[Bioconversion] Usefulness R&D

Sat Feb 11 11:17:08 EST 2006

Mr. Comeau,

Thanks for your response and willingness to continue this dialogue.

I would like to ask you;

What is your take on the basic concept that I am developing; that being to 
design, develop and offer internationally a basic furnace design that can be 
made in any country and then used to convert solids from sawdust sized 
particles to large bales into heat, power or biofuels using direct 
combustion, pyrolysis and/or gasification and be scaled from small to any 
size needed and be operated by manual or automatic means as desired?

I see this as a novel approach to empowering humanity to rapidly adjust its 
fuel mix from fossil fuels to renewable energy to address sudden climate 
change (before it is too late) by building tens of thousands of small, 
modular and widely distributed power plants and biofuels producing plants in 
developing as well as developed countries.

In other words I am undertaking to put one more tool in our collective tool 
box to fix climate change through also empowering the worlds poor to achieve 
a better life through renewable energy in the process.

Is it already too late or should I keep trying?

Les Blevins
AAEC

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gerald Comeau" <geraldcomeau at yahoo.com>
To: "Les Blevins" <lbj4 at mindspring.com>; <bioconversion at listserv.repp.org>
Cc: "Kirk MacDonald" <kirk.macdonald at gnb.ca>; "Tadeuse W. Patzek" 
<patzek at patzek.berkeley.edu>; "Richard F. Ablett" <rablett at nsac.ca>; 
<MMBTUPR at aol.com>; "David Pimentel" <dp18 at cornell.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 6:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Bioconversion] Usefulness R&D

> Mr. Blevins,
>
>  Your web site for Advanced Alternative Energy Corp at 
> http://aaecorp.com/ceo.html shows your commitment to improving technology 
> for use of biomass for energy.  I looked at your web page as you 
> suggested, and it wasn't for the first time.  I've been reading your 
> letters on bioconversion listserv and had already looked at your page.  I 
> can appreciate how hard you're working.
>
>  Thank-you for asking me to say a little bit about the dispersed nature of 
> biomass and on the attitude of scientist in North America, particularly in 
> Canada, towards highly efficient emerging conversion technologies.  I am 
> discovering through my work in the trenches that those are big issues in 
> the process of developing a new economy from renewable energy from 
> biomass.
>
>  There is a lot more to say about the dispersed nature of biomass than I 
> am going to say here.  Today I am just going look at the big picture by 
> taking the Canadian flaxseed crop to illustrate the problems.  In Canada 
> we grow up to two million acres of flaxseed annually.  There are 
> agricultural districts on the Prairies where flaxseed acreage is 
> concentrated, but you could say the biomass is dispersed as yield of flax 
> straw on a bone dry basis is only one half tonne per acre.
>
>  Nothing has changed in Canada after years of head scratching over the 
> practice of burning most of one million tonnes of flax straw left on the 
> field after the seed has been harvested.   Farmers are not eager to burn 
> flax straw on the field, but have no choice because except for one pulping 
> operation by hammermilling, and one small flax decorticating plant, the 
> farmers have no market for the straw.  Note that flax stems contain a bast 
> fibre which is recoveralbe for textile fibre, and the energy content of 
> the shives fraction is high because of their elevated levels of lignin.
>
>  The Canadian Government through Agriculture Canada, has created an 
> organization called FLAXCANADA2015 to develop strategies to further 
> develop the potential of the flaxseed crop.  I am a member of one of the 
> FLAXCANADA2015 committees to work on setting goals for FLAXCANADA2015.  It 
> is obvious to me that FLAXCANADA2015 is taking a market driven approach. 
> It has its main focus on the potentail for flaxseed as a nutraceutical, 
> and is entertaining some discussion of the fuel potential for biodiesel. 
> Eliminating the practice of burning flax straw o the field is way down the 
> list of priorities, and is really seen as an irritant than as a potential 
> for the fax crop and for renewable energy.
>
>  FLAXCANADA2015 would not, or could not even make any seed money available 
> to me to take a small delegation to a recognized US univeristy where I 
> have contacts in the field of gasification and catalytic conversion of 
> derived synthesis gas to produce high value energy carriers.  Although it 
> was pointless to do so, I asked for support on a prefeasiiity study.  Of 
> course I was denied.  It is not a priority.  What does that tell you about 
> agaricultural scientists and the established order?  As someone pointed 
> out to me: once practices are estalished over a long period of time, they 
> become entrentched and are extremely difficult to change.
>
>  I have also explored the possibiity of securing supplies of wood biomass 
> for a feedstock.  I have discovered that this resource has its own set of 
> problems.  In the end, I have concluded that the way to go is to devlop 
> energy crops.  Agroforestry for the production of  willow are being 
> researched at the State of New York University in the North East,  and 
> research on industrial crops in agriculture such as Miscanthus has begun 
> at the Universities of Illinois and Indianna for the Midwest where you 
> are.
>
>  I could go on in much more detail, but I think the bioconversion readers 
> might like to read what someone else has to say.
>
>  Les, thanks for writing and I would be happy to continue to help if I 
> can.
>
>  Regards,
>
>  Gerald
>
>  somewhere near the woodlands of New Brunswick Canada
>
>
>
> Les Blevins <lbj4 at mindspring.com> wrote:
>  Mr. Comeau,
>
> Your posting to the Bioconversion list indicates you to be highly
> perspective. If you have anything more written on bioconversion (such as 
> on
> the dispersed nature of biomass or the unwillingness, or on the part of 
> many
> scientists to look beyond furnaces for space heating and making steam for
> electric power) I would like to peruse that as well.
>
> And if you haven't yet I would hope you would open my webpages at
> http://aaecorp.com/ceo.html and look at the bioconversion device shown 
> there
> and allow me to tell you more about it.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Les Blevins
> Advanced Alternative Energy
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Gerald Comeau"
> To:
> Cc: ; "Tadeuse W. Patzek"
> ;
> "Richard F. Ablett" ; "David Pimentel" ;
> "Kirk MacDonald"
> Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 11:21 AM
> Subject: Re: [Bioconversion] Usefulness R&D
>
>
>> to Bioconversion llist from Gerald Comeau
>>
>> Ref Lewis L. Smith's posting
>>
>> As someone who is actively promoting projects in collaboration with a
>> well recognized US univerisity in the field of combution and energy
>> studies, I found Lewis Smith's feasibility approach uselful . He has
>> pointed out that he is leery of generalizations such as those found in 
>> the
>> Roger Samson posting. I am entierely in his support in this sentiment.
>>
>> Roger Samson has pointed out in an earlier posting that biomass must be
>> treated differently from the large scale found in the refining of fossil
>> fuels. He should not assume that those engineers and scientists with
>> backgrounds in the petrochemical industry who are now committed to bomass
>> utilization, are blind to the dispersed nature of biomass. I believe the
>> prevailing idea by those dedicated scientists involves the adaptation to
>> viable scales of operations for particular situtaions of feedstock supply
>> as they arise in the field.
>>
>> In my promotion of new projects involving biomass feedstocks for
>> processes yielding high value second generation energy carriers such as
>> dimethyl ether, I have frequently found natural scientists uncooperative.
>> I have found an unwillingness on the part of many of them to look beyond
>> furnaces for space heating and making steam for electric power.
>>
>> I can only guess at the reasons for a reactionary attitiude on the part
>> of many scientists to emerging new technologies, however in some 
>> instances
>> these attitudes may be be very detrimental to new oportunities in the
>> development of a renewable energy economy from biomass.
>>
>> Those scientists serving the forestry and agricultural sectors,
>> frequently have large networks of contacts at their disposal, and they
>> spend a great deal of their time promoting their agenda at ongoing
>> organized publicly sponsored acitivities such as workshops, focus group
>> meetings, etc, etc, etc. They have contacts in institutions including:
>> universities scientists; federal, state (provincial), and municipal
>> government officials; executives from natural resources industries; and
>> many others. They frequently use their wideflung networks to act as
>> spokespersons for establishing government policy for economic 
>> development.
>> This may work out well for maintaining their own research budgets.
>> Unfolrtunalely these same attitiudes may have negative consequences as
>> well. They may exert negative influences in areas of viable technologies,
>> and unfortunately promising projects involving sophisticated technologies
>> for the development of second generation energy carriers from bioma
>> ss
>> feedstocks. The result is that potentially viable projects are killed
>> before they can see the light of day.
>>
>> I urge natural scientists operating in the fields of agriculture and
>> forestry to refrain from taking a broad brush approach to R&D when it
>> involves sophisticated technologies for biomass utilization for
>> conversion to energy, unless those same natural scientists are qualified
>> to participate in the evaluation of the individual projects on which they
>> are asked for an assessment.
>>
>> There are competent and capable specialized engineers and scientists who
>> have a background in fossil fuel exploration or petroleum refining,
>> actively pursuing new careers in the field of renewable energy from
>> biomass. I know several. These engineers and scientists can bring
>> important knowledge in the field of biomass utilization as feedstocks for
>> energy conversion processes and should be given a fair chance.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Gerald Comeau
>>
>> somewhere near the woodlands of New Brunswick, Canada, who can be
>> contacted at geraldcomeau at yahoo.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> MMBTUPR at aol.com wrote:
>> to Bioconversion List from Lewis L Smith
>>
>> Ref Roger Samson's latest posting.
>>
>> Roger may be right, but as an energy economist who has done a lot of
>> project
>> evaluations ["feasibility studies"] I am leery of such generalizations.
>> The
>> attractiveness of many options in the biomass-energy field is often 
>> highly
>> site
>> sensitive.
>>
>> For example, pelletizing for co-firing with coal may justify both the
>> pelletizing and a fairly long haul to the boiler. Pelletizing for
>> decentralized
>> ["distributed"] gasification is probably too expensive, in terms of the
>> incremental improvement in the combustion properties of the feedstock.
>> Again this will
>> depend on what is in the soil and how much of the noxious materials are
>> picked
>> up by the plant in growing and in harvesting respectively. In this
>> engineers
>> should remember that the field and transport aspects of biomass energy
>> never
>> have been, are not now and never will be "in the six sigma" world.
>>
>> Ethanol is often a coproduct of processes where important costs are both
>> joint and variable. In such cases, the economic feasibility of the 
>> process
>> depends
>> on all coproduct prices and volumes, not just on those for ethanol. Under
>> such conditions, ethanol cannot be considered in isolation, no matter how
>> sophisticated the cost-allocation techniques which the accountants come 
>> up
>> with.
>> Such techniques may be fine for preparing tax returns, valuing 
>> inventories
>> and
>> valuing "in house" consumption of output, but they are no good for doing
>> the
>> economics of such a project. [If anyone wants a paper on the subject, 
>> post
>> me
>> a "snail mail" address.]
>>
>> And so on.
>>
>> Perhaps some graduate student somewhere could be persuaded to compile a
>> list
>> of operating projects, whether commercial scale or not, along with
>> estimates
>> of their life-cycle costs. There is a lot of evidence out there but at 
>> the
>> level of the Internet, most of it is anecdotal and/or widely scattered.
>>
>> One generalization that may prove useful is to give priority to 
>> feedstocks
>> which do not get us into horrendous food-vs-fuel arguments, such as those
>> which
>> helped to kill "energy cane" in Puerto Rico and which are now entangling
>> the
>> use of soy beans for energy in the US Midwest.
>>
>> Cordially. End of message.
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