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Pastimes : The California Energy Crisis - Information & Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (278)	5/7/2001 8:59:47 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1715

Re: Biomass - This energy source is one that seems fatally flawed. In the first instance, there simply isn't enough of the stuff to matter. At best, less than 1% of the nation's energy requirements could possibly be satisfied with biomass. Secondly, in order to utilize biomass, we will need to mine the forests of otherwise better used nutrients, or plant millions of acres with suitable feedstock crops. In both cases, wildlife and the environment suffer great degradation. Biomass utilization and conservation of the natural environment are anathema, IMHO. There is a lot of biomass. nrel.gov While there are many uses for biomass besides using it as a fuel, it is useful to try to estimate how much biomass is available in terms of its energy content. The total annual production of biomass is estimated at 2,740 Quads (1 Quad = 10,000,000,000,000,000 Btus) Biomass production is about eight times the total annual world consumption of energy from all sources (about 340 Quads). Therefore, biomass represents a very large energy resource. At present the world population uses only about 7% of the annual production of biomass. Therefore, we are only partially exploiting nature's abundant renewable resource. There are a lot of forms of biomass biomass.org Bioenergy technologies help protect the environment by making use of renewable plant material such as sawdust, tree trimmings, rice straw, alfalfa and switchgrass; poultry litter and other animal wastes; industrial waste; and the paper component of municipal solid waste. We could start with biowaste. I recall that approximately fifty percent of the waste in LA is trimmings and the like. A lot of it ends up in a land fill...releasing methane and polluting the air as it decomposes. Some of it is captured and burnt...most escapes into the atmosphere. There are some lame attempts at composting it...still methane gets into the atmosphere. The green trash should be centrally processed to produce gas and organic matter. King County in Washington State is installing a one MW fuel cell to convert municipal wastewater digester gas to electricity. fce.com We could derive a lot of energy from existing waste biomass without having to plant specialty crops and mine the forests. Many forests would benefit from selective harvesting. Zeuspaul