I had to check my weblog posts to ensure that I had not written about All Power Labs (APL). In 2007 its premises were called The Shipyard. It was an art collective in the center of Berkeley. Here much of the pyrotechnic art for the Burning Man festival was produced.
While rites of passage typically apply to individuals and groups, they can also apply to processes, possibly even things. A rite of passage involves three phases: Separation, where the person/ group/ process/ thing wanting to undergo the rite of passage is isolated; transition, often characterized by danger and uncertainty; incorporation, where those completing the rite of passage accept their new status and responsibilities, and re-enter society. Gasifiers endured a rite of passage during World War Two, when one million vehicles were repowered with gasifiers in less than five years.
For processes, that initial isolation involves experimentation, resulting in prospective solutions to a problem. The transition phase is an arrangement to operationalize the most promising solution. This often involves the building of a suitable infrastructure. Incorporation takes place when the process is taken into use.
When I first tried to investigate the process, I came across an unusual unit of mass: 1 Gt = 1 gigaton, close enough to 1 giga tonne. My first task was to recalculate a ton/ tonne into grams: 1 000 000 g = 106 g = 1 Mg. Then, I had to multiply this by the factor for Giga = 109. Combining them gives a value of 1015 = 1 Petagram (Pg). I find it irritating that people do not use metric prefixes consistently. For example, people mention driving 1 000 km, which should be written as 1 Mm = 1 Megameter.
All Power Labs (APL) is located in Berkeley, California. When I first read about them, almost 20 years ago, they described themselves as making electrical generators using biomass as a fuel. Now, they regard themselves as a company manufacturing gasifiers, with their goal to move CO2 from the atmosphere to soil. They tell the following story: every year, in some ideal world, 1 Pg of biomass = 10% of the available residue biomass on the planet = ~0.8% of terrestrial plant production could be processed through a gasifier. This process could continue for the next century. A carbon/climate calculator can be used to explain how a gasifier’s energy actions will impact CO2 in the atmosphere. The implication is that a 20-80ppm COe atmospheric adjustment can be achieved over the next century, using technology that is already operational. Existing industries related to composting, agriculture and forestry will benefit from using gasifier equipment.
There are many terms used in the combustion industry. One is the concept of combustibles for detecting the onset of incomplete combustion for safety and for fuel efficiency. Three components are needed to ignite a fire and generate combustion: oxygen, fuel and some form of initial energy, such as a spark. Under ideal conditions, hydrocarbon fuels, such as methane (CH4), react to form carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). In a perfect world, this could be written: CH₄[gas] + 2O₂[gas] → CO₂[gas] + 2H₂O[steam] + 891kJ. However, in practice, there is always a small amount of incomplete combustion present, often taking the form of ppm-levels of combustibles carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2). The term combustibles originated in the mid-1900s in the gas detection industry. During the 1970s and 1980s, the technology used for combustible gas detection was adapted to make industrial measurements to detect process upset conditions for safety and later for fuel efficiency.
In the combustion industry, the abbreviation COe stands for Carbon Monoxide equivalent. As the name suggests, COe measures all combustibles relative to (or equivalent to) the reactivity of CO. COe and combustibles are similar in that they both refer to incomplete combustion. H2 is much more reactive compared to CO. A COe detector might overestimate the levels of H2 in the sample gas due to its much higher reactivity compared to CO.
In reading about APL, I have noticed a change in how they describe themselves.
APL designs and manufactures various forms of the carbon sequestration tractors that makes this drawdown work possible. The “1GT/year Earthshot” scenario expects other startups and large OEM ag/engine/heavy equipment companies to ultimately form a new industry around these solution processes. The need and opportunity will exceed what one single company can do. The critical work for APL is to pioneer the technical innovation and productization refinements that make this an easy to use, highly profitable solution for customer driven growth. Therefore APL has been laser focused on developing new types of compact and integrated biomass thermal conversion products, ones that can be delivered as ready-to-work boxed appliances, at price points reduced 2-3x previous comparable equipment.
A Carbon/Climate Calculator
The climate impact scenario above is derived from APL’s testing and modeling of biomass thermal conversion systems, and more recently biochar co-composting and soils systems, and specifically connecting these flows and sinks to the larger climate system. This work is progressively being structured into an integrated framework enabling us to answer (or debate with formalism) the results in atmosphere of actions on the ground with APL systems, in terms of both delta carbon loading and delta ppm of CO2e.