Viewing profile — pkrein

Hi HN, author here. I wanted to address the most common theme in the comments: safety. The regulatory burdens I've encountered and described were not related to safety requirements…

nothing in hardware is cheap until it scales up. in fact, the cost vs. scale dynamics are well understood, see Wright's Law. the "huge assumption" is our entire roadmap... and the …

CO₂ is captured from the atmosphere in biomass as C C in biomass is converted to C in bio-oil, with relatively small release of CO₂ C in bio-oil is injected deep underground for pe…

Bio-oil production itself has a small amount of net positive emissions associated with it. We also purchase renewable electricity, renewable diesel, etc. to minimize those emission…

Wildfires.org is doing really awesome work on unblocking and accelerating environmental review and planning for all kinds of wildfire prevention treatments.

Carbon purchasing already exists. Voluntary purchases like Frontier: https://frontierclimate.com/ and many other corporate buyers. Regulatory cap-and-trade markets like CA ARB LCFS…

Read two comments up. Biochar/ash made from the biomass goes into the soil.

It's tough for building hardware, where the engineers own building their prototype systems. Likely other roles in sales, etc. would go remote sooner.

If you or your friends are mechanical engineers, we're looking for great meche's with experience in thermal, fluids, combustion, ag processing and more. Would love to chat: https:/…

Leaving the biomass on the field results in the CO₂ going back into the atmosphere (~80% within 2 years): https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.4141/cjss2010-055#T0002 By contrast, our …

Want to come show us how it's done? :)

The process separates the biomass carbon into bio-oil, and the NPK in the biomass separates into the biochar/ash (2% of the N, 70% of the P, >90% of the K). That biochar/ash goes b…

Actually we aren’t burning the biomass, we’re heating it without oxygen (pyrolysis) to create a transportable biomass intermediate called bio-oil. That bio-oil is rich in carbon, m…

Our customers are technology companies based in the Bay Area, check out the home page: https://charmindustrial.com We delivered 90% of permanent carbon removals globally last year:…

Academia has started referring to our category as Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage, or BiCRS (pronounced like “bikers”): https://www.icef.go.jp/pdf/summary/roadmap/icef2020_roadm…

Initial testing was in San Francisco, where corn stover is relatively tricky to come by because corn is not widely grown in California, and agricultural residues cannot be brought …

Not sure how we got to $0.01/kWh (half the cost of the lowest PPAs ever signed for solar in Saudi Arabia), but if the electricity cost is 10x lower than current California prices, …

Ok so the 40% efficiency and 2.5x reduction in electricity prices cancel each other out... we're still at electricity costs == energy in the jet fuel. No room for electrofuel plant…

If the founders are around... trying to understand their economics. They claim to sell Jet A at the market clearing price. Jet A goes for $0.45/L. The lowest industrial electricity…

This. Equivalent CO₂, but bio-oil has 1/3 the energy content of crude oil.

I saw a very interesting talk by Mike Tamir, Berkeley and Uber Autonomous Group, about an extension his research group built to detect sensationalism and emotional appeals. The ide…

Would this make hydrogen fuel cells (the reverse of electrolysis) have double the power density as well? That would be meaningful for reducing hydrogen fuel cell weight and cost pe…