PURPA is the law that lets you sell alternative energy to the grid. I get big dollar signs in my head at night. Ill be honest about that.
The pay is too low to use retail E85 or biodiesel. You cant beat the production of modern ethanol production so I would not try to buy a ton of corn to make ethanol. Soy might work because it has fat for biodiesel and protein for alkaline hydrolysis hydrogen.
I think you need to do this downtown because that is where the demand is So no big fuel tanks. A truck full of battery is a fraction of the energy of a truck full of fuel but it’s much safer.
I explain to people that I use petroleum synthetic fuel equipment but I stop very early in the process to just make hydrogen.
I was an electrician in the navy and a boiler operator later on and I worked at bulk Ag plants like grain silos.
When I talk to sales people on Alibaba the first ten sales people are pretty and offer no information on the machines they sell.
The first method I pitch is Ag by product hydrolysis to hydrogen. You need bulk protein heavy mass like Meat Bone Meal or Distillers Grain. You melt the grain with Potassium Hydroxide and heat to 180F so the ammonia comes out to a Ammonia cracker that makes Hydrogen and then feeds a Hydrogen Fuel Cell. This method fits together easy but the feedstock is limited.
After that comes pyrolysis but I call it Thermal Decomposition. Organic molecules break down at 1200F. You get a stream of CO2 and H2 and Carbon. I cant find a CO cryogenic CO machine. People here say “Water Gas Shift Reactor” over and over. A nice retail WGS unit on a pallet would be handy. CO is much safer than H2 and you could put that almost anywhere very clandestinely. This feedstock is very abundant.
Hi Phillip,
Obviously you could run a gasifier => engine => generator and put power on the grid that way. Another possibility might be a gasifier => fuel cell. We here on DOW focus mainly on gasifiers with occasional detours into engine modificatoin.
I personally see great potential in the Western US to somehow use standing dead pine beetle killed trees. This has the potential to prevent wild fires and provide alt energy in one stroke.
What are you thinking of as a fuel source?
Rindert
Thats all good but this isnt free. You still need to put work into fuel production. You have to keep it running and producing a net to put into the grid. Most utilities only pay penneys to outside producers compared to what they charge. Goverment will regulate and inspect your system and you must comply.
There are easier ways to make money like getting job.
This is already challenging enough to supply your onw power over a 24 hour period. Supplying the grid with access power? yeah no thanks, I wont even do this full time for my own power. Solar panels are a lot easier. I can see this viable only if other renewables are combined with it. Then it " might " be viable for that application. Use what can get for free and run the gasifier system to supliment durring low production times. Make fuel inbetween those times.
“Big dollar signs” and “Alternative energy production” are never seen in the same sentence. 10-15 years ago when many countries were trying to push the development of solar you could see some of that but those days are long gone. A simple look at the reduced rates for grid feed in that are being legislated in tells you what the future holds. In a way its a good new story as it means the alternative generators have become so mainstream they no longer need support… I wish you luck but I would try to create better metrics for yourself than pure profit because that will be a painful path to follow.
Cheers, David
I tell my friends that I have a part time job being my own power company with solar panels… And it is true. It does take some work to keep those solar panels clean, and the inverters doing their job.
Hi Rindert thank you for your time. I have a flaw that prevents me from using syngas engines and I think I have to overcome that. You make several good points
Syngas fueled engines dont have governor control so you cant parallel them to the grid so they stay off line to fuel
Hydrogen Fuel Cells or charge batteries.
I have a low opinion about syngas fueled engines but I think I need to compromise. My favorite articles here are about the 10hp Honda Multi fueled engines powered by charcoal.
My economic opinion is that woody waste biomass is the most appealing because it seems to fall on us like rain.
Annual crop biomass is hard to come by except for small situations. The Carboniferous Period lasted 60 million years so there are 60 million harvests from a different and more productive environment than from what we have now. Fate is stacked against me 60000000:1.
So we are left with insect diseased wood, hurricane and flood blow down, yard waste, Sargassum and lumber mill trimmings. Its not enough for to make synthetic gasoline for everyone but its still useful.
If you want this mass there are at least two steps 1) dry distillation to separate the lignins, hemicellulose and cellulose. 2). Thermal Decomposition to make fuel gases
I dont want to windbag anymore for now. Thank you for your time.
Hi David thank you for your time. You make good points. Solar panels are popular because they are tidy. You can call a toll free number and you’ll have what you want in two days.
After that they get expensive. When you have a solar field you have to put in new power lines to the distribution grid and that gets really expensive. Meanwhile we are surrounded with waste biomass.
The pay for this is 90% of retail and . $.03 and $.04 for renewable tax credit and hydrogen tax credit. Yes the hydrogen tax credit is going away at the end of the year.
I think that you need to look at each area’s resources. Here in western pa we have too many cloudy days to make solar effective, but with all those cloudy days, rain and humidity we have an abundance of fresh water, and amazing plant growth. I can heat our home with just cleaning up the fallen branches and aged out dead trees. This area is know for its forests and logging, the waste wood from logging and milling could generate excess, renewable power through gasification. Just west of us a large dairy(2000 cows) uses all the cow poop to generate methane to run an engine and alternator, rumor has it they make almost as much money from sell electricity and milk. I think it is time to rethink government money and tax credits.
Are you implying you don’t need to build power lines for a similarly sized biomass operation? You absolutely would. Any sizeable power production comes with infrastructure requirements, engine-driven generators fueled by gasification would be on the higher end of that.
What you’re talking about is not going to pay a living wage at a DIY home scale, you need to go much bigger. This is not really the right forum for discussing industrial-scale ventures. Many have tried such schemes and failed. There is no free lunch, certainly not here with woodgas.
I’ll go a step further. I submit that you won’t find a single person here that agrees with your premise “I want to make woodgas PAY”. It can certainly save you money by replacing gasoline use, which is much more expensive than grid electricity. More importantly to most of us, it provides personal independence and freedoms that are hard to get otherwise. But we have all invested a large chunk of our spare time to this pursuit. If we had to pay for that time with dollars saved, it would be a very poor wage. And trying to sell the energy back to the grid? You would receive a pittance, far below your DIY scale production costs.
The better direction to go, in my opinion, is reducing your need for dollars at all. Learn to provide for yourself, get some land, grow a garden, build a woodgas tractor, cut your hay, milk a cow. Raise a family. Woodgas is perfectly suited to that lifestyle. Reduce your cash needs to a minimum, and let the world worry about tax credits and “renewables”. Just live your life.
The better direction to go, in my opinion, is reducing your need for dollars at all. Learn to provide for yourself, get some land, grow a garden, build a woodgas tractor, cut your hay, milk a cow. Raise a family. Woodgas is perfectly suited to that lifestyle. Reduce your cash needs to a minimum, and let the world worry about tax credits and “renewables”. Just live your life.
Chris, knowing my world view as I think you do you can understand that there are very few times that I want to say " Amen Brother"… This would be one of them.
Cheers, David
I don’t know what you can purchase commercially, or what Utility requirements are like, but you could use an induction generator tied to the grid with very simple controls. The only thing I’ve worked with was a mighty 2 hp Briggs and Stratton engine driving a 1/2 hp induction motor. Connect the motor to grid power to start the engine, advance the throttle until the motor current drops to zero, reverses direction, and climbs to whatever level you choose (within the rather strict limits of the hardware). A simple micro-controller or programmable logic widget should be able to handle the tasks. Full disclosure: this never ran on char gas, since the little low-compression engine struggled enough on gasoline, and was a bear to start on char gas.
I think @JO_Olsson ran an induction generator off his Volvo for a while. He would know more about running at reasonable power levels.
Yes, I did - as an experiment - and so did Tone.
With the grid available, running a standard asyncron motor as your generator couldn’t be easier. The grid is automaticly exciting the field windings and does your rpm-governing for you. All the throttle does is increasing the current and therefore the power into the grid. It’s like pushing a cruise ship by hand and getting paid by the number of sweat drops you produce.
However, with the grid available anyway it’s not worth the effort. In my case a bag of wood chunks is worth at least 20 times more replacing gasoline.
Running the setup off-grid is a can of worms. Ideally you would need variable capasitors and some kind of automation to adjusts them according to the load. Also, you would then need your engine to be governed. There’s a good reason any standard genny uses a syncron generator, which produces its own field voltage.
Roofing work continues. Upgraded with a stol and my 1947 “skylift”
The most tidious part is pressure washing the tiles. Roots are kind of buried into the concrete.
Look here is the Real of it.
You are either as your primary goals are supporting yourself and your family.
Or whoring yourself out endlessly try to keep all of the demanding Beasts of “civilization” fed and happy.
The first will require compromising some of your thoughts of high, pure ideals. Be pragmatic. Do what you must. But the minimum that you must. The more you compromise, the less satisfied you will be with your life.
Fully diving into a keep the whole of the Others outside your immediate family entertained, lighted, warmed/cooled, and fed and you just sold off your core essence what makes you human. For what? Name Fame? To scratch your curiosity itch? To pursue a lifetime of endless Whys; and Why-nots; answering? You chose. You lost. You lost everything of true value.
The good news is there is hope for those who with no initial choice were thrown into a life of whoring themselves out. Choose to walk-away.
Choose to sweat for your power; and fishes and loafs.
You’ll be healthier, happier, live a longer life.
3000-6000 years of decently well documented living-civilized experiences shows much about the experiences of becoming too civilized entrenched. You become fat, lazy and stupid. Then you die unhealthy of body and mind/soul, miserably.
