On 07/17/2012 10:47 AM, Gerald Kutney wrote:
If I understood the work of Thoresen properly, his use of biocoal
referred to a biocarbon product. It was ECN who proposed the term for
a torrefied material. Both products have similarities to coal.
Torrefied biomass has an energy value close to lignite, while
biocarbon (often used in biochar applications) has energy, chemical
and physical properties like that of bituminous coal. Generally,
"biocoal" today is rightly or wrongly used for torrefied biomass.
Torrefaction was discovered in France in the 1830's.
Gerald Kutney, Ph.D.
Managing Director
Sixth Element Sustainable Management
Executive Bioenergy Consultants
www.6esm.com
Considering that biocoal is made from wood and it costs energy to
torrefy it, and some of the mass is lost to out gassing, one can
rationally conclude that a larger mass of wood will be needed than the
mass of biocoal produced.
Since biocoal is likely to have more energy per unit mass than the
original wood (but the wood to produce it will weigh more than the
biocoal), biocoal will likely have more than 16.2 to 18 MJ/KG (a common
number for wood, "Biomass Energy Foundation: Fuel Densities"
<http://web.archive.org/web/20100110042311/http://www.woodgas.com/fuel_densities.htm>.
Woodgas.com), but less than 32.5 MJ/KG (a common number for anthracite
coal, Fisher, Juliya (2003). "Energy Density of Coal"
<http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/JuliyaFisher.shtml>. The Physics
Factbook.)
Two or three billion people in the world are currently using wood as
fuel (woodgas.com), assuming there are more using other fuels plus wood,
3 billion is a safe number for potential biocoal users.
Do the math and you will see that biocoal is NOT the answer, it will
result in deforestation as it becomes the energy source of choice for
the world. Of course wood is not the best choice either, both for
pollution and deforestation reasons. What we need is a clean, high
energy, cheap, nonpolluting power source, fat chance of that appearing
soon. In the interim, more than one fuel will need to be used.
For certain uses biocoal is wonderful, but for general use it appears to
be a recipe for disaster. Great Britain had huge hardwood forests
around London before wood was in common use for fuel. Now coal is more
common and it is dirty! What hardwood forests still exist in Great Britain?
Dave 8{(
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