I agree- Bravo! It is a matter of scale.

RR,

Thank you Sir!

Although I have never engaged in research work, I have spent countless hours at the library all my life, reading whatever happened to be available in the lines of science oriented periodicals, as well as the general content publications.

All the publications, and websites too these days, long ago figured out that thier regular readers CRAVE this techno progress, and they collect thier advetising and subscription money by playing up the tiny incremental changes in precisely the manner you describe.

I would add that in the unlikely event that somebody does manage to produce some ethanol under some particularly favorable but limited circumstances from cellulose at a more modest price while the car culture is still alive and well,the accomplishment will be blown from a mole hill into an Everest by the cheerleaders and by various business factions anxious for bau to continue uninterrupted.

I do expect biofuels to play a critical part in maintaining a viable civilized society , but it may well be that it is in our best long term interest that they come on line later rather than sooner.The termprary pain would be all the greater , but otherwise the long term pain in my opinion may be beyond bearing.

Simply put, as I see it, we will not truly embrace conservation and efficiency society wide until such actions are forced upon us by utter and absolute neccesity.

If biofuels become cheap enough soon enough for the general public to become obsessed with the idea that they can continue to fly on vacation, commute in a 4by 4 truck,live in seventy degree comfort in hundred plus degree envoronments, and eighty degree comfort in subzero environments, well...

It's RIP for whatever is left of our farmlands and forests, and food riots every where followed shortly by resource wars that might very quickly evolve into the big number three.

Of course these are only the musings of an arm chair researcher into the nature of the beast that we are , and if you take them to the bank TODAY, they might bounce.But funds in the form of shortages of this, such as oil and water, and an excess of that , such as unemployment, credit, and expectations, are being deposited daily.These deposits will continue , and one day before too long, if a cheap enough biofuel deposit is made, that check will fly.

Incidentally ,and OFF TOPIC, I have taken several bad checks over the years, and eventually cashed nearly all of them , simply by calling the bank every day where they originate to see if sufficient funds are available.Sooner or later, you can run a four hundred dollar check right up to the tellers window and get your money, when the guy who wrote it deposits enough to cover his monthly bills in the account after forgetting about it.(Such characters know that for relatively small amounts, the court process is so clunky, expensive, and slow that they may well get away with writing such a check to a a farmer selling an old car, etc.)

I have actually had such a person call me up and cuss me because his phone , water, and electricity checks bounced, accusing me of holding the check for no purpose.When I laugh and tell them that I know the legal difference between writing a bad check on an open account, and writing one on a closed account, which is substantial, and that I have called the bank until I am on a first name basis with the teller(that recent call feature on cell phones is the cat's meow!) and she finally TOLD ME what day and hour the check would be good, you can actually see the red face on the other end of the phone line.Believe it or not!

Would OFM lie to all his cyberbuddies on TOD?

I never indulge in hard cider concentrate until after 5pm.

Net energy, with those two immutable and undefeatable laws of thermodynamics, is in charge.

Many people seem to conflate technology with fuel. A technology is NOT a fuel source.

What is your point? An internal combustion engine is not a fuel source, but you know what, that gasoline we were producing in mass while distilling kerosene was a waste material till the ICE.

So, no, windmills, solar panels, fission reactors are not fuel. But wind is a fuel. Biomass is a fuel. Thorium is a fuel.

I bet just a few years ago you would have told us all that fracing wells are not a fuel source. You would have been right technically, I guess, but guess how much shale gas my state has produced since then...

Not that I believe in ethanol, but let's not throw out all options just to do the Rah! Rah! Rah! of doom.

Campbell et al. (2009) presents a case which makes battery powered electric vehicles look better than ethanol fuel. I recall also that there are other sources of biomass which give more production per acre than switch grass, which would make the case even stronger.

One aspect of the whole situation which may not be considered is the fact that there might be an additional benefit from building relatively small systems to burn the biomass. That is, the ease of returning the ash from the burning back to the land from which the biomass is taken. With small scale generation located close to the farms feeding existing power lines, the trucks which bring the biomass to the plant could carry the ash to the farms on the return trip. As the ash would weigh much less than the biomass, the cost of transport would be essentially free, since the trucks would be making the trip anyway. Small scale plants could include enough storage on site to supply the plant during the winter months when no new biomass was available. With small scale operations, the biomass could be dried with solar dryers before burning, thus improving the storage quality. Or, the biomass could be turned into pellets, which represent a form that is easy to move from place to place and to store. With the ethanol production, completing the loop back to the land would appear to be more difficult.

E. Swanson

I have been involved in a project to produce Cold Pressed Food Grade Oil from oil seed, grape seed and other inputs.

Very little info and research available on this subject in this country, THOUSANDS of studies and actual accounts on expelling for Biofuels.

Almost unanimous on total costs for biodiesel at between $6.00 and $12.00 per gallon.

Nearly every biodiesel operation I have contacted, well over 30, are hurting or throwing in the towel altogether. Those that are still operating are operating on Gov funding and venture capital and are petitioning Gov. for more money.

Even with all that is happening, all that is known about the realities of biodiesel the USDA and DOE are broadcasting the message loud and clear that there is major funding readily available, even 100% funding in many cases.

Funding for food grade is like pulling teeth. I have to do a 6month feasibility study, then a separate marketing study, then a small proof of concept operation, then maybe a matched funds grant. Time frame 3 to 5 years.

VC investors all want me to switch over to "renewable energy" (hate that term) and then they will flood the project with money.

Frustrating but I do see a slightly paler point of darkness way down at the other end of the tunnel.

After reading a few government reports, a person gets the idea that the Rah! Rah! mentality affects all of them.

Government scientists over decades are infected with groupthink but not TOD (the land of RahRah)doomers?

Heh.

The politicians/legislators get their 'science' from K-Street(Big Oil). It was revealed lately that the Wegman testimony on the IPCC was coached.

http://desmogblog.com/wegmans-report-highly-politicized-and-fatally-flawed

Still it is interesting that R^2 whose company Merica bought a stake in Choren(biomass to 'green diesel')last November is blasting the US DOE for promoting cellulosic ethanol.

Seriously, Gail, is this not a case of conflict of interest (or at least non-disclosure)? I am reminded on a row over certain Amazonian Indians and R^2 observing that that was precisely why he never took junkets, etc.

I for one am certain that cellulosic ethanol will come thru in the next 5 years and will certainly boom once a carbon tax is passed.

Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass makes twice the amount of ethanol per acre as corn currently does.
It's true that cellulosic ethanol at +$2.35 per gallon coal is more expensive than corn ethanol at $1.70 but corn ethanol requires far more fossil fuels per output btu.
Cellulosic ethanol takes 2.2 btu of biomass to make 1 btu of ethanol, which beats Choren and the other gasifiers.

Choren's 100 million Euro 2008 Freiberg plant (was built on 35% subsidies by German State of Saxony) produces 5 million gallons of Sundiesel per year.
Poet's corn cobb plant will 25 million gallons of ethanol per year and costs $200 million dollars($8 per annual gallon).
A conventional oil refinery costs about $2-3 per annual gallon.

Cellulosic ethanol is looking good.

The claims that cellulosic ethanol is net energy negative, violates the laws of thermodynamics, etc. are nonsense.

Government scientist are not corrupted or co-opted anymore than that Government climate scientists work for Al Gore.

Gail, This is a very good point. I would suggest the Rah, Rah tendency has an even worse effect in that it tends to undermine the very technology that it trumpets. I recently spoke with an academic who researches "third generation" solar cells. He was lamenting the steady stream of journalistic spin on progress in photovoltaics, in particular Nanosolar's claim to have driven the cost of generation down to 1 dollar per watt of generating capacity. The effect of this, in his opinion, would be simply to undermine the confidence of investors in the long-term when the reality became clear, diminishing his own funding.

Maybe Robert will have a chance to comment later today, or tomorrow. He is in Hawaii so there is a time difference.

You might look at Robert's post The Wheels Come off the Biodiesel Wagon.

Biodiesel made in the regular way is doing especially poorly. One of its problems is that it is chemically different from regular diesel, and "gels" when it gets a little cold out. This characteristic makes it difficult to blend more than a small amount in the regular diesel supply. It is also very expensive to make.

There is also "green diesel" which is chemically equivalent to petroleum diesel. It can be made through gasification of biomass or animal fat. The prospects for this may be somewhat better, but it is limited by the amount of biomass or animal fat available as input.

Would it be possible for someone to quantify ongoing or planned projects for biodiesel production? And qualify in terms of not replacing food production as well?

I did some of that in a book chapter I wrote a couple of years ago. I did the calculations based on biodiesel and the amount of arable land that could be reasonably (loaded word there I know) allocated to biodiesel production. The conclusion was that we could only displace a small fraction of our current petroleum consumption.

On the other hand, I do favor thermochemical processes such as gasification and pyrolysis with liquid fuel production at the end. These processes are still economically challenging, but I think they could provide some liquid fuel in a pinch. As I point out to people sometimes, two countries - South Africa and Germany - were cut off from liquid fuels and they both turned to gasification as a scalable solution. Not cellulosic ethanol, even though the technology was available.

This is a blatant lie Sir! I will have you know that a good many of my nieghbors over the years have been quite successful at selling good liquor at less than half that price to thier regular retail customers willing to buy in case lots.

Thier physical plants might not be all that impressive or efficient, but the efficiency of thier bookkeeping,legal, advertising, tax accoutants,and bankers is simply unreal- it's so high that they have been able to dispose or thier services altogether!

As a matter of fact the only time they have any need of these non producing practicioners as a rule is if thier security appartus fails.

It is true that they often find it necessary to make substantial donations to local politicians, but what businessman can avoid that expense these days? It can be and is frequently dealt with by marrying one of the sheriff's or procesuting attorney's less attractive daughters.

Labor efficiency and relations are also up in the clouds.
Employers are small enough, and laborers few enough, that there actually IS a free market in labor.Nearly everybody is on piece rates, there are no time clocks, no benefit packages other than complimentary drinks and a legal defense lump sum benefit , payable if necesasary.Maintained in cash on hand,no investment vehicles necessary.

These forward thinking people have been recycling thier mason jars since before Greenpeace came into existence.

Thier nimble and flexible organizational model, combined with thier low or nonexistent debt loads, enable them to diversify quickly as the need arises.When the cultivation of industrial hemp goes mainstream, the younger guys will have a twenty year jump in terms of practical experience with the crop on everybody else.

I was in our corn field (for the deer!) this afternoon .. a beautiful sunny, blue skied 27F day and the corn still standing (which is standing all over the place up here) still has a lot of ears left. As i was picking through some of the ears, every one of them had mold on the husk that penetrated all the way to the ear, and some of the ears had mold on them, although not many. Most of the ears were tiny, probably due to cold growing season. IF we keep getting weather like we've had, you can screw ethanol all together. At least up here in Wisconsin. Hard to grow good corn when you don't get the growing degree days AND every ear has mold (not sure if you can use moldy corn for ethanol?). The soybeans we had did good, but the deer have picked them empty. The food plots failed because of 2 rainstorms and a huge early snowstorm. There is easily a foot+ of thick snow with layers of ice in it plus 5 inches of snow we just received on top.

Replacing even a single typical N Gas-fired generating station with solar-thernal, then using the saves N Gas as transport fuel, would probably do more than all the ethanol projects implemented so far in N America.

There you go using logic and getting all "sciency" again. Allow me to "educate" you: farm-belt politicians are not interested in macro solutions to energy problems at a national level, much less a world level. They are interested in securing as much federal pork money as possible for their campaign benefactors.

These benefactors mainly run businesses in their state and/or Congressional district, and heavily depend upon those federal subsidies and earmarks to keep their businesses "profitable". If those businesses fail to secure a sufficient amount of taxpayer pork, they may fail to generate enough profits to be skimmed off in the form of: bountiful prostitutes/mistresses, cocaine, mansions, private jets/yachts, expensive bling and clothing to keep the trophy wife happy, and all the other "necessities" to keep said contributor fat and happy. If this means rich subsidies for energy-negative corn ethanol and/or cellulose ethanol, then so be it. If the contribuors suffer, they start abandoning aforementioned politician and contribute to the other guy (who promises to restore all the goodies), which usually results in the other guy's victory.

This is a "by design" result of our for-profit political patronage system, not to mention human nature. Your science and logic are utterly impotent in the face of human greed, selfishness and political calculus.

Alan, that is a good idea, and in fact the first part, linking sewage effluent with biofuel (not algae) production is done in a few places around the world.

As good as it is, there are a couple of issues with scaling this up. Firstly, if we are using sunlight, then you need to think of treatment ponds as large farming fields. You will need tens of thousands of acres of ponds to grow the biomass to handle the effluent from a large city - in fact, you will need an area approaching the size of the city itself. That requires a lot of (flat) land. And most major cities are located on or near the coast, and the land area is simply unavailable or too expensive. Now, you could pipe it back uphill and to the farming areas, and some (small) cities have done this quite successfully. For a city like Los Angeles, this would be quite an undertaking, but still smaller than what they had to do to get the water there in the first place.

By using effluent for biomass, you don't need to go the expense of doing nutrient removal in the sewage treatment - the plants do it for you, and are more productive for it. You just can't use it to grow food, without extra treatment of the effluent, but for energy crops (be it algae or trees) it's ideal.

So it's not that it won't scale, it's just that to do it at scale requires some serious infrastructure, land, pipeline right of way etc. In short, a government needs to drive it, it's not like any company can just set it up. And governments are leery of megaprojects these days.

It's a great solution, just not a sexy one.

Algae WILL scale...And yes, it will take a lot of landmass...Yeah, so what?...We have the huge state of New Mexico just lying there in the sun...Take 20% of New Mexico and use it for algae fuel production...Guess what, that bit of land will probably produce ALL the fuel necessary to run the entire U.S. of A....Not ready yet?....Yup, we have some engineering to do to fully capture the economies of scale... But these are of lesser magnitude that the technologies we had to INVENT to go to the Moon...In short, green, virtually everlasting fuel...Sorry Doomers, it's BAU!!!!!!!!!!

Globalization came in somewhere too--import more from everywhere else, but that is not working too well either.

interesting your last line ?- ) a little poetic license I imagine ?= )

Thanks for the Feynman quote, one of these days I'll fight my connection for another lecture or two of his.

Thank you! I hoped if I looked through the comments eventually someone would suggest making do with less. A gallon of 'fuel' not burned is a gallon not needed and a gallon that can be produced in the future for greater effect after we learn what to do with that gallon. Enough gallons not needed means a manufacturing plant not needed. All of the plants are costs. The lie is that some of the costs don't have to be counted. The arguments are about which costs can be ignored. In reality, none of the costs can be.

The cycle to break is that of mindless waste:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/12/AR201002...

Yes it is off topic, but it's not a bad question. Firstly, they are oil sands, or even "bitumen sands", but most definitely not tar sands, as explained by RockyMtnGUy in yesterday's drumbeat;
"Tar is chemically different and is the result of destructive distillation of organic material. It can't be refined to produce fuel. The "tar" sand do not contain tar, they contain extremely viscous oil."

Moving onto the oil they produce. It takes 1-1.5 GJ of natural gas to produce a barrel of synthetic crude. That barrel has an energy content of 7GJ (roughly), and when refined into gasoline/diesel/jet fuel, you get about 6GJ of product.

So the short answer is, that using NG in the oilsands, allows us to make use of an otherwise unusable resource, and get 4-6 times the NG energy back, as LIQUID fuel.
So it extends the domestic oil supply substantially.

There are other issues, like CO2 emissions etc, but in the end, there is a positive energy return on the process. Whether there is a dollar return is an entirely separate question, as are the (perceived) environmental impacts - but all businesses deal with these issues every day.

(BTW, is there a general form where ordinary readers can create topics?)

Yes, the most recent Drumbeat.

Has anyone done a study of the relative efficiency of using natural gas to turn tar sands into gasoline versus just burning natural gas in cars (as T. Boone Pickens likes to advocate)?

The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is on the order of 6:1, You produce about six times as much energy in the form of oil as you input in the form of natural gas. That's the whole rational of using natural gas for processing oil sands - there's a lot more energy coming out than going in. The ratio is improved by the fact that many of the companies run the gas through a co-generation plant and produce electricity as a by-product of producing oil.

A lot of the environmental action groups imply otherwise, but if the EROEI was unfavorable the oil companies would sell the natural gas directly and forget about producing oil sands. All of them are in both the oil and natural gas businesses, and don't care which they sell. They do whatever produces the best return on investment. Unlike fuel ethanol producers, oil sands producers are not subsidized and actually pay billions of dollars in taxes. (However, they pay them to Canadian governments, which is one reason why US governments are somewhat negative about them.)

And, yes, the "tar sands" don't contain tar, they contain bitumen, which is an extremely viscous grade of crude oil. The difference is significant because you can refine bitumen into gasoline and diesel fuel, which you can not do with tar.

It is happening now in Brazil with the recent run up in sugar prices. Cane use is being shifted to sugar because it is more profitable than ethanol.

This is precisely why cellulosic ethanol a better feedstock than corn. It avoids the food versus food dilemma which is very real(just look at palm oil, cooking oil or biodiesel?).

It is convenient for corn farmers to be able to sell corn for animal feed, corn flakes or biofuel but that hurts consumers of those products.

By 2012 there will be 7 billion people in the world.
By 2030 there will be 8 billion people in the world.
By 2045 there will br 9 billion people in the world.

I agree very much with you X. Neighboring farmers and I have been talking about cellulosic ethanol, and have come to the conclusion that the cost of trucking the stuff (probably grass) to the manufacturing plant will be stiff. You just can't bale the grass densely enough to get a decent load on a truck. Since you'll want the plant to be operating 24/7 for efficienc, you also will need a large amount of space to store the bales before processing them,because foul weather will prevent movement of the bales out of the fields, and since the areas that can grow the 10 tons per acre of grass are somewhat wet, the bales will probably have to be stored inside a HUGE warehouse or covered with HUGE tarps to prevent degradation (the stuff rots and gets moldy when wet). Building smaller plants nearer to or on-farm would help some. It would be nice to put the leftover biomass back on the land, but probably some higher use will be found for it, such as animal feed.

Very little is said about corn ethanol byproducts, but when the alcohol process is done, all of the corn is still there except for the starch (carbohydrates), concentrating protein, vitamins and minerals into a tasty animal feed. Some processors are talking about what it take to make this into a food grade product for humans. The downside is that all pathogens and pesticides that were in the corn get concentrated. Ethanol production has drastically changed the animal feeding business, mostly for cattle, but also somewhat for chickens and pigs.

Something that bothers me about urbanites discussing ethanol vs. food is that the vast majority of the corn grown in the U.S. is genetically designed to be animal feed. It's not all that good as homeground cornmeal. There are food-grade corn varieties that go into cornflakes and meal, but they don't take up a very high percentage of the corn acres. If you really want the flavor, get the old open-pollinated varieties. Food grade corn generally yields enough less than feed grade that the price premium doesn't make up for the yield drop. There are also issues of keeping the two corn types separate in storage and delivery.

Ethanol production was started because farmers were just too good at growing corn and the price was in the dumps. Ethanol grew out of a desire to find another use for corn and its poorer cousin grain sorghum. It worked, but now farmers are growing even more corn, so the price/cost squeeze is returning. Ag lenders are increasing the capital requirements for farmers to get operating loans this spring.

A couple of years ago I read in "Farm Show" magazine about a farmer in this area who had bought a cheap, but heavy-duty Chinese oil press run by an old-design one-cylinder diesel engine. He did not separate out the glycerin, but instead added about 1/4 regular, non-ethanol gasoline to the mix. He thus was able to ignite the glycerin with the vegetable oil (sunflower) for more power than "cleaned-up" biodiesel. It worked fine in his farm diesel engines as well as his diesel-powered pickup, in which he saw more power and about 1/3 better fuel economy. He had a gentleman's agreement with the State of Kansas on driving a non-taxed biofuel on the roads, since he was also adding the taxed gasoline to his off-road fuel. He had figure that on his farm it took the profit on about 500 acres of grain sorghum to pay for his fuel for the whole farm, but only about 100 acres of sunflowers to produce the same amount of fuel. The leftover sunflower meal, or soymeal if that's what works in another area, is a high-protein feed that could be sold or fed on-farm to offset the cost of the gasoline blended in.

My opinion: forget cellulosic biofuels unless gasification could be made to work well, but you'd still have the logistics of all those tons of biodegradable grass to deal with.

Few people compare the subsidies on blending ethanol (which goes to the blenders, not the farmers) to the hidden subsidies for Middle-Eastern oil in the form of military endeavors and lost human lives, some of whom just might have thought up good solutions to our energy crisis. So many expenses are cast off onto someone else, it becomes a nightmare to unravel them to get really true comaparisons. True comparisons are necessary, because hiding them and cooking the books still doesn't make the expenses go away--they just surprise the heck out of you when they crash the economy.

Bravo.

Boof,

A dual gas-liquid (diesel-type) fuel vehicle is my idea of what a flex fuel vehicle should be. But what we might see, is that some countries/ regions choose one type of liquid fuel over another. E.g. Europe will stay will diesel fuel, and compatibles(lipids), and US will stay with gasoline and compatibles (ethanol), while NG will be the universal gas.

It really sounds like what is needed is an efficient external combustion engine (i.e. a modern steam engine or closed cycle gas engine) as this can run on any fuel - solid, liquid or gas, and can burn it cleanly with a minimum of pollution control equipment.

The hybrid technology enables constant speed engines, like microturbines, to be used. One NZ company is building hybrid city buses around a 50kW turbine, that can burn any liquid/gas fuel - so the piston may not rule forever.

"I think the standard vehicle will be a van"

Ford Unveils Its Electric Delivery Van

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/ford-transit-connect-electric/

Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I would say the belief in technology is similar to a belief in God. I have spoken to a few people in regards to PO and they tell me "technology will save us." I don't find this any different than saying "God will save us." But I will also write off the belief of total disaster as presented by some here as a quasi-religious belief as well, when they say "Peak Oil will destroy industrial agriculture and cause a die-off leaving only a billion people."

Well, perhaps there will be a die-off but there will be 5.6 billion people after. Or perhaps birth rates will magically plummet or maybe Haliburton will do some selective spraying and sterilize a few billion people. No one can tell the future.

I don't see any reason why Clarke is wrong though, long term there will be some very interesting technological advancements. But to think it will solve our problems just because you think it can is rather foolish.

Kalpa, I doubt your last sentence. In France the politicians are afraid of the voters, who regularly go out in the streets and break some crockery just to remind the politicians who's boss. In the US, the voters are afraid of the politicians (hate washington, reduce government, reduce taxes are all attractive because voters THINK that will control the government. They should learn to use their votes more wisely. Party loyalty is simply writing a blank cheque to often corrupt pols. And getting a grip on those obscene campaign budgets would help. In Canada, a country of comparable geographic size, federal election campaigns last 7 weeks, cost about 1 million per candidate, and are funded only by taxpayers and small private contributions to parties. Hence, universal medical insurance, etc.).

Preston,

The reason we have to scale them up is to produce enough fuel for the farm to export it. Your papers are great examples of sustainable farming, and I hope that it is profitable too.

Producing electricity is great, and I think it makes a great side (or even primary) business for any farm.

However, none of this addresses the issue of providing an alternate transport fuel to oil. If every farm, in any country, follows your model, that's great for the farming industry, but what fuel do the vehicles of the country use? There is always scope to reduce fuel usage, but it can't be eliminated entirely.

Your annual output of 221GJ of producer gas is the equivalent 1500 gallons of diesel fuel, which is great, but how do you use it as a transport fuel? Producer gas does not store well, and the concept of using on-vehicle gasifiers is fine for trains, and even trucks, but is not going to work for the general population of a city (unless we are in another war situation).

You have a positive EROEI, to be sure, but if the object is to produce alternative transport fuel, and this is the object, then no matter how efficient or productive your farm, you are not producing any useable product - your scale of transport fuel production is zero.

Therein lies the problem.