[Gasification] Carbon disposal in soils

[Kevin Chisholm]

Dear Art

The net effect of this process is that they use biomass as a source of 
hydrogen to make ammonia. The ammonia is then reacted with CO2 from a coal 
fired power plant to make ammonium carbonate. . When they spread the 
ammonium carbonate as fertilizer, the plants take up the ammonia, and the 
CO2 is released to the atmosphere. They bury the charcoal, and claim a 
credit for adding carbon to the soil, and for sequestering carbon in the 
charcoal.

They also claim a credit for the CO2 that they consume at the power plant. 
This is a devious claim, in that the CO2 would appear to be released to the 
atmosphere as soon as the fertilizer is used.

Another devious and misleading claim they make is that "for pyrolysis, they 
use oxygen that is a byproduct in the production of nitrogen for fertilizer 
manufacturer..." The reality is that the ammonia is already used as a 
byproduct from the production of oxygen.

There would be a net benefit to the Environment for the following reasons:
1: The use of biomass as a source of energy to displace the need for natural 
gas or fossil fuel.
2: The sequestering benefit from burying charcoal.

The claim of "a solution to power plant CO2" would appear to be fallacious.

The Promoters of this stock do not appear to be very straightforward.

Best wishes,

Kevin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Art Krenzel" <phoenix98604 at msn.com>
To: <GASIFICATION at listserv.repp.org>
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 2:18 PM
Subject: [Gasification] Carbon disposal in soils


>I thought I might add a little "carbon fuel" to the debate of carbon's long 
>term effect on soils.
>
> Art Krenzel
>
>
>
> Carbon Dioxide Scrubbing Technology. A Solution to Global Warming?
> <http://altenergytechnology.com/>
> Monday, August 07, 2006
>
> It's not often you run into a technology that could literally change
> the world, but this week I may have during my visit to the Georgia
> Bioenergy Conference in Tifton GA. A small research company in Athens
> Georgia may have come up with a solution to the global warming
> problem and also the problem of food production. The company known as
> EPRIDA had a small table at the conference showing a technology they
> developed that can scrub coal fired plants of the majority of carbon
> dioxide as well as the sulfur and NOx in the flue gases. The
> byproduct of this scrubbing process is a carbon based fertilizer that
> they have proven is more effective then our current nitrogen based
> fertilizers. Danny Day the President of EPRIDA told me that they have
> shown this scrubbing technology to many people including Georgia
> Power (Southern Company). Southern Company and other coal based power
> utilities all over the world could definitely use the technology to
> significantly lower their CO2 emissions. Apparently they have shown
> in their lab that they can reduce CO2 flue emissions from a coal
> fired plant by as much as 60% with their carbon scrubber technology.
> No CO2 sequestration would be necessary as CO2 is converted to
> straight carbon that can be used as a fertilizer or simply buried
> without any concern of further leakage.
>
> Coal plants are the largest source of CO2 emissions and being able to
> scrub the flue gases of coal plants for CO2 would be a huge
> breakthrough in the fight against global warming. But that's not all
> of it. The fertilizer that they produce from the process has been
> shown to turn infertile land into very fertile farmland. They have
> found that adding carbon to the soil in the form of charcoal, which
> is the byproduct of this process, works wonders and lasts almost
> indefinitely since the carbon absorbs nutrients keeping the soil
> continuously fertile.
>
> <http://www.eprida.com/images/Eprida_soiltest4.jpg>
> A test of EPRIDA's Charcoal Based Fertilizer Byproduct
>
> I originally come from Winnipeg Canada and I've always been struck
> how Winnipeg's soil was so black and how fast things grew there even
> though the growing season is quite short. Robert Hawkins, EPRIDA's
> research scientist told me that this is because black soil has a much
> higher percentage of carbon then most soils. This carbon absorbs the
> various nutrients and keeps them in the soil. I guess it is like a
> carbon water filter absorbs impurities in water. They have done
> studies of fertility of high carbon black soil around the world and
> found this to be true. By adding carbon to the soil we can
> artificially increase the fertility. Unlike nitrogen based
> fertilizers the effect is long lasting and can last for 1000s of
> years.
>
> So it appears with this technology we can take something bad, CO2
> pumped into the air, and turn it into something good, highly fertile
> soil, to help solve the global food problems. Hawkins told me that
> with this carbon fertilizer we can turn land unsuitable for farming
> into highly fertile farmland.
>
> If that wasn't enough their system also produces biodiesel and
> hydrogen from biomass sources. Since the carbon has been removed from
> biomass to be used as the feedstock for the scrubbing process, the
> fuel produced has a negative carbon effect. Here is a link to a flash
> animation on EPRIDA's web site that explains the process. EPRIDA
> Process <http://www.eprida.com/eprida_flash.html>
>
> So why doesn't everyone know about this? I'm not sure, but the world
> needs to know. I plan to write more about the technical aspects of
> the technology as I get more familiar with it in future postings on
> my website. I hope everyone that reads this will pass the information
> along to other people so we can help EPRIDA bring this technology
> into the mainstream.
>
> This could be one of the biggest solutions we have to global warming
> and governments, industry and the public need to know about it.