Home Biomass Power Generators

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."

Practical?

[The Eye of the Behol]

It may be clean and efficient, but is it practical? Will it provide enough energy to fuel America, and will we be able to produce enough matter to fuel it?

Sooner then later

[mao che minh]

This is probably where things are going (albeit in the distant future). Most of our power comes from sources that aren't feasibly replenishable, such as coal and oil. There aren't a whole lot of huge waterfalls around or places to build dams, so hydro-electric plants aren't going to solve the problem. Solar power is a way to go, but it is rather expensive. Wind power is always uncertain.

In short, natural sources of energy aren't enough. We will have to start getting creative soon.

Re:Practical?

[Frymaster]

It may be clean and efficient, but is it practical?

whoa! efficient maybe, but clean? read the section of the article below:

So how does Community Power's BioMax work? In one end you pour a sack of wood chips, nut shells or pellets (considered the optimal fuel because they are small and dense) into an oxygen-starved tank- shaped gasifier, which heats the solid fuel until it forms a combustible gas (up to 800 degrees Celsius, or 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit).

they're talking about ch4 - aka methane (please, leave the roadwarrior jokes for later). when it comes to climate change this is a Bad Thing. burn oil and you get yr carbon as c02 which is a greenhouse gas... but molecule for molecule, methan is way worse than co2. don't trust me, trust the epa:

Methane traps over 21 times more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide
the epa from this site [epa.gov]

this is not about the environment. it's about energy self-sufficiency and the whole middle-easter instability thang. read the article, 9/11 comes up every third paragraph.

now. where are my damn solar panels?

That's ALL!?!

[dubbayu_d_40]

"60 pounds of wood chips morphs into 20 kilowatt-hours of energy - sufficient to run a typical three-bedroom home for a day."

That's only 21900 pounds of wood per household per year!!! Yay!?!

Re:Sooner then later

[sllim]

You are a sucker.
There is an enormous amount of Oil waiting to be dug up. Hell, the US is sitting on an amount that could keep us independent for quite some time.

In fact, there is some speculation that we may be wrong about how oil is made. There have been some observations made in the ocean oil feilds that suggest old and used up oil reserves are somehow being replenished.

It isn't that I (or anyone else for that matter) is against different forms of energy.
Oh sure, the liberals like to paint us like that, but it just isn't the case.
It is that we are kind of in a 'The Devil you do know is better then the devil you don't know' mentality.

Solar, Wind Power, Garbage Power (try saying that with a straight face), hydro-power, hell even nuclear power; we just don't know nearly as much about these forms of energy as we know about Oil, Gas and Coal.
And that is where I get worried. We have all these people just screaming there foolish heads off that we are in some sort of crisis. Truth is, we are not in any sort of crisis. You enviromentalist nuts out there have created an unintended safety for us. Because you are so stubornly against us drilling for oil in the US our country is in a position where the oil fields of the world could dry up, or OPEC, Russia, South America and Iraq could decide to stop selling to us and we would be able to pump our own oil on our own soil and be fine!

I say we should sit tight and allow technologies to improve. Let's learn about all the nasty effects of these alternate sources of energies.
Lets get them to where they are equal in the efficeincy of Oil, Gas and Coal and then we can allow the market to absorb the newer forms of energy production.

No need to panic.

Well now that I am done that, it is time for some bonehead that isn't capable of considering an opposing viewpoint to moderate me 'troll' or 'flamebait' status.
What if the children hear what I have to say?

Re:Practical?

[ed333]

So how much energy does it take to heat 60 pounds of wood chips to 800 C? What kind of efficiency can this thing possibly have?

Sawdust

[FooAtWFU]

How many corncobs, how many coconuts, and how much sawdust stuff does the average American consume daily? ...
I don't see this being in every home. Stick it in the feed processing plants, though...

Re:Sooner then later

[DakotaSandstone]

Could we keep using oil forever? Sure. Heck, even if we ran out of traditional oil, there'd be almost limitless oil shale [wikipedia.org] deposits. We'd just need to get an economy of scale going to make them cost effective.

But should we continue using oil, coal, etc? When we have purple air quality days in cities where it's unsafe even for olympic atheletes to exert outdoors? I sincerely hope you aren't so blind to the effects oil and gas consumption have on our air that you have never noticed how the air sometimes turns yellow in some cities??

"Not in some sort of crisis?" I suppose next you'll tell me fresh drinking water isn't a big 21st century issue, since "I can obviously just go turn on the tap and get clean water."

Open your eyes. It's a big world out there.

Assistance only

[miknight]

I think this form of power could only be supplementary to an alternative, more powerful supply.

I think its the decentralization thats the kicker

[mary_will_grow]

I, for one, think that this is a GREAT idea because it helps decentralize energy production. That way we dont have a few people feeding ALL INDUSTRY, getting BUHZILLIONS of dollars, and the totally obscene amount of influence such money grants you.
Then, we wont have our country's policy being written by people who have been hammered by lobbies representing people with endlessly deep pockets.
Of course you can pick flaws in this. Maybe the corn co-ops will become the next big bastard. Whatever. If you think people becoming empowered to power their homes themselves is a Bad idea, you are on crack.

Re:Sooner then later

[G-funk]

Please, go on, tell us what kind of "nasty effects" wind and solar power have in store . . .

Apart from the horrid chemicals involved in solar panel production?

Imagine the fucked up effects wind power would have on the weather if we had enough generators to actually be useful?

The short answer is, unless there's a MASSIVE breakthrough in solar technology, nuclear power (fusion or fission) is the only long term answer.

Re:Heat energy

[ramk13]

I think you are missing part of the electric power generation equation... If you were on the the surface of the sun (which is pretty hot) it doesn't necessarily mean you can create tons of electricity. You need a temperature difference and a 'heat engine' to turn the the temperature difference into useful work.

The Sterling engine that the sibling mentions is an example of one that uses even small temperature differences to create reciprocating motion (which can be turned into rotary motion for electricity generation)

Also you can't 'extract heat' from the air and make it cooler without expending energy and dumping the waste heat somewhere else. See Second Law of Thermodynamics...

What about human waste?

[mellon]

One of the puzzles about this article is that this biomass generator doesn't use one of the most significant sources of biomass in a typical household. I know it's icky, but there's energy in it. Plus, if you live in a place with a serious septic problem, extracting gases and composting what's left would be big win.

Re:Sooner then later

[sllim]

Ummm wind power is only good as long as the wind is blowing.

Seriously, most parts of the country do not have a guarenteed constantly blowing wind.
Then there is the land area needed to sit the windmills on. Windmills are not really that efficient. It takes many of them (running consistantly as well, see my first point) to replace a decent size power plant. You are talking about enormous tracts of land that could be used for many, many things.

Course before you put up the windmills you have to deforest that tract of land....

And solar power...
Same problem really. Overcast days are as bad as night time. If you want to guarentee a consistent energy supply from the sun then you must also guarentee consistant access to it.

Once again it isn't that I am against any of this stuff. Hell, that wind farm they want to build off Martha's Vineyard is perfect in so many ways. Take a look at the hypocrits that are against that....
I am for building wind farms and solar farms in areas that can support it.
I am against these structures in areas where the justification is political and not scientific as well as in areas where the land can be put to better use.

This is a good trend...

[WebCowboy]

Innovations like fuel cell and biomass generators aren't only beneficial because they use renewable energy sources and/or produce less pollution. I think that there is an even more intriguing aspect--the implemetation of these new technologies in small-scale units. The possibility of a truly distributed power generation system is very appealing.

I look forward to a time when millions of homes/farms/factories/villiages have their own refrigerator-sized, low-cost, efficient heat/electricity generation units connected to the existing power grid. People could choose to buy electricity off the grid from any number of sources or produce their own power and sell the excess to the grid (imagine getting a cheque instead of a bill every month!).

Such a setup would make blackouts like the one on the US eastern seaboard and southern Ontario much less likely--less dependence on massive, central generation means less disruption due to a failure cascading through the grid.

More sources of generation might also make the electric energy sector truly free market. Deregulation was supposed to make the scenario I described possible, however so far it has been a disaster in its implementation--governments all over the continent lifted regulations, sold off government owned utilities where they existed and handed the whole market over to lumbering old monopolies to mismanage, while at the same time leaving barriers to entry for new players and technology. Politics royally shagged a potentially good idea--hopefully over time it all works out.

Re:Sooner then later

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear fuels take a lot of energy to mine, process and transport securely and safely. Nuclear plants cost more than other plants to build and maintain. More precautions need to be taken against accidents and attack (which would require some sort of military defence), and that costs more money. Nuclear waste remains radioactive for millions of years, and so needs to be stored securely and safely for this amount of time. Can you guarantee that the waste will be safe and secure for millions of years, against human and natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes)? At present there is only one permanent storage facility for nuclear waste in the whole world, and it was opened only last year. Most nuclear waste is either stored on-site (which is unsafe) or shipped/trucked to another location. What if there was an accident during transportation, or even a terrorist attack? What if terrorists got a hold of this nuclear waste and decided to use it in a 'dirty bomb'?

Older reactors should to be decommissioned for safety reasons, but it is far cheaper to keep them running. Decommissioning is very expensive, and to date only one reactor in the world has been successfully decommissioned. The plant site needs to be protected from human contact for millions of years to prevent radiation exposure.