Jun 27, 2026, 3:52 PM@renardboy
It will never be profitable whatsoever but I think we need to capture and convert it. And invest the energy. It's the best method to make sure this is not getting back into the atmosphere.
I don't see it as a valuable business, more like a necessity to keep us all alive.
@thomasfuchs
@momo @thomasfuchs Perhaps. To this end I'd say gassify biomass in retorts, use the creosote as a wood preservative for railroad ties and such, use the gas for fuel, and crush the charcoal to use it as soil amendment.
But before biomass as fuel can even be considered we must reduce our energy use by like an order of magnitude.
@renardboy @momo @thomasfuchs or two
Jun 28, 2026, 8:43 AM@renardboy
No, you are mistaken. We need the carbon dioxide to get out of the atmosphere and stay out of the atmosphere. That means no conversion into fuel and burn it back into the air.
It means turn it into carbon so that it can be stored without gassing out by accident reverting all the capture effort.
Using CO2 from the air for combustion fuel means "This current heat stays as it is". Storing it means "We start to revert the climate catastrophy." and the price tag for that is not measured in costs for capturing, transforming and storing, its measured in extinction prevented.
@thomasfuchs
@momo @thomasfuchs well yeah. But the quickest and currently most effective carbon sequestration mechanism is photosynthesis, and the most reliable way to sequester it making charcoal, since charcoal doesn't degrade and when mixed into the soil it makes it impractical to recover and use as fuel.
Charcoal contains about 30% of the energy in the wood used to make it, and the creosote contains another fraction; using it to preserve wood also prevents it from decaying and releasing its carbon.
@momo @thomasfuchs so this improves outcome. But pyrolysis also produces gas which is much more difficult to sequester, so it's probably put to better use as fuel, possibly directly to help perform the pyrolysis.
Of course, that's for the long term. For the shorter to mid term, biomass carbon should be sequestered by making buildings out of wood, especially instead of making them from concrete or steel. Also a compounding effect there.
@momo @thomasfuchs Cause photosynthesis stores carbon but then releases most of it as biomass rots. Mature forests are more or less carbon neutral, not carbon sinks.
I'm not overly worried about deforestation from these practices, since by far the leading cause of deforestation is, per my understanding, clearing land for agriculture.