Comment by Cycl0ps
6 days ago
Carbon sequestration!
I grew up in an area known for coal and logging. Ever since I heard of sequestration brought up I thought the area sounded perfect for it. Fell (maybe mulch) the trees, kiln dry to remove weight/moisture, and toss them down a mineshaft.
It always felt a bit peotic to 'reseed' a coal mine
Kiln drying is an interesting idea to speed it up and prevent premature rot, but might offset some of the carbon impact since most industrial kilns use fossil fuels directly or upstream if electric.
Maybe it would be more effective to drop wet lumber off in the desert for a few years by rail before moving the dry lumber to permanent underground storage. This assumes two stages of transport to and from the desert would cost less carbon than transport to a kiln and then to storage.
I’m not convinced that the wood even needs to be dried before burying, though.
Ehh if you are just going to bury it kiln drying wouldn't really be that helpful. Wood in open air will dry out pretty well just sitting for two years. Commercial wood is only really kiln dried so that nobody has to store it for a year or two first and they can sell it before as much of it warps and twists due to being cut while green which makes less of it able to be sold. With a large enough pile, even if it is left uncovered, only the top couple logs or boards will get wet from the rain and if a small percentage of it rots or grows some fungus, well it wasn't there to get built into other things anyways so it doesn't matter.