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Dust Fuel

Make energy from dust
  (-4)
(-4)
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There must be many places on earth where there are LARGE amounts of combustible dust - on farmyards, fields etc.

You would use filters / fine mesh netting to collect the dust balls, then squash them up into blocks.

These dust blocks could then be used as fuel in power stations.

meggabrain, Jan 20 2009

BOOM! Silo_20Combustion_20Engine
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 21 2009]


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       //then squash them up into blocks// and then put them through a pulveriser for the fluidised-bed combustor.
coprocephalous, Jan 20 2009
  

       One of the problems is dust is a tough thing to collect. The second is that it is tough to pump. There is tons of corn dust on corn farms, but the stuff isn't just flamable, it's explosive as has been sadly proven too many times. The only way I could see it being collected in bulk is eloctrostatically but that would be suicide, so, I'll have to say (-) unless you can show a method/mechanism.
MisterQED, Jan 20 2009
  

       The act of compressing them will cause the explosion.
daseva, Jan 20 2009
  

       Not if it is wetted first.   

       I think this is workable, but not economically viable. Cheaper to fell trees; cheaper and energetically better to use fossil fuels.
Texticle, Jan 20 2009
  

       //The act of compressing them will cause the explosion.//   

       Just the reverse. Compressing them makes them less explosive.
ldischler, Jan 20 2009
  

       Well, yes and no, but mostly yes. If you filter he dust out of the air and compress it into a "brick", then yes, it'll be less compressible.   

       If , for some reason you were to compress a mixture of air and dust, then all you'll be doing is increasing the explosive potential.
Custardguts, Jan 20 2009
  

       Wasn't there something here years ago about prisoners no longer being allowed to have powdered creamers because they could be used to create an explosive dust in another man's cel?
{had to have been here, where the heck else would I have learned that?}
<toodles off to find thread>
  

       Aha! Makes sense now. [link]   

       I still miss [MrBurns].   

       If there were only some way to ignite and use the dust in situ. Perhaps a mobile powerplant situable over clouds of billowing dust.   

       Better: the Mythbusters create said clouds (of corn dust, coal dust, nondairy creamer, etc) at an abandoned quarry and determine how easily ignitable they are, and exactly how cool the explosion looks, and how far it carries Buster.
bungston, Jan 21 2009
  


 

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