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Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

charmindustrial.com

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Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#91

Post by bob29 »

carbadtraingood wrote: post #64
bob29 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 from hydrocarbon into combustion byproducts, namely C02. This company claims to be condensing all of these hydrocarbons, not combusting them.

For a nice and understandable example of pure pyrolysis without combustion, there is this project [0] wherein an airtight vessel is loaded with biomass, heat/energy is applied with electrical resistive heating elements. The pyrolysis occurs and the resulting vapors are captured and stored as a low pressure vapor for later use in cooking or powering internal combustion engine.

[0]https://www.patreon.com/posts/story-of-thing-i-61916621

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#92

Post by bequanna »

I’m having a tough time understanding how this makes sense.

Is this even close to being financially viable if there is never any such thing as carbon credits?

Put another way, are the people funding projects like this assuming there will be some kind of carbon credit system in place that will pay absurdly high prices to sequester carbon?

Additionally, I suppose you will be compensating farmers for their corn stalk bales, but you can’t take something OUT of a field long term without replacing. Those bales contain more than just carbon and the farmers will eventually have to amend the soil to compensate.

Which, if we are then living in your sky-high carbon credit world, fertilizer (and everything else) pry got MUCH more expensive.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#93

Post by smm11 »

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.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#94

Post by colechristensen »

pkrein wrote: post #87
colechristensen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

My email is my username @gmail.com I might be able to do some consulting.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#95

Post by pkrein »

colechristensen wrote: post #88
pkrein wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 back into the soil. So we recover most of the nutrients, plus you get biochar which improves soil carbon, water retention, microbial health, etc. https://charmindustrial.com/faq?question=how-do-you-sustaina...

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!

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#97

Post by GeekyBear »

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…

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.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#98

Post by jonstewart »

dbcurtis wrote: post #50
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…

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. )

(Another former Iowa farm boy) This is a CO2 sequestration process, and one still in development. The carbon in the corn stalks is obviously pretty neutral—it’s the petroleum for tractors, drying, and fertilizer that are the CO2 emissions problem.

For soil health, I think you’d want your renter to go no-till (if isn’t already). And then for emissions, look into putting solar panels wherever, seeing whether there are electric/heat pump dryers available (???) if you have drying bins, and encouraging renter to use biodiesel.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#99

Post by goda90 »

seunosewa wrote: post #59

I wonder if just buying crude oil and burying it isn't more cost effective than transporting bulky biomass which could have been fed to animals in order to put it through this complicated process of converting it to oil and burying it.

Burying crude oil would at best be carbon neutral, but most likely carbon positive. Burying biomass has the potential to be carbon negative if the processes are refined enough because it's capturing atmospheric carbon and putting it into the ground.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#100

Post by niklearnstodev »

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.
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