We all are making gas

Sounds like a tremendous waste of good money to me. Somebody with a technical background sold somebody without a technical background a bill of goods.
Trees take in Carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. Burning trees (wood) releases the carbon dioxide back into the air. So when we process this, we remove the carbon dioxide digester and turn it into a carbon dioxide generator.
The understated costs are rediculous. Tree waste or wood waste is cheap if you do it in a localized environment, turn that into an industry and the costs rise. I dont have the information available to me nor the technical knowledge to figure out the efficiency factor to see how much energy it takes to calculate how much energy it produces. The problem with hydrogen fuel cells at this point is that it consumes more energy than it produces. IT has better potential because we have plenty of water and after hydrogen burns, it becomes water again.
Another falacy, as far as practicality is concerned, is that wood is not a practical renewable resource. Someone has to own the real estate. Real estate has a value. You will have to tie up that real estate for a very long time to get a decent amount of wood from it. If we did this for an energy resource, it would come to an end after just a few harvests. The nutrients in the soil will eventually have to be replaced. That means fetilizer which also means more energy consumption.
Money invested would have given a better return in research with wind, water, solar, hydrogen fuel cells and nuclear. Somehow, that don't seem as interesting as "wow, turning trees into gasoline".

Let the games begin.
 
Trees take in Carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. Burning trees (wood) releases the carbon dioxide back into the air. So when we process this, we remove the carbon dioxide digester and turn it into a carbon dioxide generator.

Burning any sort of biomass is carbon neutral.

Yes, CO2 is released -- but it is CO2 that the tree took out of the air to begin with. It is all carbon that is actively cycling or on the "short loop" of the carbon cycle (depending on your preferred term).

This is opposed to petroleum or coal that take sequestered or on the "long loop" and push it back into the active cycle/"short loop".

That said, Tony makes some good points about the economics of the real estate required & economics of something like this going large scale. I wonder if the technology would also work with other cellulose rich biomass like switchgrass which is faster growing.

-Matt
 
As for the real estate there is a ton of it all ready. All being used for some product or another. Paper, biomass plants, lumber and the list goes on. That is where the problem list yes wood is a renewable resource but we can only renew so much and the demand that fueling our cars would have on that resource would be to great for any of the other things it's used for now.
If that worked out and they started making gas from wood a 2x4x8 could end up costing 20 bucks and have to be imported.:doh::doh:
 
I guess my point is that with a $75 Million loan, that research could have been put into something more efficient like research in wind generators which would be on line and powering up a small town in less than a year. The research could be going on while the wind generators are actually producing energy.
You dont have to truck electricity down the highway like bio-mass. You send it through electrical cables. You dont have to feed a wind generator either.
Some of the largest wind farms in the US are owned and operated by BP. Yes, the British oil company, not an Americam company.
If I were a betting man, my money would go with BP. They know how to make money. While they are producing electricity and making money, they are also doing research on how to make there wind generators more efficient. So while we are playing around with growing a renewable resource, foreign companies are making money and producing energy without having to worry about growing a renewable resource when wind is already here. It is free, and there for the taking.
 
Who knows which solution will be the best? Maybe it'll be a mix of a bunch of different sources, depending on regional conditions.

The cool thing here is that a bunch of people, all of them *way* smarter than me, are looking into a bunch of different solutions. It actually gives one hope we may find a way out of this mess... :dunno:

Thanks,

Bill
 
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