[Gasification] Forbes.com: The New New Fuel

[Benjamin Domingo Bof]

Mr. Richard Haar;
   
  Congratulatinos and thank you very much for your comment. It seems for me like an video. Your vision cover an wide field of action. We send copy oy letter to MS Ana Garau researcher of Facultad de Agronomia of Universidad de Buenos Aires. (agarau at agro.uba.ar).
  Salicaceae is not only an energy source . It is also an environmental tool to dry wetlands. In Delta of lower Paraná River was made plantations 20 by 20 feet spaced to breed cattle. Work was published at VI Argentine Forest Congress in 1988 by Cesar Fuentes and Raul Suarez describing vantages of these exploitation. We have an humble system to obtain principal fuels for country activities. For stationary needs as electric generation to 250 Kw we suggest gasifiers for firewood. Efficiency of gassers is only thirty percent. Waste heat is proposed to distill ethanol from diverses agricultural raw materials and residues. Is possible to make an mash from different types of wastes like corn germen, whey, cotton gin, dairy wastes and others. We are making an column to distill forty gallon a day to fuel cars and light trucks. In large scale we propose  to make methanol by sythesis gas recovering waste heat to fast acid hidrolisys to obtain cellulose for pulp or ethanol.
   
  Congratulations and thank you very much again; 
   
  Regards ;Benjamin Bof

Richard Haard <richrd at nas.com> escribió:
  Bob - just a few ideas for you

Interest in softwoods as a biomass alternate energy source is the 
reason why I hang around here. Almost 10 years now I have been 
propagating willows from seed and have made some selections of my own 
as candidate for short rotation biomass crops. I am especially 
impressed with Scouler willow (Salix scouleriana) which I have 
isolated 5 strains out here in PNW. It is a plant that also occurs in 
your area as it is native from Alaska to Manitoba to Mexico.

There is a excellent set of literature on the topic of willow coppice 
from Canada, New York, Netherlands, and GB. The problem is 
transportation of chips to the use location. I have put my focus on 
what I could do with willow groves within 1 mile of our farm and what 
I might do to use mostly manual labor for harvest and strictly on 
farm energy needs. Our energy needs would be met by 15 acres of 
coppice (60 acre farm) according to my estimate for energy needs of 
irrigation pumping in summer and product refrigeration in winter/ 
spring.We have not yet seen the right gasification or pyrolysis 
technology for our application and electrical power and diesel fuel 
now is too cheap. Worth the waiting and watching though.At my scale 
other uses for candidate species as byproduct is also important. In 
Great Britain years past coppiced willow stems were used to make 
baskets for market crops, for Aspen, cordwood and saw-logs would be 
an excellent cash crop. For us our willow is used as a riparian 
restoration tool as coir logs and live stakes.

The diversity of willow species increases with latitude hence boreal 
forest species are much more numerous than further south.There are 
other plants in the Salicaceae that would also be excellent 
candidates. These are cottonwood and aspen. In selecting a plant for 
cultivation you must consider habitat preferences. The willows and 
cottonwood prefer moist habits. You would not use willow or aspen in 
steppe sage. For high cold desert, I would consider rabbit-brush. It 
occurs in your area in dry sites, you could have a zero irrigation 
perennial crop that produces diesel. http://plants.usda.gov/java/ 
profile?symbol=ERNAN5

In am interested in scouler willow because it occurs in drier sites 
than other willow species. In Yukon Territory, and other places we 
have aspen parkland habitats where these softwoods occur on drier 
sites, although with significant winter precipitation as snow.

There are other reasons to use Salicaceae. These plants are 
ecological pioneer species, upgrading nutrient and organic matter 
poor soils to productive soils with their ecto and endo mycorrhizae. 
This is significant because these plants make their own fertilizer. 
Alder (Alnus spp) is another plant that makes nitrogen fertilizer.

I have a preference to use native species that have natural 
colonizing ability rather than a male only clone or an exotic species 
that can escape and become a pest as has the basket or crack willow. 
(Salix fragilis)

We have some 5 year old willow groves now and are planting this 
spring another 5 acres for purposes other than biomass energy. Lastly 
an agroforestry planting of deciduous trees has the potential for 
understory plantings with herbaceous species that use the spring 
light before the canopy fills out and in fall after leaf fall such as 
Ginsing and some other medicinal and also food plants like nettle 
(Urtica sp).

Your program would have to be climate and soils adapted but is worth 
the effort to study.

Rich H, Bellingham, Washington
On Nov 9, 2007, at 7:23 AM, Bob Stuart wrote:

> I am quite interested in the question of how many BTU / year can be
> produced on an acre, especially with a short growing season. I've
> heard that softwoods have an advantage at gathering rays at the ends
> of the season. I was quite tempted to plan a gasifier based on straw
> until I realized that the annual production from a woodlot is far
> more consistent. I am located at the edge of the northern boreal
> forest, on the Great Plains of NA.
>


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