An interesting report on the potential of agricultural biofuels

[Nick Balmer]

Hello,

There is a very interesting report written based on Germany biofuel
experience and extrapolating it to the US.

http://www.boell.org/downloads/Beyond_Biofuels_report(1).pdf

I have been using some of its data to try to do a similar
extrapolation to the UK.

Regards

Nick Balmer

[dave andrews]

Nick, one of the things I came across when looking into this, is that you can for example grow very poor quality maize - much cheaper than if it were meant as a food crop, and then grind and feed the WHOLE crop - not just the cob, into the digest or......this can be grown in between proper food crops as I recall.

 

Also the best digester I came accross after extensive research ws HOST based in Holland....worth a look..... a guy called michael geary and a company called FLI host it in the uk.

 

mge...@fli.ie

 

 

 

Dave

--

Dave Andrews

K.E.N.T.
+ 44 (0)  755 265 9166

+ 31 (0)  631 926 885
+ 44 (0) 1225 837978

 

 

[Nick Balmer]

Hello Dave,

Thanks for your comments. I am well aware of much of the research into
feedstocks for AD.

There are a number of subtle differences between conditions in Germany
or Denmark and Britain with crops, for instance we are closer to the
northern limit of suitable sunlight hours for growing maize. Usually
this is believed to be around the 1200 hours a year, and north of say
the Wash this acts to slow growth.

I have been looking at other crops entirely and indeed different
growing regimes. In my teens I wanted to be a farmer and I spent a
huge amount of time reading up on crops and cropping theory, and I
also worked on highly intensive diary farms in Britain and New Zealand
where grass and other forms of silage were grown.

It is quite clear to me that we could adapt and improve on the
existing cropping regime with maize, by going to perennial leys.

You have to match crops to soils and exiting land use patterns. What
would be appropriate in Suffolk would be completely wrong in Wrexham
or Pembroke.

My father who farmed has been really helpful over the ways to do this,
and I am working with a number of his contacts. It is quite clear to
me that we could optimise yields for biogas production in really
meaningful ways by really simple breeding programmes and selection of
varieties.

Although my German is not that good, once I started to get the correct
German equivalents for the words I use here, I have discovered (not at
all surprisingly) that the best German farmers are already several
years down the same thought chain.

I am working towards a position where I can build several integrated
farm plants, because you need an integrated whole supply chain
approach.

For obvious reasons I don't want to go deeply into the technicalities
because they are commercially sensitive.

I do know FLI and have met them several times. Oddly enough their UK
office is less than two miles from where I sit writing this post.

Oddly enough the exact technology used is of less overall consequence
than the efficiency of the feed stock and the upside you can obtain
for the bio-gas.

It is of course important, but what I am aiming to do is to combine
several existing technologies in a slightly different way.

This greatly assists selling the product.

A lot of existing studies are focus too narrowly on a particular
aspect of the chain.

People are trying to force AD to conform to lots of drivers that have
little to do with optimising the product.

It is these sorts of barriers that are holding things up, and the
awful uncertainities over things like ROC's FiTs RHI, Permitting and
the risk of Regulatory Change that blights all businesses here.

Thanks for your interest and help.

Regards

Nick Balmer

[dave andrews]

Nick, John Seed and old friend and farmer in Scotland may be a useful contact here.

 

I will put him in copy.

 

At Wessex Water I put a large 250 kW homogeniser onto the sludge, this reduced particle size from about 100 micron to about 10, from memory and appeared to increase gas production...worth looking at....Dave

[Nick Balmer]

Hello Dave,

Particle size matters and there are loads of research papers on this.

I actually think that not enough though is given yet to the amount of
"parasitic" energy the bugs use simply to break the cell walls to
release the sugars.

There is an interesting approach here by Vogelsang called Biocrack.

http://www.engineered-to-work.com/web/infomaterialien/biocrack_bga_ka_en.pdf

Like all these things until you use it you cannot be sure if it is as
good as it says in the advert.

Regards

Nick Balmer