The Oil Drum | The Limits of Biofuels

213 comments on The Limits of Biofuels

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NC on May 9, 2006 - 8:45am

Okay I have to weigh in here with some realistic comments.

The Scientists involved with lipids, oil seeds and biodiesel know they can not replace even a large fraction of petroleum with biofuels. I know, I just got back from a conference where this was discussed in context of food lipids. Many speakers kept saying biological lipids are just a fraction of the oil we burn every year. No one is expecting total replacement of petroleum with ethanol and biodiesel.

But this misses the point entirely. People are thinking about making money and to some extent being a little bit self sufficient. As oil prices keep going up biodiesel and ethanol become ever more attractive as money making operations even if they don't replace all the current supply. In fact one could make the case that if petroleum oil gets very scarce (after peak) that biofuels will become gold mines in an energy starved world.

Also consider farmer coops that are invested into biodiesel. They know there is a positive return, energy wise, in shunting some of their crop into fuel. This can come back to them and allow them to plant a new crop at lower cost than if they were 100% dependant on oil. This helps moderate their costs. Even a small percentage helps.

This is all nibbling around the edges at present. A little more supply here. A little bit cheaper there. A little better price for a commodity for fuel use rather than CBTrade prices. It all has real economic impact on the producers of the raw material, which is agricultural products. These people are not thinking about saving the world from peak oil. They are trying to make a living based on the best mix of crops and markets currently available to them. And ultimately they may save our butts if energy becomes very scarce and they have a ready system in place to continue mechanized agriculture using liquid fuels grown on site.

My point here is that yes ethanol and biodiesel are positive EROEI. NO this will not allow us to continue in our present energy use. Yes these fuels will have some impact mitigating peak oil. No we should not convert all available land to fuel production. Yes we should divert some land to biofuel production to determine how efficient this system is. We are always going to need some liquid fuels. We are in the infancy of determining what will replace petroleum in delivering that liquid, even if it is at very reduced volume from today. In the absence of a coherent national energy strategy I see no other way for things to progress at this time.

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Keithster100 on May 9, 2006 - 9:46am

Excellent post! I am glad someone else gets it too.

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spunkledevil on May 9, 2006 - 11:04am

NC - very thoughtful post. I would like more info on where you've gotten your data on amount of land needed for biofuel production. Thanks!

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NC on May 9, 2006 - 12:11pm

Spunkledevil, some numbers for you to digest.

From a talk at AOCS here are the numbers I copied down. For details on this survey contact Professor Frank Gunstone at St. Andrews University, he gave permission to cite his numbers. I'm sorry but I don't have the original sources he cited for this data.

As of 2005 total lipids on the world market was 135 million metric tons (MMT) from all sources - land and sea. Of that total 108 MM tons went to human food usage, about 80% of the total. This assumes the productive capacity of all the agricultural land currently being farmed, plus fish stocks both wild catch and pen raised. This is only the lipid portion of that productivity stream. Obviously there is a larger volume of starch and protein that is being produced simultaneously.

For 2005 the 108 MMT divided by the 6.44 Billion people on earth gave about 16.8 kilos of fat per person per year. But this was distributed unevenly with the EU-25 countries consuming 50.8 kilos per person per year, the U.S. was 49 kg/p/yr, China was 19.6 kg/p/yr, India was 11.7 kg/p/yr and Bangledesh was at the bottom at 7.5 kg fat per person per year.

Estimates are that China and India will be raising their caloric intake, as well as their population, so that the lipids required just for food will double by 2030. That would be 216 MMT of fat required with most of the increase going to Asia and Africa by 2030. For 2020 it should be well under 200 MMT required, say a 50-60% increase over 2005.

At the same time that lipid for food will increase the EU-25 and U.S. have biodiesel targets. The EU-25 want to produce 20 MMT of biodiesel by 2020, they produced 4 MMT in 2005. The US goal is 2 MMT in 2010 and 12 MMT in 2020. So the stated goal is to produce about 40-50 MMT of biodiesel in 2020, which is in addition to the less than 200 MMT for food.

Interestingly India has a law that says no food oil can be used for biodiesel so they are researching other oil producing tree crops that can't be used for food. Clearly production would be constrained for all lipid production by land availability, yields, sustainability and climate change. Yes all these limitations were brought up in the talk. He was realistic about what could be produced not pie in the sky optomistic.

So the conclusion of the talk was that Food lipids would need to increase by 40-70 MMT and Oleochemistry uses (mostly biodiesel) would increase by 40-50 MMT, for a total lipid increase of 80-110 MMT by 2020 from all sources. Almost all of this increase is expected to come from oil seeds.

So the final conclusion was that oil supply would be tight for the expected demand (no one talked about a rapid decline after peak petroleum) but that supply might not be distributed uniformly as it is not distributed today. A main point is that much of the lipid production today is as a biproduct of some other production. Very few acres or food streams are dedicated to oil production. A small percentage of acreage dedicated to high oil production could meet much of the oleochemical needs. But no one is talking about replacing 80+ million barrels of petroleum oil per day with biological oil. The numbers just don't add.

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jim burke on May 9, 2006 - 12:37pm

Even a modest amount of biodiesel use should help raise prices for cooking oil, and pull increasing amounts of tropical oils from the tropics to the wealthy countries, to power our cars. Therefore, I would expect that the Bangladeshis and Africans would probably go (even more) hungry in the near future.

Does this bother anyone?

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odograph on May 9, 2006 - 1:26pm

sure, it bothers me. i certainly hope that images of african and asian privation will drive a bit of conservation here. if there is a hummer backlash now, when cost and (hard to visualize) global warming are the drivers, i sure think it would be stronger when the image becomes starving people.

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Mad Maxout on May 9, 2006 - 7:38pm

Yes and no. It'll depend on the complexion of the starving people, unfortunately. Do you think that closet Ku Klux Klan idiots down south are going to care about starving Africans? Worst case: David Duke. Do you think he'll care that Africans are starving so he can get a load of bio- jet fuel for his Lear Jet? Or the others who time-share that plane?

By far the most egregious wasters of energy are the corporate kingpins who exploit illegal aliens and fire them once injured on the job, especially in Texas. Are they going to care who starves - of ANY colour - so they can get a fill-up for their jet?

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odograph on May 9, 2006 - 8:58pm

we're back again to human nature, or each of our expectations of human nauture.

i notice that "doctors without borders" ...

"In 2004, MSF's worldwide income was $568 million. In the United States, nearly 380,000 private donors contributed more than $91 million to MSF-USA."

that wouldn't happen if the glass was truly empty.

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ET on May 9, 2006 - 11:10pm

A 'hummer backlash' today, with small-car drivers sneering at hummer owners, may someday become a 'mechanized transport backlash' with those of us walking (or lucky enough to own a mule) sneering at those gluttons with the plug-in hybrids. It's a matter of perspective here...

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odograph on May 10, 2006 - 7:25am

shrug. and the hybrid might be the car that stays in the garage while you walk for most trips. It's a matter of perspective here...

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Leanan on May 9, 2006 - 2:06pm

I don't think it will bother most Americans enough to stop them. We already take food from countries that would be better off keeping it for themselves.

A journalist friend of mine was working a big story a few years back - an expose about child slavery on cacao plantations in Africa. Her office had been boycotting chocolate for months while they worked on the story in secret. She thought it was going to be huge.

Instead, it was barely noticed. Americans didn't care if their chocolate was grown by children sold into slavery by their impoverished parents, or kidnapped off the streets by slavers. I doubt they'll care if the fuel in their tanks takes food from the mouths of the hungry, either.

The best hope for Africa, IMO, is for peak oil to unwind globalization. Perhaps in the post-carbon age, it will end up being too expensive to import ethanol from Africa.

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kvenlander on May 9, 2006 - 4:14pm

I remember that story. Please thank your friend for a job well done. Unfortunately it is all too easy to close your mind on the implications of stories like that. The cognitive dissonance between "I'm a good person" / "I am funding slavery" is too painful.

I don't know if there is a solution except to keep plugging away. Is the story online somewhere?

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Leanan on May 9, 2006 - 6:19pm

There are now many web pages devoted to the topic. There's even a Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_and_slavery

But the average American doesn't even know...or care. There seems to be more concern in Europe, where apparently some people are making an effort to by "free trade" chocolate...enough for it to be a marketing point.

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fleam on May 10, 2006 - 1:30am

I'm fairly well informed and have never heard of this issue. It's a total non-issue in the US and not likely to ever become an issue (unless the slave folks get nukes). I had a chocolate bar this morning and some nice tirimisu earlier this evening, and would probably have another chocolate bar now but I'm saving that one for tomorrow. They (the chocolate bars) say "made in Belgium" see no mention of starving children or of Africa. If I were a typical American and thought about it at all I'd have visions of nice well-fed Belgians with good medical plans tending to the cocoa trees growing in the Belgian cold and wind.

Everything in Starbucks doesn't have chocolate in it, but almost everything does. In fact, I'm not much of a chocolate eater (these 3 little chocolate bars I got at trader joe's are 3 of maybe 6 a year I eat), but overall Americans are chocoholics.

And this issue is utterly unknown in the US.

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smekhovo on May 10, 2006 - 3:59am

If the perpetrators of these crimes were Muslims, we would be hearing a lot more about them.

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tappel on May 10, 2006 - 12:07pm

The fair trade movement is actually pretty big in Europe, although fair trade chocolate is not as widely available as fair trade coffee and various kinds of fruit. I, as well as many of my friends, only buy bananas if they are fair trade.

The growth of the movement is one of the very few really encouraging developments in the recent years.

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fleam on May 9, 2006 - 5:17pm

Yes, all! Good posts! Thsi is my point. India is wise, and wise through experience, in banning human food oils to be used for biodiesel. They can well imagine the starving, boney, peasants toiling by hand so the local moghul can tour around in his biodiesel Mercedes, while the peasants' childrens' hair falls out due to lack of proteins and oils.

And no, this shit doesn't bother Americans at all. Biodiesel creeps me out more day by day. I mean, the idea of a biodiesel industry. We're already overstraining Mother Earth to make food, now we're supposed to start stripping, essentially, the surface of Mother Earth to come up with gas for our cars? All those calories of fuel we were getting from oil stored up over millions of years, millions of years ago, becomes uneconomic so we're supposed to strip the biomass from the surface to make up for it? I find it scary as hell that there are people working on this.

I saw somewhere, a calculation of how many thousands of years of sun and biomass we use a year in the form of oil. It's like a savings account - you can put in $5 a a day and you save and save and save, and then after 50 years or something you decide to start binging at $50 a day. This is what modern "civilization" is doing with the Earth's oil savings account.

And no, Americans don't care about children dying in slave labor camps so Starbucks will have chocolate bars for sale, or likewise children dying in labor camps so "coltan" (columbium-tantalum ore) can be dug up, by hand, to make the tantalum capacitors in our electronic products, or any of this stuff. I'm typing away on a computer just full of tantalum caps and eating a chocolate bar while I'm doing it. I'm a good Amurrikan I don't care. So, this is why it all needs to come crashing down. The crashier the better as far as mother earth, living things, and little children (better to not be born or die quickly than die slowly in a labor camp) everywhere.

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Magnus Redin on May 9, 2006 - 5:54pm

Odd, I have the same kind of reasoning in reverse. I partly see ethanol and biodiesel as a way of slowing down the outcompeting of Swedish farming and maintaining a higher local foodstuff production then the local food needs. We then get the emergency option of eating the local car fuel.

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Mad Maxout on May 9, 2006 - 7:50pm

Don't forget there is one last point against biofuel. When an animal eats a plant, the animal emissions come out as all 3 phases of matter, solid (feces), liquid (urine), and gas (CO2). A goose fertilises as it makes CO2 during flight. A plane burning biofuel only creates CO2. (not including the insignificant "blue ice" droppings)

The animal makes fertiliser while making the CO2, and the plants recycle it all with solar power. By using too much biofuel, you screw up that balance, depleting topsoil. If you use algae > biofuel, you screw up the seas the same way.

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Johnny Buffalkill on May 9, 2006 - 11:05pm

All those calories of fuel we were getting from oil stored up over millions of years, millions of years ago, becomes uneconomic so we're supposed to strip the biomass from the surface to make up for it?

Good point. A gallon of gasoline has what, 30,000 calories? Are we really going to grow fifteen times everyone's nutritional needs in biofuels just for the morning commute?

The prospect of a low energy future isn't what scares me. The fact is we could live quite comfortably on far less energy than we do. What scares me is how a low energy future will be managed. Will we live in low energy eco-villages, or will "they" starve so we can drive (or maybe the other way around)?

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jim burke on May 9, 2006 - 2:23pm

THanks for the feedback.

In answer to my own question, I'd like to share a story from the latest Earth Day.

A friend of mine that was watching the biofuels booth wandereed off, and a sudden gust of wind was blowing the booth down and scattering the literature. I staked it back up and collected the pamphlets, when a nice looking, middle class couple came up to ask me about biofuels.

Since I was the only one around, I gave them my own schtick, that you can buy a "cracker," or biofuels refinery, for $4 - 7K through REal Goods, and get all the used cooking oil you wanted from Burger King. But once other people started to get into the act, Burger King would start to charge for their waste oil.

Then I said that in the longer run, biofuel markets would buy up the cooking oils from the third world, and they'd really start to starve.

After a pause, ne of them looked at the other and said "I'm glad we hung onto that diesel Volkswagen."

The other smiled and nodded, and they walked off, looking quite contented -- even happy.

It was like being in a Dilbert cartoon. Perhaps this is a parable for our age.

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fleam on May 9, 2006 - 5:25pm

Sad.

Yes, like what someone wrote here about a week ago, making a joke based on Soylent Green, "You mean this fuel's made of people? Like brown people? Whay-hey! Fill 'er up, Jack!"

This kind of behavior started with the Agricultural Revolution, people are ugly but they got REALLY ugly when farming was invented. That's when you got feast/famine cycles, desertification, and killing off every man woman and child of the other tribe because their noses are a slightly different shape (hutu-tutsi) but really because there's not enough food to go around.

And yes, the solution for Africa and for everywhere, is to localize. The sooner we hit real depletion and hopefully things really do collapse, the better. Cheap oil is what feeds the IMF, the UN, oil-for-food programs, all the various tentacles of beast. The modern international trade system makes it possible for people to exploit others who are thousands of miles away, and they're out of sight, out of mind.

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Magnus Redin on May 9, 2006 - 5:56pm

Around here in europe "natural" famines went away with railways and steam powered ships. Long range trade is a blessing.

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NC on May 9, 2006 - 4:22pm

It is not as simple as us vs them.

Remember that a lot more food lipid is already produced outside Africa and Asia. Increasing supply there for food, but increasing supply even more in EU and US for food and fuel can improve food intake everywhere. It's just that most of the biodiesel will be in the wealthy countries. The way most of the oil and gasoline is in wealthy countries today.

We haven't been able to distribute food equally around the globe when we have had cheap oil for 100 years. Why expect this to change when oil is scarce? This is not a technical problem. It is a political one, without technical solution.

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light299 on May 9, 2006 - 5:27pm

It bothers me, but alot of things bother me. In fact, I'll tell you what bothers me more.

Awhile back I was in a store, and I saw a young man and his wife. She was beautiful, and he was about 25, with huge sholders, arms as thick as my legs, and generally someone who looked like they could take on the world. They were buying a T-shirt with a picture of Bush and a gas pump on it that had the quote "Taking it up the gass". They seemed like nice people, and but when they made a joke about the shirt there were undertones of real suffering. As they walked away from the counter I noticed the man had one leg.

Now as I see my friends go off to war, as I see the suffering in Darfur I think, "all for oil". Yet every week I'm at the pump, filling up.

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fleam on May 9, 2006 - 5:37pm

This is one reason why The Powers The Be would love to fight this thing with mercenary forces, and already are to as great a degree as they can get away with. Protests agains the war will go way down in the US as long as Amurrikans aren't being hurt. If we can pay others to go out and do the real fighting and dying, and your brother or son or best friend's duty over there consists of sitting in an air-conditioned building looking in a radar screen or something safe, and no more Americans are coming home with one leg. the war won't be seen as such a bad thing.

The huge casualties among mostly innocent, women and children and the old, etc., and things like the leveling of Falluja don't bother Americans.

This is probably why the big permenant bases are being built and the HUGE embassy. Nice safe places for Americans to work, and from which to issue orders to the mercenaries.

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spunkledevil on May 9, 2006 - 8:45pm

NC - thanks very much for your prompt and thorough reply!

I've been following biofuels on various websites for some time now - with a focus on cellulosic ethanol rather than corn with its poor EROEI. But there is one twist I haven't seen yet: paper manufacturing technology as the foundation for cellulosic biofuel manufacturing. Paper companies are already into processing cellulose in a big way; they already digest pulp and refine various by-products - some of which they use for process power.

Plus paper manufacturers already deal with commercial scale issues - moving huge amounts of materials, environmental protection, optimizing plant size versus distances from raw materials, etc.

There are some damn knowledgeable people discussing cellulosic ethanol in theoildrum and elsewhere, so it really puzzles me why paper manufacturing technology is not mentioned...

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 11:19am

As oil prices keep going up biodiesel and ethanol become ever more attractive as money making operations even if they don't replace all the current supply.

That's not what has happened historically. Due to the marginal EROI, as fossil fuels become more expensive, ethanol becomes more expensive due to the large input of fossil fuels. I have posted a link to a Nebraska government site that shows for the past 20 years, ethanol has consistently been more expensive than gasoline on the spot market, and has risen and fallen in lock-step with gasoline. That's the thing so many people don't seem to understand. Unless you can substantially improve the EROI, or use a fuel source that does not rise with the price of oil (coal, for example, but it has its own baggage) then higher oil prices don't make ethanol more economical.

My point here is that yes ethanol and biodiesel are positive EROEI.

That's situation dependent. Nebraska, for example, has a marginal EROI due to the need to irrigate the land. If you make ethanol in Nebraska and ship to the coast, your EROI is probably not >1.0. You can look at the USDA studies and calculate this for yourself. When people quote EROI numbers, they are quoting an average for the highest yielding corn states. Even among those states, some have a far worse EROI than the average.

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BaSE on May 9, 2006 - 12:23pm

It does seem that farmers would be wise to see to their own energy security if they are able. IMO, as shortages occur and the rationing becomes onerous, the Govt will prefer military uses for oil over all others including food security.

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NC on May 9, 2006 - 12:43pm

RR,

I totally agree with you and used to think that ethanol and biodiesel could never compete. And I am certain that biofuel can never replace current petroleum liquid fuels volume, only supply some liquid fuel when petroleum gets very scarce. I live in Iowa and almost nothing is irrigated. I still have doubts about ethanol from corn but as long as it is subsidized it makes people money.

For biodiesel, soybeans don't require such high rates of nitrogen making them less input intensive than many crops. In addition a farmer can run biodiesel through his equipment to plant the next generation crop. So closing the loop on biodiesel means that the cost of biodiesel going forward could be determined primarily by the cost of making biodiesel. Since each soybean multiplies itself 100's of times using the sun there is a theoretical geometric progression for cost reduction. But ALL petroleum has to be taken out of the equation before you can do the calculations. It is difficult to seperate energy from cost when the two sources are intertwinned in the market. Even then it makes my head hurt trying to account for all the costs and co-products from farm though liquids back to farm!

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odograph on May 9, 2006 - 1:28pm

one of the fragments i thought i caught here, in a previous TOD comment stream, was that farmers are planting more soybeans and less corn this year. that in response to higher corn "inputs" costs.

... why isn't there a soybean biodiesel lobby to fight the corn ethanol lobby?

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NC on May 9, 2006 - 2:37pm

Corn vs ethanol acres change on a multitude of variable.

One variable this year is that there may be a late season drought (August time frame) that will put water stress on a crop in the midwest. Corn has done most of the grain filling (growth) by mid August but almost all the soybean pods are filled right until early September. For that reason an August hot dry spell would really hurt soybeans but have almost no effect on corn yields. This is all on non irrigated land, which is western Iowa east to the mountains.

So this year lots of farmers in my state are getting lots of corn acres in early as a hedge against drought. So corn acres might be up a little bit even though a nice premium expected on beans. Farmers are living calculators when it comes to risk management.

Last thought on crops in the midwest. Corn and beans are often grown together and in rotation to each other for lots of reasons. The biggest is that you can use the same equipment to plant and harvest, just swap out combine heads and planters. Typically about 2/3 of row crops in Iowa is corn and 1/3 soybeans. Other states have different ratios plus other small grains thrown in. Each farmer makes his own calculations so the market really has to send a strong signal before everyone plants a lot more beans nation wide. Too much of any one crop causes over supply, a drop in prices, and no one makes any money.

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odograph on May 9, 2006 - 2:58pm

thanks, good info.

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fallout on May 10, 2006 - 8:48am

Down here in the Deep South, farmers largely plant corn for the crop insurance payment, knowing full well that a drought year (we seem to have a lot of those the last couple of decades) will pretty much ruin the crop. If you do not irrigate and put little effort into the corn, then it is a cheap investment, and beats leaving a field fallow (an alternative crop for rotation with soybeans, cotton, and/or peanuts) from a $ perspective.

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 2:51pm

Oh, I am 100% with you on the biodiesel angle. I wrote a blog essay in March comparing biodiesel to ethanol:

Biodiesel: King of Alternative Fuels

I firmly believe that between biodiesel, GTL, CTL, and ultimately BTL, we are eventually destined to have a diesel economy.

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Engineer-Poet on May 9, 2006 - 3:23pm

Someone over at GCC gave a figure of 26 gallons per ton yield for F-T BTL diesel. Even if that can be doubled, we're not going to run an economy on it.

There are a lot of concepts being hyped which have no real potential for ever replacing petroleum, and some of them compete with others for feedstocks (e.g. cellulosic ethanol vs. gasification BTL). Unless we can get several billions of tons of biomass per year, there's no way these things can make much of a dent (and we need far higher yields than 26 gallons per ton - like 3 times that). I am beginning to wonder if they aren't being pushed by coal and oil interests to guarantee that they get every last cent out of us that they can.

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 4:02pm

I will have to dig up that GCC reference. I am going to write some essays soon on GTL, CTL, and BTL. I know quite a bit about GTL, having recently run a GTL research lab. I know a bit about CTL, and not so much about BTL. GTL is obviously the easiest, because it is much easier to handle gas in a reactor than it is to handle a solid. BTL will be the hardest, and last option to pursue. If you are correct about the BTL yields, then that is certainly a problem.

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Engineer-Poet on May 9, 2006 - 4:28pm

Found it here, but no reference cited.

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Engineer-Poet on May 9, 2006 - 4:33pm

I take that back, the reference is http://www.ecn.nl/_files/bio/RX03014.pdf

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 6:40pm

Thanks for that. I will study it.

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 9:31pm

Incidentally, I found another biomass to diesel paper, and this one is very detailed:

Biofuels from Lignocellulosic Material

It's 101 pages, so it will take me a while to get through it.

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neuroil on May 11, 2006 - 1:54pm

Thank you very much. I love the WTW (well to wheel) analysis. This is by far the most interesting technical paper I've read on this issue.

BTW, I was surprised to note that it stems from the third most important oil exporter. Of course the northern people are way ahead of us in public discussion and policy of energy management.

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Engineer-Poet on May 11, 2006 - 11:36pm

That is by far one of the most information-packed papers I've seen in a while. Reading it is seriously interfering with getting things done around here!

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 7:20pm

I just opened up the link. That process was developed by James Gaddy, and his research was similar to what my research advisor was doing. We talked about Gaddy's research quite a bit in graduate school. I am pretty sure my research advisor, Mark Holtzapple, collaborated with him some.

We always produced some methane, hydrogen, CO, etc. as byproducts, but we were really after the liquid products. Looks like Gaddy focused on the gaseous products.

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Engineer-Poet on May 9, 2006 - 10:21pm

Liquid products of biomass pyrolysis, or of subsequent synthesis?

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 10:57pm

What we were doing was running anaerobic bioreactors with inoculum from cow's stomachs. We would take ground up cellulose waste, throw in some sewage sludge for nutrients, and let the bugs grow and consume the cellulose. They would make a lot of different organic acids and alcohols, as well as gaseous byproducts which we did not care anything about.

The research is described in the following brief article:

Biomass technology answers biofuels need

We won the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for the research in 1996. We received it at the National Academy of Sciences, and the awards are signed by Al Gore. Mine is on my desk at work.

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Joseph on May 10, 2006 - 12:52am

Wow, RR, I didn't realize you are an old Ag. Dr. Holtzapple gave a speech my freshman year on that very subject, inspiring me to switch from computer science to chemical engineering. He's quite the enthusiastic speaker, and he's got a bevy of intersting research programs.

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Robert Rapier on May 10, 2006 - 10:40am

If you see Mark, tell him I said "Hi". I haven't talked to him in a few years, and I really need to touch base with him. You are right, his research programs are pretty interesting. He always had a list of grad students wanting to work for him.

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TJ on May 9, 2006 - 4:45pm

From what I read here the Western hemisphere is going to peak on gas before oil. Or are you thinking GTL in Russia or Iran?

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 6:41pm

GTL only makes economic sense where there is a large quantity of stranded natural gas. Right now most of the plants are being built in Qatar. The next round will probably be in Russia.

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Kalpa on May 9, 2006 - 2:19pm

To R-squared,
Thanks for keeping after my state of Nebraska about ethanol. You are right on about our irrigation and this state is in a mess, owing Kansas millions of dollars for water used up by irrigators in south central Nebraska which we as taxpayors will end up paying. We have a proposal in our legislature to pump and pipe water from our Platte to the Republican river to fulfill our obligation to Kansas! Our most beautiful tourist attractions include Lake McConaughy, a 100 mile long shore-line reservoir with wide sandbeaches in the sandhills, owned completely by the "irrigators" and has been sucked almost dry in recent summers (visited by Denverites in droves), as well as our Platte river which is the flyway and sandhill crane migratory refuge in the spring. In the recent summers when one crosses the Platte bridge in Columbus there is no water whatsoever. Cottonwood trees are growing up in the "wide shallow water" river so that it is becoming a river of small channels, no longer suitable to the cranes as a safe roosting haven. Our unicameral legislature has not come up with a decent long range irrigation plan so farmers have been sinking irrigation wells as never before in case a moratorium is called for in the future. Areas in this state are still ploughing up virgin grasslands in the name of corn-growing in regions never intended to grow corn, because we've been blessed with our abundant underground ocean, the Ogallala Aquifer. State leaders complain that we have a brain-drain going on as well as retirees leaving the state, and it is partly because our natural recreational areas are being "farmed", with no priorities given to them as an aesthetic resource whatsoever. At the same time, we see successful business friends sinking life-savings "investment" $ into new ethanol plants, believing what they have been told about the bright future of ethanol. If you openly oppose ethanol in this state, people look at you as if you are a Martian. If one takes the long range view, our most precious resources are the abundant clean water we have been blessed with as well as our fertile topsoil. Both are being squandered in the name of "ethanol"!!! Politicians can't touch the subject because it "appears" to be our economic salvation of the moment. Today, being voting day, however, I did vote for the gubernatorial candidate who I feel recognizes this the most. Wish us luck!

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Seadragon on May 9, 2006 - 9:32pm

I think this is why my next book is going to be When the Rivers Run Dry...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807085731/sr=1-1/qid=1147224681/ref=sr_1_1/102-2176903-3940106?%5F encoding=UTF8

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Engineer-Poet on May 9, 2006 - 12:15pm

Farmers don't even need to make liquid fuels. During the 70's, some folks dusted off old plans for "gasogenes" and came up with modern adaptations which could run a (gasoline-fuelled) tractor on wood chips. The concept was that farmers could build these things out of materials on hand and be able to continue work if they couldn't get fuel deliveries.

Fast-forward three decades. Tractors are more sophisticated and almost entirely diesel, but you can still burn wood gas in a diesel by carbureting the fuel gas and using a bit of liquid fuel for pilot ignition. Fuel could be pelletized or carbonized crop wastes, charcoal from any convenient source, wood chips or bark. If I recall correctly, the fuel required to plant and harvest corn is some gallons or tens of gallons per acre; the yield of excess corn stover is TONS per acre.

This looks doable, if we're willing to do it.

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JimK on May 9, 2006 - 2:01pm

Just to save other interested folks the googling effort:

http://www.gengas.nu/byggbes/index.shtml

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Engineer-Poet on May 9, 2006 - 3:28pm

And here's a charcoal gasogene, with two pictures of other styles (one) (two).

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Cherenkov on May 9, 2006 - 1:20pm

The only problem with the bioguel fantasy is the unsustainability of it. Yes, Virginia, it is unsustainable. It is, as many have called it, strip-mining our topsoil. The only way the process can have a positive EROEI is by ignoring the fact that soil is a depletable resource. Unless you return a certain portion of the crop to the soil and then rest the soil and perhaps rotate the crop, monocropping will result in desert.

Sure the Brazilians are making do with ethanol, but that is at the expense of their topsoil and the rainforest. The ethanol people are all asking us to ignore the man behind the curtain and to believe in this wonderful boon for our farmers and entrepreneurs while ignoring our weakening soil.

Woohoo!! Let's keep destroying the soil!! Fools are those who do not take the holistic view, who dismiss terms like "holistic" as being too hippy or some such nonsense. You MUST examine ALL aspects of the process before you proclaim success.

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GreyZone on May 9, 2006 - 2:25pm

There's a solution to that - manure, including human manure or "humanure" as it's frequently named. Unfortunately, we flush all this useful biomass down the river that would be perfect for restoring the soil. Permaculture sites that have used humanure have actually improved the quality of their soils over time while continuing to farm. Yes, this is part of what you referred to as a holistic view and yes, it's the only sustainable way to do this but it is doable.

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Robert Rapier on May 9, 2006 - 3:04pm

One of my most unpleasant experiences in graduate school was collecting the raw materials for our bioreactors. (Another was obtaining the inoculum from the stomach of a live steer, but that's another story). One of those raw materials was treated sewage sludge. A fellow student and I spent a Saturday morning filling the back of my Toyota pickup with sewage sludge, which we took to my research advisor's house and spread out on his lawn to dry.

Anyway, when we were talking to the operators, they told us they did sell the treated sludge to local farmers who spread it on their land. I would imagine that this is a common practice.

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jim burke on May 9, 2006 - 6:41pm

The "Humanure Handbook" by Joseph Jenkins has been voted the book "Most likely to save the planet," and given numerous "best of year" awards.

It is based on the "sawdust toilet" method, and it works great!

Basically you build an outhouse, and instead of a hole in the ground, you have the humanure liquids and solids drop into a 5 gallon bucket, which you fill with carbonaceous material like sawdust or shredded yard debris. Essentially it's a human litter box.

Anyway, the humanure is rich in nitrogen, the "kitty litter" is mostly carbon, and when you compost it in the compost bin, it turns into the richest compost.

You don't turn the compost, you let it sit for a year, it doesn't smell at all, it doesn't look bad or smell bad, and it doesn't attract flies if you keep a thick layer of straw over the compost. It also is hygenic, in that the rich nitrogen charges the thermophilic bacteria, that raise the temperature to over 117 degrees (sometimes as high as 150 degrees!) and cooks out all potential pathogens (you can't "give yourself" organisms which you don't already have).

Then, as it cools and cures, bacteria and other soil organisms invade the compost, and turn it into rich topsoil. As I'm sure most of you are aware, in a spoonful of top soil you might find tens of billions of organisms, of tens of thousands of species.

The best thing is that the whole set up costs about $50 (as opposed to NSF certified "plastic box" composting toilets, which cost over $1,000 and don't work very well.

The bad thing is that you have to hide it from the government,because they tend not to be very enlightened.

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fleam on May 9, 2006 - 5:31pm

Exactly. Brazil is being held up as some kind of a shining example, while in the real Brazil the elite have cars, while the masses have death squads and child labor and poverty. Doesn't anyone even remember the dystopic movie called "Brazil"?

And they're felling their rain forest as fast as they can to grow sugarcane for fuel. And all the 'greenies' over here think that's just great.

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Oilrig medic on May 9, 2006 - 6:27pm

Fleam.....I am in Campinas, Brasil and have been in country for almost a month. As far as elites having cars my fiance´s budget is about 400 US$ a month and she has a fiat. I have traveled on foot and bus almost everywhere I hae needed to go and no death squads are evident in Minas Gerais, Rio, or Sao Paulo. Have you been here its nicer than many parts of the US? I tried to buy Mahogany (I like to carve) at a lumber store and got a lecture from two customers and the owner about protecting the rainforest.

I saw a lady get mugged in Rio and a Soccer game in Sao Paulo had a riot but that was the extent of the violence.

Anyway from inside brazil their biomass program and public transportation system seems to work. I think they nitrate their soil with hydroelectric but my portuguese is terrible and complex discussions are hard.

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Cherenkov on May 10, 2006 - 12:01am

Clearly you have not been in the shanty towns in Brazil. Of course, why would a jet-setting oil guy want to go where 40% of the population in Brazilian cities live?

I love it when Americans fly to places like....Iraq and proclaim that all is swell. "Everywhere I look it's safe, there are McDonald's and Pizza Huts and everyone speaks English. I so love this little part of Baghdad the locals call the "Green" zone. How colorful!"

Jeez. If we got all of our social history from oil execs, we would be seriously screwed.

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Oilrig medic on May 10, 2006 - 12:34am

Dude...and I use the term loosely I've been working on a volunteer basis in the poorest areas of Sao Paulo vaccinating children. Sao Paulo is the third largest city in the world and has plenty of social problems just like every other metropolis. Yet there are NO roving DEATH squads and it is pretty much a nice city. Which shanty town in brazil did you go to? I am curious because I walked all over Rio for five days and spent two weeks in various parts of Paulo....I spoke spanish with my translator and English with the other medic. I was never in a "Green Zone" The churros are really good.

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fallout on May 10, 2006 - 8:56am

Cherenkov is right, you apparently did not stray far from the "guided tour". Read, view the pictures, and be enlightened:

"In pictures: Life on a landless camp in Brazil"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/americas_life_on_a_landless_camp_in_brazil/ html/1.stm

"One-third of Brazil's population, or some 58 million people, live on less than a dollar a day"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3631601.stm

"At least 30 people, including children, were reportedly killed last night in two attacks in Rio de Janeiro, apparently carried out by a 'Death Squad'."
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news/press/16033.shtml

http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/Bra-summary-eng

"Life in a Brazilian Shantytown"
http://www.bahiastreet.org/shantytown

Dude, I could go on and on about the real Brazil. Terry Gilliam had the jist of it with his dystopian dark comedy.

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Oilrig medic on May 10, 2006 - 2:42pm

Fallout,
Check the dates on these articles and then google Washington DC. The social problems you illustrate are common in almost all urban settings. Meanwhile I have not been on a guided tour I´ve been working in a clinic. Email me a request and I´ll send you pictures of the REAL Brazil. What makes it REAL? Is Washington DC REAL what about NY? I definitely don´t consider Hollywood real but I´ve been all these places. So break down a dollar a day living expenses. Not counting beer (which is also cheap) you can have a lavish steak dinner for R$6 approximately 3 dollars with the exchange. People below the Poverty line get more than enough rice beans and other staples free so a family of five on a dollar a day has R$10 for living.

I repeat my question have you been to this country other than through www.google.com and the BBC?

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fallout on May 15, 2006 - 10:21am

Sorry I didn't see this earlier.
Yes, I have been to Brazil, I did ministry outreach work there in the mid 1990's with my church group. What I saw then was shocking, to say the least, and these days I try to avoid unnecessary travel to devoluting, third-world countries, where news like this
"Brazilian criminal gang riots leave 35 police dead"
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=723912006
is commonplace.

Back on the issue of the state of living accomodations outside of the "guided tour". Don't tell me Brazil is not overrun with poor shantytowns, because it is. Brazilians even have their own name for them, "Favelas".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favela
http://www.barok.de/Rio2000/jpeg/favelas.jpg
The real Brazil is a far cry from a tourist destination.

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fallout on May 16, 2006 - 12:50pm

Oh, and it just keeps getting better in that wonderful utopia that is Brazil:

"Sao Paulo, Brazil -- Four days of violence in Brazil's financial capital have killed more than 80 people, including 39 law-enforcement officers, victims of an underworld run by prisoners able to use cell phones to order murders, drug deals and violent unrest in prison and on city streets."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/16/MNGVRISA4C1.DTL

Yes, I definitely see Brazil as a model every nation should be looking to follow....

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Todd on May 10, 2006 - 12:16am

Actually, Milton Maciel has had innumerable posts on the Energy Resources fourm about his success with organic sugar cane production in Brazil as well as processing the juice. There are too many links to show but the forum is here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources

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Nick Rouse on May 9, 2006 - 5:54pm

Before you get too enthusiastic about biodiesel read this. Unless there is massive protectionism or subsidies (which would cause all sorts of problems with the World Trade Organisation), biodiesel is not going to come in any quantities from America. Price competition will mean it will come from third world countries and cause massive damage to the local environment and to the production of locally grown food and lead to widespread dispossession of small farmers.

If you want an idea of the damage that can be caused by third world catering to first world appetites read here about shrimp farming.

Biodiesel using more than waste oil is a bad idea.

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