The Oil Drum

37 comments on Biofuel progress, a report from Dubuque

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mbnewtrain on October 17, 2007 - 8:37pm

This conference had a lot of data from "in use" processes. Very good reporting!

Two questions:

1. Did anyone mention the use of alternate sources of heat for the ethanol process to increase EROEI? I have heard of using cow manure and other organic waste to generate nat. gas for the process, thus increasing the EROEI.

2. The cost associated with using switchgrass as boiler fuel in a normally coal fired plant sounds very high. The $61/ton cost of transport equals $1342 per truckload or $6100 per railcar load. This equals a trip length of 500 to 800 miles. These figures must be off. I would think that switchgrass could be grown very near the power plant in normal economic situation, thus reducing this cost to 10% of quoted figure.

Comment: Cost for coal may be $20/ton, but that is not delivered price. Rail transportation from Wyoming or Montana where low sulpher coal is located costs more like $20 per ton, so delivered cost is more like $40/ton.

Mark in St Louis, USA

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Heading Out on October 17, 2007 - 10:07pm

The $61 figure covered harvesting (with special equipment to prepare the bales, and load the trucks) and storage - the issue of moisture content is critical, and thus they had to be in barns with at least a gravel floor, and good water protection in the walls and roof. I don't know how they amortized off these costs, nor how they were derived. The numbers came in response to a question at the end of the paper and so was not very detailed, and was, I recall, because the presenter had said that the power company liked the idea but would not displace $20 coal with $120 switchgrass, and the question related to where the $120 figure came from. The plant is up around the Iowa:Missouri border. (And I am not sure if it covered the cost of herbicide and a small amount of fertilizer for the switchgrass - sorry).

The use of biodigesters for gas generation was one of the topics mentioned by the first speaker, but apart from making pellets from animal waste at a Missouri college, and the possible cellulosic source, I can't remember animal waste being mentioned much.

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thomas deplume on October 17, 2007 - 10:52pm

The powerplant for the grass experiments is in Ottumwa, IA. At least some of the grass was from the Corydon, IA area roughly 75 miles away.

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practical on October 18, 2007 - 5:08am

This is where alternative feed stocks to corn break down. Harvesting costs, as pointed out, are significant. There is no high tech-high volume infrastructure in place as there is with corn. Those who favor such as switch grass are unfamiliar with the efficiency of the corn harvest and what would be involved to obtain such efficiency with alternatives to corn. Corn has definitive quality characteristics that must be met at sale. What will be the definitive quality characteristics of switch grass and such? No one knows and no one can say. Storage is a big issue even for corn. Transporting bulking low density materials is difficult and time consuming. Also completely lacking is a discussion of on whose land the alternative feed stocks will be produced. Poor land is owned by poor owners mostly with little capital for investment. The better land is owned by the more wealthy who are not going to forgo growing a well established crop such as corn with a firm market price for a pie in the sky scheme.