Home Biomass Power Generators 264
TLouden writes "The Rocky Mountain News had an article today about Community Power Corp. and its new BioMax unit which uses renewable resources such as corncobs, sawdust pellets, and coconut shells to produce electricity. This gasifier unit isn't commercially available yet but we might be seeing it sometime in 2004."
Distributed Energy (Score:5, Informative)
The page for microturbines is currently down, but the rest are up.
Re:Practical? (Score:5, Informative)
This would be BURNING the methane, which would produce CO2 and H20, similar to burning natural gas.
I have never heard that burning methane is any worse than burning any other carbon-based fuel.
In full scale use in many countries (Score:5, Informative)
FYI: I worked at this company a couple of years back.
Re:Practical? (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, but biomass is essentially a closed cycle. All of the CO2 that you're generating is coming from plants that recently took that same CO2 out of the air, so there's no net addition of greenhouse gasses. This is a direct contrast to fossil fuels, where the carbon was previously buried in the ground for millions of years.
Calorific Values Of Fuels (Score:5, Informative)
chicken shit: 8.8
wood: 10.0
meat & bone: 18.6
coal: 30.0
tires: 32.0
diesel: 45.6
propane: 49.4
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http://www.lowpay.gov.uk/energy/inform/calvalue
Why you didn't read the article? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a gasifier. It doesn't burn the biomass directly. It converts the biomass into clean gas fuel just like it would naturally decompose. It's actually more enviromnentally responsible because it supposedly makes use of excess materials that would otherwise be left to decompose into the atmosphere.
Heat energy (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, current technologies leave a lot to be desired (but there may be hope [powerchips.gi]). So for now, I'll continue to wait.
Re:Heat energy (Score:3, Informative)
The way you say that is like its just another cool technology but infact its the holy grail of power generation.If someoen could find a way to turn ambient heat into energy the world power problems would be instantly solved
Re:Sooner then later (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it is over 50%.
Total Electric Power Industry Summary Statistics [doe.gov]
Energy Production (Thousand MWh)
All Energy Sources: 303,091
Coal: 154,690
Re:Heat energy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I think its the decentralization thats the kick (Score:2, Informative)
All you can really say is having Less People Profiting From It allows One Big Place to sell their energy off cheaper than if they were 10 separate places with totally separate staffs and blah blah blah. But if NO ONE is profiting from it, then your "economies of scale" stuff is not even relevent. As long as they all extract X% of the energy from their fuel, just like the Big Plant (which neither of us can really say is possible or impossible) then it really doesnt matter.
Economies of Scale, and just about everything in Economics, rarely applies directly to Real World stuff. People think it does, its their little religion thingy, but IMHO, its mainly crap.
Re:Same to you, buddy! (Score:4, Informative)
Except that you are missing one important point. Coal (and other fossil fuels) release CO2 (and other gases) that are currently stored in the ground, so they are added to the environment. Biomass gases are created from the very plants that use them within the environment, so there is no net gain of gases in the environment.
Re:Sooner then later (Score:3, Informative)
Photovoltaics have a payback time in energy terms of around 1-1.5 years. Economic payback comes much later of course. See This [apec-vc.or.jp] and This one [sharp-world.com]
Re:Sooner then later (Score:2, Informative)
Oh wait... stop. This must be flame bait...
Re:Could we feed this puppy hemp? (Score:2, Informative)
Burning hemp-extracted fuel carries another benefit. It processes the same amount of CO2 (into Oxygen)that it emits when burned. It also creates a "closed loop" against greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere. Rosie's ass just emits large amounts of methane.
Re:Sooner then later (Score:3, Informative)
The land that windmills are on is usefull for farming. Many farmers make more by leasing their land for windmills, than the make on crops. The bonus is that the windmills can go on the land, plus cows can still graze on the land around the windmill. The land footprint of a windmill is relativly small. http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/06/14/wind.power/