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Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

charmindustrial.com

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Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#41

Post by rexreed »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #22
rexreed wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If corn stover is a critical importance to your business and business model, wouldn't it be more effective, efficient, and beneficial to your business to be where the critical resource and information and experience is? Basically why not move to Kansas instead of stay put in California?

Come on. No one wants to live in Kansas. And it's extremely difficult to build in a rural setting. You try prototyping an experimental cutting-edge technology in the middle of a corn field 2 hours from the nearest Home Depot or metal fabricator.

John Deere might find that interesting. Now headquartered in Moline, IL (Iowa border), they started up and built their company exactly in the rural America (Grand Detour, IL), when Home Depot didn't even exist. Yes it was over 150 years ago, but there's nothing that prevents you from starting an agtech company where the resources are if they are in the midwest. The Kauffman Foundation, a major entrepreneurial resource is based in Kansas City, MO.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#42

Post by andjd »

In their FAQ, they mention this statistic.

> Every ton of biomass contains roughly 1.65 tons CO₂.

On it's surface this is impossible. Does this refer to CO₂ equivalents like Methane? It seems that for carbon specifically, the process (pyrolysis, transportation, etc) emits more than one ton of carbon for every ton of oil sequestered.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#43

Post by bob29 »

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…

How are you heating it? How are you powering all the chippers, blowers, conveyer belts, and other machinery? Along with the transportation of crop residue to your facility, how much carbon is re-emitted with your consumption of all these industrial products of the primarily fossil fueled powered energy system?

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#44

Post by mnw21cam »

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…

Neat idea.

My main concern is about whether you're sealing all the plant nutrients deep underground too, or are they separated out at some stage?

As a world, we're going to need to put all those nutrients back into the soil to be able to keep growing stuff. Particularly phosphorous has limited mineable stocks.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#45

Post by certifiedloud »

andjd wrote: post #42

In their FAQ, they mention this statistic. > Every ton of biomass contains roughly 1.65 tons CO₂. On it's surface this is impossible. Does this refer to CO₂ equivalents like Methane? It seems that for carbon specifically, the process (pyrolysis, transportation, etc) emits more than one ton of carbon for every ton of oil sequestered.

Conservation of mass need not apply.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#46

Post by wongarsu »

andjd wrote: post #42

In their FAQ, they mention this statistic. > Every ton of biomass contains roughly 1.65 tons CO₂. On it's surface this is impossible. Does this refer to CO₂ equivalents like Methane? It seems that for carbon specifically, the process (pyrolysis, transportation, etc) emits more than one ton of carbon for every ton of oil sequestered.

Of course the statement is a bit inaccurate, it should probably say "burning 1 ton of biomass generates roughly 1.65 tons of CO₂"

Oxygen is a good bit heavier than carbon, to the point that about 80% of the mass of CO₂ is oxygen. Since burning fuel is generally about combining carbon and hydrogen in the fuel with atmospheric O₂, producing CO₂ and H₂O respectively, you can get numbers like these even before accounting for high-impact gases like methane.

Edit: and of course photosynthesis is essentially the same process in reverse, taking in CO₂ and energy, adding water for the hydrogen and removing some oxygen (that gets vented to the atmosphere) to get energy-rich biomass.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#47

Post by hinkley »

andjd wrote: post #42

In their FAQ, they mention this statistic. > Every ton of biomass contains roughly 1.65 tons CO₂. On it's surface this is impossible. Does this refer to CO₂ equivalents like Methane? It seems that for carbon specifically, the process (pyrolysis, transportation, etc) emits more than one ton of carbon for every ton of oil sequestered.

Only 16% of the weight of CO2 is the carbon. Since we’re concerned with the greenhouse effect of the molecule, that makes a bit of sense. But it also inflates both the rate of production and the value of capture so it could just as easily have been the other way.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#48

Post by hinkley »

rexreed wrote: post #17
pkrein wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 into the state because of the bugs. Wheat straw was much easier to procure in-state. Since encountering the differences, we tracked down the rarer corn growers in California and now use corn stover for testing as well.

If corn stover is a critical importance to your business and business model, wouldn't it be more effective, efficient, and beneficial to your business to be where the critical resource and information and experience is? Basically why not move to Kansas instead of stay put in California?

“Did he just tell me to go fuck myself?”

“I believe he did, Bob.”

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#50

Post by dbcurtis »

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…

How is this an overall improvement over leaving the corn stalks in the field to decompose and return nutrients to the soil? This process moves soil nutrients away from point of origin. (Serious question from former Iowa farm boy who still owns corn ground operated by others. Should I let my tenants ship stover away? I want to be a good steward of the soil. )
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