Synthetic gasoline? Syndiesel from coal? Oil-based fuels from algae, grasses or waste grease? Single alcohols like ethanol? What about higher mixed alcohol fuels?
We can’t afford to buy real world billboard advertising yet, so we did the next best thing and hacked a picture to make a point: the future of green energy is just around the corner!
This one sums up our business nicely, but not quite completely. Because our technology can convert much more than household trash to E4™ ENVIROLENE® mixed alcohol fuels. All kinds of unwanted stuff such as excess biomass, sewer sludge, toxic wastes, petroleum byproducts and wastes, and even methane and C02. But household trash is a great place to start looking for abundant, renewal carbons!Truth be told, there will always be middlemen in the fuel business. But they don’t all have to be Middle Eastern men.
“British Columbia has lost 40 million acres of forest to the bark beetle; Colorado is approaching 2 million acres of dead forest; Wyoming just recently crested the 1-million-acre mark,” said Mary Ann Chambers, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service’s Bark Beetle Incident Management Team for the Rocky Mountain region.
Source: The Climate Daily, “Climate change has doubled forest mortality”
This photo taken in Wyoming but it could be anywhere in the western US.
Destruction of trees by the mountain pine beetle, combined with climate change and fire, makes for a dangerous feedback loop. Dead forests sequester less carbon dioxide. Burning forests release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More CO2 adds to climate change, which raises temperatures, stresses forests, and makes bigger fires that much more likely.
Montana faces an incredibly tough situation in years ahead. What to do with 3.9 million acres* of standing dead beetle-kill trees? Let them all rot? Burn? Sit back and let nature take its course because we can’t agree on a fair, environmentally and economically balanced strategy to do anything more? What about people and employment? Economic growth? Clear skies in the summer? Forests that are primed to explode?
Or do we put our heads together and get to work converting at least some of this massive carbon abundance into new forms of clean-carbon energy we can all use, like green, renewable mixed alcohol transportation fuels?
That’s what Bioroot Energy is doing. We invite your participation and support.
Do a quick potential yield calculation based on 5 tons of thinnings and slash material per acre, which is a ridiculously low figure for thinned Montana forest land. That’s 19.5 million tons of biomass. (Some credible forest remediation estimates run 28-30 tons per acre.) Surely there is a gargantuan amount of sustainably harvestable biomass outside of protected wilderness and other sensitive areas to support a substantial biofuel industry.
What could a cutting-edge biofuel industry do for western Montana? What could it do for you? Please let us know what you think.
*Pine beetles infested 1.2 million acres of Montana forest in 2008 and 2.7 million acres in 2009, based on aerial surveys.
Bioroot Energy today announced that it will provide Montana book release tour support for Jon Turk, noted Montana writer, scientist, and adventurer. Mr. Turk is releasing his third book, titled The Raven’s Gift, on Macmillan Press.
One novel way to view trash? Think of trash as mankind’s apathy, made real. The visible signs of our failure to act responsibly to preserve our own interests. We’ve been burying and burning waste since we lived in caves or slept underneath the stars 10,000 years ago. Just like apathy which shadows all human initiative, trash has been a constant backdrop of all human activity.
At some point soon enough, without direct, concerted action at the local and municipal level, we’ll bury ourselves in trash, if we don’t go flat broke (whoops, we are already) or perish from the inevitable pollution first. Our collective apathy will ensure the outcome.
Nobody in their right mind wants this, right? Then why is it turning out that way?
If you think we’re being dramatic here, just keep doing what you are doing, which is probably nothing. In case you’re wondering, simply reading what we have to say on the subject is next to nothing if you don’t do anything real with what you’ve learned.
But if you’re still with us, we need your help on a few million sundry items, such as:
How can we turn what has never had a practical use into something very valuable? And to further beg the metaphor, how can Bioroot Energy turn personal apathy (maybe even yours) about the subject into abundant enthusiasm for supporting what we are doing?
Would money help? Sure! you say. How about a cleaner planet? Absolutely, right?
The green energy potential in the trash and harvestable, sustainable non-crop biomass within 50 miles of you is likely far, far larger than you might think. Whether it’s enough to make a biofuel venture work is up to the experts, but it’s well worth considering if you have interest in solving one of America’s biggest problems and reaping the benefit, right in your town.
The other big variable that has yet to be addressed, at least in our project, is what to do with the syngas created by processing the feedstock via gasification. Make ethanol? What about methanol or di-methyl ether? What’s the highest best use of the syngas? What will justify the large investments required to build these facilities, and get the green biofuels ball rolling for real?
Is there a way to turn syngas into a fuel type that is less toxic, cleaner burning, and has a higher octane rating than ethanol? What options are there?
Don’t let the local waste management company fool you. They’re not experts at doing anything more than hauling away your trash. Out of sight out of mind, and it better not stink!
You get a bill at the end of each month. You’re locked in. They like it that way. Oh sure, the big waste companies give plenty of lip service to being “green”, and are slowly moving to adopt cleaner methods. But their bread and butter is hustling your trash and taking it all to a dump or incinerator. End of story.
Alternatives? Is it possible to manufacture a wide range of biofuels by processing solid waste, sludge, trash and other biomass generated by your community? Profitably? We believe so. But it’s a question with an answer only you, your family and your friends, and project investors, can provide.
Plasma gasification technology to process trash into marketable fuels is proven and ready to go. It’s exponentially cleaner and more efficient than incineration, which only generates electricity. With plasma gasification, you have a facility that not only consumes the widest range of feedstocks, but which also can generate the widest array of output fuels.
What’s more, there’s probably more than enough feedstock, i.e., municipal solid waste and harvestable, non-crop biomass, within a 50 mile radius of your city or town to generate solid returns on investment in a clean, renewable and sustainable waste management facility.
So what’s missing besides money to plan and build such whiz-bang energy production facilities? A lot. Namely, the attention and interest of people (citizens, banks, politicians) who are preoccupied with the present and not looking to the future.
We’ve been tossing our trash for so long that we don’t really see landfills as a problem. And we don’t yet realize the stored value of what’s in our own trash cans. Or we see this intrinsic value of our trash going to waste but don’t think there’s a chance of ever realizing that value, aside from recycling.
You could change the way the trash and biomass game is being played, in your town. All you need to do is step up and help make it happen.
Factor in the future and we simply must act to protect our long-term interests, not just for our generation, but for all generations to come.
That’s why we’re here fighting for your attention and the respect this energy and waste management issue deserves. We have a future to build, or risk not having done enough to spare future generations from inheriting our complex, interwoven and seemingly intractable trash, energy, and environmental problems.
It’s time to bring trash management and energy creation into the 21st century for everyone’s sake.
Waste management companies, are you listening? How about you, Joe Lunchbox?
We have all heard the expression that “history repeats itself.” It has been uttered for centuries, by intelligent and studious men in Greek, Roman and Chinese literature, and has been expressed so many times over the centuries that we just naturally assume that it is true. Well let’s look at some statements from the past and see if they relate to what is happening today. I believe that we will all agree that it is beneficial to study the past so as to see the mistakes, and the successes, of men and nations (empires) that preceded us. We are then able to replicate that which is useful for success and survival, and we can also avoid that which has proved to lead to failure. It is dangerous for us as individuals, and for we as a nation, to ignore the mistakes of the past.
Tomorrow’s history is being created today, as we go about our personal business and family lives amidst great financial and environmental turmoil in the world around us. Will our history be marred by negligence and default or will we become active creators of value and better managers of our future legacy? It’s our choice.
In Montana, life goes on more or less as it has since frontier days. The deer and the antelope still play. The buffalo still roam, at least in some areas of the state. The bear, the elk, and the reintroduced wolf, still thrive.
Of course, western Montanans stopped shooting up the saloons and at each other long ago, traded their horses for cars, and built the highway (Highway 93) that today serves as a key economic lifeline to dozens of far-flung communities from south of the Idaho border north to Missoula.
We’ve come a long way since horse and buggy days. But the real work is ahead. Our quality of life is second to none, but we still don’t know the first thing about digging ourselves out of the massive hole we’ve dug along the way with regard to energy, our economy and the environment.
We’ve only just begun to investigate clean coal technology which uses gasification to greatly reduce carbon emissions, letalone retrofit any power plants. But it’s coming, sure as the sun shines, because it’s important and needed.
It’s also time to focus on taking a truly radical action with gasification tech in our own backyard: cleaning up our municipal trash and excess biomass, profitably and sustainably, right here in the Bitterroot valley. Gasification is a compelling solution for lots of reasons, both environmental and economic!
With America facing a steep uphill climb to economic stability, there’s never been a better time to develop locally owned gasification facilities to convert household waste and biomass to energy. Trash and sustainable biomass to make these projects profitable is almost everywhere! What’s more, the revenue generated from energy created by these facilities can belong to the communities where they will be located. Gasification is a compelling solution for lots of reasons, both environmental and economic!
The human race has never been good about cleaning up after itself. We’ve always had plenty of room to dump our trash and waste somewhere and cover it with dirt. Or pile and burn it or incinerate it. Sure, some elements of trash get recycled (aluminum, steel, cardboard, etc.) but not very much in the big scheme of things.
Just another day in Montana. And another 340 tons of solid waste on its way to the Missoula landfill.
You can bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow and every day thereafter there will be another 340 tons of trash heading to the landfill. And hundreds of slash piles from thinning and logging projects going up in smoke too.
Nothing about how we manage trash has changed. And nothing will, unless we choose to actively support a venture to build a gasification facility right here in the Bitterroot.
In viewing Bioroot Energy site visitor logs, lately we’re getting a lot of visitors using “Ripper 0″, which is apparently a web site ripping tool that copies the contents of an entire web site to a local machine. So far about 15 people have ripped the public portion of the site, and we’re working on identifying whether there has been any plagiarism. Which is to say, if we find some of our content on your site, you’ll be hearing from our attorney, or from your web host if there has been an infringement.
DO YOU ever get the impression that civilisation has degenerated into an unedifying free-for-all? Like pigs gobbling at their troughs, we all seem to be out to get as much as possible of whatever is on offer. Everyone is at it, from loggers felling the Amazonian rainforest and fishers fighting over the last few cod to SUV drivers running the oil wells dry and politicians on their gravy trains. Science even has a name for the phenomenon – one that seems eerily prescient following the recent revelation about MPs’ expense claims in the UK. It is called the Tragedy of the Commons.
While we’re flattered that some visitors think our site is interesting enough to be worth downloading in its entirety, we don’t like the practice because there’s no communication from these people other than the record of their visits to our site. Many of them have masked their IP addresses.
Communication is what will help our revolutionary idea flourish. Not stealing or otherwise appropriating someone else’s content or ideas. But there’s not much we can do about it since this is a public web site. At the least, we hope you, the users of Ripper 0, find our ideas useful in cleaning up trash where you live. You’re going to need all the help you can get.
Our latest site logs show Ripper 0 visits from China, Saudi Arabia, Ohio, and Texas. What is the motivation, exactly? Do any of you Ripper types have it in you to leave a comment about why you’re ripping this site?
Given the enormous social, political and economic hurdles of turning America’s trash into clean energy, it’s not likely that we will suddenly make the leap into a new paradigm of waste management without significant effort. And it’s equally unlikely that we’ll be able to plow through the hurdles along the way if we continue to pay little attention to the opportunity before us. (The trash companies can barely keep up doing it the old way.)
So, about the monster truck option. That’s looking like the Bioroot Energy recipe for success. No leaps, no plows, just build a big bad well oiled machine that can get America’s cities and towns and Americans out of the trash-to-landfill business and into the green-energy business.
A plasma gasification facility is big by design, it can consume a lot of waste and turn it into energy without hurting the environment. Quite the opposite happens, in fact: the solid waste that gets turned into energy via plasma gasification doesn’t have a chance to biodegrade in a landfill, emit methane into the air, or emit toxic chemicals into our groundwater.
We can’t jump over the problem, we can’t plow through the trash problem. But we can roll right over the problem and squash it like the stalled cars under Bigfoot’s tires. We can get there from here! Are you with us?
One way of understanding our mission is to look at your own trash and excess biomass in a different way. Instead of seeing trash as stuff to be thrown away, landfilled or incinerated, think of trash in aggregate terms as intrinsically valuable raw material moving through a maze of pipelines that wind their way through every home and business in America.
Remarkably like the toilet you flush and the sewer pipes in your home that carry away human waste, your trash pipeline begins at your trash can. Each week, millions and millions of tons of trash are emptied into trucks and carried off to be disposed of somewhere you nobody wants to live next to, like a landfill or an incinerator. Virtually none of the stored energy value moving through America’s byzantine trash pipeline “system” is currently being extracted.
Some trash system, you’re probably thinking. No value is being created from the current trash methodology. The air and water are being fouled. And we (you and me) are paying a heavy price for the privilege, as have all humans since the Stone Age.
What if this trash pipeline got connected to community-friendly facilities that could cleanly and efficiently process this pipeline of trash into biofuels? Almost all of the infrastructure to release the stored energy value from trash is already in place: the raw materials exist in abundance, and the waste management companies who haul it away for you. All that is needed is are well run local businesses to convert it into energy!
Why do all our trash pipelines terminate at dumps and incinerators? Is this the best America can do? Are we going to wait for companies who own the landfills and incinerators to do something about it, or are we going to roll up our sleeves and build 21st century businesses that become key players in revitalizing our communities, not to mention cleaning up the environment?
Bioroot Energy doesn’t want to build huge behemoth regional waste to energy plants that look like Soviet-era architecture run amok, complete with belching smokestacks. We want to see “right sized” plasma conversion facilities that enable the technology to be deployed at a community level, with each community making the investment and reaping the reward.
Healthy skepticism is the business person’s best friend. It’s keeps our feet planted firmly on the ground as we go about the lofty business of changing the world by changing how we manage trash. And addressing honest skepticism as it arises is a great way to make the Bioroot Energy story that much more compelling!
We’ve been interacting lately via email with a very knowledgeable person with a background in global marketing. After reviewing our site, he was upfront in saying it will be difficult to find investors willing to fund such large projects, especially with the downturn. He then pointedly asked:
“Is it safe to assume that you are interested in putting together an investor group to fund a production facility in the Bitterroot?”
Here’s some of our response to his email:
Seeing such a facility built in the Bitterroot is my [our] goal, absolutely. The history of ethanol and corn isn’t good of course, but we’re talking next gen ethanol (or other fuel types, perhaps even di-methyl ether, used as aerosol propellant in cosmetics, etc., that sells for $9/gallon.) made from stuff nobody eats or has yet found a use for. And there’s plenty of it in the Bitterroot.
This is a profoundly different scenario that includes everybody as real feedstock producers (at least in theory), not just farmers in the Corn belt.
As far as show me don’t tell me [about current gasification projects] goes, there are several good examples: One municipal gasifier project in Toronto by Plasco Energy is probably the most “mainstream” urban deployment to date, and has been very successful so far. It’s currently running 80 TPD and generating electricity but will eventually scale well past that. Toronto obviously has a huge waste footprint, so they’ll need to add a lot of capacity to make headway…
It is true that earlier gasification projects were for internal remediation, but modern invocations of the technology are designed and will be warranted to make transportation fuels at a profit (the “wraps” or production guarantees by the technology vendors). The Reno project referenced below is huge.
You say this [Bioroot] project could be “quite difficult” and I concur it will be! But the only thing more difficult will be if we fail, and humanity doesn’t learn how to clean up its messes and does nothing constructive with solid waste. Today’s waste is not the benign agrarian output of yesteryear, it’s amazingly toxic stuff, the accumulation of which could eventually threaten all life on earth. (Yes I am an armchair environmentalist…:-) A sweeping generalization, but pathogen loading is a very real long-term threat (ask your local pathologist) if we continue to treat earth as our sewer.
Finally there is a viable, carbon-negative technology that will consume everything short of radioisotopes, and make nearly anything in the way of energy with basically zero pollution. So, I ask, what’s not to like aside from the barrier to entry? ROI in 4 years is pretty standard for this level of investment, and that’s surely what investors will care about. There is great interest in developing new approaches to old problems, even with the downturn, and I think the Renewable Fuels Standard is all the evidence needed to see there is a large market demand that will continue well into the future.
And, after thanking him for his input, so ended my response; most of the skepticism is understandable because the technology and the opportunity are brand new and essentially unproven in the marketplace.
Word is getting out about Bioroot Energy. And we’ve been encouraged by some people we’ve talked with about our mission. But we’ve also encountered misunderstandings and ambivalence from people we’ve contacted about our plans who are busy tending to their own lives and families, or who already think they know what we’re talking about. It might well be because we haven’t been clear enough in our top line message.
What is our mission, exactly, you might still be wondering? Here it is in one sentence:
It’s to benefit you, your family and your community by building a solid, sustainable business converting trash to energy where you live.
In particular, Bioroot Energy is focused on developing a waste to energy project here in the Bitterroot valley. But the lessons we’re learning and covering on this site are likely to be applicable to your town too, so pay attention to the developments here if you want to make a difference in the dialog about trash where you live!
What does this have to do with turning America’s trash into clean energy? How about everything!
You might not believe that mankind’s emissions have anything to do with global warming, but the fact remains that the planet is warming rapidly. Anything people can do to mitigate and adjust to the inevitable changes is self-preservation, not to mention smart thinking.
Nice people usually avoid public discussion of sensitive subjects like sex, politics and religion.
What other topics do people avoid talking about? How about their trash? It’s not a sensitive topic, but it gets ignored as a topic nonetheless. Perhaps because Americans so far have few options for how their trash gets disposed of.
There’s no value there, so people don’t talk about trash. What would be the point, right?
What if there was a point to discussing trash, like money, jobs, new businesses and a cleaner environment?
Waste-to-energy plants generate enough electricity to supply almost three million households. But, providing electricity is not the major advantage of waste-to-energy plants. In fact, it costs more to generate electricity at a waste-to-energy plant than it does at a coal, nuclear, or hydropower plant. The main benefit of incineration of waste is to reduce the waste that gets buried at the landfill!
Plasma gasification clearly makes greater environmental sense. What’s more, it makes economic sense as well because plasma gasification can enable the production of a wide variety of biofuels.
GIMO: Garbage In, Money Out
How interested are you in seeing your trash get processed into biofuels by new green energy businesses in your town? Interested enough to talk trash with people you know?
Ask a smart person what we should do with America’s trash and you’ll probably get a blank stare. Followed by a “what do you mean?” When you find the smart person momentarily at a loss for words, it’s a good opportunity to share Bioroot Energy’s vision for helping Americans build new businesses to monetize trash and biomass, and clean up their local environments.
Almost nobody on the street knows about plasma gasification or its massive potential to change the way we manage solid waste. But word is getting out and interest is increasing.
Meanwhile, major magazines such as Newsweek run articles such as How Our Purchases Affect The Environment with nary a mention of how we dispose of trash, or how we create energy, or its impact on the environment.
America has its focus on the marketplace for buying and selling stuff. We don’t yet focus on developing a marketplace for converting all that used up stuff to energy after it has served its useful life.
If you don’t think all the stuff around you will end up in a landfill, burned, buried or get carried out to sea, you need to learn more about archaeology.
Most Americans probably don’t yet see trash disposal as a problem to be solved, much less as a magnificent opportunity to develop localized green energy businesses that will fundamentally improve the way we manage and dispose of our solid waste and excess non-crop, non-food biomass.
Think about it from the marketer’s perspective. How to solve a national problem that isn’t widely viewed as a problem?
Taking out the trash is so deeply entrenched in the American way of life that the thought of anyone using your area’s solid waste and excess biomass to generate biofuels and getting paid for their effort might seem like science fiction. Or wishful thinking.
How about neither of the above? The technology to create biofuel from trash and other stuff nobody wants is ready to go and set to be deployed widely in municipal settings in coming years. It’s only a matter of money, time, and place. So the question is, exactly who will plan, develop and own these facilities, and reap the rewards?
America needs all the clean alternative energy it can make. And America needs to become more efficient with lifecycle management of trash or get buried or poisoned by it eventually as well. Why not combine the two to form a whole waste to energy solution that actually works for the good of everybody and not just somebody?
When America’s waste makers (that’s all of us) learn to clean up after ourselves in a sustainable, non-polluting, carbon-negative way and, better still, get paid for it, our children will have a brighter future. Not until.
If you don’t think this topic is important, do some reading and find out why improving waste management might be one of the most important undertakings of our time. Humanity’s future and the condition of our environment rests on our ability to innovate a baseline clean energy solution from trash that is non-polluting, carbon-negative, and viable.
Think about what turning your town’s trash and garbage into clean energy could mean, eventually:
The end of landfills for everything we toss that has no further practical use.
The end of groundwater contamination from leaking landfills.
The end of methane ventilation from toxic landfills nationwide.
The beginning of new businesses and jobs in the green energy sector.
The beginning of an American rennaissance in alternative energy manufacturing.
The beginning of a new era of doing the right thing with our trash: gasifying it!
The emergence of America’s cities and towns as energy partners and producers.
Bioroot Energy clean fuel facilities will produce ENVIROLENE® 138 octane higher mixed alcohol fuel.
EPA-registered, water-soluble, biodegradable ENVIROLENE® blends seamlessly into gasoline and diesel fuels for more mileage, more power, and lower emissions.
Truth be told, there will always be middlemen in the fuel business. But they don’t all have to be Middle Eastern men.
