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That CAN'T be true! / Re: Why can't water vapour be the driver of today's climate change?
« on: 05/01/2022 15:37:11 »The economics of biomass haven't been favorable until now: the energy cost of harvesting, transporting and preparing flammable material exceeded the energy of any electricity generated therefrom.
This is true mostly, but also falls in the consideration of localizing resourcing and the commercialization of fuller refinement like we provide to crude and frac gas today. Past efforts lacked terribly in any real efforts of real-time refinement stream, (versus batch) at points where power generation tested gross clear cutting and then jammed green, wet wood into combustion units, then reported biomass to be a failed concept. Hardly a valid concept evaluation, more intended to maintain the status quo.
Part of the trick is to get the energy density per unit of biomass elevated to help offset cost. Picture a cousin something on the order of synthetic coal from biomass that would "look" like charcoal briquettes but have a higher energy and mass density as a refined product from renewable and sustainable sources. If it were formed to be water resistant and cured from evolving CO emissions in storage, you could see rail cars full of it feeding generating facilities yet be essentially emissions neutral if not emissions negative.
It won't work with mid section conventional flotation bed gasification, but would benefit from a newer combustion design which makes better use of relative mechanics, thermal transfer and fluid dynamics. CFD simulation has gotten pretty good at this game for modeling.
What we know so far is that good old wood pellets can't meet those goals on several levels yet they continue to be a source of energy production having gained popularity in the UK for central energy, last I knew. I think those might be co-generation of natural gas with pulverized pellets, flotation bed combustion.