 | Chavez vs ExxonMobil war escalates | The Oil Drum | Climate Code Red: The Case for a Sustainability Emergency |  |
Ethanol from Coal
Posted by Robert Rapier on February 11, 2008 - 11:00am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: coal, coal-to-liquids, ethanol [list all tags]
The handwriting has been on the wall on this issue for a couple of years. In fact, I first mentioned it in March 2006 in Improving the Prospects for Grain Ethanol. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote:
This is an option that most environmentalists will abhor. However, it is the one most likely to take place in the short-term. The natural gas input into ethanol production is a serious long-term threat to economic viability. Since natural gas is a fossil fuel, and supplies are diminishing, it will put upward pressure on the price of ethanol over time. However, if the energy inputs could be produced from coal, ethanol prices would be insulated from escalating natural gas prices.
Using coal might also lessen the significance of the EROEI debate. If you take 1 BTU of (cheap) coal, and you get back 0.8 BTUs of (more valuable, liquid) ethanol, then EROEI doesn't have the same significance as when you use natural gas to produce ethanol. You converted the BTUs into a readily usable liquid form. This argument may be valid from an economic point of view, but it ignores the fact that coal is still an inherently dirty energy source. If coal remains abundant and cheap, coal economics will beat natural gas economics, but coal will increase the rate at which we put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If we come up with a viable method of sequestering the carbon dioxide produced at the power plant, then we might have a temporary economic solution (although we are still using up a non-sustainable fuel in the process).
Now I am not going to tell you that I think this is a good idea. I am just telling you what I think is going to happen. And a few days ago a friend sent a link that says Iowa is considering a couple of new coal plants for some ethanol plants, acknowledging the superior economics of coal as fuel:
Two coal-fired electricity plants, in Marshalltown and near Waterloo, have been proposed in Iowa to provide electricity for the growing collection of Iowa ethanol plants. Critics say that ethanol’s need for coal-powered electricity makes the case that it is not a green fuel.
Alliant Energy, co-owner of the Marshalltown project, said that the needs of the ethanol plants can only be solved at this point in time by nuclear, natural gas or coal, and that natural gas is not economical while nuclear has been taken off the table due to environmental concerns. The proposed plants would cost $1 billion each.
Last week, Xethanol Corporation announced that it would invest $500,000 in Consus Ethanol for its cogeneration project that would provide power for its ethanol production process from waste coal, that would have a $0.48 per gallon cost advantage over comparable ethanol plants in the Midwest powered by natural gas. The Pittsburgh-based facility will distribute fuel to East Coast markets, which have higher prices for ethanol.
On the subject of using coal as the source of BTUs for ethanol production, there are two things that stand out. First, the current process of using natural gas to produce ethanol makes little sense, since you can use natural gas directly in a CNG vehicle. You gain little or nothing by turning a BTU of natural gas into a BTU of ethanol (plus some animal feed). However, coal can't be used directly as automotive fuel, so one can make the argument of upgrading the quality of the energy source by turning some of coal's BTUs into ethanol.
Second, the cost of energy per BTU is far lower for coal. The current price of natural gas is $8 per million (MM) BTUs. However, according to the EIA coal sells for about $40/ton, or 2 cents a pound. The energy content of bituminous coal is about 12,750 BTU/lb, which calculates out to $1.57 per MMBTU. (Just double-checked my numbers, and found that the EIA reported that coal prices in September 2007 were $1.78 per MMBTU, so I was in the ballpark).
So, the economics are going to drive ethanol producers toward coal as their fuel of choice. And some have already been driven there. I predict we will see a lot more of this in the future, especially in light of my previous essay on the economics of corn ethanol. Plug in coal at $1.57/MMBTU instead of natural gas at $8, and it makes a huge difference. But for ethanol producers who do go this route, don't pretend that what you are doing is clean or renewable.
It would seem to me that scrapping ethanol altogether, gassifying coal on a massive scale, and converting automobiles to CNG would be a better way to go. The EROI for such a scheme surely must come out considerably better. There must be a way to gassify coal (maybe in situ?) that would be cleaner than just burning it directly for fuel. Automobiles and service stations would have to be converted for CNG. On the other hand, most of the existing inventory of autos can't run E85 now, and very few service stations carry it, so we're going to need to be making some investments in some sort of changeover in any case. The advantage of going the coal gassification route is that it doesn't just help the transport fuel situation, it also helps with Peak NG. The coal will eventually run out, of course (and much sooner under this scheme), but it does buy us some time to transition.
It would seem to me that scrapping ethanol altogether, gasifying coal on a massive scale, and converting automobiles to CNG would be a better way to go.
It would be so much smarter to retire the cars... we have bicycles, trains, feet...
Is gasifying coal to power cars more easily done than simply moving to electric transport and converting the coal to grid power as we do today? At least with electric vehicles we have alternatives in place when (if) wind, solar and nuclear ramp up.
In any case, considering coal+corn for ethanol suggests we are rather desperate. This is incredibly wasteful.
A good summary!
Does anybody in the USA that makes the law care about CO2 emissions at all?
As somebody below says, welcome to the Anthropocene.
I am not sure there is any point in being desperate. I saw a chart that suggested that the US uses more FF energy than the entire estimated energy gain in all biomass from photosysnthesis in the US. In other words, if every square inch of US soil was planted with corn that you still wouldn't replace FF. There are no free lunches; and this is brutally true in energy. Ethanol from biomass is also BS.
All of this, PO, Climate change, the ethanol BS; indicates that humanity has to shift its mindset and it is not going to. If getting desperate is what counts it will happen when gas is $10+/gallon and sea levels have risen a foot and continuing to rise so a world wide moratorium closes all coal fired power stations.
Then people will be desperate!
If we had enough lead for all those electric car batteries, electric cars would be the way to go. An electric car with a fifty mile range for commuting, shopping, etc, and a van to take out of the garage once a month if you needed to drive a long ways without stopping someplace like work to charge your batteries for a few hours.
There is plenty of lead for run-arounds for everyone.
Advanced lead-acid like that from Firefly would use a lot less anyway, and in a light, specially designed vehicle give you plenty of range for most commutes and going shopping:
http://www.fireflyenergy.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5...
Background & History - fireflyenergy.com
The Japanese have always been doubtful about plug-ins, and have said why not go straight to all-electric.
Unfortunately car companies have emphasised the resource-constrained lithium and nickel metal hydride batteries, when if you want to make plug-ins zinc-air would do a better job and is not resource constrained.
"The Japanese have always been doubtful about plug-ins, and have said why not go straight to all-electric."
As best I can tell, that's partly due to Japan's small size & short travel distances, and partly just competitive FUD.
I'd be curious to see a better analysis of lithium supply limits. It appears to be plentiful in theory, though current suppliers are somewhat limited.
There are real resource limits for lithium, Nick, and to a lesser extent Nickel for NiMiH batteries.
Here is a discussion complete with references and sources on my blog:
http://energy-futures.blogspot.com/2008/02/resource-constraints-for-batt...
Unfortunately, lead for advanced lead acid batteries also seems to be in short supply, at least anytime soon:
http://energy-futures.blogspot.com/2008/02/resource-constraints-for-lead...
Zinc air seems the best option, or perhaps Sodium Nickel Chloride to some extent.
I suspect that if one were to rank order the number of trips - from shortest to longest, clustered in 5 or 10 mile increments - the average person (or the total motoring public in aggregate - it doesn't really make much difference which way you look at it) takes in a given time period (a year, say), you will very likely find that they take far more short trips than long trips.
Therefore, I think we need to just approach the whole problem differently. Instead of coming up with an EV that will work for both long and short trips, we need to be thinking in terms of providing people with small, inexpensive EVs that will just work for those short trips. Not everyone can walk or bike everywhere around their locality, all the time, and not everyone will be well served by mass transit for a long time to come, so we do need to at least be weaning them off of the habit of hopping into an SUV for a quick trip down to the post office or grocery store. For longer trips, unless someone is making such trips very often, it is going to have to make more sense for them to just rent a vehicle with the capacity to go long distances when they need it.
Now here's the thing. If we are talking about most people having small, inexpensive EVs with limited speed (maybe a little higher than the 25-35 mph that NEVs are limited to now, but certainly not much more than 55 mph) and limited range (maybe 25 miles or so), then that is less of a challenge than is coming up with EVs for everyone that can go several hundred miles at highway speeds. We just might be able to come up with enough materials for enough batteries for that.
As for the long-distance cars, I don't think that electric is the way to go with those at all. Probably some form of fueled, combustion-based engine is the better solution. Whether the fuel should be ethanol or biodiesel or methanol or methane or hydrogen is something we can debate, and probably will endlessly. But if you are only talking about a small fraction of the total vehicle population now on the road (with further decreases as more intercity passenger rail comes on line), then each of these options looks a lot better than they do when talking about using them for the entire motor car population.
First of all, we need to rebuild neighborhoods to make them walkable. We can do this by building village centers in suburban areas where necessities and important wants could be made available within walking distance to all.
We should make it a societal goal to reduce automobile use by 80% by 2050.
Car sharing is an interesting concept. EVs could be part of the pool for short trips. Longer trips could be made by flex-fuel hybrids or by bus (Reducing the use of automobiles could shift resources to making bus transit more available and timely).
I have reviewed the Meridian Lithium report before - it's an interesting preliminary study, though it jumps to some conclusions on the USGS study. IIRC, it's evaluation of the Reserve Base makes a bad assumption on how "existing economically viable techniques" are affected by price changes - if price changes, economic viability changes, and he doesn't address that. He notes that li-ion battery prices need to fall, but he doesn't address the fact that lithium cost is only about .25% of battery cost, so increased lithium prices wouldn't be a serious problem. More importantly, the author has done some questionable things in the past, and I'd like a confirmation from another reputable source.
Oil has been the object of intensive exploration for many decades, and OPEC members have an incentive to overstate them. It's easy to assume that other commodities have been explored for in the same way, but that's rarely the case - usually, they receive only the exploration needed to ensure production within the window of time necessary to find new reserves and exploit them. In fact, sometimes commodity reserves are taxed - that's a big incentive to keep them down.
Lithium is a pretty abundant element, and TOD posts have suggested that it has gotten little serious prospecting (perhaps due to very low prices until recently), that it's pretty abundant, and that it's available from many similar salt-flats elsewhere which have received little attention - I'd like to see some good analysis here beyond this one source. At this point I don't think we can say anything stronger than "questions have been raised about the adequacy of lithium supplies".
On lead, I couldn't find the discussion of lead on the Stockhouse site you link to (the link is cut off, and I couldn't find it searching the site). There doesn't seem to be a question of insufficient resources. I don't see any quantitative discussion of the suggestion that production can't be ramped up quickly enough - that seems unlikely to me. Commodity production increases are difficult in time frames of 1-2 years, but in timeframes of 5-10 years production can be increased at high % rates. I think you need to present more information to make your case that limits to lead production are a serious problem.
It seems that the Meridian report has serious inaccuracies, and is too gloomy by half.
It aint' easy for an average guy like me to sort out what is happening, without engineering training.
I like to put ideas out there though, with the intention of having them shot down if there are holes in them.
Here is a very thorough discussion of the issue of lithium availability:
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2008/02/mitsubishi-unvi.html#m...
It's a shame that some of the posts are personal, including a couple of mine, but some seem to find it a personal affront to suggest anything contrary to their own ideas.
I am hoping that one of the more technically qualified people there will write this up, so that we have an easy reference point.
I would still be more comfortable if we had rather more emphasis on zinc, with it's vastly larger resource base.
If lithium is in good supply, lead resources are of less interest anyway, so it seems concerns are misplaced.
It was an interesting excercise though!
That is a good discussion over at fraserdomain.
I took a closer look at the MIR report, and found that indeed, the data didn't support the conclusions. Definitely biased.
I sometimes post info about which I'm unsure, to get feedback. It's very helpful to say that's what you're doing, or to signal your level of certainty with phrases like "it seems that", or "this source suggests that". You'll alarm people less.
SailDog - I have finally heard an accurate evaluation of "What we are likely to do in response to Peak Oil and global warming". For me, as well as a growing number of people, it's clear that until we are left with no alternative to happy motoring, infotainment and addictive consumerism the prospect of people retiring their cars and taking effective actions to solve global warming and Peak Oil are just more wishful thinking.
George Bush told us years ago in his state of the Union that "America is addicted to oil".
If we are addicts then it is reasonable to assume that:
a. not all of us will decide to wake up to our addiction in time
b. each of us will have reach our personal bottom before we make the change
c. the biggest enemy for an addict is denial
d. Only one out of 3 addicts are able to free themselves from their addiction before it kills them.
Therfore I would have to conclude that for America to make the shift to a sustainable lifestyle there will need to be a massive dieoff of most of us.
Does anybody in the USA that makes the law care about CO2 emissions at all?
Yes: the state legislature of California. They wanted their own automotive emissions standards to include CO2 and greenhouse gases, resulting in more strict efficiency standards than Federal law.
But they, and the EPA's own scientific staff, were overruled in an extraordinary decision by the head of the EPA (a political appointee), and I believe a legal ruling says that any state can't make its own emissions standards unless the Feds agree.
So, no. At the moment, there is no legally enforcable standard on greenhouse emissions in any way in the USA, or any mandatory economic penalty imposed.
There are new Adsorbed Natural Gas natural gas tanks that can store more natural gas in a smaller space at lower pressures on vehicles. If you gasify corn stalks into Substitute Natural Gas (methane) you would have carbon neutral fuel for cars. You can just pipe the SNG into the existing natural gas pipelines and fill your ANG tanks on your car in your garage more conveniently and at a lower cost.
I suggest that Leanan bring back my all-time favorite HO post, gasifying coal and oil shale with surplus nuclear weapons.
I was thinking along the same lines.
If you are going to use coal, particularly bituminous or subbituminous, why not just gasify it? With the inital volatile content of a medium-high volatile coal somewhere around 20-30%, by weight, you'd be well on your way to creating a liquid fuel of reasonably high BTU value.
The rough rule of thumb value we use for coal-to-liquids (and it really does depend upon the BTU value and both the proximate and the ultimate analysis of the coal) is over 2.4 BOE/ton of coal.
Robert,
I think your coal pricing is a bit out!
McCloskey's reported last week that coal was rising rapidly and had reached $270 per tonne
http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=137#more-137
We could be closer to peak coal than we imagine - possibly within 40 years, for the following reasons:
1. Natural industrial growth in newly industrialising countries such as India and China.
2. Coal being consumed to offset petroleum consumption - such as coal to liquids.
3. Remaining coal stocks are inferior grades meaning more tonnage has to be mined for equivalent energy content. Lignite is about 60% of the calorific value of anthracite. The US has already peaked in anthracite and bituminous coals.
We may have our eye on the oil price - but we should also be watching coal.
Existing Chinese coal fired power plants seldom exceed 28% thermal efficiency, although they are starting to build some ultra-super-critical plants that will produce power at about 45% efficiency (before transmission losses).
By way of comparison, the typical efficiency of UK and US plants is about 38%, and then about 8% of the power produced is lost in distribution.
It is good that we have all these tecnologies that may be available for long term use.
However, none should be considered, if not accompanied by a long and shorter term demand side reduction plan.
Pollution from burning and mining coal is a large concern with viewing this resource as a mere economic substitution for the diminishing oil resource. And remember, there is a finite supply of coal.
That's what spot coal costs after you ship it someplace at the peak of a boom. If you build a strip mine you sell coal for a lot less on long term contract.
I'm not religious, but all I have to say after reading this is, "god help us all." It looks like we'll cook the planet before human activity is curtailed by a serious energy crisis. Welcome to the Anthropocene.
We need to set as a goal, and REALIZE the reduction of automobile and airplane use by 80% by 2050.
True enough, but I find this stated a bit euphemistically, as though only social considerations are worth mentioning.
How about "This is an option which, if implemented, may contribute to killing off many of the planet's existing species and much of its human population in coming decades and centuries."
RR is clear he's not supporting it, but why not call it as the majority of climate scientists see it?
I wouldn't want to be raising corn to compete with coal. Sounds like a storm brewing for all those midwest farmers.
forget the farmers.
There's a storm brewing for anyone who eats.
"The three major U.S. grain exchanges said in a coordinated statement late on Friday that they will raise the daily trading limit in wheat futures to 60 cents per bushel from 30 cents, starting with the February 11 trade date."
Usually when this happens, the commodity in question trades down.
But this ain't usual times.
Lowest wheat stox in 60 years. Maybe 100.
Wheat Open High Low Last
Mar 08 1153 1153 1115 1115 * Feb 08, 17:06
Today:
Mar 08 1153 1153 1150 1153 Feb 11, 09:29
$1131.50 now -CNBC
How much of that panic pricing is because of wheat and soy acreage turned to corn for ethanol production? I think the commodity grain market is set for a fall. A recession could lower energy prices and currently uneconomic ethanol production could crash. Suddenly the tassle would be off the ear, so to speak.
The raising of trading limits isn't all that significant if you look at it as a percentage of the current price vs: the old limit as a percentage of the price five years ago.
I can gloom and doom with the best of them but my hunch is that this agricultural boom is heading for a bust, short term. Recessions cause people to eat less meat, drive less, buy less and generally pull in their consumptive horns. We all know the common wisdom that it takes ten calories of corn to grow one calorie of beef. The corn required to make a hamburger can make four pounds of tacos.
If the coal to ethanol conversion process is scalable and economic the implications for corn based ethanol would seem to be pretty grim. If corn prices crash, acreage will go back to wheat and soy.
As for wheat, in the US the answer would be to be "not much". From the USDA numbers, in 2006 the acreage downturn happened for soybean and oats (and perhaps hay production.) There were problems worldwide in 2006 for wheat production so demand for US exports is understandably strong.
The cornbelt in the US overlaps the major soybean growing areas, thus there is a natural tradeoff there that we would expect to continue. Should there be a major problem say in China over this year's soybean production then we might see beans in the same situation as wheat currently finds itself. Historically in China there has been tradeoffs to actually substituting human hair for soybeans... really, for making "soy" sauce. That is just for flavoring of course - for the bulk protein I think the Chinese are running out of options.
hair is protein.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen01/gen01995.htm
There's a little rent-seeking going on with the coal company. In reality, the ethanol producers are moving, pretty rapidly, toward biomass for energy. Several are taking the "Corn-Plus route" of burning their thin stillage, others will take the Poet route (too complicated to explain, here.) One, or two, have actually taken the route of using the waste heat from a present coal-fired utility.
Interestingly, coal hasn't worked very well where it was tried. It was probably a design flaw in that specific plant, but they weren't able to generate enough heat.
The really good news is that the ethanol plants are learning how to make alcohol at lower, and lower temperatures. That, and the newer membrane technology is bringing the "energy invested" part of the equation down very quickly.
"The really good news is that the ethanol plants are learning how to make alcohol at lower, and lower temperatures."
And some of these guys say their stuff tastes almost as good
as Jack Daniels. Green, not the Black.
;}
Just make sure you get to it BEFORE it's "denatured." :)
C'mon!!
Let's all sing!!
WE'RE BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE, OH YEAH! BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE, BABY!!
It such irony. We thought the BOMB would be the end...
But no. It's going to be the freaking car.
Imagine that.
Don't count The Bomb out yet. This is The Car's show, yes, but The Bomb may yet make a "special guest" appearance, right before the end of the show. ;P
Don't count out the nuclear car bomb or small sailboat bomb. It may be the future delivery system of choice.
Now that would be just perfect! The exact opposite of a neutron bomb - takes out all the d@mn cars, and leaves the people standing.
With all the electronics on new cars, the EMP from a high altitude nuclear burst would take out the cars (and a whole lot more) and leave the people standing around with nothing to do (or eat).
E. Swanson