[Gasification] Britain to build world's biggest biomass plant

Fri Nov 23 14:55:04 EST 2007

Roger; to comprehension about South production capacity; Argentine produce 100 million tons of cereals. Brazil near 120 and 500 million of metric tons of sugar cane in only six millions hectares. Sun shines brighter in tropical regions.
Optimizing production with advanced tech is possible to send overflow to export. Magnitude of production is similar of grains and are the same regions involved. For me shifting productions could be an new resource. Rational use of products an energy is itself an new source.

Regards; benjamin

Roger Samson <rsamson at reap-canada.com> escribió:  
Benjamin

I support Brazils economic development through bioenergy and cooperate with
Brazilian bioenergy scientists. Brazil is  becoming one of the leading
nations in the world in developing an agrarian indutrial economy. However,
the industrialized countries need to do a better job developing sustainable
biomass energy systems in the north to reduce their energy footprint on the
south. Developing countries will need much of their biomass themsleves for
their own internal energy use. 

It seems a bit awkward that the press release talks about 3 million tonnes
of biomass from canadian and US sources. There are in my opinion two
problems with this plant:   
1) Using woody biomass at 30% conversion effiency to produce power is
thermodynamically wasteful and should be avoided if other conversion
technologies are available 
2) There is no serious sustainability plan for the biomass if they are
talking about canadian and US sourcing of the 3 million tonnes. 

It must be remembered this power plant is not producing energy, its
transforming energy. If you are going to import tropical biomass as your
energy source it should be used as sustainably as possible to minimize the
negative landscape and social development impacts in developing coutnries.  

regards

Roger Samson

Executive Director

REAP-Canada

Box 125 Centennial Centre CCB13

Ste. Anne de Bellevue, QC H9X 3V9

T: (514) 398-7743

T: (514) 398-7972

E: rsamson at reap-canada.com

W: www.reap-canada.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Benjamin
Domingo Bof
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 1:09 PM
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
Subject: Re: [Gasification] Britain to build world's biggest biomass plant

Roger,myintention is not to compete philosophically with wood chips
supply.Simply we are speaking about possibles solutions and suppliers for
biomass. If Brazil shift eucaliptus for paper pulp to sugar cane bagasse is
available an great amount of chips not only from eucaliptus also pinus spp.
Is very good to debate any proposal because tropical woods are "One summer
night dream".In São Paulo exist railroads, highways and ports are near of
plantaions. Amazonia have not infraestructure to supply importants amounts
of firewood. De La Plata -Paraná,Paraguay rivers have two thousands miles
extension able to plant salicaceae in non agriculturalregions,Pantanal etc,
etc, easy to load in barges as today are sended millions of tons of grains
from Mato Grosso,Paraguay an Argentine regions to Rosario port.

  Regards,Benjamin

Roger Samson  escribió:

Benjamin 

The press release says they building the worlds largest biomass combustion
plant based on Canadian and US wood residue supply. There is no mention of
extracting the energy supply for conversion from the tropics. Here is the
latest wood residue supply report (Nov-2005) I am aware of for Canada. 

http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/Fo4-7-2004E.pdf

>From this report you will see there there were in 2004 effectively no
significant volumes of surplus wood residues in eastern canada and the
situation was worsening. We have pellet plants that in recent years couldn't
operate fully because of lack of wood resources. To get any surplus from
western canada it would have to go down the US west coast and through the
panama canal and then back up to Britain. 

The wood residue shortage has been so bad in eastern north america that the
US east cost and canadian east coast pellet suppliers import pellets from
western canada which comes in by train after about 5 days of rail travel. In
my opinion its misleading to think they are going to use eastern Canadian
wood residues as a long term supply. Are they really going to ship bulk wood
residues from western canada through the Panama canal all the way to Britain
at a reasonable cost? The only surplus biomass that can come from eastern
canada has to be farmed from marginal farmlands using grasses. That is why
we have so much interest in grass pellets. Effectively we can't develop a
serious biomass combustion industry in eastern Canada because we don't have
the wood residues how is britain going to get them. 

If they need 3 million tonnes of woody biomass, its not coming from Canada
in a bulk form. We would be happy to work with them to grow grass pellets
for export.

Roger Samson

Executive Director

REAP-Canada

Box 125 Centennial Centre CCB13

Ste. Anne de Bellevue, QC H9X 3V9

T: (514) 398-7743

T: (514) 398-7972

E: rsamson at reap-canada.com

W: www.reap-canada.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Benjamin
Domingo Bof
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 11:02 AM
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
Subject: Re: [Gasification] Britain to build world's biggest biomass plant

Roger; an option is to use eucalyptus wood chips because they are from
reforestation. In São Paulo state is available wood chips from pinus spp. at
u$s 50 a metric ton. Eucaliptus are planted respected twenty percent of area
with native wood. Secretary of State Environment Francisco Graziano was
fined to sugar cane plantations because they dont respected reforestation
areas with natives. 
Regards; Benjamin Bof

Roger Samson escribió:

It doesn't make sense to burn wood chips at 30% conversion efficiency to
create power for further distribution when you can use it for direct thermal
applications or for decentralized CHP plants. Unfortunately there is no
parity in incentives for green heat compared to green power or liquid
transport fuels for CO2 mitigation and energy security. 

Undoubtedly they will import the vast majority of the biomass as Britains
biomass is limited and dispersed. There are no significant low cost surplus
biomass resources in Canada or the US. Here in Canada the wood residues are
being gobbled up by the rapidly growing pellet industry. As there are no
real certification programs established for sustainable biomass imports,
Britain will inevitably reduce its GHG emissions at the expense of tropical
deforestation. 

This seems as bright an idea as the European power and transport projects
running on palm oil biodiesel that led to massive deforestation in SE Asia
and made Indonesia #3 in the world for GHG emissions. There is no
sustainability in this, the worlds largest biomass power project, until they
clearly indicate a sustainable biomass resource as the energy source for the
project. Mega projects need a mega supply and this is the biggest ever.
Overall biomass is much better used sustainably in decentralized
applications. This project will either be a white elephant or be
environmentally destructive on tropical forests which are already being
depleted rapidly. 

Alternatively they could import canadian grass pellets and put in
decentralized heat and CHP systems. That would genuinely reduce GHG's and be
less harmful to both the British taxpayer and the global environment and be
much less risky. We would be pleased to work with Europeans on developing
sustainable biomass imports from sustainably grown grass pellet fuels from
eastern Canada. We can produce 20 million tonnes of grass pellets in the
provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba largely using marginal farmland.
It’s an energy production system that is of benign design and management
that can work well in most any combustion appliance suitable for burning
coal. We have developed production systems for these grasses that produce
potassium and chlorine levels that are not appreciably different than #1
quality wood pellets. Our grass pellets cause no clinker or corrosion
problems. We have resolved the historical problems that have plagued the use
of herbaceous biomass feedstocks as a combustion material. Our GHG balances
and net energy gains per ha of warm season grasses into pellets for thermal
energy applications are the best in the temperate world. 

Roger Samson

Executive Director

Resource Efficient Agricultural Production (REAP)-Canada

Box 125 Centennial Centre CCB13

Ste. Anne de Bellevue, QC H9X 3V9

T: (514) 398-7743

T: (514) 398-7972

E: rsamson at reap-canada.com

W: www.reap-canada.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of kenn johnsen
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 8:20 AM
To: gasification at listserv.repp.org
Subject: [Gasification] Britain to build world's biggest biomass plant

> Where is the sense, to transport wood chip across the pond from US
> - Canada. How about building this plant in US. Keep government 
> planning out, those people there plan with others money do more harm 
> than
good.
>
> http://www.physorg.com/news114925938.html
>
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