[Bioconversion] Fireballs, Gasifiers and Heathuts

[Thomas Reed]

Dear Jeff:

I have just spent a stimulating 1/2 hour looking at your picture site.  
Your day to day comments constitute a diary of failure, then success.  
What a diary of excellent experiments with many aspects of biomass energy.

I recommend that anyone planning to survive the post cheap-oil century 
study your various subjects.  There is SO MUCH TALK about energy.  So 
little talk about fuel, but THAT is what we are running out of.  SO 
LITTLE RESEARCH.  Research is a naughty word for most investors, so you 
need to reach a certain level on your own nickel.  Jeff has done a lot 
over the years and his current project of fireballs is right on the 
money.  If biomass is to become an important energy source we need to be 
able to densify ALL sources forest/field/urban.  Fortunately, most 
biomass is fibrous and lends itself to making fireball and logs (Richard 
Stanley's legacy foundation). 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

FIREBALLS:  Your paper sludge looks very much like what I produced in 
2005 for a contract for the US Department of Defense.  We used the 
"fireballs" to operate a gas cooking stove to replace diesel in the 
field.  (Diesel - JP4, can cost $30-$150 in the field.)   When we tried 
real army waste in the disposal the plastic clogged it up as you also 
found.  There is a company in Tennessee that makes "MSW fluff".  We have 
a cubic meter of it for testing.  I notice that there are chunks of 
plastic that they haven't quite mastered. 

Tell me more about how the paper fireballs burned.  Your picture makes 
it look rather anemic.  I suppose the thermal conductivity of low 
density paper fireballs can cause pyrolysis to occur, leaving char at 
each level, so hard for the fire to propagate. 

HEAT HUT:  I spent Christmas in Barre, MA.  They are mostly wooded, so 
have a fantastic wood heat store.  Out back they have a "fire hut" just 
like yours, but inside it there is a wood furnace that you load once a 
day with logs and hot air or water  is blown/pumped into your house.  
$13/MBtu gas sure gets the thinking and experimentation going.  I'm 
planning on getting the heat from my fireplace into the house before it 
goes up the chimney.

MOTHER EARTH GASIFIER:  Sorry to say, the ME gasifier hasn't been 
improved much.  We sell two books on gasifier construction (#12 and #14) 
and need to perfect/automate it for our 80 kW Amazon Village project. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Doesn't everybody have a lab?"  I like your quote.  A lot of what I do 
I call "kitchen chemistry".  I give 10% of what I make on consulting 
etc. to Vivian for the part time use of our kitchen.  (I give the other 
90% to her for food, cleaning, clothes, homemaking....).  I made early 
batches of biodiesel in our kitchen from McDonald's waste grease in 
1989, starting the biodiesel ball rolling in North America. 

We hesitated to buy our current home in 1990 because it had a 3 car 
garage and our four children are long gone.  Within a month I had 
converted #3 to a laboratory.  Since then half a dozen 
businesses/enterprises have been born there.  When they get to big, my 
wife complains, so we find a bigger lab.  Our current "Renewable 
Hydrogen Foundation" lab is 3000 ft2 and perfect so far. 

Onward beyond the cheap-oil/gas era,

TOM REED               BEF     RHF

Jeff Davis wrote:

>Dear List,
>
>I have added two more fireball pages to my web page, pages #9 & 10.
>
>http://www.velocity.net/~jeff0124
>
>  
>

-- 
ÐÏࡱá