Questions & Answers
Question #1
The easy inexpensive way
Isn’t naming your machine the ‘Climate Change Machine’ audacious?
Yes, it is. But you need to understand the plan that the Climate Change Machine (CCM) would play in reducing the carbon in the atmosphere. It is based upon giving common individuals the ability to fight global warming while having an independent, profitable business. If given the opportunity, tens of thousands of individuals will make up the work force needed for this huge task. They would all work independently, using their knowledge of the local area to maximize their return on investment. The standardization of the CCM will allow financial institutions to provide loans and mortgages. The CCM will be beneficial to local communities.
The CCM itself is effectively a carbon sequestration machine. At first, it only makes sense that the products from a CCM will be used to lower the amount of fossil fuels burned. But as the development of sustainable clean energy increases, the demand for fossil fuels will fall, and allow the products from a CCM to start sequestering large amount of carbon.
To us, the machine’s name seemed to be the only one that makes sense; when you look at what it does and the potential it has to reduce the carbon in the atmosphere.
Question #2
The easy inexpensive way
What is the potential of the CCMs vs Global Warming?
This scenario estimating the potential of using solar pyrolysis across the world is difficult, since crops, yields, and conditions vary from place to place. This following calculation will use an estimate of 1 ton of agricultural residue per acre for this scenario (this is an estimate for a very light crop; many crops consistently produce 5 times more residue).
Wikipedia estimates the world’s cultivated lands at 17,235,800 square kilometers or 4,259,052,359 acres.
If we use 32% of the total mass as the amount of gasoline and diesel produced by pyrolysis at 500° Celsius. Then we can do the following math:
Agricultural residue estimated at 1 ton or 2,000 lbs. is equal to 8,518,104,718,000 lbs.
Conversion of 8,518,104,718,000 *32% = 2,725,793,509,760 lbs. of gasoline and diesel
If we use 6.5 lbs. for the weight of the gas and diesel mixture, then it is equal to 419,352,847,655 gallons per year or 9,984,591,611 barrels per year. The world is currently using an estimated 100 million barrels per day so that works out to being about 27% of what we are using currently. If we use 2 tons of agricultural residue per acre in lieu of 1 ton (a more realistic estimate) the number jumps to 54% of our current use. This scenario is crude, but it shows that in a future without fossil fuel extraction, Climate Change Machines would be able to reduce the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere a significant amount over time.
Or
If one CCM produces 1,400 gallons per day (33.3 barrels)
with 300 days of sunshine per year
1,400 gallons of diesel and gasoline per day X 300 days = 420,000 gallons (10,000 barrels)/ year
1000 CCMs = 420,000,000 gallons of gas & diesel or (1,000,000 barrels)/year
100,000 CCMs = 42,000,000,000 gallons of gas & diesel or (100,000,000 barrels)/year
1,000,000 CCMs = 420,000,000,000 gallons of gas & diesel or (10,000,000,000 barrels)/year
A million CCMs would produce 27% of our current use of Petroleum
The cost of a million CCMs at 2 million per unit would require a 2 trillion investment over time.
If we use 8 billion as the world’s population, a million CCMs would equal 8,000 people per CCM or 4,200 acres of farmland per CCM
This works out to be a $250 investment per person
The reason a million CCMs are feasible is that individuals acting on their own (without government support) will make the decision to build these machines, because of their profitability. And even if a million CCMs are not reached, the work of the CCMs built will help in the fight against global warming.
We should expect that later models of the CCM should be more efficient than the prototype.
Question #3
The easy inexpensive way
How much can a CCM produce?
A CCM’s output is directly related to the amount of solar energy it can concentrate into the reactor.
The proposed prototype has 330 heliostats in an array around the solar tower with each heliostat averaging 1000 watts of reflected power during the day (heliostat manufacturers estimate). We estimate that 85% of the total power is reflected into the reactor.
330 KW Climate Change Machine………………………330,000 watts
85% efficiency…………………………………………………………….85%
Total energy reaching reactor……………………………280,500 watts aimed into reactor
The amount of energy required for both flash and fast pyrolysis is estimated at 200 +/- watthours to raise the temperature from 25 degrees Celsius to 500 degrees Celsius for a kilogram.
Power delivered to reactor in solar energy……….280,500 watts
Pyrolysis of 1 kilogram requires……………………………….200 watt/hours
Kilograms of pyrolysis an hour……………………………….1,402 kilograms per hour
15% of mass = biochar………………………………………………. 84 kg of biochar per hour
Kilograms of mass minus biochar…………………………….1318 kg per hour
Pyrolysis efficiency of mass to liquid 80%………………1054 kg per hour
40% of mass = gasoline & diesel in pyrolysis oil…………421 kg of diesel and gasoline mix per hour
Lbs. of gasoline & diesel produced…………………………….928 lbs. of diesel and gasoline per hour
Using 6.6 lbs./gal for gasoline & diesel mix……….……….141 gallons of 50% diesel & 50% gasoline mix/hour
A 10-hour day could produce…………………….……………1,410 gallons (33.5 barrels) /day mix of gas & diesel
The machine will need additional energy for the compressor and processing equipment that can be supplied by solar panels or from the grid. The machine can be set at different temperatures to produce more hydrogen with less gasoline or diesel.
The prototype is design to produce a minimum of 1,000 gallons per day of a mixture of gasoline and diesel. CCMs in the future could include more heliostats and power for greater productions.
Question #4
The easy inexpensive way
Energy required for pyrolysis of 1 kg of different substances.
The Solar Energy is directly absorbed by the pellets in the reactor. This is a much more efficient way of transferring energy than heating by convection or conduction that is used in other pyrolysis methods.
Formula for calculating energy required to raise the temperature by 475 degrees Celsius per kilogram.
(SH) Specific Heat = joules/kg*1°Celsius………………………… Joules = measurement of energy for 1 second
(M) Mass = kilograms……………………………………………………Watt hour = 3600 joules
(ΔT) Temperature change = ΔT Celsius
(E) Energy = Joules of energy
Specific Heat of Corn Cobs = 1484 J /per kg
Formula SH x M x ΔT = E
Example – (Specific heat of corn cobs =1484) x 1kg x (500° C – 25° C = 475° C) = 704,900 joules
We used 200 watt/hours per kg as an approximation in our calculations of CCM output.
Question #5
The easy inexpensive way
What happens in the reactor?
The reactor is extremely simple and principally made of fire brick and ceramics. The metal funnel on top of the reactor’s purpose is to control the wind and hold sensors that will control the amount of suction at the bottom of the reactor. The funnel does not reflect light.
A round hole at the top of the reactor is where the reflected sun light enters the reactor and high temperature steam fills the hole, acting like a virtual lens that separates the air above from the inside of the reactor. Immediately below the hole, biomass pellets fall below the opening and through the concentrated solar energy, until they reach the pile of biomass that is slowing moving toward the bottom. At the bottom of the reactor is an auger that removes the remaining biomass (bio-char and ash). On the opposite side of the reactor, a hole sucks the gases out of the reactor.
The three main reactions that take place in the reactor are: Flash Pyrolysis, Fast Pyrolysis and Steam Reforming. The pyrolysis processes turn most of the Biomass into syngas, leaving only ash and bio-char. The steam reforming process is when the steam’s oxygen atom combines with the biomass’s carbon atoms and results in the production of both hydrogen and carbon monoxide (C + H₂O = 2H + CO).
The gases are sucked into a high-pressure chamber where the large molecules from the biomass are changed into simpler, smaller molecules by both the steam and hydrogen combining with the biomass molecules (steam cracking). This soup of chemicals can then be refined by fractional distillation in which gasoline, diesel and other products can be separated by their boiling points.
The processes and results of what happens in the reactor can be modified by the settings the CCM operator can make to produce different amounts of different products. Generally, the major processes that take place in the reactor are endothermic, requiring the addition of energy. The energy required for the high-pressure chamber and compressor will be supplied by solar panels located outside of the heliostat field supplying concentrated solar energy.
The figure summarizing different pyrolysis conditions and the effect on product distribution.
Credit: Alternative Fuels from Biomass Sources, John A. Dutton (Created based on Xavier Deglise, Emeritus Professor at University Henri Poincare, France. 2006
BEEMS Module C2, Brian He.)
Question #6
The easy inexpensive way
How profitable is a CCM?
The profitability of different CCMs may vary widely caused by different locale conditions. Currently, in some areas, people must pay to get rid of biomass. CCMs operated by farmers, dairy people and others may have an opportunity to use very cheap biomass. If recent historical trends continue, CCM operators may also have windfalls, when petroleum prices spike, and the CCM’s ability to switch from gasoline and diesel production to hydrogen may also be an important factor. In the following analysis we only use the CCM’s production potential for Gasoline and diesel and ignore other income streams for simplicity.
In our analysis, we use 2 million as the cost of a CCM about the size of the prototype.
A CCM is a simple machine with only a few moving parts, allowing them to be automated and only requiring a manager and two part time helpers to keep the machine supplied with biomass pellets and the removing and handling of its processes products. Because of the automation, we believe that in some situations, the operator could spend as little as 15 hours a week, operating the machine.
Question #7
The easy inexpensive way
What happens after fossil fuels are no longer needed?
The CCMs have two purposes:
To reduce and replace the use of fossil fuels.
To remove carbon from the atmosphere and the carbon cycle.
The Climate Change Machine is a machine that creates products that allow sequestering of carbon from the carbon cycle. Biochar is a product that a CCM will always produce. The amount of biochar produced depends on the machines settings the operator selects. Since biochar is a solid, using it as a soil amendment to improve top soils is a proven way of sequestering the carbon for thousands of years. The gasoline and diesel liquids that the machine produces can also be sequestered cheaply, the same way that current fossil fuel oil wells disposes of the large quantities of salt water produced in oil production. That’s by pouring or injecting the CCMs fuels into existing depleted oil wells.
Who will pay to sequester carbon? That will eventually be the hard part. But it will not be a problem at the beginning since a viable market for fossil fuels exist and will allowing for the construction of the CCM infrastructure. But as the efforts to replace fossil fuels continue, a time will come when CCM operators will need to have government or others pay for their work in sequestering carbon.
It will take time and money to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to acceptable levels. The existing CCMs infrastructure will be the cheapest and most environment way to reduce greenhouse gases quickly.
Reference Literature & Web Address
The easy inexpensive way
Daren E. Daugaard, Robert C. Brown
Enthalpy for Pyrolysis for Several Types of Biomass
Energy & Fuels 2003, 17. 934-939
https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/2e5490ab-a079-4d56-aeb3-cb628a1b88f0/content
John A. Dutton
Alternative Fuels from Biomass Sources
5.1 Biomass Pyrolysis
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee439/node/537
United Nations Environment Program
Converting Waste Agricultural Biomass into a Resource-Compendium of Technologies
2009
R. Lal
World crop residues production and implications of its use as a biofuel
Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, United States Received 14 July 2004; accepted 22 September 2004
http://www.tinread.usarb.md:8888/jspui/bitstream/123456789/1116/1/biofuel.pdf
US Dept. of Energy, Bioenergy technologies office
US Billion-ton update: Crop Residues and Agricultural Wastes
https://www1.eere.energy.gov/bioenergy/pdfs/btu_crop_residues.pdf
Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia
Land use statistics by country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use_statistics_by_country
Heike Kahr, Alexander Jäger and Christof Lanzerstorfer, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
Bioethanol Production from Steam Explosion Pretreated Straw
Teresa Martí-Rosselló1 , Jun Li 1, Leo Lue1 , Oskar Kärlstrom , Anders Brink, Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Strathclyde, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow, G11XJ, United Kingdom (jun.li@strath.ac.uk); Process Chemistry Centre, Åbo Akademi University, Porthansgatan; Turku, FI-20500, Finland
HEAT TRANSFER BEHAVIOUR OF A WHEAT STRAW PELLET UNDERGOING PYROLYSIS