Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

charmindustrial.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 189 posts

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#171

Post by orthecreedence »

corrral wrote: post #148
hinkley wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taken cynically, these full disclosure engineering stories are calculated to make the team seem human and trustworthy. How much do you want to bet that the real story is that one of them drove past a grain elevator and wondered if they make a portable version of that equipment, or one of the frustrated/amused locals didn’t suggest it. Either directly or subconsciously. One of my coworkers has spent most of the last y…

> One of my coworkers has spent most of the last year sharing observations and ideas with the team that are things I pointed out three years ago. I don’t know if he’s giving me an overly subtle nod or he just doesn’t know he’s doing it. Like people who accidentally write a story/song they heard once. I once suggested a product name in a meeting and everyone was like "eh" and then about five minutes later someone else…

Was she hot? I'm not being sarcastic, actually asking.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#172

Post by JetAlone »

smm11 wrote: post #93
jcpst wrote: post #32

The title "Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares" reminds me of this bit of pop culture where Rick and Morty land on a corn cob planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw-2KuHIYyo

I recall that episode, but never understood why it was bad thing if there was a cob planet? Earth is water planet, or dirt planet, with everything destined to be dirt or whatever.

Everything from the mountains down to the atomic structure is on a cob. Maybe you'd end up having Junji Ito tier body horror as they eat and breathe in more cob particles. We'd get Summer on a cob, and Jerry on a cob. Maybe the planet has a god on a cob who will punish them in eternity on the cob, for breaking the laws on the cob, of this world on a cob. Whatever the case, Rick's not willing to take a risk on the cob - as far as he's concerned, there's not so much as one kernel of truth in any criticism of that decision.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#173

Post by hinkley »

corrral wrote: post #148
hinkley wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taken cynically, these full disclosure engineering stories are calculated to make the team seem human and trustworthy. How much do you want to bet that the real story is that one of them drove past a grain elevator and wondered if they make a portable version of that equipment, or one of the frustrated/amused locals didn’t suggest it. Either directly or subconsciously. One of my coworkers has spent most of the last y…

> One of my coworkers has spent most of the last year sharing observations and ideas with the team that are things I pointed out three years ago. I don’t know if he’s giving me an overly subtle nod or he just doesn’t know he’s doing it. Like people who accidentally write a story/song they heard once. I once suggested a product name in a meeting and everyone was like "eh" and then about five minutes later someone else…

Well that’s just egregious.

If the room reads right I’ll occasionally do that as a joke, but I have heard too many stories of people who do it for real (one of the reasons I try to make it a joke).

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#174

Post by hinkley »

iancmceachern wrote: post #163
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…

And change/difference for the sake of change/difference

Everything in moderation. I do occasionally argue to let someone change something that doesn’t really need to be changed because it makes them happy. If they’re happy they’ll stay longer, or at least be less cranky the next time some random top-tier bullshit happens. Throw stress at someone whose fun you’ve completely sucked away and see how far that gets you.

The trick is to find something they can fiddle with without ruining everyone else’s fun in the process. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes it’s a riddle.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#175

Post by hinkley »

xg15 wrote: post #154
hinkley wrote: post #55

> Light and flexible pieces of wheat straw in San Francisco had easily been conveyed pneumatically from the tub grinder into the hammer mill. Okay, that is a very basic failure of engineering/imagination. I’m not saying shame is in order here, but several someone’s should be made to feel uncomfortable over this cock-up. Including the hiring manager because they went for kids instead of people with experience. Why on…

> Why on earth would you assume you could move corn residues with air? From what the article describes later on, it appears the air pressure was actually generated by the tub grinder itself, not by any additional device. So the appeal of the original design might have been that no active conveyance solutions was needed at all: Because the grinder's air exhaust stream - which you get "for free" - already provides enou…

For every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#176

Post by dreamcompiler »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #117
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever their answer they'll need to account for the fuel cost of the trip to a facility, lifecycle cost of the instrumentation, and fuel cost of a return trip for where ever the whatever is going to go. I can tell you right now having done experimental LCA previously, its not gonna pen out. The cost of moving massive amounts of 'stuff' to do 'something' with it when its an extremely low margin, low value add produc…

Couldn't the bio-oil generated by the process be used to power the transport and supply lines? Or don't the maths work out? I don't know any of the numbers here...

That would defeat the purpose. Burning the bio-oil to extract energy from it would just pump CO2 into the atmosphere.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#177

Post by oogabooga13 »

galdosdi wrote: post #127
a_c wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 searc…

1) Public transport works today. True self driving is an unknown amount of time away, and IMHO it is a foolish mistake to assume it is definitely very soon or definitely very long before it works. It could be a year away or decades. 2) Even with self driving, there would be some efficiency gains from a bus, especially in places dense enough that there just isn't space for a car per person, like Manhattan. It would ta…

I can agree with your general time scales on self driving. Just today in SF I watched firsthand a "Cruise" self driving car completely wig out when faced with a double parked car (pointed in the same direction as the "Cruise") and oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the street.

When it decided to make its manuever (on coming traffic briefly stopped to allow the car to drive around the double parked vehicle) the car made erratic micro turns and short hard braking action (pushing the nose of the car down) once it entered the (stopped) on coming traffic lane. The occupants were definitely thrashed around a bit.

The attempt was not pretty and definitely not even close to human level proficeny.

A typical manuever one has to make these days in the Bay with street parking eliminated in many busy restaurant / cafe corridors.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#178

Post by dreamcompiler »

bob29 wrote: post #91
carbadtraingood wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pyrolysis is an energy positive reaction. It requires an initial heat input, but after getting started it produces more heat than it needs. That heat can be used to generate electricity or warm water.

Pyrolysis is entirely endothermic - it requires applying heat to biomass. Pyrolysis yields a vapor that will combust in the presence of oxygen and release energy. The energy released in the combustion of pyrolysis products can be used to drive further pyrolysis. A "Top Lit Updraft Gasifier" is a simple apparatus to achieve this. Capturing the heat from pyrolysis in this way does however convert the pyrolysis vapor fr…

Pyrolysis could in theory be done with concentrated solar thermal energy. The issues would be:

-- How much mirror area [heat] would be needed?

-- Mirror geometry: Troughs may lend themselves to continuous processing and gas recovery a bit better than central point concentrators but they provide less heat potential.

-- Can the economics work if you only process when the sun shines?

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#179

Post by seunosewa »

pinot wrote: post #132
seunosewa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corn and wheat post-harvest biomass is usually tilled into the ground to improve organic matter in the soil and return nutrients to the soil, or fed to cows and other ruminants by grazing or by cutting.

The point is to take carbon out of the cycle. Not mining petroleum would of course have the same effect but good luck getting people to do that.

In both cases you're burying a product of photosynthesis that would have been converted back to carbon dioxide through combustion or respiration. You're taking carbon out of the cycle. It doesn't matter whether the carbon was fixed millions of years ago or a couple of months ago. Carbon is carbon.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#180

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #176
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't the bio-oil generated by the process be used to power the transport and supply lines? Or don't the maths work out? I don't know any of the numbers here...

That would defeat the purpose. Burning the bio-oil to extract energy from it would just pump CO2 into the atmosphere.

Yes, I understand that, but I thought that most of the CO2 is bound to the ash that's supposed to be buried underground? So there would be a net reduction of CO2, even if the bio-oil was burned?
Post reply on HN