Ed said:
Using Bio-mass in a gas producer system is very clean and completely recyclable. The CO2 emitted is the same CO2 the plant's took in to grow in first place.
That's a nice picture Ed, but try to make it affordable to the masses is the trick! I work where (courtesy of the 'Stimulus Package'), we make bio-fuel. Right now we are struggling to get the price down to $10/gal. !
I Think I'm misunderstood. Biomass is not Bio-fuel. Biomass is waste material like baggasse from sugar cane, wood chips here in New England, or wheat chaff, corn stalks (a both very good) that can be had in high volume at low cost because it is waste (any combustable solid can be made to work but at different costs). This material IS NOT PROCESSED (well maybe chipping or grinding is processing?) but fed directly into a gas producer system (some electric companies are already doing this via a fluidized bed system) the gas producer system incompletely combusts the solid waste material producing many flamable gasses mostly CO and H2. The gasses are then burned to either produce heat --> steam --> electricity or burned to directly produce electricity in a gas turbine system or even a regular internal combustion type generator.
BioFuel is usually a heavily processed product manufactured specifically as a fuel (ei: ethanol and vegie-diesel) Biofuel requires more energy to produce and therefor has a much higher break-even point in energy used in production vs energy produced and is less competitive against petroleum because it can not capitolize on economy of scale like the oil companies can.
Biomass is essentially a free or very low cost fuel that requires minimal processing.
I doubt it would get "to the masses" (maybe farmers and certain hardy souls who are willing to home brew a system - which is very doable) but it is a low cost already developed technology, gas for lighting was produced in great volumes in the early 1900's with the same process, although coal was used as a fuel then. This is the cleanest way to burn coal by the way - pyrolize and combust the volatiles into CO2 and water, then either run the coke through or sell it minimal scrubbing of the exhaust required.
