The great forests of England were destroyed by the early steel industry,
not people cooking. In fact the need to find a replacement source of
carbon and subsequent development of the coking industry was what led to
the massively expanded coal industry. If you really want to see what is
the real problem in the world take a look at a night image of the
population centres of the UK & Europe. Not much room between the lights
for trees to grow.
Our background and hearts are in sustainable forest management, which
was where our interest in gasification and enhanced wood fuels arose. It
was about having the right tools that improved resource use and provided
the essential economic under pinning to rehabilitate and manage
degraded forests. At the request of independent FSC auditors we gave
permission for sustainable forest management principles and strategies
developed by my wife Kerry and I to be used by villages in the Solomon
Islands seeking FSC certification. Our dream is to make forests so
useful that they are valued above other land uses and replanted, not as
plantation mono-cultures but as analogue forests with the same broad
environmental values as the original forest cover, whilst still
providing building materials, food & energy, along with creating
permanent jobs that individuals and communities can be proud of.
Like anything else good technology can be misused, these are human
decisions. Denying the technology that can lead to the sustainable use
of forests though does absolutely nothing other than hasten the demise
of that which we seek to protect.
Peter
On 19/07/2012 5:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:
From: "David G. LeVine"<[email protected]>
Considering that biocoal is made from wood and it costs energy to
torrefy it, and some of the mass is lost to out gassing, one can
rationally conclude that a larger mass of wood will be needed than the
mass of biocoal produced.
Since biocoal is likely to have more energy per unit mass than the
original wood (but the wood to produce it will weigh more than the
biocoal), biocoal will likely have more than 16.2 to 18 MJ/KG (a common
number for wood, "Biomass Energy Foundation: Fuel Densities"
<http://web.archive.org/web/20100110042311/http://www.woodgas.com/fuel_densities.htm>.
Woodgas.com), but less than 32.5 MJ/KG (a common number for anthracite
coal, Fisher, Juliya (2003). "Energy Density of Coal"
<http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/JuliyaFisher.shtml>. The Physics
Factbook.)
Two or three billion people in the world are currently using wood as
fuel (woodgas.com), assuming there are more using other fuels plus wood,
3 billion is a safe number for potential biocoal users.
Do the math and you will see that biocoal is NOT the answer, it will
result in deforestation as it becomes the energy source of choice for
the world. Of course wood is not the best choice either, both for
pollution and deforestation reasons. What we need is a clean, high
energy, cheap, nonpolluting power source, fat chance of that appearing
soon. In the interim, more than one fuel will need to be used.
For certain uses biocoal is wonderful, but for general use it appears to
be a recipe for disaster. Great Britain had huge hardwood forests
around London before wood was in common use for fuel. Now coal is more
common and it is dirty! What hardwood forests still exist in Great Britain?
Dave 8{(
_______________________________________________
Gasification mailing list
to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
[email protected]
to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org
for more Gasifiers, News and Information see our web site:
http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/
