A good way to get rid of fossil fuel co2; also article on co-generation

[poopfuel]

http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=132629

Neil Pierce wrote the above mentioned article on cogeneration, appeared last week in Seattle paper.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,1843093,00.html

Tells how fossil fuel plants are using co2 in greenhouses to generate quicker produce harvests.
We can grow plenty of food in the world. It's who has the money to buy it.

[mccoyn]

1. Cool, this is what the Koyoto protocol brings.

In the US there is no reason for a refinery to waste time on all this because they can dump their CO2 into the air. In Europe, they can actually make money doing things like this. It gets people thinking. In order to reduce our staggering CO2 emmissions it will take lots of little ideas and that means we need to get lots of people thinking.

[LiberalEsto]

2. I've been writing about co-generation

for several years, and liked the articles you posted. I love the greenhouse concept.

I write marketing case studies about natural gas technologies such as cogeneration, desiccant dehumidification, and distributed power.

Natural gas can be a temporary solution to bridge the gap until good renewable power-generating technologies are developed and become widespread.

The natural gas industry has been promoting technologies such as Combined Heat and Power -- in which the heat that is created by generating electricity is used for heating water, indoor air, swimming pools, or for absorption cooling (an air conditioning system that converts heat to cold). CHP can save huge amounts of money and and energy.

Usually "waste heat" from power generation is exhausted into the atmosphere. If it can be used to heat water for showers, industrial processes, etc., it saves the cost of running a hot water heater on gas or electricity, and becomes "free heat."

Distributed generation is also a big thing, especially in California which got screwed by Enron and other power companies a few years ago. Many businesses, hospitals, school systems, government buildings and industries that have access to natural gas are setting up their own electric power generators, either with engine generators, microturbines or fuel cells. Natural gas is the fuel of choice since diesel and fuel oil won't meet CA's strict air quality rules.

To make on-site power generation more affordable, the waste heat from the generators is put to use for other purposes, as I mentioned above.

Here are some links for more info:

www.energysolutionscenter.org


http://www.utcfuelcells.com/fs/com/bin/fs_com_Page/0,92...
"On August 14, 2003, a major power outage crippled Manhattan and much of the Northeast. However, the Central Park Police Department as kept fully functional by a PureCell™ 200 Assured Power Solution. And while blackouts of that magnitude don't often occur, smaller rolling blackouts – such as those of California – and brownouts can happen at any time, interrupting power and productivity."


http://www.aaenvironment.com/DG.htm
"The growing DG market can improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions if clean and efficient technologies are used. However, we should discourage the use of highly polluting emergency backup diesel generators that degrade local air quality. Emissions of greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants from DG technologies range from zero (renewables and hydrogen) to quite high when fuel oil is used at high capacity. Consequently, the expansion of DG may lead to higher levels of pollution unless states can create a framework that recognizes and encourages clean and renewable technologies.

AAEA believes that hydrogen fuel cell generators are the best environmentally friendly technology for distributed generation."

[NickB79]

6. Natural gas production in N. America has peaked

The US peaked years ago, and Canada just peaked a couple of years ago. Natural gas production in North America is now declining. Any plan to increase natural gas consumption is bound to fail unless extremely expensive LNG import terminals and specialized ships are built in large numbers.

[LiberalEsto]

7. But methane can be used

Natural gas is mostly methane. The methane from animal manure, sewage treament plants, and old landfills can be burned to make electricity too.

I'm not saying we need to use natural gas as a permanent energy solution, just as a temporary one to wean us off coal.

Ultimately, the answer is in renewable energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and geothermal.

[TexasProgresive]

3. How does enriching greenhouses with CO2

eliminate CO2 from the system?

The plants take in CO2 and convert the carbon into sugars, starches and lignum, that's good, CO2 is not in the atomosphere. But what happens to that carbon over time?

Animals eat the plant matter and carbon is oxidized and released with each exhale, other plants die and decompose with the carbon oxidizing and releasing CO2. What's worse is that some whether ingested or decomposed becomes methane which is a worse greenhouse gase than CO2.

The only thing to do with CO2 is to put it back where it originated - deep in the ground.

[poopfuel]

5. partially true and your last sentence is right

because our soils have been depleted of carbon by industrial agriculture.  When plant matter is consumed by soil microbes and those microbes are consumed by larger creatures etc. all of that is a dynamic sequestration of carbon.  Sure some of it is released back to the atmosphere but an awful lot of it stays tied up in the biomass in the soil.  We are looking to bring the soil organic matter (read carbon) from less than 2% back up to 22% or more as is found in forest soil.

Doing this with fossil carbon still does result in an eventual net increase in the atmosphere (bad), but doing it with biological carbon can result in steadily dropping surplus gas in the atmosphere (good).

Hence, the case for sustainable biofuels from numerous sources. Making them and sequestering their co2 is part of a formula where organic agriculture supplants corporate agriculture and begins to roll back the greenhouse effect.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Where is Maxwell's Demon when we need it?

What is Maxwell`s Demon? The answer to all our problems.

However, the thing doesn't work cheap.

--p!