While precious fossil fuels are being steadily depleted to provide electricity and petrochemicals, biomass materials, such as household wastes, animal wastes, field crop wastes, forestry wastes, etc. are produced in enormous amounts, and constitute a tremendous waste of potential energy.
In an attempt to utilize these biomass materials, Tamers, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,009,219, in one embodiment of his invention, completely carbonizes biomass materials at over 1,000.degree. C., for at least 30 minutes in the absence of air, driving off oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen gas, to provide an essentially pure carbon char. This pure carbon char is then reacted with less than a stoichiometric amount of lithium, sodium, potassium or cesium in the form of the metal, hydroxide or oxide, at over about 500.degree. C. This produces substantially all metal carbide solids, which are then hydrolized to produce acetylene. All reactions of metal with oxygen, water or nitrogen are avoided. Following acetylene production, the metal is recovered by a variety of means.
This process, however, when converting biomass to pure carbon char, wastes hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen gases, which are considered undesirable products capable of consuming lithium. The process also requires a tremendous input of energy in the form of heat, to completely carbonize the biomass at 1,000.degree. C. for 30 minutes. What is needed is a new and improved process that can directly produce a variety of energy useful gases, particularly hydrogen, from biomass materials, without excessive use of heat energy.