Exploring Biomass Production
Biomass is one alternative energy solution that potentially could propel us towards
making the vision of a society that exists in harmony with the environment a reality. Yet
there are potential pitfalls and they include many assumptions and potential strategies that
some proponents of biomass energy system propose.
Ironally enough a conservative, "free market" "environmentalist" named Peter Huber1 in
his book Hard Green raises an important.
Conventional environmental strategy is now based on What Huber calls the Soft green
path. The Natural Step program an influence environmental program geared to the
socially conscious business community seems to lean towards a soft green path espoused
by Huber's adversary Amory Lovins who wrote Natural Capitalism with his wife Hunter
and green capitalist guru Paul Hawken. Hawken has been influential in guiding the
Natural Step movement. The four systemic conditions of the Natural Step process are
designed to promote a sustainable development platform that avoids the removal of the
Earth’s crust. The goal is to move towards a bio-based economy. However how can one
seriously talk about shifting even further away from minerals use and towards bio-based
technologies and products when we already use too much biomass to be sustainable?
Huber’s solution is hard green environmentalism and it involves a continuing focus
on mining and drilling rather than expanding agricultural capacity. A mineral based
economy he argues has much less of an environmental impact than one that increases
What missing from his thinking is an acceptance that present rates of consumption are not
sustainable. Beyond this is the realization that the way we organize our economy is very
inefficient and wasteful so that per unit of energy and resources consumed we do not get
much bang for the buck.
for fuel sources of energy as well as for plastics, solvents and oils because they are
more sustainable given that the real problem in resources is not inanimate natural
resources but animate or organic resources. The qualification for sustainability should
not at this time so much revolve around whether or not a resource is renewable in broad
terms, but whether it mitigates trends that are in sum chipping away the viability of the
environment to reproduce life on the planet, in a way that might undermine the balance
of life. The problem with petroleum in particular is not just extraction but refining and
transport as well as consumption. Refining processes create products that have potential
environmental and health hazards as well as unwanted byproducts that are toxic to people
and the environment.
A green technology is one that moves us towards the ideal of energy producing systems
that do not reduce the ability of the biosphere to regenerate. Currently no place is
completely isolated from some sort of tradeoff.
Regardless of the material or process used, we are already using a substantial and
unsustainable part of the earth's biomass to sustain human needs. If is possible to
extract hydrocarbons with only negligible long-term environmental harm and sequester
the carbon produced from the conversion of these hydrocarbons into energy, then
what some are touting as a clean coal technology might actually be a transitional green
technology. Such a technology might be more sustainable than using valuable biomass as
Clean Coal Technologies
Clean coal technologies are still many years away from commercialization, yet they
represent the hope among many in the coal industry that coal will remain a viable energy
resource well into the 21st century. The fuel cells designed for the clean coal systems are
called molten carbonate fuel cells6. It is worth noting that they can utilize are variety of
materials including biomass.
It is also important to consider that power plants that use biomass directly as a feedstock
create air emissions that contribute or lead to local air as well as emissions of the CO2
the main cause of global warming. This compromises the "greenness" of any renewable
energy system or process. The best strategy for biomass is to see it as stopgap approach
where feedstocks for biomass are primarily wastes that would otherwise be burned or
discarded and/or landfilled as potentially problematic pollutant. One example of this
is when people go to fast food restuarants looking for oil to power their bio-diesel
vehicles and plans to use residuals of agricultural and forestry processing
facilities to bio-oil.
Methane Extracted From Anaerobic Digesters
The process for using biomass in a fuel cell is similar to the way in which coal is
gasified to produce a gas that is similar to methane. A superior process that involves the
collection of biomass (including human sewage) that would otherwise be dumped in
oceans, landfills, rivers or burned/incinerated. There are several upsides to this process.
One is that bacteria create methane as they break down/digest the unstable nitrogen into
stable nitrogen facilitation the decomposition process that breaks down dead matter into
compost that can eventually be used to fertilize soil or as feed for other organism. Hence
the vessel that holds the mix as the bacteria break down this organic material is called a
digester, but most important is the fact that the digestor is designed to extract the methane
gas so that it be utilized as an energy source. The advantage of this system is several-fold
• Extract energy from the biomass without burning it, giving one a potentially
valuable natural resource, that can returned back to the fields.
• Capturing methane which is a potent greenhouse gas.
Extracting methane from biomass is the best transitional green technology because
byproducts traditionally seen as waste in the modern society need to be reintegrated
into the natural-human cycle of regeneration rather than land filled or burned. Indeed
ecologically orientated experimental communities could take advantage of the relative
cheap valuation of the various forms of biowaste in society and seek to design income
generating systems that would be capable of sustainable alternative energy appropriate
technological project that seeks to create a spirit of innovation within these communities
that maximizes the value of these undervalued biowastes as well as non-organic materials
over the long term causing a rethink of prevailing economic practices.
Utilizing Byproducts of Biomass to Oil Processes to Create Value Added
DynaMotive’s fast pyrolysis system is an efficient way to unlock
the natural energy found in the world's abundant organic resources
(traditionally discarded by the agricultural and forest industries),
and economically convert them into a renewable, environmentally
friendly fuel. DynaMotive has successfully demonstrated conversion of
these residues into fuel known as BioOil, as well as char.
According to a Dynamotive public relations news release (DYNAMOTIVE
ENERGY SYSTEMS CORPORATION News Release - December 10, 2003) it
has recently done research that demonstrates that the activated
carbon properties of its char products are similar to those of
commercial activated carbon products. The surface area and pore
volume characteristics obtained with DynaMotive's char are comparable
to those achieved with other commercial products," said Professor
Dalai of U of S. "We look forward to obtaining detailed quantitative
comparisons of the performance of activated carbon to open up a variety
of opportunities for application of char-based activated carbon as
a greenhouse gas neutral alternative to products produced from non-
renewable sources such as coal," added professor Dalai. The Chemical
Engineering Department at the University of Saskatchewan College of
Engineering (Kathryn Warden Research Communications Tel: 306-966-
2506) is doing research in five major areas: thermodynamics, corrosion,
fluid mechanics, biochemical engineering and reaction engineering.
The development of renewable sources of energy and chemicals from
biomass-derived oils under catalytic reaction conditions is a major
area of study in reaction engineering, as is the role of catalysts in
the abatement of gaseous pollutants from coal-fired power plants. The
research focus also includes the application of carbon for natural gas
clean-up and catalyst development for heavy oil upgrading derived from
oil-sand bitumen.
Activated carbon is a value added byproduct of the pyrolysis process 2
to 2.5 tons of char yields a ton of activated carbon which goes for
around $800 to $2,000 a ton depending on quality. It has a variety of
applications in the pollution abatement and prevention industry:
o purifying gas and water
o recovering solvent vapors
o Serving as a catalyst for final cleaning in many processes
Global demand is predicted to reach around 870,000 tons and US$1Billion
in the year 2006 and grow by 4% annually.
1.Peter Huber author of Hard Green has done work with Mark Mills in making the case for distributed
power, as for making the case for suburban sprawl. The fact he has worked with Mills might cause some
to doubt Huber's claim that he is committed to the environmental cause because Mills once claimed that it
is not his concern to protect or the save the enviornment so much as keep the lights in silicon valley on. In
addition Mills and Huber have worked closely George Girder who was a former advisor to Ronald Reagan.
Girder a free market ideologue wrote the book Three Cheers for Capitalism.
2. The Natural Step movement was started in Sweden by a doctor. One of the first ecologically designed
business centers is called the Natural Capitalism center in Portland. Several leading edge organizations
that are pioneering these approaches have offices there including Portfolio 21 which invests in companies
that trying to make their companies more sustainable by adopting the Natural Step/Natural Capitalism
3. soft green path or soft energy path is one articulated by Lovins and others which seeks to reduce mining
and petroleum production and emphasize agricultural production.
4. Hunter and Amory Lovins are alternative energy advocates who run The Rocky Mountain Institute in
Snowmass CO. More on Natural Capitalism.
5. Natural capital refers to the value that natural systems provide to humans in the many ways that we
experience and appreciated life.
6. For more on this go to Fuel Cell Energy’s Coal Gasification project which uses Molten carbonate fuel
cells to produce electricity.