So is Brazil pursuing this?
Jones Beene wrote:
Ever heard of BioTen? (not to be confused with the vitamin, biotin)
The "Cyclonic Combustion" process invented and patented by the US DOE
and Tennessee Valley Authority, also known as the "Bioten process" was
all but abandoned, even though testing showed that it operated at a cost
of $0.027/kWh on cellulose waste.
That cost was slightly higher than TVA spends at its coal plants, BUT -
it is for renewable carbon-neutral energy - and yet the geniuses at DoE
abandoned it anyway. This is, almost by definition, the way that
bureaucracts manage to "compound" errors.
The best estimate for power from "hot fusion" is three to four times
more (~$0.075/kWh) - but only IF it were ever perfected, and after $20
billion of wasted funds - it is far, far away from making its first
megawatt. Why do we not write-off the entire hot-fusion boondoggle as a
massive mistake, and forget about it?
Instead DoE makes another compounded error.
They did make one good choice: an actual 10 Megawatt Renewable Energy
Power Platform, using the BioTen process, which was built and
successfully operated for two years in Tennessee, and tested by NREL. It
worked fine- above expectations.
Tests show the system can produce either power or ammonia as a
transportation fuel (or fertilizer) from renewable energy resources such
as agricultural wastes, municipal biosolids, begasse, rice hulls, corn
cobs, etc. It is done with limited emissions, and is CO2 neutral. It
can be combined with algae ponds (for algoil) or greenhouses for food-
to then become CO2-negative, and to actually significantly reduce CO2
and the toxicity of coal burning. But no. It was abandoned.
The $64 question - how could DoE and the Bush Administration (before
they got "green-religion") give up on this promising process !?!
BTW the equipment was sold at auction in 2002 to Brazil at a $25 million
loss to DoE, even though it could have been operated at nearly breakeven
with only slightly more funding IF DoE had forced TVA to pay slightly
more for the power than it cost them to burn coal.
Do you happen to know if Brazil bought it to put it in a museum, break
it up for scrap (they make a lot of steel there), reconfigure it into
feeding troughs for cattle, or for some other approach to "recycling" it
-- or are they actually going to try to make the process work?
If the latter, then the technology isn't necessarily lost; it's just
moved offshore for a while. Maybe a little way down the pike we can buy
perfected generation plants from Brazil...
If there ever was a Brain-dead decision in alternative energy, from a
Brain-dead Department of Energy, this was it.
Maybe we should de-politicize DoE - make it closer to a private entity,
and fund it independently by forcing an excess-profits tax on the oil
companies, to pay for a completely independent department, which oil of
partisan politics cannot influence in either staffing or in decision
making.
Yeah. In my dreams....
Jones
