I Sequester Carbon for a Living
Posted by Robert Rapier on December 19, 2008 - 10:53am
What Makes This Bridge in Sneek, the Netherlands One of a Kind?
Back in March, I left my job with ConocoPhillips to become the Engineering Director for London-based Accsys Technologies, PLC (my work is focused within the wholly-owned Titan Wood subsidiaries). I explained the circumstances behind my decision to switch employers here. I stated at that time that I would continue to focus my writing on energy and the environment, and not use my platform to start promoting my new company - even though it is focused on environmental technologies. I think it's fair to say that I have kept to my word. However, I did say that at some point I would write a more extensive article on exactly what it is that my new company is doing. This is that article, which ties into energy, the environment, sustainability, and carbon capture.
A Brief Chemical Tutorial
In a nutshell, Titan Wood chemically modifies fast growing softwood species like (but not limited to) Radiata pine in a way that results in performance characteristics that are superior to some of the best tropical hardwoods such as teak. It is important to note that the modification we make is at the molecular level; we do not impregnate the wood with chemical preservatives that can leach out into the environment. Wood treatment processes like Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA) fall into this latter category, and can be a nightmare to dispose of, as they are classified as hazardous waste.
Following is a brief explanation of the science behind our process, in mostly layman's terms. Wood is a mixture of many different compounds, many of which are present as complex organic polymers (very long-chain carbon compounds). There are also numerous hydroxyl groups (OH) within wood. Think of a hydroxyl as 2/3rds of a water molecule (HOH, or H2O). Hydroxyl groups are very prone to attracting and releasing water, which is the primary mechanism by which wood shrinks and swells (and this of course makes paint crack and peel). Wood also naturally contains acetyl groups. An acetyl group is essentially an attached acetic acid molecule. Most of you are familiar with acetic acid, because you sometimes put it on your salad in the form of vinegar.
The Chemistry behind Accoya® wood
What we do in our process is remove a large fraction of those hydroxyl groups and replace them with acetyl groups. We call this wood ‘Accoya® wood’, and the properties are remarkably different than the unmodified wood we started out with. Dimensional stability, durability, and UV light resistance are all dramatically improved. Because Accoya absorbs less moisture, thermal insulating properties are also better. Further, Accoya is resistant to attack by termites, microbes, and fungi. Accoya is virtually rot-proof, and yet non-toxic.
Consider the implications. Instead of deforesting tropical rainforests for the highest quality hardwoods, we can essentially make them from fast-growing trees in northern climates. Wood that is grown via sustainable forestry practices and modified with our acetylation process provides a far more sustainable model for producing high-performance lumber. If the wood is both grown and used locally, so much the better.
How Accoya Sequesters Carbon
That alone is a pretty good story, but there's more. As we all know, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. The recently released World Energy Outlook from the IEA predicted that carbon dioxide emissions from coal combustion would rise from 11.7 billion metric tons in 2006 to 18.6 billion metric tons in 2030. The IEA further predicted that carbon sequestration applications will have limited potential to influence carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.
If we are to slow or halt our carbon dioxide emissions, we need a combination of lower reliance on fossil fuels, coupled with commercially viable carbon sequestration, or carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. But the problem with carbon sequestration technologies is that either 1). People can't figure out how to make money with them, so they aren't commercialized; or 2). The carbon sequestration is fleeting.
For example, carbon dioxide can certainly be captured from the stacks of coal-fired power plants. A number of technologies will suffice, but they will all add to the cost of electricity. Estimates are that carbon capture would add 25% to the cost of producing electricity from coal. Unless large numbers of consumers are willing to pay this cost - or unless governments mandate it (and therefore mandate that consumers will pay the additional costs), adoption of these sorts of CCS technologies will face strong headwinds.
What about the use of CO2 in enhanced crude oil recovery operations? There are some applications for this, but they are limited. You must still capture and compress the CO2, and then you have to get it to the oil field. Further, that CO2 is being used to produce more oil, which will subsequently produce more CO2. A similar situation applies to the schemes for using algae to capture carbon dioxide from power plants, and then turning that algae into biodiesel. While one could certainly argue that additional energy was produced for each CO2 molecule that was emitted (presuming the energy return is >1.0), at the end of the cycle the CO2 originating from the coal still ends up in the atmosphere.
However, I believe Titan Wood has a truly commercial carbon sequestration application. You know that when a tree grows, it extracts carbon dioxide from the air, converts it via photosynthesis into various biopolymers, and stores the carbon as wood, leaves, etc. Left alone, a tree will uptake carbon dioxide as it grows, but it will eventually die and decompose, returning the carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere. If you could instead take the tree and just bury it deep within the earth, the carbon would be sequestered. This is in fact similar to how all of the carbon in oil, coal, and gas got sequestered in the first place. Ancient plants and animals died and were buried, and the heat and pressure of the earth turned them into fossil fuels.
Of course one can’t make money by growing trees and burying them. So, what else can you do? You could build with wood, and that also sequesters carbon during the lifetime of the application. Because Accoya is modified to resist rot, the carbon can be sequestered for much longer. That’s appealing, but it isn’t the most compelling argument. In fact, you could make that same argument about wood that is treated with toxic treatments – it can sequester carbon for a long period of time (with the obvious negative of the chemicals leeching into the environment).
The really compelling aspect about Accoya is that the improved characteristics make it a viable replacement for metals, plastics, and even concrete in certain applications. You can take a fast-growing tree like pine, and modify it so that it can not only replace tropical hardwoods, but it can in some instances replace the steel in a bridge. That’s where the carbon sequestration potential comes into play.
Imagine that instead of making window frames out of plastic (which comes from a fossil fuel) or aluminum (which requires a lot of electricity to produce), you made them out of Accoya. Not only have you avoided carbon emissions, but you have sequestered carbon in a long-lasting application. (Window frames are in fact a major end use of Accoya).
Imagine that instead of constructing a bridge out of steel and concrete (both very fossil-fuel intensive), you made it out of Accoya. Again, you have avoided carbon emissions, and you have sequestered carbon. Note that neither of these scenarios is hypothetical. Accoya is currently being used in window frames, and a pair of heavy-traffic bridges is under construction right now in Sneek, the Netherlands. Kudos to the Dutch government for their foresight. The first bridge has been completed and is shown in the opening picture. (See this article for more information). Bear in mind that this bridge is certified to support 60 tons, making it the only wooden bridge in the world certified to support such a heavy load. That makes it the first of its kind.
(As an aside, in 1988 the U.S. Congress passed the Timber Bridge Initiative, to promote the use of timber in bridges. This initiative currently resides at the Forest Products Lab of the U.S. Forestry Service, but we have not yet been in contact with them regarding the possibility of building Accoya bridges in the U.S.)
What is the potential for carbon sequestration? I have done some calculations on that, shown below.
Carbon Sequestration Potential of Accoya
Per this reference:
According to analysis by JATO Dynamics, CO2 emissions in the top five markets dropped by 0.3 g/km in through the first seven months of 2007 compared to the same time last year. A volume-weighted average of new cars sold in the period yielded an average of 160.5 g/km for the fleet.
That means that the average European car emits (160.5/44 g CO2/mol) = 3.65 moles CO2 per km traveled.
The density of Radiata pine is roughly 500 kg/m3. According to University of Wisconsin Professor Emeritus Roger Rowell (and from other sources I have checked), carbon represents about 50% of that, or 250 kg/m3. In chemistry speak, that is (250,000 g/12 g mol) = 20,833 moles of carbon per m3 of wood, which is equal to the number of moles of carbon dioxide that were removed from the atmosphere.
Our Arnhem plant has a nameplate capacity of 30,000 m3/year of finished wood (and the next plant will be much larger). Then the carbon sequestration potential from the Arnhem plant is 20,833* 30,000 = 625 million moles of carbon per year.
Put in terms of the average European car, that means that the output of our relatively small Arnhem plant could sequester the carbon emissions of 625 million moles/(3.65 moles per km) = 171 million km of driving. The average European drives around 11,000 km/yr according to this chart. This translates to sequestration of the carbon emissions of 171 million/11,000 = 15,545 cars per year.
I am not aware of any other technology that can make this claim.
Conclusion
I believe we have a good story in Accoya. I barely scratched the surface of the advantages, which extend to painted surfaces lasting much longer (more avoided emissions, and less fossil fuels for paint manufacture). Our plans at present are to continue to manufacture Accoya in the Netherlands, and to license the technology. The second Accoya plant is being built by our licensee, Diamond Wood, in China. The third plant will be built by our licensee Al Rajhi in the Middle East. Serious discussions are taking places with other prospective licensees around the world, including several in North America.
The nameplate capacity of our first plant in Arnhem, the Netherlands, is 30,000 m3 of wood/year. This output can potentially sequester the carbon emissions of over 15,000 cars per year in Europe. The total offset is equivalent to an annual distance driven of 171 million km. Note that this presumes that we have used Accoya in an application that normally uses metal/plastics/concrete, etc. It does not take into consideration the fact that our life-cycle-assessment (LCA) shows that the energy inputs into producing concrete, steel, etc. are also higher than for producing Accoya – nor that we are avoiding the harvesting of tropical hardwoods. In other words, I believe this should be a conservative estimate.
While I have given you the technical spiel, I am not the guy to answer questions about licensing, sales, etc. If you want some information along those lines, please contact Starla Middlebrooks (Starla 'dot' Middlebrooks 'at' titanwood 'dot' com) at our Dallas offices.
Questions and (My) Answers to Various Inquiries
People have asked me lots of interesting questions around the company and the product. One sort of funny story related to this is that at this year's ASPO conference in Sacramento, I escaped the talks a bit early to grab a quick bite, as I was on an evening panel session. A few minutes later, Bob Hirsch walked in and asked if he could join me. I was delighted, and thought I would get to quiz him about The Hirsch Report. Instead, he spent the next half hour asking me all sorts of questions about Accoya. We were joined by Kjell Aleklett, and he also wanted to talk about wood. After we finished talking, I reflected on how funny it was to have the three of us sitting there, all passionate about oil depletion and energy in general – and at a conference on oil depletion - and all we talked about was wood.
Anyway, here are some of the questions that seem to come up most frequently.
Q. Doesn't the process itself use a lot of energy? A lot more than say, planting a tree and waiting a few years.
A. No. When you grow a tree, like a fast-growing softwood, what happens? It either grows to maturity, eventually dies, and releases its carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere. Or, it is cut down and used in an application that results in it releasing its carbon back to the atmosphere in much less than 100 years.
What happens with Accoya is that you can make a harvest every 20 years and put it into a long-term application. When you put it into an application that is typically aluminum or steel, you have a dual-win: It takes less energy to make Accoya, and you have sequestered carbon where you would have placed steel.
Of course you also have a big benefit by using it for applications typically reserved for tropical timber in that you displace tropical timber with softwoods.
Q. Can Accoya eventually be cost-competitive with other treated woods?
A. That depends on what you mean by cost-competitive. Is it as cheap as arsenic-treated wood? No, but arsenic-treated wood is toxic and disposal is problematic. Likewise, there are similar issues with other cheap wood treatments like pentachlorophenol, creosote, borate, etc. Accoya is no more toxic than regular wood. There is no toxic residue from the treatment.
Q. Seems ironic. Other treated wood is less likely to be burned at the end of its structural life, so the toxic wood is actually more likely to sequester carbon for more than 100 years than is the Accoya, even if the toxic wood is otherwise worse for the environment.
A. No, as that misses two key points. You touched on one in your last sentence. The reason toxic wood eventually fails is because it has leached its components out into the environment. So it continues to decompose at the landfill, albeit at a slower rate than normal wood.
But the key point is this: The acetylation treatment not only makes the wood resistance to biological attack (as do toxic treatments), but it also imparts other beneficial characteristics to the wood, which is the real bonus.
Toxic treated wood doesn't become more dimensionally stable. A toxic-treated pine is still a softwood. An acetylated pine becomes comparable to a tropical hardwood. The durability and dimensional stability of Accoya exceeds that of teak. See here and here. Now you can go build bridges out of it, something you can't do with the toxic treated woods. Thus, the acetylation opens up new applications, so there is much greater carbon sequestration potential.
Q. So what's the catch?
A. The 'catch' is pretty straightforward. Accoya is obviously more expensive than untreated softwood. And unless customers understand the whole story, they may opt for a cheaper, but less-durable option. My job as Engineering Director is to make sure we are running our process in the most efficient manner, and therefore keeping our costs at a minimum so we can compete.
The other catch is that the market for building materials is presently pretty poor, as a result of the overall economic crisis and the slowdown in construction. So we are swimming upstream against that current.
Q. So are you saying that this is the solution to rising carbon dioxide emissions?
A. It can be a tool in the arsenal, but it would admittedly take a very large amount of wood in new applications to make much of a dent in carbon dioxide emissions. To make a bigger dent, we would need to start replacing more metals and plastics with Accoya (wooden refrigerators, anyone?).
Q. What are the growth rates for your softwood pine species?
A. Generally about 20 years, which is a much faster turn around than the tropical hardwoods.
Q. Are the freezing properties of wood changed (e.g. teak and mahogany do not handle freezing well when their moisture content is too high, compared with local (nordic) softwoods)?
A. Because the equilibrium moisture content of Accoya is much lower than other woods, we believe it should tolerate freezing quite well. But we are checking to see if we have any test data on file.
Q. Are the bending properties of wood changed in some manner?
A. Bending properties (MOE) are very minimally changed.
Q. Can wood be stained after your treatment?
A. Absolutely. Stained, painted, cut, glued – the same kinds of things you do with regular wood.
Q. What's the net carbon balance on your process? Presumably there's energy in the processing itself, as well as the harvest, transport, etc. That might be 5% or 50% of the embodied carbon in the wood, and that will have a huge impact on the actual potential for sequestration.
A. That is a very important question. We do have an LCA for Accoya, but I don’t believe that we have ever made that information public. We are in the process of getting additional LCAs that flesh out the carbon question in much more depth than the original LCA did. What the original LCA did was focus the energy to manufacture window frames versus competitors like aluminum and PVC. The conclusion was that it takes less energy to make Accoya than it does to make the competitors. But ‘less than a lot’ can still be a lot, so we are trying to go through and validate all of the energy inputs. Regardless of the energy inputs, if it takes less energy to make Accoya than it does to make a comparable amount of PVC, then the sequestration potential relative to the competitor is at a minimum the amount of carbon stored away in the wood.
The carbon issue is complicated by the fact that one can easily make choices that will impact overall energy inputs. When we built our first plant, capital costs were a concern. So, we used natural gas to produce steam. In the future wood waste could be used. In fact, I think I could design a process that could have zero fossil fuel inputs (into the actual process). It all comes down to capital costs.
Q. What is the typical mass of your material required in structural applications vs. the mass (of steel, etc) that is being replaced? That bridge looks like it used a LOT of wood.
A. I have been asked that question now a couple of times. One thing to bear in mind is that there is a LOT of wood in the bridge, but a large portion of what you see is aesthetic. Your question would be relevant to the structural parts. I know how much wood went into the bridge, but not how much steel, concrete, etc. was displaced as a result. This is of course another very important question. If it took 3 cubic meters of Accoya to replace 1 cubic meter of steel, then the energy inputs for Accoya must be multiplied to compensate. I am not suggesting that this is the case, but I understand why the question is important. I am trying to find an answer for this question.
Q. Is this publically traded?
A. It is, but we have taken a beating just like so many other companies - especially in the building sector. We trade on the London Stock Exchange as AXS, and our current market cap is 234 million Euros.
Q. How does Accoya's strength compare?
A. The hardness slightly improves, and the strength is the same as the original wood. More information here. The real difference in strength would be noted as time progresses. Accoya would retain strength and the base Radiata would lose strength.
Q. What’s not mentioned is what happens to Accoya at the end of its life. Concrete and steel don’t last forever and both can be recycled into new buildings at considerably lower energy input when compared to extracting raw materials. Where does the Accoya sequestered carbon go when removed from service? I doubt it can be recycled to the same degree that can steel, and I suspect it will end up emitted one way or another.
A. I think the question remains theoretical for decades. We really don't know what the upper limit for the lifetime of Accoya will be.
Someone mentioned to me a couple of days ago that the Sneek bridge was designed for 80 years. So let's say that 80 years from now, the bridge is coming down. If at that point we are still dealing with the problem of carbon emissions, I can envision a number of schemes for recapturing the carbon in the wood. For instance, I can gasify the wood, turn it into acetic anhydride, and use that to acetylate a new batch of wood. I could burn it for process heat, displacing a fossil fuel. I could reuse it in a less demanding application. I could hydrolyze it to sugars and turn it into ethanol. I could gasify it and turn it into biodiesel. What I won't have to do is to landfill it as hazardous waste, which is the end fate of wood produced by many preservative processes.
So the question isn't whether it can be recycled. I think the answer is going to be dependent upon the conditions in place when we actually have to deal with the issue.
Q. Does the Accoya process change the thermal conductivity of wood as presently used up or down?
A. Thermal conductivity is lowered as a result of the process, which is especially desirable in door and window applications.
Q. Does using Accoya generate carbon credits?
A. Carbon credits, as I have found, are a very funny thing. While the regulations vary from region to region, for the most part the ones who can play are the ones who already emit a lot of carbon dioxide. As hard as it may be to believe, if I invented a machine that did nothing but extract carbon dioxide from the air and bury it in the center of the earth, you might be a hero, but you won't get to sell carbon credits as a result. On the other hand, the coal-fired power plant that reduces their emissions can sell carbon credits.
You can find answers to lots of other questions in our FAQ. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming (even though I think the subject matter here is topical).
Note: As always, if you spot any errors, please call them to my attention.
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Increasingly popular is recycled plastic/wood fiber used in plastic decks. The advantage of this product is that it does not require any preservation/staining like pine, even arsenic treated pine. While it is more expensive up front, it is cheaper in the long run. Would Accoya be competitive with these recycled plastic products?
Would Accoya be competitive with these recycled plastic products?
I don't have any information on market analyses against recycled decking. We did come up favorable against PVC for windows in the initial LCA that we had commissioned.
Very intriguing. When will this be available on the US market? Anyone we can write letters to to move this forward?
The carbon issue is complicated by the fact that one can easily make choices that will impact overall energy inputs. When we built our first plant, capital costs were a concern. So, we used natural gas to produce steam. In the future wood waste could be used. In fact, I think I could design a process that could have zero fossil fuel inputs (into the actual process). It all comes down to capital costs.
This didn't quite answer the net carbon balance question; also please add in the carbon footprint of acetic anhydride to the LCA, if it already isn't there.
When will this be available on the US market?
We have been putting some into the US market, but I don't have details on whether it is going to be available for purchase. You can e-mail Starla (her e-mail is in the essay) and she knows all of those things.
This didn't quite answer the net carbon balance question; also please add in the carbon footprint of acetic anhydride to the LCA, if it already isn't there.
That's because the carbon balance issue is very complicated. Is the wood being sourced next door, or halfway around the world? Where is it being sold? Are you making your own anhydride, or are you shipping it halfway around the world? Lots of questions like that make the carbon balance question entirely dependent on the specific situation.
However, we sequester more carbon away than we use to make the product. Also, note on the anhydride that it gets chemically locked into the wood, and so is sequestered away as well. The other thing to point out on the anhydride is that we can make it ourselves, and if the economics dictated we could make it from wood waste.
We are in the process of having some more LCAs done to cover specific usages for Accoya. Hopefully this information will be widely available.
The other thing to point out on the anhydride is that we can make it ourselves, and if the economics dictated we could make it from wood waste.
How is your feedstock made now? Do you have any efforts underway at this time to determine the economic feasibility of making it from wood waste?
Any other beneficial products or feedstocks that you can recapture from your waste stream?
Will, we don't currently make anhydride from waste as the economics of doing so aren't good. I am working on multiple energy reduction projects however, and that is in the stack.
Could this treatment be applied to bamboo, and would it be advantageous to do so? (I am thinking of applications like wooden bicycles)
(Sorry DaveMart, didn't mean to tag this onto your thread, was supposed to be a new thread)
This statement is VERY important for everyone to understand. "Cap-And-Trade" is the equivalent being promoted (by industry insiders and Wall street brokers) in N. America, and it suffers exactly the same problems the author points out. It entrenches the incumbent emitters at the expense of any inovative alternatives, and is too complex for smaller entities to get involved with. FAR SMARTER is a simple carbon tax on all carbon fuels at source, which adequately penalizes incumbents and also doesn't discourage inovation.
We need to get LOUD about this quickly, people.
Carbon credits will rebadge themselves as deductions under a carbon tax scheme, plus the physical target will overshoot or undershoot.
That's the difference between "Cap and Trade" and "Cap and Auction" ... whether or not we create a "value in being a polluter".
Any time Cap and Trade is proposed, the fight to make it Cap and AUction has to be fought. This was done in the US in the Democratic primaries, but primary promises have a tendency to fade away after the general election ... its necessary to find ways to hold the Congresscritter's feet to the fire on this issue.
Cap and Auction versus Carbon Tax is whether you think its primarily a physical problem or primarily a problem in economic value. But Cap and Trade with free permits to polluters is giving a free ride to polluters based entirely on the fact that they have already been getting a free ride on the backs of everyone else for years.
Could this treatment be applied to bamboo, and would it be advantageous to do so? (I am thinking of applications like wooden bicycles)
Dave, we have been looking into that (bamboo, but not bicycles).
The light weight and toughness which make bamboo suitable for bicycles translate into a lot of engineering applications, so it is great that you are looking at it.
Here it is for bikes:
http://www.calfeedesign.com/bamboo.htm
Very intriguing.
Acetic anhydride. I imagine you could make that from apple juice, but I suspect it is really made from coal or natural gas. How much is actually used to acetylate the wood?
Cellulose acetate is pretty flammable, I believe. What is the flammability of the bulk wood product? What about the sawdust or shavings? Might it be unsafe to use under certain conditions?
Apparently you use some kind of giant autoclave to process the wood. That must take a lot of heat, though I suppose less than manufacture of Portland cement.
Seems like this would be a natural for the Pacific Northwest, if your claims are all accurate. But the long life of the product may limit its economic value! Out here on the coast we rely on the fact that wood rots, and so needs to be replaced. What will we do with millions of houses that will never decay, full of increasingly old people who almost never die because of increasingly effective medical technology? I see the makings of a new Zardos movie.
"Acetic anhydride. I imagine you could make that from apple juice, but I suspect it is really made from coal or natural gas."
Acetic anhydride is usually formed by carbonylation of methyl acetate(an ester of methanol and acetic acid).
Methanol is made from synthesis gas(a mixture of CO and H2). There's no reason except cost that you can't make syngas from biomass, old tires, whatever.
Industrial grade acetic acid is usually made from carbonylation of methanol.
I agree it sound real good as especially the lighter, fast growing wood rot way to fast. Interesting using
acetic acid. But how much/kg of wood do you need.
I build things of high performance wood, mostly plywood and epoxy so this is close to home. And it sounds like a real improvement.
You should try in your designs so you can be recycle the pieces into new structures, ect once the bridge, ect is no longer needed.
Here in Fla we have cypress that is about as rot
resistance as possible with 100yr old log cabins looking about 3 yrs old!! To take light pines, ect to do
.the same is a good step forward
As for larger wooden bridges we have many in the
US and should be online. Start with covered bridges.
And a large number of RR bridges all made of wood. Near me beside US301 across from the Hillsbrough State
park N of Tampa are several all wood bridges about the same size as yours built in the last 10 yrs or so.
I agree it sound real good as especially the lighter, fast growing wood rot way to fast. Interesting using
acetic acid. But how much/kg of wood do you need.
I build things of high performance wood, mostly plywood and epoxy so this is close to home. And it sounds like a real improvement.
You should try in your designs so you can be recycle the pieces into new structures, ect once the bridge, ect is no longer needed.
Here in Fla we have cypress that is about as rot
resistance as possible with 100yr old log cabins looking about 3 yrs old!! To take light pines, ect to do
.the same is a good step forward
As for larger wooden bridges we have many in the
US and should be online. Start with covered bridges.
And a large number of RR bridges all made of wood. Near me beside US301 across from the Hillsbrough State
park N of Tampa are several all wood bridges about the same size as yours built in the last 10 yrs or so.
Thankyou, this looks very interesting.
I read a science fiction story once about a future where essentially all technology was biological, i.e. all human artifacts were made from either living or once-alive organisms. I think possibly the only way out of our current bottleneck (the future a high-entropy wasteland) will resemble something like this.
Very interesting, have you considered "Accoya® wood" railroad crossties (or sleepers as you would say in Europe)? Even if unsuitable for heavy traffic applications like U.S. freight railroads, perhaps lighter duty applications such as rail transit would be feasible. There has been such a trend recently for railroads to switch to concrete crossties (and some steel, some plastic) and to replace older wooden culverts and trestles with steel or concrete. Many of those wooden structures had lasted a century, and had survived the pounding of steam locomotive drivers.
Very interesting, have you considered "Accoya® wood" railroad crossties
Without getting into details, yes, we have been discussing this quite a lot.
Your plant produces 30,000m3/year of wood, of which you say the carbon is 250kg/m3 which gives a total sequestered carbon of 7,500,000kg = 7,500 (metric) tonnes of carbon. Let's optimistically round that up to 8,000 tonnes.
The amount of carbon produced anthropogenically in one year is around 30 gigatonnes of CO2, or about 30x12/(12+16+16) = about 8 gigatonnes of carbon. I'll write that out: 8,000,000,000 tonnes. It's a lot. In fact, a million times more than your plant is capable of sequestering.
Now I'm the first to agree that we need every measure we can think of to reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, but my question is whether you ever see this having a non-negligible impact on atmospheric CO2 levels - can it realistically be scaled up even to 100,000 plants (even if we do see wooden refrigerators as you suggest!) and if so, is the land area of forest likely to be able to sustain it?
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies are indeed in their infancy but even at this early stage of relatively low adoption and little government support we already see storage facilities at the scale of 1 megatonne CO2 or 300,000 tonnes of carbon per year (for example at Sleipner in the North Sea). Admittedly, this is not yet enough to make a noticeable dent in atmospheric carbon levels but is nevertheless nearly 40 times more carbon stored per year than your process (and is more certain of guaranteeing storage security for longer).
You mention carbon credits - this or an equivalent carbon tax is exactly what is needed to kick start CCS. The reason the project at Sleipner exists is due to the Norwegian carbon tax which the operators of the plant avoid by reinjecting CO2 rather than releasing it. When governments can get themselves into gear on this issue and set up a properly operating system by which a price for carbon becomes well-defined and reasonably stable, then we will see CCS becoming economic and consequently more widely adopted.
CCS may not be "truly commercial" yet, but it is a large and useful addition to our armoury against global climate change. This process, though it seems like a great idea and may well be truly commercial, surely cannot reasonably be scaled up to be anything more than negligible in the context of global carbon emissions.
The amount of carbon produced anthropogenically in one year is around 30 gigatonnes of CO2, or about 30x12/(12+16+16) = about 8 gigatonnes of carbon. I'll write that out: 8,000,000,000 tonnes. It's a lot. In fact, a million times more than your plant is capable of sequestering.
Erica, those are numbers very similar to what I myself calculated.
A couple of things to note, though. First, our second plant that is being built in China is 10 times the size of the one in Arnhem (which is really a demonstration plant). The one in the Middle East will be similar in size to the one in China. We have had serious discussions with companies about building plants that are 33 times the size of our Arnhem plant. So we believe we can scale this thing up by quite a lot.
The second thing is to consider the alternatives. If you can choose to use wood instead of steel or plastic, you have lowered your carbon emissions and sequestered carbon in the process. Is that enough? Are any of our contributions enough? I bet you watch your own carbon footprint. Why? Paper or plastic? Does it really matter?
I agree with you that the scale of our carbon emissions is enormous. I have said before that people who think we will rein in carbon emissions any time soon really don't understand the magnitude of that problem. That's why I say it will take a combination of energy that has a low carbon footprint, and commercial sequestration technologies.
Re: Sleipner in the North Sea - apples and oranges. There, carbon dioxide that is co-produced with natural gas is reinjected. That amounts to a very small portion of annual carbon emissions, and this solution is only applicable in that specific situation. As I pointed out above, our process in Arnhem is really a demonstration unit, capable of being scaled and applied all over the world (and capable of soaking up CO2 from the atmosphere). So I would strongly disagree that Sleipner is a better example of a commercial CCS solution.
This approach could certainly comprise one of the much-discussed "stabilization wedges".
Hi B,
I'm not sure I follow. Like PO, mitigating climate change will require lots of silver BB's. RR's process seems like a wedge to me. Which of the stabilization wedges gets compromised?
I think you misread: "comprise" (make up) v. "compromise."
Maybe I should have said that Robert's technology could add another wedge. :)
B,
My fault, I did read it wrong. Thanks for correction. Your choice of words was quite appropriate.
Nicely put, Erica.
We have to stop UN-sequestering massive quantities of carbon as quickly as possible, but few have called for a moratorium on ff extraction (except for George Monbiot).
The moral hazard here is that someone will hear about this ingenious process and say "Hey, problem solved" without realizing the disproportionate scale of the problem.
That said, I am impressed with the technology and wish the enterprise well.
Could you give a bit more info on where and how the trees are harvested?
Two other applications which immediately spring to mind are 1) going back to wood pole for utility poles and street lights. 2) pilings used for docks and building foundations, used to be wood but now commonly concrete and steel.
Where/how are the trees grown? Timber plantations are notorious users of fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides etc etc (all of which require fossil fuels for their synthesis) and can be a serious source of pollution to neighboring ecosystems. Can you add these consequences to your equation?
That sounds a bit unreasonably negative. And to my knowledge, timber plantations are rarely if ever fertilized, sprayed for insects or weeds. What's your proposed alternative? Steel and concrete? Cave dwelling with only stone age tech?
Nothing negative about asking for transparent accounting. At first blush this sounds far superior to steel and concrete, but......if I get breast cancer from the 2,4D that contaminates my water supply or if more carbon is released in synthesis of the starting materials than is sequestered in the product, my enthusiasm is dampened.
That's a pretty declarative "asking for"
Timber plantations are regularly sprayed with herbicides. After clear cutting, but before replanting, most cuts are sprayed with herbicide to kill the "non-profitable" plants and allow the new trees to grow.
See:
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2006/03/16/coverstory.html
I see. You have your mind made up already. So, for your POV, anything timber is out. BTW, some anecdotes in an Oregon local weekly are not scientific evidence. Surprises me to see it, because the returns are obviously very marginal for herbicide spraying forest cutting, but I guess anything's possible in the US.
I've done a lot of tree planting in Ontario, Canada in my youth, and never heard of such. Perhaps if locals planted trees rather than riding around on 4-wheelers protesting then the weeds wouldn't smother out the seedlings. 'Course no such thing as a weed either, eh?
Len;
There's nothing unreasonable about looking at their forestry inputs. It doesn't mean that they're 'Against' timber in the extreme, but clearly there are a wide range of lumbering practices, and this must be considered openly. I'm in favor of windpower, but it, too, can be done responsibly or not, it has to be approached more carefully than the blind rush that so much of our industrial development has exploded with.. with timber clearcutting often being the first stage in our expansions.
I would also be interested to hear what kind of polycultures are being used to keep these tree-farms healthy and uneroded.
I just finished Omnivore's Dilemma, and thinking about Joel Salatin's 'Grass Farm', I hope it's true that we can create and promote farming practises that enrich complex soils, pasturelands, woodlands and perhaps fisheries.
Bob
Your paycheck obviosly comes from the timber industry, so you will never understand things. Go to the town of Marcola, Oregon, and take a look at the Weyerhaeuser tree farm. Ask the people why helicopters are spraying their town with herbicices. Would a quote from the timber cos. themselves help you out?
http://coastalconcern.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/wheeler-oregon-residents-...
How about on the other coast?
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1088896/
Herbicide spraying is a common practice on tree plantations.
We have a neat poplar/wastewater reuse operation north of Seattle, near Marysville.
Great link, thank you. A fine alternative to the helicopters spraying hormones on Christmas tree farms.
Robert,
In section 7 of your FAQ is stated:
"Due to its lack of toxicity, however, Accoya® wood is not suitable for underwater use in a salt water environment."
This seems to imply that toxicity is required to be suitable for use underwater. Is this a typo of some sort or am I just too ignorant of the nuances of this application?
Very informative article.
What I am told on this is a copper treatment is the only thing known to stop the marine borer.
The wikipedia entry claims that teredoes can digest cellulose, but it is my impression (having had some of the critters in a saltwater aquarium about 4 decades ago) that they burrow into the wood only for protection, and filter-feed like the other bivalves. I believe there are even a few bivalves that burrow into stone.
Is the marine borer problem the only problem to marine applications? Is this a qualification only for stationary marine applications.
Older boat hulls use to be made of teak. So if this wood is comparable to teak then I don't see any problems beyond using it to make a wooden boat.
It would likely rot at the same rate. But I would think that there would be a cost advantage. Pine is much cheaper than teak.
Excellent. Linked.
I think it's a bit early for the authour to say that he sequesters carbon for a living. We need more data before we can believe him, and he has to clean up some messy calculations.
There are a few things the authour is not telling us in this piece. Most importantly, they are in brief,
- EU cars travel around 14,000-15,000km each, not the 11,000km the authour states, reducing the "equivalent to X cars' driving" number
- not all raw timber ends up as finished product, at best 2/3, and the rest will rot/burn
- the authour contends that forests once grown don't sequester any more carbon; this is true of continuously-harvested plantations, but forests left alone in diversity continue absorbing more
- the authour cannot give us figures for the emissions during timber harvest and processing, or for construction with the timber, so we can't say how much net carbon is sequestered; certainly it'll be less than the 250kg/m3 he tells us
In detail,
Distance travelled by cars in EU
You've overestimated the car-equivalent. This is because the chart you referenced gives distance travelled per person, which you have read as per car; there are less cars than people in Europe.
Car ownership varies a lot across Europe, from around 350 cars per 1,000 people in Berlin to 650cars/1,000ppl in Rome. The EU says that in 2004 there were 216 million, or 472 passenger vehicles per 1,000 people in the EU25. Thus, 11,000km annually per person becomes 23,300km per car.
This is probably an overestimate for passenger vehicles, since the original 11,000km you gave was just your eyeball guess from a graph. The underlying paper tells us that many of their figures are a bit of a fudge anyway. This book on infrastructure tells us the converging average in countries with a high rate of car ownership is 15,000km per passenger car annually.
As I discuss in driving is not a rational choice, in most countries passenger vehicles get driven pretty consistently 14,000-15,000km annually. The US is the exception at 19,000km. Fuel taxes, availability of public transport, culture and so on seem to affect whether people own cars, but once they own them they pretty consistently drive them 14,000-15,000km annually.
Anyway, 14,000-15,000km means that your 15,545 cars become 11,400-12,200.
Since this sequestration corresponds to, you tell us, 171 million km of driving, well if we divided that into the 216 million passenger cars in the EU25 in 2004, that'd be... not even 1km less each. So if everyone walked to the shop for that loaf of bread just once in a year, we'd get a reduction in emissions equal to your sequestered carbon.
The new plant you speak of is said in that article to have a "500,000m3 nameplate capacity", compared to to 30,000m3 one you spoke of earlier.
If 30,000m3 sequesters 171 million km of driving, then 500,000m3 will sequester 2,850 million km of driving. This is 13km per vehicle in the EU25 in 2004. So perhaps on a single day in each year everyone bikes to work... this will match you.
So I'm not too impressed with the scale of this sequestration method. It's just insignificant in scale compared to the problem.
Finished timber is a fraction of raw timber
You base the rest of your calculations on this figure. However, what you fail to mention is that not every last cubic centimetre of timber is used in construction. When you down a tree in your plantation, a fraction of that tree ends up in a bridge, but another fraction ends up as scrap discarded at cutting site, offcuts in lumber mill (eg you want square beams, the tree is round, or you need 0.2x0.2x6m beams so only the main trunk is useful, not the branches, etc...), sawdust, some is rejected as being not strong enough for the job, and so on,
The fraction of a tree which goes to useful building work is all you can count as sequestered carbon; the rest becomes paper pulp, is burned, left in the plantation to rot, etc. This amount varies a lot across the world depending on forestry practices. For example my country of Australia has sloppy forestry practices - we tend to plant the seedlings and then just leave them until 15 years later - and so our trees get lots of knots and splits and the like, unable to support weight, and are good only for paper pulp. Finished building product fraction = 0. Germany and Switzerland are well-known as being much better than this.
An excellent useful fraction, assuming a normal mix of building timbers, sizes and qualities, is 2/3. It would be a little bit more if you were making telephone poles, and much less if you were making framing timber for a house. But 2/3 is a decent figure for a normal mix of sizes etc. And so all your claimed sequestration figures must be reduced by 1/3 at least.
When you tell us that your plant can process 30,000m3, does that mean 30,000m3 of timber straight from the field, or 30,000m3 output? Generally a quoted mill's figure will be how much input it can process. So your 30,000m3 input is not more than 20,000m3 output. That leaves 10,000m3 to burn or rot and contribute to global warming.
Plantations don't sequester much carbon, but forests do
Yes and no. It depends on the kind of forest you have. Plantation forests have the ground kept clear for logging access and just one kind of tree species, so the material all rots as you describe. Old mixed forests with a variety of tree species and bushes and fungi and mammals and insects and heaps of worms and bacteria in the soil, in this case a lot of the material of dead trees ends up sequestered in the soil.
That's why deforestation creates some 17% of our greenhouse gas emissions, because once we cut it down it rots and the carbon is no longer stored in the soil, not enough lives there to take up the carbon. If it were true that all dead trees returned their CO2 to the atmosphere and none was absorbed by the soil, then deforestation would not add any CO2.
A forest treated as a plantation does not sequester much carbon, but a forest treated as a forest does. You are probably thinking of "forest" in the form of plantation because this is how any lumber yard treats a forest - a crop to be harvested.
Carbon sequestered - carbon emitted = net carbon sequestered
This renders all your calculations of "carbon sequestered equal to X cars" utterly meaningless.
If we don't know the emissions it took to get the wood, then we can't say what the net emissions/sequestration are. Let's say the wood has 250kg carbon per m3, as you describe. And again remember that's only the useful timber, what happens to that? Burned, rotting, not processed with the preservant, etc - so it returns to the atmosphere. If 1/3 of every 1m3 is disposed of in this way, then you get just 167kg/m3 of timber input.
If your process requires (say) 50kg of carbon emissions to turn that 1m3 raw timber into 0.67m3 useful timber, then we have,
+250kg raw timber
-83kg discarded
-50kg emissions required to process timber, build structure, etc
= 117kg/m3 sequestered
Of course the finished timber/raw timber fraction is not known to us, and you specifically note you're not telling us the emissions required for processing, construction, etc. But we can say with certainty that the net carbon sequestered will be less than 250kg/m3 of raw timber input. The process may be carbon zero, carbon negative, carbon sequestering, we don't know.
Get back to us when you have a carbon LCA.
Conclusion
This appears to be a good and sustainable forestry practice; we don't yet know if it'll be a net sequestration or not. We need more information, and the authour needs to be clearer about the logging and timber processing methods, finished product fractions, etc.
Some very negative statements disguised with some easy quibbles about the obvious.
Any scientific references to back up that nonsense about "Old mixed forests"?
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with a website called www.google.com, it's most useful in discovering if someone's "nonsense" has any backing. But perhaps you just didn't know where to start?
Estimation of the carbon sequestration by a heterogeneous forest: night flux corrections, heterogeneity of the site and inter-annual variability
Long-term trends of carbon dioxide exchange above a mixed forest at Borden, Ontario
Global warming and terrestrial carbon sequestration
Comparing monocultures with polycultures or old forests,
Carbon sequestration in native rainforest tree plantations
"forest systems need to be managed to provide multiple production and environmental services, including carbon (C) sequestration, restoration of soil fertility, and biodiversity. Overall, traditional plantation monocultures cannot meet all of these new objectives"
Carbon return and dynamics of litterfall in natural forest and monoculture plantation of Castanopsis kawakamii in subtropical China
"The results of this study demonstrate that the natural forest has a greater C return through litterfall than monoculture plantations, which is beneficial to the increase of soil organic matter storage and the maintenance of soil fertility."
Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks [Nature magazine]
"Old-growth forests accumulate carbon for centuries and contain large quantities of it. We expect, however, that much of this carbon, even soil carbon, will move back to the atmosphere if these forests are disturbed."
Is that enough for you to begin your own researches?
Nonsense. Wood laying on the ground rots very quickly, releasing all carbon as CO2 and Methane. Doesn't matter how old the forest stand is, the trees all have a given life span. The author's process proposes to significantly delay the rotting and release of trees which would otherwise rot much sooner.
Period.
I hope you don't really think such a reply is really an effective refutation of all the links that Kiashu posted...
Aside from that, however, I can't resist saying that you've missed the forest for the trees.
To put it simply, it just stands to reason that an old growth forest, being an ecosystem that contains more living organisms than a tree plantation, is also most likely an ecosystem that contains more carbon at any given time.
Turn an old-growth forest into a tree plantation and you've released carbon into the atmosphere. Allow a tree plantation to return to being wild forest, and you've effectively sequestered a roughly equal amount of carbon.
I'm not an expert on the amounts, I'll leave that to the sort of folks Kiashu linked to.
A brilliant refutation. I'm sure that if you send it to the editors of Nature they'll publish it, and the Nobel Committee will create a new prize for contributions to biology just for you.
What matters is the net change in carbon storage, in the forest, plus in the product. We are not increasing the equilibrium amount of carbon in the forest. (That is also true of the mixed HW forest, although it probably takes longer to reach an equilibrium, and that equilibrium could well be higher). But RRs accola if the product lasts 100 years on average, would contain five times as much carbon, as the above ground part of the forest. Add in less than 100% for tree to accola, and the fact that the underground storage is (nominally) unaffected, and typically larger than above ground (roots, and carbon in storage). But even a conservative estimate would make the net carbon storage at equilibrium at least twice that of the forest alone. Of course this harveted forest will never be grown to maturity, so its carbon storage is going to be less than virgin forest. Nevertheless, I'd be very surprised, if this didn't cause net storage of carbon (and we have displaced other products, such as concrete/steel).
If this catches on it could be a useful carbon BB. Not a solution by itself. But it is doubtful any single method will solve the whole problem. Lets develop all the BBs we can.
A bit more from Kiashu's 'Nature' quote; part of Abstract from paper
(RR's technology seems useful: low maintenance long life construction materials that are non-toxic have to be real progress when we slide down the energy slope. But first priority: treat with utmost care the growing and harvest of trees, and defend the old forests.)
I posted this quote already on ToD in a different context.
I am getting questions faster than I can answer them, so let me hit a couple of points quickly:
Get back to us when you have a carbon LCA.
We do have one. I already stated that, and it verifies that our energy inputs are lower than competing aluminum, steel, or PVC. So if we choose to use Accoya over steel in an application, you would have a hard time arguing that carbon isn't being sequestered. You would essentially be arguing that the energy inputs into the process are greater than the energy contained in the wood.
A couple of other things to clear up. First, the 30,000 cubic meters is on an output basis. So the amount of wood initially in the tree is not a factor in my sequestration calculations. That is irrelevant. That covers about a third of your post.
If 30,000m3 sequesters 171 million km of driving, then 500,000m3 will sequester 2,850 million km of driving. This is 13km per vehicle in the EU25 in 2004. So perhaps on a single day in each year everyone bikes to work... this will match you.
This is the difference in what could we do, and what are we doing. Convince everyone to bike to work one day a year, and good luck with that. Meanwhile, we are selling a sustainable replacement for steel in certain applications, validated by one LCA (with two others in progress covering specific applications).
"energy" does not equal "carbon", as you know. I asked for a carbon LCA.
It's quite possible to have a net gain in energy while causing net emissions of carbon, or lose energy while absorbing emissions, etc. This is all about efficiencies. You've already stated that some lower-emissions methods were rejected because of financial cost.
I'd certainly be surprised if dealing with the timber caused more carbon emissions than the timber has carbon, but it's not impossible. And in any case it related to your calculation of sequestered carbon. Whether there are 1kg C emissions per 250kg C in the timber or 1,000 or more likely some number in between, it must be accounted for if you want to present us detailed calculations of "equal to X cars' emissions."
Had you simply said that it was a net sequestration, it wouldn't be a problem. But you gave us a detailed calculation of exactly how much would be sequestered. I was pointing out that the calculation was missing some important numbers.
Which means that there is some other timber left to rot or burn in the plantations. In a carbon LCA that'd have to be accounted for. Only counting the carbon once it enters the mill gates is like Italy boasting it's nuclear free when it buys nuclear-generated electricity from France.
If for example your finished product fraction was 1/2, that is only half the weight of the logged trees became a finished product, then the process would be close to carbon neutral (not quite because of the emissions in logging, processing and construction), but not net carbon sequestering.
Which is why I say that it certainly looks like a good and sustainable timber use practice, but it's not yet shown that it's carbon sequestering. So the title of the article is somewhat premature.
The view of conservation or changes in people's day-to-day lifestyles as being impossible is not borne out by experiences. Here Down Under, for example, we have by a mixture of progressive pricing, advertising and regulation halved domestic water consumption in a couple of cities, greatly increased public transport patronage, and hugely reduced rates of smoking. So we can change people's behaviour substantially.
That does not mean it's certainly possible to change people's behaviour in all energy use, deforestation and so on. But it does mean it seems to be worth a try - amongst all the areas of transport, heating, cooling, cooking, food, and so on, it would be surprising if none of those could be changed.
Kiashu, first let me assure you that I appreciate the criticisms. If I can't defend my arguments against criticisms, then the arguments aren't good enough. Having said that...
"energy" does not equal "carbon", as you know. I asked for a carbon LCA.
You misunderstand. We do have a carbon LCA. The LCAs we are currently having done cover a lot of different "What if" scenarios. That's what I mean by going much more into detail on the carbon question. But for our current process, we do have a carbon LCA, done by EMPA:
www.empa.ch
Which means that there is some other timber left to rot or burn in the plantations. In a carbon LCA that'd have to be accounted for. Only counting the carbon once it enters the mill gates is like Italy boasting it's nuclear free when it buys nuclear-generated electricity from France.
I don't believe that is remotely accurate, nor a proper analogy. Timber that is left to rot or burn is timber that was previously carbon dioxide pulled from the air. So it makes no contribution either way. Your argument would be like saying that if I grew a tree and then burned it for firewood, there was a net addition of carbon to the atmosphere.
If you are harvesting from an old growth forest, then your argument is true, but it doesn't apply for us. The only thing that matters is the carbon that was ultimately wood going into our reactors, and the energy inputs it took to make and distribute the finished Accoya.
Whether there are 1kg C emissions per 250kg C in the timber or 1,000 or more likely some number in between, it must be accounted for if you want to present us detailed calculations of "equal to X cars' emissions."
Don't get hung up on whether it's 15,000 cars or 10,000 cars. That number was clearly for illustrative purposes. If I said "X tons of carbon sequestered", it's meaningless to most people. If I can put that in terms of cars or miles driven, it can start to give people a picture.
The view of conservation or changes in people's day-to-day lifestyles as being impossible is not borne out by experiences.
That's not my view at all. I highly favor policies that reduce consumption. However, you compared something that could be to somethign that is. This is like me saying "If the U.S. lowered their energy usage to Europe's levels, we could be energy independent." Or "airing everyone's tires up could save more energy than this or that." Those are certainly things that could be, but neither is likely to happen in practice. But that doesn't mean that we should stop trying, just that we also have to work with 'what is.'
And as I said in my reply to Erica, I certainly understand that magnitude of the carbon emissions issue. There won't be a silver bullet, unless we just run out of fossil carbon.
This sentence bothers me. Why doesn't it apply to you?
If you are arguing that using Accoya will have a globally significant carbon sequestration result, but you are not including in any of this that we will use less wood somewhere else, then you are essentially arguing that increased timber consumption equals increased global carbon sequestration. But increased timber consumption almost certainly means that, somewhere in the world, old-growth forest will be turned into tree plantation. Or worse, simply consumed. And that means that some amount of carbon is almost certainly released at the other end.
It doesn't matter if you yourselves only buy from good tree plantations, someone else on the planet will either devastate old-growth forest or else replace wood with the concrete and steel your customers gave up using. It's either a wash, or else the science of carbon sequestration in forests, and the fraction of harvested wood that goes into real use, and all the things Kiashu has brought up, are vitally important to the question of whether you are actually affecting global atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
This sentence bothers me. Why doesn't it apply to you?
Because it is irrelevant to the argument he is making - that I need to count against the process the wood that was cut down and not used in the process (since it will either rot or be burned). But since this wood was grown for the purpose of construction, etc. then the carbon that is released on burning or rotting is the carbon that was sequestered while growing. So it isn't a plus or a minus. It makes no contribution toward the sequestration calculation - which concerns how much wood was stored away versus how much carbon was used to produce it.
And my calculations are based on finished product - not trees standing in the forest. He wanted to shave off a third on the basis that he thought the 30,000 cubic meters was input, when it is output.
Hi Robert, I enjoyed your post. Have to agree with several posters though that, at least for the time being, the new product described will have virtually no impact on total carbon emissions. Certainly any process for decreasing carbon emissions is welcome. But a strong argument for products such as Accoya® wood is that it will help decrease the amount of waste in the world since the life time of the product is increased. Rot, rust and insect resistance are highly desirable attributes for any construction material. It must be noted that no proposed process for sequestering carbon dioxide is likely to even start to dent the amount of CO2 evolved by burning FFs. Burial of CO2 underground is likely to be too expensive, in the long run, for the consumer to ever be applied.
Has any thought been given to using this process in tandem with the Japanese process for steaming and compressing wood to give wood with very much superior strength? Your process probably would have to precede the Japanese process in order to get good penetration of the acetic anhydride but the high temperature steam used by the Japanese might start to de-O-acetylate the Accoya wood.
Lets look at accola as a modifier to global demand for wood. In an equilibrium system, annual wood demand is the total inventory of wood product divided by the average lifetime of the wood product. If we hold the total inventory of wood product fixed, but increase the lifetime of wood in use, we decrease demand. I.e. we can harvest less wood than before, because we don't need to replace rotten wood as often. Of course if the total inventory of wood product is held fixed, we have not increased carbon sorage in wood product (but we would have decreased demand, which should imply healthier forests). If instead we keep wood production fixed, but product lifetime increases the total carbon stored as product goes up. Either way we are increasing carbon storage, in either healthier forests, or in greater inventories of wood product. In all likelihood, the accola would lead to some of each of these alternatives.
Absolutely, the criticisms are not in any way meant to detract from what I think is an excellent idea - to use more wood in construction. Since modern building materials are generally created with large amounts of fossil fuel inputs, wood will generally be a great improvement on them in fossil fuel and emissions terms. I critique because it's always good to keep things rigorous. If I can think of it, commercial competitors, government regulators and so on will certainly think of it.
It's my understanding that slash heaps are often burned, making the methane issue moot.
The rest of your objections above are similarly flimsy. A stand of e.g. poplar is unlikely to serve just one purpose. Sections large enough for lumber will be sent to mills (which is where the arcs and knots will be cut off and rejected, not on the land), smaller pieces may be chipped for pulp, and the twigs and leaves may go for mulch. With the recent interest in bio-oil as an easily transportable fuel product, the non-lumber fractions could be pyrolized to bio-oil in the field and the ash returned to the earth. Chips for pulp yield fuel also, both immediate (the lignin-containing "black liquor" can be gasified) and deferred (waste paper is a perfectly usable fuel).
All of these displace fossil fuels using carbon taken from the atmosphere. Some of them sequester carbon for a while, depending on the lifespan of the product. None of them are the greenhouse disasters you imply.
Hmmm, not sure what happened with all those blockquote tags, that seems to happen a bit here. Anyway...
Slash heaps are often burned, but not always. In any case, the combustion is never total; if 4% of the material is left unburned, this potentially doubles the effective emissions.
Yep, plantation timber often serves several purposes. But just as often lots is wasted, and oldgrowth forests logged are largely wasted, too (a particular problem with Australian forestry practices).
It's certainly true that using best practice in forestry will mean that the net greenhouse impact is low. But it's also true that best practice is far from universal. In fact, of all timber logged, the vast majority is logged very wastefully. Most of us don't need to worry about that.
But a company offering timber products and wishing to claim "I sequester carbon for a living" does need to worry about it. You can't make a claim like that unless you can back it up by telling us about your forestry practices. Rapier's article was missing that half of the process.
Preview is your friend.
Not really. Anything left unburned from a slash-pile fire will be partially or completely pyrolized, and not digestible by bacteria. Thin layers of slash material will be aerobic, like fallen leaves and needles.
It appears that waste timber in Europe is a luxury that few can afford. Maybe Australia can follow suit? That would help the Americas and SE Asia get on the bandwagon.
Timber emits as much CO2 when it rots as what it took up during growing, so it nets out zero. Whats your argument then?
Regarding your comparison to the CO2 Saved by driving less, two things. First: Don't you think its a bit pointless to compare the CO2 savings of one pilot plant with all vehicle emissions in europe?
And secondly we need to do all we can to use less fossil energy and emit less CO2, so arguing that a method of CO2 sequestration isnt any better than driving less is again just contraproductive as we will certainly need to use all available methods simultanously if we want to turn this situation around.
No. It also emits CH4. See my comment above.
Perhaps, but it was the article authour's comparison, not mine. I was simply responding to that.
Absolutely! Which is the drive of my critique.
There is a tendency in many people to look at sequestration and hope that we can continue business as usual forever, but "let's just bury it." By overstating a particular process's sequestration potential, that encourages that wrong thought.
Likewise, by overstating the potential of reduction of consumption, of solar panels or nuclear or whatever, we also encourage the wrong idea that something is a "silver bullet". People tend to hope that they can continue their lives exactly as they've always lived them, and a single solution will without disruption or expense deal with all the problems.
We see it here a TOD all the time, posters become well-known for pushing nuclear, or personal rapid transit or whatever, and downplaying or denying the usefulness of any other approach. And it's not confined to TOD, but is quite widespread - it's human.
There actually is a "silver bullet," that is in the sense that there is one simple answer to the problem of increased CO2 in the atmosphere, and that is to stop UN-sequestering massive quantities of carbon in the form of ffs. But this doesn't fit the other usual meaning associated with "silver bullet"--that it be relatively painless (to "us").
Some good points, none the less if the acetylation process leads to a net gain in sequestered carbon the author would be within rights to make the claim he sequesters carbon for a living. Any model used to calculate the net value of carbon removed from the cycle at this point in time is lacking much in complexity and scope so any claims can not be taken as dogma--but we must start somewhere.
A point not adequately addressed critical to the calculation is the length of time it will take for all the carbon stored in acetylized wood to be released back into the atmosphere. Pie in the sky hopes that it will all be regasified or recycled in some other way do not mesh with generally happens on the ground with demolished wood product structures. They are bulky, long distant transport is expensive, reuse in less demanding applications is unlikely at a large scale in a market where labor costs are high. (I build commercially for a living so I know how the short term cost constraints shape projects.) To make any meaningful computation on the carbon being sequestered by the product requires the likely percentage of the wood that will eventually decay per time be subtracted from the amount of carbon which was stored in products originally per time.
All that said, this sounds like good innovation. Is the process patented? If it proves commercially viable in this market it will do well. Making unsustainable claims as to how much benefit the acetylation process brings are not helpful in the long run, they tend to bite you in the ass.
A point not adequately addressed critical to the calculation is the length of time it will take for all the carbon stored in acetylized wood to be released back into the atmosphere.
As I said, it's theoretical at this point. We know that the wood lasts above ground for more than 50 years. We don't know what the upper limit is. So, any carbon sequestered buys you 50 years for finding better solutions.
Is the process patented?
Yes.
Making unsustainable claims as to how much benefit the acetylation process brings are not helpful in the long run, they tend to bite you in the ass.
Claims are based on the LCA we had done by EMPA, as well as many years of independent verification by multiple outside labs. From our website:
Results of the testing are available upon request, so you can see that isn't just us making claims.
My point merely was that the greatest part of the wood will likely decay in time barring some phenomenal changes (we can hope) in the way materials get recycled from job sites. When talking carbon sequestering 50 years, 100 years and 200 years are all fairly short term but those differences could all be significant to the cycle we are dealing with.
Since the growing of the trees and eventual decaying of x percent of their end products will be an ongoing cycle it is of import to determine how much faster carbon is being sequestered than it is being rereleased if you are using carbon sequestering as a real selling point of the product. This is not theoretical. Of course if there is no reliable way to determine the eventual decay rate of acetylation processed wood other than gathering data in real time, coming up with real numbers becomes problematic. Marketers will look for the best case scenarios, decent science will require including all scenarios right up to worst case when rating the probable outcomes. Hence the possibly slightly coarse comment about getting bit, 'come back to haunt you' might have fit this forum better.
I in no way meant to impugn your product. As much as I love what I can do with reinforced concrete, wood is my first love as a building material. A better, cleaner type of treated lumber is a very good thing.
Increasingly, so is landfilling.
Landfilling of demolition debris is expensive enough that at least one startup, Ze-gen, is focussed on gasification of the combustible fractions and reclaiming metals. The mineral portions wind up as slag, which can be reused as well. Ze-gen has not yet released data on the efficacy or flexibility of the gasification process, but the chemistry is no mystery. Whether the syngas goes for synthesis of acetic anhydride or methanol or just gets burned for electric generation, it's displacing some fossil fuel. It may not be worth using Accoya for interior woodwork in a short-lived commercial building, but if Accoya can be used in place of e.g. steel roof members, substantial amounts of carbon would be taken out of the atmosphere for a significant period of time. If it can be separated upon demolition, it could be pyrolized just like wood and used for bio-char; that would continue to sequester about half the carbon for as much as thousands of years. The inseparable portion would become fuel or feedstock.
Accoya isn't the only new technology out there. It's worth keeping in mind that these things together can be more than their sum.
That's excellent.
Interestingly, here Down Under around half of municipal landfill inputs are from demolition and construction, the other half from homes.
On rubbish day, walk along and see how much stuff people are chucking out of their homes. Then think that it's about equal to the construction debris. All that rubbish every week. It's amazing.
If we could reduce that construction waste, and make use of it, that'd be excellent.
In Canada (and I think the US also) we have a MAJOR problem with the pine beetle. Could the wood that is infected with the pine beetle be used as a source for the Acoya process. If so, there is a lot of wood in Canada that needs a use.
Very interesting article, and a hopeful one also.
Don
Don, I want to be careful about how much I reveal, but we are very much aware of the pine beetle kills. In fact, I have some of this wood.
I agree, in Canada we need to be doing more (or publicizing it more) about the vast tracts of deadwood. We could make the best of a bad situation by sequestering a lot of that carbon before it rots, and I think this process just may be a perfect opportunity. Pyrolysis and biochar production could also offer some opportunities.
Robert I am curious about how deep the process penetrates the wood. Does it go all the way through a treated board or just some sort of surface application? Is there a limit to the board dimensions because of saturation issues?
Thanks for the article.
Jason, the process treats the wood consistently all the way through. Some wood species have very difficult to penetrate pores, however, and they can't easily be acetylated. So the process is not universally applicable.
Also, does the process work with denser hardwoods, such as oak or hickory? What about poplar, which grows relatively rapidly? And, has sawdust (form either soft or hard woods) been investigated, especially as a feed stock for a moisture resistant particle board?
E. Swanson
The hardwoods are very difficult to penetrate. Poplar and sawdust have both been done successfully.
If this process enables an increase in the use of wood as an 'engineering material', then so much the better. However, wood, in the form of large laminated wooden beams, has already found use in a variety of architectural applications, such as public buildings, modern churches, upscale residences, etc. As most of these are indoor uses where rot resistance is not particularly critical, I don't think the Accoya material is particularly applicable.
As far as the Accoya material providing a substitute for tropical hardwoods, I don't think one can make such a blanket statement, because such substitutions are highly application specific.
Take teak for example. It is used quite heavily in boat-building as decking material and various structural components. While teak has good rot resistence, what makes it ideal for decking is that it is hard, close-grained, well-wearing, and strong. Something like treated pine, even if 100% rot resistant would make for a poor substitute.
Furthermore, many of the more endangered tropical hardwoods include such premium items as ebony, cocobolo, bubinga, and the various rosewoods. These are mainly prized for use in making fine furniture and various woodworking items. Few if any outdoor applications. (How many people are going to build a shed out of something costing $40 per board-ft?) So, the Accoya material would not serve as a substitute in this case either.
Now, there are lesser, non-endangered tropical woods that ARE used for general outdoor structural applications. In which case the Accoya material might make some inroads here.
In general, people tend to denigrate wood as being capable of sophisticated engineering applications, which is a mistake. If things are properly designed and executed, wood can be every bit as good as metals for certain applications. For example, the RAF Mosquito, arguably one of the best fighter/bombers of WW II, had a fuselage and wings made almost entirely of wood. This was done to save on strategic aluminum. The planes held up reasonably well, except in the tropics, where aggressive microbial action tended to rot the wood and soon turned the casein glue that was used into a substance resembling cottage cheese (and with just about as much holding power). If Accoya was available back then, it might have found itself in the wings of a Mosquito.
Regarding outdoor structural applications - and longevity
Here's an example of CCS techniques done in the name of God on Norwegian soil about 1000 years ago
No fossils involved whatsoever. Think more of a few horses and alot of handpower.
For longevity think woodtar ........ looooooongeviiiiiity
About Stave Churches
My local stave church
Some details
Other Stave churches, most are 800y to 1000y old
As for the Accoya's techniques on sequestering carbon, I'll stay mute. And my muteness goes for most other variations on that very issue. I'm not getting my head wrapped around that phenomenon
(Scalability and time, that's my problems with all of CCS proposals I've heard of.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't today the 1 year birthday of CCS, or is it 2 already ?)
Robert,
Many timber design applications are controlled by deflection. I looked at your links, but didn't see any stiffness parameters readily available. What is E?
Thanks
BCK
Specific physical properties of the wood get a bit outside my area. Someone else asked a question about bending, and the answer I got back was that this was not impacted. If you want a more specific answer, I will have to direct you to someone in Technical Support who deals with end users.
I asked about the use in boatbuilding - there is a traditional way of steaming the wood to get it to bend more in places where hull shape curves so much that dry wood would probably break. Anohter method has been heating without steam - probably the natural moisture in wood then allows more bending (just a guess...).
So there could be difficulties there because the Accoya method does not let water in as much as untreated wood would.
Other way to do shape wood to sharp curves is to laminate thinner wood to required thickness but e.g. planking a boat this way requires a lot more work. And there are other ways to build boat hulls that might benefit from Accoya but this is perhaps not a place to go into all methods that can be and have been used...
There was also a mention about teredo worms etc that cause trouble for wooden structures in sea - wooden boats and ships have been built and are being built for oceans and usually can be protected quite well with usual bottom paints. Care is needed in construction, though.
Robert, perhaps you should contact also the 'Wooden Boat' magazine - the best one about wooden boats in US. They have a regular feature about woods, their use, environmental impacts etc. I would imagine that they might be interested in this although the Accoya is not yet available on that side of the pond. Web site is http://www.woodenboat.com/ - they could give this some more visibility at least in boating side of things...
Best success,
Seppo
Please point me in the right direction.
As a woodworker dimensional stability is attractive. As an engineer I'd be more interested in strength and stiffness properties that go along with your durability improvements. Would also suggest discussions of capacity (e.g. 60 tons) clearly distinguish controlling limit state. Strength or deflection? Ultimate or allowable? . . .
This all sounds great. I have a quick correction . . .
There are lots and lots of wood railroad bridges out there (in the US) and they are all rated for a lot more than 60 tons. Some can be quite big. So your bridge with your wood is beautiful and a technological milestone, but not even close to the heaviest rated wood bridge.
There are lots and lots of wood railroad bridges out there (in the US) and they are all rated for a lot more than 60 tons.
Can you give a specific reference? That information comes from the company who built the bridge:
Hello R-squared,
Beautiful bridge in the photo. I assume that plentiful lightning rods protect this structure so that it won't go up like a Texas A & M Aggie bonfire, which, as I recall from feeble memory, is your Alma Mater? Does the Accoya process greater reduce accidental lightning flammability? Is it required to have a fire-sprinkler system?
I am certainly not a bridge engineer, but I could easily forsee long & graceful Accoya spans for lightweight, narrow gauge minitrains and/or pedaling Spiderbikers as this equipment would come nowhere near the weight of standard gauge RR & Mass-Transit rail or even heavy buses.
Additionally, since the narrow gauge equip. is so light: the short railroad tie required could be made of any softwood, or even a Accoya sawdust composite if the strength and termite/rot durability is adequately pre-engineered in. Or just place lots more of Accoya-processed branches side by side under the narrow track!
What would be really be aesthetically pleasing is live trees flanking the narrow track with Accoya-processed branches [yes,branches!] artfully interwoven into the trees to provide the aerial pantograph support for electrified minitrains, or just to help shield the spiderbikers from the worst of the weather or hot sun.
I picture the live trees being moved by the winds, but the Accoya-branches, like a real spiderweb, just flexing, bending, stretching, and sliding on the interweave*** into the branches coming off the treetrunks. If Accoya branches last 80 years-->plenty of time for ever more of the live tree branches to numerically grow even more into the Accoya weave--> even the birds won't be able to tell the difference between live and dead branches if cleverly engineered and artfully designed.
*** Think of a more sophisticated form of sliding/knitting your ten fingers together.
Weave even more Accoya-processed branches into a vertical bramble running alongside the track--then never worry about shoveling huge snowdrifts off the tracks again.
Just trying to help tickle your synapses so that your company uses and/or carbon sequesters all of the tree. YMMV!
EDIT: Accoya-sawdust cladding for steel pipes so they don't need painting yet are protected from external rust?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
You may be confusing the length of the bridge with the length of the individual spans of the bridge. I inspect wooden bridges for a living. Some of them might support 60 tons, but those are very short (eg, 20 foot) spans as a component of the larger bridge. Also, they're full-o-creosote.
Hello,
I am puzzled by your answer to the question about freezing conditions.
Though I am not a civil engineer, I wonder, should not a material used to build a bridge in The Netherlands have been properly and thoroughly tested in sub-zero condions?
Regards.
The bridge builder did all sorts of tests, but I don't have the specifics:
On the question specific to freezing conditions, since the wood doesn't retain much moisture, it shouldn't have difficulty in freezing conditions.
Hi Robert,
It is pretty interesting that a chemical process involving wood and vinegar had not been tried by our ancestors. The Romans would have loved it! Does it require very high pressure or very high purity acetic acid?
It is good to see your talents hard at work on our sustainable future rather than our fossil past.
The Romans did not have acetic anhydride. The Romans did pretty well with stone bridges for example Pont du Gard in France which is an aqueduct but really a bridge (for water)whereas the first level was used as a bridge in the usual sense. See the beautiful picture of the Pont du Gard at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard
I have walked across the top of the Pont du Gard, believe me it is impressive.
Wood has a lot of limitations structural limitations. Steel is roughly 25 times as strong as wood. Unreinforced concrete is +2 times stronger and is not combustible.
The original streets of Chicago were made of wood blocks driven into the ground. They were structurally strong enough for the heaviest loads but those streets burnt during the Great Chicago Fire.
This is why wood isn't used more often even for cladding(siding). Most fire codes require building exterior walls to have a fire-rating even if interior fire ratings are not needed. I suppose you can get some kind of fire rating by plastering over the cladding.
I think a few decades ago they talked about plywood foundations made of pressure treated lumber; concrete requires a lot more energy than processed wood I suppose.
Of course in the South there are the termites.
I do think we should definitely use a LOT more wood but fire resistance is still the biggest obstacle to acceptance IMO. Roads and foundations made of wood that are not exposed(topped with asphalt or concrete) might work. The pile-driven wood supports of Venice have lasted hundreds of years.
I was a builder in the US for 20 odd years and never had to deal with fire code issues in home siding. We used many different kinds of wood, plywood, pressed board and other wood-based products. As far as I know, wood is still one of the most commonly used materials for siding a house.
I wasn't thinking about houses with big setbacks.
I was thinking about cities.
Even houses and apartment buildings have to have rated walls if they are less than 5' from the lot line, which means they have fire rated dry wall below the siding. Very few commercial buildings are made of wood because of fire codes. The issue with wood is combustibility.
Consider me a little bit skeptical...
Robert, I've not much doubt that you are sequestering carbon in your work. But I've considerably more doubt about whether acetylizing wood can make a statistically significant impact on how much wood the global timber industry sequesters. And I've perhaps even more doubt as to whether sequestering wood in human infrastructure is a better way to sequester carbon than, say, allowing tree plantations to return to being old growth forest.
Implicit in your post seems to be an idea that wood is normally an inferior building material compared to metal, concrete, or plastic, but that your process neutralizes or overcomes those inferiorities. I'm not convinced that this is true except in a few niche cases, and I have to wonder how much carbon those niche cases add up to.
As far as I can tell, my parent's house, built in 1922, still contains the same wooden windows and frames that came with it when it was new (not to mention the framing and flooring). They've been refurbished at least once and repainted many more times, and I've no doubt they can last another 85 years if equally well maintained. So why doesn't the new part of the house also have wooden windows? (Especially considering that one of the new metal frames in my old bedroom broke a few years after installation?) Well, I'm no expert, but I would guess it's essentially because it's no longer as cheap or as politically acceptable to obtain redwood from California's forests.
In other words, if wood is the answer, we still have to overcome all the problems that caused us to replace so much of it with other products over the course of the last century. Namely, deforestation and cost (when compared to fossil fuels). Maybe fire codes as well. It really wasn't the quality of wood that was holding us back from using it in so many countless small projects and products.
So, granted that Accoya can be used for large projects where untreated wood is not adequate, what percentage, globally, of concrete and steel construction in large products could be replaced with Accoya, practically speaking? And does it add up to be statistically significant when compared to the amount of wood that used to be (but no longer is) used in small projects, such as toys, tools, and certain aspects of residential construction?
Or, instead of buying Accoya, could we in fact sequester just as much carbon, at lower cost and with minimal or no sacrifice in product quality, by simply using wood in many many small products that we don't currently use it for?
But perhaps most importantly, in either case, what would be the potential for, and consequences of, increased deforestation? Can the worlds forests meet the demand sustainably? Or are we better off leaving them alone?
(And finally, almost as an aside, does using wood instead of plastic (as opposed to metal or concrete) have any sequestration benefits at all?)
the properties of this wood seem kind of similar to good old cedar. is this "new wood" chemically similar to cedar ?
Cedar derives its rot resistance from terpenoid resins (that cedar smell) throughout the wood. Acetylation is a chemical process (see description in keypost) that changes the composition of the cellulose. Not the same thing, but similar in effect.
I've perhaps even more doubt as to whether sequestering wood in human infrastructure is a better way to sequester carbon than, say, allowing tree plantations to return to being old growth forest.
Well, first thing is that we will continue to have tree plantations. Those aren't going away. But second, it is hard for me to believe that over the course of 100 years, 5 harvests of Radiata pine wouldn't sequester more carbon than allowing a forest to grow for 100 years. However, I am all about data. If you can show me the data you can convince me.
I'm not convinced that this is true except in a few niche cases, and I have to wonder how much carbon those niche cases add up to.
There are numerous cases where this is true. As someone said, wherever water, sun, and wood meet and you need durability, there is a potential application. Doors and windows have been the first big market for us, and certainly in window frames I believe we are superior to the competition. The wood is also being used in decking, another good application.
It really wasn't the quality of wood that was holding us back from using it in so many countless small projects and products.
Durability. Have a look (this was done by an outside testing agency):
http://www.titanwood.com/performance_beauty_that_endures.html
This stuff will last more than 25 years in the ground. It has been used in canals in the Netherlands, and that is a very harsh environment.
And does it add up to be statistically significant when compared to the amount of wood that used to be (but no longer is) used in small projects, such as toys, tools, and certain aspects of residential construction?
This is like the guy who suggested if everyone just biked to work for a day we could save as much carbon. That's well and good, and I would encourage anyone to get that initiative going. But it isn't either/or. So nothing is stopping someone from also reviving more wood in toys, tools, etc.
But perhaps most importantly, in either case, what would be the potential for, and consequences of, increased deforestation? Can the worlds forests meet the demand sustainably? Or are we better off leaving them alone?
Speaking for ourselves, we only use certified sustainable producers. So deforestation isn't an issue in our case.
(And finally, almost as an aside, does using wood instead of plastic (as opposed to metal or concrete) have any sequestration benefits at all?)
I guess I don't follow your logic. You make plastic out of fossil fuels. So the carbon is tied up in the plastic, but it came from the ground. There is no net sequestration. The carbon in wood comes from the air, and thus can sequester carbon.
I don't know the answer to that. But some of the articles I linked to here could be the beginning of an answer.
Net carbon sequestered in forests is amazingly variable. This study looking at litterfall (and thus carbon sequestration in soil) in Chinese plantations and forests finds that it's 20-100% higher in a natural forest than in a plantation. This study says,
"Half of the primary forests (6 x 108 hectares) are located in the boreal and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. On the basis of our analysis, these forests alone sequester about 1.3 +/- 0.5 gigatonnes of carbon per year."
This works out to 2.2+/-0.8 t/ha of carbon. On that basis, for each hectare of your plantations to equal that you would have to sequester 2.2+/-0.8t carbon, harvesting at least 4.4+/-1.6t/ha of wood annually.
In NZ they claim 814tCO2/ha of sequestration for radiata pine,
"Pinus radiata afforestation on a high productivity site, 800stems per hectare planted, pruning to 6.3m and thinning to waste to 400stems per hectare. Clearfell harvest at 28 years. Long term carbon stock averaged over three rotations. Includes live biomass only."
and 550tCO2/ha on a low productivity site (with different planting practices). Notice the large variation by climate and practices.
Three rotations of clearfellings over 28 years takes 84 years. So that the 814tCO2/ha becomes 814/84 = 9.7tCO2/ha per year, and the 550tCO2/ha becomes 6.5tCO2/ha/yr.
The site if left fallow will release the carbon after this time, so that continuous long-term rotation is required for permanent sequestration. It doesn't sequester anything if you clearfell it, only if you keep planting it.
12/44 of CO2 is carbon, so that 6.5-9.7tCO2/ha/yr is 1.7-2.6t of carbon per hectare. On the basis of your "50% carbon by weight" figure for radiata pine, this is 3.4-5.3tC/ha.
Thus, a mixed boreal or temperature old-growth forest sequesters 2.2+/-0.8 t/ha/yr of carbon, and a radiata pine plantation sequesters 3.4-5.3t/ha of carbon.
The extra amount sequestered by the perpetual pine plantation compared to an old growth forest, to have them equal in sequestration effects, is the amount which you can let rot or burn. This is 0.4-3.9 tC/ha/yr, or 0.8-7.8t timber/ha/yr.
These very rough calculations show the large amount of uncertainty based on exactly where the plantation is grown, its local climate, how it's treated and so on. So I don't blame you if you don't have exact figures, I only blame if you present exact figures which are wrong :)
Unfortunately, just planting trees doesn't make a big dent in CO2 production from fossil fuels. A typical forest absorbs maybe 3 tons of carbon dioxide per acre per year so 2 GtCO2(all US coal emissions--33% of US CO2 emissions) would take 1,000,000 square miles to absorb it which is all current US forest land. There just isn't the land to do it.
About 40 million tons of CO2 per year is currently injected in US oilfields for EOR, which is about equal to 20,000 square miles of forest.
About 40 million tons of CO2 per year is currently injected in US oilfields for EOR, which is about equal to 20,000 square miles of forest.
Not really, when you consider that this CO2 is being used to get more oil which will produce more CO2.
My point was that land for biological sequestration is very limited whereas there are lots of oil and gas wells to be filled.
Depends where you get the CO2 from and how much oil you extract.
For example a ton of subbituminous coal will combust to 1.5 tons of CO2 for capture which in turn will produce 3 barrels of EOR oil per ton which emits .315 tons of CO2 releases. It's roughly balanced; 1.5 x 3 x .315=1.417 released vs. 1.5 tons of CO2 buried from the subbit coal. But from an energy viewpoint a ton of coal without CCS will produce 2Mwh/ton of coal (electricity) and in this case you get say 1.5 Mwh plus 4.5 barrels of oil for the same amount of CO2. If electricity is 10 cents per kwh and oil is $40 per barrel its the difference of $.1 x 2000=$200 versus
$.1 x 1500 + 4.5 x $40=$330. Or in terms of raw energy,
2 Mwh/.33 =6 Mwh primary energy versus 1.4/.33=4.2 Mwh plus
4.5 x 1600 kwh/bbl =11.4 Mwh of primary energy(almost double). All for the same CO2 emissions of 1.417...1.5 ton of emissions.
(Of course you could water-shift all fossil fuels into hydrogen gas
by C+2H2O-->CO2 +2H2 and emit zero CO2 but hydrogen technology is developing too slowly.)
And in fact we will need oil and coal for the next generation at least, according to Hirsch and Simmons.
I find it to be completely unrealistic to pretend that people will suddenly reduce their electricity by 50%(coal phase-out) or to stop driving their cars(oil) because they think they are destroying the planet.
But let's assume that they do.
The alternative is to drive the whole mess into the ground and reduce carbon use as fossil fuel is depleted. Today there are 300 million americans using 100 quads of energy(17.8 Gboe), 85% of which is fossil fuel or 60 boe per US citizen. Assuming the world is at the fossil peak now with a decline rate of just 2%, in 2050 the US containing 400 million people will be using 37 quads of fossil fuel(6.6 Gboe) or 22 boe per person--a drop of 72% in energy per person)--about what they use in Romania or Poland today, though still three times as much per capita boe as today's North Korea. Of course we would still continue to increase the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by (6 GtCO2/yr today to 2GtCO2/yr of US in 2050?).
If ~750 Gt CO2(previously burnt fossil fuels) raised world CO2 concentrations by 100 ppm, another 600 Gt CO2 between now
and 2050 will pretty much increase it by close to another 100 ppm--doubling it to above 480 ppm(old Red Line).
Just by doing nothing but waiting for the fossil fuel to run out.
So by this rather longwinded argument, I am suggesting that actively CO2 sequestration will reduce carbon emissions faster and with less energy reduction than simply powering down as fossil fuel dries up.
Isn't what the IPCC says also?
The problem is that even as a supercritical fluid, the CO2 takes up more volume than the oil it came from.
For example, the world's used something like 1,000 billion barrels of oil. A barrel of oil has a volume of 159 litres, more or less. So that all the world's "empty" oil fields (lots are filled with water used to pump out the oil, but we'll ignore that) could hold 159,000 billion or 1.59 x 1014 litres of CO2.
CO2 as a gas at standard atmospheric pressure and temperature has a density of 1.9g/lt. So we could store 302 million tonnes of CO2, which is less than 1% of annual emissions of greenhouse gases. Hmmm.
As a liquid it's 771g/lt, so we could store 123Gt. That's a bit better, taking up 2.5 years of our emissions, or 10% for 25 years, etc.
Or we could consider it in the same way we do oil - it's one thing to have it all there, but processing it is another matter. Just because there are 1,000 billion barrels of oil in the ground doesn't mean we can get them all out today. Likewise, just because we can pump CO2 into the ground doesn't mean we can pump it all in. What sort of infrastructure would we need to deal with our CO2?
Well, let's look at the oil industry. They process 87 million barrels of oil a day, more or less, which is basically 32Gbbl. A barrel of oil is about 0.1364t, so that the world oil industry processes 4.4Gt of oil annually.
By comparison, the world in 2004 produced some 49Gt of CO2-equivalent emissions, 55% of which or 27Gt was from burning fossil fuels. So that if CCS infrastructure equal in size to the oil industry were built tomorrow, we could process less than one-tenth our greenhouse gases, or one-sixth from burning fossil fuels.
This assumes that it can be made to work and not leak out and so on, and forgets issues of cost and all the rest.
CCS just isn't practical as a globally-useful solution. We just have to burn less stuff. Then perhaps CCS, along with reforestation, can make a small contribution.
Burn less stuff.
The problem is that even as a supercritical fluid, the CO2 takes up more volume than the oil it came from.
On 26 May 2006 construction work started on the world's first CO2-free coal power plant in the Schwarze Pumpe industrial district. The plant is based on a concept called Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS), which means that carbon emissions will be captured and compressed to 1⁄500th their original volume, liquefying the gas. It will then be forced 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) below the soil into porous rock where it is believed that it will remain for thousands of years without exacerbating global warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spremberg
The density of crude oil is 850 g/l.
The density of liquid CO2 is 771 g/l.
And gas caps and gas fields are nearly empty by comparison.
Liquid CO2 is 90.7% as dense which is close. This is what gets buried and being 3000 feet down where the pressures are great means it's liable to remain as a liquid; The pressure at 3000 feet below ground is
tremendous based on the basis of simple hydrostatic pressure--i.e. 62.4 x 3000/144=1300 psi or 88 bar at which CO2 is a liquid at , 88^1.28=308. At 500 vol reduction we are in a 'supercritical
fluid' phase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_dioxide_pressure-temperature_ph...
In your example, if we have used 1000 Gb of oil we have room for 1000 Gb of liquid CO2 (which is now in the atmosphere). Since we are at Peak we have 1000 Gb of oil to go. A barrel of oil weighing 135 kg produces 317 kg of liquid carbon dioxide. So we could sequester 85.8% of that oil; 317 x 1 Tboe-136 x 2 Tboe/317 x 1 Tboe=.858 of mass stored(almost all).
We would have to relocate CO2 generation points close to sequestration points. These are generally far from points of use so
the electric grid would have to be expanded and reinforced which is something we need to do for renewables anyways. Fossil fuel power plants would be located over oil fields or coal beds or saline aquifers. Coal could be converted to natural gas which releases 75% more energy per ton of CO2 emitted, so we can burn less. The CO2 produced by the conversion process would be buried. We already have natural gas distribution pipelines. We can further reduce the need for energy by generating electricity from natural gas and recovering heat for space heating and domestic water use on site so rather than 30 or 40% efficiency there would be 30% efficiency for electricity and another 20-25% for low temperature heat recovery.
The US has 1500 or so aging coal power stations(source of 40% of US emissions) and replacing them with new CCS units located over CCS spots goes this seems do-able to me---the Chinese are building a power station a week, right?
I would agree that CCS isn't useful for countries that don't have carbon(obviously) but for countries with lots of carbon like the US(and Australia) they can also contain huge amounts of CO2. The US DOE estimates that the US can hold 82 GtCO2 in oil and gas fields, 152 GtCO2 in coal seams and 919 Gt CO2 in saline aquifers and there is also the possibility of liquid CO2 burial in deep ocean trenches. The US produces 6 Gt CO2 per year(1.6 GtCO2 per year from coal) and has possibly 450 Gt of coal(800 Gt CO2?), so it looks like the US will run out of fossil fuels before we run out of sequestration sites.
Just a nit:
That's true as far as it goes, but oil isn't the only thing that comes up an oil well; especially in EOR, a lot is water. We don't have to pump the water back down, and that makes room for CO2.
In the end, the best method of sequestering the carbon is not to dig it up.
However, worldwide deforestation is responsible for something like 17.7% of greenhouse gas emissions. So that reforestation of lands previously cleared can make a significant difference. Not so much now when what we can do is so small compared to all those other emissions, but later when we've reduced emissions, it can help.
As we burn less and less carbon - whether because of peaking or because of some treaty limiting it - deforestation becomes a larger and larger fraction of our total emissions.
Think of it this way: the IPCC 2007 report told us that we need to reach 15-50% of 2004 emissions by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Given that they excluded possible feedbacks, it seems prudent to look at the lower end of that number, the 15%.
The 17.7% from deforestation then starts to look really important. It's our safe level of emissions all by itself.
If it's physically possible to cut down so much forest that 17% of our 49Gt CO2e 2004 emissions, or 8.7Gt CO2e come from it, then logically it's also possible to plant enough that not only do we stop those 8.7Gt emissions, we also absorb another few Gt. Currently we cut down about 13 million hectares annually. If it's physically possible to cut that much down, it must be physically possible to plant it out, too. This would be (based on the 2.2t/ha figure above) about 29 million tonnes CO2e absorbed in the first year, but of course each year your old plantings absorb, too. It fairly quickly adds up.
This doesn't allow us to burn fossil fuels with impunity. It just helps us adjust. Some of you may know of the one tonne CO2e lifestyle. That's 1/12th an average Westerner's emissions they can control.
In trying for that, what I've found is that to go from 100% to 25-50% average Western emissions is pretty easy, just cut out the waste. But from there it becomes harder. You have to have the local infrastructure like trains and wind turbines, watch what you eat, have energy-efficient appliances, do a lot of biking and so on.
I think it's likely that in reducing global emissions we'll find the same thing. To go from 100% to 25-50% will be (technically, though not politically) easy, to push on down to 15% or less will be more difficult. So if sustainable arboriculture and reforestation can contribute a few percent there, it'll really help.
Of course, reforestation has many other benefits, too, such as raising water tables and helping in rainwater capture for dams, locking in topsoil (see Haiti for an example of what deforestation does to agriculture), ensuring biodiversity and so on. So even if burning coal gave us vitamin C, planting trees would be a good idea.
Given the long life cycles of trees (especially in boreal forests), we cannot wait for reforestation.
Reforesting Iceland is "low hanging fruit". There is significant domestic support for expanding forests in Iceland, they plant almost 20 trees/capita/year, and they are approaching 2% forest cover. 25% seems technically possible (bristlecone pine could make it 50+%). The world would be better off if they planted 1,000 trees/capita/year.
But a Siberian larch or Sitka Spruce# planted in 2009 will still be growing in 2100. Siberian larch (a high value tree) will be ready to harvest in 90 to 110 years (Sitka Spruce longer). They estimate that slightly under half of the carbon in the tree (and almost none in the soil) will be lost when harvested and processed. The rest will be captured in wooden structures for even longer.
# They are also working with Douglas fir, trying to develop a variety that will thrive in some parts of Iceland.
A reasonable estimate is that a reforested Iceland with larger species of trees (Siberian larch, Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir) could capture as much as 25 million tonnes of carbon. But this will take over a century after planting. And planting has just begun !
Best Hopes for Icelandic Forests,
Alan
Good show Robert:
As a woodworker engaged in high-end furniture I doubt I will have any contact with your Accoya. It would seem the grain would be the rather non-descript nature of the original pinewood. As such it would not be a replacement for the exotics. I use various oils and resins to treat and protect the wood, which typically stays indoors unless the wife doesn’t like it and then it ends up at the curb waiting for the trash pickup. I have used Lyptus in an open shelf piece. It is also fast growing wood from sustainable forests but may be too hard for your use. That stuff sure slivers easily.
In East Texas there is the Big Piney Woods where my folks used to live. They grew pulp pine trees there and IIRC, it was about 15 to 20-year turnaround for a tree 12” or more in diameter.
Does the nature of the treatment create a more acidic environment for fasteners? Since it is harder, it should hold screws better but pre-drilling may be required for decks, etc.
Some woods like Oak are high in tannic acid, which allow fuming with high concentrates of ammonia to create the brown color of Arts and Crafts furniture. The Accoya Bridge in the picture has a similar color but there are so many possible digital color changes it is impossible to tell.
I rather doubt if sequestering carbon was the main reason Accoya was created but it is an interesting concept. Just the replacement for pressure treated toxic wood is good enough as long as the price is in line.
Thanks for the information and good luck to you and your company in this environment.
Does the nature of the treatment create a more acidic environment for fasteners? Since it is harder, it should hold screws better but pre-drilling may be required for decks, etc.
I tread carefully around the technical questions on the wood itself, because I am really not a 'wood guy' yet. That's especially true when the wood guys are asking questions.
However, I can give you what I think is the official answer on this. There has been a vigorous internal debate on the acidic question. While not completely resolved, I believe that we recommend stainless steel fasteners.
I rather doubt if sequestering carbon was the main reason Accoya was created but it is an interesting concept. Just the replacement for pressure treated toxic wood is good enough as long as the price is in line.
You are correct on both points, and I think this is the point that many are missing. The carbon sequestration is a side-effect. It is not the reason the wood was created.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for writing this article and putting up with the troll tax on your valuable time. I really appreciate it.
As a woodworker I hope the process can be applied to woods that are more attractive than pine. I would like to use it for some durable outdoor furniture. I am not so keen on lyptus (splinters! pink!) but I do like the even grain of beech. Black walnut and silver maple are supposed to be fast growers and would be attractive. Does the process work for any of these?
My local distributor is Sierra Forest Products (a subsidiary of UCS) who say they will have Accoya in Q1. I will be trying out whatever they have.
Good luck, Robert, on your enterprise.
Looking forward to seeing Accoya / Titan wood in a Home Depot near me. :)
wood collier
make charcoal
and
wood vinegar also called
pyroligneous acid
cas 8030-97-5
stcc 4910428
pirolenhoso www.biocarbo.com biopirol
wood vinegar is used as a pesticide which does not cause colony collapse disorder.
charcoal is also called bio-char
bokashi made with bio-char ?
I am for having more uses for wood
accoya
Very interesting post.
Could your process be applied to bamboo?
http://www.bambootechnologies.com/allabout.htm
Bamboo is a viable replacement for wood. It is one of the strongest building materials, with a tensile strength that rivals steel and weight-to-strength ratio surpassing that of graphite. It withstands up to 52,000 pounds of pressure psi. With a 10-30% annual increase in biomass versus 2-5% for trees, bamboo creates greater yields of raw material for use. One bamboo clump can produce 200 poles in the five years it takes one tree to reach maturity.
Also check out this wonderful book: Grow Your Own House: Simon Velez and Bamboo Architecture
I see someone already asked the question and you answered in the affirmative, yay!
Very cool stuff you have there.
That bamboo question comes up a lot. I need to have a look and see where we are with that.
Talk about hype!
52000 psi? (yes, I read the website, but below are the
real values; I guess they didn't bother to read their own website.
Allowable stresses by Code
flexural-2910 psi
compressive-1140 psi
tension-2170 psi
E-2.3 million psi
http://www.bambootechnologies.com/PDF.cfm/BambooICCESR1636.pdf
It's better than many structural lumber types but far from ordinary steel which has allowable stress of 24000 psi(66% safety factor),and an E of 29 million psi,etc.
Too bad they only come in small diameter sections.
And how do you make connection? Glue? Tape?
Could you even make handrails from this stuff?
Hhhhhyyyypppeee!
To ask these questions means you really haven't examined this subject at all. No it is not Hype. There is a very extensive history and literature about the quality and architectural history of the use of bamboo in construction. That's not to say it doesn't have disadvantages in certain circumstances but it can be an excellent structural element when properly incorporated by those who are experienced and knowledgeable in its use.
http://bambus.rwth-aachen.de/eng/reports/zeri/englisch/referat-eng.html
The above link can lead you to a deeper exploration of at least one Architect's solution on connection techniques.
I actually have the results, (somewhere among my books on this subject) of the stress tests conducted by the German engineers who were tasked with giving the Okay for this particular project.
I have also have a lot of information on joints an connectors for bamboo. I'm a member of the bambu-brasil at yahoogrupos dot com dot br most of the members are Brazilian and correspond in Portuguese but you might want to check them out and I'm sure there are plenty of other similar groups on the interwebs.
Cheers and best wishes for a sustainable future
Meanwhile, climate modification marches on:
geoenginering
Robert, here on the west coast of America, redwood is very popular for outdoor applications, because of its great resistance to rotting. But redwood trees take hundreds to literally thousands of years to grow, so redwood production can be considered to be the equivalent of the mining of a nonrenewable resource. Increasingly cedar is being used in its place. Could your process compete against redwood.
Redwood actually grows quite quickly-- I live in Norther California. However, I advocate saving all old growth, not another tree cut down. We have 3% of old growth redwood left.
My understanding is that the Pinus radiata plantations around here will be cut, burned, ripped by bulldozer then replanted to hardwood. Here's a couple of assumptions that any LCA needs to address
1) no diesel or NPK after 2030
2) >40C summer temperatures starting soon.
I suspect the gnarled Monterey Pine is the low maintenance form of the species, unsuitable for timber. I'd tend to work on burning less coal rather than sequestering carbon.
How does it compare to charcoal brickettes on resistance to bio-degradation? Don't laugh. I serious.
Jim Hansen advocates returning the atmosphere to 350ppm CO2 ASAP. There are proposals to set up giant structures to capture CO2 using sodium or potassium hydroxide and reacting resulting sodium/potassium carbonate with various minerals to make other stable minerals, proposals to burn biofuels in stationary power plants with the same Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technology that is proposed now for coal, and proposals to make charcoal soil amendment. All for the main effect of getting the carbon out of the atmosphere. How does your process compare to them for this carbon removal? Can it be used to stabilize the switch grass as a carbon capture substitute to burning and CO2 capture?
If there is any prospect of this working, you have a really big potential market for the stuff. ;-)
Robert - Your title for this piece just serves to illustrate your insecurity and in fact your latent guilt surrounding your deep understanding of your direct part in destroying any potential future your son may have.
You want to point back at this post some day and say "see son, I was all about trying to change things".
Bull Shit!
You have the knowledge and acumen to understand the situation and to really make a difference but you are too timid to do so.
You are quick to lash out and are unequaled when it comes to the keyboard, but are a weenie when it comes to doing something real that might help your progeny.
I have no respect for you nor this BS BAU project you are involved in.
Not that that matters to you but I will say it anyways because that’s what needs to happen. People need to start saying what needs to be said.
Start engineering POWER DOWN. (and no, This project is not anywhere close to powerdown)
Harsh.
At least my critique had substance. This is just "u r poopyhead!!!1!"
This wood-in-vinegar stuff seems like a genuine attempt at something which is constructive in every sense of the word. It may or may not be as constructive as Rapier hopes, we need some hard numbers on it. But it's an attempt.
The tone of souperman2's comment above is disagreeable. That weakens the force of any arguments it may contain. Please stick to discussing what is written rather than attacking people. Read this for guidance.
If I could be persuaded that the Accoya process would
then I would agree with Robert.
The trouble is, I can't see either of these occurring.
Economic use of forests has historically converted old-growth mature forest to plantations, which contain less wood than the unused forest. Planting previously unforested land is rare.
I can't see any significant impact on fossil fuel use from this technology. The rate at which it is burned may be slightly lowered, but it would all still be burned.
The issue is, IMHO, what is the competing use for that dimensional pine lumber ?
The obvious answer is largely housing and other structural uses. The lumber can be used for walls in a McMansion# for example or as Accoya for premium windows.
Both will likely end up in a land fill after a number of decades. The Accoya will stay sequestered, the other will eventually rot or be eaten by termites (the time varies with the condition of the landfill).
Both uses sequester carbon, Accoya just does it longer.
Best Hopes for Reduced Carbon Emission in the 22nd Century,
Alan
# The Dutch and other Europeans build far less disposable housing, and the expected life cycle for ordinary structural wood is significantly longer there than in the USA.
Planting previously unforested land is rare.
Not true in the South. Vast areas of cropland that was farmed during WW II was later converted to pine forests/plantations in the 1950s and 1960s. Many are now on their third crop of trees (a planting issue is pulpwood or lumber trees, with different spacing, thinning and harvesting profiles).
Alan
I suspect that the cropland was originally forest. A return to tree-cover is probably "better" than having the land continue as cropland. (WAG) I don't believe, though, that trees-as-crops are forest, which I believe is the thrust of the comment.
Regards,
Al
This sort of personal attack is completely uncalled for.
You want to point back at this post some day and say "see son, I was all about trying to change things".
What I really want to do is point to posts like yours, and say "See son, this is a troll." Amazing to me that one can be attacked for being involved with something aimed at displacing tropical hardwoods. Thank God I am not trying to cure cancer. Someone may try to shoot me; overpopulation and all.
You are quick to lash out and are unequaled when it comes to the keyboard, but are a weenie when it comes to doing something real that might help your progeny.
Every time I put up a new post, I always ask myself "Do I really want to put up with the jerks?" Stuff like this is why Stuart doesn't post here anymore. He got a taste of some of the crap I regularly get dished my way (with his "Civilization to 2050" series), and that was enough. This will be the last time I ever respond to you.
I am involved in quite a number of projects, all involved in 1). Getting people to consume less; 2). Helping fill the void that fossil fuel declines will create; 3). Developing environmentally responsible technologies. You are fond of ELP; 2 and 3 are both "P" in ELP, and 1 is "E".
I work on these things, often 12-16 hours a day. I write about the need for gas taxes, the need to reduce our energy consumption, and the need for sustainable alternatives. You can just browse through the stories I have written, and see how many hours I have put into arguing against BAU. In fact, even with this, I am still arguing for the need to reduce overall power consumption. But conservation alone is not a solution.
I will take no lectures from an anonymous Internet troll who wishes to tell me what I am not doing enough. I spend most of my waking hours working on solutions - on both the supply and demand side.
Take a lesson from Kiashu: Criticisms minus the ad homs. That is all.
In just a few years from now, when massive numbers of people are seriously hurting, the world is hurting, do you really want to point to this groovy monolith of a bridge as what you were focused on at the time?
Looks very simular to "build a bigger head".
When I was 15 my grandfather and I, just the two of us, built a tractor bridge over the creek using trees at his ranch. It held up to several tractor trailor rigs over the years. It's still there and going strong. If it starts to look weak a new one could be built using trees that grew over the last 40 years.
We dont need new tech we need people to develope sustainable methods for powering down not ramping up. If we don't put all our creative energy into this we are DOOMED and I don't want that to happen.
Developing new tech is just ego stroking BS that will insure that we keep going off in the wrong direction.
Sorry about the ad homs but this is much more important than having your ego stroked by you adoring fans.
Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow.
IMHO, Robert is making as great an effort as anyone in trying to prepare "us" for post-Peak Oil and do something about Climate Change. He is making an effort on multiple fronts.
His vision may not be identical to others, but I see that as an advantage. The future is unknowable, and multiple efforts on multiple fronts are, IMVHO, the best way to prepare for what is coming.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Alan - Your proposal is very specific about the fact that it's not re-inventing anything, does not require NEW tech. It does require alot of highly skilled engineering. Represents a wonderful and engaging challange, enough for even the most driven of people.
My comments are addressed to the seemingly childish need to think up new things as a solution. This kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Truth is you are right that no one knows what the future holds so the only reasonable, logical action that I have seen proposed is to... take one step back to what we do know before we are forced to keep going backward... forever.
Robert made extraordinary efforts for several years to combat the myths about ethanol. I think it can be fairly said that he was the #1 debunker of the claims of Big Ethanol. I have not forgotten that.
I do not believe that technology can be directed (we need this, so Technology will deliver it Just in Time#), but I do believe that technology will add to our repertoire of responses.
# I have made fun of the "JIT Technology Fairy".
In the area of rail, in the last two decades electric locomotives have been revolutionized. Today, single phase AC > DC > 3 phase AC is the norm where before, the electricity was usually used as it came off the wire (or transformed down in voltage).
Concrete ties (sleepers in UK) are only a few decades old and composite ties (made mainly of recycled plastic) are even more recent. Will Accoya ties appear in a few years ? If so, they will be welcome. One day recycled plastic may be less common.
IMHO, one should make plans based on mature existing technology, but modify those plans when new technology proves itself in real world use.
The Segway was introduced with great hype. It works. But after seeing it in action, it has only a very small niche. No change in plans.
The world is not a monoculture and there is not, IMHO, a "one size fits all" solution to our multiple problems.
Best Hopes,
Alan
What I really want to do is point to posts like yours, and say "See son, this is a troll."
LOL!
Hey! I offered some praise as well. It's just that it takes more words to criticise than praise. Well, unless you just say, "u r poopyhead". :D
"People need to start saying what needs to be said."
So what are you saying?
What is powerdown supposed to mean? Do you think we won't be using wood for construction any more? It reminds me of the Anti-car rants that seem to conclude that we must un-invent the wheel itself.
Be reasonable, Soup boy..
Robert, If you're still awake - do you have any information about the usefulness of applying this to the softwood used in piano soundboards and other musical instruments? It would be necessary to keep the mass and stiffness about the same, along with the damping (elasticity). Piano soundboards are also subject to very high compressive stresses constantly applied for 100 yrs+ (which often lead to their failure).
Piano bridges (connecting the strings to the board) are currently made of strong hardwood such as beech, maple etc - might accoya do that job too? (They too struggle to cope with the high stresses!)
do you have any information about the usefulness of applying this to the softwood used in piano soundboards and other musical instruments?
It has been used to make harmonicas, but I have heard several suggest that it would be ideal for other musical instruments.
The tops of premium guitars and other stringed instruments are usually made of Sitka Spruce. That's because of the fine grain structure of the wood and the fact that knots are infrequent and small, due to the extremely slow rate of growth of the trees. Southern white pine of yellow pine just wouldn't work. It's been said that the supply of Sitka Spruce will be gone within a decade, given the limited supply of old growth timber.
The sides and back are usually a clear hardwood, as they do not have as much influence on the sound, but add to the aesthetic quality. A local master craftsman builds high dollar guitars and made one for a fellow who owns a furniture company. That fellow provided his own piece of exotic wood used to make the sides and back. The results were stunning.
E. Swanson
How does the color change ?
What other species have been done on a trial basis ?
Locally, everyone loves the color of cypress when it is stripped of paint, but it will turn dark if left unpainted and exposed to the weather. So it must be painted.
There would be a premium market for natural cypress and redwood that could be left exposed "as is" IMHO.
Also, what companies make windows with Accoya wood ? Do any of them export to the USA ?
Thanks,
Alan
How does the color change ?
Alan, we generally find that darker woods lighten a bit, and lighter woods darken a bit.
Regarding which woods have been tried, I don't know whether that's public or not. I looked around on our website and couldn't find it, so to be cautious I better not say. It could give someone a competitive advantage if they know what works and what doesn't.
Also, what companies make windows with Accoya wood ? Do any of them export to the USA ?
A couple of things on that. First, several have asked about Accoya in the U.S. Here is what is public:
In the UK, BSW Timber has quite a lot of experience with windows from Accoya:
http://www.bswaccoya.co.uk/
As a bridge inspector for Red Deer County (where we have several bridges almost entirely made of wood and creosote), and as the "energy and ecology" columnist for the local newspaper (see www.rdfuture.com and click on "columns" for examples), I find this technology tremendously exciting. As such, I'd like to write a column on it.
However, I'd also like to find out a bit more about the engineering properties, and the accoya website didn't seem to have any hard numbers. Robert, your initial reply to BKelley indicated that the engineering properties might not confer any improvement. And the size of the beams on the bridge indicate this also. Would I be correct to infer that this type of construction would be similar to what we call "glulam", but with a much better lifespan?
Thanks in advance.
I'd also like to find out a bit more about the engineering properties, and the accoya website didn't seem to have any hard numbers.
Shoot Starla (from the essay) an e-mail and she can hook you up with all of that. We have lots of very specific information on the engineering properties.
Robert, your initial reply to BKelley indicated that the engineering properties might not confer any improvement.
No sure which reply are referring to, but key to remember is that the fact that the wood doesn't rot is the key to being able to use it in demanding outdoor applications. I have been asked a number of very specific questions on engineering properties, and the safe thing for me to do there is to refer to someone who deals specifically with end users. My job is focused on the process of making the wood.
And the size of the beams on the bridge indicate this also.
Keep in mind that a lot of the wood you see in the bridge is aesthetic. The structural components are not the size of those beams.
Robert:
Here is a URL that is much more detail about a carbon sequestration scheme than in my earlier post. Perhaps your company's process might contribute to an improvement on Zeng's proposal.
http://www.cbmjournal.com/content/3/1/1
I don't know enough about your process to evaluate the relationship, but IMHO the carbon capture needs to be done on a much larger scale than any of the uses that have been considered in this thread, e.g. sequestration in musical instruments will not put a detectable dent in the problem.
I hope you consider this a helpful suggestion about elevating your ambition to new (and necessary) heights.
I just learned today that the new thinking is that radiatia pine can be grown on indefinite rotation eg 1000 years in the one place if climate conditions persist. The technique is to grind the stumps from a clear cut and plant seedlings in the debris where the old trunk used to be. Thus the roots of the previous tree are still in place and represent a carbon store. I guess the unfriendly chemicals in the natural leaf litter prevent invasion by other species. However I think our timelines are now too short and desperate to take such a long term approach.
Hi Robert,
Thanks fort he very interesting post.
I googled a little bit, but found very little about the fire resistance of accoya wood. I understand that accoya has a lesser moisture content than the original wood, so if exposed to fire does it burn faster?
If used in residential buildings the fire resistance is very important, especially for the load-bearing structure. The structure should not collapse too fast so that the people inside the building can escape or being rescued. If for example a beam is exposed to a fire the exterior burn rather quick, but then functioning like a kind of fire insulation for the core so that the beam withstands the fire for some time. How does for example an accoya beam behave in such a case compared to the original wood?
Flip, we have some work going on in this area. However, I don't know what kind of tests have been done on flammability versus unmodified wood. Sounds like the kind of test we would have on file, but you would need to inquire with Starla to get those results.
The mention of vinegar reminds me of pickling onions and I think it's not too far off the mark to say that Accoya is pickled wood. I hope it does really well. Good luck!
The most "commercially viable carbon sequestration, or carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies" are based on traditional farming and forestry practices. NASA (http://ecocast.arc.nasa.gov/publications/press/globalgarden/center_study...)reports:
"the important take-home message of Nemani et al.'s new study is that satellite-derived observations reveal the planet's terrestrial biosphere to have significantly increased its productivity over the last two decades of the 20th century in the face of a host of both real and imagined environmental stresses, chief among the latter of which is what climate alarmists routinely claim to be unprecedented CO2-induced global warming, which they paint as anathema to life on earth. Once again, however, the doomsayers are shown to be 180 degrees out of phase with reality, as the greening of the earth continues."
Before I rip him to pieces with facts, let's first use our common sense.
1. Deforestation causes CO2 emissions.
2. Our boy here tells us that extra CO2 causes more forest growth.
3. Therefore, if we want to combat deforestation we should cut more forests down.
There's a logical flaw in there somewhere. One of those steps must be wrong.
Now his linked article. While it's on a nasa site, it's actually a quote from the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which is a climate change denial group receiving funds from Exxon, associated with the (possibly defunct) Greening Earth Society, which was a front group for the Western Fuels Association, a coalition of US coal-fired electricity generators.
So much for the fossil fuel industry shills. Really it'd be easier if some PR guy from Exxon just wrote these articles himself.
As to their actual assertions, some trees and plants will be better off with increased CO2, but most will not be. We also have to consider the warming, which would help some plants and kill others, but more importantly change the water available to them. A plant does not live by CO2 alone.
From a useful site,
I already pointed you towards the most common "skeptic" arguments, and all those link to their refutations, too. So this is a good opportunity for you to come up with some new and brilliant ideas which will knock conventional science on its bum.
Also if you're going to be a shill for fossil fuel companies, you should at least earn some cash for it. Offer your services to netvocate. They actually pay people to wander around posting stuff on blogs. They don't ask you to post anything you don't believe in, but if you're already a passionate supporter of some ridiculous nonsense, they'll pay you to keep that passion going.
Alternately you could just give it up and acknowledge the reality before you. But I guess that's not as much fun.
All CO2 should be collected and used to produce Methanol.