Should We Burn Wood or Gas

[Barry_White]

Although this post is in "Nothing to do With Woodwork" it certainly has a lot to do with wood.

As I have stated in posts previously that I use a slow combustion stove for cooking and heating water in the winter and Solar for heating water both summer and winter. I also use wood for heating my house in the winter.

My concern was that I would be creating greenhouse gases.

I had to replace the oven insert in my slow combustion stove this year and as Everhot has gone out of business I did a Google search trying to find one and the only source I could find was through this company in WA. Wood or Gas? (http://www.woodstoves.com.au/html/wood_or_gas_.html)

They have some very interesting information on the burning of wood verses gas, coal and electricity.

That link actually takes you directly to this information and it certainly eases my conscience about being a polluter.

[seanz]

With-out starting a huge debate.......fingers crossed.

If you burn timber you are releasing carbon from this (or recent) carbon-cycle. If you burn fossil fuels you are releasing carbon from a previous epoch.

To put it very simply, the carbon you release from fire-wood is going to go back into making another tree.

So, you're not making the problem any better (well, you might be if your heating alternative is fossil fuel), but you're not making it any worse.....especially if you use plantation timber as fire-wood.

I miss using my log-burner..........

[ravna]

Hi Bazza....they are drawing a pretty long bow in the article, but nonetheless, we have a Masport wood fire in both houses and in winter they sometimes go non-stop and for heating, but more importantly, ambiance, you can't beat them.

However, having said that, when I had crane trucks I was always on the lookout for iron-bark logs and have at times, gone through several in a winter.

Now I have retired and no trucks my huge stash has nearly dwindled to zero and I figure next winter will be on gas.....and more importantly, my love hate relationship with the block splitter is fast becoming a win for the splitter, the body will no longer allow wood chopping, and much as I love the evenings in front of the wood fire I want to live long enough to enjoy it..forget the green twinge, unless you have an endless supply of chopped wood (and someone to chop it) go with gas.

Cheers

John M

[Barry_White]

With-out starting a huge debate.......fingers crossed.

If you burn timber you are releasing carbon from this (or recent) carbon-cycle. If you burn fossil fuels you are releasing carbon from a previous epoch.

To put it very simply, the carbon you release from fire-wood is going to go back into making another tree.

So, you're not making the problem any better (well, you might be if your heating alternative is fossil fuel), but you're not making it any worse.....especially if you use plantation timber as fire-wood.

I miss using my log-burner..........

I can't argue with you, I'm only going by what the man says and he does quote a few references. I also have some printed copy that he sent me a bit different to what is on his website.

[Barry_White]

Hi Bazza....they are drawing a pretty long bow in the article, but nonetheless, we have a Masport wood fire in both houses and in winter they sometimes go non-stop and for heating, but more importantly, ambiance, you can't beat them.

However, having said that, when I had crane trucks I was always on the lookout for iron-bark logs and have at times, gone through several in a winter.

Now I have retired and no trucks my huge stash has nearly dwindled to zero and I figure next winter will be on gas.....and more importantly, my love hate relationship with the block splitter is fast becoming a win for the splitter, the body will no longer allow wood chopping, and much as I love the evenings in front of the wood fire I want to live long enough to enjoy it..forget the green twinge, unless you have an endless supply of chopped wood (and someone to chop it) go with gas.


Cheers

John M

Well where I live I would have to use bottled gas and cart it myself. I live on 5 acres but with the use of 1400 acres and plenty of volunteers to chainsaw it up and a 20 tonne hydraulic log splitter to split it up. BTW I hate the smell of gas.

[ravna]

Bazza....looks like a no brainer, stick with the wood fire.
-------------------
Cheers John M

[Toymaker Len]

Yep, no brainer, wood is beautiful to watch burning, smells sweet, doesn't cost the earth, a renewable resource and best of all you can pick out the odd special bit to take down to the workshop and have a play with.
I've just been to politics in the pub in newcastle tonight to see a couple of AGL reps, a couple of gas industry reps, a couple of renewable energy people and a couple of wine and farming people all debate the whys and wherefors of the gas industry in australia. All very polite and well moderated but the gas people came out looking especially bad. At one point they had just assured us all that the fracking liquid used in the hunter valley contained no poisonous chemicals when a woman in the front row jumped up and announced that she had just done her PhD on the chemicals used in the gas industry and that they were in fact using amazing amounts of carcinogenic compounds much of which is mixing into bore water.
I came home and nearly put my head in the oven.

[BRADFORD]

We use wood for heating, but only naturally fallen trees (we do not cut down any trees for firewood).
As I understand it, by burning this wood we contribute no additional CO2 to the atmosphere. If the wood is left untouched the natural decomposition will release as much CO2 as burning it.
We do produce some polution from the chainsaw used to cut it up.
I think wood heaters are not so good in cities because of the smoke from so many fires in a small area, get a bit of a temperature inversion and it is choking.
We do use gas for cooking in summer, mostly wood stove in winter.
Our house is old (100yr+) is very well insulated and has a verandah right around it, so requires no air conditioning in summer (we don't even have one) and minimal heating in winter.
I get a bit disturbed about people who have thermally inefficient houses, run big air conditioners all day then complain about how much electricity they use.

[pampelmuse]

As I understand it, by burning this wood we contribute no additional CO2 to the atmosphere. If the wood is left untouched the natural decomposition will release as much CO2 as burning it.
We do produce some polution from the chainsaw used to cut it up.

True. This is one of the big myths thrown around in carbon accounting schemes that rely on planting trees or retaining standing vegetation as a 'credit'. This is not a credit in the sense that it offsets additional output from fossil fuels. For that to occur, after they have grown you would have to deepfreeze the trees in the polar ice or blast them into outer space to stop them decaying/burning and releasing the carbon that is temporarily stored in the timber into the atmosphere. There are plenty of other reasons to plant trees and retain existing woody vegetation without incorrectly including them in carbon trading schemes. Maybe the economics of doing so is useful in one sense because it provides insentive to plant trees but it is a logically flawed approach to combating rising CO2.





I think wood heaters are not so good in cities because of the smoke from so many fires in a small area, get a bit of a temperature inversion and it is choking.


Yes this is exactly the issue. Here in the ACT they are actively encouraging (i.e. paying) people to remove wood heaters cos the air pollution in the Tuggeranong and Woden Valleys is so bad on some winter evenings/mornings.

Another problem with wood stoves is that they are commonly inefficient in design.... >90% of the heat disappears up the chimney. I do find it ironic though that the ACT government spends hundreds of thousands of dollars every year cutting, chipping and removing trees in public spaces primarily as trees are viewed as a public liability. It would be great if this wood fueled something like domestic heating but it is wasted as a resource.

[Cruzi]

Best people to ask would be the Easter Islanders.

Wood does not cleanly burn and releases many other compounds, natural gas is a clean burn, in fact about the cleanest burn there is.

FYI the smell has to be added to gas as there was a few major accidents involving gas and no-one knew because of the lack of smell.

[RETIRED]

FYI the smell has to be added to gas as there was a few major accidents involving gas and no-one knew because of the lack of smell.This event New London School explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion) led to the inclusion of Mercaptan in gas.

[kiwigeo]

At one point they had just assured us all that the fracking liquid used in the hunter valley contained no poisonous chemicals when a woman in the front row jumped up and announced that she had just done her PhD on the chemicals used in the gas industry and that they were in fact using amazing amounts of carcinogenic compounds much of which is mixing into bore water.
I came home and nearly put my head in the oven.

The problems associated with frac fluid getting into groundwater supplies is happening in the coal seam gas industry where the coal seam are relatively shallow and dewatering of same is a part of the production process. Where gas production is from conventional reservoirs it is less of a problem as the gas reservoirs are generally deeper (eg Permian reservoirs in Cooper Basin) than the shallower artesian aquifers and production method is slightly different from that used in CSG.

[kiwigeo]

If you burn timber you are releasing carbon from this (or recent) carbon-cycle. If you burn fossil fuels you are releasing carbon from a previous epoch.

To put it very simply, the carbon you release from fire-wood is going to go back into making another tree.



Trees don't care where the CO2 they take in comes from ......doesn't matter if it comes from burning a tree or burning fossil fuels.

The big difference between burning wood and fossil fuels is that trees are replacable where as fossil fuel is a finite resource. The sensible approach is to burn plantation timber and replant trees at a rate that makes the exercise carbon neutral.

One little known fact about "clean" gas....most of it comes out of the ground containing a significant amount of CO2 (up to 20%), H2S and other impurities. Until recently this would have simply been separated at the processing plant and vented to the atmosphere. On many of the newer projects the CO2 is injected back into the reservoir.

[artme]

Are we still allowed to burn witches :?:?

[kiwigeo]

Are we still allowed to burn witches :?:?

They burn ok but theyre a bit hard to get into the wood burner and they take a few packets of firelighters to get going.....

[Cruzi]

The hysteria around the coal seam gas is quite amazing, they have taken every drilling fluid additive and claimed it is used in CSG :doh:

CSG whilst the most boring job ever for drilling contractors usually uses only 2 additives, one is KCL (potassium chloride) and the other soap. (Most CSG is done with Air Drilling, requiring a foam to prevent downhole fires)

CSG has been done for decades in other places but one place does an experimental method on shallow seams and suddenly a whole industry is vilified.

Contamination of bore water, artesian basin and other aquifers is a big concern of all drilling companies and contractors and is closely monitored by the government.

Many will say this is not enough but there has been several thousand holes punched through the Great Artesian Basin and the controls have protected it. And yes it is independently checked frequently.

[kiwigeo]

The hysteria around the coal seam gas is quite amazing, they have taken every drilling fluid additive and claimed it is used in CSG :doh:

CSG whilst the most boring job ever for drilling contractors usually uses only 2 additives, one is KCL (potassium chloride) and the other soap. (Most CSG is done with Air Drilling, requiring a foam to prevent downhole fires)

CSG has been done for decades in other places but one place does an experimental method on shallow seams and suddenly a whole industry is vilified.

Contamination of bore water, artesian basin and other aquifers is a big concern of all drilling companies and contractors and is closely monitored by the government.

Many will say this is not enough but there has been several thousand holes punched through the Great Artesian Basin and the controls have protected it. And yes it is independently checked frequently.

Cruzi,

The process by which coal seam gas is drilled and the wells brought into production is a bit different from that used on conventional gas wells.

The coal seams generally have to be fracced and also dewatered. The fraccing fluids aren't nice and the dewatering process does affect shallow aquifers.

Unfortunately there are one or two coal seam operators who don't care alot about the health and safety of both their workers and the general public.

KCL is usually a component in drilling mud (usually combined with polyacrylamide)...it functions to stabilise swelling clays. Foam as you say is used in air drilling.

Re frequent independent checks......the mines departments in most states are so poorly staffed and the staff overworked that adequate monitoring of drilling operations is just not possible. The NT mines department is a good example of this and its part of the reason the Montara blowout happened.....the monitoring was a complete joke. Over the years there's been a move towards oil and gas companies "self monitoring" their operations....often also a joke.

Regards Martin

[Cruzi]

Ok, it seems I am out of touch with what is currently happening in the patch.

We did a lot of CSG work around Injune and Roma using nothing but foam (before current operators took over), over pressure, release, cavitation, repeat ad infintum., the hole was cased to top of seam with bond logs and that was it.


But having said that did go drill a hole that the operator did neglect to mention the existence of H2S on (you know the company quite well).


As for fraccing coal, really?

We always treated it like cream in a cake, it keeps coming into the hole due to the overburden, no need to actually frac but then the only frac operations I worked on ( not in coal) used nitrogen and frac sand.

[kiwigeo]

Ok, it seems I am out of touch with what is currently happening in the patch.


There have been alot of changes in the oil and gas game over the 25 years I've been involved in it.

I assume you were involved in the drilling side of the operation? I spent 8 years in the Cooper Basin with a major operator (you know who). We probably both know alot of the same people. The sand and flies and smurfs got to me after a while and these days I only lurk offshore....mainly on long term deep water projects.

Cheers Martin

[seanz]

Trees don't care where the CO2 they take in comes from ......doesn't matter if it comes from burning a tree or burning fossil fuels.

The big difference between burning wood and fossil fuels is that trees are replacable where as fossil fuel is a finite resource. The sensible approach is to burn plantation timber and replant trees at a rate that makes the exercise carbon neutral.

One little known fact about "clean" gas....most of it comes out of the ground containing a significant amount of CO2 (up to 20%), H2S and other impurities. Until recently this would have simply been separated at the processing plant and vented to the atmosphere. On many of the newer projects the CO2 is injected back into the reservoir.

The trees don't care where the carbon comes from?

The trees care, man. The treees caaaare.
:q

The underlined part is what I was trying to say.......:roll:

[fxst]

it would save a lot of bother if we just burnt pollies instead. :D
It seems whether you use coal,gas,oil products, trees or electricity etc you are doing the wrong thing. Are we supposed to just freeze in winter & fry in summer? We all can't, or don't want to, move into tropical areas or fit so the solution to me is use what you want it will be taxed at some stage
Pete

[Barry_White]

it would save a lot of bother if we just burnt pollies instead. :D
It seems whether you use coal,gas,oil products, trees or electricity etc you are doing the wrong thing. Are we supposed to just freeze in winter & fry in summer? We all can't, or don't want to, move into tropical areas or fit so the solution to me is use what you want it will be taxed at some stage
Pete

Well Pete I live in a climate that is easy to tolerate in the Summer although it does get down to -7 C in winter but my free wood keeps me warm and cooks my dinner so the only tax I'm paying to keep warm is the tiny bit I'm paying for the bit of fuel I burn in the chainsaw to gather the wood and I don't think they will be able to work out how to tax the wood that I burn.

[Cruzi]

There have been alot of changes in the oil and gas game over the 25 years I've been involved in it.

I assume you were involved in the drilling side of the operation? I spent 8 years in the Cooper Basin with a major operator (you know who). We probably both know alot of the same people. The sand and flies and smurfs got to me after a while and these days I only lurk offshore....mainly on long term deep water projects.

Cheers Martin

Worked with the smurfs for some time, with Obsolete Drilling Equipment, went OS to few countries ended up in Sakhalin doing ERD work, did that till my head exploded, now a wood eating hermit :U

[fxst]

Good for you Barry...we do the same on the bush block :2tsup:
Spent a couple winter months in the new england area ...(Armidale) too bloody cold for me :oo: though I probably might like the summers there:)
Cheers
Pete

[ian]

With-out starting a huge debate.......fingers crossed.

If you burn timber you are releasing carbon from this (or recent) carbon-cycle. If you burn fossil fuels you are releasing carbon from a previous epoch.

To put it very simply, the carbon you release from fire-wood is going to go back into making another tree.

So, you're not making the problem any better (well, you might be if your heating alternative is fossil fuel), but you're not making it any worse.....especially if you use plantation timber as fire-wood.

I miss using my log-burner..........I'm not so sure ...
I think the real question is

Does your (and everyone else's) wood burning stove consume trees faster than they regrow? If you burn 1 tonne of hardwood each year, does the "replacement" tree produce 1 tonne of wood in the following year?
if the answer is no, then burning trees just takes longer to do the same climate damage as burning fossil fuel

[seanz]

Hardwood? What is this hardwood of which you speak?

Do we consume more firewood than we grow timber every year? With all of the plantation forestry in NZ, probably not.

[ian]

Do we consume more firewood than we grow timber every year? With all of the plantation forestry in NZ, probably not.It would be interesting to know for sure, but some "back of an envelope" calcs might be

a stove burns 10kg of wood each day to warm the house,
the stove runs for 120 days (4 months) per year = 1200kg of wood per year
the cooker burns 2kg of wood a day cooking meals = 730kg per year
call that 2,000kg, or 2 tonnes per year per household
figure 4 million households in the cold bits of OZ and NZ -- it's probably more

so, that's 4,000,000 x 2 = 8,000,000 tonnes of fire wood per year
call that 12 Million tonnes of trees per annum -- after allowing 33% for in forest waste (small branches, leaves, bark, etc)

The projected NZ forest output in 2025 is 40 million cu.m (say 24 million tonnes as most of it is soft wood) harvested from around 4 million ha ref Forestry in New Zealand: Overview (Forest Enterprises Ltd) (http://www.forestenterprises.co.nz/fgen/finz/nzforestry.htm)
of which >80% will be exported, making NZ the world's largest wood exporter
leaving around 5 Million tonnes to build and heat houses

I think there would be a "shortfall" somewhere, either in NZ and OZ or everywhere else in the world

feel free to adjust my sums based of your firewood usage

[BobL]

You'all might find this article very interesting.
http://www.ifiallc.com/PDFs/long-run_outlook_for_timber_prices.pdf

As for burning wood for large scale heat some of you may remember this which on the scale of a small industrial estate - you have to read through to about post #3 to find out about heating.
http://www.woodworkforums.com/f132/automated-milling-joinery-117469/

And then there is this which provides 4 soon to become 12 MW of heating for a small town which has a very cold winter.

While I was in Italy last year I went to visit a big (4 Megawatt average operation) woodchip fired water heating plant supervised/managed by one of my cousins in the Italian Alps.

The plant is located right in the middle of the major ski resort of San Martino at and elevation of about 2000 m and was installed to reduce the amount of pollution that covers the resort in a brown fog, especially during some of the colder skiing season weeks when all of the hotels and lodges would have run their oil fired heaters on max.

Here's a shot of the main plant building and a pile of woodchips ready for burning - nothing special to look at but, then it does need to blend into the ski resort town.
168376

Wood chips are dumped into those to two bays by a front end loader where a conveyor belt and large piston rams feed the chip into the furnaces. The wood chips come from timber processing waste - not the sawdust or woodchips but the branches and bark. Every year the town and surrounding councils also clean up the roadsides which are continually over grown with branches - these are collected up chipped and trucked to this plant.

There are two (soon to be 3) furnaces each of 4 MW each and also a 4 MW oil fired furnace for use on really cold days and in emergencies as they are really only getting started.
168377
168378
The furnaces heats a pressurised hot water circuit which circulates around the plant at about 92C.
This water then heats the resort town loop which goes around to all the houses, hotels and resorts. The water leaves the plant @ around 86C.
These are the 30kW pumps that drive the water in secondary loop around the town.
168379

At each house, hotel or resort a small heat exchanger extracts heat from the town line for internal heating and hot water.
The burn rate in the furnaces are maintained such that the temperature in the return line back to the plant never drops below 52.

The exhaust from the furnaces are electostatically filtered and the soot is dropped into large dumpsters. The soot is added to road base to use in road building.
This removes about 800 tones of soot a year from the air.
Condensers are also used to remove water from the exhaust.
The remaining gases are then mixed with large volumes of external air and expelled as totally clear gas from a low rise smoke stack at a temperature of around 85F

Here is a port open in the side of the smoke stack.
168380
While there some residual oil vapours in the exhaust (ie I could smell the fact that conifers were being burned) - the gas coming out of the stack is premixed with so much air that it was only 30C and extremely clean - there's nothing visible and it was not making me gasp.
The resort people are very happy about the outcome.
The oil companies that used to supply the hundreds of thousands of gallons of heating oil a year to the resorts are not.

There are over 40 such plants in the Italian Alps and many more in the pipeline.
The chips are waste from logging or clearing operations and law dictates they cannot travel more than 40 miles to the plant.
There are way more chips available than they can burn so the next step is to introduce a thermo electric system

I think we can learn a lot from these people.
The other alternative is Russian gas and it has to pass through 7 countries to get there!

[seanz]

Interesting post BobL, very interesting.......Un Zud is almost all out of hydro opportunities.

And, of course, extra points for a good post that's completely on topic.

:D:D:2tsup:

[seanz]

It would be interesting to know for sure, but some "back of an envelope" calcs might be

a stove burns 10kg of wood each day to warm the house,
the stove runs for 120 days (4 months) per year = 1200kg of wood per year
the cooker burns 2kg of wood a day cooking meals = 730kg per year
call that 2,000kg, or 2 tonnes per year per household
figure 4 million households in the cold bits of OZ and NZ -- it's probably more

so, that's 4,000,000 x 2 = 8,000,000 tonnes of fire wood per year
call that 12 Million tonnes of trees per annum -- after allowing 33% for in forest waste (small branches, leaves, bark, etc)

The projected NZ forest output in 2025 is 40 million cu.m (say 24 million tonnes as most of it is soft wood) harvested from around 4 million ha ref Forestry in New Zealand: Overview (Forest Enterprises Ltd) (http://www.forestenterprises.co.nz/fgen/finz/nzforestry.htm)
of which >80% will be exported, making NZ the world's largest wood exporter
leaving around 5 Million tonnes to build and heat houses

I think there would be a "shortfall" somewhere, either in NZ and OZ or everywhere else in the world

feel free to adjust my sums based of your firewood usage

Usage? I don't use it, it's stacked in the shed and every now and then I walk past and shake my head.......wood-fires need chimneys. Who knew? :roll:

Here's some more figures for you, you may need a bigger envelope.
Forestry-statistics (http://www.maf.govt.nz/news-resources/statistics-forecasting/forestry.aspx)

Wish these figures were as easy to find for NZ
Firewood industry - Plantations and sustainably managed forests (http://www.environment.gov.au/land/pressures/firewood/plantations.html)

Does that help? Is Oz firewood use carbon neutral?

These fellas say it's 'practically' carbon neutral in NZ
Firewood Supplies (http://www.firewoodsupplies.co.nz/Overview/Information/Green_Energy.htm)

But they would, wouldn't they?:;

I look forward to the day when I, once again, enjoy doing back of the envelope calculations for entertainment........but I've been a bit short in the 'quality sleep' department.

Still, if it is roughly carbon neutral now, without even trying, that's a good thing, right?

[BRADFORD]

All the firewood used in our area is from trees that have fallen naturally, so if it is not used for firewood than it decays naturally (takes many years in some cases)
This means we are not harvesting trees for firewood but using what is really a waste product.
As far as I know most firewood used in WA comes from this source.
So calculating firewood from the forest harvest would not be quite right, because a very large percentage would be from waste.
BTW at our place we use about 5 tonnes per year, which is less than 50% (much less as we also supply our daughter's household as well) of the trees and branches that fall on our 30 acre property.

[kiwigeo]

Worked with the smurfs for some time, with Obsolete Drilling Equipment, went OS to few countries ended up in Sakhalin doing ERD work, did that till my head exploded, now a wood eating hermit :U

You escaped from Smurfonia too?? Good to hear. :2tsup:

[ian]

All the firewood used in our area is from trees that have fallen naturally, so if it is not used for firewood than it decays naturally (takes many years in some cases)
This means we are not harvesting trees for firewood but using what is really a waste product.
As far as I know most firewood used in WA comes from this source.
So calculating firewood from the forest harvest would not be quite right, because a very large percentage would be from waste.
BTW at our place we use about 5 tonnes per year, which is less than 50% (much less as we also supply our daughter's household as well) of the trees and branches that fall on our 30 acre property.thanks for that number

so based on your experience, 30 acres (~12 ha) of mature trees generates about 10 tonnes of deadfall per year, which is enough to heat 4 or 5 houses.

1 million houses would therefore need about 2.4 Million ha of mature forest

[SawDustSniffer]

a tree that is getting larger is storing carbon as it grows , once it gets to a mature size it looses as many branches as it grows , so it no longer stores any more carbon ,

when the branch hits the ground microbes feed off it and emit methane , and carbon dioxide , the methane has about 10 years in the atmosphere before UV light smashes it into carbon dioxide , methane is 100x worse as a green house gas than carbon dioxide

burning only dropped branches is bad because of the nitrogen in the branch is removed from the eco system ,most of the nitrogen comes from the air , but takes a long time to build up in the soils , since most of the air (60%) is nitrogen , the rain holds a lot , thats why watered grass (town water) is never as green as after 2 weeks of rain

best policy would be to remove the largest fully grown trees in the forest , the smaller trees will race to fill in the opening , storing carbon quicker than leaving the fully grown tree standing , but mature trees have hollows needed for animals homes ,

most people dont know how much carbon dioxide comes from oil , if you burn 100kg of petrol in a car , it will make 1.6 ton of carbon dioxide

[Barry_White]

In the area that I live the only trees that drop limbs of any significance are white gums and they would be lucky to be 10% of all the species and as fire wood they are useless because it does not give off very much heat and just smolders and smokes so we don't use it.

The eucalyptus trees that grow here eventually die of natural causes and these are the ones we cut down for firewood after they have been dead for at least 10 to 15 years and this isn't long enough to develop many hollows for wildlife.

The main species we use for firewood here are Yellow Box, Red Gum, Stringy Bark and New England Peppermint.

[ian]

most people dont know how much carbon dioxide comes from oil , if you burn 100kg of petrol in a car , it will make 1.6 ton of carbon dioxide???
can you please explain

[SawDustSniffer]

???
can you please explain

100lt of petrol is mixed with 1500lt of air ,

hydro carbons are made up of hydrogen atoms bonded to a carbon chain , each carbon to carbon link uses 2 bonds , each hydrogen to carbon link uses 1 bond , carbon must bond with 4 links , oxygen needs 2 bonds per atom

...H H H H H H H H
H C C C C C C C C H
...H H H H H H H H

hydrogen is number 1 on the periodic table , with a "weight" of 1
carbon is number 6 on the table , with a "weight" of 12
oxygen is number 8 on the table with a "weight" of 15.99

during combustion the hydrogen is burnt and produces water vapour H-0-H ( H2O)
every carbon atom bonds with 2 oxygen atoms O-H-O , carbon DI oxide

:2tsup:swapping the light weight hydrogen (2x for long chain fuel, 4x for methane ) for the heavy oxygen , makes the carbon dioxide weigh +16x the weight of the original fuel :2tsup: (new tax $30 per ton = $30 per tank )


burning Methane ( LNG ) is a lot better than burning long chain fuel
methane has 4 hydrogen atom for every 1 carbon

...H
H-C-H
...H
so methane( LNG ) can burn 4 hydrogen atoms to make energy , producing only 1 carbon dioxide 4:1


propane( LPG ) has 3 a carbon chain with 8 hydrogen's

...H H H
H-C-C- C-H
...H H H
so when you burn propane the 8 hydrogen's produce the energy and 3 carbon dioxides are made

the chains on petrol are too long to type out , and diesel is even longer so the 2 extra hydrogen's on the ends of the chain dont matter much

you burn 2 hydrogen's for each carbon dioxide , almost 2x as much carbon dioxide than methane (LNG)

hope that is understandable , ken

[Toymaker Len]

,

:2tsup:swapping the light weight hydrogen (2x for long chain fuel, 4x for methane ) for the heavy oxygen , makes the carbon dioxide weigh +16x the weight of the original fuel :2tsup: (new tax $30 per ton = $30 per tank )

Er, hang on, it would be a carbon tax, not a carbon dioxide tax and at $12-$15 per tonne that would add say 50 cents to a tank of petrol. Anyway I am rigging up a steam boiler on my old jalopy and I'm gonna run it on firewood, all carbon neutral.

[SawDustSniffer]

problems with hydrogen fuel

using hydrogen as fuel would be the best but there re a few problems

1) liquefying hydrogen use's more energy than the finished product gives as energy ,

2) liquefied hydrogen is very hard to store , the hydrogen atoms under pressure will travel straight through the metal of a storage bottle and over time the bottle will empty unless the bottle is kept extremely cold , ( more energy )

hydrogen can be used if wind and solar generation are expanded to run peak load electricity , at off peak the excess electricity can be used to brake water apart , and cool and compress the hydrogen , the oxygen would be released into the atmosphere

using oil products to get hydrogen uses less energy than using water to get the hydrogen ,but we run into a huge problem if its allowed to happen

water is a very stable compound , in nature not much will brake it down , lightning will , so water is very long lived unlike carbon dioxide where green plants will brake it down ,
so if hydrogen is allowed to be made from oil , it will use oxygen in the atmosphere to produce water , as it do's today burning oil , reducing the oxygen levels in the atmosphere , a tiny problem today but over time it will be a problem

so hydrogen has to be split from water , the oxygen produced is released into the air , and recombined with the hydrogen in combustion

another idea is to use electric motors in cars , and instead of replacing the battery's at the servo , replace the acid , drain out the used acid , solar panels on the servo recharge the acids , and the fresh acid is used to refill the battery ,
i believe a test program has been set up on an island in "Bass Straight" ???King island ?? by Melbourne university , using a system with 2 acids , one + one - , when the acids are introduced to the battery ( kept separate by a membrane ) electricity can be used , the used acid is drained into 2 "spent" acid tanks allowing more fresh acid into the battery

[AlexS]

SDS, thanks for your sensible, succinct and unemotional explanations.

[mic-d]

SDS, thanks for your sensible, succinct and unemotional explanations.

Yep well, I've long since stopped being the chemistry nazi so I'll keep my mouth shut save one thing. 100kg of petrol burnt in a modern IC engine produces around 230kg of carbon dioxide, give or take, not 1600kg. The mistake is that combustion in an IC engine is not complete.

[BobL]

1) liquefying hydrogen use's more energy than the finished product gives as energy
This is not a problem if waste energy is used. There are new designs of nuclear reactors that will safely make hydrogen directly from the waste heat involved while they make electricity.


2) liquefied hydrogen is very hard to store , the hydrogen atoms under pressure will travel straight through the metal of a storage bottle and over time the bottle will empty unless the bottle is kept extremely cold , ( more energy )

Have you heard about the Perth Hydrogen bus trial - just google "Perth Hydrogen bus trial". The bottles are not kept cold, just high pressure and they last for months. The big problem with hydrogen in steel pressure vessels was that H would embrittle the tanks but this problem has more or less been solved with using the right steels. New ally and carbon fibre composite bottles have been designed that also reduced the bottle weight problem but they currently cost a lot more than steel but the prices will drop if enough are produced.

[ian]

100lt of petrol is mixed with 1500lt of air ,

hydro carbons are made up of hydrogen atoms bonded to a carbon chain , each carbon to carbon link uses 2 bonds , each hydrogen to carbon link uses 1 bond , carbon must bond with 4 links , oxygen needs 2 bonds per atom

...H H H H H H H H
H C C C C C C C C H
...H H H H H H H H

hydrogen is number 1 on the periodic table , with a "weight" of 1
carbon is number 6 on the table , with a "weight" of 12
oxygen is number 8 on the table with a "weight" of 15.99

during combustion the hydrogen is burnt and produces water vapour H-0-H ( H2O)
every carbon atom bonds with 2 oxygen atoms O-H-O , carbon DI oxide

:2tsup:swapping the light weight hydrogen (2x for long chain fuel, 4x for methane ) for the heavy oxygen , makes the carbon dioxide weigh +16x the weight of the original fuel :2tsup: (new tax $30 per ton = $30 per tank )hang on Ken, would you like to check your sums?

if we assume that a molecule of petrol contains twenty carbon atoms, when it's burnt we'll get twenty molecules of carbon dioxide.
So in terms of mass, petrol with 240 "weight" units of carbon (20x12=240) becomes 880 "weight" units of CO2 (20x(12+16+16)=880), a 3.67 times "weight" gain.
so 100kg of petrol will generate about 360kg of carbon dioxide, not the 1.6 tonnes suggested earlier.

most people dont know how much carbon dioxide comes from oil , if you burn 100kg of petrol in a car , it will make 1.6 ton of carbon dioxide

[mic-d]

hang on Ken, would you like to check your sums?

if we assume that a molecule of petrol contains twenty carbon atoms, when it's burnt we'll get twenty molecules of carbon dioxide.
So in terms of mass, petrol with 240 "weight" units of carbon (20x12=240) becomes 880 "weight" units of CO2 (20x(12+16+16)=880), a 3.67 times "weight" gain.
so 100kg of petrol will generate about 360kg of carbon dioxide, not the 1.6 tonnes suggested earlier.

as I said earlier, in practical terms it's about 230kg CO2 per 100kg petrol.:)

[BRADFORD]

as I said earlier, in practical terms it's about 230kg CO2 per 100kg petrol.:)

So this would represent about 63kg of carbon (using others maths, not mine)
Assuming a carbon price of $30 per ton, 100kg of petrol (more than the average tank would hold) would cost about $1.90 extra with a carbon tax.
This would mean about $1.00 for an average tankfull, or something in the order of 1 to 1.5 cents per litre.
BTW I'm not pushing for a carbon tax :no:

[ian]

as I said earlier, in practical terms it's about 230kg CO2 per 100kg petrol.:)neither 230kg nor 360kg per 100kg of petrol is the 1.6 tonnes presented earlier.

I'm still asking is there a basis for the larger number ?

[SawDustSniffer]

ill find the magazine and go through it again , ill be back
:2tsup:

[SawDustSniffer]

Yep well, I've long since stopped being the chemistry nazi

i say let the nazi loose

as for the carbon tax / carbon dioxide tax , i cant see a point in taxing "graphite pencils" and toner refills ??? carbon fibre costs enough already ??do i invest in diamonds ????