Sequestering Carbon: the Answer Could Be at Our Feet

September 26, 2009

Went to a meeting of the North Texas Energy & Environment Club, a well attended affair with a nice mix of students, staff and faculty from the University of North Texas. Met Greg Hawk, who whispered in my ear that he knew a little something about a process (possibly carbon negative, possibly market worthy) that would sequester carbon in an agrichar (see biochar). I leaned in. He said "I'm sure you're familiar with pyrolysis." I nodded yes, because maybe this is something that I should be familiar with (and, assuming I caught the word correctly, I would look it up later, so when I nodded yes what I really meant was that I would become familiar with pyrolysis shortly).

Hmm? What? No one told me about a new, carbon negative way of sequestering carbon. The last time I paid attention to carbon sequestration, it was all about deep sixing CO₂ in the Marianas Trench or the Norwegian North Sea, which came with big price tags and fretting about the CO₂ leaking from its sequestered places. Now it appears we can just burn up some agrichar and throw it in the dirt, where it remains, inert and sequestered.

Using Weeds to Power Heavier Things

January 04, 2009

A weed powered a 747 this week. Air New Zealand made the first commercial flight of an airplane powered in part by fuel made from the jatropha plant last Monday, using a 50/50 blend of conventional Jet A1 and fuel made from the jatropha seed in one of the 747's four engines over a two hour flight. What many consider a weed could blossom into a smart fuel for several reasons.

Airlines have been hammered by fuel prices in recent years, and could welcome jatropha's stabilizing, deflationary influence on operating expenses. The new fuel could be adapted quickly into the relatively tight fuel distribution network of commerical and military fleets (plus airplane engines wouldn't have to be retrofitted).

Cars and other light vehicles are today commonly powered by batteries, as hybrids or electric vehicles. Planes and trucks are not. It will be awhile, if ever, that heavy machinery (particularly machinery that goes in the air) uses electric-battery technology for propulsion. Biofuel such as the jatropha could prove to be the fix for this segment of the transportation industry.

Jatropha is drought and pest resistant, and might be grown in marginal arid lands that don't compete with food crops. Imagine struggling areas of Africa, for instance, gaining foothold with this crop. Jatropha as geopolitical stabilizer; dampening the influence of oil states as it builds the influence of poverty trap states.

We don't have the final report on this potentially potent little weed, but it offers hope of doing some of the heavy lifting of our transition to a new energy order.

Photo: Job de Graaf on flickr

More from Kurzweil @ MIT: Exponential Growth for Solar, Biofuels

September 16, 2008

Dr. Raymond Kurzweil was part of a Sustainable Energy X-Prize kick-off last week at MIT, and used his time on the stage to draw a distinction between systems that undergo linear improvement, vs. those, based on information technologies, that progress exponentially.

He immediately called out what first sprung to folks' minds: Moore's Law and the rate at which CPU processing power doubles (every 18 months or so), but then continued with other familiar examples of exponential growth: magnetic data storage, DNA sequencing costs, DNA sequencing data, internet data, the decrease in size in certain mechanical devices. He noted that not all technologies can become information technologies, but said that medicine is on the verge.

As is solar. Said solar has been doubling both in watts generated and adoption every 2 years, and that this rate was about to increase as nano technology practices transform solar into an information technology. That's good, because he began his talk by reminding us that we need 10,000,000,000,000 watts to power human activities on earth. So that's only 9 more doublings ... piece of cake.

Photo courtesy of Aaron LeMay @ Flickr

Heavy Duty MIT Line-up with Energy Advice for Obama or McCain

September 11, 2008

Yesterday I attended an MIT Forum titled "What I would Advise the Next President" in a packed Stata Center (right) lecture hall. Speaking were Ernie Moniz, who some consider a likely candidate for an Obama administration Energy Secretary, Peter Diamandis, head of the X Prize foundation, and 3 panelists who proffered advice to the next President.

Ray Kurzweil, George Church and Saul Griffith ... each painted a picture that would likely go over the candidates' heads, but would be understandable to their science advisors. Of course, the room was filled with MIT profs and students, so this audience grokked it easily. Kurweil, citing collaboration with Google's Larry Page, focused on information technologies' trustworthy exponential growth curves (think: Moore's Law) and how solar, with the increasing introduction of nano-scale fabrication tools and techniques, is becoming an information technology. He contends we'll see solar reach the economic tipping point in approximately 5 years and watch it become dominant after that. 

Church, active with the west coast start-up LS9, went into some detail on the company's attempts, building upon recent advances in genetics (another information technology) to scale-up production of "renewable petroleum" from biological processes.

If both Kurzweil and Griffith got the audience worked up with possibility, Griffith brought it back down to earth with copiously detailed constraints and the mind-numbing enormity of the task of replacing the 3.5 Terawatts the US currently consumes and 15 TW global energy appetite. Net/Net: the poor advisor to the President would have a mixed message for his/her Commander in Chief.

The session ended with Diamandis announcing a $25K X Prize award for the student who will make the best game-changing "Crazy Idea" sustainable energy proposal. Powrtalk will keep an eye on that ... it'll be visible here: www.youtube.com/xprize. Who knows, perhaps the winner will become the next advisor to the next President !!!

Photo: MIT