[Gasification] Gasification Digest, Vol 8, Issue 6

[thomas reed]

Dear Nandu and all

I continue to learn more and more about lignin as a key component of
Gaia-Earth and the precursor of all our coal PLUS our 20% oxygen
atmosphere which could only exist with carbon sequestration as coal.

Mostly in Texas, we have a legume, Mesquite, that has 64% lignin and
therefore yields 34% charcoal in our TLUD stove!

How is it possible for one species to be so far out of line with
others?  Do you have anything comparable In India?
It is quite common in the northern forest of the US to find huge brown
logs of pure lignin remaining after all the cellulose has been eaten
by microorganisms.  They take 100 years to fully decompose and even
then they add duff to the forest floor.  Do you have anything
comparable in India?

These logs are easily reduced to a face powder consistency in my
wife's food blender ( when she's not looking).   I wonder if there is
anything that this could be used for.  Glue for plywood?  Medicines?
Chemically Lignin is not a carbohydrate, CH2O) and it IS A
HYDROCARBON, (~ CH1.2O0.3, the formula for the monomer, coniferyl
alcohol).

Glad we have a lignin thread going here, and I hope we get more comments.


On Thursday, April 14, 2011, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Tom,
> thanks a lot for information on lignin. I can cerrtainly use it in my
> lectures and popular articles.
> Yours
> Nandu
>
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:31 AM, thomas reed <tombreed2009 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear Ron and all
>>
>> A few comments on Ron's questions.
>>
>> Woody biomass is typically 15-25% lignin and the balance is cellulose
>> and hemicellulose.  In cellulose all the carbons are attached to -OH
>> or =O and so come off during pyrolysis as CO or CO2.
>>
>> Lignin has a benzene ring and is a  hydrocarbon polymer based on
>> coniferyl or other alcohols monomers.  As such iti is not easily
>> digested by microorganisms, and fallen trees in the forest rot leaving
>> "lignin logs".   They fall apart when you kick them because the
>> longitudinal cellulose fibers are gone.  Lignin's the precursor for
>> charcoal and dictates the ~20% yield of charcoal from most trees.
>> (Mesquite has 64% lignin and yields 30-40% charcoal.)
>>
>> Lignin was the precursor of all the coal in the world.  It evolved
>> about 360 million years ago and made possible the enormous vascular
>> trees that became fossilized as coal.
>>
>> Some charring processes yield more than 20%, but typically contain
>> recondensed tars reabsorbed during manufacture.
>>
>> It is unfortunate that we don't have more analyses on the chemical
>> composition of tars from each process.
>>
>> Tom Reed, Pyrologist
>>
>> On Monday, April 11, 2011, Ron Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> List:
>>>
>>>    To Tom's list, I'd like to add
>>>
>>> 8.  What is the range (especially the upper limit) of weight percent char that is possible with each device?  (It seems pretty high with the GEK)
>>>
>>> Ron
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>> On Apr 11, 2011, at 1:00 PM, gasification-request at lists.bioenergylists.org wrote:
>>>
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>>>>   1. Re: under 1MWe biomass CHP (Tom Miles)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Message: 1
>>>> Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 08:31:27 -0700
>>>> From: "Tom Miles" <tmiles at trmiles.com>
>>>> To: "'Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification'"
>>>>    <gasification at lists.bioenergylists.org>, <tombreed2009 at gmail.com>
>>>> Subject: Re: [Gasification] under 1MWe biomass CHP
>>>> Message-ID: <004d01cbf85d$87f57ad0$97e07070$@com>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-2"
>>>>
>>>> Gero,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Questions for you and other gasifier suppliers:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 1. What --
> ***
> Dr. A.D. Karve
> President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
>
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Dr. Thomas B. Reed
The Biomass Energy Foundation
BEF, BEC, BER