The only reason why these options are economical is because the federal government has made the other options uneconomical and is throwing $165 million at the ones it likes.
But up until recently, some farmers were hesitant to make the switch [to drying grain by burning corn stalks, straw, dust from oat hulls and wood chips]. The government’s offer to cover half the price of the upgrade has apparently changed that.
Any ideas out there as to what the true carbon footprint is for burning wheat straw as opposed to natural gas to dry grain?
Answering your question:
Burning crop residue is presumably carbon neutral, since they are burning plants that aborbed CO2 and made it carbon to burn. Just like the wood fueled electrical generators are supposedly carbon neutral too.
I think the word and theory is Bio Mass.
I have no idea how safe or automated it is. Do you need to stoke the dryer, and watch it to make sure you do not start fires in the field or in the drying grain?
Natural gas is every bit as “carbon neutral,” only over longer time-frames.
Really, definition of terms before any argument even starts is something of a lost art these days.
“Really, definition of terms before any argument even starts is something of a lost art these days.”
Indeed. People are less and less able to articulate arguments against the elites. Newspeak FTW.
GW: There exist natural gas deposits that were not made by biological activity, ie carbon that was not taken from the atmosphere to begin with. Clathrates, and so on. We can burn every scrap of coal and oil without harming the biosphere, as only a small percent of the carbon that got sequestered from the carbon cycle is available as fuel, around 0.1%, but we cannot burn all the natural gas available. There is enough of it to hit 5-10% CO2, ie toxic levels, if we burn all of it.
““Any ideas out there as to what the true carbon footprint is for burning wheat straw as opposed to natural gas to dry grain?”
My answer is that it doesn’t matter in a country the size of Canada with massive oxygen producing forests and lakes. With a population of less than 40 Million … our carbon foot print is negligible … AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT.
So don’t worry about it … turn up the air condition while you have one.
Any ideas out there as to what the true carbon footprint is for burning wheat straw as opposed to natural gas to dry grain?
If the government’s trying to subsidize it, the answer is very likely to be “not favourable.”
The gov’t is trying to force natural gas producers out of the market, and when that’s done, the higher CO2 production of burning mulch will be made much of. People are going to have to start breaking the law en mass soon enough, if they wish to avoid starvation.
Denmark, the righteous, bicycle-loving, green utopia is basing its “journey to net-zero” on burning wood pellets (mostly imported from the American South) to supplement its intermittent wind and solar. All under the approval of, in fact, encouragement of the scientifically illiterate United Nations.
“Burn the forests, save the environment!”
A better question is why aren’t these ‘bio-mass’ materials being composted in the first place?
My understanding was that the unusable portion of the grain plant was left on the ground as Winter mulch, then ploughed under in the late Winter, early Spring.
Am I mistaken?
Taking some CH4 or alcohol or what have ye out of the mulch is OK, as long as the nitrogen, phosphorous, etc, are left over. Plants can get as much carbon as they like out of the air, nitrogen phosphorous, etc, not so much. In fact, we’d be better off around 1000 ppm CO2.
Carbon emissions mean nothing, except to your betters who hold the sword of Damocles above your pathetic little unknowing heads.
That being said, total carbon emission/joule of energy will be higher for long-chain hydrocarbons and long chain carbohydrates than they are for natural gas. The opinions of people who cannot balance a chemical equation are about as valuable as my opinion on how to build nuclear thermal salt-water rocket engines, possibly less so.
You just use thermal salts on the ground. Use the densist source available, U and Pu for space. BTW I imagine, I don’t know, that corrosion is a major problem with the halide salt reactors. But, just as with commonly available treatments for Covid, I expect there are simpler and safe atomic fission solutions being forbidden by vested interests.
I understand the logic of biomass believed to be “carbon neutral” but the combustion temperature and moisture content variatiability can make such burning filthy and polluting (particulates and toxins, not counting the non pollutant of CO2). NG is one of the cleanest burning fuels there are. I have lived in logging communities where everyone and their dog burned wood in the winter resulting in near unbreathable air under certain weather conditions. This is the technology the greens want to take back their surviving population to after they have eliminated most through energy poverty, war, extermination camps, and famine.
The only thing that burns cleaner than NG is hydrogen, which is pretty pricey, and has a carbon footprint as high as NG, as that’s where it comes from. There do exist woodstoves and what have you that emit very little PM, but even those are becoming illegal. I wonder, will people break the law or starve and freeze in the dark?
Not to mention burning hydrogen produces the most powerful greenhouse gas of all – dihydrogen monoxide .
Nasty stuff, that dihydrogen monoxide. A real killer.
Especially if you drown in it.
I’ll be breaking the law.
Your point is exactly correct. Methane burns fairly cleanly (CO, CO2 , H2O). Why goes it make sense to creating all those atmospheric particulates and other combustion products that we worked so hard to eliminate in the 70’s 80’s.
CO2 just isn’t that bad.
Does one have to burn CH4 so hot that it makes NOx compounds if one wants complete combustion, ie no CO?
Amen.
Best to put the bio mass back into the soil and build more life back in the soil. That’s the best place for CO2.
Plants get their carbon from the air, not the soil. CO2 is a gas, it doesn’t exist in soil, or coal, or biomass fuel, or oil. It only comes into being when carbon is burned, either as fuel for energy or as food for oxygen-breathing life. The anti-CO2 crowd is also anti oxygen-breathing life, you know, like people.
Absolutely. The NPK is only a minor benefit compared to returning the minerals and especially the organic material.
The jury is still out on ploughing, over no-til or mini-til. But the Winter mulching is a no-brainer.
It already fucking is. It’s called zero till.
I thought “zero till” was cashless retail?
Oh well, if there are taxpayer cheques involved there’ll be no pushback from the farm organizations. They’ve been leading their blind memberships down the gallows path for years.
Surely biodiesel would be so much more virtuous?
Especially that made from the excess fat left over from the Soylent Green.
Double plus good,in Trudopia.
Damn,what an “upgrade” when you need government to pay half..
What ever happened to “If it ain’t broke,don’t fix it”?
Rhetorical question.
We allowed Progressives to live in our communities.
Independence.
Combined with Banishment.
This is the only Reset I will tolerate.
Ok,that and Open Season.
Virtuous yes, moral, no, and economically ruinous. Burning food is a criminal act as far as I am concerned.
Robert.
Soylent Green is food?
I once did an eavstrough job for a beekeeper who also had a couple dozen acres of corn. He used a small percentage of the corn he grew to run a big outdoor pellet furnace to heat his home. Do you think he was a criminal?
Couple dozen acres of corn wouldn’t heat a shit house in July If your going to lie try and make it believable.Simple s.o.b
How many dry tons of silage corn do you think 1 acre can produce? Hint: More than enough to heat a 3 bedroom house. Learns some math, learn the yield rates of silage, etc. 1 acre can make well over 60lb a day worth of dry silage. You don’t know squat.
That burned silage corn is material that will never enter the human food chain, never be used for animal feed, will never be returned to compost in the soil, will increase nitric oxide emmissions. Unless you want to significantly increase deforestation to increase the planet’s arable land area.
So we’re going to expend 10-20% of the planet’s agricultural land so that the reduced amount of food produced from the remaining 80-90% is “virtuous”?
Brilliant. Face-palm. /sarc
“Unless you want to significantly increase deforestation to increase the planet’s arable land area.”
And that is exactly what happens with any of these “green” initiatives.
Corn-sourced ethanol caused more forest destruction than all other reasons combined. I love pointing that out to all the fools that voted for it.
Government creates a problem to solve a phony problem.
Government solves the problem by making its first concern worse.
But don’t worry, somehow Liberals will get their cut.
Yep they always do don’t they.
“Farmers argued that they couldn’t pass on the extra fuel expense on to the global commodities market, where they compete with producers in other countries who aren’t under the same carbon pricing pressure.”
so how much of that fuel cost was raised because of the carbon tax?
https://www.triplegreenproducts.com/grain-drying/
the product they are promoting requires you to be ignorant of how their product works, as an indirect heater, versus those units that are being used as direct heaters… if you are using an indirect heater, then the byproducts of combustion don’t pass through the grain, the upside to direct heater units is they are more efficient than indirect.
of course the biggest question of all, is which liberals benefiting from promoting this product?
Why are we so worried about our emissions of NG, oil or wood for that matter when the elephant in the room, CCP, emits more than the rest of the planet mainly with coal?
bverwey
Why are we so worried about our emissions
Because those are our emissions. We’re the bad guys, remember?
Excellent reply!
Boycott Chinah and their junk.
I guess all your tools are Snap-On and Knipex? Nice to be rich enough not to have to buy DeWalt, Milwaukee, Makita, Mac or Channel-Lock, all of which have at least components made in China.
That is if you do indeed own a bunch of tools.
I inherited my father’s tools, which includes a variety of Snap-On wrenches and sockets. He accumulated them over a period of years, so I’m sure the number of Chinese-made bits is rather small.
Burn Liberals. They stink like shit but its less work than building gibbets and hanging them.
Burning biomass for heat is almost always a bad idea. Removing straw from the land (and not replacing it with manure/etc) – bad. Every farmer knows this. Just the nutrient loss is significant. Lots of P and K in straw, as well as micronutrients. Never mind the cost of loss of tilth, and loss of organic matter. Cost in fuel/equipment etc to remove straw, package, and haul to burner – bad. Like solar and wind, the carbon footprint and environmental damage is off the scale even before the project is running.
H
Then the increase in need for fertilizer.
Follow that money.
Don’t forget all the soap and drain cleaner you can get from leaching the KOH from the ash!
I think we should use catalytic enzymes to break down the cellulose into sugars, ferment them into ethanol, and use the rest of the sludge as fertilizer. I’m pretty sure a modest capital investment could make a continuous process setup that takes in mulch and spits out fertilizer and ethanol. We can use the ethanol for fuel, and drink it. Of course, the PTBs don’t like the little guys fermenting ethanol.
Aren’t we already doing this?
Except instead of drinking the ethanol we’re blending it into transportation fuel?
In the end we’re expending more energy (and money, and land, and time, and effort) for about the same amount of useful output. All to shower ourselves in virtue.
How much diesel fuel does it take to rake, bale and haul crop residue? How much extra petroleum product does it take to fertilize the fields where the crop residue was raked, baled and hauled?
Much less than the energy you get out of it. Picking up tons of cellulose that’s just laying on the ground isn’t that expensive. That’s almost like asking “how much fuel does it take to pump a barrel of crude outta the ground?” Same answer.
It is, and always has been, about control. Too many sheeple believe the BS and the government gets away with it.
Don’t know what the “carbon footprint” will be, but can guarantee that there will be lot more reall polution – as in smoke and particulates. That’s how that stuff burns.
And increased nitric oxide (NO) (which increases smog and acid rain).
The burning stupid emit more CO2 than anything ever.
If you haul away the bio mass and burn it en lieu of natural gas the end result may be theoretically carbon neutral, but you will exhaust the soil in 3 years.
A more enlightened approach:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/soil_as_carbon_storehouse_new_weapon_in_climate_fight.
My current perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSxVnn2FWZI
(they apparently just posted this, 47 views, no ads. seem like decent folk. )
Fortunately for all of us living on the planet CO2 is not a problem, a lack of it sure would be.
I am no farmer but I hear that plowing straw back into the ground (straw return) improves soil. It also minimizes the use of machinery and, hence, petroleum. That’s the other side of the ledger.
Brondo is the answer to our needs. It’s got electrolytes that plants crave.
bverwey
Medical science, logistics and finance obviously aren’t the liberals forté. Maybe they’ll have better luck at farming.
Always remember; evil, not stupid. Further down the line, we run into other “unforeseeable” problems.
All that biomass. Like cities, this creates a biomass black hole, where it all just disappears. All the nitrogen, phosphates, potassium, in that straw/corn stalks, that used to be left in the field to be reincorporated into the soil; gone. It is why the farmland that gets flooded with sewage from cities (or feedlots) does better, then farmland that has to buy fertilizer every year.
You grow 90 tons of plant matter, and all that biomass just disappears from your acres. It becomes waste in municipal sewer systems thousands of miles away. Never to return. Just disposed of where there is no use for it.
If government is promoting it, by definition it is a bad idea.