Carbon-Negative Energy Machines Catching On

An anonymous reader writes "All Power Labs in Berkeley, California has produced and sold over 500 machines that take in dense biomass and put out energy. What makes the machines special is that instead of releasing carbon back into the atmosphere, it's concentrated into a lump charcoal that makes excellent fertilizer. The energy is produced cheaply, too; many of the machines went to poor nations who normally pay much more per kilowatt. '[T]he PowerPallets are still relatively simple, at least as far as their users are concerned. For one, thing Price explained, much of the machine is made with plumbing fixtures that are the same everywhere in the world. That means they're easy to repair. At the same time, while researchers at the 50 or so institutions that have bought the machines are excited by opening up the computer control system and poking around inside, a guy running a corn mill in Uganda with a PowerPallet "will never need to open that door and never will," Price said.'"

Re:Fertilizer?

[lxs]

Charcoal appears to be a very useful soil addition.
For further reading look into terra preta [wikipedia.org] and its modern incarnation biochar [wikipedia.org].

Re:Fertilizer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not pure carbon, you get all the useful trace elements and minerals as well trapped in the carbon matrix and the ash.

Re:Fertilizer?

[burni2]

interesting point:

but it is indeed so that in the agriculture you burn plants on a field to fertilize the new crops, if you want to reduce your fertilizer-costs.

However this technique is used to increase the nitrogen, and other things level in the field.

Re:Key phrase

[Zumbs]

I found the answer on the producers home page [gekgasifier.com]. The "less than $2 a watt" is the initial expense when investing in a plant: A 10 kW plant costs $19,000 and a 20 kW plant costs $29,000, corresponding to $1.9 or $1.45 per watt capacity (source [gekgasifier.com]). So, it adds up.

Re: Fertilizer?

[93 Escort Wagon]

But, in general, it's not the carbon in ash that's a fertilizer - it's potassium.

proven wood gas technology since 1839

[colordev]

It works [wikipedia.org]. During the WWII there were around 700,000 wood gas powered automobiles in Germany, France, Sweden and Finland. As those were back then able to power buses and trucks, it's plausible to think modern designs also producing 20kW of bio power - as advertised.

Finland's eco-mobilist association has a gallery [ekoautoilijat.fi] of hobbyist build wood gas mobiles, some even with designs specs and tips. Chairman on the Finland's currently most popular party, which unfortunately isn't The Pirate Party [piraattipuolue.fi] which among others has pirate bay and privacy activist Peter Sunde [wikipedia.org] as a candidate in the coming EU- parliament election, has build his own wood gas automobile - " El Kamina [google.com]" which by the way is build on top Chevrolet El Camino, which...

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No, I didn't just wrote that

Re:Fertilizer?

[vikingpower]

See my comment above. Plants, indeed, can not absorb it through their roots. But the bacteria they live in symbiosis with, can. And that is of benefit to the plant ( its bacteria guests are healthier ), to the bacteria ( absorbing carbon from the soil is energy-cheaper than absorbing it from air ) and to the farmer ( the bacteria decompose into humus i.e. humic acid ) after harvest time . Win-win-win, so to say.

Re:It's not negative, it's neutral at best

[Gary van der Merwe]

No. The process creates charcoal, not ash. When this charcoal is used as a soil amendment, the carbon is fixed for approximately 10 000 years. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar [wikipedia.org]

Re:Key phrase

[bugnuts]

10kW is essentially the "top speed", and the kWh is the "fuel economy" or more like the miles travelled. You don't have to go at top speed, and if you're going at half speed you're only putting out 5kW, but will still get the same amount of power after 2 hours instead of 1.

The fuel consumption is also important to compute cost. For the 20kW machine, it burns 50 lbs of biomass per hour, which means 50 lbs of biomass is converted to 20kW for an hour, or 50 lbs to get 20kWh. (You can probably burn this over longer times than an hour.)

That's actually a fair amount of power, and 20kWh can power several houses for that one hour. If it's linearly scalable to smaller numbers, that would be very good since a house might only use 20kWh over an entire day. It would allow someone to run solar power during the day, and this thing at night (putting out 1kW) and during rainy days, with only a small battery farm.

But there are too many unknowns in the article to make a good guess.

Re: Bullshit

[FishTankX]

Not quite. the innovations are in the control systems. that is what they have patents for. also standard gasification tech tends to convert the biomass to ash. this machine converts it into charcoal which both creates fertilizer and locks a portion of the carbon away mostly creating hydrogen and co. which are combusted into water and co2. the control over the combustion process that allows charcoal production over ash production is imporant as gasifier ash shakedown to make room for more fuel is the biggest problem keeping gasifiers from being used in diy stationary power generation. This tech they have developed dodges this problem.