O.U. BEYOND COAL EXTRA CREDIT

The O.U. Beyond Coal discussion was very informative and helpful for my specific research topic of Biomass as an alternative fuel source. The discussion featured three O.U. professors that are all exploring possible alternative energy sources. Ben Stuart spoke about the transitions from coal to alternative energy source as a transition period and not “on and off light switch” that would start first with a reduction of consumption along with efficiency improvement. He spoke about the long history of using woody biomass was a way to produce heat, light, and means to cook food. He then spoke about his specific research based on algae using waste water as a food source to produce optimum biomass. One interesting point that he made was about how biomass would not be optimum for large scale power production since the amount of woody biomass needed would exceed the harvesting levels. Gerri Botte spoke about coal electrolysis in which coal would be combined with water to produce a slurry that has a high hydrogen gas yield with low CO2 yields. She also spoke about using waste water to harvest ammonia to use to extract H2 gas from. The main stress was on using sources of waste as possible energy sources. Carole Womeldorf spoke about wind technology in south eastern Ohio. She explained how there had been wind maps made for Ohio in 1986 and how inaccurate they were do to lack of data and computing power of the time. Nachy Kanfer talked about the Sierra Club and how they sued the state of Nebraska for clean air violations of their coal fired water heating plant at their university. He also spoke about Ball State and Cornell University and how they have moved from coal to geothermal and biomass to heat their campuses. Matt Bennett from Dovetail Solar and Wind spoke about the most cost effective and most efficient ways of creating energy. One idea he had was to put hydro electric turbines on all of the preexisting damns built on the Ohio river. He also spoke about the possible use of solar farms and how they could use the high power transmission lines that are already present throughout Ohio. All of the people that spoke at this meeting agreed that there is not a single solution to the energy problem that can replace coal. They stressed the need to be aggressive in research and development of these new alternative energy sources while at the same time perfecting the current production processes to make them much more efficient. I am very glad that I went to this conference because it helped me focus more on my research project.