I haven't seen the attached file, nevertheless I have at least one comment.

A few years ago, Fidel Castro was among the first public politician to ask not to use food on fuels production, since this will surely raise poverty. I believe he is quite right, given we live in a free-market & capitalist-world.

I suggest to read my attachment before giving an answer.

I was not suggesting to use food (I agree with your comment) but rather wood.

I focused on simulating its chemical behavior with Hysys

I tried once to simulate with Aspen Plus the combustion in a furnace of biomass wood and thistle straw ( for a cogeneration plant ) starting from the wood ( or straw ) elementary composition.

In that case the target was to predict the composition of bottom and fly ashes ( Gibbs energy minimization ) and among the input parameters there was also the wood characteristic size.

Unfortunately the world would not be saved - it would just run out of trees.  I have made many simillar flowsheets with F-T  or methanol production on the back end. Fun technology but its not going to save the world

Well, my family car burns about 1 ton of hydrocarbons a year To obtain the same heating value I should (or somebody should for me) convert to liquid fuel several tons of wood, or better of oils from vegetale seeds (biodiesel). 

1 hectar of ground can produce up to 3,7 tons of palm oil, which can be converted to few tons of biodiesel oil. How many hectars of land are available for each of us ? About 20, as an average. There is room for other. 

I agree anyway that we all should begin to save energy and fuels, if we do not want to be surrounded by palm plantations.

Avoiding the use of fossil fuels is a very important topic for the issue of sustainable development and counteracting the progressive global warming of the climate.

Avoiding the use of fossil fuels

In my opinion, this is an important and interesting question.

It is very good that this question appeared on the research portal Research Gate.

Does anyone from you conduct research in this area? It's good that there was a discussion about this question.

This is a very interesting and scientifically important topic. Because the topic is very important so I still read the answers, I follow the interesting discussion.

Sustainable development can be achieved by various methods. Which method will be selected is determined by many factors of the environment, the environment of specific economic processes as well as the specifics of economic enterprises and the national economy. However, in the absence of a key development factor, a key raw material such as water can be a significant cost barrier for the implementation of the process of achieving sustainable development. Sustainable development can not be excluded in the context of continuous irrigation of agriculture, but it will generate high costs. In such a situation, profitable ventures should be developed in the domestic economy, which will allow to finance the costs of the said irrigation. It can not be ruled out that irrigated poor soil with proper fertilization and use will produce high yields, high production of agricultural produce will be generated and after a few or more years, it will be possible to create more complex flora ecosystems, including forests next to arable fields, and the way can be improved. Then, sustainable development will be analyzed, implemented and improved in terms of the national economy.

I invite you to the discussion

It is very difficult to establish precise measures for the sustainable development process. Sustainable economic development in correlation with ecology should be measured to determine if it is being implemented. It is necessary to define precise determinants that on one hand will determine the pace of economic development and on the other hand will take into account specific issues of ecology. It should be a set of quantified indicators based on selected measurable and quantitative data, so that the whole analytical process can be considered as a research objective method. The best solution will therefore be to develop an analytical scoring method, for which the basic components of this method will be defined economic and ecological quantitative indicators.

In view of the above, the current question is: How to define precise measurable factors for the process of sustainable economic and ecological development?

Is it time to change the civilization development strategy globally and focus on sustainable socio-economic development?

Yes, it is necessary to change the development strategy based on intensifying the exploitation of the Earth's resources on the sustainable development strategy. It is necessary to develop new energy technologies based on renewable energy sources to slow down the progressing greenhouse effect of the Earth in order to reduce the risk of dramatic natural cataclysms. It is necessary to develop ecological innovations, while it may not be too late. It is necessary to save the Earth through destruction for future generations.

The 21st century is the last moment to introduce global sustainable development based on the development of renewable energy and ecological innovations. Sustainable development should be analyzed and measured in correlation with the analysis of economic growth and the share of individual sectors in the country's economic development, including the transformation of traditional energy sources into renewable energy, environment reclamation and recovery of recyclable materials, and ecological innovations.

I invite you to the discussion

The current technological revolution, known as Industry 4.0, is determined by the development of knowledge-based economies in which technology, information and innovation become one of the most important factors of production.

Among these new technologies and innovations, ecological innovations and new technological solutions in the energy sector may become key in the 21st century.

The aforementioned technological revolution is currently motivated by the development of the following factors: Big Data database technologies, cloud computing, machine learning, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence.

On the basis of the development of the new technological solutions mentioned in recent years, the processes of innovatively organized analyzes of large collections of information collected in Big Data database systems dynamically develop.

What other technological improvements, innovative organizational, technical and IT solutions will be developed in the future based on the development of the above-mentioned factors?

What kinds of innovations will be able to be created in the coming years, in the future based on the integration of the above-mentioned main determinants of the development of the current technological revolution known as Industry 4.0?

What kind of new categories of added value may be created in the future if the above-mentioned technological solutions are more involved in the creation of biotechnological, ecological, product and other innovations.

Will new technologies be created in this way, with the help of which it will be possible to generate solutions to the problems of excessive exploitation of Earth resources in the process of civilization development?

Perhaps new innovative technologies for renewable energy sources and the creation of biodegradable substitutes for many non-degradable materials, e.g. plastics, besides the development of biotechnology and energy innovations, etc. will allow major global problems to be solved.

The development of human civilization in the next few decades should give answers to the above questions.

Therefore, I am asking you with the following question: Will eco-innovations or innovations in the field of industry 4.0 generate more added value in terms of environmental protection in the 21st century?

I invite you to the discussion.

Will changing the entire energy, communication and industry to renewable energy sources and ecological technologies significantly slow down the greenhouse effect on Earth?

Does any of you conduct research in this area? Apparently, the greenhouse effect is an irreversible process. the only thing that can be done is to slow down this process and thus adverse weather anomalies, unusual atmospheric phenomena, disasters caused by climate change. The development of industry based on traditional energy sources, ie burning of minerals, still dominates in many regions of the world. In domestic terms, the management of economies often boils down to economic growth, development of the industry without taking into account environmental protection issues and analysis of greenhouse gas emissions. In national economic policies, the tendency of the race is dominating for a higher number of economic growth, and the negative effects of this growth are forgotten. An attitude is assumed that the next generations are worried about how to solve this problem. Such an approach will accelerate only the negative effects of the global greenhouse effect and the emergence of disasters and natural disasters about the sources of climate change in a larger part of the world. More and more often the question is asked: how can we stop this process only as this process of warming up of average temperatures on Earth could be slowed down? What scale of this downturn could be generated if mankind would start to take this problem seriously? Does any of you conduct research in this area? Has any of you developed a theoretical model that would answer the question: Will switching all energy, communication and industry to renewable energy sources and ecological technologies significantly slow down the greenhouse effect on Earth?

I invite you to the discussion.

Will man manage to create innovative technologies of renewable energy sources, which will stop the greenhouse effect on Earth?

Every year new sources of clean energy and technologies are created. New, innovative technologies in the field of renewable energy are being created. The existing technologies of renewable energy sources have been successively improved in the direction of creating more and more economically efficient and energy-saving technological solutions. New patents and innovative technological solutions are being created. New types of materials used in new energy sources devices are being discovered. The main determinant of technological progress in this field should be the process of implementing the most energy-saving technologies on the industrial scale and promoted for industrial implementation and the transport sector should be sources of energy under RES that will emit the least harmful external effects to the planet Earth environment.

In view of the above, the current question is: Will man manage to create and develop on a mass scale in industry and energy innovative technologies of renewable energy sources, through which will stop the greenhouse effect on Earth?

I invite you to the discussion.

Here is another discussion on this subject.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_will_replace_fossil_fuels

still lots of questions but bo real answer.

As of now, solar energy seems to be a potential candidate.

Wind seems to be ahead of Solar right now but fossil fuels is still around 80% of the total. Nuclear probably needs to fill the gap until a real sustainable solution emerges.

I am still awaiting... :)

I am still awaiting...

Giorgio, We are all still waiting. No clear solution has emerged wind, solar, and tidal along with conservation seem to be the leading renewable options but they still fall way short of projected needs. Fusion has a lot of potenial but it also does not appear to be close a demonstrated technology that is commercially viabel.

We are still waiting for someone to have a breakthrough

Whenever I model gasification of biomass/wood I match the elemental composition with a combination H2, CH4, H2S , CO, NH3 I burn this mixture with feed at 25 C and cool the flue gas to 25 C to find the heating value of the stream with the same elemental composition as the biomass and I add a heat stream to correct the amount of heat released to match the known heat of combustion of the biomass.

To model combustion tin more detail Biomass +O2 => Char + H20 followed by Char + O2 => H20+ CO2 you need to make some assumptions about the composition and heat of combustion of the char. There is some information about char quality available but all char is not necessarily the same.

Giorgio, I see the question is 4 years old and it seems to be focused on how to model gasication and combustion of wood/biomass.

Is that still the question you want answere.

I am not a fan of burning food as fuel. But I seem to be int he minority and some "vegetable matter" is not edible.

Thank you Rick. Infact, I asked a judgement on my approch to the simulation of organic matters with HYSYS. You confirmed it.

Giorgio, Modelling systems that go to equilibrium if very forgiving. Path is not particularly important if the end resultis a known mixture of compunds in equilibium.

Kinetic analysis is not as forgiving. Reaction path is much more imprtant if the products don't approach equilibium at the conditions being considered..

Maybe it's worth thinking about the huge amount of energy stored in the interior of the earth. A very, very small part of it is used in the form of qeothermal waters. But it is a negligible amount in relation to all the energy produced by humanity. Regards,

Miroslaw, Iceland has been very successful producing geothermal energy but it is not nearly as successful anywhere else. Here is an update from the US DOE on their efforts with geothermal energy.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f47/GTO%202017%20Annual%20Report.pdf.

Fossil fuels contain carbon, which is converted to CO2 during combustion.

An alternative fuel like hydrogen is clean, but difficult to carry and store.

An intermediate carbon-free fuel could be ammonia NH3, which can be easily synthetized from hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen and stored as liquid under mild pressure. It could be an intermediate solution for carbon-free fuels, between hydrogen and liquid fuels.

Giorgio,

H2 is a clean burning fuel but it is usually produced from natural gas by steam-methane reforming. There is no reduction in GHG emissions unless you capture and sequester CO2 at a H2 plant.

Less GHG is formed if you burn CH4 directly instead of producing H2 first, H2 powered vehicles are a good way to move CO2 emissions from automobile tail pipes to H2 plants where they could be (but usually aren’t) captured. Using electrolysis to produce H2 is usually worse because incremental electricity is usually produced by burning coal. It may make sense at some renewable power facilities (or even nuclear plant) as a means of storing power at times when soar/wind power production is greater than local demand but in most cases batteries are better for that purpose.

Rick, I wrote about Iceland, but not here. Here I was just wondering about the possibility of using a huge amount of energy accumulated in the earth and I wrote that only a very, very small part of it is used in form of geothermal water. I added that it is negligible amount compared to all the energy generated by humanity. Regards,

Rick, what I meant is that, if we exclude hydrogen as a direct energy carrier, a more practical way to store and carry it is to combine it with the atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia, which is easy to make and more energetically dense, because it can be liquefied.

Of course, if we wish to exclude carbon from the energy chain, the only way to produce it is from water.

Giorgio, I never really thought of ammonia as a fuel - it’s more of a building block for fertilizers and other fixed nitrogen compounds. It is probably more dangerous to handle and transport than gasoline. Burning ammonia or amines as a fuel would probably create a serious NOx problem that we would have to deal with. But I agree it is probably better than Hydrogen as an energy carrier.

I think the real problem is that burning 80 Million BOE equivalent of almost anything is an environmental challenge.

Rick, I know about NOX's. It's the same problem with diesel engines.

I agree about the safety problems. But liquid ammonia is normally carried with the same tankers used for LPG (I saw some of them with ammonia near the Marghera plants. I must say I was a bit worried)

I am also very concerned with LPG leaks. Heavier than air combustible gas spreading out over large area until it finds an ignition source is a recipe for a catastrophic fire. At least ammonia doesn't have that problem,