Biomass: Too Valuable Just To Burn Richard Douthwaite

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Biomass Too Valuable Just To BurnRichard
Douthwaite Feasta
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Too valuable a resource just to burn
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First, cut your miscanthus....
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Hemp a productive annual, but only 8-10
tonnes/hectare
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The myriad uses to which hemp can be put
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Ways of making the journey

• Crush or grind
• Ferment using yeast
• Break down using enzymes
• Digest using bacteria
• Hydrolyse
• Pyrolyse
• Catalyse
• Distill
• Reconstruct using algae

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Utilising rape seed
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One possible journey

• Grind up the grass
• Extract the protein
• Put residue in digester to get methane
  along with sewage sludge and animal slurries,
  food waste etc
• Treat the cellulose left, along with waste
  paper and wood waste, to turn it into
  platform chemicals using the
  Biofine process
• Grow algae on the remaining liquor
• Recover nutrients using char
• Return nutrients to the land

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Pilot bio-crude plant in Holland, 2004turns
100kg wet biomass into 8kg of bio-crude per hour
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A variant on the process using pyrolysis rather
than hydrolysis
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Why we are getting climate change
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What happens when soil carbon is lost
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Big increase in soil bacteria when charcoal added
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How adding charcoal to the soil encourages
fungal growth
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With and without char
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How a terra preta soil compares with a normal one
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The vision A virtuous cycle

• Every rural community operating a bio-refinery
  which extracts the most valuable components from
  the biomass grown in the area and sends them on
  for further processing
• in addition to
• Providing heat, electricity to the community
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• Returning nutrients to the soil by sequestering
  carbon, thus slowing climate change and enabling
  a bigger biomass crop to be grown next season.