I was just about to say...

till I was cut off by our resident nuclear crank seth, that this is probably the product that will be fed to Children's Hospital in Vancouver when they build their new power plant sometime next year. While the old one is in good condition, with a total energy conversion of more than 35% for the plant and more than 40% for the oldest boilers, the word is out for a new combined-cycle power plant in a new location with a new fuel source... yes, the City of Vancouver is mandating a "green" energy supply, and the only one they can think of to do it with is "pellets" or "hog".

Won't that just impress the hell out of the residents - 3 delivery trucks a day of 10-20 yards of "pellets", continuous noise from the front-end loader to push the piles into the hopper, water sprays to prevent accidental combustion, the stench of rotting "hog" when someone up high and upwind decides we can't afford to run on "pellets" any more, a semi-trailer a day to the dump of collected fly-ash, and the grey-white residue we can't catch in our new 99.9% scrubbers parking itself on your lawn, your car, your plants, your houses.....

And all with a budget of $5 million for a 10MW/150,000 lbs/hr plant. And you can double that if they decide it would be a good idea to supply VGH too in the steam line they just recommissioned between the two.

Oh, there's a market for this, a political market, but a market nevertheless. That's why I mostly ignore seth's worthless contributions, thogh in this case, he got it partly right in that "flex fuels" will be an answer, though only part of the time....

just fabulous

My 75 mins. a day sitting in traffic will be so much easier to take knowing that my car is burning ethanol/electricity/unicorn farts rather than oil.

That's progress.

waste burner

With the GVRD's new ultra efficient waste burner which I assume will use COGEN, why not take all that hog fuel going to the hospital and this stupid tree plantation output and dump in there. The ash can be repackaged as biochar.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy and as green as green can be - cept for the dioxins and ruined forest ecology.

The hospital then can then run COGEN on the waste burner's gas output claiming a tax credit no dump trucks needed.

Always love to hear another nuclear deniers spew. You got something to say Zalm take a shot. Better men than you have tried and died.

BUT, DON'T YOU HAVE TO CUT THE TREES DOWN?

What will the urban eco-fruitcakes say? "OH MY GAWD!! THEIR RAPING THE EARTH !!" There will be an invasion of naked bikers to protest! Dreadknots will chain themselves to cottonwoods! Snarling Grannies will pitch tents in their limbs! Protesters will leave more garbage on the ground than fireworks watchers!
Gawd, I'm having flashbacks!!

Why trees for fuel, why not industrial hemp?

Wouldn't hemp be better? It certainly grows faster than trees. It was also used for centuries for paper. Why not now?

North of Hope - I Hope you will Learn about Energy:

What is Green Nuclear Energy?

Nuclear Energy does not emit significant CO2 (full lifecycle) and has a small environmental footprint. See the highly regarded ExternE report. Nuclear has the lowest Environmental impact of any form of Energy production:

http://gabe.web.psi.ch/projects/externe_pol/index.html

What is Carbon Neutral Methanol?

Carbon Neutral means that the fuel does not produce significant full lifecycle CO2 emissions.

How will methanol be converted to a synthetic diesel?

This is well known chemistry. For Instance Shell has the GTL process for methane to synthetic diesel - Germany made synthetic diesel during WWII from Coal, as did South Africa during apartheid.

What is "high energy density"?

Diesel has an energy density of 10 kwh/liter.
Gasoline is 8.6 kwh/l
Propane is 5.7 kwh/l
Methanol is 4.3 kwh/l
Liquid H2 is 2.6 kwh/l
Dry Wood is 2.1 kwh/l
CNG @ 3000 psi is 2.2 kwh/l
H2 @ 3000 psi is 0.75 kwh/l

Uranium, fully burned in a High Burn Reactor, like a MSR or IFR produces 416 million kwh/l.

Some applications like aircraft, a high energy density is highly desirable. For most applications like home heating, long distance trucking and light duty vehicles, methanol has a sufficiently high energy density and most importantly is easy to store, easy to transport, safe to handle and spills are trivial.

YCSTS & Green Energy

You are saying that "green" means it doesn't produce too much CO2. It still produces very dangerous radioactive wastes that will be around for 1 000's of years. I don't consider pollutants like that to be green.

When methanol is burned, one of the products os CO2 and the other is water, usually. Sometimes you will get CO. In any event , CO2 will be produced. It cannot be carbon neutral. It is also highly poisonous. Ingesting this may lead to serious injury such as blindness or death. This was one of the big problems with bootleg liquor. Its spills are not trivial.

When you talk about "energy density", I would suggest you refer to the quantities in terms of moles per litre. It is then easier to make the comparisons. The liquid H2 that is referred to will convert to a gas before it it burned.

Nuclear waste and ethanol

THe methanol is carbon neutral because it can be or is made from bio carbon or atmospheric CO2 combined with nuclear produced hydrogen. No new CO2 is produced.

What the Hopester calls nuclear waste is really nuclear fuel.The worlds current supply of nuclear waste covering a football field 40 feet deep could power the world for hundreds of years either reprocessed into MOX fuel for current generation reactors, or burned in the new GenIV units like India's new 500 MW plant. Areva claims MOX fuel is already as cheap as enriched uranium.

Now that's what I call renewable energy wouldn't you say.

Since the waste is already there the only way to get rid of it is to burn it in new reactors anyway. The argument is a canard.

nuclear waste can be

“burned in the new GenIV units like India's new 500 MW plant”

Can you provide more info: when and where was it turned up?

North of Hope - Greenie Religious Zealot?

North of Hope, from your response, I must conclude you are Hopeless. An obvious Green Religious Zealot – you can’t reason with people like that. They are so obstinate in their wacky Green Fantasy, they just block their minds to all logical argument.

Hopeless says: “…It still produces very dangerous radioactive wastes that will be around for 1 000's of years. I don't consider pollutants like that to be green…”

Then you don’t consider any tech green, since virtually anything humans produce, in one way or another produces toxic wastes that last for thousands of years. That especially includes Wind Turbines & Solar Panels. How about NG & Coal radioactive waste which is dumped right into the atmosphere and in uncontrolled landfills and even directly into our homes.

Hopeless says: “…methanol is burned, one of the products os CO2 and the other is water, usually. .. CO2 will be produced. It cannot be carbon neutral…”

That’s true of all biomass consumption. It can be argued that all biomass is NOT carbon neutral, since using it does produce CO2, vs burying it which doesn’t, at least for a long time. However, Greenpeace, the Green Party, the EU, the Kyoto Agreement and most Gov’t claim Biomass is Carbon Neutral, because it was produced from atmospheric carbon, which will be returned to the atmosphere on combustion.

Hopeless says: “ [Methanol] is also highly poisonous…Its spills are not trivial…”

Methanol is a primate poison. So? Do you drink gasoline & diesel? The EPA limit on the Benzene fumes from Gasoline (a deadly carcinogen) is 1ppm for 8 hrs. Methanol is 200ppm for 8hrs – not a carcinogen. Many plants & animals are also contain human poisons. You want to get rid of them to? Methanol spills ARE INDEED TRIVIAL. You ever spilled any Methanol on the ground. It evaporates within minutes. Large spills can be washed down with water as it is completely miscible in water. They add millions of gallons of it to sewage treatment effluent to destroy nitrates. A dilute Methanol solution can even be sprayed on plants to make them grow faster.

Hopeless says: “…When you talk about "energy density", I would suggest you refer to the quantities in terms of moles per liter…”

That would be stupid. The important issue with fuels is volumetric energy density. In some cases, like aircraft, weight energy density is also important.

HEMP WON'T HAPPEN!

As long as our American (friends) are running things hemp (marijuana) will remain illegal. It does after all pose a huge threat to their petroleum industries and the accompanying tax base. Remember that "Prohibition" was created so that farmers could not legally make alcohol to run their tractors. Hemp,the evil weed is still a bane to industry, and will remain so until all the easy profits are taken. That is unless, we take arms against this sea of corporate control and thus "end" our rape.

@ YCSTS and seth

To quote from Wikipedia, "Generation IV reactors (Gen IV) are a set of theoretical nuclear reactor designs currently being researched. Most of these designs are generally not expected to be available for commercial construction before 2030, with the exception of a version of the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) called the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP). The NGNP is to be completed by 2021." Note they are not now in use as you implied when you said,"the new GenIV units like India's new 500 MW plant." Scientists do not yet know if they will work.
Your comments about methanol do not detract from the fact that it is extremely poisonous.
If you are going to compare the energy released form a chemical, esp. gases, you do not say how much energy is released from a litre
of the gas as its pressure and temperature are also an important factors. Therefore scientists say how much energy is released per mole of the substance so they can compare them.
You seem to know nothing about methanol so I suggest you do some research to find out about it. It vaporizes very easily and is also highly flammable.
You seem to behave like someone from PAB, attack the person and call them names rather than use logic to support your argument. It would be interesting to see some logic and scientific basis to support your point of view, rather than the skipping stone approach that is employed. That is the approach where the stone bounces across the water until it loses energy then it sinks to the bottom.

North of Hope - you just don't get it!

Hopeless: “…Note they are not now in use as you implied when you said,"the new GenIV units like India's new 500 MW plant." Scientists do not yet know if they will work…”

Nonsense. You are confused with the GIF ( GenIV International Forum) Nuclear Reactor R&D boondoggle, based in the USA, which is a bit of a joke, since it receives very little funding and has ignored some of the most promising designs, like LIFTR. Fast Reactors, Modular Reactors, Small Reactors and Thorium reactors are all being developed and have been used for several decades. India’s 500 MW Fast Reactor is scheduled to be generating power next year. Many Fast and Molten Salt reactors have been developed and used successfully. The Russian BN-600 fast reactor has been supplying electricity to the grid since 1980 and is said to have the best operating and production record of all Russia's nuclear power units.

Hopeless: “…about methanol do not detract from the fact that it is extremely poisonous…”

Actually Methanol is generally a non-toxic natural substance, that has a peculiar effect on primates, since primates have evolved the ability to process the ethyl alcohol in fermented fruits. The same enzyme that brakes down ethyl alcohol converts methanol into formaldehyde which is converted to Formic Acid in the blood. After a period of 10-24hrs the Formic Acid will build up to a sufficient level to attack nerve tissue. It is easily treatable before it does damage, unlike gasoline of which 1 tsp entering the lungs is almost immediately fatal. Methanol is widely sold in grocery stores in flimsy plastic containers as fondue fuel and has been used for over 50 yrs by kids as fuel for model airplane engines. Gasoline is just too toxic & dangerous to handle. There has not been a significant issue of Methanol Poisoning anywhere it has been used for vehicle fuel use, including Canada in the early 90’s, USA and China (currently the biggest consumer of Methanol for vehicle fuel).

Hopeless: “…to know nothing about methanol so I suggest you do some research to find out about it. It vaporizes very easily and is also highly flammable…”

You know nothing about Methanol. So it is flammable – duh, it’s a fuel. The EPA states replacing Gasoline with Methanol will reduce vehicle fire related deaths & injuries by 95%. That’s why they’ve used it in race car engines for 50 yrs. And energy per mole is irrelevant to a discussion of a fuel’s viability for transport. It is energy per volume & energy per mass that is relevant. It is also the cleanest burning of all liquid at STP fuels.

Methanol/DME as a fuel:

http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/ggfrforum06/pariente/taupy.ppt

Methanol fuel use in China:

http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=148:chinatakesgoldinmethanolfuel&catid=82:asia&Itemid=324

Biomass Power - BP - a Dangerous SCAM promoted by Big Petroleum

RickW, you sound like Amory Lovins, who admits much of his funding comes from BP - Big Petroleum. Now why does BP fund proponents of small energy, distributed energy, energy efficiency, renewable energy, biofuels, carbon capture/CCS & pie-in-the-sky energy?

Because they know damn well it won't do dick to impair their Energy Hegemony. It just gives the gullible populace and politicians an opportunity to blow 100's of $billions on useless SCAMs that may even increase fossil fuel consumption.

I love Home Energy. I love home energy independence. But Solar Panels, home Biodiesel & Wind Turbines ain't going to do ZIP to achieve that, except for the very isolated remote few, who are entirely insignificant. Someday, I dream we will have the home particle accelerator which will generate my entire home energy needs from a piece of Thorium half the size of a dime - for an entire year. Until then we are stuck with Big Power - although small factory produced Nuclear Power are the only currently feasible somewhat alternative to that.

As it is, I would need 1 HA of Hemp to supply my home Electricity & Heat requirements. That does not include heat energy for drying (air/sun drying is a BIG assumption), harvesting, planting, irrigation, pest control, packaging & transportation.

Add 2.3 HA of Hemp for Biodiesel to supply the avg Canadian Vehicle travel distance burnt in a Jeep Cherokee diesel.

That's 3.3 HA of Hemp just for little old me.

Canada's Arable Land per capita is 1.3 HA. It takes .25 HA of land to feed one person, quite well. So I need 13X that just for heat, electricity & vehicle fuel.

Include my share of Canada's per capita Energy Consumption of 132,000 kwh/yr/person and that is up to 8.1 ha of hemp per person. 6X the Arable Land in Canada and 32X the amount of land to feed one person - decent diet. 162X the land for a minimal diet.

And that is ignoring the above mentioned huge energy inputs to Hemp or any other Biomass production.

Sorry, RickW it won't work. You are talking death, destruction & the collapse of civilization. People will burn cheap, filthy brown coal in smoke belching power plants until the Sky is Black and the Rivers & Lakes are poisoned, rather than die the death of Biomass/Renewable Energy Suicide.

The truth about Hemp. An excellent crop for FOOD Oil ( a very healthy & tasty food oil), wonderful fiber for clothing, building materials and miscellaneous manufactured goods. For Energy – Forget it!

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/sb/sb681/

Biomass Energy – the Fake Fire Brigade:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6758

Alice Friedemann - Peak Soil: Why cellulosic ethanol, biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America:

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=1

@ YCSTS

You should go back to high school and learn some high school chemistry wrt to relative aspects of chemicals.
Methanol is an alcohol and can be used as a fuel.
From Wikipedia,
"Methanol has a high toxicity in humans. If ingested, as little as 10 mL can cause permanent blindness by destruction of the optic nerve and 30 mL is potentially fatal,[6] although a fatal dose is typically 100–125 mL (4 fl oz). Toxic effects take hours to start and effective antidotes can often prevent permanent damage.[6] Because of its similarities to ethanol (the alcohol in beverages), it is difficult to differentiate between the two (such is the case with denatured alcohol).
Methanol is toxic by two mechanisms. Firstly, methanol (whether it enters the body by ingestion, inhalation, or absorption through the skin) can be fatal due to its CNS depressant properties in the same manner as ethanol poisoning. Secondly, in a process of toxication, it is metabolised to formic acid (which is present as the formate ion) via formaldehyde in a process initiated by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver.[7] The reaction to formate proceeds completely, with no detectable formaldehyde remaining.[8] Formate is toxic because it inhibits mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase, causing the symptoms of hypoxia at the cellular level, and also causing metabolic acidosis among a variety of other metabolic disturbances.[9] Fetal tissue will not tolerate methanol.
Methanol poisoning can be treated with the antidotes ethanol or fomepizole.[7][10][11] Both of these drugs act to reduce the action of alcohol dehydrogenase on methanol by means of competitive inhibition, so that it is excreted by the kidneys rather than being transformed into toxic metabolites.[7] Further treatment may include giving sodium bicarbonate for metabolic acidosis and haemodialysis or haemodiafiltration can be used to remove methanol and formate from the blood.[7] Folinic acid or folic acid is also administered to enhance the metabolism of formate.[7]
The initial symptoms of methanol intoxication include central nervous system depression, headache, dizziness, nausea, lack of coordination, confusion, and with sufficiently large doses, unconsciousness and death. The initial symptoms of methanol exposure are usually less severe than the symptoms resulting from the ingestion of a similar quantity of ethanol.[2] Once the initial symptoms have passed, a second set of symptoms arises, 10 to as many as 30 hours after the initial exposure to methanol, including blurring or complete loss of vision and acidosis.[7] These symptoms result from the accumulation of toxic levels of formate in the bloodstream, and may progress to death by respiratory failure. The ester derivatives of methanol do not share this toxicity.
Ethanol is sometimes denatured (adulterated), and thus made undrinkable, by the addition of methanol. The result is known as methylated spirit, "meths" (UK use) or "metho" (Australian slang)."

Methanol Truth - No HYPE

from:

http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html#moremeth

Question: Just how dangerous is methanol?

Fact: Methanol is a poisonous chemical that can blind you or kill you, and as well as drinking it you can absorb it through the skin and breathe in the fumes.

Question: How much does it take to kill you?

Short answer: Anything from five teaspoons to more than half a pint, but nobody really knows.

Fact: Human susceptibility to the acute effects of methanol intoxication is extremely variable. The minimum dose of methanol causing permanent visual defects is unknown. The lethal dose of methanol for humans is not known for certain. The minimum lethal dose of methanol in the absence of medical treatment is put at between 0.3 and 1 g/kg.

That means it's thought to take at least 20 grams of methanol to kill an average-sized person, or 25 ml, five teaspoonsful. Or it might need more than three times as much, 66 grams, 17 teaspoonsful, or maybe more, and even then it'll only kill you if you can't reach a doctor within a day or two, and maybe it still won't kill you.

But it definitely can kill you. If you drink five teaspoonsful of pure methanol you'll need medical treatment even if it doesn't kill you. Yet people have survived doses of 10 times as much -- a quarter of a litre, half a pint -- without any permanent harm. But others haven't survived much lower doses. Getting rapid medical attention is crucial, though the poisoning effects can be slow to develop.

Authorities advise that swallowing up to 1.3 grams or 1.7 ml of methanol or inhaling methanol vapour concentrations below 200 ppm should be harmless for most people. No severe effects have been reported in humans of methanol vapour exposures well above 200 ppm.

Out of 1,601 methanol poisonings reported in the US in 1987 the death rate was 0.375%, or 1 in 267 cases. It might have been only 1 in more than a thousand cases because most cases weren't reported. Most cases were caused by drinking badly made moonshine, which is a worldwide problem

Fact: 30 litres of fruit juice will probably contain up to 20 grams of methanol, near the official minimum lethal dose. Methanol is in the food we eat, in fresh fruit and vegetables, beer and wine, diet drinks, artificial sweeteners.

Not only that, methanol occurs naturally in humans. It's a natural component of blood, urine, saliva and the air you breathe out. It's there anyway even if you've never been exposed to chemical methanol or its fumes.

Methanol is eliminated from the body as a normal matter of course via the urine and exhaled air and by metabolism. Getting rid of it takes from a few hours for low doses to a day or two for higher doses. Some proportion of a dose of methanol just goes straight through, excreted by the lungs and kidneys unchanged. The normal background-level quantities of methanol in humans are eliminated and replenished all the time as a matter of course.

More on Methanol

It is the major component of Biodiesel production, 20% of the vegetable oil in qty. No problem.

Gasoline is wall known carcinogen and just as poisonous if not more so than Methanol. And Methanol is an intoxicant, similarily to ethanol. Gasoline & Propane are also intoxicants, but far more dangerous than Methanol or Ethanol. Many have been killed and homes destroyed from breathing gasoline fumes & sniffing propane.

Methanol burns with a very gentle, cool flame. Easily extinguished with water. The fact that ethyl alcohol is denatured with Methanol proves that even the gov't does not think methanol consumption by humans is an issue.

As a home heating fuel, where NG is unavailable, Methanol is far superior to Heating Oil. Right Now Heating Oil is 4.1X more expensive to use for Heat than NG. Methanol production cost from NG is 13 cents per liter equivalent to 29 cents per liter for Heating oil. Heating Oil or Diesel fuel spills are a major disaster and can cost the homeowner $100k, as all contaminated soil must be dug up and transported to a toxic waste site. Insurance usually won't pay for the cost. And new required double wall fuel tanks cost the homeowner $3500 installed, that for a smelly, smokey fuel that is lower efficiency, useless for hot water and the furnaces have higher maintenance costs.