TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Pyrolysis: Cooking with Biomass

John Jainschigg | Date: 06-23-09 | Comments

Is pyrolysis the missing key to a winning strategy for successful green energy sources? Guess what, chicken droppings may play a key role in creating a more sustainable global economy.

On chickens**t, from Paul Fussel's Wartime:

Chickens**t refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige... insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickens**t is so called� instead of horse�or bull�or elephant s**t�because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously. Chickens**t can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.

Except when it does. As reported by John Lorinc in a recent post in The New York Times Green Inc. blog, chicken ... guano may play an important part in winning the war for the environment. We have a lot of the stuff�the United States leads the world in production of this valuable resource, which turns out to be an ideal target for pyrolysis: treatment with extreme heat in the absence of oxygen, preventing release of carbon dioxide. The result of pyrolitic treatment is a clean, carbon-sequestered, charcoal material, called 'biochar,' that can serve as a PNP-rich fertilizer. Oil and combustible gas byproducts of pyrolysis can be used as fuels. Bonus: none of this stuff ends up in landfills, and unlike aerobic biodecomposition, pyrolysis releases no methane.

A leading exponent of pyrolysis is Dr. Peter Fransham, founder of Advanced Biorefinery, who make biomass pyrolysis systems for biochar, bio-oil and biomass gasification. "Pyrolysis is not magic," he said. "It's just the densification of energy for easier use and transport." Several generations of ABRI equipment are now in test, and pilot projects using the systems have commenced in Australia, Canada and the United States.

This is interesting stuff�most interesting (I feel) when this tech is applied in harmony and context with composting (a.k.a. "the other method of carbon sequestration through anaerobic degradation, for fertilizer production and landfill mitigation"), and in consciousness of the fact that fertilizing fields by burning off biomass and plowing under the resulting char is actually a many-thousand-year-old technology for farmland preparation (and ironically, one still in use in developing countries, to clear old-growth rainforest terrain after logging). This is the attitude frankly taken by The Carbon Char Group, which espouse hybrid thermochemical methods of pyrolitic reduction for gasification, biomass reduction and carbon sequestration, a process they aver is substantially carbon negative.