What are the efficiency gains of burning forestry waste vs. crop residue? Also, what is the relative size of forestry waste vs crop residue, and how much more/less impact does it have on CO2 displacement by 2050?
I don’t know the actual difference in efficiency, but from experience I can tell you that:
1) forestry waste is much easier to load into a reactor and handle in an automated way than crop waste. I’ve actually not seen a functional materials handling system for crop residues at the 1 ton per day or greater scale. These are common in forestry waste.
2) Feedstock needs to be bone dry before it will pyrolyze into biochar. It takes more energy to dry crop waste than forestry residue.