Biomass Has Its Pros and Cons
It’s hard to over-estimate the importance of biomass as a component to a sustainable mix of renewable energy resources—largely for its capacity to convert streams of waste, many of which are toxic, into useful chemical or electrical energy.
That’s the good news. As far as the bad news is concerned:
• Many of these “waste streams” are not waste at all, but rather plant material grown specifically for this purpose. In these cases, we need to consider the footprint of creating the feedstock: planting, irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting, and processing, not to mention the issues associated with the use of the land.
• Processing biomass without creating its own stream of toxic waste is still an evolving science. The trick is to develop technologies that are superior to incineration, i.e., those that introduce a minimum of oxygen. A variety of “flavors” of thermochemical processes including pyrolysis and gasification has existed for hundreds of years, but they remain problematic when applied to real-world conditions.
• In actual operation, the processing of biomass is not a black-and-white proposition; as compared to solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal, which either work or don’t work, many biomass plants in today’s world work intermittently with an extremely narrow class of feedstocks, produce a disappointing grade of liquid fuels or underperform in terms of power generation, and, perhaps worst of all, simply break down unexpectedly for reasons that defy understanding.
• This has given rise to a world of exaggerations and outright lies with respect to the claims associated with cost-effectiveness, reliability, eco-friendliness of operation, etc.
Yet the allure of biomass is not going away, especially in a world in which certain waste streams are becoming increasingly obnoxious with each passing day. For example, Americans dispose of more than 300 million automobile tires per year, most of which are clogging our landfills. Many of the world’s great cities also have great supplies of garbage; e.g., Bangkok generates 14,000 tons of municipal solid waste per day, which is causing all manner of issues with crowding, odor and disease.
Introducing Andrew Grant, Senior Biomass Engineer
This is why we are so thrilled that Andrew Grant has come on board with us. Andrew has vast experience in building, developing, and operating biomass plants that produce both power and chemicals. He helps 2GreenEnergy clients write specifications and contracts for both major equipment and complete facilities. Specialties include performance guarantees, trouble-shooting, and optimization of operating facilities.
He writes:
Our team of experienced biomass power industry specialists helps you take your project from concept through due diligence, permitting, fuel assessment and contract documents for financing; uses our project knowledge to manage the engineering, equipment supply, construction and testing of your project, with O&M support of your acquisition, all based on my 30 years of Biomass Power experience.
We are the Technical & Project Management support you need to help develop, permit, finance and construct your facilities. We help select suppliers, engineers, contractors and negotiate, then enforce, contracts. We help to minimize your legal costs by providing practical documents for legal review. We are contract experts for PPA’s and Fuel supply agreements, which are expected to be areas for improvement.
For anyone contemplating a foray into the wild world of biomass processing, Andrew’s a good guy to know. If you’re interested in speaking with him, please let me know and I’ll make the connection.
I don’t disagree with the overall premise of this article but would like to make two points:
1. I would not classify tires and other kinds of municipal waste as biomass. When I think of biomass, I think of agricultural waste or plantation-grown fuel crops. Municipal waste should be considered separately.
2. You mention Bangkok as an example for MSW issues. Having worked in the energy industry here for the last 34 years, I’ve found that most project implementation problems have to do with politics and the resistance of the people involved in the waste management industry, not with anything technical.
Dear Craig,
Know that today we offer biogas installation that only need the sludge and that is already profitable for small cattle farms … 11 KW needs 60 cows … 45 KW .. 240 cows.
Not any other ingrediënt … full automatic .. all technical parts are in one container …
Between building time and production of electricity = 4 weeks !!
Space you need for a 45 KW which produce 8300 H per year : 200 m2
Beside we have small biomass installation which use only WASTE …
So today we deal with systems who can use only WASTE !! and are profitable on small scale already.
Best regards
GJ
That’s terrific news, Gerolf. Thanks for the update.
Dear Graig even though I am Wishing you and your followers A HAPPY MEW YEAR LATE ITS THIS 2016 CAN BRING DRASTIC CHANGES BELIEVE ME YOUR CONTRIBUTION DO WORTHY IN MY WORK TO NEARLY CLOSING TO MY RESULT THANKS AND GOD BLESS YOU ALL C K SWAMY P J WATCH MY TWEETS FOR ACTION OF 2016 @VCANTOGATHERDO
Thanks for the good wishes; we wish yo well in return.
Dear Craig
We also have a wood power system : from 9 till 45 KW
You can put it in serie and make even a central of 1 MW
1 kg dry wood gives 1 kWe and 2 kWth
So we could for a small factory (70 people / 200 kW power / 40% waste wood during production) ensure that only with the waste wood they could dry the wood and produce all the electricity they need.
They even have surplus of thermal power, which during 6 months a year is useful for heating system
All the best
Gerolf Jacobs
In regards to the use of agricultural; wastes and small scale fuel crops, I would suggest that the best and most cost effective use of such feedstocks is to meet thermal rather than electrical loads.
You could for example run a bakery on sustainably harvested wood chip from a local coppice, likewise straw bales, or biogas from an anaerobic digester.
In Sweden in 2006, 60% of the heat fed into district heating networks came from biomass.
In places where straw is still burned in the fields to make way for the next crop, the straw could instead be harvested, used for heat production, and the residual ash – rich in essential trace elements could then return to the land as fertiliser for the next crop.
Taken one step further, pyrolysis rather than combustion would allow the production of “Char Pretta” by putting the residual char back onto the soil.
Char Pretta has been produced for centuries by indigenous tribes in the Amazon region – sequestering huge quantities of carbon in the soil in a form not degraded by biological processes, and Char Pretta soils are some of the most fertile and productive in the world!
Frank from Florida writes: “Hi Craig, I am happy that you were able to bring this gentleman aboard your company. I know you and your team will make sure things are done right the first time. It sounds like your new year is off to a pretty good start.”
Yes, indeed. This guy is an important addition to what we have going on here.
Concerning biomass Andrew wrote; As far as the bad news is concerned many of the waste streams are not waste at all, but rather plant material grown specifically for this purpose.
What????? I don’t understand what he means by that. It sounds like nonsense. I don’t know how anything that is grown specifically for a purpose can be called a waste stream.
He adds; In these cases, we need to consider the footprint of creating the feedstock: planting, irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting, and processing, not to mention the issues associated with the use of the land.
This country converts a lot of grain to fuel via digestion and ignores the corn stover which is grown in any event and does not require any more land or irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting or processing to produce.
I guess it will be good to separate the goats from the sheep. My little knowledge about the topic indicates that Biomass is a waste from agriculture activity. In other words, It is a by-product from Agric related activity. I believe a pure biomass should be a better option to generate power and heat with little stress to the environment. For instance, Shea Biomass with calorific value of about 5,000 Kcal/kg can give some good heat to generate electricity, steam for processing in the factory, steam to generate chilling conditions for AC and processing, Potash for grains production to enhance crops yield and income of small-holder farmers. Furthermore, rural industrialization could be rejuvenated with availability of sustainable supply of electricity to power irrigation schemes and foods processing plants…..Sustainable Foods Security.
Its a good article you wrote about Biomass. I am from here in the Philippines and just recently we registered a company engaged in renewable energy business.
You mentioned about Mr Andrew Grant who is an expert in Biomass Project . With great pleasure our company, BMC Renewable Energy Corporation wish to be connected with Mr Grant for project feasibility study of Biomass power plant here in our country.
Mr. Mendiola if you will email me at Lblevins@aaecorp.com I’ll be happy to send you a position paper on why the AAEC system will become known as the best technology for deployment in island nations such as the Philippines.
The fact is energy from biomass and wastes can be carbon negative and help resolve the global warming problem through new concept innovation.
Therefore I would like to communicate with you to determine your interest level in joining AAEC in an effort designed for empowering humanity to avoid that portion of human induced global warming that is still within our reach to minimize.
My position is; to win this epic battle, humanity needs new, modern and innovative tools of battle, and my firm, Advanced Alternative Energy, has developed negative emissions technology and I’m inviting requests for more information from all interested in helping to help humanity move forward on a much saner pathway. Please call or email me if you would like information on my novel, new concept technology, a technology designed for the epic battle ahead, and designed to help us win the fight for humanity’s long term survival.
AAEC believes we will do better and be safer in the long run if we can deploy a practical way to power our societies on extraction of greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into earth’s atmosphere while also reducing ongoing greenhouse emissions and begin protecting our communities and electric power grids. We are claiming to be the inventor of one of the repowering “tools” needed to enable humanity to overhaul the power delivery system, in the USA and elsewhere, and help get us out of the box fossil fuels and governmental inaction have humanity boxed up in. We propose to do this through deployment of advanced alternative energy projects at residential, village, community and county scale because many good paying infrastructure construction jobs are needed worldwide. Thus AAEC is seeking support from any and all that may care to support this grass roots – trickle up – project.
Here is a notice I’ve posted on Facebook and elsewhere.
COLLABORATORS, STRATEGIC ALLIANCES AND/OR INVESTMENT NEEDED FOR NOVEL NEW CONCEPT GLOBAL REPOWERING TECHNOLOGY. AAEC WILL PROVIDE MORE DETAILS ON REQUEST.
AAEC invented, patented, tested and further developed a novel new concept low-carbon energy technology we’ve designed for serving as the core technology for far cleaner renewable energy production systems and energy efficiency improvements across the American landscape and around the world. AAEC’s novel new concept technology consists of a biomass, fossil fuel, and municipal waste combustion, gasification and pyrolysis conversion technology that can provide scalable heat and power requirements as well as both biofuel and biochar production. AAEC’s technology is for stand-alone use or as backup for alternative energy systems that depend on solar, wind or other intermittent sources of energy, and in this way it will help enable a doubling of the deployment of alternative energy projects around the world in coming decades.
AAEC developed this new concept breakthrough technology to enable homeowners, businesses, towns, cities and counties to convert completely to cleaner energy. AAEC is for all those who understand that distributed alternative / renewable energy derived from solar, wind, biomass and waste is a viable pathway to stall global warming and produce a much better future for our descendants, and ultimately for all humanity. AAEC offers a viable way to move to a future where we are better at controlling global warming. Fossil fuel firms and utilities may at first oppose what AAEC offers and prefer to continue passing on the costs in cleaning up their operations to their clients and customers even if better options are available that would benefit them as well.
AAEC management believes we will all do better and be safer in the long run if we can deploy a practical way to power all human activities on extraction of greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into earth’s atmosphere while also cutting back on ongoing greenhouse emissions and begin protecting communities and electric power grids. I’m claiming to be an inventor of one of the “tools” needed to enable humanity to overhaul the power delivery system, in the USA and elsewhere, and help get us out of the box fossil fuels and governmental inaction have humanity bound up in. I propose to do this through deployment of advanced alternative energy projects at residential, community, city and county scale as good paying, infrastructure producing, jobs are needed. Therefore AAEC is seeking support from any and all that may care to support this trickle up – distributed energy – project. With such support AAEC will enable bringing energy production to the people much as the PC brought computing to the people.
Les Blevins
President at Advanced Alternative Energy Corp.
1207 N 1800 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66049
Phone 785-842-1943 – Email LBlevins@aaecorp.com
For more info see http://aaecorp.com/ceo.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Advanced-Alternative-Energy/277213435730720
http://buildings.ideascale.com/a/dtd/SCALABLE-MIXED-WASTE-TO-ENERGY-CONVERSION-TECHNOLOGY/84117-33602
“We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and we’re the last generation that can do something about it. We only get one planet. There’s no Plan B.” ~ President Barack Obama
I now have a contact in Indonesia who is in the power business and is installing systems that use combustion turbines and other means to generate alternative energy from biomass and wastes and when I discussed my front end combustion and gasification system with him he was enthusiastic and said he would pursue funding for a demonstration project with the end goal of spreading the concept all around Indonesia. One of the several things he said he liked was when I explained that the heavy conversion equipment could be made right there instead of having to import it. He said this would appeal to the government in Jakarta and that he had contacts he would discuss this with. The other thing he said he liked was when I told him I’ve done some cost analysis that indicates the AAEC approach would cost far less to install than the projects he is currently doing. This is based in part on the fact that the heavy equipment can be fabricated either on-sight or nearby to cut costs.
By the way, in the lead in for my January 2nd comment I wrote “Concerning biomass Andrew wrote” and later realized I had attributed the comment to Andrew instead of Craig. It was my mistake but I did not correct my mistake at that time and so I’m correcting myself now.
With the current heightened renewable energy focus, many fossil fueled generator operators around the world are asking how to convert their existing generation assets to biomass firing. While a simple question in premise, the answer is multi-faceted with a number of important factors dictating the equipment required. For example available fuel quantity and characteristics, environmental emissions and the existing equipment all influence the decision of how to proceed.
Biomass is a general term for a wide range of fuels with an equally broad range of physical characteristics that can affect combustion technology and boiler equipment. Stipulated emission requirements need to be considered, as both the uncontrolled and controlled levels can influence boiler design and post-combustion equipment. Existing boiler and auxiliary equipment have to be evaluated for performance, operating and maintenance considerations associated with the different physical characteristics and flue gas properties associated with the fuel switch.
An alternative approach to total coal use is to co-fire biomass. Co-firing uses either a dual fuel burner with finely prepared biomass. A dual fuel burner can fire finely prepared biomass simultaneously with a main fuel (for example, natural gas or pulverized coal) and share the same flame front. Co-firing can also fire finely prepared biomass through one or more separate burners. The AAEC approach involves gasification of the biomass in a separate unit and then sending the resulting fuel gases through the same burner as the natural gas or the pulverized coal is being fed. The reasons for this approach are mainly that biomass preparation for blowing through a burner is expensive and to transfer biomass over long distances to bring it to a central generation plant are also expensive.
A viable biomass conversion strategy is to retrofit to one of the mass firing approaches listed above or as another alternative move in the direction of distributed energy in order to put the generation of power closer to the load and closer to the available feedstocks. This is what AAEC is working to offer and more information can be had by emailing Advanced Alternative Energy’s chief scientist at LBlevins@aaecorp.com.
A friend “Mario” from Mexico writes:
Craig,
90% of bio-mass is WOOD. From saw dust to compressed leaves.
Burning wood can be justified if you are making wood coal, by restricting oxygen, or
When heating in the cold of winter…..but it is not beneficial to the air, or is the ash any
advantage to grow things.
Burning Bio-mass is what is deforesting huge tracks of forests neat populated areas
And principal cause for SMOG in Chinese cities.
The Sahara desert use to be a forest of Ceders, huge trees were used to make ships
And homes for an estimated population of around 1 million along the Mediterranian
African coast line. Wood fuel was the largest use, from about 15,000 BC to
around 12,000 BC. Then we were struck by Comet, who eradicated the Mammoths
and brought on an ice age that put man at risk of extinction…..but we survived.
We have very little proof, because around 6,000 BC, the Magnetic axis shifted, causing
Plates disruption and worldwide and undersea volcanic eruptions, that heated the sea waters,
That went into steam and accumulated in heavy black clouds that caused torrents for
40 days and nights, or so goes the Biblical story of Noah.
Today, the Sahara is a growing desert of fine sand, threatening the middle East.
We are like these British rats that commit suicide by running head on into the ABYSS………..
So far, nothing will save us, we are doomed unless we terraform somewhere new.
Mario
Congratulations Graig, Bio-mass is a very interesting field of energy production. The method any applications vary widely according to circumstance, and having someone qualified to advise will be very valuable.
That it from someone who has learned through painful experience, the theory is a lot easier than the practice !:) Nonetheless small scale Bio-mass usage in the right circumstances can prove a satisfying method of turning an environmental negative into a positive.
I wish you the best of luck, and a Happy New Year.