First Commercial Plant in U.S. to Produce Biofuel from Wood

It is fundamentally different as it uses pyrolysis instead of fermentation. This oil could potentially be turned into all sorts of products.

Just a question to all your American members .I am Australian and we had a recent change of govt and have since 'signed on'to the Kyoto protocol,leaving the USA as the only non signatory.Whats the opinions out there on the importance of this issue?

How much energy does fast pyrolosis use? Where does that energy come from? I know pyrolosis has been the stumbling block in other extraction processes because of the 400+ degree temperatures required. How are they making their plant cost effective?

Atmospherically, Mssrs. Erickson and Williams, we know that CO2 levels are higher than any other time measured in ice cores in arctic and antarctic ice.

We know that high CO2 levels in ice coincided with warm epochs.

More importantly, that same data shows we are on the warming upswing of a 100,000 year cycle, and should expect two or three more degress of warming before the peak.

Dear Murray Rose
Art Erikson is an idividual who is in a rapidally shrinking minority and should really be perusing some other website where his spreading of self professed ingnorance is appreciated

It is my understanding we did sign the document, we just never ratified it. That should answer your question.

Personally, I think the co2 scare is alarmist and based on poorly tested science. It would appear someone correlated the release of co2 with industrial output and that is what they want to reduce - industry.

I'am not doubting that this planet has experianced previous warming periods. My question would be how much has the releasing of millions or maybe billions of yrs. of stored carbon affected or even initiated our current warming trend. Could you prove a theory to the contrary that would be as widely accepted in the scientic community I doubt it! It's really a no-brainer when realistically taking all the accumulated evidence into account. My comment was prompted by how tired I get of people like mr. Erikson, who if he doesn't believe there's a need for renewable energy for what ever reason the enviroment just being the most important. What the heck is he wasting his time on this website?

Slow and Fast Pyrolysis technologies are very slow and require substantial energy for thermal processes. Gasification in any form is difficult to control. Reconstitution of gases to liquid will result in a very low-grade, oxygen heavy oil that will demonstrate neglible aromatic characteristics.
Converting 200 tons (400,000 lbs) of wood waste per day to 34,000 gallons (809.5 barrels) of Pyrolysis crude at water based weight of 8.345 lbs per gallon = 6,755 lbs of PC. This equates to using 2,600,000,000 (value of raw wood)Btus to produce 2,837,300,000 Btus of raw PC. A net gain of 237,300,000 without the costs of feedstock prep, plant investment, transportation, and energy to produce the very small net gain of Btus. Combusted as raw biomass in electricity generation, the wood produces 761,793 KWh per day. Combusted as PC bunker oil, the net is 69,528 KWh per day.
Bob Hennkens