The Magic of Technology and the President's Biofuels Interagency Working Group

A report was recently issued by The President's Biofuels Interagency Working Group regarding the status of advanced biofuels:

Growing America’s Fuel

As I read through this report, I couldn’t help but think that it appeared to have been written by an optimistic cheerleader rather than by someone conducting a sober assessment of the situation. It contains very little of "Here is why we have fallen more than 90% short of our advanced biofuel targets." Instead, the report is completely full of Rah! Rah! Rah!

Bear in mind that the advanced biofuel mandate for 2010 was 100 million gallons. The report admits that the shortfall will almost certainly exceed 90% (as I have been saying it would for at least a couple of years), and the report coincided with an announcement that the former 100 million gallon (cellulosic) mandate for 2010 is being reduced to 6.5 million gallons. Turns out that the government is learning that you can’t mandate technology after all.

Where the report does get into specifics, it makes excuses, suggesting that the technologies themselves aren't the problem, lack of funding is. To that I say that I can make all sorts of things work "commercially" if I am willing to throw enough money at them. But they will only continue to remain "commercial" so long as I am supplementing them with outside funding.

This report would seem to have been written by people who believe that technological progress is inevitable. All barriers can be broken down by throwing enough money at them. While I am a technology buff, I have a different view on technology. Generally, technological successes are built upon a great many resolved technical problems. Yet it may require only a single unresolved problem to lead to technological stagnation, or failure.

For example, consider the scale-up of a process from the laboratory. I have run laboratory reactors and distillation columns - and scaled those up - so I am familiar with some of the things that can go wrong. The scale of a laboratory process may be on the order of a few pounds a day. At that scale, things behave differently for a number of reasons. When scaling up a lab process to something like demonstration scale – say a factor of 100 times greater than the lab process – many things can go wrong. In fact, I think it is safe to say that most good ideas die in the lab when practical realities intrude upon theoretical considerations.

One of the most important aspects to manage is the heat inputs and outputs. In the laboratory, the size of the equipment is such that the heat losses from surface areas is a much greater percentage of the total than when the equipment is scaled up. What does this mean? It can mean that it is difficult to replicate the temperatures achieved in the lab. It can mean that the temperatures at scale are much hotter than desired, or it can mean that there are undesirable temperature variations within the process. In my experience, this is a frequent cause of failure when scaling up from the lab.

Each successive scale-up filters out more seemingly good ideas, and in a world in which commercial success hinges on actually being able to earn money from a project, this filter works well. In a world in which technological failures are met by excuses and then optimistically throwing more money at the problem, then end result will be a massive amount of spending, and later congressional inquiries into why we wasted so much taxpayer money with so little to show for it.

So success for these projects is far from assured. Even success at one level of scale-up doesn't assure success at full commercial scale. I can rattle off a dozen things that have gone wrong and been apparent only as projects progressed to full commercial scale. Trace contaminants that can easily be disposed of in the lab can become big headaches at scale. Corrosion is often a killer once some of these projects begin to operate at bigger volumes.

But for the technological cornucopians, these are not real problems: They just require more money and they will be solved. But then why do cancer and heart disease still kill so many people each year? Why does my laptop battery only lasts a few hours instead of a week? Why don't we commercially fly people from London to New York in an hour? The reason is that not all problems are solved by throwing more money at them, because the laws of science sometimes get in the way. Further, solutions are generally advanced an incremental step at a time – not exponentially as our cellulosic ethanol mandates were designed to be.

As I have pointed out, cellulosic ethanol technology is more than 100 years old. You heard it here, and you can hold me to it: There will be no breakthrough that suddenly makes it cost-competitive to produce. On the other hand, press releases that announce big breakthroughs for small incremental steps? No end to those I am afraid, nor any retraction when they can't replicate results outside the lab. The impression this leaves is a steady upward march in the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol - and no setbacks that weren't simply related to lack of funding.

Cellulosic ethanol will never be produced in large volumes for less money than corn ethanol can be produced for - and keep in mind that we are still subsidizing that after 30 years. What may happen is that it eventually can be mildly successful in certain very specific instances. But to think that a billion tons of U.S. biomass will contribute a major portion of the U.S. fuel supply via cellulosic ethanol? Hogwash from many people who have never scaled up anything. The reasons are not from lack of funding, they are fundamental based on physics, chemistry, and the nature of biomass. Technological breakthroughs won’t get around the laws of physics.

Had I written the report, you can bet that I would have written it differently. It would have been a sober technical assessment, and would have included a root cause analysis of why there was a 93.5% shortfall in the mandated supply of this miracle fuel that is going to end petroleum dependence forever. I would not have recommended to cease all funding - cellulosic ethanol is in my opinion worthy of further research, and can be a niche solution in specific circumstances – but there would have been a recommendation for the government to get out of the business of choosing technology winners. There would also have been a lot of planning for scenarios in which things didn't pan out as expected. I like to have a Plan B that wasn't cobbled together only after Plan A fell apart.

Bravo!!! Encore!!!
Thank you for your honesty ande sobriety. Is Steven Chu still awake and at work? Maybe you could replace him?

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

"It is a matter of scale."

Yes, and we can use all the niche fuels we can find (many of us may only have access to locally produced, smallish scale niche fuels someday).

But Oldfarmermac points out, we need the truth about the likely contribution of these alternatives. We've got to stop The Delusion, or at least stop feeding it.

RR,

Thank you Sir!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would OFM lie to all his cyberbuddies on TOD?

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

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

I did the same thing when I owned 36 rental units.
I hated that business...........

and she finally TOLD ME what day and hour the check would be good

I'm guessing that was long time in past--such a revelation is a real good way to get your teller buddy fired. Quite unethical of her.

Not really my buddy-she simply told me to get me to stop calling every day.And she didn't tell me in so many words.She simply said one day after the usual"I'm sorry sir there are insufficient funds in the account to cover the check at this time " that I might want to try again the next morning about 9 AM.

If you know how to hassle such people very politely and say thank you and please while you are doing it, and they figure out that you aren't going to go away,they will find a way to help THEMSELVES. If you find yourself in this situation, always call at rush hour and always ask for the same teller.

Sounds like the teller was smart enough to cover her butt sufficiently. As my daughter has a similar job I just kind of was issuing a heads up to any younger eyes that might have been out there. I didn't at all fault your efforts to get what was rightfully yours and your clarification makes the revelation not at all damning.

I had a slightly different check incident to deal with back a few decades. I took a equipment operator job for a farmer in his corn cob grinding operation, actually I became that operation. I got his stock ground in a few days and he laid me off. I took the check he paid me with into the bank and they told my the signature was bogus (it was his daughters) and something else was wrong, can't remember what. I walked out of the lobby around the building to separate walk-up facility where the teller recognized me and cashed the check, as it was on their bank. Then I went back inside and closed my account.

Last time I ever dealt with that bank so I have no idea how they handled it. I walked away with what I had earned in cash rather than funny paper but that was before computer hookups with instant information exchange, such a trick would be impossible now. Of course back then while on a trip through Canada I put a certified cashier's check of a few thousands in a Royal Bank of Canada in BC. I spent a week or two in BC. Then after driving the Alaska highway I went to withdraw my money in Whitehorse Yukon from the Royal Bank of Canada there. Nothing doing, I had to wait a five days to get my money from one branch to another OF THE SAME BANK, because the branches were in different province/territories I think. Those were different days.

while on a trip through Canada I put a certified cashier's check of a few thousands in a Royal Bank of Canada in BC. I spent a week or two in BC. Then after driving the Alaska highway I went to withdraw my money in Whitehorse Yukon from the Royal Bank of Canada there. Nothing doing, I had to wait a five days to get my money from one branch to another OF THE SAME BANK

My wife had a similar experience with a paycheck from a really solid medical employer. The Canadian banks will put a 5-day hold on checks that there is no possible way that someone could default on just because it is bank policy. They don't trust anybody, including themselves.

On the other hand, no Canadian banks went bankrupt in this recent "global financial meltdown", so you can't fault them on being cautious and financially prudent.

Nah, I didn't hold it against them, the idea is for banks to keep your money safe, but this was a little different than a bank putting a five day hold on a check. My certified funds--and I'm certain they were certified, but that's another even farther off topic story--had been deposited in Prince George (or William's Lake or Quesnel--three plus decades has blurred the edges of that memory) three weeks prior to my attempting to retrieve them in Whitehorse. I ended up enjoying my bare bones five day stay about the town, except for the last night--this was the end of October. The bottom dropped out of the thermometer and the temp fell sixty degrees F in just hours. I had quit keeping a credit card around for a decade or so back then. The back of the pickup got right uncomfortable.

Another method is to take the check to the bank and ask "how much do I have to deposit into this checking account to be able to cash this check".
Deposit the difference and get your money.

Heard it from a friend who used it on someone who kept his account "just under" the amount to get it cashed.

I do expect biofuels to play a critical part in maintaining a viable civilized society ,

Wood is a biofuel... used to be a majaor player, even into the age of rail. All a biofuel is is the transformation of sunlight, by plants, into energy stored. Concentration is the problem. Oil is biofuel, concentrated by time, heat and pressure, over many many years. Too much heat and pressure and it is natural gas, another biofuel. What makes oil so great is that it is easy and safe to transport, and very concentrated.

Take all of our biomass, and bury it, drive it deep into the ground, and after a few million years, you have a concentrated fuel, again. Simpler organisms seem to transform more easily into oil... wood, and heavier bio mass do transform into coal... thouth I am not sure about the hardwoods. I guess them might as well, though I don't recall any hardwood peat beds. Peat is the first concentration into fuel.

Oh, one other thing, dung is also biomass, and can be burned when there is no wood or other biomass available.

Loved your story about the checks, Mac! You actually did that guy a favor when you didn't take the check to the DA. I have practiced law in Illinois and Texas and in both States you can be prosecuted for nsf checks! And, I know you'd never lie!

Craig

I see two things in our future. Gasification and hopefully sterling engines. I'm not considering motor fuels but cogeneration.

Ran into this very, very interesting piece...

http://www.fundamentalform.com/html/energy_from_waste.htm

Claims 90% efficiency with up to 66% moisture content. You need to read this stuff carefully as he doesn't waste words. Reacts excess water with carbon( C + H2O = CO + H2, which are both combustible) heat recovery to get heat back out of water.
very amazing

RR you should look at this....(above link)

Cellulosic ethanol will never be produced in large volumes for less money than corn ethanol can be produced for

OK, I'll take your word for that!

How about other biomass-to-liquids, via gasification (pyrolysis or plasma) ? Although they are undoubtedly a "few" years off, I like to be optimistic...

Are you hard-headedly pessimistic about them too?

Thanks for the post, Robert.

Many people seem to conflate technology with fuel. A technology is NOT a fuel source. That may sound obvious, but just think about all the technocrats out there that think we can invent our way off fossil fuels. We need to start comparing fuels, not technologies. From this perspective, it is easy to see that there is very little hope that a fuel source based on GRASS will be competitive with a hydrocarbon.

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

of course the current concept of absolute zero appears to be in conflict with those laws. Does that give the techno miracle cure types less or more credibility ?= )

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

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

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

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

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

The whole cellulosic ethanol business ignores the fact that: Bioelectricity produces an average 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions
offsets per unit area cropland than cellulosic ethanol (Campbell-2009).

It's actually quite silly to use all kinds of not-really working technologies and destillation if you can simply burn the biomass, and generate electricity and heat.

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

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

E. Swanson

Whenever I see Black_Dog..., I always think Led Zeppelin.

Batteries are nice..., but they are not a source of energy. Batteries are only nice as a convenience.

Black_Dog, are you one of those techno-optimists???
Are you a green-cornucopian???

Well, I saw Led Zeppelin once decades ago in San Francisco. Great show.

Being an engineer, I do have some optimism that there are solutions. However, I don't see the US making the changes fast enough to get past the decline of Peak Oil or to be able to face AGW as a serious threat to our planet. I think that makes me a doomer. In fact, in the early 1980's, my associates used to call me Dr. Doom. It's rather nice having more company of late...

E. Swanson

Black Dog,

You are spot on with your observation about small biomass systems being potentially more efficient, and closing the ash return loop - it is a great fertiliser.

If I was the biomass farmer, I would take it one step further and have the generating station on farm. If all the waste heat cannot be used in the gasification process, there may be other uses for it (grain drying, heating barns, etc).
A 1000 ac "biomass" farm, producing 10t/ac and doing on site gasification/electricity production, would run a 1-1.5MW plant and produce about $1-$1.5m of electricity per year.

Sounds expensive to set up a 1MW plant, but compared to articulated tractors, combine harvesters and other farm machinery, it's probably cheaper.

The prices of electricity are far more stable than any agricultural commodity, so you reduce price variability, and by using perennial crops, like trees, you reduce annual weather variability, and you can harvest at (almost) any time of year, and your harvest can't get rain damaged.

In short, more productivity with less risk - what farmer wouldn't want that.

Having said that generating biomass electricity is a good business, let's not kid ourselves that it will solve our transportation fuel problem anytime soon. Campbell's report assumes that electricity can power vehicles, in substantial quantity, and that is far from reality at present. The only vehicles we can reliably power with electricity, today, are trains, and there seems to be zero interest in electrifying them. But perhaps if Campbell did an analysis of what it would cost to produce enough electric vehicles, to save as much oil as from electrifying trains, I expect we'd find our dollars are better spent stringing wires.

As it stands today, and will remain for this decade at least, there is virtually zero linkage between electricity production and transport, so Campbell is really weighing up a (potential) breakthrough in liquid biofuels against a (potential) breakthrough in electric vehicles. And I wouldn't want to make my investment decisions based on either.

Here's a link to a report in SCIENCE about work by David Tilman, published in 2006. He found that his test plots using mixed species of grasses produced about twice the biomass per hectare compared with a monoculture of switch grass. Here's a link to a later article describing his work, which appeared in 2008. Since I have a subscription, I can' say whether these articles are outside the pay wall, although I think the first is open to all...

E. Swanson

BD, both articles are behind a pay wall, though the abstract for the first is viewable. No earth shattering conclusion though, a monoculture can only be sustained by constant weeding, and if it is not a a nitrogen fixer, then fertiliser input is also need for decent productivity.

I read a similar study comparing growth of hybrid poplar in monoculture, compared to when mixed with red alder, which is slower growing but nitrogen fixing. The growth rates of both increased compared to monoculture of either.

As every farmer knows, a properly mixed "pasture" will, in the absence of intensive inputs (irrigation, fertiliser) do better than a monoculture, and is more resilient to weather events.

As always, nature shows us the way with it's mixed forest, highly productive but when they become monocultures of their own, and event (such as drought, fire, mountain pine beetle) will eventually take them down and allow a new start.

After reading a few government reports, a person gets the idea that the Rah! Rah! mentality affects all of them. We know about the EIA oil production forecasts. But we also had what appear to be optimistic reports on the EROI of corn ethanol (leaving out energy inputs like irrigation energy, making the ratio too close to a best-case scenario). Carbon Capture and Storage is being represented as a real possibility, not too far away, if we only work on it. Even the 20% Wind Energy by 2030 report (or maybe it is the interpretation of that report) has Rah! Rah! characteristics--making the transition sound less challenging than it really would be.

The other information legislators is likely to hear is from researchers and manufacturer who would make money with the new technology. Needless to say, their views are Rah! Rah! as well.

The lack of unbiased information makes it difficult for the legislators and the general public to know what is right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excellent account of how all this biodiesel hype affects food.

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

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

Heh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cellulosic ethanol is looking good.

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

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

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

Really? Is that the angle that you – an anonymous poster whose interests nobody can be certain of – wish to take with me? Me, whose position has been consistent since long before I was affiliated with Choren? Me, who actually joined up as a result of my position on gasification/hydrolysis – and not vice versa? I mean really, given that my position is the same as it was before I ever joined, don’t you think this is a little low, even for you?

Seriously, Gail, is this not a case of conflict of interest (or at least non-disclosure)?

See above. Where were your disclosures again? You can find mine all over the place. They are very common knowledge, unlike yours. How else would you even know about my Choren affiliation (which has been dislosed here on multiple occasions).

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

Yes, unlike the past 100 years, the next 5 are key. I for one am certain that you don’t know what you are talking about.

Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass makes twice the amount of ethanol per acre as corn currently does.

Utter rubbish. There aren’t even any facilities that we can go to in order to check. So what on earth do you base this claim on? Hint: It hasn’t actually been measured, but I have seen plenty of lab data and they aren’t good.

Cellulosic ethanol takes 2.2 btu of biomass to make 1 btu of ethanol, which beats Choren and the other gasifiers.

Again, garbage which has been refuted here before. You are obviously scientifically challenged if you believe that a process that produces fuel with over 90% water content can be produced more efficiently than one that is self-sustaining and produces a product that isn’t soluble in water. Gasification beats cellulosic ethanol in efficiency by a long stretch. I say that as someone who knows; that is I have actually worked with both and am very familiar with the energy balances. What is the basis of your opinion? Well, nobody knows, because you haven’t disclosed anything.

Choren's 100 million Euro 2008 Freiberg plant (was built on 35% subsidies by German State of Saxony) produces 5 million gallons of Sundiesel per year.

If you are implying that Saxony has 35 million euros in the Freiberg plant, you are delusional. I can get the exact number, but it is quite small. They have in fact refused to take advantage of most of the subsidies they could have qualified for.

Poet's corn cobb plant will 25 million gallons of ethanol per year and costs $200 million dollars($8 per annual gallon).

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

In most cases, it certainly is net energy negative. I just reviewed a process two weeks ago that was supposed to be cutting edge. As I pointed out, the energy balance was barely break even for just the hydrolysis/fermentation/purification step. Add in the inputs of getting the material to the plant, and it doesn’t look too good. I think POET’s is probably slightly positive, but it is a niche and won’t be applicable to many forms of biomass.

However, as I have said, it may work in certain niches. But if you think cellulosic is going to scale up to produce a large fraction of our fuel, then prepare to be disappointed. And remember that you heard it here. I am sure when things fail to materialize, you will offer up all sorts of excuses. By the way, why in 2010 have we fallen over 90% short of the mandate? Couldn’t have been the technology. Let the excuses begin.

Me, who actually joined up as a result of my position on gasification/hydrolysis – and not vice versa? I mean really, given that my position is the same as it was before I ever joined, don’t you think this is a little low, even for you?

I didn't want to be accused of a snide ad hom. Normally, people having a financial interest disclose the fact when recommending. Of course, I knew you were directly involved in Choren as you reported but I would guess many readers did not or may have forgot. I remember the barrage leveled at Gail over Chevron-Ecuador, who I defended. I could hardly let you off.

35 million Euro from Saxonny
http://www.ihb.de/wood/news/Biomass-to-Liquid_biofuel_Germany_16872.html

Switchgrass yields twice as much ethanol per acre than corn

By the way, why in 2010 have we fallen over 90% short of the mandate? Couldn’t have been the technology.

I wouldn't characterize it that way. The government will allow a further expansion of ethanol if the plants can use cellulosic feedstock instead of corn. This makes sense.
Corn production goes to ethanol(25%), animal feed(46%), fructose(4%), other(7%) and exports(18%). The corn cobbs and other sillage represents a huge source of cellulose.
The 2009 corn crop was 12 billion bushels which included 45 million tons of corn cobbs not to mention stalks, leaves, etc. The US hay production is 80 million tons. There's plenty of biomass out there.

Why the lack of progress in realizing cellulosic ethanol?
It is a new technology (despite your 100 year claim) and expensive. If a carbon tax passed, the price disadvantage and reluctance of farmers like X to learn something new would disappear.

Normally, people having a financial interest disclose the fact when recommending.

Of course I am not recommending anything, so it was a snide ad hom. Besides, it is a bit rich for an anonymous poster who is always pushing ethanol to suggest someone else isn't making full disclosures.

35 million Euro from Saxonny

I don't believe that it is accurate, but I will find out.

Switchgrass yields twice as much ethanol per acre than corn

Did you read your link? Do you know that the basis is a model based on assumptions? A model that has not been validated? It is easy to design a plant on paper. When running it, they have to deal with real technical challenges. So we can agree that it yields twice as much per acre when that has actually been demonstrated.

I wouldn't characterize it that way.

Well, the mandate was for 100 million gallons of advanced biofuel this year. The two companies that were being heavily counted on - Cello and Range - are either behind schedule or DOA. The mandate has now been reduced to 6.5 million gallons, a 93.5% shortfall. You can characterize it any way you like, but those are the facts.

It is a new technology (despite your 100 year claim) and expensive.

If it is a new technology, then so is motorized transport. Both existed in the early 1900's. We did have two functioning cellulosic ethanol plants in the U.S. by 1920. It is not new technology. It has been improved incrementally, but that doesn't make it new technology.

As far as the carbon tax, I am on board with that. I have advocated that for years.

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

Thanks for rehersing the obvious Robert.

There have been so many doubts about ethanol (also corn based) from the start, especially from an EROEI point of view, many expressed on this board, it was bound to fail from the start.

I think that biodiesel may be a better route in providing a modest contribution to the liquid fuel problems we face. Would it be possible for someone to quantify ongoing or planned projects for biodiesel production? And qualify in terms of not replacing food production as well?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The only economic success on ethanol has been in the form of Jack Danniels at $40 per gallon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wow. I can't decide which of you two did the better joke. Smith gets all the points for brevity, but Farmer Mac keeps the gag going for seven paragraphs!

Nice one, Mac! (And all the better for being 100% true.)

Friend of mine gets angry everytime he hears that 'shine makers do it because they are too lazy to work...,"let them try packin' corn up a hillside" he says, and then adds, "not that I would know ya' understan'..." :-)

RC

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

I ran a pilot plant and semi-works for several years with a staff of 60 people. It seemed that the research chemists had never set foot in a real life situation. And, not to put the ChemE's (even with PhD's) down but they weren't much better either because they couldn't envision stuff outside of their narrow area of expertise.

I was also responsible for new facility start-ups. More cans of worms that I don't even want to get into.

Todd

To quantify the obvious:

The dilute-acid pretreatment process has the lowest PV among all process scenarios, which is estimated to be $1.36/l of gasoline equivalent [LGE] ($5.13/gal of gasoline equivalent [GGE]).

Techno-economic comparison of process technologies for biochemical ethanol production from corn stover, Feroz Kabir Kazia et al. Fuel, (2010) (in press.)

By contrast, Linc Energy is claiming $30/bbl ($0.73/gal gasoline equivalent?) for underground coal gasification to liquid fuels.
See Linc Energy Presentations

Linc's approach promises commercial competitiveness compared to the politically correct bioethanol.
This political correctness will cause trillions of dollars in higher costs to consumers, further increasing the post peak oil recession.

The bottom line on any bio-mass --> fuel process is easily found in the base process, which is conversion of sunlight into carbohydrates by photosynthesis. That process has two inherint weakness which determine that it will never be more than a minor niche fuel source, no matter what system may then be used for conversion of the carbohydrates. Weakness 1) is the extremely low efficiency of plant photosynthesis, at less than 1% sunlight to carbohydrate stored energy. Weakness 2) is the large input requirements for economical growth. Nitrogen (energy expensive), phosphorous (rapidly depleting, perhaps 80 to 100 years consumption remaining at present rates), potassium / potash (costly to mine, long transport distances eg. mid-Canada to China and India presently), fresh water (nuff said).

Some few fortunate localities may have sufficient natural advantages to temporarily mitigate these issues, eg. Brazil with sugar cane or Thailand with palm oil, both with abundant free labour to distort the accounting, but these are few enough and rare enough to make them a niche on the scale of present world energy production.

Bottom line is, the net energy return from 1 acre of solar-thermal electrical generation will exceed that from 100 to 300 acres of bio-fuel crops. Its so obvious its painful to see these politicians still duping the public. Replacing even a single typical N Gas-fired generating station with solar-thernal, then using the saves N Gas as transport fuel, would probably do more than all the ethanol projects implemented so far in N America.

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

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

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

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

"Your science and logic are utterly impotent in the face of human greed, selfishness and political calculus."

While this is unfortunately (and humorously) true, the other sad fact is that solar thermal to electric, has been, until now, impotent compared to almost any other "renewable" energy. The large scale plants built in the 80's were economic failures, decades of development on dish/Stirling systems are yet to result in a single commercially available product - though, like cellulosic ethanol, many claim to be only a few years away. And this with the dish/Stirling system holding the world record for solar electric efficiency for almost 30 years.

even now, solar thermal plants are risky investments in bleeding edge technology, and are running into environmental opposition, that is eerily similar to that associated with hydro electric dams.

And, for most farmers, it's not a good alternative as most farms are not in the sunniest places - that would be the deserts. So power to the solar thermal folks, and I wish them well and hope they can get a sustainable business going - but that doesn't do anything for the farmers.

I'd also like to see the farmers get a sustainable (subsidy free) business going, but that's another story..

Paul: "even now, solar thermal plants are risky investments in bleeding edge technology" -- It appears from this report by the engineering firm Sargent & Lundy's, that solar thermal is only a risk to established generating systems (which no doubt explains why you can post your list of negatives as if they mean anything. Solar thermal technology is useless BECAUSE for-profit corporations with huge investments in existing coal and gas generation aren't building it? BECAUSE it get criticised by persons dreaming wistfully of future net energy positive ethanol?)

Assessment of Parabolic Trough and Power Tower Solar Technology - Cost and Performance Forecasts - Sargent & Lundy LLC Engineering Group Chicago, Illinois

[QUOTE]For the more technically aggressive low-cost case, S&L found the National Laboratories’ “SunLab” methodology and analysis to be credible. The projections by SunLab, developed in conjunction with industry, are considered by S&L to represent a “best-case analysis” in which the technology is optimized and a high deployment rate is achieved. The two sets of estimates, by SunLab and S&L, provide a band within which the costs can be expected to fall. The figure and table below highlight these results, with initial electricity costs in the range of 10 to 12.6 ¢/kWh and eventually achieving costs in the range of 3.5 to 6.2 ¢/kWh. The specific values will depend on total capacity of various technologies deployed and the extent of R&D program success. In the technically aggressive cases for troughs / towers, the S&L analysis found that cost reductions were due to volume production (26%/28%), plant scale-up (20%/48%), and technological advance (54%/24%).[/QUOTE]

Given Sargent & Lundy Engineering's worst case scenario provides peak time solar electricity at $0.062/kwh by only building 2.8 GW and doing a few minor and definitely achievable R&D improvements, plus transmission, and a clear path is provided to offering 83% capacity factor using cheap sand and gravel tanks for thermal storage with 3x collector area and no additional central plant, which should make the installation no more expensive PER KWH if only the industry can get to 2.8 GW installed, I don;t see what we are waiting for.

It also appears to me that the more agressive forecasts of NREL / SunLab of $0.035 / kwh if we can get to 8.2 GW insalled quite quickly is entirely within reach.

Len,

I guess we have to let the current situation be the jury on this. That report was written in 2003, and yet there have been only a handful of demonstration projects built since then, yet demo projects were being built in the 70's and 80's, so what needs to be demonstrated?

If you argue that it is being held back by the utilities, then how do you explain the growing wind industry? If solar thermal were truly ready, it would be growing by demand as is windpower. Property owners in Ariz/Nevada/new Mexico would be putting in 25kWdish systems just like European farmers put in wind turbines, but there is no sign of this in the near future. Solar thermal (presently) costs far more per kW than wind for the same 25% capacity factor.

I have been following the solar thermal for a decade, looking for any opportunity to build a small scale system - I always come back to other technologies being a better business bet. That is why I have built micro hydro and am looking at a biomass generation system.

Don't get me wrong - if there's a profitable solar technology I will build one, and so will the utilities.

then how do you explain the growing wind industry?

a) Targeted subsidies not available for solar thermal. b) Development stage. With wind, Northern Europe did all the development investment in wind because their solar resources are very poor. US has excellent resources, but still refuses to contribute anything.

It is not useful to point out the obvious, that electricity costs from a solar thermal plant built tomorrow will be over $0.125 / kwh. and therefore unable to compete as a strictly commercial investment. That's in the referenced report. Wind was at the same stage when it was abandoned by the US in the 1980's.

US GDP $10 trillion, military budget $250 billion+ / yr. 2% of military budget as a 50% subsidy to private solar thermal developers would build 1 GW / year. In 5 years, you would be at the required 2.5 to 12 GW constructed in order for mass production and experience to have made the electricity costs competitive! (See the engineering report I referenced above).

But I suppose that might excessively weaken the military as the oil transport route protection system subsidy which it is.

Excellent report, thanks.

In case you have not seen this here is an excellent overview of the realities of biofuels:

The Myths of Biofuels by David Fridley
http://www.archive.org/details/Myths_of_Biofuels

Growing up on a small developing (underdeveloped?) island must have limited my ability to think on huge scales. On my visits to developed countries I have often been awed by the scale of things particularly in th US. Big thing seem so ridiculously big to me. I have on occasion wondered if making things that huge really makes sense. Of course the answer is that, in a world of exponential growth with unlimited supplies of mainly fossil fuel energy, economies of scale do make sense. Maybe now that we are facing limited, declining supplies of fossil fuel energy we should be re-examine economies of scale. Maybe the success of our species going forward will rely on doing things on a scale that better match the environment we are operating in.

Maybe we should not be questioning the ability of a process or technology to scale but, our desire for such large amounts of everything that requires us to "need" to produce on such a massive scale. In other words, instead of trying to scale up processes to meet our "needs", we should be scaling down our "needs" to match the resources available from whatever process we can successfully develop. IMHO a far more sustainable approach is going to be small scale, distributed, local production of energy and maybe even biofuels, for use close to where they are produced.

To illustrate the wrongheaded large scale approach we need look no further than Dubai's new tallest building in the world. I am quite fascinated by it and it is a remarkable feat of human engineering but, what is the point? They have created an edifice that can not be sustained by the energy, water or food resources available from anywhere near it and will require huge supplies of resources that it's immediate surroundings will never even come close to supplying. IMHO, that building is doomed and will stand as evidence to the folly of our ways long after Peak Oil.

This brings me to the point of a another "miracle" biofuel that is often bandied about although it wasn't specifically mentioned by Robert in this article, algae. I feel like I am missing something. It seems obvious to me that the least expensive way to clean up emissions from FF fueled power plants would be a process that uses renewable energy as much as possible and captures the carbon in a form that has some value. The plans to pump the CO2 deep underground for storage are a boneheaded idea to me, their only benefit being that the emissions are not released into the atmosphere while costing a small fortune.

There are people out there trying to commercialize "algae for fuel" production which by itself is another boneheaded idea since the cost/benefit will probably never pan out. They seek to take advantage of the fact that algae is the fastest growing photosynthesizing organism known to man but, that's about it.

Another big problem out there is the human and animal waste (manure) problem. Sewage is a big cost for several municipalities and for those where it is not, untreated waste and contamination of waterways and aquifers is the problem.

Why is it so difficult to come to the conclusion that the best solution would be one that integrates carbon capture with algae production and waste water treatment? I am not talking about fancy shmancy closed algae production here. Just introduce algae into sewage ponds and circulate power plant emissions through the ponds to provide CO2 for the algae. Any species of algae that can find their way into the system and out-compete whatever's there is welcome to join the party (survival of the fittest). At the end of the process, harvest the biomass, dry it and analyze it. Based on the analysis the dried algae can then be sold for whatever purpose its composition suits it for, fertilizer, fuel (oil or pellets) or whatever else they can come up with. I figure it is very unlikely that whatever comes out at the end will be totally useless or toxic. Is it just that it won't scale? If so see my first two paragraphs.

Alan from the islands

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

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

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

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

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

I suspect there would also be some tocicity issues for the algae themselves in trying to survive in an environment suffused with the exhaust from say a coal-fired generating plant (how much SOx, NOx, metals etc. get past even the best scrubbers? Probably enough to make a pond toxic for most species), or the heavy metals &etc in municipal sewage.

Yes and no. The SOx and NOx are actually nutrients to the plants, once dissolved in water. Heavy metals are only a problem if they accumulate in the ponds over time, so that will need some management. more likely they will leave with the biomass, and end up in your ash. The effluent irrigation projects I know of all come from towns that have minimal industrial activity, and thus low metal content in sewage.

The real problem, is that it is hard to control what species grows best. Nature wants the fittest algae to survive in the ponds, we want the highest biomass energy (or better yet, oil) content. Just as with people, these two things are often mutually exclusive - the "fattest" one as are far from the "fittest" ones. If we are not too picky about what type of algae grows, we will grow a lot. if we want the "oily" algae, we will spend a lot of time trying to prevent the growth of the "weed" algae - same predicament as any normal farmer!

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

.We have the huge state of New Mexico just lying there in the sun...Take 20% of New Mexico and use it for algae fuel production...Guess what, that bit of land will probably produce ALL the fuel necessary to run the entire U.S. of A....

Just curious, and where exactly do you propose to acquire the necessary quantities of dihydrogenmonoxide which you will need to create this vast inland New Mexican Sea?
BTW, dihydrogenmonoxide, being a rather volatile compound has tendency to evaporate when left lying in the sun. But you did know that I'm sure...

My guess is that you've never even kept a small aquarium let alone have a clue about an ecosystem as large as 20% of New Mexico. It is precisely because of statements like yours that people like myself are doomers.

Maybe you need to come in out of the New Mexican sun? Either that or get yourself a sombrero, compadre.

Methinks you're suffering from a serious case of sunstroke!

Ah humor!!!.......Love it, means you are not TOTALLY irredeemable!!!...LOLOL

Oh ho!!...So your substance...(dihydrogenmonoxide)... in the ONLY way to do it, eh?

And it has to be ONE large pond, eh?

Pretty sure of yourself, eh?

Methinks yo ego is crowding out thy brain!!!

Yes!!!....Yes!!!...I crown you TumorHead (registered trademark)

And yes, people like you have NO imagination...It's sooooooo easy to be a critic.........yet soooooo hard to come up with anything useful

Because, you REALLY, REALLY want to live the life of an Amishman....LOLOL

And yes, people like you have NO imagination...It's sooooooo easy to be a critic.........yet soooooo hard to come up with anything useful

OK! let us know when your genetically engineered symbiotic algae, desert lichen hybrid is producing powdered diesel sans the dihydrogenmonoxide. I suppose you could grow them with misting technology. Sort of like hydroponics sans the hydro. Then you could feed it to reindeer that have adapted to the desert ecosystem and process the reindeer dung for fuel.

Do I get a gold star for imagination yet?

As for something useful, that is exactly the problem with your pipe dream, it isn't useful and the EROEI doesn't make sense.

Robert's comment about why cellulosic ethanol won't scale applies in this case as well, this is not cheap shot criticism, it's reality and you can't change it with wishful cornucopian thinking.

The reasons are not from lack of funding, they are fundamental based on physics, chemistry, and the nature of biomass. Technological breakthroughs won’t get around the laws of physics.

Why are these basics concepts so hard to understand?!

Cool...You DO have an imagination....just woefully misapplied...

Nice use of catch phrases...But I didn't see you explain the part about the WHY algae fuel is in contravention of the laws of physics..

Of course, that is your BELIEF...Ok, gotcha...(meaning: It's what you WANT to believe)

Ya know, smart guy Howard Hughes often ordered his driver to slow way down when a woman was in the car...he BELIEVED hitting a bump in the road would damage her breasts...

So I do understand the concept of humans believing weird stuff...helps me understand all you crazy, crazy doomers on the OilyDrum

Sometimes I am shocked that you don't deny the very existence of oil...LOLOL

Oh wait, that's right...it runs out next Tuesday....sure, uh huh, right...

Ahhhh yes...EROEI.....the magical incantation that stops any further discussion...at least in YOUR mind....LOLOL

Why do YOU believe the energy situation is hopeless?...It isn't

Only problem is that cellulosic ethanol was already - what, plan F? Lessee, plan A was business as usual. Plan B was invade an oil-rich middle-eastern country. Plan C was Hydrogen. Plan D is grain-ethanol. Plan E is hybrids. So yeah, I get cellulosic as plan F or so. We're running out of plans to keep the happy-motoring society going.

So far, plans A, C, and F don't seem viable. Plan B may still work out for a little while, though the first phase was pretty painful. Plan D requires burning the food supply, which seems to really bother some people, jacks up food prices, and has some unpleasant medical side-effects for certain populations. The hybrid thing is kind of working, though not scaling quickly - but shows no signs of stopping!

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

It would have been a sober technical assessment, and would have included a root cause analysis of why there was a 93.5% shortfall in the mandated supply of this miracle fuel that is going to end petroleum dependence forever.

Ok, children gather around now, next Christmas you will have 93.5% fewer Christmas presents under the tree. The good news is you are going to learn to be that much more creative with 6.5% that you do receive!

Living within your energy budget is a most novel concept indeed. In a way it's rather amusing to watch as the scales begin to fall from the eyes of the people.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Richard Feynman

I'll bet Dr. Feynman is looking down upon us with that rather mischievous smile he was so well known for.

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

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

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

That would be correct. As an atheist and secular humanist with a strong skeptical and scientific world view the only afterlife I consider plausible is the recycling of energy and matter into other lifeforms. I believe consciousness ends with death. I understand that that was Feynman's view as well.

Consciousness is a curious creature, hard to imagine it outlasting the hull that it is born of. Of course it is equaly hard just to imagine the girth of the sun. Then to try and imagine the sun getting compressed with all the other stars and whatnot floating about into an awful hot and way beyond tiny space. Where that came from to start with I can't imagine, nor is science able to tell us. Just ends up an act of faith somewhere down the chain.

I've certainly been around a thing or two science might have a tough time explaining just yet, but with round about 90 odd percent of the universe necessary for the universe to work unknown except in that its existence is necessary for the math that so well explains the known part of the universe to work, there could be some truly mind boggling, but completely science based revelations yet to come--if we can hold it together long enough.

For now I'm hoping one young human sacrificed is enough to allow the Canadian games to go on without any other consciousnesses involved blinking out. I do love the Olympics.

Well, we know exactly where it came from, it came from "NOTHING" ;-)

I'll let Lawrence Krauss explain that one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

You and I have been round this block before. LK has two nothings. One is the empty space nothing within molecules where the quantum foam has been determined to actually make up 70% of the molecules' mass. This nothing occupies space which takes time to transit.

The other nothing is the one that 'exists' before the big bang created space. We of course tend to imagine the universe expanding into empty space but that is not the case, rather as the universe expands it creates space which of course is defined by the time it takes for light to transit. About this nothing it is extremely probable nothing can be truly known ?- )

Of course there is the Planck time thing where chance and uncertainty win out over Newtonian determinism, which for all practical purposes, requires us to have to have the universe be born when it is already 1E-43 seconds old. Math is beautiful but we can only take it back so far and so small when using it to descibe the universe. What is limited by those tiny Planck numbers, existence or our definition of it with an extremely powerful tool, which itself may only be able to define an approximation of what really is--at least when it is used by human 'hands'?

So now not only is better than 90% of the universe basicly a completely unknown except that is must have mass and energy properties of some sort, 70% of the mathematically defineable 'visible' universe is 'empty' where apparently matter pops and fizzes in and out of temporal existence ?- )

Science is really getting to be a 'know nothing affair' ?= )

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

The cycle to break is that of mindless waste:

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

Off-Topic: Tar sands (BTW, is there a general form where ordinary readers can create topics?)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, the most recent Drumbeat.

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

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

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

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

So a 6 to 1 EROEI. OK. I greatly appreciate the answers. I know it makes an environmental mess but people are just not going to care. And despite the good return on the natural gas, is there a big enough supplies of natural gas and water to scale up those operations to the 2M barrel/day range? By what I understand, they do like 300,00 bpd now.

The environmental mess is something of a temporary phenomenon. In the long term it is more an exercise in landscape architecture on a vast scale. It's kind of like landscaping a city suburb the size of Florida, but with buffalo instead of alligators, and without the houses and people.

One might have thought that natural gas might be a constraint, but that was before they discovered shale gas. There is probably more shale gas nearby in northeastern British Columbia than there is in the United States, although the cost is probably somewhat higher.

The Athabasca River, which runs through the Athabasca oil sands is one of the biggest rivers in North America - 5% of it would supply any demand foreseeable in the next 20 years. The Peace River, which runs through the Peace River oil sands is even bigger. And Cold Lake, in the Cold Lake oil sands, is pretty big (and cold) too. No real shortage of water up there.

I am often a harsh critic of RR's posts, but he is right in this case. Cellulosic ethanol is a bad idea even if by some miracle there should be a technological breakthrough.

If that were to happen production would shift from corn to whatever the new feed stock is. The idea that there is land available that can produce cellulosic feedstock in the volumes required without affecting food supply is rubbish.

Even corn cobs which are the feedstock for pilot cellulosic ethanol plants around here deplete the soil when they are removed and not allowed to rot.

Using corn for ethanol is not as stupid as many would have you believe. When a feed grain is used there is a backup for an emergency like bad weather or run away prices.

The answer is to simply shut down some ethanol plants to relieve the pressure on feedstock supply and let it go for use as animal feed or whatever. This happened in 2008-2009 in the U.S. when corn got too expensive.

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

In the case of cellulosic ethanol, such adjustments are not easily or quickly made. The feedstock is a single use crop and land is in effect committed to ethanol. This is a bad idea because clearly ethanol production will have to be reduced in emergencies. Shutting down cellulosic ethanol plants will not have a quick mitigating effect in an emergency situation.

Corn ethanol is the better way to go. It uses the current infrastructure and distribution systems. And even though record amounts of corn ethanol are being produced, surpluses overhang the corn market. That is one reason for the recent corn price drop.

Cellulosic ethanol backers do not appreciate the volumes and logistics evolved in liquid fuel production. While ethanol is a small percentage of liquid fuel, the volumes of feedstock used in its production are huge.

For cellulosic ethanol to amount to more than a pipe dream, a whole new infrastructure will have be created to make it come true.

It is not going to happen. Cellulosic ethanol is dead.

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

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

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

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

We'd still be using arable land to grow fuel rather than food, wouldn't that present a problem as well? So we can grow the food, but how will we get the food to the hungry people? How will the food be distributed to the hungry people if it gets to their countries?

The US exports food. It doesn't export ethanol. In 35 years if the population continues to grow as it is more and more resources will go into food production. The US and Western Europe is looked on by some experts as the Saudi Arabia of food, a swing producer.

About 10% of international trade is in food, 20% is in minerals(oil) and 70% is in manufactured goods. As population raises and energy depletes manufacturing and minerals shipments will shrink. The West will ship food to
do something about the specter of tens of millions starving to death.

http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch5en/conc5en/naturetrade.html

There's plenty of coal for shipping.

Ah... Coal powered ships, what's old will be new again. I'm not so sure the West will simply grow food because they can, perhaps some sort of food for oil arrangement to insure we still live similar lifestyles? Export Land Model doesn't apply if local governments forcibly cut consumption.

We aren;t going to ship enough food to feed the world for two very simple reasons.One, that the world, excepting a few relatively small countries, has not the wherewithal to pay for it.

We are ourselves in no position to give it away, and we will hopefully only get our nose bloodied badly enough this time around the depression merry go round to realize the folly of exporting our industry and importing our energy, rather than collapsing ourselves.

Second, we don't have the capacity, with a growing population and a shrinking agricultural resource base, although those in the industry will assure those outside it that we DO,for all the usual reasons.

My concern exactly, Mac. How many millions of tons of soil will we burn every year to satisfy our obcene "need" for energy? How do we replace it? As folks say around here, "you can't get sumthin' fer nuthin'". We're already facing this problem, so, hey!, let's just make it worse.

If it came to that, population growth would essentially stop as immigration would be stopped.

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

While those are reasonable assumption based on current population growth trends they are not in any way written in stone. We may already be entering some very turbulent and chaotic circumstances with unknown unkowns that may provide tipping points which could suddenly and quite drastically begin to reduce the population as well. I'm actually betting on the latter. See graph of rise and fall of yeast population growth below... I have yet to see any indication that we are any smarter.

While those are reasonable assumption based on current population growth trends they are not in any way written in stone.

Baring a genocidal war in South Asia and Africa, I think they are. I doubt that the megawars like WWI or WW2 which were the products of industrialized societies are going to be economically feasible. Medical technology will greatly reduce natural population controls.

Last year the UN increased their low projection, their medium projection is 9.2 billion people in 2050.

The great hope is that third world women joining the workforce will reduce or eliminate the number of children but third world women are poorly educated and cultural repressed. Even in China, raised with socialist values of sex equality and education culture trumphs propaganda.

Sterilization campaigns are considered a crime against humanity.

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

With all due respect to your diagram, you'll have to post some arguments with facts.
Perhaps TOD should allow troll-rating of optimists(just joking?).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hayseed, I think you hit upon the solution when you said "small or on farm systems", assuming that some kind of cost effective cellulosic process can be developed, which is still doubtful. I have always thought a good way would be to do on farm distillation of the corn, using the stubble as fuel for the distillation. There is still an issue of stubble storage, though not of transport. if you have your own stock then you can feed the ddg's directly. Seems like a good case for a mixed farm, or a group of adjacent farms that have these functions.

Interesting story about the press and home cooked biodiesel. But I don't get where the glycerin is coming from - is that a by product of pressing sunflower oil, or does it come from somewhere else?

My take on gasification is that you might as well then run an IC engine on the producer gas to generate electricity and sell that - probably more $ per ton of biomass than ethanol. Mind you, once you are set up for that you are then better off to start growing trees instead of corn, but that's a whole different story. In any case, you could still use the waste heat (exhaust and cooling system) to run your corn ethanol distillery. My experience growing up on our (mixed) farm in Australia was that everything could be used by something else - hard to do in a monoculture farm. But then again, only half the farm was good cropping soil - if you have all good cropping soil, probably best to crop it, if you have enough water to do so.

Paul Nash:
Glycerin is a liquid that gets pressed out of oilseeds along with the oil. Normally, lye (KOH) is added to attach to the glycerin so it can be separated out. It has its industrial uses, such as explosives (nitroglycerin), but for a small on-farm squeezer, its one more environmental hassle to deal with. Glycerin, as is, is not a good fuel--it gums things up, too large a glob of molecules to get through the filters, much less pump and injectors. I think adding gasoline emulsifies the glycerin so it flows through the system and explodes in the engine. The farmer I read about had put quite a few miles and hours on his engines with no ill effects, and some improvements. Ethanol doesn't mix well with glycerin.

I agree with you on older style farms having a use for practically everything. In my Dad's old Morrison's Feeds and Feeding (around 1929), the part dealing with fattening cattle stated that such a process is seldom profitable (this was before crop subsidies influenced farmers toward more corn, lowering the price, cheapening up the cattle rations), and that often the only profit to be had was from the hogs fattening up on the cattle manure, with its predigested corn, alfalfa, etc. Old-timers have told me that hogs would root around on the cattle in the morning trying to get them to stand up, stretch, and provide them with a warm breakfast. Sorry about that, you urbanites, but that's how it used to be done before species segregation and confinement feeding.

Some farmers are planting corn now only to turn calves out on it, using electric fence and portable water tanks to limit the acres eaten at a time. Those that plan it out effectively, match the cattle numbers and acres eaten to the growth pattern of corn, finishing the cattle as the corn ripens--higher protein of young corn providing for muscle growth of younger cattle and more carbohydrates as the cattle mature and fatten. (I personally prefer grass fattened cattle.) Generally half of the cattle can go directly to the slaughterhouse, while the remainder need a couple of months in the feedlot. Think of all the fuel saved with no harvesting, hauling, drying, storing, hauling, storing, grinding and feeding expense. Also, with all that manure falling right back onto the field on which the crops are grown, fertilizer expenses go down drastically, and fewer herbicides are needed.

For those who lean toward vegetarianism, all this is foolishness, but for the majority of farmers who are struggling to survive with these volatile prices, whether caused by peak oil or greedy speculators with ultrafast computers, cutting out a whole bunch of sunken costs in depreciating equipment in favor of costs put into a growing animal, well, a lot of pencil pushing is going on.

A monoculture farm can mimic a diversified farm if its owner becomes a processor who takes his raw crops all the way through to a finihed product, be it ethanol, vegetable ersatz diesel, or gasified cellulose IF he returns the concentrated leftovers back to his own soil instead of selling them. However, it's still more profitable to sell the DDGs, for example, and buy back commercial fertilizer. I'm not really willing to call such an enterprise a farm, though.

An excellent review. There is a powerful trio of factors that cannot be overwhelmed quickly regarding biofuels policy and expectations. First, there is the raw precedent of misguided and wildly unrealistic but still on the books renewable fuels expectations. Second, the combined power of corn state legislators and their corn-powered commodity group constituents effectively blocks sober discussion of alternatives strategies beyond liquid fuel production. Third, both the Energy Department and the USDA have invested a lot of their prestige and agency political capital promoting all manner of biofuels. The boom in corn ethanol for a time enhanced both agencies' inter-agency standing, as did the advanced biofuels R&D promotion period that let hundreds of millions in support of the next generation of fuels, and their "experts" still hold sway.

For all the technical issues that must be addressed, the politics of this are still an awful mess with little or no chance of reasonable resolution in the near future.

Bravo.

Haven't read every comment so I hope I'm not repeating. If we accept
1) PHEVs may not take more than 10% of the vehicle market in the early years
2) alcohols and lipid based fuels have clear limitations
3) piston engines will be cheaper and more reliable, albeit inefficient.

the question becomes then what? I think most vehicles will be piston engined dual fuel running on both a liquid and a gas hydrocarbon. The liquid could be anything with the standard octane or cetane rating. For the gas I think blendable methane has a lot going for it
sources - natgas, biogas, methanated syngas, Sabatier method
storage methods - liquid (LNG), highly compressed (CNG), adsorbed (ANG)

For a number of reasons I think the standard vehicle will be a van. That extra space will be for a battery pack, methane tank, more groceries for less frequent shopping trips or for passengers in the obligatory car pool. So I guess microbial methods fit in with biogas and ethanol, while thermochemical methods fit in with syngas and Choren. If the dual fuel vehicle is diesel/methane the diesel could be a blend of petro, bio, FT (Choren) or the hydrogenated (green) variety, maybe with a smidgin of ethanol (diesohol). The idea is that vehicles will run on a wide variety of fuels.

Boof,

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

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

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

Paul Nash,

Your remarks are interesting, and in reference to Robert Rapier's discussion of technology that for whatever reason simply "will not scale", the perfect case study could be the Stirling external engine. This technology is over 150 years old, has been touted for decade after decade as the new breakthrough in engines, and yet it never seems to deliver despite all the theory being in it's favor (?)

Speaking of a great test bench engine, even high school kids make them that can run on ice or a tea kettle! :-)

So simple, so perfect and yet....NOTHING in the way of usable development except in very rare applications.

RC

Yes, the Stirling is a perpetual also ran, and is actually coming up on 200 years old (but then , the fuel cell is now 150!). I actually built a "coffee cup" Stirling, really quite impressive, and a great amusement for kids and adults alike. Much less impressive is their record in revenue service. The only successful ones, such as Whispergen, get about 15% electric efficiency, which is no better than Organic Rankine Cycle systems.

ORC systems are starting to appear, using off the shelf refrig/air conditioning components, same performance as many Stirlings but 1/10 price per kW.

A company called Cyclone power is doing a new version of a piston steam engine, using supercritical steam. Gets efficiency of 30%, but still in development.

The real challenge is that, aside from the steam engine, all the other external combustion, or turbine types, have low torque and/or power density, and are only good for constant speed application - hence the turbine/hybrid bus, though it is no more efficient than a 50kWdiesel/hybrid would be, just much more expensive to build.

But there is a great appeal, in my opinion, to external combustion engines as they are fuel agnostic, and don't need highly refined fuels. Thus solid biomass could be used without giving up half its energy to convert to liquid.

But just like stirlings, any other external combustion engines are (to date) only for niche applications, and they are seen as a step "backwards" not forward like fuel cells and lithium batteries.

I think about this every time I chop my firewood...

"I think the standard vehicle will be a van"

Ford Unveils Its Electric Delivery Van

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

Great job. I fear that the Big Oil owned Congress will never enact an energy policy that will break our dependence upon oil from despots that hate us and a commodity market that is totally rigged. The comments bring hope, vote out the rascals! Mike Conners

More on diesel/CNG.

Of course this is a hassle with two tanks and separate fill ups. The dual fuel vehicle may be more clunky and less zippy than a liquid fuel only vehicle but still better than taking the bus to shop for groceries. A handy version would use liquid fuel maybe for cold starting and hill climbing then CNG only on the flat highway. That way if the liquid fuel be it ethanol or Choren diesel is expensive it only needs to be used sparingly. If the motor vehicle market goes this way we need to know how much new NG it will need, the problem being that CO2 cap-and-trade will divert more gas to electrical generation instead of coal.

The "Magic of Technology", is that a redundancy?

A little off topic from what RR had in mind, but have you noticed how the word "technology" has become the modern day euphemism for "magic" and "alchemy"?

Examples:

If TECHNOLOGY can get us to the Moon, it can do anything we need done.

If TECHNOLOGY can get a billion transistors into a little sand chip, it can do anything we need done.

All we need is just another Manhattan Project.

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

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

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

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

RR
As always, you have stated the situation well. I suspect Dr Chu and the Pres have sold out politically on this subject, as to every other subject of importance facing us these days: The strong ethanol lobby just marched in Washington DC, the catering to the Senators from the grain belt region, the Iowa caucus and the corporate lobbyists and insiders within the administration... all the usual suspects.

Because of the fiscal conservation that will be required down the road due to the debt burden this nation has taken on, slack will need to be cut from the system and as that happens I expect the biofuels programs to end. In just announced leaked documents, Europe is questioning them right now on the basis of greenhouse emissions, as they also consider cutting their rich ag subsidy program. Social costs, unrest, and political uncertainty may outweigh biofuels special interests sometime soon.

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

And Canada manages that with a GDP about the same as that of Texas while having a population around the same size as California's, a state that just happens to have about the same GDP as France whose voter's you so admire. Campaigning is a mess here, that for sure, but the scales we are dealing with make any voluntary improvement in the situation highly unlikely.

Why do we have to scale up biofuel technologies? If we want renewable energy that is not in conflict with food production, we need smaller scale, localized systems. The following links will indicate our strategy and achievements so far:
http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd21/11/pres21195.htm
http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd22/1/rodr22010.htm
http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd21/7/rodr21110.htm

Preston,

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

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

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

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

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

Therein lies the problem.

A hundred years ago the used split logs in a firebox to fire a boiler and drive a steam operated locomotive.

Some systems failed after becoming overly complex. There was much technical jargon to back them, but little intelligence.