The Wheels Come Off the Biodiesel Wagon
Posted by Robert Rapier on January 12, 2010 - 10:13am
Domestic Biodiesel Production Plummets
One of my Top 10 Energy Stories of 2009 involved the actions taken by the EU against U.S. biodiesel producers. U.S. tax dollars had been generously subsidizing biodiesel that was being exported out of the U.S. European producers couldn't compete against the subsidized imports, so the EU effectively cut off the imports by imposing five-year tariffs on U.S. biodiesel.
This was a big blow to U.S. biodiesel producers, and was one of the factors leading to a disastrous 2009 for U.S. biodiesel production. But there were other factors as well, which I will describe in this post.
How disastrous was 2009?
Per the National Biodiesel Board (NBB), here are the statistics from the past 6 years of biodiesel production:
2004: 25 million gallons
2005: 75 million gallons
2006: 250 million gallons
2007: 450 million gallons
2008: 700 million gallons
2009: 300-350 million gallons (estimate)
The NBB also reports that domestic biodiesel capacity is now operating at only 15%. There have been a number of stories in the past few days covering these developments:
Bad start to 2010 after 'rough year' for entire biofuel industry
A federal tax credit that provided makers of biodiesel $1 for every gallon expired Friday. As a result, some U.S. producers say they will shut down without the government subsidy.
A one-year extension of the biodiesel tax credit was included in a bill that was approved by the U.S. House recently, but it never made it through the Senate.
Politics and Energy Policy
I have often complained about the chaos that political leaders cause with inconsistency on energy policy. I will get into the wisdom of this biodiesel tax credit in a moment, but government policy makers need to send clear, long-term signals so energy producers can plan. This has long been a problem for planning energy projects. Wind and solar developers have lived with this uncertainty for years. It seemed like at the end of every year, there was a tax credit that may or may not be extended. The uncertainty often froze project developers, and created unnecessary delays.
The same has long been true in the oil and gas industry. One of the reasons that it has been difficult to get a gas pipeline built in Alaska was government refusal to commit to long-term tax rates. Imagine that you are contemplating spending $26 billion on a gas pipeline, but the government can't tell you what your tax rate is going to be. If my state income tax doubles, I can move to another state. But it isn't like you can pick that pipeline up and move it, so it is important that you know that the government can't double the tax rate in the event of a budget shortfall.
Recap of Government Interference
A different kind of government interference - a tendency to attempt to pick technology winners - resulted in cancellation of what I believe was a promising 2nd generation renewable diesel process. I documented the saga in several posts.
To recap briefly here, there are two different types of renewable diesel that can be produced from vegetable fats. One is biodiesel, which is normally produced by reacting methanol with animal fats or vegetable oil. The product is actually an alkyl ester, which contains oxygen, and is structurally different from petroleum diesel. This is the 1st generation type of renewable diesel. But biodiesel changes consistency in cold weather, limiting the amount of biodiesel that can be blended into petroleum diesel.
The other type of renewable diesel is green diesel, which is chemically equivalent to petroleum diesel, and has promise as a 2nd generation renewable diesel. This product contains no oxygen and can be blended in any proportion with petroleum diesel. It can be made via gasification from any biomass or by hydrocracking the same fats and oils that you use to produce biodiesel. Besides the structural differences in the product, biodiesel results in a glycerin by-product whereas green diesel from oils or fats results in a propane by-product.
My former employer, ConocoPhillips (COP), developed a process for making green diesel that was both more efficient and more cost-effective than conventional biodiesel production, but still required the biodiesel tax credit to be profitable. But because an oil company was involved, Congress voted to specifically deny the biodiesel tax credit for the process.
By killing the credit, COP was placed at a $42/bbl disadvantage relative to biodiesel producers who received the credit, and because of this decided to cancel the project. I documented that sorry saga here. I explain the differences between 'green diesel' and biodiesel more fully here.
Where to Now?
So where to go from here? We now have a classic dilemma created by the government. Through government fiat, an industry was created. Investments were made and infrastructure was put in place. The problem is that the particular industry that sprang up had little hope of ever really competing without the subsidy. The reasons are alluded to in the link above:
"By the time you buy the feedstock and the chemicals to produce the fuel, you have more money in it than you get for the fuel without the tax credit," Francis said. "We won't be producing any without the tax credit."
I have long believed that there is no future for 1st generation biodiesel. I wrote in an August 2007 essay: "I have said it before, and I reiterate: Biodiesel's days are numbered." Note that the year after I wrote that the U.S. biodiesel industry had their best year ever. But the handwriting was on the wall for very fundamental reasons, and the prediction I made in 2007 is playing out now.
There are multiple problems that will make it difficult for biodiesel to ever compete without subsidies. In a nutshell the key problem is that the feedstock costs are linked to fossil fuel prices. The feedstock is generally a vegetable oil and methanol - an alcohol typically produced from natural gas. A second big problem is that biodiesel is an inferior fuel to hydrocarbon diesel (especially in cold weather). Further, the by-product of the biodiesel process is glycerin, which has limited value (especially at the volumes produced when biodiesel production is ramped up).
But this story is worse than simply a fuel that can't compete. As evidenced by the opposition of the National Biodiesel Board to the extension of the tax credit for COP’s 2nd generation process, 1st generation biodiesel isn't even a bridge to 2nd generation biodiesel - it is a barrier. Not only is biodiesel chemically different, but 1st generation producers have pulled out the stops to protect themselves against 2nd generation competition. So now we have a 1st generation industry that was already in trouble even with the subsidies that it was receiving, and a 2nd generation industry that could have been much further along were it not for 1st generation interference (which was aided by Congress).
If instead of picking technology winners, Congress had simply raised fossil fuel taxes, we wouldn't be in this dilemma. With the high level of embedded fossil fuels, biodiesel would have been unable to compete, and an industry with no future would not have been created by the government. Green diesel, on the other hand, would start to look a lot better because of the lower level of fossil fuel inputs (particularly for gasification), and we might find plants starting up to produce green diesel from both hydrocracking vegetable oils (the COP process I described) and gasification of biomass (described here).
What I expect to happen is that Congress will eventually extend the credit, and it will be applied retroactively. But there are no guarantees, so producers are once again left with uncertainty. What should happen - in my opinion - is announcement of a phaseout schedule. I wouldn't simply eliminate the tax credit cold turkey. That would be a blow to producers who invested on good faith that government support would be continued. But they also need to receive a message that this tax credit will be phased out over the next 3-5 years. At that point, prospective investors will be fairly warned that projects whose economics hinge on continued government subsidies are to be avoided.
This, by the way, is the sort of metric I try to apply to projects. I am looking for projects that can be viable without government support and can operate with low/no fossil fuel inputs. The first item means that governments have much less ability to wreck my project by withholding support, and the latter means that the project should become more attractive in the higher oil price environment that I expect.
That doesn't mean that initial government support isn't often helpful, but unless the underlying economics are sound then government support is a crutch I will never be able to throw away. In my opinion this is the case for most U.S. biodiesel producers, which helps explain why industry capacity is presently at 15%.
Disclosure: I worked for ConocoPhilips at the time that it developed green diesel using left over chicken fat. I now work for a company (not a petroleum company) that has partial ownership of a company that is involved with the development of green diesel by gasification of biomass.
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The Obama Administrations renewable fuels policy is in disarray. Evidently it and the Democratically controlled Congress can not juggle more than one ball at a time and they have chosen to concentrate on health reform.
Obama told us in the campaign that a President has to be able to do several things at the same time. It turns out that he can't.
As a result Iowa's 18 biodiesel plants are shutting down one by one and employees are being laid off. The same thing is happening in Minnesota and other states with biodiesel operations.
Cellulosic ethanol is dead due to government red tape that leaves projects hanging in mid air until strangled. And the EPA's delay of 6 months in approving E15 has killed off investment by limiting the market for ethanol for half a year.
Not only that but one of the largest states is trying to defeat ethanol by including Indirect Land Use Change in carbon emissions calculations. This will be contested in the courts which guarantees no action for months if not years all the while holding back ethanol in one of the largest liquid fuel markets in the world.
These are some of the reasons I am so bullish on crude oil prices. The effect of these and other things going on is to increase the demand for crude oil, the opposite of stated government goals.
Talk about counterproductive, thy name is government renewable fuels policy.
It's a little bit unfair to lay this failure at Obama's door. To this European observer, it looks like the legislative process which is at fault; extremely short term in its vision (this is driven by the two-year electoral cycle); extremely beholden to lobbies (campaign finance reform, anyone?) and intensely pork-barrel oriented in its processes (local politicians go to Washington but rarely develop a sense of the national interest).
I agree with you Alistair. Though I share few of President Obama's positions he's not the problem. He has just assumed a position in the game. And the game was designed by the system (both Democrat and Republican). And both parties will do anything to perpetuate the system IMHO. In the meantime demagogues on both sides will say nasty things about the other side. And this will cause large segments of our society to choose "the lesser of two evils". And that provides great safety for the system. While the Reds and Blues curse each other the two-party system will win.
I agree too.
But is has to be said in additional, that it is not an bad idea to shutdown biodiesel plants, no matter who is responsible, Obama or congressman or both. It might be the cause, that the politicians at first created this industry, but as it is and never will be producing anything useful, it is the best way tu shut down as fast as posible. It is not the price, what makes biodiesel unproductive but the energy weighted by the price. For the fossil fuel used for Production has more energy and is therefore more expensive than the energy produced, it is just a trick which government makes to fool itself, as we say in germany.
I think it could be possible that green diesel does work, it might have an EROI just above 1, but if it would be very much higher i would not assume. Therefore i resist any subsidys for any biodiesel or anything like that.
I also think, that the fats or oils which are a byproduct of industrial foodproduction won't be there for long time, when agriculture looses that high amount of fossil energy it can use today. Other biomasses like dung could not be used for biodiesel or biogas any longer after this time because they will be needed for fertilizing the fields.
At the latest i think that it could as a law of nature not be possible to use biomass at better EROI as sunlight where its energy comes from. As every transformation of energy has losses which equate in warmth, it is needed to use a very low count of transformations.
I know that the Production of electric energy out of sunlight has a low efficiency factor, but it is not clear if it is lower than the tranformation into the energy of biomass and the production of biofuel out of it combined.
The efficiency factor of heating water by sunlight is very high and i dont understand, why the germa government gives much more subsidies for generating electricity out of sunlight which is very unproductive in contrast and gives less money for the thermal variation of solarcells.
At last, we would not need biodiesel, as cars are the biggest symptom of our unsustainable society and they have to go anyway.
So i dont understand why not the important questions are discussed but this biodiesel-nonsense
belerophon
I know that the Production of electric energy out of sunlight has a low efficiency factor, but it is not clear if it is lower than the tranformation into the energy of biomass and the production of biofuel out of it combined.
It is actually very clear.
This photovoltaic 3.5 kW parking roof:
produces 5250 kWh per year with a capacity factor of only 17%.
Which is enough to drive almost 50'000 miles per year with this EV accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds:
How many miles would one get per year if one planted some soybeans on that same parking roof with this fast accelerating diesel?
And much work would one have to invest to harvest these beans and turn them into fuel every single year?
Keep in mind: The photovoltaic roof does not need to be harvested it directly feeds its electricity into the grid for 30 years.
The photovoltaic roof does not need to be harvested it directly feeds its electricity into the grid for 30 years.
And PV does the best conversion of photons into electrical wattage. Go ahead - take raw photons and send 'em thru the conversion steps. PV wins for most applications. Solar thermal wins in a few. Neither do a good job of making food for humans tho.
FWIW, here are biodiesel yield numbers from wikipedia. The higher soybean number, 922 liters per hectare, equals .25 gallons of diesel per square meter. Assuming that the array you've pictured is 20 square meters that's 4 gallons for the area taken up by the solar array, which according to standard conversions is 162 kwh. (You'd get less than half that energy, it should be said, generating electricity from that diesel.) This is compared to 262kwh per sq meter for the solar using your production number.
If I may editorialize, I think this shows that we'll be able to use more solar PV than biodiesel, but not for driving cars.
Why convert to electricity ?
4 Gallons of diesel will get you 120 miles in an average small ICE car. PV gives 25,000 miles.
But ofcourse, the enrgy to to manufacture PV has not been considered here.
Counting the PV mfg is fair enough.. but then for those 30 yrs of production, we similarly must weigh the equivalent variety of mfr and other essential costs to get 30 years of biodiesel produced. Plus Land/Soil Use, Water , Nutrients.. I think PV has some advantages in many of those comparisons, too.
Bob
Yes, even the machinary used to plant and harvest would have to be counted in, because in my area it is generally assumed that 5, maybe seven years at the topside is the useful life for farm equipment if used to it's maximum capacity...so you would be talking 4 generations of farm equipment alone...
On manufacturing costs in either money or energy, if PV cannot compete with biofuels, it simply should be abandoned. But it can, with plenty of room to spare.
RC
To be fair though, liquid fuels will still be needed for air-travel.
Granted that liquid fuels can also be produced with electricity:
http://www.ammoniafuelnetwork.org/
But these sorts of fuels are probably not well suited for air-travel.
Thats It
As a farmer who is pretty familiar with various kinds of farm equipment I think you need to qualify your example with specifics. Off the top of my head I cannot think of any significant piece of farm equipment that only has a useful life of 5 years even under fairly heavy use. A tractor run even as much as a 1000 hrs a year (a huge amount) will get more years than that before needing an engine overhaul. Maybe you meant to say that the "depreciation" schedules are 5-7 years? Not the useful life. Many industrial farms switch out equipment when the current equipment has finished depreciating. Or perhaps you were speaking of the mean time between major overhauls/rebuilds? All of the major tyupes of equipment can be refurbished/rebuilt on a periodic basis and used for very long periods of time.
Perhaps one of the commerical combining companies could wear out a combine in 5-7 years. But it is more likely that due to their intense workload of constantly following the harvests around the country that they reach the point that the downtime needed for maintainance (as well as the loss of depreciation) makes more economic sense to purchase a new machine. Their used equipment is normally bought and used by a regular farmer (strictly speaking these types of companies are not farming operations nor are their employees really farmers).
Wyo
I think you are exaggerating just a little bit. Perhaps you meant 50 years - 70 years instead of 5 - 7?
1960's and 1970's Ford tractors are still working everyday over here in Thailand. Even if they are discarded in the US for personal reasons, these are extremely rugged workhorses with lifespans measured in decades.
Because I was too lazy to convert to miles! No, seriously, you're right, a miles to miles comparison is best here.
Sorry, but you made a math error! The 4 gallons is for one square meter of area. I estimated the solar array is 20 square meters. You've got to divide your PV miles by 20 as well. You've also got to calculate them honestly. Using the most recent numbers for the Tesla Roadster on Wikipedia, 28 kW·h/100 mi plug-to-wheel (number from Tesla itself) I get 18750 miles on 5250kWhs. (Not 25000, let alone 50,000 as 'anyone' said.)
Divide that by 20 and you get 938 miles.
The most fuel efficient diesel car probably would get at least 160 miles on 4 gallons, or more. (Price is no object if we're comparing to the Roadster.)
Interesting idea, any more details? I tried pricing a similar setup, with 12 of these panels:
http://www.orionairsales.co.uk/schott-solar-panel-260-watt-ase-260-gt-ft...
Back-of-an-envelope figures coming out at about 20,000gbp (30,000usd) just for the panels, ouch. Probably double that including the electric car and the connection to the grid (the car would be away during the best hours of charging so some degree of storage/offset needed really). At the moment I can get much cheaper KWh's out of the wall also.
I guess it's good for the rich, but not for everyone just yet; and certainly not for someone like me in Sunny Scotland. (however I live near a wind farm don't really need a car anyway.)
Strob,
If you figured $30,000 for 3120 watts of panels you guys are paying about 2-3 times what we are in the U.S.. I can get a pallet of 28 200W panels for under $2.50/watt. (5600 watts = $14,000) Looking at top rated Kyocera 210W at $3.11/watt ($706 each). $12,708 for 18 panels = 3780 watts (rated). An order that large will probably get you free shipping in the lower 48. Depending on voltage, charge controllers would be less than $2000. Rough figure for good batteries (about 42 KwH) and a good inverter about $9000 max. Balance of system, $1000 (not including panel mount).
Grand total: $24,708 (and with some arm twisting even less). I just wanted to give folks an idea of what a good system for charging an EV in the U.S. may cost. Around $25,000 (plus install and mount) will charge your EV for years and provide a good backup system for your home. Panels are at historic lows in the U.S. right now. I'm sorry to see they're so high across the pond. Maybe you should shop around some.
Edit: found same panels for $628 (Kyocera KD210GX-LPU 210w)
http://www.affordable-solar.com/kyocera-solar-panels.htm
They have the Schott ASE-300-DGF (290W) for $1157
Not to mention that there are still state and federal tax incentives available, at least here in the US which could take a bit out of the sting. I'm not sure what is or is not available in Scotland.
Little insider secret here, it is often possible to purchase B panels, meaning panels that produce full power but have cosmetic blemishes, these can often be bought at a discount. Solar isn't cheap if you consider the up front costs but if you look at it as an investment and do a payback analysis it can prove to be a real bargain in the long run, not to mention I really don't expect electricity from the grid to start getting much cheaper anytime soon.
Of course if someone already has affordable wind then solar probably won't make economic sense in their area.
There was a link in a previous Drumbeat for 60W thin-film panels selling for US98c/watt. You had to buy a pallet, but that was 1100W worth.
I emailed asking for a freight quote for six pallets, but they'd sold out within two days (unsurprisingly).
The big win on solar vs soy beans is scale. The PV can be driven down to an individual household installation, the harvest and pressing of soybeans is not possible at small scales unless you have lots and lots of time. Finding various agricultural implements to work for smallholdings is next to impossible, I have antiques to do certain things. I have an electric offroad motorcyle and a prius PHEV conversion coming in to plug into my 10 year old solar system which I will have to expand now. I see the operating commodity inputs (soybeans, wood pellets, whatever) for fuel, heat, increasing in price but the photons not fluctuating in price at all. Capital goods like PV panels and 50ton presses have inputs as well, but I can fix the costs at any moment by simply buying them. While no man is an island, PV is an amazing insurance policy on raising costs, grid interruption or any form of collapse.
Bzzzt! Math Error! Off by a factor of 2!
I'm a Physicist, and my main hobby has been building and using assorted electric vehicles, especially ultralight efficient EVs. Your math is slightly wrong. You probably accept, at face value, industry claims about how far a given EV will travel on a given amount of energy. it has been my experience that these numbers are always lowballed.
Start with a 3.5 kW solar PV array. Say you live in a place with a solar exposure of 4.1 hours of sunlight per day (north of Oregon, where I live). So, that's 3.5 kW * 4.1 * 365 == 5237 kWh, right so far.
Now, let's figure out how far you can travel in this, using various EVs.
Mountain bike at 15 mph requires about 25 watt*hours per mile.
Streamliner recumbent bike at 30 mph requires about 25 watt*hours per mile.
Small electric car (e.g. a Xebra EV electric motorcycle) at 30 mph requires about 150 watt*hours per mile
Medium electric car at 60 mph requires, realistically, about 250 watt*hours per mile.
5250 kWh == 5,250,000 watt*hours would be enough to travel these distances in the above vehicles:
Electric mountain bike at 15 mph could travel 210,000 miles
Streamliner electric recumbent bike at 30 mph could travel 210,000 miles (at twice the speed)
Xebra enclosed electric motorcycle at 30 mph could travel about 35,000 miles
Medium electric car at 60 mph could travel about 21,000 miles
Your math is only off by about a factor or 2, easily within the realm by which for-profit EV companies could exaggerate, but I though I'd point it out.
Finally, if you consider the efficiency loss between the charger energy in, and the energy recovered from the batteries, this factor increases. Modern battery technologies are better but, for old lead-acid batteries, you only get out (for EV applications) about 50% of the energy you put in. Thus, if your medium size EV is powered by lead acid batteries, it would actually only travel about 10,500 miles, a difference of 4x.
Otherwise, very reasonable post. This is my first post to The Oil Drum, which I've been reading since it's inception. Thanks for your time.
Welcome to the fray energyscholar. Nice to have another physicist. My daughter is a junior at MIT with a double major in physics and EE.
Say you live in a place with a solar exposure of 4.1 hours of sunlight per day (north of Oregon, where I live).
I just took the world average which is 1500 kWh/kWp and year. (Granted that this is a little optimistic for places farther north).
Your math is only off by about a factor or 2, easily within the realm by which for-profit EV companies could exaggerate, but I though I'd point it out.
Actually it's off by a factor of 1.61 because I mistakenly thought that the consumption of that EV is 0.11 kWh /mile. But it is actually 0.11 kWh /km (well, according to the manufacturer).
But I just wanted to point out the order of magnitude difference between PV-EV and biodiesel-ICE.
Thanks for this contribution, welcome to TOD. Please continue to point out math mistakes! :-)
Hi Anyone,
I'm afraid that you may be guilty of being somewhat overly ambitious as a cheerleader in this case - with the best if intentions, I am sure.
It is almost certainly not possible to actually drive the pictured car anywhere near the fifty thousand miles quoted by charging it with the system pictured in a year for various reasons including limited range and recharging time when the car is out of service. I have no expertise in this area but I will venture a wag that it would be very difficult in the real world to get even ten thousand miles out of an EXISTING car using a system of that size.
This is not to say that the total quantity of kwh produced might not be adequate-only that it could not be used effectively to charge up the car for extensive driving, given the times the weather doesn't cooperate, the times the car is in use when the sun is shining, the times the car is fully charged, out of use, and there is no additional storage, etc.
It may be also that the photograph does not give an accurate impression of the size of the array due to photographic trickery.
Of course this kind of exaggeration in promoting our programs and positions is p[retty much sop in communications these days, as the intent is to impress the viewer or reader and sway public opinion rather than actually communicate actual facts and figures.
When the public actually encounters reality after being led down the prim rose path in such fashion, the folks on the other side of the sustainability debate are more than ready and able to come back with devastating counter attacks on our credibility.
Any one who has ever seriously studied a sales flyer about the amount of money that MIGHT BE MADE by running a fast food franchise under optimum conditions as opposed to under real world conditions will understand instantly the point I am trying to make.
The sense of disillusionment stinks.
I will never , never, never forget how disapointed I was to find out that there are NO LIONS AND NO BEARS ,etc, in the night sky after reading my first little book in the second grade or so about astronomy-just the two lousy dippers can actually be recognized in the "real world".
As a matter of fact this experience may have been a traumatic turning point that resulted in my becoming a life long cynic and hard headed realist. ;) snark !
It may be also that the photograph does not give an accurate impression of the size of the array due to photographic trickery.
Of course this kind of exaggeration in promoting our programs and positions is p[retty much sop in communications these days, as the intent is to impress the viewer or reader and sway public opinion rather than actually communicate actual facts and figures.
Fine, then let's build our own parking roof with facts and figures:
One can build a parking roof that is 4 m wide and 8 m long (we want to give about 1 m on each side to also be able to fit an F-150 which currently appears to be a typical commuter vehicle in the US and for proper rain and sun protection it might actually still need to be bigger than that). Then you can incline this (4m x 8m) roof by 30 degrees to get better sun exposure and you end up with 36.95 m2.
You can purchase PV modules with an efficiency of at least 15%:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/201488111/photovoltaic_module.html
That will actually give you 5.5 kWp with the area above, which is 58% more than what I stated.
This PV-power plant in Northern Germany produced 1085 kWh /kWp in 2008:
http://www.energieundumwelttechnik.de/00000097e10807b04/53749598540e8710...
So 1085 kWh should be feasible in all of the US (excl. Alaska).
And with 1085 kWh from that PV-plant in Northern Germany you end up with almost 6000 kWh.
This is not to say that the total quantity of kwh produced might not be adequate-only that it could not be used effectively to charge up the car for extensive driving, given the times the weather doesn't cooperate, the times the car is in use when the sun is shining, the times the car is fully charged, out of use, and there is no additional storage, etc.
Besides that cars are parked over 95% of the time, no-one said not to connect the PV system to the grid and thus reduce peak load to some extent if it's not used to charge the car (as PV-systems produce electricity during day time only when demand is at least doubled).
Please allow me to play Rockman's role of being the RPA (redundand pain in the axx) but my point stands-using your figures you could nearly get two f150's under the carport and have room left to turn the subcompact cross way behind or in front.
And juice going into the grid is not going to go into the car.The fact that cars sit most of the time actually proves my point-that little car isn't going to go fifty thousand miles in the real world unless it is either a delivery vehicle or a long long distance commuter-in either case it can't go because it must be on it's Momma's charging nipple probably twenty hours a day to run thr other four.
I doubt very seriously if such a car as the one pictured actually exists that can be bought which is capable of going two hundred miles per day and still be kept charged at a single point by direct hookup to a pv system.
No battery banks or utility poles are shown in the picture.
The graphic is a lying come on designed to impress the gullible and niave and cannot be described honestly in any other words.Listening to speeches and watching video of this sort is what got us into the ethanol business.The people who were telling it straight never had a chance-facts are seldom as attractive as staged pictures.
I defend religion but this picture is a little too much like heaven -a place we hear a lot about but never expect to see in the near future.
Sorry , but I posted sooner than any of your other up thread replies-I could have thrown out some monetary figures too.
And the picture of the truck doing the power sled drag at a tractor pull was the absolutely worst possible concievable use of a diesel engine , deliberately selected to make diesels look bad.Vehicles of that sort exist exclusively for entertainment purposes and it is not likely that it runs more than an hour during a weekend long show a few times a year.The entire pulling sport probably uses less fuel in toto than is used to fly people into Vegas or Denver for a given weekend.
A truly honest comparision might have been to show a small farm tractor being used to do the equivalent of about a months hard labor on a quart or two of green diesel produced from a small percentage of the crop in the field leaving the rest of the crop available for other purposes.
Sorry I'm in such a crabby mood.
Believe it or not I do support renewables-but I try to be a realist too.
in either case it can't go because it must be on it's Momma's charging nipple probably twenty hours a day to run thr other four.
Even if that was the case. The majority of commuters do not drive four hours a day.
No battery banks or utility poles are shown in the picture.
Electric cables in and around house and town are typically put in the ground in central Europe, because we like it tidy.
Look there's no utility pole here either and this is not a few kWs but a few thousand kWs:
but my point stands-using your figures you could nearly get two f150's under the carport and have room left to turn the subcompact cross way behind or in front.
No you clearly cannot because a new F-150 is wider than 2 meters and even if it wasn't you could not open your doors anymore (because there's a second F-150 and a pole on each side) and even if you do not care when you cannot open your doors of your scratched F-150 anymore, you still need space for your 6 poles to hold up your roof, so the parking space is actually smaller than those 4 x 8 meters I proposed.
Look, you can turn and wind it as much as you want but 4 m x 8 m of space for a parking roof which delivers 58% more peak-power than what I originally stated is perfectly feasible and is simply not asking for much.
And the picture of the truck doing the power sled drag at a tractor pull was the absolutely worst possible concievable use of a diesel engine
No kidding. Are you seriously suggesting that people who visit this topic about bio-diesel have never seen any vehicle with a diesel engine (no tractor, no ship, no truck etc.) and would never notice that it was purposely exaggerated?
I defend religion but this picture is a little too much like heaven -a place we hear a lot about but never expect to see in the near future.
Probably not as gasoline is still relatively cheap even at $6 a gallon. But it is more likely than powering all F-150 commuter vehicles with homegrown bio-diesel in the future.
A truly honest comparision might have been to show a small farm tractor being used to do the equivalent of about a months hard labor on a quart or two of green diesel
Besides that your wimpy tractor doesn't do 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds, you won't drive your tractor around for a month with a quart of green diesel grown on that very same parking roof AND this is the very point I was making.
" incline this (4m x 8m) roof by 30 degrees to get better sun "
This incline is appropriate for Cairo, Egypt or New Orleans, Louisiana. For northern Germany (Berlin), ~52degrees is better. For San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington, DC 37 - 39 degrees is better.
I think solar is a technology that has a future, but throwing numbers like these around doesn't really do much to prove it, IMHO.
There are >6billion people spread over the surface of the Earth, but not uniformly. Arguing that this or that technology is 'the best' and the only way to go, really muddles the issue.
Especially think of the costs of transport of whatever specialized
materials or equipment a technology needs. Transport will surely be more expensive in future than it is now, so a technology that uses local materials is to be preferred almost everywhere.
This incline is appropriate for Cairo, Egypt or New Orleans, Louisiana. For northern Germany (Berlin), ~52degrees is better. For San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington, DC 37 - 39 degrees is better.
Even better: A steeper incline actually favors my calculations, as you get more area out of those 4 x 8 meters:
But I doubt your numbers, because you also need to consider the fact that the solar hours are longer in the summer than in the winter which leads to a lower angle than what one would guess based on the degree of latitude:
http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/apps/pvest.php?lang=en&map=europe&app=g...
Arguing that this or that technology is 'the best' and the only way to go, really muddles the issue.
I would never single out one technology and claim that it is the best. It always depends on many factors. For instance: Is the energy needed at all (do we need a F-150 commuter car or would a Civic also be an option)? What is the energy needed for? What primary energies are available? etc.
Transport will surely be more expensive in future than it is now, so a technology that uses local materials is to be preferred almost everywhere.
Besides that silicon is indeed everywhere.
It depends what you need your transportation for. Do you need to transport a single 150 pound banker in a F-150 2 hours every single day for 30 years or do you just need to transport a PV-system in a truck for several households one single time in 30 years?
This stuff shouldn't require special government [mis]handling. When crude was $30 the biofool promoters told us $40 would be the break even and bring in a profit. Well, crude is now $75 and I am not surprised the gunk still can not stand on its own.
Many of us at TheOildrum knew this stuff would never drive (or fly) because the enterprise doesn't return energy. That one spends more BTU's in producing the liquid (crude for diesel, coal for the press etc.) than is contained in the liquid, suggest that more $$$ must go into the process than comes out.
The obvious lesson: low/null EROEI processes do not produce investment-grade liquids.
Whenever I see the prefix "bio", my first thought is "EXTREMELY LOW ENERGY DENSITY." Bio fuels will never fill more than a small niche or two, such as the small farmer making enough for his tractor and other personal use. It will never scale, and no subsidies should be wasted on any of this stuff.
Antoinetta III
If this is truly what you think, then perhaps you should look a bit harder for where biofuels are being used. The pulp and paper industry has been using their own waste , the lignin, or "black liquor" to fuel their boilers for over a century. Once separated from the cellulose, lignin has 90 % of the energy density of coal, and 100% less mercury, less sulphur, zero ash, etc etc. This is the original processed biofuel, and it's current annual production is over 200 million tons around the world. Since it is almost all used in pulp mills, you don't hear much about, and it is certainly a niche market, but it is neither low energy density, nor small scale or strictly personal use.
At the other end of the spectrum, the the use of fuelwood, or charcoal for home heating and cooking is the norm for about a third of the world's population, so a "niche" market, and personal use, but very large scale
And for a widespread market, wood pellets in Europe are being used for home and commercial space heating, water heating, district combined heat and power, and for displacing coal in thermal power stations. They are probably being used in more applications, and certainly more premises than coal (which is mainly in large power and steelmaking plants), so I would call that a wide market. They are using almost ten million tons of them a year, and it is the world fastest growing (% wise) biofuel industry , so I would say it probably scales very well. Pellets are 75% of the energy density of sub bituminous coal , so I would not call that extremely low energy density.
These biofuels are not sexy, but they have been in use for a long time, and ( for fuelwood anyway) will be used long past the oil age. They have all developed without needing any major subsidy programs like ethanol and biodiesel (though the US did do a ridiculous black liqour tax credit for pulp mills recently, but this was really a bailout for the industry, not to encourage biofuel production).
I wholeheartedly agree that no subsidies should be wasted on biofuels, the ones that are worth doing will find their own way forward by innovation, same as any other industry. Subsidised ethanol and biodiesel are a waste of taxpayers money (and food), but please don't tar all biofuels with the same brush. Just because biofuels are not being used for transport, does not mean they are not being used. If they pay their way without subsidy, they have earned their right to exist.
(Full disclosure - I heat my home with wood that I cut myself, so technically, I fit the original description of a niche market for small scale personal use, but that does not mean that all biofuels users are small, niche or personal use)
24 million biogas digesters in China at the end of 2007 (link). I just read some stuff about Home Economics in Greer's "Theo Ecotechnic Future" and am convinced that lots and lots of people fulfilling personal use needs outside the radar of the industrial economy can have a huge impact.
FWIW, in this context, I don't consider wood a biofuel, because it's 'just there'. You don't have to do anything to it apart from cut it down. Commercial Biofuels, on the other hand, require quite a bit of processing before you can add them to your tank.
Do you really think the tax credit will be extended? The shortcomings of the 1st gen biofuels became fairly apparent in the past couple of years, and doesn't strike me as obvious that Congress will just renew the old one.
When the old tax credit was created, you might have thought that retail prices would have dropped by 1$/gallon. But you would be wrong - prices only dropped a fraction of that value - the difference pocketed by people along the way. In some cases, retail prices didn't budge at all.
Our local biodiesel co-op (http://www.blueridgebiofuels.com/ ) has focused on 1st gen products from used veg oil and has developed a strong following. I have never been very supportive of large scale biodiesel because of the oil cos ability to outcompete these small regional outfits. I like the idea of biodiesel production being local or regional because I think we're going to need them. I'm not sure how the loss of subsidies will affect these producers. This group has a loyal following and I suspect that their customers will make the adjustment rather than loose this valuable local resource.
Where I live (semi-rural France) there is, anecdotally, a fairly strong movement among farmers to "grow their own" : growing and pressing rapeseed oil enables them to run their tractors "for free".
This is pretty much outside the formal economy, probably not even measurable (possibly not even legal, by some reports). It's the sort of vertical integration that I see as being the only guarantee of biofuel viability, in temperate climates at least.
Per David Pimental
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/july05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html
Someone on another thread asked me if renewable fuel efficiency went up, would utilization rates go up. I said, "Not necessarily".
If one is starting from a situation where the energy inputs are much greater than the outputs, and the government is masking the problem with subsidies, this situation produces falsely high utilization. In order to make the process economic, one really needs to get the energy inputs much lower than the outputs. It is quite possible that there will be an "improvement" in efficiency, but the outputs will still remain lower than the inputs, or just marginally higher, so it still makes no economic sense to use the product.
There is also a question of limited capital (which is what Dennis Meadows says it the ultimate limiting factor as we go forward) and limited inputs. Limited capital restricts the number of new plants likely to be built. Limited inputs are likely to be a problem, whether the inputs are of plant or animal origin. If biofuel is made from biomass, we are fairly much constrained in how much we can take out of the system, without problems elsewhere (higher food and wood prices, less biomass available to maintain soil fertility). Biofuel from excess chicken fat is an interesting niche, but it is hard to see it scaling very big.
Folks like this:
http://www.advancedbiofuel.net/
have invested a lot in these technologies and loss of subsidies is likely to kill a lot of the progress that they have made. People need to compare these subsidies to the (sometimes hidden) subsidies that the big petroleum producers have recieved. These developing industries, like the solar thermal industry, have little to no funds for lobbying congress, unlike their competitors, which is why I disagree to some extent with daxr's comments below about subsidies. Without a hand up, many of these technologies wouldn't have a chance.
Gail, we fail to recognize an important subsidy--the inexpensive crude-built infrastructure that is currently used to make biofools.
Without inexpensive steel, affordable heavy tractors, and large electrical generators produced during the cheap-oil regime, there would be little profit/incentive/reason to spend precious biofool producing more steel, tractors, generators. Biofool only becomes biofuel in a low-energy pastoral, agrarian society. For special occasions like driving the old chevy to a wedding!
There is only excess chicken fat because we have fossil fuel agriculture. This allows people to grow chickens in central places in large numbers fed with grain from fossil fuel agriculture. They are also processed in central locations and excess fat would then be available in those central locations while the processed meat is shipped to overeaters in far off places. In a world without fossil fuels, agriculture will be localized and chickens will be free ranged. What fat they have will be eagerly used by those who eat it to fuel their bodies when they can afford a bit of meat.
All the excess food that might be used to make biodiesel such as used oil from fast food restaurants will disappear when the oil is gone. To count on such excesses being available in any great quantity at some central location ignores how fossil fuels make it possible for that to occur. Same thing with the turkey guts that the thermo-depolymerization folks were going to turn into energy. Fine while turkeys were centrally grown in mass...but how much energy would it take to collect turkey guts from individual farms where they are slaughtered individually. Besides you need something to feed the dogs....
The most energy efficient use of spare animal fat and vegetable products is to feed a pig. The pig is then eaten by people. This was standard USA farming practice 100 years ago, and will be again 100 years from today.
If the veggies are going to rot, then that makes sense. Otherwise passing the calories through another animal results in a loss of energy. Makes more sense to eat it yourself unless you were rich enough to indulge a hankering for a specific type of food.
Pigs were often fed on acorns to fatten them. While Indians used acorns directly (it took some work to remove toxins) the conquerers of the New World didn't make that standard practice. Thus since the acorns would go to waste it was a useful way to fatten a pig. While in the woods they would get other "free" food as well http://www.stockmangrassfarmer.net/cgi-bin/page.cgi?id=656
But I suspect by and large vegetables that were about to rot were the only ones fed to pigs 100 years ago, the rest were canned or dried for human use. Likewise I suspect most if not all chicken fat was eaten with the chicken or used to make stock for soup and not given to the pigs. However some tubers might have been grown for pigs - mangels and turnips for instance.
These numbers tell us why Pimentel must demonized, especially in the financial (academic?) community. We can not afford a primary fuel that does not support profit/waste. Only very inexpensive energy grants us the luxury of commodities markets, punditry, and other forms of navel gazing.
To be fair, Pimental's estimates have been refuted by dozens of researchers. The biggest complaint is his use of energy consumption estimates using equipment from the 80's instead of modern equipment.
Of course, IMO a ratio of less than 10:1 energy gain is of questionable utility, so it's not a practical difference. However, quoting Pimental as a sole source will not result in credibility in the research community as a whole.
No. He has not been refuted, rather his work has been nitpicked to death. The assumed net-energy gains (claimed by his detractors) are attributed to
--lesser fertilizer and water input numbers into corn production than Pimental used and,
--distillery protein grain waste going to feed livestock (but at what cost in handling?)
Neither of these questionable gains really change the equation much, certainly nowhere near 10:1 energy return you quote. That is nonsense. At best Shapouri claims 1.34:1. When combined with the vast scope (most of US crop lands necessary to impact some gasoline use) this mitigation because a solution out of context and scale.
Um, I didn't claim that it *is* 10:1, I said that's a minimum of what it would *need* to be to matter whether it's 0.6:1 or 1.3:1. My point was simply that quoting Pimental exclusively clouds the argument that even 1.3:1 is not enough.
I've seen estimates for cellulosic ethanol in the 27:1 range, but I won't believe that until I see it performing on the ground -- at that energy balance, it should be economically competitive with no subsidies, so I'm happy to wait until the prove it by doing it without subsidies.
Anewland, I think the DDG's are necessary to include in the equation to come up with anything in the positive range. But there is a problem with DDGs, actually several but here is one:
http://www.livablefutureblog.com/2009/03/will-i-need-a-prescription-to-f...
So why don't we just forget ethanol and ride public transport.....
Let me nit pick a little further. Pimental's estimates of the EROEI of wood are insane. I can and DO grow an acre of nitrogen fixing trees, in four years, with no fertilizer, no chemical inputs, no irrigation and no maintenance other than mowing grass between them for livestock feed. At the end of that four years we harvest them, solar dry them, chip them, and use the chips to make electricity, and process heat. All the ash goes back in the field and we do it all over again. The four years growth produces 40 dry tons of chips with a btu content of 640 million btu's, as well as 4 tons of 24% protein livestock feed from the tops. The total diesel fuel required to do this is about 10 gallons. I would be real interested to see how the EROEI is calculated to be so low.
Treeman,
You have my complete attention.
What kind of trees are you growing, where, and how do you harvest and chip them ?
I presume you are not including fuel used to mow the grass for feed.
How many man hours are involved in the harvesting and chipping?
Old farmer mac, The tree is called Albizia and it is the fastest growing useful tree in the world, according to Guiness. We harvest them with an excavator with a harvesting head pulling a large 16 foot wide trailer. Whole tree goes on the trailer. We clip off the tops at the baseyard and chop them electrically so the light green stuff can be air separated from the rest of the limbs. Trees are dried whole and chipped electrically. Hydro unit supplies the power. Planting is by hand, but the trees coppice readily so no replanting is required. I did not count the fuel used in harvesting the grass but obviously the feed pays for itself. To be honest the fuel in the original land prep was not counted either but if you average that over 5 or 6 harvests, it probably only adds less than a gallon.
My understanding of albizia, though, is that it isn't very dense. The foresters I work with tell me that you can get more mass per acre with other species, but albizia is probably the fastest growing by sheer volume.
Treeman's claimed 640 million btu per 40 ton crop is consistent with the most popular number for btu per pound in a search of Google. The density only matters, I think, if one is planning on transporting the chips in bulk carriers. I think Treeman is not doing any off-site transport, so I find his numbers entirely believable.
For long distance transport, if the bulk of the chips leads to difficulties, I can imagine the chips being compressed into large blocks with runners on the bottom to accommodate fork lift loading and unloading on flat-bed trailers. (Yes, this would have to be accounted for in EROEI, as would the fuel to power the road tractor that would haul the trailer.) So grow the trees were the wood will be used and save the cost of shipping.
Willows are another tree that is being grown for fuel wood, but on a seven year harvest cycle. My understanding is that willow also coppice. Willow vs albizia may also depend on soil type available, climate, etc. I don't know. Neither crop needs the help of Wall Street financiers.
R2 Don't know if you will see this but while the tree is less dense, it grows so much faster that the tonnage is greater regardless of the density. And it does so without fertilizer which many foresters seem to overlook, but clearly should not. The difference between sustainable and not.
Had another discussion with our foresters. Their opinion was that due to the low density, the harvesting costs per BDT will be too high. You know a lot more about the particulars of this than I do, but the nitrogen-fixing potential is intriguing regardless.
Treeman that is very admirable. However what Pimental is trying to get at is providing fuel for the general public. To do large quantities of fuel the feedstock must be transported to a central place, processed in a large factory, and transported again to where it will be used. All those energy inputs must be measured. Then the energy inputs in the equipment for this must also be accounted for - the building of the dedicated use factory etc.
The energy embodied in whatever equipment you use counts against your return. That gets amortized for the years of expected use and if you use it for other purposes that would get accounted for as well. If you grew enough and made enough to sell to others you would have additional energy inputs to consider in storage and transportation.
If your process was working as well on large scale as it does for you on a local small scale wouldn't biodiesel being doing just fine and not even need subsidies, just maybe no interest start up loans.
Increasingly doing things locally will make more sense as the relatively cheap energy we used for transport becomes more and more expensive.
After the end of BAU, the general public might have a very different demographic than now. Treeman may be a precursor of the new general public.
Oxidatedgem,
"To do large quantities of fuel the feedstock must be transported to a central place, processed in a large factory, and transported again to where it will be used"
I have to disagree with you this point, about the "central place", and that the transport is a deal breaker. Treeman's excellent example had them doing part of the processing, and the drying, on the farm. They could take it a step further and do onsite torrefaction (which is "toasting" the wood to remove most of the moisture, and stabilise it. So the wood is processed at distributed places. After this, the wood is 75-90% of the energy density of coal, which is routinely shipped across continents and oceans, so shipping it is not really an issue. In fact, wood pellets (non torrefied) are shipped across oceans today.
If you take a look at the way the forest industry works today, most most saw and pulp mills are located within 50 miles of their feedstock. And all of said saw or pulp mills are located by a rail siding and/or port. So if they become the tree fuel processing facilities, they are using the exact same transport infrastructure, and energy that they are today. There are hundreds of pulp and thousands of sawmills in north America, so I would classify them as "distributed" rather than "centralised' - that would be the tens of oil refineries we have today.
If we keeping the fuel solid then processing can easily be done at local, or on farm facilities.
If we choose to further convert to liquid fuel (not I path I advocate) then at that point the liquid fuel can be transported for the same energy cost as oil/gasoline are today. But in converting to liquid fuel, the process energy losses are so great (50-60% of the feedstock energy), that the transport energy of the resulting (small) volume of liquid fuel is then a minor fraction of the energy inputs.
Bottom line - if we keep it solid, it can be processed locally to a near coal density, and less transport is needed, though it is still economical if needed. If we go to liquid, well, if the (unsubsidised) sell price justifies the large energy loss and capital cost, then it probably justifies the relatively small additional cost of transport the end product.
"If your process was working as well on large scale as it does for you on a local small scale wouldn't biodiesel being doing just fine and not even need subsidies?"
The forest industry is already at a very large scale, worldwide, already, and the tree fuel business (mostly as pellets) is its fastest growing portion, so it obviously does scale well - lumber and pulp producers are getting in on pellets too.
But you can't then extrapolate that success to biodiesel. The per acre energy yield of soy or canola biodiesel is one tenth of what he is getting for his trees - that is why trees are such a good energy crop. And the farther from the tropics you get, the greater the advantage for trees. So tropical farmers can probably do oil palm biodiesel, at 1000 gal/ac/yr profitably, and without subsidy - and they too, are farming "trees" so their farming costs are about the same as Treemans. But US and Canadian farmers can't grow oil palms, and canola biodiesel at lower yields (120g/ac/yr and soy at 50-70gal/ac/yr) and higher input costs (more fuel, equipment and higher labour costs) haven't got a hope without subsidies.
I am cautiously hopeful that the government has come to the same conclusion and will let the subsidy die a natural death.
Read your bio. Nice to have you on board Paul, I am growing in the subtropics. Bill
Read your bio. Nice to have you on board Paul, I am growing in the subtropics. Bill
Thanks BIll,
I grew up on a farm in southeastern Australia where we had lots of sunshine and heat and no water. Now I live in coastal British Columbia where there is lots of water and little heat or sun (in winter, anyway) - you have the luxury of all these, all the time!
Good point about the coppicing, you get multiple harvest for one planting. Sugar cane is the same, but corn definitely not.
My brother in Australia is considering turning part of his farm into a tree farm, growing blue gums (eucalyptus globulus, which also coppices well), as it is much less work than annual grains crops, and more $ per unit water invested, which is his limiting factor. In fact, for all the talk about EROEI, in Australia, for biofuels anyway, it is more about energy, or $ returned for WATER invested - you can always buy more energy, for a price, but only some farmers (the irrigators) have the option of buying more water.
I am curious as to the end use/market for your tree fuel. With the electricity in your area being double/treble the price of mainland US, selling it as electricity rather than fuel would be a viable option? Is that then where the ash you spread comes from?
Paul.
Pimental, at least in his initial studies, assumed marginal land would be used (which is an arguable point), did not credit the ethanol for the DDG co-product, and older machinery was used, with lower energy efficiency.
Part of the problem is that corn is primarily calories for energy, DDG is more of a protein feed. One way to properly assess the energy value of the DDG is to compare the BTU's it would take to make an equivalent ton of soybean meal protein.
I once talked with a staffer of the National Renewable Energy Lab, they came up with a 1.3-1.4 EROEI for older ethanol plants, 1.6 EROEI for newer plants, and 1.9 if the DDG could be sold wet to a nearby feedlot, thus avoiding the expenditure of BTU's to dry it before shipping.
For biodiesel, it runs in the range of 3-4 EROEI when made from virgin oil feedstocks. I have never heard or seen of a study of the EROEI if made from waste fryer oil. The input BTU content of the fryer oil should be evaluated at it's next best use, which is calories in animal feed. So I suspect the EROEI of fryer grease is probably fairly high.
Does anyone would like to recommend any readings on the advantages and pitfalls of algae biofuels? Or comment on their feasibility?
Thanks
Nobody is doing it commercially yet, at least as far as I know. Lots of people are interested - if you could get it to work, it could be a sort of holy grail of biofuels. But as far as I know, nobody is far enough along that you can really say all that much.
Any 1st-gen biodiesel is going to have problems in cold weather. It solidifies into something that resembles butter. The freezing temperature depends upon what the feedstock was that was used to make it. I have seen claims that there are additives which prevent freezing, but I don't know enough about them to say how well they work..
I guess my own feeling is that if farmers want to run tractors off of a 1st-gen biodiesel, that might make sense. But there is no way that we will ever meet anything but a small percentage of demand with this, and it will distort the markets for cooking oils.
Biodiesel made from used cooking oil is another niche product - there will never be enough to be of much use.
A lot of research is being done and claims about the per acre advantage over grains are high:
From :
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Biodiesel_from_Algae_Oil
A lot of acres will need to be flooded to make an impact, requiring a lot of water, both in limited supply. Then again, if the theoretical claim of a 1000/1 advantage over corn can be realised, this tech may have a future.
Algal biodiesel appears to have far worse economics than biodiesel. See The Prospects for Algal Biodiesel Dim
The link I posted below, dated about a month after your link indicates that NREL, Chevron et al are not convinced.
My take on liquid fuels is that there will come a time when there will many inputs to the mix, seasonal blends, etc (as we already have). Perhaps commercial farmers will add algae to their crop list. Bio-engineered corn, why not bio-engineered algae?
Hmmm put lots of identical algae all together in one place and let them multiply so we can harvest them for fuel. Of course non plant creatures who don't have photosynthesis besides humans would like to get that fuel too. Sounds like the perfect setup for some bacteria or other microbe to exploit. Bet once you got some infection of algae eating replicator it wouldn't take long until you have more algae eating bugs than algae.
Where there is a food source there will be a food eater.....
The National Renewables Energy Laboratory (NREL) spend 15 years and millions of dollars looking at algae biofools and observed (contrary to the political spin and justification required in the concluding report) that algae biofools were a non-starter. For many reasons mostly to do with the simple biologic fact that single-celled organism tend to thrive only in species-specific conditions. That is why e-coli mostly thrives in cow guts but dogs can fly, swim, and dig. Bioreactors or closed ponds to maintain temperature, cleanliness, chemistry, ph, et. (and to protect from infection) are necessary but prohibitively expensive.
There is no simple organism capable of both producing fuels and also thriving and reproducing in timely manner. Cultures stressed with low selenium etc. diets produced fuel at a reasonable rate but did not grow.
They seem to think enough of the idea to continue their studies:
From last April:
http://www.nrel.gov/features/20090403_algae.html
"That is why e-coli mostly thrives in cow guts but dogs can fly, swim, and dig."
A flying dog? Maybe if his name is Krypto.
Her name is Happy, one of my Standard Poodle bitches. She made the cover of "Bloodlines" last year:
Wow! I knew poodles were great in the water, and I'll be gosh darned but that there puppy is soaring!
What do you feed her? Helium baloons?!
The National Renewables Energy Laboratory (NREL) spend 15 years and millions of dollars looking at algae biofools and observed (contrary to the political spin and justification required in the concluding report) that algae biofools were a non-starter. For many reasons mostly to do with the simple biologic fact that single-celled organism tend to thrive only in species-specific conditions. That is why e-coli mostly thrives in cow guts but dogs can fly, swim, and dig. Bioreactors or closed ponds to maintain temperature, cleanliness, chemistry, ph, et. (and to protect from infection) are necessary but prohibitively expensive.
There is no simple organism capable of both producing fuels and also thriving and reproducing in timely manner. Cultures stressed with low selenium etc. diets produced fuel at a reasonable rate but did not grow.
This lecture series isn't about fuel from algae per se but if you are interested what role recent advances in genomics might play in all this then check out:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/church_venter09/church_venter09_index.html
Dave Summers (Heading Out) does algae research, among other things. This is a link to an article he wrote in May 2009 called Cost Viability and Algae.
Robert Rapier, the author of the current article, also writes about biodiesel from algae. This is a link to his most recent post on the subject.
I wrote this review a year and a half ago covering the various issues surrounding algae based biodiesel and trying to understand what the primary barriers and advantages of the technology are.
http://web.mit.edu/neltnerb/www/papers/Algae%20Based%20Biodiesel.pdf
It was for a class, not my research, so don't take it as an expert's view. I did, however, spend a lot of time reading published literature about it to compile the document. I also tried to compile a list of the existing commercial ventures at that time.
My primary conclusion was that the issues are primarily technical/engineering challenges as opposed to fundamental problems, and that the biggest costs are:
1. Staffing plants (expensive, highly skilled labor).
2. Filtration and separation (unicellular organisms in water that has to be cracked).
3. High capital costs (polycarbonate, etc).
I think that these are solvable by learning more about producing healthy symbiotic ecosystems (i.e. not just algae) where co-organisms digest the algae as it's growing (near it's mid-log point so growth rate is maximized) into methane. This should nominally be self-maintaining, and essentially results in a low-efficiency (possibly less expensive) solar collector that produces a storable and convertable-to-liquid fuel instead of electricity.
I also think that overall the priority for collecting solar energy should be:
1. Solar thermal.
2. Wind.
3. Solar PV.
4. Biomass gasification (either through algae digesters, or via straight gasification).
If you read Robert's post carefully, you will see that he seems to imply that biomass gasification is probably above the other renewable diesels that he lists. That would seem to be consistent with your ordering.
I think with algae, there are a lot of obstacles. The question is whether one can find ways to work around them.
Imagine the up-scaling of algae to cover vast acres of ponds. This is the kind of yummy monoculture which Nature will view with glee and set out to destroy forthwith. A range of organisms from bacteria and fungi and weedy plants through to birds and insects will arrive or even evolve to consume their slice of the pie.
This is the same problem which all farmers face to some extent and the larger the monoculture the greater the problems.
A large part of agricultural energy inputs are spent on fighting pests and protecting the desired monoculture.
(Even in your home vege patch most of your time and energy is spent on weeding.The planting, watering and harvesting are the easy bits!)
A vast area of free floating energy-dense and nutritional valuable would be very attractive to a vast array of organisms. And any 'infection' such as bacterial,yeast or fungal could spread rapidly through the water resulting in the spoiling of acres of algae overnight.
So to protect the 'crop' would take more than a few scarecrows. Think tons of pesticides, fungicides, selective herbicides, antibiotics and constant monitoring.
This will not be kind to the EROEI.
Currently most of this stuff seems to be grown in small manageable tanks but a whole new raft of problems will emerge once we go outside the controlled environment of the lab and interface with raw Nature.
Absolutely agree.
People aren't going to need all of those swimming pools in Vegas!
http://www.pooldomesbybd.com/
I have to say my opinion has always been that subsidies create artificial markets, and artificial markets tend to be unrealistic markets. If its not cost effective to make biodiesel then subsidies encouraging it only skew the market away from other things that might work. Upthread there's a good list of things that don't work, each of which has been touted as "the next big thing" to solve our supply problems.
I always figured if a process worked you wind up with saleable product, then you wind up with a profit. Money follows success, and industries take off naturally without artificial stimulus. First a process has to work.
Well I am happy to not be subsidizing EU diesel consumers. Not sure why the EU thought US tax subsidizing EU consumption was a bad idea. Ok so there is a long term issue of the subsidy but it is as harmful to the US as it is to the EU.
Well, who would have thought that chickens may ever a play role in the energy industry.
Chickens produce electricity and heat in China.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/chinas-first-chicken-manure-biog...
Their their left over fat produces green-diesel.
And their feathers can apparently even be utilized to store hydrogen.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200906261
What's next?
Reverse engineer them to make dinosaurs.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/how_to_build_a_dinosaur.php
I guess this would certainly be one way to indirectly reduce oil consumption...
What irritates me is that none of this is part of a coherent energy plan. I'd even accept some marginal energy "sources" if there was at least a rationale for them existing. As things exist, everything is being done on an ad hoc basis and, ultimately, doomed to failure - a total waste to time and money.
We will live to regret everything that has transpired.
Todd
Votes.
May be we should start with having the first caucus/primary by rotation in different states.
I think the niche for biodiesel is to create a blending product out of the waste fat generated by the food production system. Absent an algae breakthrough biodiesel doesn't justify dedicated crops on a broad scale. In fact blending is desirable since the benzene (aromatic) fraction in petro-diesel largely solves the cold weather gelling problem.
When there is no petroleum I still think we will need diesel engines for their toughness and reliability. Alternatives like the methanol fuel cell don't seem ready yet for trucks, buses, ships and long distance trains. The long term niche for diesel compatible liquids could be in liquid/gas dual fuel rigs. An 18 wheeler could set out on the highway with tanks of both compressed natural gas and an alternative diesel-like liquid. That liquid could be biodiesel, hydrogenated veg oil, Fischer Tropsch diesel or other. If the CNG tank runs out on the highway where there is no suitable refilling station the trucker could top up instead with a blended liquid fuel, albeit expensive. In that role the diesel-like liquid becomes a gas extender.
Does anyone else remember when Vinod Khosla contributed (by invitation) to the discussion and made the ridiculous (to me) apples-to-gerbils comparison that concluded corn ethanol is more efficient than photovoltaics?
It seems we need a peer-reviewed and readily verifiable way to calculate EROEI and soil / water / atmospheric damage estimates so that these different alternatives can be easily compared.
Don't forget the photons and the conversion of photons into into watts.
To the extent they matter, those things are entailed by any valid EROEI calculation.
Most EROEI does not count the photons. What would be the # of photons to make 1 watts worth of coal? Of rock oil?
How many photons to grow a plant worth 1 watt of heat? How many to grow a plant that you convert into a watt of electricity?
(other ppl's math
Power and photons
Example ,
How many photons are emitted every second from one watt of yellow light?
Power = Energy / time
= Energy per photon * number of photons / time
= hf * n/sec; f=c, so f = c/
Power = (hc/) * n/sec P = 1 Watt =
(6.63 x 10-34 J-s * 3 x 108 m/s / 5.5 x 10-7m) * n/sec;
n/sec = 2.8 x 10^18 photons per second.)
You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of the purpose and concept of EROEI, which refers to energy invested by and returned to humans, or other lifeforms. (Caloric EROEI is sometimes considered in biology).
Since the photons and are invested by the sun, instead of humans, they are not counted as energy invested. It is usually possible to do valid EROEI calculations without considering the questions you are asking.
Since the photons and are invested by the sun, instead of humans, they are not counted as energy invested.
Tell ya what - why don't you just have a system without photonic energy input.
It is usually possible to do valid EROEI calculations without considering the questions you are asking.
And I'll stake out that your definition is wrong. But do come back with citations of systems without photonic input that will work for humans.
Strikes me as they are needed for humanity.
But do come back with citations of systems without photonic input that will work for humans.
I don't think that's what he is saying. From the perspective of harvesting energy, the input from humans is what matters. That is the basis for EROEI calculations. For instance, oil, shale, and ethanol all have embodied photons. But one of those is far more economical than the others because the EROEI is much better because the human inputs are much lower. The embodied photons of oil and oil shale are in fact very similar, but the EROEIs are very different (which explains why oil shale may forever remain largely untapped).
If the model of energy is choosing to ignore a valid part of what is actually happening then it is a broken model.
Period.
Wikipedia claims that eMergy is an analog to EROEI and that EROEI is tied to human action *YET* part of the 'base unit' calcs in the eMergy system is photons and thus would be outside the very same human scope.
If the human input is to have value in energy calcs then the eMergy model is more useful than EROEI.
Nothing about the concept of EROEI ignores anything. (Which is not the same as saying the concept is always properly understood or utilized.)
That's for pointing out that mistake in Wikipedia. I fixed it.
While you're there, try reading the first subsection of the page on EROEI. It's very clear about what we're talking about.
EROEI calculations can, do, and usually must consider the embedded energy (emergy) of technologies involved in energy production. Emergy is a related concept that is neither identical to or in conflict with EROEI. It is not "more useful", it is useful for a different purpose.
While you're there, try reading the first subsection of the page on EROEI. It's very clear about what we're talking about.
And it is very clear that it is a wrong position. If one ignores the energy inputs you'll end up with distortions like have happened with rock oil.
The model is flawed - flawed models ignore valid data.
Maybe you can listen to Robert if you can't listen to me. I didn't talk about systems without photonic input. Photonic inputs manifest themselves in the energy returned. If you can measure that energy where it is used, you don't actually need to know anything about how the photonic inputs work or how efficient they are. You are still measuring the fraction of the photonic energy you've ended up using. You're assertion above that "Most EROEI does not count the photons" is therefore wrong.
You can get a lot more photons out of a watt of microwave energy.
Perhaps the photon based measure (PROPI?) is useful if you sort them by wavelength.
But my initial point was that there needs to be some rational way to account for environmental costs. I suspect that a reasonable accounting would show which "renewables" are worth pursuing and which should probably be dropped.
To be fair/honest, one should do a full accounting of the EROEI of biofuels. Unlike an oil or gas well or coal mine where the output in energy is the only output, biofuels also have a food output even after the energy is extracted. All of the seed meals pressed for oil and corn fermented for ethanol are used as animal feed after the energy fraction is extracted. To do a complete accounting, one needs to subtract from the energy input whatever fraction of energy would have gone towards the other agricultural products which are also produced. This has not been done in any of the published reports which I have read; they treat the energy fraction as the only output, which puts biofuels in a much worse light, and is misleading. The same is true for biodiesel made from waste vegetable oil.
Please do not jump to conclusions here, even with apportioning of the energy input fairly to all the outputs, biofuels would likely not be a major positive source of energy return (possibly slightly positive based upon some studies of biodiesel manufacture). But they would look a lot better than many of the existing figures would lead you to believe. And they offer the potential for trading forms of low density energy (human and animal power) to concentrated energy (liquid fuels), which could be useful at some point in the future.
We seem to have gone from/to extremes on biofuels. Starting from them being our savior, to the current they are worthless. The reality is at neither of these extremes. Once we can take a rational look at them, they will probably find a place in a diversified energy future.
They already do and have been for over 30 years. I was driving a 100% ethanol powered car back in the 80s in Brazil when I worked for Petrobras. Here's a picture of a typical Brazilian fuel station today that sells gasoline and ethanol made from sugar cane. Of course sugarcane ethanol has a lot better EROEI than say corn ethanol grown in the midwest.
And they have such cute little cars!
Those are Sporty Utility Vehicles ;-)
And they are the #1 reason for the destruction of Amazon rain forests. Once the forests are gone the sugar canes will go as well - there will be no rains.
No they are not.
Sorry evnow, you are perpetuating a myth! There are certainly valid arguments underlining real issues with producing ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil and elsewhere. The one you cite, as anyone's map below clearly illustrates, ain't one of them! I was born in Sao Paulo Brazil and lived and worked in the Amazon region at one time. Have you ever been to Brazil? Oh, and in case it isn't clear sugarcane is grown in the red areas of the map. Sugarcane needs a much drier climate than the Amazon region provides.
Steve 777,
Agroethanol in Sweden claims that they have EROEI of 5:1 in their ethanol plant including the protein residue and CO2 from sermentation used for soft drinks. The crude material is wheat and the heat for destillation comes from a biofuel power/district heat plant. The capacity is 210 000 m3 ethanol per year.
http://www.agroetanol.se/aetanol.nsf
While I agree that government needs to send clear, concise, and consistent signals, especially for fledgling industries like advanced biofuels development, those first generation biofules industries have not gone through their booms and busts just because of subsidy uncertainty.
All subsidized items will be over-produced, and it was obvious before and it is obvious now that all biofuels that were heavily subsidized in the 2003 through 2008 period resulted in over-capitalization; hence, bankruptcies and excess capacities, policy uncertainties notwithstanding.
None of the nation's biofuels policies were developed with the economics of production in mind first or for that matter consideration of realistic long term energy strategies; the primary drivers of national policy were Grain Belt state senators assuring commodity demand through massive subsidies and using national energy security fears, terrorism, and (used to be) green arguments to sway public opinion with a public that was horribly uninformed.
In the meantime we wait the inevitable "five more years" for our commercially viable advanced biofuels operations to be demonstrated.
American biofuels policy to date has been environmentally questionable, economically destructive, agricultural production distorting, and socially misleading. But farm state senators will make darned sure the biodiesel subsidy gets extended and the con continues.
The Preem refinery in Gothenburg starts commercial production of second generation biodiesel from tall oil this year. The production is not subsidised but is relieved from the heavy fossile diesel tax.
http://www.preem.com/templates/page____9480.aspx
Dave Swenson ,
Well said Sir!
About the only thing that can be said for our govt is that relative to the the alternatives it's not too bad.
If we were rationally governed we would spend govt money for research only as far as biofuels are concerned and use all the production subsidy money for subsidizing effficiency and conservation measures.
As it stands if it turns out to be possible to produce biofuels at a price such that it is possible for the ordinary citizen to run personal automobiles on them , we will have perfected a six lane high speed freeway directly to hell.
Who thinks that environmental considerations or even considerations of widespread starvation in the third world will be enough to tame our collective lust for the automobile?
I have a strong suspicion that there is more to the US subsidies than just what meets the eye. Without the surge in biofuels in recent years, the US would have seen significantly higher liquid fuel prices as WW oil production started its decline. Even though biofuels were a small percentage of the overall total, they played a critical role in keeping the marginal demand from over-running supply. (And as the oil price spike to the $140's has shown it does not take much of a marginal gap in supply to drive the price way up.)
My theory (not based upon personal knowledge) is that the biofuels surge of the last few years was put in place to mitigate against the anticipated shortfall in supply. Now that demand has fallen, there is less need to keep production of these high cost alternatives growing.
Hi Robert,
It is my understanding that the Previously ConocoPhilips Whitegate Refinery here in Ireland is using the process you describe to Make GREEN diesel using the process you describe to add to base stock. It gets the same Fuel duty exempitions as conventional trans ester Bio Diesel. It is using home grown Rapeseed oil and WVO as raw material.
Regards
Rib
Hi Rib,
Yes, the process was first tested at Whitegate. And it may get the same tax treatment in the UK as biodiesel, but it does not in the U.S. If fact, one of our 'wise' government leaders called the idea of an oil company benefiting from a subsidy intended to favor biodiesel "legislative abuse." It had nothing to do with the potential benefits of the process; it was all about the fact that an oil company was involved.
The most likely thing will be a return to steam. I saw Steam driven trucks when I was a boy, an steam locomotives are still running (Mostly for Film and TV).
The world produces 5 million tons of biodiesel with 34% being produced in the EU, 22% in Asia, 22% in Latin America and only 16% being produced in the US.
The amount of biodiesel being produced worldwide is about 15% of the world production of ethanol in tonnage.
http://lipidlibrary.aocs.org/market/biodiesel.htm
As stated above the $1 per gallon blenders credit lapsed on Dec. 31, killing the infant US biodiesel industry.
The only current US mandate I could find was that 2% of diesel must be biodiesel in Minnesota and Washington State.
Biodiesel has serious clogging problems in winter operation in Minnesota. Apparently green diesel solves this winter problem.
Green diesel(NExBTL or maybe COP green diesel) is vegetable oil with a catalyst and hydrogen(how much?) added to remove the oxygen. Apparently it is better than Fischer Tropsch.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/10/neste_oil_in_la.html
This could be a step in the right direction if hydrogen could be supplied cheaply from a non-fossil source. A friend of mine paid $A6k to convert a Nissan Patrol to gas injection. With each firing cycle both diesel and LPG/propane are injected. The result is higher power and low use of both fuels. If the propane tank runs out the engine can run on diesel alone. It appears to run flawlessly.
Hi Robert. I wonder if you could comment on the opportunities for green diesel by the small farmer. One of the reasons I support biofuels is because they can be developed and maintained with almost no inputs from the industrial economy. While first generation biofuels may fail at the industrial level, they are definitely practical on small, independent farms around the world. And they do not require any government subsidies either.
Are there any such opportunities for these second generation processes that you speak about? If the home producer can make even first generation biofuels profitable, it seems to me that this is the area to concentrate on.
Our industrial economy in general is simply inefficient. Rather than subsidize it in any form, we should be directing our efforts at ways to fundamentally reform it. Can you envision any plants for green diesel production that can be produced for under $10K USD?
Hi Robert. I wonder if you could comment on the opportunities for green diesel by the small farmer.
I always say "Local solutions for local problems." I favor biofuels for small farmers. I have even said that corn ethanol may be a fine solution for Iowa in the midst of the corn. But it is a horrible solution when produced in Nebraska and shipped to California.
But the primary advantage of biodiesel is the ability of the hobbyist to produce it for personal consumption. I like that model.
I was studying the biochar process a bit last year.
Is the gasification process basically a simpler version of pyrolysis? I know pyrolysis can produce both the char (for soil) and bio-oil/fuel of some sort, though the processing machines (stills?) seem to be more complicated than simple gasification would be.(?)
Gasification is actually more complex if the intent is to turn the gas into fuels via Fischer-Tropsch. If you are simply burning the gas, then gasification is simpler, but it is carried out at a much higher temperature than pyrolysis.