70 comments on On burning wood, coppicing and pollarding
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
70 comments on On burning wood, coppicing and pollarding
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Google search
Advanced search
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
- Politics and Peak Energy
- How do we maintain adequate phosphorus and potassium levels for crops?
- What should we do with funds set aside for retirement?
TOD:Europe
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- Electric cars an 'attractive proposition' for Australia
- Electric Vehicles: The End Of Australian Manufacturing ?
- Upcoming Forum In Sydney: 'Peak Oil - Is this the end of civilisation as we know it ?'
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“This order [i.e. capitalism] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with the economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”
—Max Weber, 1905
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Dave Murphy, Engineer-Poet, Glenn, Heading Out, Jason Bradford, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Nate Hagens, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:ANZ: aeldric, Big Gav, Phil Hart
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.










GAIA Host Collective
Willow and poplar wood gets 17-19MJ/kg. Miscanthus produces 19-20 MJ/kg and switchgrass 18-20 MJ/kg.
http://www.biofuelsb2b.com/useful_info.php?page=Typic
http://cta.ornl.gov/bedb/appendix_b/Bioenergy_Feedstock_Characteristics.xls
Trees produce 3-6 dry tons of renewable biomass per year while switchgrass gets 3-10 dry tons per acre and miscanthus gets 4-15 dry tons per acre.
Grasses can also be pelletized.
http://pelheatblog.com/2008/02/12/miscanthus-pellets/
That would mean that you could produce up to 74,130,000 MJ or 20.6 GWh per km2 with miscanthus or almost 4,000 TWh (total energy) with only 2% of the area of the US.
The downside of grasses is the high ash content. High ash content = high mineral requirements.
A diverse mix of native "weeds" beats out the monocultures if conditions are suboptimal (link). Its not clear from the article abstract if the biomass grown in the test plots had a lower ash content, if they were truly "low input" I think they would have to be.
Not according to the table above, repeated below.
http://www.biofuelsb2b.com/useful_info.php?page=Typic
miscanthus 1-3% ash
switchgrass 6% ash
poplar 1.2% ash
willow 1-5% ash
coals are rated as low ash coal <8% ash
medium ash >15%, <8% ash
a high ash coal is >15% ash
Since we're talking about 50%(!) co-firing coal biomass ash seems
minor.
Monocultures could be a problem in the future but right no there's too little biomass IMO.
Underutilized resource, agreed. Much better to displace NG and fuel oil in residential and commercial heating applications with biomass than to incur massive capital expenditures turning same into liquids.
Premium hardwood pellets currently have an ash content of less than 1%, but its a limited resource as its waste from furniture factories. The problem with grasses is the high silica content that causes clinker buildup on surfaces in the firebox. Miscanthus is seldom as low as 1%, that would probably be for hybrids harvested late winter -- some minerals leech out if it stands a while.
Every btu of ethanol replaces 10 Btus of petroleum and 95% of
the input energy is provided by biomass with an overall efficiency of 45%.
Therefore 1 ton of biomass(16 GJ of wood) would produce 7.2 GJ of fuel but uses only .8GJ of fossil fuel.
Compare this to finished fuels like gasoline, LNG or CNG which are net energy negative; 1 GJ of gasoline comes from 1.25 GJ of fossil fuel(petroleum) but 1 GJ of ethanol comes from .8GJ of fossil fuels(cellulosic ethanol uses very little fossil fuels).
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/39436.pdf
Your way 100 BTUs of wood saves 100 BTUs of oil/coal/gas or my way 100 BTUs of wood saves 45 BTUs of fuel/ethanol.
The fact is that the US residence and commercial uses 2 quads of petroleum and 8 quads of natural gas versus 27.9 quads of gasoline and diesel from petroleum.
So at most you could save 2 quads of heating oil which would come from 2.5 quads of petroleum.
How much cellulosic ethanol could be produced?
A gov't report says that 1 billion dry tons of biomass could be sustainably harvested.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/final_billionton_vision_report2...
Assuming 10,000 MJ per ton,
10,000 MJ x 948 BTU/MJ x 45% x 1 billion dry tons = 4.2 quads of cellulosic ethanol requiring .8 quads of fossil fuel.
Remember, people, majorian accuses other people of innumeracy.
Interested, people? Think!
NREL says the petroleum to fuel rato is 10:1.
Why does NREL say that?
Are NREL scientists really innumerate?
Or is Space Cadet E-P who forgot to divide by 2.8?
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/39436.pdf
"Every btu of ethanol replaces 10 Btus of petroleum" and "the petroleum to fuel ratio is 10:1 for ethanol" are not equivalent statements.
Correct.
Let me rephraise that.
1 BTU of petroleum used to produce 10 BTUs of ethanol
replaces 11.7 BTUs of petroleum used to produce 10 BTUs of gasoline. Net savings--10.7 BTUs of petroleum for the same
energy.
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/39436.pdf
Ah, it's all about petroleum, not the natural gas used to make the ammonia for fertilizer or run the distillery to concentrate the products. I guess those don't count if you're innumerate (or a propagandist).
Just think: if you made the agri-chemicals and ran all the equipment on natural gas, it would still suck energy-wise but the ratio of output to petroleum input would be INFINITY to one.
</sarcasm>
Peak Oil is first about oil.
Corn ethanol requires .1 Btu of oil and .6 Btu of natural gas or coal per Btu of fuel according to Nrel.
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/39436.pdf
By law up to 15 billion gallons per year of corn ethanol can be made or 1.14 quads which would require .114 quads of petroleum (.05 mbpd) and .68 quads of natural gas(.68 Tcf) or coal.
So by corn ethanol we can save 1 quad of petroleum or a little less than .5 mbpd.
With 1.3 billion tons of biomass we would produce 3.5 billion barrel equivalent or 20.5 quads of fuel[cellulosic ethanol], which would require 2.05 quads(1 mbpd) of petroleum and 2.05 quads (2 Tcf) of natural gas (or coal).
So by cellulosic ethanol from 1.3 billion tons of biomass we save net 18 quads of petroleum(8.3 mbpd) and spend 2 Tcf of natural gas.
If we do both corn ethanol and cellulose we would save 8.8 mbpd
for using 2.68 Tcf of natural gas (or coal)--- or we would gain
19 quads of liquid fuel for using 2.73 quads of natural(12% of domestic natural gas consumption).
The US has 237 Tcf of natural gas proven reserves and a resource mean of 526 Tcf of 'undiscovered' natural gas.
The US has 21 Gb of proven oil reserves with a resource mean of 75 Gb of oil resource. The US produces less than 2 Gb/yr of domestic oil(5mbpd).
Suppose the US were 100% cutoff from foreign oil,
corn plus cellulosic ethanol would produce 3.6 Gb/yr
--a bit less than 50% of US oil consumption (21.6 quads of fuel) per year using 2.73 Tcf of gas(13% of current domestic prod.)-- and .38 Gb/yr of oil produced (20% of current).
Now obviously the US has'nt the infrastructure today to produce
that much ethanol but assuming a 14.4% per year compounded growth rate, in 30 years we would go from 5 billion gallons per year(.38 quads/yr) to 280 billion gallons(21.6 quads per year).
It's only 50% of the petroleum we use per year today but it will last a long time.
I just want to note how utterly bat-guano crazy you are.
With most of the latter required for the distillation process. It is better to look at fuel paths which do not require distillation. It would also be good to eliminate inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are not needed in the product. Ethanol made from corn fails on all criteria.
But blenders are already butting up against the 10% limit for standard gasoline. You're not going to get to 15 billion gallons without an increasing fraction going to E85.
You're not even getting your own numbers right. The NREL multiplier you quoted for gas/coal is 0.6, so the required input would be 12.3 quads. Note that this is more than half of current natural gas consumption of ~23 quads/year.
Not even close. Your numbers are all wrong, even if we assume your sources are right.
It would be far simpler and cheaper to just make high-economy NGV's and run them directly on the natural gas (if we had it), eliminating all the overhead of growing and processing the corn. If corn stoves could burn the corn at more than 55% efficiency (I found a quote of 60%), they could displace more than 1 BTU of natural gas for every BTU of ethanol the corn could make. The displaced NG could run vehicles. This eliminates a lot of processing as well as the subsidies. Not that I expect the poster child for innumeracy to be able to figure that out on his own... or even follow the arithmetic when it's being spoon-fed to him.
280 billion gallons at 3 gal/bu requires ~93 billion bushels. The record US corn harvest is around 12 billion bu. Growing 93 billion bu at 200 bu/ac would require 465 million acres of cropland; this is roughly 5 times as much as has ever been planted to corn in the USA, and is roughly equal to all land cultivated in the USA.
Let me repeat this (not for you, you're too far gone, but for those out there who might be tempted to take you seriously):
YOU ARE TOTALLY BAT-GUANO CRAZY.
Wrong again Space Cadet Second Class E-P.
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/39436.pdf
The chart "Energy required to produce fuels" on page 3 of the booklet shows that you need about less than .1 Btus of oil and less than .1 Btus of natural gas/coal for cellulosic ethanol, so .1 x 20.5 = 2.05. As most people know, cellulosic ethanol requires less fossil fuel than corn ethanol.
The reason I used 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol is that the
Congress limited corn ethanol to 15 billion gallons in the 2007
energy bill.
http://www.allbusiness.com/energy-utilities/renewable-energy-biofuels-et...
Of course, I never said anything of the kind.
I said 15 billion gallons of corn-ethanol plus 20.5 quads of cellulosic ethanol from the 1.3 billion ton biomass scenario which works out to ~280 billion gallons of ethanol, as NREL says on page 4 of the booklet under chart "The 1.3 billion-ton biomass scenario".
SpaceCadet doesn't really describe you well enough as it suggests mere ignorance without your pomposity, menace and grating negativity, E-P.
So henceforth you will be named (by me)---Darlek E-P.
Ah, you changed the assumptions without listing them. BTW, you should not be using a 6-page brochure intended to be printed on glossy paper as a reference. There are no data tables or citations for sources. The least-authoritative source you should be citing is a white paper... unless 6 pages of pretty pictures is the most complex thing you can handle.
Of course, you can't even get that right. A 50% biomass-to-ethanol efficiency (omitting fossil inputs) would yield roughly 7.5-8 million BTU of product per ton of input (biomass at 15.8 million BTU/ton). That is about what the advocates are reporting as their theoretical efficiency, and it comes to approximately 100 gallons of ethanol per ton. You could only get 130 billion gallons out of 1.3 billion tons... if you can get all the processes working, which appears to be a ways off if the schedule slips and bankruptcies of cellulosic ethanol companies are any indication.
But let's assume it's feasible. Should you? Let's be generous to ethanol, and assume that engines tuned for it can achieve 80% of the volumetric fuel economy of gasoline engines. The USA's 3.1 trillion vehicle-miles per year would require 175 billion gallons of ethanol, or about 13.6 quads. That's an average of 17.7 MPGe, or about 4400 BTU/mile. At a generous 30% average drivetrain efficiency this would deliver about 1320 BTU/mi (390 Wh/mi) to the wheels. This takes 135% of your 1.3 billion tons of biomass; you have some 26% of your demand left unsatisfied, and nothing left over for other purposes.
Suppose instead that you chose electricity instead of ethanol as your medium. 20.5 quads of biomass is processed in the field to pyrolysis oil at 65% efficiency, yielding 13.3 quads of oil. This is burned in combined-cycle gas-turbine powerplants at 60% thermal efficiency, producing 8.0 quads of electricity (2.34 trillion kWH). Transferring this over the grid and to wheels at 60% efficiency delivers 1.40 trillion kWh at the wheels. At 390 Wh/mi, this is sufficient to drive 3.6 trillion miles, requiring just 86% of your available biomass. You have 14% (328 billion kWh) left over for other purposes.
The previous calculation assumes no improvements in vehicle efficiency over today's fleet. If the average electric vehicle is as efficient as the GM Volt (250 Wh/mi at the wall), demand would only require 860 billion kWh at the generators, leaving about 540 billion kWh for other purposes. The leftovers come to roughly 145% of all renewable electricity put on the US grid in 2008.
Of course, you can add wind power or nuclear to run your electric car if your biomass supply runs short; wind and uranium can't help you if you're burning ethanol no matter how much you have.
In brief, cellulosic ethanol makes no sense. Ethanol is a way to keep transport running on liquid fuels so that the oil companies continue to own the market when the ethanol makers fail. It has enormous opportunity costs and should be deep-sixed immediately.
No, it's far better applied to the guy you see in the mirror.
So who to believe in, nrel scientists or a nuke/electron economy cornucopian Space Cadet?
Everything goes back to the efficiency of either lightweight hybrid cars at 50 mpg-gasoline or EVs at 2.56 mi/kwh(your number)?
Okay, lets look at running the hybrid on cellulosic ethanol from biomass at 33 mpg(1.5 GGE) versus grid electricity from a plain old 30% fossil fuel plant, with battery charging at 75% efficent per Ulf Bossel equals 22.5% efficient.
BTW, your example of bio-pyrolysis is wrong.
First, 1 ton of biomass converts to ~50 gallons of bio-oil(which contains water), the rest is char and CO2. I will unrealistically assume burning the char completely covers the conversion of biomass to bio-oil.
UOP processed 2250 gallons of bio-oil in an oil refinery into 1010 gallons of gasoline and 250 of diesel or 1260 gallons of actual fuel --56% so 1 ton of biomass produced 28 gallons of 'bio-gasoline' which is the energy equal to 42 gallons of ethanol in energy. Versus +60 gallons per ton of cellulosic ethanol.
So your overall efficiency for bio-oil assuming biomass is 17 million BTUs per ton is 42 x 78000/17000000 = 20% not 65% as you state.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/sp2UserFiles/Program/307/biomasstoDiesel/RobertB...
The oil industry likes bio-oil because it needs their refineries for upgrading(any process energy input required is not included of course).
(1 gal/75700 BTUs)/33.33 mpg = 2271 Btu per mile.
2271 BTU per mile/45% efficiency = 5047 primary Btu/mile
If I use your .39 kwh/ mi or 2.56 mi/kwh,
3412 BTUs/kwh/2.56 mi per kwh = 1333 Btu per mile.
1333 BTUs/mi / 22.5% = 5924 Btu per mile
So at you 390 wh/mi an ethanol powered hybrid beats a grid electricity (charging batteries) from a conventional steam plant.
You need special 60% efficent plants and super-efficent bio-oil
conversion to make your fantasy numbers work.
Not too impressive, E-P.
Oh, believe NREL. Just don't believe what you quote out of context.
We could go to the Tesla roadster at 200 Wh/mi (5 mi/kWh) if you like, but I thought that was too optimistic for a back-of-the-envelope analysis. I was trying to be fair to your thesis, after all (not for your sake, but for the people reading this—you are a lost cause).
Why? You are no longer comparing two uses for the same feedstock, with systems tailored for that feedstock.
You are full of it. Dynamotive reports 85% conversion to liquid and char. I have found other sources claiming ~70% yield of liquid by mass, with 65% of the input energy contained in the liquid. Here is one finding 66 wt % yield from maize stalk. Other sources claim yield as high as 79 wt %. The density of pyrolysis oil is approximately 1.2. 1 short ton yields ~1400 lb oil, which comes to ~530 liters (~140 gallons).
The rest of your analysis is based on the numbers you pulled out of your butt. Excrement in, excrement out.
No upgrading is required to use pyrolysis oil for boiler fuel or turbine fuel. That's why I used it in my hypothetical example.
There is nothing special about them; they are available as commercial products.
Why shouldn't I use your number of 2.56 miles per kwh(390 wh/mi)?
A Feb 2008 test for Tesla got 3.1 miles/kwh at an EPA range not 5 miles per kwh. That works out to 4891 Btu/ mi versus 5047 for a 50 mpg hybrid. Well, I have a EPA 56 mpg Insight hybrid which works out 4506 Btu/mi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster
Your Dynamotive report showed the overall efficiency of biomass to gasoline/diesel as 'approximately 25%..the highest ever reported'; I said 20%.
And you said 65%?
LOL!
http://www.dynamotive.com/2009/04/22/renewable-gasoline-and-diesel-from-...
Er..no. GE listed bio-oil nowhere in their long list of fuels. You're ignoring that bio-oil has a lot of water in it; it's HHV is 16-26 MJ/kg where as ethanol is 30 MJ/kg.
http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-1052.pdf
http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/gas_turbines_cc/en/downloads/G...
Nothing special except the odds of getting electricity from a few state of the art plants instead of regular coal fired plants burning biomass are very low.
But assuming the 60% efficient GE CCGT turbines were using your 25% efficient Dynamotive bio oil they'd produce 25% x 60%= 15% efficient electricity.
You're welcome to, for the sake of argument (though you should recognize that it is based on a deliberate over-estimate of ICE drivetrain efficiency and is thus biased high). What you shouldn't use is the 33% efficiency figure for existing powerplants.
The Wikipedia page claims 135 Wh/km (217 Wh/mi). But everyone already knows that you don't, or can't, read your own references.
And I'm not talking about conversion to gasoline, which is not required to run gas turbines. Not that anyone would expect you to grasp fine distinctions like that either.
Conversion to 75 wt % bio-oil translates to energy efficiency of 70%. I used 65% to allow for other losses and to be generous to the case for ethanol... which still loses badly.
Why should they? Nobody is asking for it yet, so they haven't designed a fuel system and combustors for it. But your reference does say this:
Crude oils are listed in the graphic on page 5, and pyrolysis oil is nothing if not a crude oil. Bio-oil burns just fine in gas turbines.
Look in the brochure where it talks about "steam injection". That can be used for NOx control. Fuels with a high level of inert products are no problem; see the graphic for blast-furnace gas and air-blown syngas.
It's 25% conversion to bio-gasoline and green diesel, not bio-oil. Nobody would insist on processing all the way to motor fuel just to burn in a gas turbine. Except you, that is; you're just not good with distinctions.