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Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

charmindustrial.com

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Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#101

Post by jonstewart »

pkrein wrote: post #95
colechristensen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but why is this better than leaving the biomass in the field and perhaps doing some soil building techniques? You also need to hire some farm kids or pay for some scholarships to get interns. Some of the problems you described solving over months would have been trivially solved by someone with farm experiences. You’d really benefit from going to farm auctions, finding one of these, taking it apart, and adapting…

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 process retains the nutrients, improves the soil health relative to the baseline of just leaving it, and you get permanent carbon removal. Yes, we're hiring for great mechanical engineers with experience in these areas ;) Lots to do!

How does removing the biomass improve soil health?

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#102

Post by a_c »

colechristensen wrote: post #86
hinkley wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We talk about this at least once a week here, usually in the scope of software, but it’s a problem that exists in other domains (though VCs and us are constantly pushing for more businesses to run like software, which is nuts considering how not in order we know our own house to be). Ageism and cultishness are how you end up with simple oversights that anyone who has been around the block a few times would either pre…

They just needed one farm kid who became an engineer. They talked about taking seven weeks to figure out a conveyor, put me in the middle of Kansas and I could have told you how to solve that problem in seven minutes, give me a truck she a credit card and i can buy you the parts in an hour. Bay Area engineering tends to be very sheltered, large groups of people with zero experience invading a domain. Sometimes it cre…

On self driving car, I think we are solving all the problems caused by cars like air pollution and congestion with "better" car. First we have electric car, then we (will) have electric self driving car.

Public transport seems boring enough that no one talks about. Is there anything foundamentally wrong with buses and trains (and bike too) compared with cars? While we moved pass the faster horse era, we are now searching for better cars.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#103

Post by pkrein »

niklearnstodev wrote: post #100
pkrein wrote: post #96

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://charmindustrial.com/team or email in my profile.

Does Charm ever plan to be remote-friendly? Asking more for some talented friends living in a remote small town, though I've admired Charm from afar for some time.

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

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#104

Post by gumby »

This is such a great article, the summary of which is “I/O is hard”, which every programmer surely knows (and if they don’t, they haven’t tried).

Ok, it’s a great article for other reasons too.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#105

Post by bob29 »

colechristensen wrote: post #78
photochemsyn wrote: post #68

For quite a few years I looked into similar processes based fundamentally on biological photosynthesis, for example algal pool farms and similar approaches to generating hydrocarbons from biomass. At present, I think direct air capture of CO2 followed by reduction to methane and longer hydrocarbons using water-sourced H2 (all without going through the biological photosynthesis) is going to be the long-term winning te…

I’ve thought a good target would be polluted lakes with algae problems or diverting part of rivers with agricultural runoff. Pump oxygen and whatever bottleneck nutrient in and harvest algae. You’ll clean the excess nutrients out of the water and sink carbon at same time. Do this in the Mississippi River delta for maximum effect, do a pilot in a Minnesota lake first.

I believe you would pump in CO2 (and any missing nutrients), not Oxygen. Algae culture requires CO2 and produces Oxygen. It also requires light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#Growing_algae

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#106

Post by pkrein »

jonstewart wrote: post #101
pkrein wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 process retains the nutrients, improves the soil health relative to the baseline of just leaving it, and you get permanent carbon removal. Yes, we're hiring for great mechanical engineers with experience in these areas ;) Lots to do!

How does removing the biomass improve soil health?

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

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#107

Post by colechristensen »

bequanna wrote: post #83
colechristensen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve thought a good target would be polluted lakes with algae problems or diverting part of rivers with agricultural runoff. Pump oxygen and whatever bottleneck nutrient in and harvest algae. You’ll clean the excess nutrients out of the water and sink carbon at same time. Do this in the Mississippi River delta for maximum effect, do a pilot in a Minnesota lake first.

So, this pilot would add more algae to a MN lake? I don’t think you would ever get approval for something like this in a public lake. Maybe in some private, artificial pond?

The goal would be to farm and continually extract algae from the lake in just a section of it, presumably to increase the water quality in the rest of the lake.

And there are something like 14,000 lakes in MN though many of them one might be tempted to call ponds :) no need to build an artificial one though, there are plenty.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#108

Post by colechristensen »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #85
colechristensen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve thought a good target would be polluted lakes with algae problems or diverting part of rivers with agricultural runoff. Pump oxygen and whatever bottleneck nutrient in and harvest algae. You’ll clean the excess nutrients out of the water and sink carbon at same time. Do this in the Mississippi River delta for maximum effect, do a pilot in a Minnesota lake first.

There was an Oxygen and Nitrogen (I think) injection project here in BC which was attempting to burn out phosphorous from silt during seasonal turnover of the water columns. I recall that it never showed a positive effect on the body of water, though occasionally it was negative. Lots of fish died at one point. After several years the measurements of P in the silt were hardly any lower, but still too high. I guess th…

I’m sure someone could come up with an efficient harvesting / filtering strategy. Pick a species that fit the requirements.

After harvesting do something similar to the process in the post. Dry it, pyrolyze, separate carbon goo from ash, bury one, use the other as fertilizer or another useful purpose.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#109

Post by colechristensen »

GeekyBear wrote: post #97
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an Oxygen and Nitrogen (I think) injection project here in BC which was attempting to burn out phosphorous from silt during seasonal turnover of the water columns. I recall that it never showed a positive effect on the body of water, though occasionally it was negative. Lots of fish died at one point. After several years the measurements of P in the silt were hardly any lower, but still too high. I guess th…

A good way to get rid of excess nutrients is to pick a water plant with ridiculous growth rates (for example, duckweed), harvest and compost it for use in agriculture. Compost will certainly remain in agricultural fields longer than chemical fertilizers do.

Yup, my whole idea is to find a body of water already suffering from overgrowth of one of these organisms, do what you can to accelerate that growth, and continually harvest it.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#110

Post by colechristensen »

bob29 wrote: post #105
colechristensen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve thought a good target would be polluted lakes with algae problems or diverting part of rivers with agricultural runoff. Pump oxygen and whatever bottleneck nutrient in and harvest algae. You’ll clean the excess nutrients out of the water and sink carbon at same time. Do this in the Mississippi River delta for maximum effect, do a pilot in a Minnesota lake first.

I believe you would pump in CO2 (and any missing nutrients), not Oxygen. Algae culture requires CO2 and produces Oxygen. It also requires light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#Growing_algae

I should have written air instead of oxygen, though plants still do respirate oxygen even though they’re net positive oxygen producers.
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