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Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

charmindustrial.com

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Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#31

Post by sumtechguy »

tclancy wrote: post #23
rexreed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agree. Also, how is this firm based in Silicon Valley / San Fran where the customers are primarily in the midwest? If they were serious about this problem, shouldn't they be where their customers or resources are? Building something in isolation and then "shipping" it to where it will be used seems very inefficient and they're clearly missing out on valuable on-the-ground information and experience. This s…

Wouldn’t the reverse question then be, why hasn’t someone in the Midwest done this already?

They may have already used that material for something else?

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#33

Post by mech987 »

thimkerbell wrote: post #20

Interesting post. Is there a "mechanical engineering for dummies" educational path (Book? Software? Kit?) that would equip someone for doing like 90% of the mechanical design&prototyping work? Interesting point: "when you solve one bottleneck you find a new one somewhere else."

"Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design" is a great textbook if you want to learn the most you can with the fewest books about designing mechanical structures and moving parts from a strength perspective.

Fluid flow/ thermo would be the other main academic area that this book wouldn't cover.

There's a bunch more topics though that you build over years of intuition- manufacturability, design tradeoffs, etc.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#34

Post by CoastalCoder »

pkrein wrote: post #28
ed wrote: post #11

So the ELI5 is they burn crop waste, harvest the heat and bury the carbon-rich ash. This process is called BECCS. (Not totally right - see 'pkrein’s comment below.) The upper bound on capture is pretty good! Almost 70% of yearly CO2 emissions. > Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests a potential range of negative emissions from BECCS of 0 to 22 gigatonnes per year [1] > Human activities emit over…

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, molasses-like consistency, and the overwhelming odor of barbecue sauce. Today we primarily pump that bbq sauce underground as carbon removal (Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage - BiCRS), but in the future it could be used for BECCS processes…

Okay, I've got to ask: Does it actually taste like BBQ sauce?

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#35

Post by ryanmcbride »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #34
pkrein wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, molasses-like consistency, and the overwhelming odor of barbecue sauce. Today we primarily pump that bbq sauce underground as carbon removal (Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage - BiCRS), but in the future it could be used for BECCS processes…

Okay, I've got to ask: Does it actually taste like BBQ sauce?

probably mostly tastes like carbon but you might notice a smokey aftertaste

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#36

Post by Imnimo »

soco wrote: post #21
ed wrote: post #11

So the ELI5 is they burn crop waste, harvest the heat and bury the carbon-rich ash. This process is called BECCS. (Not totally right - see 'pkrein’s comment below.) The upper bound on capture is pretty good! Almost 70% of yearly CO2 emissions. > Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests a potential range of negative emissions from BECCS of 0 to 22 gigatonnes per year [1] > Human activities emit over…

So out of the 30 gigatons of CO2, up to 22 are from biomass? That's way, way more than I would have thought...

I think the 22 is not how much is currently emitted from biomass, it's the upper bound on how much we could store if we replaced a bunch of energy generation with this process.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#37

Post by philote »

soco wrote: post #21
ed wrote: post #11

So the ELI5 is they burn crop waste, harvest the heat and bury the carbon-rich ash. This process is called BECCS. (Not totally right - see 'pkrein’s comment below.) The upper bound on capture is pretty good! Almost 70% of yearly CO2 emissions. > Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests a potential range of negative emissions from BECCS of 0 to 22 gigatonnes per year [1] > Human activities emit over…

So out of the 30 gigatons of CO2, up to 22 are from biomass? That's way, way more than I would have thought...

I think the meaning is that out of the 30 gigatons of CO2, 22 gigatons can be recaptured ("negative emissions").

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#38

Post by mcronce »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #35
CoastalCoder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I've got to ask: Does it actually taste like BBQ sauce?

probably mostly tastes like carbon but you might notice a smokey aftertaste

To be fair, the smokey flavor you get from barbeque is primarily carbon

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#39

Post by rmccue »

pkrein wrote: post #28
ed wrote: post #11

So the ELI5 is they burn crop waste, harvest the heat and bury the carbon-rich ash. This process is called BECCS. (Not totally right - see 'pkrein’s comment below.) The upper bound on capture is pretty good! Almost 70% of yearly CO2 emissions. > Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests a potential range of negative emissions from BECCS of 0 to 22 gigatonnes per year [1] > Human activities emit over…

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, molasses-like consistency, and the overwhelming odor of barbecue sauce. Today we primarily pump that bbq sauce underground as carbon removal (Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage - BiCRS), but in the future it could be used for BECCS processes…

This is pretty cool!

Presumably it takes some amount of energy currently to run this process, so the "cost" of the carbon removal is energy usage currently. Would a BECCS process remove the need to use external energy altogether?

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#40

Post by draw_down »

[deleted] wrote: post #25

[deleted]

I had the half-joking thought, I wish I didn’t waste my life on software because this seems like actually enjoyable and satisfying engineering work.

I don’t really know if biomass is the best power source or whatever, but the problem of “get the biomass into the pyrolizer” is straightforward as can be.

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