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New Biofuel Technique

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by tripp, May 21, 2007.

  1. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    My home state is doing it's part. Yay. The researches claim that this could be a carbon negative way of making liquid fuels.

    Full Article
     
    #1 tripp, May 21, 2007
  2. SSimon

    SSimon Active Member

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    It sounds like they'd be cutting down mature trees instead of finding waste stream sources of wood chips. I didn't see where they mention the removal of the mature trees in their carbon equation. I'd be curious about this, and the mechanism of disposal of the chemical required for manufacture, before lending my support.

    I tend to like this better than traditional bio fuels as it seems like this would require less land for a greater volume of fuel, unless I'm looking at this wrong.
     
    #2 SSimon, May 22, 2007
  3. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ May 22 2007, 01:03 PM) [snapback]447452[/snapback]</div>
    Georgia is paper country. There are vast tree farms for supplying paper mills with feedstock. I would think that they'd be tapping forestry waste (which is really cheap) instead of growing trees solely for the purpose of turning them into bio oil. There has been talk of going that way with, say poplars, for cellulosic ethanol. I like the pyrolosis approach because you can turn the oil into a wide variety of things using existing infrastructure. The fertilizer is a big side benefit of this approach.

    Mature trees are carbon neutral so they'd factor out of any carbon balancing equation. The article is mum about feedstock. It just talks about wood chips. Those can come from a variety of existing processes.

    I think the real question here is how far can we responsibly take this?
     
    #3 tripp, May 22, 2007
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