbert Blight, these orchards will be replaced by resistant varietys being developed by OSU. This has already started in the northern part of the Valley. We need to burn these infected trees to reduce the spore load.
Generally, each acre may result in 30 to 40 tons of raw material. Also, we have many tons of prunings annually.
It seems to me that this resource might be combined with forest residue to produce a viable bulk of biomass.
I would like to talk with anybody who might think this idea is worth exploring further.
Peter McDonald
-
Peter:
You might look at our website http://www.biocharproducts.com this is what is comming down the road we are trying to get it going here in halfway but as I discussed on the call biochar is probably the best way to use biomass because you can move small scale plants to the site and produce bichar on site and send the biooil to a biodiesel refinerly. The biochar could be put in the soil before you replant the filberts. Inproving the soil for 100's of years.
Let me know if you are interesed in learning more.
-
I would like to be able clarify my last point regarding road building on national forest lands - the policy that I was referring to is this one that was recently issued by the current administration to place a one-year moratorium on all road building in roadless areas. I was sorry that we did not have the time to clarify this point on the air.
Kevin Boston
-
To PeterMcDonald's comment concerning philbert fields. During summer months when the fields are accessible, agriculture biomass such as filbert trees, cherry trees, and christmas trees do come our way. For farmers that are doing crop rotations, receiving money for the biomass makes financial sense. Without a facility to send the material to, they would not be able to offset rotation expenses and would most likely be piling and burning the material for no economic or environmental benefit. This is much the same argument for collecting material that would have been piled and burned in our forests as part of slash mitigation efforts.
There was also a comment concerning the efficiency of boiler operations. The 74% efficiency factor of our biomass boiler is calculated by the BTU or energy recovery. So if there are theoretically 5,000 BTU's/lb of biomass delivery to the combustion chamber, we can capture 3,700 BTU's in our conversion to steam. There is much science that goes into increasing the efficiency of these systems, and it is in our best interest to get as much energy out of the biomass as we possibly can. Regardless of the technology you use, the possiblity of capturing 100% of the energy when converting from one form to another is not available.
Concerning emissions from biomass facilities, efficiency of combustion is of primary concern. Of course anytime wood is combusted there are pollutants in the airstream. This has to be weighed against the potential pollution from catastrophic fires such as the 2002 Biscuit fire which left a haze from southern Oregon up to Salem and had a substantial negative financial affect on Oregon. It also has to be weighed against other energy sources such as coal that have far more serious emissions than a biomass plant with a carbon-neutral footprint. -
I agree that catastrophic fires are a concern, but is burning the slash the only way to reduce this danger? My concern is that a biomass burner is running constantly, and therefore is constantly emitting pollution. This is a real concern in an area like densely-populated Eugene where we get inversions regularly in the winter. And we are downwind by only 2 miles from the proposed plant.
Couldn't the slash and by-products be turned into wood pellets? They are $5 a bag now, that seems profitable. Pellet stoves are 80-90% efficient, I believe.
-
To clarify- gasification can extract the energy from biomatter (Anyone living anywhere around McFarlanes knows the results of allowing this energy to escape into the air), produce multiple form or energy and still provide concentrated nutrients for soil building. Of course my suggested feedstock is what is accumulated in the urban areas wood should be left in the woods where it forms a critical aspect of natural preservation.
-
Good to see the program participants contributing clarifications on the blog - thank you.
Notice how difficult it is to track responses to questions without a framework from which to talk. The assertion that it is better to at least capture enrgy from wood piles from forest cuts that would otherwise be burnt, seems to make sense - provided it doesn't require more energy to move it to the energy recapture (that's the heading this should go under) facility, than is gained... AND that the assumption that it needs to be burnt is correct (digging pits and filling with bio-debris creates decades lasting 'hot' growing beds) AND ignores the aspect that the facility Kyle Freres operates requires an additional 40% of bio-waste from cities... which seems OK because it would 'just go into landfill' - BUT is that aspect clear? Is Biomass needed in landfills to counteract the amount of toxins. plastics, etc? Could city biomass be better used locally in communual growing areas for food, water and transit conservation?
Naturally Kevin Boston couldn't be expected to answer with every nuance on each point. For instance, he did a fair job of trying to answer in context to private/federal lands, but the fact that we cannot resolve things without systematic framing of the options, issues and full spectrum impacts is inescapable.
How about a dedicated 6 month task force to clarify the whole energy picture using a consistent criteria that everyone can follow?
Zaph Mann
The Energy Framework
-
Concerning slash in our forests, the economics are largely site specific. As Professor Boston mentioned yesterday, the slope of the ground, road access, size and amount of biomass collected all have impacts on whether or not it is profitable to collect it for use in a facility like ours. The biomass fuel market is also important. A year ago biomass prices were about 40-50% higher than they are today, due to the fact that the economy is suffering, spot market electricity prices are lower, and overall consumption has decreased. At last year's prices it absolutely made sense to put more effort into collecting available slash, while today it makes less sense.
As for using slash for pellets, it's a trickier poposition. In order to make pellets the wood used has to be clean, small, and have less than a 6-8% moisture content. Typically, sawdust and shavings from lumber operations have supplied the majority of the material for pellet manufacture. Green wood from the forests can range between 30-70% moisture content on a wet basis (depending on the time of year and how long it has been sitting), which would mean that any material used for pellet manufacturing has to be dried in some fashion, which would also mean emissions from drying facilities. Our biomass boiler operates at a fuel moisture content range of 40-60%, which allows us to use green wood, and in wet months a portion of supply from ground pallets or construction debris helps to bring overall moisture content down to reasonable levels. Anything over about 65% MC, and it takes all of the energy from the wood just to get the water out of it.
A distinction has to be made between different types of biomass for different uses as well. We can't burn yard trimmings or leaves, since the MC is higher than is beneficial to burn. These products largely go into composting operations where they can be used in gardens or yards as a substitute for bark dust.
-
I'm a little late to the discussion - only heard about it after the fact. Feeling appreciative for the asynchronicity of mp3s.
Congratulations on an excellent program!
Dave, one problem. You fell into a common assumption of framing the discussion as: biomass as an alternative source of electricity. What we should be discussing is biomass as an alternative source of heating or cogeneration.
The authors of a recent article in Science address this topic in response to a group of letters prompted by their article, Wood Energy in America.
"[O]ur Policy Forum emphasized that wood is too valuable to waste with inefficient combustion and that community-based advanced wood combustion (AWC) systems used for heat, cooling, and power operate at two to three times the efficiency of electricity-generating facilities being planned in response to the Congressionally proposed Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). Burning wood solely for electricity is not AWC as defined in our Policy Forum, given that these facilities will waste 60 to 75% of the energy stored in wood. Such RES-promoted wood electricity helps explain Casten’s recent remark that 'separate generation of electricity and heat is utter madness'"
-
Excellently written post, if only all bloggers offered south beach hotels the same content tampa cheap flights as you, the internet would be a much better san diego vacation packages place. Please keep it up! Cheers.
-
What are the main features <a href="http://www.chestnutuggsboots.com/kids-uggs-boots-c-66.html">Kids Uggs Boots</a> to look for when purchasing a Ugg Boots? Always take a close look at the ones you are going to buy as sheepskin leather comes in many different grades <a href="http://www.chestnutuggsboots.com/ugg-knightsbridge-boots-c-59.html">Ugg Knightsbridge Boots</a>.
-
Comments are now closed.
A few years ago an east-coast bio-mass company called Laidlaw Energy came to my attention. The idea of converting wood waste to energy fires my imagination for the great northwest.
A German friend claimed that Germans "sweep their forests" to collect firewood. One problem Oregon purportedly has is over-grown forest understories which require thinning to reduce fire hazard.
Why don't trained workers sweep through Oregon's production logging forests to collect bio mass for energy production? Logging companies "claim" they can't make a profit from collecting bio mass but I believe they're failing to use ingenuity and imagination.
An analogy is that many people collect cans along highways to get paid, but they leave the garbage for someone else to pick up. It would be helpful to pick up roadside trash as a paypack to society when we collect cans to make a financial profit for ourselves.