Dear Andrew and all: The question of bury or burn is an important one that is far from resolved. One point emphasized by several people involved in implementing climate mitigation strategies at the Heinz Center workshop last week is that in general, there are many other competitions with biomass use as the total supply is limited by available land. For example, two that are being strongly promoted at this moment are long-term product use of wood by the forestry community, and biochar by soil scientists+, in addition to burning for energy. CO2 storage in geological formations are not yet practical at large-scale, so one can not assume so (and yet most stabilization scenarios count a few wedges on that!).
At the end it will all come to the economics vs carbon/energy benefit, and most likely each method will find its niche depending on the local circumstances and carbon price. Plenty of research and real projects will have to be carried out before we know how much, where and when for which method. cheers, -Ning On Sep 12, 9:11 pm, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote: > An interesting paper, but one which nonetheless does not consider the > possibilities offered by Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture & Storage. If > you can float crop waste down the Mississipi for sinking, you can float it > down in dry bags for burning. > > Typically, CCS knocks about 20% of the energy output of a power plant (from > memory). So, it still looks like it's worth burning the crop waste to > recover the energy, then sequestering the CO2. (Although the 20% may rise > if the carbon efficiency of the generation process is lower for crop > waste). > > Further, the paper's comparison with natural gas isn't terribly helpful, as > it's a particularly scarce fossil fuel. Coal would make a more realistic > comparison, in the long term - dramatically reducing the benefit claimed. > > One further point is that sequestering CO2 rather than crop waste doesn't > carry any risk of clathrate formation. > > Perhaps someone could do me the courtesy of pointing out any flaws in my > analysis? > > A > > On 12 September 2010 21:55, Marty Hoffert <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Maybe the attached paper will help: An early approach explaining why, > > fundamentally, it's better to bury crop residue biomass than to burn it for > > energy. > > > Marty Hoffert > > Professor Emeritus of Physics > > Andre and Bella Meyer Hall of Physics > > 4 Washington Place > > New York University > > New York, NY 10003-6621 > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
