Is biomass usage sustainable and as green as it is made out to be?

[Khriss]

@Paddy1000111 its a convoluted chain. Co2 converted to sugars to drive leaf production girth increase and root development and al the other process involved. On an Oak of ten tonnes over a hundred years  would venture its ten times the mass at the very least, conifers much less but then on a given land area you have many more of them. One for the number crunchers i think.  K

[Stere]

 

Alot of the uncertainty  stuff is just a new type of denialism  by the fossil fuel industry.

 

Guy that made the famous hockey stick graph has just got a new book out about it.

 

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet by Michael E. Mann

WWW.GOODREADS.COM

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The New Climate War book. Read 2 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. A renowned climate scientist...

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by Stere

[Paddy1000111]

47 minutes ago, Khriss said:

@Paddy1000111 its a convoluted chain. Co2 converted to sugars to drive leaf production girth increase and root development and al the other process involved. On an Oak of ten tonnes over a hundred years  would venture its ten times the mass at the very least, conifers much less but then on a given land area you have many more of them. One for the number crunchers i think.  K

I think like you say it's not easy to calculate.

 

To work out the sequestered CO2 amount the formula is: Tree mass (kg of fresh biomass) x 65% (dry mass) x 50% (carbon %) x 3.67 (carbon multiplication factor) x 120% (root mass inclusion)

 

So in this case 14,313kg of CO2 sequestered by that 10 tonne tree. Assuming this was a 100 year old tree (although a 10 tonne tree is likely to be much older than that), that's 143kg of CO2 a year. A more realistic number (based on case studies of old oaks I found) A 222 year old tree would weigh in at 14.386 tonnes which means it would have sequestered 17158kg of CO2, spread over 222 years that's 77kg of CO2 a year which is a bit more realistic for a mahusive tree like that. 

 

The UK produces roughly 373.2 million tonnes of CO2 a year so we would need just over 4.85 million of these 222 year old 14 tonne oaks. Based on the same tree, it has a crown of 17.8m meaning that if we were able to get all the crown sizes into squares and fit them all together that would be 593 square miles of 222 year old 14 tonne oaks to be roughly carbon neutral on trees alone which is an area roughly covering most of London. 

 

This doesn't actually seem that unrealistic which means that my calculations are garbage. 

To be honest I don't know why I did these calculations. I'm bored as hell stuck indoors! 

[porky]

Well done for trying anyway! 😄

[Paddy1000111]

2 minutes ago, porky said:

Well done for trying anyway! 😄

I'm still trying to work out how a tree weighing 14 tonnes holds 17 tonnes of CO2 😂

[porky]

What weighs more, a ton of feathers or a ton of Co2?

[Doug Tait]

6 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

I'm still trying to work out how a tree weighing 14 tonnes holds 17 tonnes of CO2 😂

It's like my water bottle, a capacity of 750ml but it's held hundreds of litres 

[Khriss]

@Paddy1000111 that is actually a good estimate and i bet a fvvk sight better that dotGov would have bothered to do @kevinjohnsonmbe  there are many variables but dont forget leaf drop and the nitrogen cycle there, plus O2 output at night. Be good to see wot the hybrid Poplars do on that scale. ( wont ask @Big J wot his lovely Eucalypts score on this 😉 )  K

[Paddy1000111]

Just now, Doug Tait said:

It's like my water bottle, a capacity of 750ml but it's held hundreds of litres 

Maybe, but that calculation is supposed to work out how much co2 is physically stored in the tree. You can do a similar equation for kiln dried building timber to calculate its stored co2 which actually works out to less in weight, i.e. a 150kg timber beam would hold 87kg of co2. So it's more like the bottle holds 750ml but you've filled it with 1000ml? 😂

 

The process of sequestering is a tree absorbing and holding onto that co2, not the process of converting some of it to sugars. A tree at night releases around 50% of the co2 it absorbed in the day in a process of respiration. 

[Stere]

Quote

I'm still trying to work out how a tree weighing 14 tonnes holds 17 tonnes of CO2 😂

How about the leaf litter created doesn't  that add carbon to the soil?

Edited January 15, 2021 by Stere