The Himalayan invention powered by pine needles | Hacker News Reader

The Himalayan invention powered by pine needles

bbc.com

66 pointsbased29 comments

Spoiler:

They put them into gasifier and obtain electricity. The pine needles are on the mountain slope, so they can only be collected manually. This provides jobs for local people.

This is using existing technology develop in India 20 years ago. The Himalayan part of the invention seems to be that you need to chop needles before loading them into device.

I am interested why this is better than burning rather than first gasifying? Less pollution? Safer?

The article says the system produces carbon that they turn into fuel briquettes. They it can't be that efficient.

Gasification produces syngas, which is more transportable, operates with existing gas infrastructure, and depending on the equipment, can actually be more efficient than trying to maintain a combustion reaction. Logistically, it also decouples fuel generation from electricity generation -- if you tried to burn the needles directly you have to figure out how to continually feed them to a burner and deal with the ash. By gasifying, you can create a reserve of fuel.

Gasification has other benefits. It can be rigged to produce biochar, which is believed to be a beneficial soil amendment. The char could also be sequestered to effectively remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Is that not he same as wood gas that people used during fuel rationing to power their cars? Essentially you put wood in a reactor and pipe the output gas directly into your petrol burning engine, runs fine that way.

I wonder, could this work on the leaf/needle litter in California? I know for it to work in the USA it would need to be collected by machine. I suppose some electric generation could offset the costs of fire control measures.

It could be more effective even than Donald Trump's 'raking'!

I wonder long term if this negatively affects the soil fertility?

As the article notes, the pine needles on the floor make forest fires burn hot in the Himalayas. In the USA it is global warming that does that. Collecting kindling in California won't help as you're addressing the wrong problem.

The article does not say anything about the situation in the USA that is why I asked. It is a bit much for you to take the 'if you read the article' line when the article only mentions one half of the two items which you say do not compare. You have presented no more information than the article, just a snide response.

> Collecting kindling in California won't help as you're addressing the wrong problem.

1) Are you saying that flamable items on the forest floor do not contribute to Californian forest fires

2) The solution to climate change is rather harder to achieve than picking up pine needles. Therefore whilst it is not the root cause, it does not make it not worth looking at.

I was sarcastic.

It might be worth it. There are already programs to collect biomass, but not much is done with it.

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