Climate change machine Concept
Using Solar Energy to sequester carbon & create fuels while empowering regular people to fight Climate Change & create wealth.
Mother Nature uses carbon dioxide from the air to grow plants that eventually decay and releases the carbon back into the air. It’s called the Carbon Cycle. The Climate Change Machine (CCM) converts useless plant debris with the addition of high temperature, concentrated solar energy into products that can be removed from the Carbon Cycle and sold, providing the income for the workers and equipment needed to reduce CO2 in the Atmosphere. The large numbers of CCMs needed to affect Climate Change will be built by individuals, across the world for their personal economic benefit. These people will be the work force that will tame global warming.
The tool Humanity needs to fight Global Warming
The climate Change machine fills a niche, local people need a place to take their local organic waste (plant material). Currently, they can only burn it, bury it or send it to a land fill which means that most of the carbon these materials contain will be going back into the atmosphere. We are sure that people will choose to be paid for their biomass and that they also will support lowering carbon in the atmosphere. Imagine the huge numbers of people who would work to fight climate change given both the economic opportunity and a desire to make things better.
How the CCM Sequesters Carbon
The easy inexpensive way
1.
Biochar (activated carbon) can be mixed with soil to produce new topsoil or buried below the surface (e.g., in coal seams), sequestering the carbon for thousands of years.
2.
The fuels produced will initially help reduce reliance on fossil fuels. As demand for fuels decreases, CCM’s synthetic fuels can be returned to depleted oil and gas formations through existing wells.
Products the facility could produce
Activated carbon (biochar)
Anhydrous ammonia
Chemicals
Diesel
Electricity
Gasoline
Green hydrogen
Methanol (syngas fermentation)
Natural gas
The CCM operator will be able to choose different interchangeable modules that produce specific products.
Why Support the CCM?
The easy inexpensive way
1.
The CCM Creates Jobs
The Climate Change Machine (CCM) is automated and doesn’t require a dedicated operator. But several people are required to maintain the device, collect organic material for processing, and to load and sell the CCM products.
The CCM will create jobs because people must gather the organic material and densify it into pellets. The CCM will be a good source of income for local unskilled laborers.
2.
It Keeps Money in the Community
Rather than giving money to oil companies and foreign countries, people who purchase fuel from a CCM owner will help dollars stay within a community. The CCM will boost local economies.
3.
It Involves No Big Investors
The CCM prototype isn’t for investors trying to make a quick buck. Our prime objective is fighting climate change and empowering local communities. We plan to only accept donations during the prototype phase.
After we have developed the CCM, there may be opportunities for commercial ventures. Although, our efforts will be to do whatever is necessary for the CCMs to be built all over the world, without the need to make a profit.
How can one Climate Change Machine (CCM) stop Climate Change?
It can’t.
But tens of thousands of CCMs throughout the world can.
This prototype will demonstrate how small business owners and local farmers can earn a reasonable living by owning and operating one or more CCMs.
The CCM Will Be the People’s Machine
Anyone can build and operate the CCM, but they make the most sense in villages, in small towns, on farms, and in other locations that have easy access to the organic materials that the CCM converts to fuel.
Donations will pay for:
Planning and development
Engineering
Construction
Testing
Developing cheap and quick way to construct CCMs so that even people in the developing world can build one.
Please Donate
During the prototype phase, we must demonstrate that our device can use solar energy to convert near-worthless organic material into synthetic fuels and products that will sequester carbon. We also must substantiate that the CCM is profitable enough for unskilled people to own and operate.
How the CCM Works
The CCM uses solar energy to quickly heat organic material. As the temperature rises, the organic material is broken down into elemental molecules and atoms, producing a relatively clean synthetic gas that can be used as a fuel. The process can also create materials that will help remove CO2 from the atmosphere, which could eventually reverse climate change.
It all starts with sunlight and mirrors.
For specifications and greater details
see Q&A page
The CCM is a carbon sequestration machine that helps remove carbon from both the atmosphere and the Carbon cycle plus produce synthetic carbon negative fuels that can be substituted for fossil fuels.
Heliostats (mirrors controlled by a computer) reflect sunlight to a specific point during the day.
The circles are heliostats arranged
around a solar tower.
The heliostats point toward
the solar tower.
The computer-controlled heliostats reflect the sunlight to a stationary point located on a mirror on the solar tower.
The light is then reflected to a cluster of Fresnel mirror lenses that are aimed at a hole in the top of the reactor.
All the reflected light from the heliostats is concentrated into the top of the reactor, creating very high temperatures.
The solar energy converts the organic pellets into superhot carbon pellets. The other material in the pellets is turned into a gas that is sucked downward. The red-hot carbon pellets fall on a pile of hot pellets traveling down a vertical tube in the reactor. Added steam reacts with the carbon pellets. The carbon molecules attach to the oxygen molecules in the water, creating carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which are also sucked downward.
The remaining carbon is pitted at a microscopic scale, creating activated carbon (known as biochar). The holes allow the activated carbon to filter contaminants or store fertilizer. And when added to soil, it produces a good growing topsoil that holds water well.
The concentrated solar light enters the top of the reactor and heats a stream of organic pellets. The falling pellets absorb the solar radiation.
Biochar magnified to show the sponge-like holes that make the material so special.
The hot gases (syngas) are sucked out of the bottom of the reactor and delivered to a nearby module, which can be configured to produce a variety of products, depending on the process that the operator chooses:
-The Fischer Tropsch process uses catalysts that create specific types of carbon chain molecules (e.g., natural gas, gasoline, diesel).
-Through the Haber process, the operator takes hydrogen and combines it with nitrogen to make anhydrous ammonia.
-Other processes include using filter membranes to create hydrogen or refining the condensate.
The syngas produced can be used in a gas turbine to create electricity.
When the biochar pellets reach the bottom of the tube, they can be used to filter water or mixed with soil, sequestering carbon.
The Arizona State Capital Executive Building is 110 feet tall. The prototype of the CCM solar tower will stand a little over 100 feet tall. The tower will be extremely light, but it will be designed to withstand very high winds. It should also be able to operate for hundreds of years.
Please study the illustration. The numbers shown are petragrams [pg] which are equal to a trillion kilograms or 2.2 trillion pounds. The blue numbers represent the amount of carbon in the environment while the red numbers are the yearly movement of carbon.
Although conditions very widely during plant decay, the rule of thumb is that in the first 1 or 2 years, all but 25% of the carbon in the plant has returned to the atmosphere in the form of Carbon Dioxide and in approximately 20 years all but 10% has returned to the atmosphere as the plant continues to decay.
Substituting synthetic fuels from the CCM for fossil fuels and sequestering (removing) carbon from decaying plants before their decomposition is the route the CCM will use to lower Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Hope for the planet
Our hope lies in greatly reducing the burning of fossil fuels and sequestering the carbon coming from plant decomposition.
We see hope in that we may be able to change what is happening now in real and meaningful ways.
The CCM may be able to sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In the illustration to the left, “Plants, 560,” “Litterfall, 59” “Soils, 1,500,” and “Soil Respiration (Decomposition), 58” are the areas where the CCM can reduce CO2 output into the atmosphere.
Nearly everything that the CCM produces can be used as a replacement for fossil fuels. And these products are easier to sequester than a gas like CO2. Biochar can be used to remove contaminants from water and air, and mixing it with soil helps the soil and permanently sequesters the carbon.
Most of the liquid fuels produced can be poured back into existing oil wells. That’s less expensive than pumping CO2 into the ground, which may not be an effective long-term solution with our current technology anyway.
Water Requirements
The CCM will require water, but only a relatively small amount. We estimate that the CCM will need about the same amount as what a lawn water hose produces, approximately 15 gallons per minute when operating.
Operators can use saltwater and various types of wastewater in the CCM. The machine is designed so that the dirty water condensate deposits can be completely cleaned with regular maintenance.
If the facility isn’t located near a water source, the operator may have to schedule the delivery of water every few days.
Emissions
Because the CCM tower runs on solar energy, it produces almost no emissions. The conversion processes are contained within a reactor. When the CCM’s reactor is first started, the gases produced will be flared until reaching operating temperature, protecting the processes in the modules from the chemicals produced at low temperatures. The facility will also use the chemicals and gases left over after processing to produce electricity in a gas turbine generator.
The electrical power produced from CCM fuel can be used during peak electrical consumption by operating a gas turbine generator during the day, and if the generator is attached to batteries, electrical power can be used at night or during brownouts or blackouts. Otherwise, the gas can be stored for electrical generation at night.
Some feedstocks may contain higher amounts of sulfur or chlorine, but we can remove them with commercially available equipment.
CCM Input
The CCM can use as an input almost any organic material that contains carbon, which includes almost anything that has been alive, even materials such as plastics and rubber. Although seashells or bones were once alive, they may not be useful in the CCM. The prototype will identify appropriate materials.
The following slides include examples of inputs for the CCM.
Corn Stalks and cobs
Cotton and cotton debris
Agricultural residue
Straw
Manure
Old clothes
Plastic
Paper
A CCM should be located where it can receive a steady flow of non-useful organic material
That includes locations where there are frequent hurricanes and tornados
Because we are considering carbon as the input for CCMs, we should use the least valued waste products derived from plants or containing carbon. The CCM should avoid using feed stock that still has value but use materials that are near worthless or after a materials usefulness has been used up.
Every year farmers throughout the world burn huge amounts of agricultural debris. A nearby CCM would allow farmers to sell this material rather than incurring the cost of removing it. A farmer who operates a CCM could use the debris to make fuels for equipment or fertilizers. Stopping the material from being burned would prevent a lot of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. Even dried-up tumble weeds are excellent material for a CCM.
Possible Products
The prototype will include the heliostats, the solar tower, and the reactor that produces the syngas from organic material.
The CCM can create a variety of products, depending on what the operator chooses to produce. Interchangeable modules will be designed specifically for the type of product the operator wishes to produce or the specific characteristics of the syngas produced, which varies according to the type of feedstock used and the way the operator sets the machine. The CCM can potentially produce all the following products:
Activated Carbon/Biochar
The CCM will always produce activated carbon/biochar, but the operator will have the ability to adjust the percentage produced. If biochar is mixed with soil as an amendment, it will improve the soil’s quality. If the operator buries it, then the carbon it contains will be sequestered for the long term. The sequestration of carbon will make the other CCM products carbon negative.
The biochar could be burned as a coal substitute. If burned, the other products will be carbon neutral, unless the other products are sequestered. Because the CCM uses organic material and solar energy, all the products will be carbon neutral if not carbon negative.
Hydrogen
A significant percentage of the syngas that the CCM produces will be hydrogen. There are several ways of separating the hydrogen from the syngas, including membranes that separate the smallest atom (hydrogen) from the syngas. Hydrogen is chemically essential for upgrading fuels.
The building block of organic chemistry
Carbon Monoxide
Carbon monoxide is extremely dangerous, but it’s also the fundamental building block of organic chemistry. CO is essential for the production of synthetic fuels, and in the future, it might also be used to produce graphene, which could be an important product.
Anhydrous Ammonia/Haber Bosch process
For many farmers, fertilizer may be the CCM’s most important product. Farmers’ CCMs could produce fertilizer for part of the year and fuel for the rest of the year, allowing them to control the cost of crops’ two major inputs.
Ammonia has recently been championed as a nonpolluting fuel because it can be used like propane, and the exhaust is only water and nitrogen. Many people believe that ammonia is the best way to transition from a carbon-based economy to a hydrogen-based economy.
Gas, Diesel and petroleum product/Fischer Tropsch process
The Fischer-Tropsch process creates fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and petroleum products from the combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, using different types of catalysis and different temperatures. This may be the most common CCM process.
Synthetic fuels from a CCM, which are cleaner than fossil fuels, are known as ”drop-in” fuels because vehicles can use them without modification. Products made through this process will be at a minimum carbon neutral, and if the biochar is sequestered, the fuels will be carbon negative. A carbon-negative fuel is one that removes carbon from the energy cycle. The more CCM fuels used, the more carbon is sequestered.
Carbon Sequestration with Fischer Tropsch
The liquid petroleum products made through the Fischer-Tropsch process will be much cleaner than fossil fuels. This should allow liquid fuels to be poured or injected into exhausted oil formations that originally contained fossil fuels.
When fossil fuels are no longer needed, the products from a CCM can sequester large amounts of carbon and drastically reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Natural Gas/Methane
Syngas that contains H2, CO, CO2, and CH4 produced by thermal processes such as gasification or pyrolysis is typically converted to methane via thermochemical methanation. This may be one of the easiest conversion processes, and the gas can be transported via natural gas lines. Studies have also shown that hydrogen can be mixed and transported via natural gas pipeline infrastructure.
Syngas fermentation to ethanol
Syngas—a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide—is used in the biochemical conversion process in the presence of a biocatalyst or a microorganism to produce biofuel.
Syngas fermentation is the process of converting syngas into various chemical products, including ethanol, alcohol, and organic acid.
Pyrolysis Oil
The CCM can produce large amounts of pyrolysis oil, which will give the operator the ability to transport the oil to petroleum refineries or to hydrocrack it at the site and separate it into gasoline, diesel, and other products.
The unprocessed Pyrolysis oil, also sometimes known as bio-oil, can be used in boilers and furnaces with little modifications, it can be used in diesel engines although some modifications are required because it is acidic and corrosive to some metals. The raw, untreated Pyrolysis oil has about half of the heating value of refined hydrocarbon fuels. A CCM can directly supply bio-oil (carbon negative energy) to manufacturing or industrial processes.
Two of the top priorities in the design of the CCM are the necessary profit margin for its operator and the community’s use of the product.