I feel no offence, Phillip. Just wanted to stress the change in system setup. New one is much more complex to me with parts I am not able to evaluate. But one thing catch my attention.
KOH could be made from wood ash, but it’s not easy nor free. Wood ash contains potassium in carbonate form and you need to transform it into hydroxide by another hydroxide. Typical way is to use calcium hydroxide if form of slake lime. Good point of this process is that it is a closed cycle with wood as the only input. You burn wood to make lime from limestone, washed it to get slake lime and mix with wood ash to get KOH and limestone.
So, start small and fail fast. Take a batch of wood, batch of limestone and you will see how much KOH you will end up with. If you will not be satisfied, you should not take another step in your development.
Hi Kent All that stuff has been perfected and documented 100 years ago by the paper pulp people. This is old news relearned. The lignins are a mysterious basket case. The compounds are all unfamiliar sounding and very reclusive. The softwood hemicelluloses are a friendly basket case of familiar sounding chemical names… lots of em. You’ll recognize almost all of them. You can extract these via classic distillation if you want for fun but there is really no big dollars there. The turpentines, there are 5 I think, they are fragile in that they not only thermally decompose at 1200 they also will change into different compounds between 750 and 1200 and then decompose. Primus is the big one, its a fuel additive and kind of a fuel for small engines. The hardwood hemicelluloses are straightforward. Mostly methanol. From my experience I’ve learned that the hemicellulose breaks down and evaporates quickly meaning that you need fresh wood if you want hemicellulose liquids. A weight of fresh wood is approx 25 percent lignin 25 percent hemicellulose and 50 percent cellulose. Old wood is 25 percent lignin and 75 percent cellulose. The energy value of the three is the same before after decomposition even against combustion in the case of methanol. Methanol is a fuel for motorcycle engines…
https://www.ferc.gov/qf
O.K. Phillip here is a source link to the beginnings of the application of what you propose to do with all of your talking.
Just the beginning.
A faculty must be located within some US State where this Federal law and authority applies.
And each State now with their own multi-layered developed extensive regulatory agencies.
Federal and State agencies are used by ANYONE wanting to block the development of any new source energy project. Who complains, and blocks??
Private and PUBLIC power companies.
Workers Unions.
Ecology minded individuals and organizations.
In the states of Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Alaska, and Connecticut for the period of the 1990’s and beginning 2000’s in 2010, I was able easily to find over $61,000,000 invested, and then lost, in bioenergy projects.
In my own home county still stands a courts commanded locked rotor largish private wind generator.
First costs ran up by the area Public Utility District requiring private payed for upgrading of the local distribution line to be able to handle the increased carrying capacity back down into the southern cities consumer areas. O.K. Understandable.
Then more hundreds if thousand commanded needed in certified engineering upgrades demanded by the electrical unions workers for the safety of the Grid workers. Hmm.
And finally State Court ordered blocked by an appeal from the Audubon Society that this private power generator could kill a protected species Bald Eagle.
These last two spontaneous generated concerns? Or someone feeding money to kill this project? “Follow the money.”
You and others can gum-to-dearth the chemical sciences and energy maths all of the while blithly ignoring the current cultural moods; and very human dimensions to all new endeavors.
Simply put. IF you do for yourself; quietly; discreetly; not informing or asking permissions and approvals; any one living true rural with their own trees and brush can make their powers.
In my State the ONLY privately generated power that is effectively allowed is PV solar as long as it is Grid tied synchronized. Grid goes down your generating by the tie-in goes down too.
You have to later put in the Islanding isolating switch over disconnects after the inspectors signing offs.
This is not actually illegal. But you play in thier game and they will simply take the Grid Tie ball away anytime they wish.
The DOW is DYI through and through. Freedom of choices and independence’s is never cheap. It is the most expensive way to live. Making other outside your own dependences lives easier is a game we must all in some way play. Chose how you play very wisely. Do not let your participation eat you up.
Boot strapping a scaled up bio-mass energy project is a very not-wise way to waste your life away in heartbreaks.
Steve Unruh
Thanks for the explanation. I think we just have different views. You see the potential, and a lot of solutions. I see corroded metal parts and a sticky, possibly toxic mess. I have limited experience with practical chemistry, but more than I’d like with messes
Phillip, If you really want to do something for the environment and sustainable living, encourage people to leave urban and suburban lifestyles! These are the least sustainable and worst environmental ways of living. I live in a rural area, we have houses falling down because there are not enough people, there is land that can become privately owned homesteads that can house a family, with garden space and woodland. There are businesses here desperate for employees. I came out of retirement to teach and train in a local manufacturing company so that they can staff shifts to keep running full time. We need to stop pretending that providing renewable energy for urban areas is environmentally good. That is like putting a band-aid on cancer.
Hi I don’t talk about being saving the environment. I talk about using local resources. Waste is free. I never mention carbon footprint. In Florida every other house has a yard waste pile the size of a car in front and Waste Management has to pick it up. Please busy yourself.
I have to sell electricity downtown because that is where the demand is. The renewable stuff is buy low sell high.
I did not mean to be offensive, I apologize. I just see so much talk about the environment by those who don’t live it. All I am saying is maybe there should not be a demand for electricity there, maybe that every other house should have a compost pile in a back corner. maybe every house and apartment should have a worm bin for kitchen wastes. I am sick that I have to pay for the packaging on product we use, then pay to dispose it. We chose to live closer to nature, chose to spend our money to buy our rural homestead, spend our money to pay property tax to live here, and urban and suburban dwellers who have made the choice to live an environmentally decadent lifestyle pay very little. With internet connectivity There is less and less need for urban and suburban lifestyles, other than it being a cultural norm. Maybe it is time to rethink the norm.
kent
There are a couple of reasons for the packaging. theft, noticed on the shelf, and the product damage. Not necessarily in the order of importance but theft is high on the list.
Phillip, I recognize that you have an educated, and technical background. I have seen over the past couple of decades a lot of industries try to implement more modern philosophies, for example “lean manufacturing” . One of the parts of lean is to do “root cause analysis”, I like this concept. Let apply it to your situation; You could ask, why is there demand for power in your area? Why is so much yard waste landfilled?: Close to home, we have had an hot humid summer and I cringe to hear the air conditioners cycle on, What can I do to personally take responsibility? Well, I admit I am limited, I’m an old fart, but I could go off grid, But we can keep the house closed during the hot times, open windows at night and close them at dawn, set an alarm and work outside early in the morning. Its the little things that help. How do we change our culture to do the little things.
you stated that you have to sell electricity downtown because that is where the demand is, I would like to encourage you to take your talents to a different market. you will make more money consulting in this industry than to stay in it. The company I teach at a couple days a week, spends just under half a million dollars a month for electricity and needs someone like you to help reduce its usage. Good luck.
In many states it is illegal to put yard waste into the trash can, and they have a separate pick up for yard waste. A lot of municipalities in Florida already do it.
A lot of it is shredded then composted, and the woody stuff is used as cheap mulch, for city properties and the soft material is composted.
While they could try to do a methane digester, the profit margin doesn’t exist.
We only put a few weeds and waste meat products in the city compostable bin. I have an old B&S chipper/shredder that uses gasoline. So just about all leaves and sticks, including some from my neighbors, get chopped an raked down into the grass. Any suggestions on how I could do it better?
Rindert
You could char the wood, then add it a compost pile or worm with with your grassy stuff, to inoculate it, and raise the pH.
Black soldier flies will take care of the meat products, as will some bacteria in the compost bin. The anaerobic barrel of crud is pretty simple as well.
It depends a lot on what you want your final products to be and what is most useful to you and how much work you are willing to put into it.
Since you are putting the wood down in your lawn, which to me is valid composting. If you haven’t you want to do a ‘compost tea wash’ with forest soil, and inoculate the soil with the fungi and such that are in the forest since they help break down the woody material.
We have an area near the house that was dead and bare this time of year. Really poor soil. After of couple of years of “chop and drop” with the riding mower, and regular irrigation, the soil is dramatically better—lush grass, clover, some wild flowers and “weeds” that the goats love when I scythe it for them. I’d say you’re doing about the same, if it stays watered and green. Yeah, you might be able to do a little better, but compared to a lot of the planet, you’re doing pretty good.
This week was good because I invented a way to recharge lead acid batteries without using electricity. You use HCl to flush the PbSO4 off the plates and the reaction recovers the H2SO4. The reaction makes PbCl2 and the reaction takes about 20 minutes. You need to DIY large plate batteries and a flushing system and a system to reset the H2SO4. The bad news is that the most common way to make Cl uses lots of electricity. The good news is that PbCl2 has has a high resale value, HCl can be made without electricity, PbCl2 has more uses in electrical production and it can be recycled and that the process doesn’t consume much HCl so it looks like you get 40- 50 cycles. Retail HCl is 2.5 times more expensive than gasoline but this HCl 50 times more efficient in recharging batteries. . The process consumes as much HCl as H2SO4 during a discharge HCl can be made locally.
Electrolysis is a good job for gasifier electrical generation. You need flat DC. Don’t worry about hertz There are a number of electrolysis processes besides making hydrogen.
This is a yard waste brush fire near my house. It would be good if we could make something useful from this yard waste but I’ve learned it’s impossible to do that
I think this is an illustration of Perspective! From one perspective natural organic material that came from landscaping I as a human want for decoration while I try to over come nature is not useful, but waste. or… As a human, I am a part of nature and want to live within nature’s process, I want to return this wonderful organic material back to add fertility to the soil.
My question is; why do we need a law to encourage the sale of alternative energy? Why not rely on a free market economy? Why do most legislation for tax breaks for green energy benifit corporate businesses rather than individual households?
according to US census statistics 80% of US population lives of only 3.5% of the land. I still think changing our culture is the solution.
