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Jeffrey H. Owen
American Christmas tree growers regularly prune back their trees' branches and top to give a dense appearance. Someday in the future, the used trees could be burned as a green fuel.
It's the time of year when millions of us admire that Christmas tree one last time before we strip it of decorations and drag it unceremoniously to the corner with the rest of our holiday trash. But what if instead of filling up a landfill, our trees could be used to generate electricity?
New Scientist reports that Jenny Jones and fellow engineers at the University of Leeds in Britain are working on precisely that what-if. They're developing a process called torrefaction that makes biomass — including pine and spruce trees — suitable for burning alongside coal.
Torrefaction is already used to create biochar, which is added to soils to improve agriculture and avoid emissions of carbon dioxide that would have occurred if the plants were allowed to decompose. The team has proven the concept with willow and Miscanthus grass and is now working with electric utilities to test other sources of biomass, including trees. Findings are reported in Dec. 12 issue of the the journal Fuel.
It will be a while before torrefaction becomes a post-Christmas tradition, but in the meantime, there are other things to do with the tree besides taking it to the dump. Click into this story from the Tampa Tribune for some of the options. And for more about the science of Christmas trees, check out the stories below.
- The evolution of the perfect American Christmas tree
- How science is building a better Christmas tree
- Christmas trees are surprisingly depressing for some
- Real Christmas trees 'greener' than fake
- Fake Christmas trees get nod over fresh: poll
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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I have a buddy that collects them every year he prunes them cuts them into 18 inch pieces and dries them for two years then burns them as fuel in an old boiler that runs a radiant floor heating system.
He spends a couple of hours every evening the first week of every year, that is when they are on the curb, driving the neighborhoods in his pickup! He now has so many people that call him for pickup he actually sets up pickup for different neighborhoods on specific nights. With the time it takes him to cut and stack you are talking about about 40 hours total and it now covers his entire winter heating bill. He lives in coastal New Jersey, so winter heating is not a paltry bill!
The small branches he bundles with twine and drys to use as kindling.
Brilliant System!
burning trash wood like christmas trees is stupid,takes a guy out of university to think that one up.throw the fir in the ditch and cut some hardwood,fir is good for kindling cause it does catch fire easy and is easy to split.i cut maple for heat and must cut some fir just to make work easier.always more trash than needed so most fir soon turns into soil.anyone that uses a spruce tree at christmas must like the smell of cat piss.man the writers must get out of a city and get an education.
brilliant,the shingles on your house are likely cedar and they burn real good.you could put the fire out with your bare hands cause they are not fire wood.cities are enemic and the citizens withinwill all die if knowledge meant anything.
isn`t that cute and quaint,try that when you need heat.
i really feel sorry for people that bundle fir twigs for heat,get a life.that`s not even wood.
egg cartons are the best that i have seen for wood heat if you don`t own a chainsaw or land.if you don`t own a chainsaw or land you have no business talking about this anyways.buy from the dummy that knows what he is doing and doesn`t lay awake at night thinking about a motgage payment.
i sort of thought people living in an urban environment like newjersey would get enough heat from their brilliant minds all working together and that would cause some kind of a radiant heat sort of thing.burning christmas trees,what next einstien,picking up beer bottles.
i pruned a few trees a week ago,i marched down behind the house a hundred yards and knocked down about a dozen big maples.fig the christmas trees i want heat next winter,middle of next summer they go in the wood house.
if you want to do something usefull and get a fuzzies green feeling from a christmas tree collect them and use them to prevent coastal erosion.the btu from a christmas tree can`t be more than three drops of furnace oil.
oak is your best bet for real heat and i hear it takes a long time to dry,won`t say much about it cause i just don`t have it to cut.
Nice conversation you're having with yourself there hockeypuck. Actually the BTUs of some Christmas trees isn't that bad. Depends on the tree. The "common Christmas tree" can be a variety of different species and what's popular in one part of the country may not be in another. Equal dried weight of all wood has very near the same BTUs. Generally though we talk about BTUs/chord. Lighter, less dense woods have lower BTUs for the same volume. Maple is hardly the top of the heap and depending on what type of maple you use, it may be only a third more than some Christmas tree species. Oak can have a good 50% or more higher heat value than many maples.
The whole issue with the species typically used for Christmas tree is their high moisture and resin contents. Both lower BTUs and the resins can create build-up in chimneys and stacks. Not a good choice for a fireplace, but in a well designed wood furnace it can be good for quick heat when fully dried. It won't last as long because of the lower density, but dry it will put out a lot of BTUs quickly. In large volumes like the article speaks of, there's definitely a lot of BTUs and dollars that could be captured. Better than becoming landfill which costs money.
spg64's friend has a pretty good system that works for him. I wouldn't be so anxious to knock it. He gets the wood for free so even if it's a somewhat lower BTU content, the price is right. I suspect there's no splitting involved and may not even need a chain saw. He's turning what would be landfill waste into something useful with real value. If more people thought that way, we'd all be a lot better off.
Get a life hockeypuck. you got tooo much time on your hands
Just love a guy, who has to have a conversation with himself and still have nothing really good to say. Yeah, you are a Hockeypuck alright. Doesnt matter what he uses to heat his house. They are free ( minus gas to get them ) and Pines while burning very fast and dirty, burn hot. The dried sap actually contributes to the heat.
Hey even very tightly rolled newpaper when burned puts out some btu's
We should get away from the idea of cutting down ever-green trees period. If you want a real Christmas tree, buy a potted one and plant it when the season is over. All of this would save a few liter of oxygen so the puckster could complain til his hearts content.
Here, we anchor the trees to something and toss them in lakes. They make great spawning areas for fish.
The author missed the power charcoal has in soil verses it being combusted as C-neutral fuel.
Thermal conversion of biomass only burns the Gas & bio-oils for exported energy, not the lignin carbon of the plant's cell structure.
Recent NATURE STUDY;
Sustainable bio char to mitigate global climate change
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v1/n5/full/ncomms1053.html
In modern Pyrolysis reactors Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration (= to 1 Ton CO2e) + Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels = to 1MWh exported electricity, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.
Biochar viewed as soil Infrastructure; The old saw;
"Feed the Soil Not the Plants" becomes;
"Feed, Cloth and House the Soil, utilities included !".
Free Carbon Condominiums with carboxyl group fats in the pantry and hydroxyl alcohol in the mini bar.
Build it and the Wee-Beasties will come.
Microbes like to sit down when they eat.
By setting this table we expand husbandry to whole new orders & Kingdoms of life.
A Brief History of Agricultural Time
Our farming for over 10,000 years has been responsible for 2/3rds of our excess greenhouse gases. This soil carbon, converted to carbon dioxide, Methane & Nitrous oxide began a slow stable warming that now accelerates with burning of fossil fuel. The unintended consequence has been the flowering of our civilization. Our science has now realized the consequences and developed a more encompassing wisdom.
Modern Agriculture has evolved in the ability to remove the limitations to plant growth, from burning forest for ash fertilizers, to bison bones, to Guano islands, then in 1913, to crafty Germans figuring out how to suck nitrogen from the air to now with natural gas derived fertilizers. These chemical fertilizers have over come nutrient limits to growth for 100 years.
NPK and the "Green Revolution" in genetics have brought us to where we are, all made possible by basically mining soil carbon stocks. So we have now hit a carbon limit in two distinct ways. The first is continued loss of soil carbon content, the second is fossil carbon energy cost. The present farming system spends ten cents of fossil energy dilivering one cent of food energy.
We can not go back, but we can go forward with our newly acquired wisdom.
Agriculture allowed our cultural accent and Agriculture will now prevent our descent.
Wise Land management, Conservation Agriculture and afforestation can build back our soil carbon, Biochar allows the soil food web to build much more recalcitrant organic carbon, (living biomass & Glomalins) in addition to the carbon in the biochar.
We can rectify the carbon cycle, and beyond that, biochar systems serve the same healing function for the Nitrogen & Phosphorous Cycles, Toxicity in Soils & Sediments and as a feed additive cut the carbon foot print of livestock by 50%.
I'm in Calgary Alberta and we have xmas tree pick-up which they use for mulch. SURELY your cities in the US
have this too?? SURELY you don't toss 'em all in the landfill. If you do, that's a shame. Maybe people should
just get a good "fake tree" if that's the case.
I'm sure it varies by location. I our town we chip them up for mulch which is free to any citizen who want it (great stuff, makes the yard smell really nice). If you want a truckload, the town will even deliver to your driveway. It's a big savings over buying it by the bag from the local big-box home center.
"What-if" the christmas tree can really become bioenergy source; it think it can be. It reminds me that how human being made fire, to which they rubbed two piece of wood, such as some branches, to make fire, or energy source.
"What-if" can help to solve the problem of "exhausting all resources", then it is forced to take a step.
Then, "everlasting christmas tree" can be replaced it; and "go green".
Every year, christmas trees have been cut dowm and dumped; if we can use the christmas tree as energy resource, that will be great.
Every year, we plant the trees again.