Wood You?

I spoke with a fellow named Lester Phillip, Candidate for District 5 of the US House representing Alabama yesterday. Although most of our discussion revolved around contacts for our political race, the subject of energy and energy conservation came up. We discussed the need for products that can be easily exported. I of course suggested electricity because all we need to sell it to Mexico and California is a wire.

We had an interesting discussion about using turbine electrical generators to tap the underground natural gas reserves that seem to be replenishing from unexplained sources deep in the earth's interior.

A great solution except that this position ignores the 2000 pound Gorilla in the room.

The use of natural gas, although better than coal, still maintains an illogical separation between global warming and carbon emissions.

Somehow the idea is creeping into the CW that if the carbon is not "fossil" then it is not "fossil fuel" and therefore doesn't warm the planet.

The included photograph shows an annual event from the sixties in Northwest Alabama. Snow hunting rabbits doesn't happen much anymore in my home town. Something is making the earth warmer. And I am afraid that deep earth carbon is not likely to help cool the planet off.

What I like about Lester's proposal is the use of a two stage Jet engine turbine for generating electricity. The method is slightly complex but in a nutshell the efficiency of a generator is a function of the input and output temperatures. The efficiency of the first is about 40% and the second is about 25%. I realize that this is technical gobbledygook but the idea is to run a second steam generator on the "heat" pipe of the first.

Efficiencies of 50%, 60% even 70% are possible by adding steam generator stages. My suggestion, is that rather than use this unnatural gas, we should use wood pellets to fuel the generator. Some companies in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi use low pressure wood gassification to do the same thing. They are making money with efficiencies of 30% . How much more then could one make with efficiencies of 70%?


This takes a minute to contemplate. But, the use of scrap wood creates a market for aeration lanes in the 5000 square miles of woodland in district six for better timber management.

It provides jobs for people running the generating plant. Brings in funds from electricity sales, and provides jobs to lumbermen and truckers.

It could easily be adapted to use scrap from mobile home plants and construction sites instead of spending money on landfills.

The ash from a high pressure wood fired jet turbine is, unlike coal ash, nontoxic ,not radioactive, and contains mostly potash which is excellent soil stabilizer for soybeans and cotton.

And most importantly the carbon emitted from a wood fired plant is exactly the same as the carbon taken in by the growing trees. Meaning it does not contribute to global warming.

The arithmetic is staggering. The forests grow at a rate of 5%.If the forest are properly managed with aeration lanes they would grow even faster. 5000 square miles of forest is over 3 million acres. At 80,000 cubic feet of scrub trees per acre that amounts to the equivalent of 5 billion barrels of oil.

I am not talking about harvesting the lumber. That would remain unaffected. I am talking about using the material left over after proper forest management. Effectively the wood harvested doesn't reduce the number of trees cleaning the air and capturing solar energy. It increases the number of trees by more than the harvest of scrub.

Now what does it take to do this?

Well, it takes two things.

One - A legislature willing to make laws more conducive to selling power directly to individual manufacturing plants and exporting to other states.

Two, - a fifty million dollar bond issue to "loan" the money to each company willing to locate a plant near the trees. That would be somewhere in northwest at the dead center of district 6.

(Unfortunately that would likely put it right smack onto the middle of property owned by Dennis "Blue" Harbor {inside joke} ).

I propose we do both as early as possible in the next legislative session..( With just a little help from you I will be there to sponsor it.)