[Gasification] Gasification Digest, Vol 8, Issue 6

Thu Apr 14 10:29:22 CDT 2011

Dear Tom,
we have two species of Prosopis in India. The indigenous one is
Prosopis cineraria, of which both the foliage and pods are eaten by
herbivores. The other species, called Prosopis juliflora, was
introduced into India about a century ago from the American continent
and has now spread all over the country, because the pods are eaten by
herbivores and the seed gets scattered through their dung. The young
seedlings are left untouched by the herbivores because the foliage of
this species is quite bitter. It also contains a fish poison.  The
plants of P.juliflora serve the local population as a source of
fuelwood. It has fantastic ability to develop multiple shoots, even if
it is cut right at soil level. The plant can tolerate repeated
coppicing. Coppice branches have a uniform diameter of about an inch.
They are fast growing. An inch thick is just the right thickness of
firewood in a cookstove. The indigenous variety is a desert plant
found mainly in Rajasthan, where it is not cut, because it provides
green fodder. The small branches are repeatedly harvested because of
the foliage on them. The trees normally develop a nice crown, but when
harvested in this manner, the trees exhibit only the main stem
supporting several small branches carrying foliage. We have often
produced charcoal from the sticks of Prosopis juliflora, but they were
not rich in lignin as they represented young growth without any brown
hartwood
I got interested in lignin, because of our work on biogas. 10 kg green
leaves yield about 1000 litres biogas. Assuming 80% moisture, 10 kg
green leaves represent 2 kg dry biomass. With about 40% protein 60%
cellulose, one kg dry matter would yield about 800 litres biogas.
Because the biogas yield from green leaves was less than anticipated,
I started looking into the composition of the leaves, and realised
that the veins and midribs of the leaves contained lignin. Cattle dung
also gives very little biogas, because dung consists mainly of lignin,
coming from the leaves that the animals have eaten. Lignin is
excreted, because it cannot be digested by the animals. In India,
lignin is digested in nature by several species of fungi. In fact, if
oyster mushrooms are raised on woody biomass, the residue, now
consisting mostly of cellulose, can be used as a source of biogas.
Yours
Nandu
On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 9:06 PM, thomas reed <tombreed2009 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>>>>>
>>>>> Today's Topics:
>>>>>
>>>>>   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)
>>
>> *Please change my email address in your records to: adkarve at gmail.com *
>>
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>
> --
> NOTE:  PLEASE CHANGE MY ADDRESS TO TOMBREED2010 at GMAIL.COM
>
> Dr. Thomas B. Reed
> The Biomass Energy Foundation
> BEF, BEC, BER
>
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-- 
***
Dr. A.D. Karve
President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)

*Please change my email address in your records to: adkarve at gmail.com *