[Gasification] BIOCOAL - THE WOOD FUEL OF THE FUTURE

[Peter & Kerry]

The great forests of England were destroyed by the early steel industry, 
not people cooking. In fact the need to find a replacement source of 
carbon and subsequent development of the coking industry was what led to 
the massively expanded coal industry. If you really want to see what is 
the real problem in the world take a look at a night image of the 
population centres of the UK & Europe. Not much room between the lights 
for trees to grow.

Our background and hearts are in sustainable forest management, which 
was where our interest in gasification and enhanced wood fuels arose. It 
was about having the right tools that improved resource use and provided 
the essential economic under pinning to rehabilitate and  manage 
degraded forests. At the request of independent FSC auditors we gave 
permission for sustainable forest management principles and strategies 
developed by my wife Kerry and I to be used by villages in the Solomon 
Islands seeking FSC certification. Our dream is to make forests so 
useful that they are valued above other land uses and replanted, not as 
plantation mono-cultures but as analogue forests with the same broad 
environmental values as the original forest cover, whilst still 
providing building materials, food & energy, along with creating 
permanent jobs that individuals and communities can be proud of.

Like anything else good technology can be misused, these are human 
decisions. Denying the technology that can lead to the sustainable use 
of forests though does absolutely nothing other than hasten the demise 
of that which we seek to protect.

Peter


On 19/07/2012 5:00 AM, gasification-request at lists.bioenergylists.org wrote:

From: "David G. LeVine"<dlevine at speakeasy.net>


> 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{(