This article is about getting chopped up grass to flow through a hopper (so that it can be gasified for fuel).
If you want to read it don't get stuck at the top (the start makes it seem like the article is about gasification instead), keep going till the images start.
Side note: From read this article they desperately need some experts. They are re-solving solved problems, and not working on what their startup is actually about. (I should add that them seem to be aware of this.)
> Side note: From read this article they desperately need some experts. They are re-solving solved problems, and not working on what their startup is actually about. (I should add that them seem to be aware of this.)
That was my thought as well. These guys may have a viable business idea, but they don't appear to have any engineering experience at all, nor do they appear to understand that one can research for existing solutions, or hire/consult with experts. It doesn't bode well for the entire enterprise.
Looks like they forgot to proof read their website too.
"If you are want to consume carbon-neutral hydrogen, please reach us at sales@charmindustrial.com"
I wish them the best of luck, but I've seen the first wave of biofuels fail and pivot to selling cosmetics or go under (Amyris, Solazyme, LS9). Sure, this is different, but the economics haven't really changed. It's damn hard to compete against something you can pump out of the ground and has no price tag on its externalities.
Personally, I think more effort put into lobbying and activism is better spent. I know we have the technology to make carbon-neutral fuels. I sincerely hope that we transition to using something like EVs for all ground-based transport and biofuels for applications like jet travel that need the energy density.
However, it's the market and the economics that don't work out. And they don't work in a way that prevents you from having easy stepping stones to scaling up. There's basically no-one who will buy this commodity at small scale for a much higher price. You have to succeed completely or fail.
You can even look at startups using conventional approaches and cheap feedstock (Siluria with methane). 10 years and still working on their tech. These big commodity markets have huge players who have huge competitive advantages.
And if you check the articles people already make those. I guess their "new thing" is using grass? switchgrass is usually considered the best plant for this.
I don't really understand why they are reinventing things that already exist.
Charm co-founder here... thanks for the typo find, fixed!
People have been lobbying and protesting for years, I don't believe it's going to fix things on its own. Policy makers need legitimate technology options to put support behind, and that's what we intend to develop.
Thankfully you are simply incorrect that "no-one who will buy this commodity at small scale for a much higher price". We are in active sales conversations with a number of buyers who are very much willing to pay a premium for the commodity given its reduced carbon intensity.
(1) we agree wholeheartedly on the experts front — for the core technology around gasification we've been working with a variety of PhDs, national labs and companies with extensive previous gasification experience,
(2) the gasification technology we're developing is actually fairly novel and unfortunately in this industry that means patenting is in our future, which means that we're not going to blog about the core parts of our gasification system... instead we can blog about the surrounding systems that still represent interesting challenges. So that's why we blogged about grass flow. Rest assured 95% of our time is going into gasification ;)
My initial thought was vibration, so I was happy to see that was the solution!
I’ve been in bed sick all day with a terrible cold and my sinuses are packed solid.
I had a headache and so out of bordeum tried using my black and decker buffer to massage my head and relieve my headache (I use the buffer as an awesome massager and modded it with a variable speed switch).
To my surprise it worked on the headache and also liquified my sinuses.
A quick google search turned up a few other people playing with vibrators for congestion and at least one patent.
Funny to come across this after experimenting with getting solids to behave at liquids via vibration all day.
Another thing to try is running up and down stairs, while holding a tissue.
Don't give in to temptation and stop too early and blow your nose! Keep going till you have full air flow, only then blow your nose (otherwise the pressure of blowing your nose closes things up again).
After that, consciously keep the nostril on the same side as your headache open, and let the other side close.
The closure is blood vessels in your nose swelling, it's not compacted material. When you exercise your body recognizes the need for more air and reverses the swelling. You don't usually notice, but it's normal to breathe with only one nostril at a time (and the body opens both when there is great demand for air). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle
Anyway, since there is no actual material compaction, your vibration did not work for the reason you think, rather it acted as a massage for the swollen (irritated) blood vessels.
Since I had a chest cold I also tried it on my lungs thinking it might help loosen things up. Less sure that worked (it felt nice), but I do feel much better today.
I just bought one... What did you use as a variable speed switch? Something like a Lutron Credenza Plug-In Dimmer? I don't know if the buffer is 2 or 3 prong and I'm having trouble finding a 3 prong dimmer that is not remote controlled.
I was just talking with a coworker about how we could theoretically modify our espresso machine hopper to avoid blockages. This is a great survey of bulk material handling options.
How much geological sequestration capacity exists, how long term is the sequestration, and what is the cost of securing it at the necessary scales? Is feedstock local to sequestration formations, and if not, has the transport been factored in?
Why not biogas as a turbine feedstock and sell carbon neutral electricity on the grid (offsetting extracted hydrocarbon)?
What about hydrogen being (my understanding) an indirect plastic byproduct?
What was the drawback of monetizing bio char volatiles while selling the "waste" as a soil amendment products?
I only ask these because I very much want this to succeed and I'm glad to see this here. I get the feeling that the point is very much finding an economic basis for sequestration.
2. We looked at generating electricity, and many others have built and operated biomass-to-electricity plants. The economics don't work out... electricity is very cheap. Most of the biomass-to-electricity plants in California are closing up shop now.
3. Hydrogen may be a byproduct of some plastics manufacturing processes, but not nearly on the scale consumed.
4. Yes, hydrogen is a (cleaned up) biochar volatile! We consume most of the biochar itself as the energy source for heating the gasifier. Any excess biochar will be sold as soil amendment.
Flow rate of biomass or hydrogen? Per unit we expect roughly 10-20 tons per day of biomass, and 0.5-1 ton per day of hydrogen. Allowable variance is low, but depends on the customer.
Fascinating stuff. If you’re using BECs rather than waste product, have you started to look into how to minimize full-lifecycle energy usage? (Plus water, nitrogen, agricultural crowding-out, etc.) And are you trying to scale up to a centralized production model, or focusing on on-site hydrogen production with logistics from the farms?
"In North America alone we have 32,000 gigatons of geological sequestration storage capacity"
I suspect that is a tendentious estimate, considering no indicative amount of CO2 has yet been geologically sequestered and observed for effects. The wikipedia article has a graphic with CO2 being pumped into a "deep aquifer".
Well, we've had the Sleipner CO2 injection in the North Sea going since 1996 at close to 1 million tons per year, with extremely close monitoring including 4D seismic. There's hundreds of scholarly articles out there with field data and modelling of that case. I think we have some pretty good estimates of how it works by now.
Thankyou, then that is one useful test project. I hold doubts towards what seems to be mostly oil company sponsored research. It is one thing to have estimates for massive geological capacity for CO2 storage, a different thing to claim that capacity exists and that an environmentally sound industry could be developed to fill those, seismically sensed, deep subterranean environments.
"With the addition of geological carbon dioxide sequestration it becomes carbon-negative."
LOL, easy peasy then
Can you make "grass charcoal"? If so, just pile the grass high and cover in a layer of clay before burning, as is done with wood. Then bury the charcoal, which also improves the soil
(Charm Co-founder here) Certainly - you're effectively describing biochar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar) which historically has been used as both an energy source and a soil amendment. Using it as a sequestration method has gained some attention recently, though I have reservations.
For one, biochar is typically produced in small, low-efficiency reactors without proper emissions control (though this is solvable). The bigger issue is the high energy content of biochar (~30MJ/kg). Simply burying all of this energy isn't economical - it makes much more sense to store carbon in its oxidized state, and sell the energy that's released in the process (in various forms - we're starting with Hydrogen).
Did you try blowing air through the mass from bottom up? It can help loosen the grass chips, reduce moisture and prevent agglomeration and is useful as long as the air flux doesn't prevent the grass from funneling down.
Certainly we considered it. The problem is that on this prototype system we were operating with a sealed hopper. Thus any gas injected into the hopper would travel through the system and dilute our output gas stream. Also any oxygen in the injected gas would result in combustion rather than gasification.
The inside of the funnel can be lined with a tube punchered uniformly and use pneumatic nitrogen piped from above and outside of the sealed hopper? I’m getting these weird ideas in my head.
Thanks for the reply, yes I am aware of biochar but wasn't sure grass was a suitable source.
The latest research seems to show that done properly, biochar can improve crop yields substantially, so that could be a way to pay for the process, but the other aspect is that it can be produced in a very low-tech manner, which is almost certainly the situation in many or most parts of the world.
How are you planning 'geological carbon dioxide sequestration'? I'm not sure of the chemistry/process, but is burning the charcoal completely actually necessary to produce hydrogen? It seems not, to me. The cynical view of course is that you will omit the costly sequestration step, which makes this just another biofuel endeavor, with the attendant pros, and, mainly (IMHO), cons...
You probably know, but don't forget that compressing air is energy intensive. I'm not saying that the extra expense can't be marginalized - especially if you can dramatically increase production, I'm just pointing out that it's far from free. Just another fun engineering problem to tackle:)
Grass biochar or bamboo (a fast growing wooden grass) biochar would seem very useful as biochar is a proven beneficial amendment for high value horticultural soils, - - - and the highest value horticulture right now is probably cannabis farming.
Specifically, she talks about the results of the Sleipner Project in the North Sea, where they've measured leakage rates, etc: https://youtu.be/lIVwbSnD0AI?t=1199
Still seems like this is a big guess that sequestration works over long periods, or at all at the scale necessary to be industrially significant. I’m inherently sceptical of anything hydrogen related due to the fuel’s association with delay tactics from the carbon industry. Chevron would prefer we all not buy electric cars in hopes of HFC becoming a real thing which, obviously, is just a farce to keep paying them to produce, transport, and sell solid fuel. I think we are better off as a society not burning carbon at all, not looking for places to put carbon polution.
Charm co-founder here... We are not betting on hydrogen fuel cell cars. There is an existing $120B/year market for hydrogen used in the production of ammonia fertilizer and oil refining. That hydrogen is currently produced from fossil natural gas, and we are replacing that.
The Sleipner Project for geological carbon sequestration has been ongoing for 20 years with extremely rigorous measurement. We also know that natural gas is stored in geological deposits for millions of years, and in vast quantities. I don't see a strong reason to be skeptical of long-term sequestration a slightly different gas in those same geological formations.
Natural gas wasn’t injected down there by man. I can tell you’re sincere but those are not the same things. This still seems like a giant guess. We’re better off burning as little carbon as possible.
Looks like they've got some bad Funnel Flow in the hopper. Mass flow is probably the desired flow regime. Using a non-conical hopper is probably a better idea and would negate the vibration, which can fail.
Typically only change the shape of the hopper in one direction at at time as you move down. This often leads to hoppers with an exit that is a slot and not round.
We've used these powder consultants before and I took a week long course on hopper design: http://powdernotes.com
Edit - another method we use to create empty-able hoppers: fluidization. Not sure if this fits with your processing strategy but it also mixes the powder somewhat which prevents size segregation of the particles. And this video is pretty cool:
First thing I thought about was fluidizing the grass via forced air. Plenty of bulky stuff is handled fluidized. One good example is the hydraulic french fry maker where potatoes are fluidized using water and pushed through a slicing grate using the pressure and velocity of the flow. The water carries the french fries out of the other side just as easily.
You can probably blow it in just fine. The problem is really getting bulk materials out of hoppers. A whole world of research and engineering unto itself.
Start with a simple question like: what kind of model do you use with bulk materials. Obviously it's not a liquid, but as a solid it has tons of weird properties- No tensile strength at all. Strength depends on history of compaction. The list goes on...
you want to mix the grass with air so you have grass suspended in a flow of air just like a fluid. since you need to avoid oxygen blow this grass nitrogen suspension through some pipes and into your gassifier.
If you want to have the grass flow like water, could you take a stream of water and add grass to it? The water could carry it down a wide pipe for example, you filter the grass from the water at the destination, then send the water back to get more grass?
Things start happening to grass when you put it in water. That might be OK depending on your other processing steps. A similar idea is pneumatic transport, where you add material to an air stream and then use a cyclone to separate the air and the grass.
"Obviously we just needed a steeper cone angle, so we fabricated one at 75° but it still jammed. Perplexed, we increased the angle to 82.5°—practically a straight pipe—and it still jammed. Thus began our surprise introduction to the field of bulk material handling, where entire books have been written and companies have been founded solely to solve this issue known as ‘bridging’, and the frequently-associated ‘hammer rash’."
This is hilarious I think partly because it's such a common theme in engineering or life in general. For some reason things that initially seem so benign and straight-forward end up becoming absolute rabbit-holes of startling complexity.
I'm skeptical of most bioenergy projects that involve growing things in a field. The best by far I've seen is seen is Brazilian sugarcane to ethanol. Sugarcane is around 8% efficient at converting light into biomass, for comparison corn which the US uses for ethanol is 1-2%. Of course you then have to process those into something else to allow us humans to make use of that energy, so real efficiency is lower.
Compare that to PV solar which is around 18% in a form that humans can use. Of course electricity is more difficult to store than ethanol and hydrogen but there's a big efficiency advantage that has to be made up.
Much better would be to use organic waste. People have to pay to get rid of that stuff so if you can make it your fuel there's money to be made. Hydrothermal gasification or liquification both seem promising for that.
This is a good point, I debated whether to express things as EROI instead of efficiency. Brazilian ethanol is estimated to be about 8:1, corn ethanol is less than 2:1. According to a Wikipedia a 2015 metastudy for solar PV found between 8:1 and 40:1.
(Co-founder at Charm) Fair points. I'm not going to defend corn ethanol - our process yields 10x more saleable energy per acre than corn ethanol. The energy crop we're currently field trialing is similar to sugarcane, with extremely high yields (and our process uses the entire plant, unlike ethanol). Of course, energy crops are only required at large scale. At small scale, there's plenty of agricultural waste available for cheap, as you mentioned.
PV certainly wins on efficiency compared to crops, but it's also relatively expensive (an acre of PV vs an acre of perennial crops). Also PV is quite unremarkable at removing CO2 from the atmosphere :]
Looks like Miscanthus grass. Although shouldn't it not matter? Why not partner with a corn grower and use corn stalk or chopped corn cobs? Or gasify cardboard.
Couldn't they use a manure spreader to throw the grass onto a conveyor belt at a steady rate? Manure spreaders come with variable flow rate and beaters to shred the manure. If you threw a bale of hay in there it would tear it up and throw it nicely.
I get the desire to turn biomass into vehicle fuel.
I don't get the desire to involve hydrogen.
Biomass-derived syngas has to be substantially better in energy density and efficiency than any kind of hydrogen.
The leading industrial use for hydrogen is in oil refining, so if you outcompete conventional steam reformed hydrogen on price, you're just going to make gasoline cheaper.
Their goal as a company isn't energy density or efficiency, it's atmospheric CO2 reduction. Their production of hydrogen displaces CO2 production by other methods, uses plant mass which is sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere, and produces hydrogen fuel that can be burned or consumed in fuel cell vehicles with zero CO2 emissions. Even if it gets sold to an oil refinery in the short term, it'll have offset and sequestered CO2 compared to their previous source of hydrogen. That means the lifecycle CO2 emissions of the cars running off the resulting gasoline will be lower.
Consider the Pepsi challenge between a straight natural gas wellhead and using lawn. The natural gas tap requires no natural-gas derived fertilizer, no grid-derived irrigation, no fuel-based harvest or processing, and doesn't deplete soil of nutrients. It doesn't remove CO2 from the air but it likewise doesn't add CO2 to the air from its use of the aforementioned.
Steam reforming the natural gas and then injecting the CO2 can't be any harder than charring the grass clippings and then injecting the CO2.
At least corn-derived ethanol is a decent motor fuel, for all its limp efficiency numbers and carbon-positive growth cycle. If you're willing to overlook the warts of this hydrogen technology, I don't see why you're not instead advocating for corn-based ethanol.
And if making green industrial hydrogen is your goal, PV-powered electrolyzers can outperform this in process efficiency, complexity, scalability, and deployment cost, all without consuming fertilizer, (as much) water, or depleting soil.
(Charm Co-founder here) Ultimately our goal is large-scale CO2 removal and sequestration with biomass. This process produces an excess of energy which we can sell in various forms to fund the process. We chose to start with Hydrogen simply because it's quite easy and has a large industrial market.
Also note that the largest use of hydrogen (~50%) is actually for ammonia production as fertilizer, which alone is responsible for 1-2% of global CO2e emissions. Decarbonizing that industry would be fantastic.
That advance is for combining hydrogen and nitrogen in order to make ammonia. This company is talking about production of hydrogen, so the technologies complement one another.
Indeed, but they're also touting that the energy component of haber-bosch can come from complete combustion of the charcoal, which is where some (much?) of the economic incentive comes from to pay for 'geologic sequestration'.
If a less energy-intensive ammonia process is used, perhaps a simpler hydrogen-generating process would be a better fit. ie, if the heat can't be used directly, is this process an economically viable way to generate hydrogen?
US annual hydrogen production is approximately 10 million metric tons (1.0E+10 kg), 68% of which is used in petroleum processing.
Given that worldwide production of hydrogen-derived ammonia is 140 million tons in total, compared with hydrotreated gasoline coming in at about 2000 million tons worldwide, it doesn't appear that the U.S. is an outlier.
Decarbonizing the fertilizer industry would be fantastic. Wind-powered and solar-powered electrolyzers are already starting to do that job, perfect uses for intermittent energy sources. I'm skeptical that your process can realistically make more fertilizer than it consumes.
I find it a little disturbing that you boast "Hydrogen's quite easy" with this little public documentation to back up your claims. Be real careful here: you don't want to be the next Theranos.
You have lightning trapped in a bottle because of your luck in landing a YC slot. I encourage you to consider pivoting technologies away from anything involving hydrogen. Since you're such a big fan of ammonia, why not just go straight for that? Getting your nitrogen from the plant instead of from the air might stand a better chance to beat Haber-Bosch.
(1) electrolysis is much more expensive than steam methane reformation, so unfortunately I don't think it's gaining much steam as a real hydrogen production method.
(2) typical ammonia fertilizer application is 0.125 tons/acre/year at a price of $500/ton = $62.50/acre/year. Our grass and gasification process yields $1,750/acre/year worth of hydrogen... so roughly a 28:1 financial return on the fertilizer input which is probably pretty close to the EROI (Energy Return on Investment)
(3) To clarify "hydrogen is quite easy"... not on an absolute basis (which is quite hard), but relative to other products that could be produced. For example, you mention ammonia, but ammonia production has enormous economies of scale benefits from complex compression systems and pressure chambers... if you run the math it doesn't work out as favorably as hydrogen, and it's substantially more complex and difficult.
(4) We are funded by an amazing group of angel investors, but that does not include YC.
(1) You should check out https://wcroc.cfans.umn.edu/wcroc-news/ammonia-wind (the title specifically mentions "gaining momentum"). (Bear in mind this technology works by making H2 first from electrolysis). There's a half-dozen more of these research groups. Wind and solar electrolysis are sensible because they can be placed next to ammonia consumers that currently have to have ammonia shipped in from thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, your technology is tied to CO2 injection wells, which aren't all that common outside the western US.
(2) I'd love to see your math, but assuming it's not available, let me show you my math: Assume 6000 pounds per acre per year yield of wet grass. Say that's 5000 pounds dried. Model grass as 100% cellulose, which is 6% by weight hydrogen. Assume 100% process efficiency, where you get all the hydrogen out, and it's magically compressed. 300 pounds of hydrogen sounds like a lot, but according to wikipedia, is only worth about 32 cents a pound at the pipe. So my numbers show $100/acre/year. The value goes way up at the "pump", but that's because of transportation infrastructure that neither you nor your competition provide. That also assumes free injection of low-pressure waste CO2, which is not only a fantasy, but presumably ties your process to a location far away from your target market for the H2.
(3) Ammonia solves your hydrogen storage and transmission problem, so my math shows it's way favorable, especially since you're triply tied to a CO2 injection site, fertile acreage to grow your grass, and an H2 consumer. Picking ammonia makes cost-effective transportation to the consumer possible. Realistically, you'd react the ammonia with CO2 to make urea, which is way better than ammonia for both transportation costs and market demand.
(4) Didn't say YC funded you, but you were in their demo day, hence my mention of the YC slot.
(1) When we investigated this last year the ammonia synthesis capex looked untenable and we didn't see a path to lower that capex. Re:injection wells... they are super common in Texas/Louisiana region as well, which happens to be where most of the US refining capacity and ammonia production is located, so we're very near customers there.
(2) 6000 dry lbs/acre/year = 3 dry tons/acre/year which is an extremely low yield. Even miscanthus and switchgrass get over 10 dry tons/acre/year, energy cane gets to 20 dry tons/acre/year and our grass gets to 25+ dry tons/acre/year. So that brings your $100/acre/year up to $800+/acre/year. Then for the chemistry it's important to note that much of the hydrogen gas produced is actually coming from H2O that reacts with carbon in the cellulose to produce 2 H2 + CO2. So, stoichiometrically you get significantly more than the elemental hydrogen content of the grass itself. That gets you another factor of 2 or so... and then we're at the $1750/acre/year mentioned in the parent comment.
(3) Agreed the transportation costs are better for ammonia, but we aren't actually transporting the hydrogen except over a feeder pipe into a refinery or ammonia plant. It's cheaper and simpler to transport the grass as opposed to the hydrogen, mostly because you get to avoid the pre-transport compression energy and losses. Again, as in (1) the issue with ammonia is the heavy capex based around Haber-Bosch pressure vessels and compressors... we didn't have any good ideas for reducing those costs, so there's no sense in competing there.
(4) We weren't at YC's demo day... not sure what you're referring to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(1) Since you're limiting yourself to the gulf region, it'd probably be responsible to disclose your CO2 injection costs, including the cost of compressing the CO2 to the necessary pressures. It'd also be responsible to either disavow or embrace enhanced oil recovery vs. other injection approaches: you're either devoted to reducing carbon or making gasoline cheaper, and you have to choose.
(2) If these numbers are accurate, you're doing yourself a disservice by burying them. 25+ dry tons/acre/year is amazing. And I thought the crab grass on my lawn grew fast.
I seriously doubt your chemistry, however. Let's look at your three possible approaches (2b sounding the most like what you're claiming to do):
(2a). Charring: Hopefully using all that free low-grade heat from the refinery you colocate with, the cellulose cooks until all the hydrogens join with the ample oxygens in the cellulose and you end up with a char and steam. No hydrogen this way.
(2b). Steam Reforming: This tech works with natural gas because the C:H ratio is so low, and no oxygen is introduced that doesn't bring its own "dates". Because the C=O bond in carbon monoxide is so strong, you can leach off some of the H2. However, as soon as you raise that C:H ratio, or up the available oxygen, steam reforming fails and just becomes combustion. C:H in cellulose is 6:10 vs. methane's 1:4. And that's before the 5 oxygens (vs. methane's 0) ruin it further. No hydrogen this way.
(2c). Fischer-Tropsch (the original Hans and Franz): In a chamber about as expensive as your Haber-Bosch capex, you somehow convert dried grass and catalyst to a mix of H2 and CO, the latter of which you can convert into more H2. Doesn't sound like you're using this approach, though it could technically work if pressure cooking your grass didn't require ridiculous amounts of energy, and you had a way to separate the H2 from the syngas. How many MJ of energy is that? So, maybe Hydrogen this way.
(2d) What'd I miss?
(3) Ok, so your co-founder's protestations about making gasoline cheaper were unnecessary, and you co-locate with oil refineries. Instead of downplaying it, own it: grassoline is trademarked but not for the type of product you'd make. Makes sense to leverage someone else's existing capex, as long as they let you. Those oil guys are flush with cash, why are you distancing yourself from them? They'd love to have your CO2 if it's at high enough pressure.
(4) My mistake. Your timing was highly coincidental with Demo Day, technology looked like it could have been part of it, and the faulty assumption was mine.
Are there hydrogen pipelines that make it easy to sell hydrogen on a larger regional market, or will you have to deal with a ton of transport issues too?
How advanced is the hydrogen production prototype?
Looking at the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming this looks like a difficult process, even when using methane that is a very small molecule and is easy to purify. Big molecules in grass are more eager to produce soot that would block the machine, and grass also has other elements like Nitrogen and Phosphorus that may react with the catalyzer, and there is the ash problem.
Is using a grass more efficient that burning the grass and use the energy to produce Hydrogen with the standard method?
What about producing ethanol from the grass and then using the ethanol to make the Hydrogen? (Both parts are somewhat proven technology.) And ethanol is easy to move and purify than grass.
Is there a reason you need to make it flow as opposed to simply conveying it mechanically? It seems like you came up with a complicated solution (making solids behave like liquids) when there are plenty of simpler solids handling techniques that could be used. For example a belt or screw conveyor.
110 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadIf you want to read it don't get stuck at the top (the start makes it seem like the article is about gasification instead), keep going till the images start.
Side note: From read this article they desperately need some experts. They are re-solving solved problems, and not working on what their startup is actually about. (I should add that them seem to be aware of this.)
That was my thought as well. These guys may have a viable business idea, but they don't appear to have any engineering experience at all, nor do they appear to understand that one can research for existing solutions, or hire/consult with experts. It doesn't bode well for the entire enterprise.
"If you are want to consume carbon-neutral hydrogen, please reach us at sales@charmindustrial.com"
I wish them the best of luck, but I've seen the first wave of biofuels fail and pivot to selling cosmetics or go under (Amyris, Solazyme, LS9). Sure, this is different, but the economics haven't really changed. It's damn hard to compete against something you can pump out of the ground and has no price tag on its externalities.
Personally, I think more effort put into lobbying and activism is better spent. I know we have the technology to make carbon-neutral fuels. I sincerely hope that we transition to using something like EVs for all ground-based transport and biofuels for applications like jet travel that need the energy density.
However, it's the market and the economics that don't work out. And they don't work in a way that prevents you from having easy stepping stones to scaling up. There's basically no-one who will buy this commodity at small scale for a much higher price. You have to succeed completely or fail.
You can even look at startups using conventional approaches and cheap feedstock (Siluria with methane). 10 years and still working on their tech. These big commodity markets have huge players who have huge competitive advantages.
And if you check the articles people already make those. I guess their "new thing" is using grass? switchgrass is usually considered the best plant for this.
I don't really understand why they are reinventing things that already exist.
People have been lobbying and protesting for years, I don't believe it's going to fix things on its own. Policy makers need legitimate technology options to put support behind, and that's what we intend to develop.
Thankfully you are simply incorrect that "no-one who will buy this commodity at small scale for a much higher price". We are in active sales conversations with a number of buyers who are very much willing to pay a premium for the commodity given its reduced carbon intensity.
(1) we agree wholeheartedly on the experts front — for the core technology around gasification we've been working with a variety of PhDs, national labs and companies with extensive previous gasification experience,
(2) the gasification technology we're developing is actually fairly novel and unfortunately in this industry that means patenting is in our future, which means that we're not going to blog about the core parts of our gasification system... instead we can blog about the surrounding systems that still represent interesting challenges. So that's why we blogged about grass flow. Rest assured 95% of our time is going into gasification ;)
I’ve been in bed sick all day with a terrible cold and my sinuses are packed solid.
I had a headache and so out of bordeum tried using my black and decker buffer to massage my head and relieve my headache (I use the buffer as an awesome massager and modded it with a variable speed switch).
To my surprise it worked on the headache and also liquified my sinuses.
A quick google search turned up a few other people playing with vibrators for congestion and at least one patent.
Funny to come across this after experimenting with getting solids to behave at liquids via vibration all day.
Don't give in to temptation and stop too early and blow your nose! Keep going till you have full air flow, only then blow your nose (otherwise the pressure of blowing your nose closes things up again).
After that, consciously keep the nostril on the same side as your headache open, and let the other side close.
The closure is blood vessels in your nose swelling, it's not compacted material. When you exercise your body recognizes the need for more air and reverses the swelling. You don't usually notice, but it's normal to breathe with only one nostril at a time (and the body opens both when there is great demand for air). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle
Anyway, since there is no actual material compaction, your vibration did not work for the reason you think, rather it acted as a massage for the swollen (irritated) blood vessels.
https://www.afflovest.com/
They make it sound fancier than just vibrations though
But then I found an old Lutron floor dimmer switch in a drawer and it worked perfectly.
The black and decker is a 2 prong plug.
This is seriously an awesome tool / toy.
I’ve seen other massagers for like $700 that are basically the same thing rebranded.
Black & Decker WP900 Buffer
Lutron Credenza Dimmer TT-300
I think the logical next step is to put a boxing glove on a sawzall.
Painful, but effective.
Perfect sustenance for spherical cows.
> allowing us to use a simple, funnel-like hopper.
But, since that one didn't vibrate, it could hardly be called a grasshopper.
Engineering students discover that real world specialized solutions are in fact optimized for what they do. Water is wet. More breaking news at 11.
How much geological sequestration capacity exists, how long term is the sequestration, and what is the cost of securing it at the necessary scales? Is feedstock local to sequestration formations, and if not, has the transport been factored in?
Why not biogas as a turbine feedstock and sell carbon neutral electricity on the grid (offsetting extracted hydrocarbon)?
What about hydrogen being (my understanding) an indirect plastic byproduct?
What was the drawback of monetizing bio char volatiles while selling the "waste" as a soil amendment products?
I only ask these because I very much want this to succeed and I'm glad to see this here. I get the feeling that the point is very much finding an economic basis for sequestration.
1. In North America alone we have 32,000 gigatons of geological sequestration storage capacity... about 900 years of global carbon dioxide emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
2. We looked at generating electricity, and many others have built and operated biomass-to-electricity plants. The economics don't work out... electricity is very cheap. Most of the biomass-to-electricity plants in California are closing up shop now.
3. Hydrogen may be a byproduct of some plastics manufacturing processes, but not nearly on the scale consumed.
4. Yes, hydrogen is a (cleaned up) biochar volatile! We consume most of the biochar itself as the energy source for heating the gasifier. Any excess biochar will be sold as soil amendment.
I suspect that is a tendentious estimate, considering no indicative amount of CO2 has yet been geologically sequestered and observed for effects. The wikipedia article has a graphic with CO2 being pumped into a "deep aquifer".
LOL, easy peasy then
Can you make "grass charcoal"? If so, just pile the grass high and cover in a layer of clay before burning, as is done with wood. Then bury the charcoal, which also improves the soil
For one, biochar is typically produced in small, low-efficiency reactors without proper emissions control (though this is solvable). The bigger issue is the high energy content of biochar (~30MJ/kg). Simply burying all of this energy isn't economical - it makes much more sense to store carbon in its oxidized state, and sell the energy that's released in the process (in various forms - we're starting with Hydrogen).
The latest research seems to show that done properly, biochar can improve crop yields substantially, so that could be a way to pay for the process, but the other aspect is that it can be produced in a very low-tech manner, which is almost certainly the situation in many or most parts of the world.
How are you planning 'geological carbon dioxide sequestration'? I'm not sure of the chemistry/process, but is burning the charcoal completely actually necessary to produce hydrogen? It seems not, to me. The cynical view of course is that you will omit the costly sequestration step, which makes this just another biofuel endeavor, with the attendant pros, and, mainly (IMHO), cons...
Specifically, she talks about the results of the Sleipner Project in the North Sea, where they've measured leakage rates, etc: https://youtu.be/lIVwbSnD0AI?t=1199
The Sleipner Project for geological carbon sequestration has been ongoing for 20 years with extremely rigorous measurement. We also know that natural gas is stored in geological deposits for millions of years, and in vast quantities. I don't see a strong reason to be skeptical of long-term sequestration a slightly different gas in those same geological formations.
If no other energy source is available, does this % change?
https://precast.org/2010/05/using-fly-ash-in-concrete/
Typically only change the shape of the hopper in one direction at at time as you move down. This often leads to hoppers with an exit that is a slot and not round.
We've used these powder consultants before and I took a week long course on hopper design: http://powdernotes.com
Edit - another method we use to create empty-able hoppers: fluidization. Not sure if this fits with your processing strategy but it also mixes the powder somewhat which prevents size segregation of the particles. And this video is pretty cool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My4RA5I0FKs
Start with a simple question like: what kind of model do you use with bulk materials. Obviously it's not a liquid, but as a solid it has tons of weird properties- No tensile strength at all. Strength depends on history of compaction. The list goes on...
This is hilarious I think partly because it's such a common theme in engineering or life in general. For some reason things that initially seem so benign and straight-forward end up becoming absolute rabbit-holes of startling complexity.
Compare that to PV solar which is around 18% in a form that humans can use. Of course electricity is more difficult to store than ethanol and hydrogen but there's a big efficiency advantage that has to be made up.
Much better would be to use organic waste. People have to pay to get rid of that stuff so if you can make it your fuel there's money to be made. Hydrothermal gasification or liquification both seem promising for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...
PV certainly wins on efficiency compared to crops, but it's also relatively expensive (an acre of PV vs an acre of perennial crops). Also PV is quite unremarkable at removing CO2 from the atmosphere :]
Good work! Grasses are the best energy crops, but a serious pain to gasify (or burn, for that matter). Silica plus alkali metals => glass.
Here is an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhvMMK91P-8
Biomass-derived syngas has to be substantially better in energy density and efficiency than any kind of hydrogen.
The leading industrial use for hydrogen is in oil refining, so if you outcompete conventional steam reformed hydrogen on price, you're just going to make gasoline cheaper.
Steam reforming the natural gas and then injecting the CO2 can't be any harder than charring the grass clippings and then injecting the CO2.
At least corn-derived ethanol is a decent motor fuel, for all its limp efficiency numbers and carbon-positive growth cycle. If you're willing to overlook the warts of this hydrogen technology, I don't see why you're not instead advocating for corn-based ethanol.
And if making green industrial hydrogen is your goal, PV-powered electrolyzers can outperform this in process efficiency, complexity, scalability, and deployment cost, all without consuming fertilizer, (as much) water, or depleting soil.
Also note that the largest use of hydrogen (~50%) is actually for ammonia production as fertilizer, which alone is responsible for 1-2% of global CO2e emissions. Decarbonizing that industry would be fantastic.
Don't mean to rain on the parade, but I am skeptical
If a less energy-intensive ammonia process is used, perhaps a simpler hydrogen-generating process would be a better fit. ie, if the heat can't be used directly, is this process an economically viable way to generate hydrogen?
US annual hydrogen production is approximately 10 million metric tons (1.0E+10 kg), 68% of which is used in petroleum processing.
Given that worldwide production of hydrogen-derived ammonia is 140 million tons in total, compared with hydrotreated gasoline coming in at about 2000 million tons worldwide, it doesn't appear that the U.S. is an outlier.
Decarbonizing the fertilizer industry would be fantastic. Wind-powered and solar-powered electrolyzers are already starting to do that job, perfect uses for intermittent energy sources. I'm skeptical that your process can realistically make more fertilizer than it consumes.
I find it a little disturbing that you boast "Hydrogen's quite easy" with this little public documentation to back up your claims. Be real careful here: you don't want to be the next Theranos.
You have lightning trapped in a bottle because of your luck in landing a YC slot. I encourage you to consider pivoting technologies away from anything involving hydrogen. Since you're such a big fan of ammonia, why not just go straight for that? Getting your nitrogen from the plant instead of from the air might stand a better chance to beat Haber-Bosch.
(1) electrolysis is much more expensive than steam methane reformation, so unfortunately I don't think it's gaining much steam as a real hydrogen production method.
(2) typical ammonia fertilizer application is 0.125 tons/acre/year at a price of $500/ton = $62.50/acre/year. Our grass and gasification process yields $1,750/acre/year worth of hydrogen... so roughly a 28:1 financial return on the fertilizer input which is probably pretty close to the EROI (Energy Return on Investment)
(3) To clarify "hydrogen is quite easy"... not on an absolute basis (which is quite hard), but relative to other products that could be produced. For example, you mention ammonia, but ammonia production has enormous economies of scale benefits from complex compression systems and pressure chambers... if you run the math it doesn't work out as favorably as hydrogen, and it's substantially more complex and difficult.
(4) We are funded by an amazing group of angel investors, but that does not include YC.
(2) I'd love to see your math, but assuming it's not available, let me show you my math: Assume 6000 pounds per acre per year yield of wet grass. Say that's 5000 pounds dried. Model grass as 100% cellulose, which is 6% by weight hydrogen. Assume 100% process efficiency, where you get all the hydrogen out, and it's magically compressed. 300 pounds of hydrogen sounds like a lot, but according to wikipedia, is only worth about 32 cents a pound at the pipe. So my numbers show $100/acre/year. The value goes way up at the "pump", but that's because of transportation infrastructure that neither you nor your competition provide. That also assumes free injection of low-pressure waste CO2, which is not only a fantasy, but presumably ties your process to a location far away from your target market for the H2.
(3) Ammonia solves your hydrogen storage and transmission problem, so my math shows it's way favorable, especially since you're triply tied to a CO2 injection site, fertile acreage to grow your grass, and an H2 consumer. Picking ammonia makes cost-effective transportation to the consumer possible. Realistically, you'd react the ammonia with CO2 to make urea, which is way better than ammonia for both transportation costs and market demand.
(4) Didn't say YC funded you, but you were in their demo day, hence my mention of the YC slot.
(2) 6000 dry lbs/acre/year = 3 dry tons/acre/year which is an extremely low yield. Even miscanthus and switchgrass get over 10 dry tons/acre/year, energy cane gets to 20 dry tons/acre/year and our grass gets to 25+ dry tons/acre/year. So that brings your $100/acre/year up to $800+/acre/year. Then for the chemistry it's important to note that much of the hydrogen gas produced is actually coming from H2O that reacts with carbon in the cellulose to produce 2 H2 + CO2. So, stoichiometrically you get significantly more than the elemental hydrogen content of the grass itself. That gets you another factor of 2 or so... and then we're at the $1750/acre/year mentioned in the parent comment.
(3) Agreed the transportation costs are better for ammonia, but we aren't actually transporting the hydrogen except over a feeder pipe into a refinery or ammonia plant. It's cheaper and simpler to transport the grass as opposed to the hydrogen, mostly because you get to avoid the pre-transport compression energy and losses. Again, as in (1) the issue with ammonia is the heavy capex based around Haber-Bosch pressure vessels and compressors... we didn't have any good ideas for reducing those costs, so there's no sense in competing there.
(4) We weren't at YC's demo day... not sure what you're referring to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(2) If these numbers are accurate, you're doing yourself a disservice by burying them. 25+ dry tons/acre/year is amazing. And I thought the crab grass on my lawn grew fast. I seriously doubt your chemistry, however. Let's look at your three possible approaches (2b sounding the most like what you're claiming to do):
(2a). Charring: Hopefully using all that free low-grade heat from the refinery you colocate with, the cellulose cooks until all the hydrogens join with the ample oxygens in the cellulose and you end up with a char and steam. No hydrogen this way.
(2b). Steam Reforming: This tech works with natural gas because the C:H ratio is so low, and no oxygen is introduced that doesn't bring its own "dates". Because the C=O bond in carbon monoxide is so strong, you can leach off some of the H2. However, as soon as you raise that C:H ratio, or up the available oxygen, steam reforming fails and just becomes combustion. C:H in cellulose is 6:10 vs. methane's 1:4. And that's before the 5 oxygens (vs. methane's 0) ruin it further. No hydrogen this way.
(2c). Fischer-Tropsch (the original Hans and Franz): In a chamber about as expensive as your Haber-Bosch capex, you somehow convert dried grass and catalyst to a mix of H2 and CO, the latter of which you can convert into more H2. Doesn't sound like you're using this approach, though it could technically work if pressure cooking your grass didn't require ridiculous amounts of energy, and you had a way to separate the H2 from the syngas. How many MJ of energy is that? So, maybe Hydrogen this way.
(2d) What'd I miss?
(3) Ok, so your co-founder's protestations about making gasoline cheaper were unnecessary, and you co-locate with oil refineries. Instead of downplaying it, own it: grassoline is trademarked but not for the type of product you'd make. Makes sense to leverage someone else's existing capex, as long as they let you. Those oil guys are flush with cash, why are you distancing yourself from them? They'd love to have your CO2 if it's at high enough pressure.
(4) My mistake. Your timing was highly coincidental with Demo Day, technology looked like it could have been part of it, and the faulty assumption was mine.
Looking at the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming this looks like a difficult process, even when using methane that is a very small molecule and is easy to purify. Big molecules in grass are more eager to produce soot that would block the machine, and grass also has other elements like Nitrogen and Phosphorus that may react with the catalyzer, and there is the ash problem.
Is using a grass more efficient that burning the grass and use the energy to produce Hydrogen with the standard method?
What about producing ethanol from the grass and then using the ethanol to make the Hydrogen? (Both parts are somewhat proven technology.) And ethanol is easy to move and purify than grass.