E3 Biofuels: Responsible Ethanol
Posted by Robert Rapier on June 27, 2006 - 1:38am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: ethanol, sustainability [list all tags]
My opposition to ethanol is due to the way we typically make it in the U.S., and is specifically focused on grain ethanol. We take fossil fuels and basically recycle them into ethanol in a very inefficient manner. Ethanol production may be a good solution for countries like Brazil, that don't rely on large fossil fuel inputs into the process (as long as they aren't depleting their topsoil and cutting down their rainforests). Cellulosic ethanol may ultimately provide ethanol at a substantially better energy return than grain ethanol, but as a recent Car & Driver article put it: "If cellulosic ethanol were easy, it would already be on the road, because the government has been seriously funding research for about 30 years."
However, a couple of months ago a poster referred me to a company that is attempting to produce ethanol in a more sustainable manner. The company is E3 Biofuels. Their concept is this: Grow corn, produce ethanol, feed the byproducts to cattle, harvest the manure, produce methane from the manure in a biodigester, use the methane to fuel the boilers, and use the remaining solids to fertilize the soil. This is ethanol production in more of a Brazilian mold (i.e., byproducts are used to fuel the process).
I had some skepticism about whether they could produce enough methane to completely provide the energy needs of the plant, so I contacted the company. I was sent a spreadsheet from one of the project managers that estimates the energy inputs and outputs of the plant. I was correct that supplemental natural gas will be needed, but due to the manure-produced biogas, the amount is estimated to be substantially less than for a typical grain ethanol plant. Based on the spreadsheet I was sent, as well as correspondence I had with the project manager, the fossil fuel usage is estimated to be 75% less than that of a standard grain ethanol plant. If these estimates turn out to be accurate, that would quadruple the EROEI of the process.
The project manager with whom I corresponded indicated that while there are a number of animal waste digesters, their facility will be the first to use the biogas in a closed-loop process. It is important to note that the process has not yet been proven. They are in the final stages of constructing their facility near Mead, Nebraska. They expect to finish the facility soon, and should be producing ethanol by September 1st. Their location has one disadvantage, however, and that is the need to irrigate corn in Nebraska. That means that the overall EROEI would not be as high as for a facility built in Iowa or Minnesota, for instance. If the process works as advertised, the EROEI could reach 4 or 5 to 1, or even higher for the same process in Iowa where corn irrigation is not required.
Clearly, as I have argued in the past, ethanol is not going to lead us to energy independence. We simply don't produce enough corn for grain ethanol to be a large part of the solution (it will certainly be no more than 20% by volume of our current fuel usage), and therefore conservation is going to have to make the biggest contribution toward sustainability. But if ethanol is going to be part of the solution to diminishing oil supplies, E3 Biofuels is the first in the U.S. to show the way toward making ethanol in a more sustainable manner. As natural gas supplies diminish, many ethanol producers are turning to coal as a fuel source. E3 Biofuels, on the other hand, may become the poster child for clean, "green" ethanol. As a long-time ethanol skeptic, the approach by E3 Biofuels is the first U.S. grain-ethanol process that I endorse.
It would seem as if this process would work with canola as well. If the numbers are really 4 or 5 to 1 for ethanol, canola might be in the 8 or 9 to 1 range. You just need a cool and wet place, AKA the PNW.
Rat@where's MyRipple.org
We've already got the grapes, and we have the best hemp experts in the world. They just need to channel their energy into a different form of the weed :>)
Lots of the wineries are already organic, some are solar...
Bottling facility going solar
By JAMES ARENS The Daily Journal
The solar panels that line the roof of the Fetzer administration building, added in 1999, supply most of the energy to the building. This solar array will be dwarfed by the new solar arrays that will soon adorn the case good and shipping warehouse. (Isaac Eckel/The Daily Journal)
HOPLAND -- Fetzer Vineyards will become the nation's largest solar powered winery, likely in October. Fetzer will begin construction in July on a solar power system that will provide it with 1.1 million kilowatt hours of clean electricity annually.
http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/local/ci_3941212
=====Triff to me...
Re: Biofuel from hemp .. Do you have the gal/acre
equivalents ??
Soybeans ~40 gal/acre
Corn ~60 gal/acre
Mustard ~140 gal/acre
Jatropha~160 gal/acre
PalmOil ~650 gal/acre
and
ta-da
algae 10-20000 gal/acre
Do a google on GreenFuel Technologies Corp ..
They've got a continuous bioreactor going commercial ..
The 'algae' folks claim that all motor fuels and
heating oil can be replaced with the equivalent of
500,000 acres of closed-loop algae production ..
who knows .. Ford also looked at Mustard plants as
a source of biofuel back in the day ..
--
and my answer, re hemp...
Hemp is a viable source of woody biomass, no deforestation necessary. In fact, while an acre of trees is about 60% cellulose, and acre of hemp is nearly 75%. How much hemp is necessary to meet current US energy needs? Somewhere between 10 million and 90 million acres, depending on how efficient the production is. Every year, the US government pays farmers (in cash or "kind") to not farm what they call the "soil bank", which happens to be about 90 million acres of farmland. The math is pretty simple.
Hemp seed oil is very similar to petroleum diesel fuel, and produces full engine power with reduced carbon monoxide and 75% less soot and particulates. Hemp stalk (different than the part that can make paper and textiles) can be converted into 500 gallons of methanol/acre. US energy consumption is responsible for 80% of the world's air pollution. The use of hemp biomass fuel would be a globally responsible evolution.
http://mit.edu/thistle/www/v13/2/enviro.html
==================Hemp as Biomass for Energy
Tim Castleman
© Fuel and Fiber Company, 2001
----
Industrial hemp can be grown in most climates and on marginal soils. It requires little or no herbicide and no pesticide, and uses less water than cotton. Measurements at Ridgetown College indicate the crop needs 300-400 mm (10-13 in.) of rainfall equivalent. Yields will vary according to local conditions and will range from 1.5 to 6 bone dry tons of biomass per acre. California's rich croplands and growing environment are expected to increase yields by 20% over Canadian results, which will average at least 3.9 bone dry tons per acre.
Hemp seed oil for BioDiesel
Production of oil
Grown for oilseed, Canadian grower's yields average 1 tonne/hectare, or about 400 lbs. per acre. Cannabis seed contains about 28% oil (112 lbs.), or about 15 gallons per acre. Production costs using these figures would be about $35 per gallon. Some varieties are reported to yield as much as 38% oil, and a record 2,000 lbs. per acre was recorded in 1999. At that rate, 760 lbs.of oil per acre would result in about 100 gallons of oil, with production costs totaling about $5.20 gallon. Sales of the remaining stalk material at $72 per ton will provide another source of income. It is estimated that a crop grown for both seed and fiber will produce about 3 tons of stalk, which is selling for about $72 per ton, resulting in a $216 per acre credit. This will reduce the cost of the oil to about $3 per gallon. Further reductions will accrue as the agronomic knowledge base is enlarged, and economies of scale are realized, lowering production costs while improving yields.
This oil could be used as-is in modified diesel engines, or be converted to biodiesel using a relatively simple, automated process. Several systems are under development worldwide designed to produce biodiesel on a small scale, such as on farms using "homegrown" oil crops.
Production of Bio-Diesel
Basically methyl esters, or biodiesel, as it is commonly called, can be made from any oil or fat, including hemp seed oil. The reaction requires only oil, an alcohol (usually methanol) and a catalyst (usually sodium hydroxide [NaOH, or drain cleaner]). The reaction produces only biodiesel and a smaller amount of glycerol or glycerin.
The costs of materials needed for the reaction are the costs associated with production of hemp seed oil, the cost of methanol and the NaOH. In the instances where waste vegetable oil, or WVO, is used, the cost for oil is of course, free. Typically methanol costs about $2 per gallon and NaOH costs about $5 per 500g or about $0.01 per gram. For a typical 17-gallon batch of biodiesel, you would start with 14 gallons of hemp seed oil; add to that 15% by volume of alcohol (or 2.1 gallons) and about 500g of NaOH. The process takes about 2 hours to complete and requires about 2000 watts of energy. That works out to about 2kw/hr or about $0.10 of energy (assuming $0.05 per kw/hr). So the total cost per gallon of biodiesel is $? (oil) + 2.1 x $2 (methanol) + $5 (NaOH) + $0.10 (energy) / 14 gallons = $0.66 per gallon, plus the cost of the oil.
Hemp Cellulose for Ethanol
Another approach will involve conversion of cellulose to ethanol, which can be done in several ways including gasification, acid hydrolysis and a technology utilizing engineered enzymes to convert cellulose to glucose, which is then fermented to make alcohol. Still another approach using enzymes will convert cellulose directly to alcohol, which leads to substantial process cost savings.
Current costs associated with these conversion processes are about $1.37 per gallon of fuel produced, plus the cost of the feedstock. Of this $1.37, enzyme costs are about $0.50 per gallon; current research efforts are directed toward reduction of this amount to $0.05 per gallon. There is a Federal tax credit of $0.54 per gallon and a number of other various incentives available. Conversion rates range from a low of 25-30 gallons per ton of biomass to 100 gallons per ton using the latest technology.
In 1998 the total California gasoline demand was 14 billion gallons. When ethanol is used to replace MTBE as an oxygenate, this will create California demand in excess of 700 million gallons per year. MTBE is to be phased out of use by 2003 according to State law.
In this case we can consider biomass production from a much broader perspective. Sources of feedstock under consideration for these processes are:
We will address these in turn and show why a dedicated energy crop holds important potential for ethanol production in California, why hemp is a good candidate as a dedicated energy crop, and how it may represent the fastest track to meeting 34% of California's upcoming ethanol market demand of at least 580-750 million gallons per year.
http://www.fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRG.htm
I'm still looking for BTU figures, and petrochemical and water inputs for the various biocrops. I'm also thinking about a weed called teasel, since I'm hacking down plants taller than me in the garden. Problem is, that it is a biennial.But, in Cal,you can walk on it for a year, and then it shoots up during late winter/ early spring, right when fields get planted. Maybe in the rows?
There is currently a hemp industry bill in the Calif. lege.
Problem I have pushing hemp is everybody says "But it will seed my crop." :-)
======And, from a paper on algae,
In the early days of the automobile, most vehicles ran on biofuels, with Henry Ford himself being a big advocate of alcohol produced from industrial hemp (not to be confused with marijuana).
http://www.energybulletin.net/2364.html
If the 4 or 5 to 1 EROEI is accurate the process is still less efficient than Brazil seems to be getting out of sugar cane. Worldwatch Institute and the German development agency GTZ claim 8 to 1. This seems intuitively correct as Brazilian ethanol is itself a biproduct and sugar is better resource feedstock than corn.
Could you make a guess as to whether shipping ethanol from Brazil would level the EROEI? How about the cost?
As I have noted before, I do think that the current US ethanol program is a fiasco, not only because of the poor returns, but because of the high tariffs on imported ethanol. Do you think that this new process could compete with imported Brazilian ethanol on an EROIE or cost basis?
Don't know the exact numbers, but shipping LNG uses 6-15% of it's cargo to ship to the U.S., depending on the length of the trip.
I'm guessing it would be in that range.
This puts the US at a disadvantage in importing LNG. For all the LNG exporters, the United States is the closest market only for Trinidad & Tobago. Nigeria is closer to the EU, Qatar, Iran & Australia are closer to Japan & China (that will be a LONG haul to the US !), Western Russia is closer to the EU and Eastern Russia to China & Japan. Mexico is the closest market for Ecuador.
The larger oil tankers are, the more efficient they are due to the cube/square law. I would suspect that <1% of the fuel is used for transport of Persian Gulf fuel to the US.
You can reduce boil-off of course by better insulation or take boil-off to power refrigeration equipment. (or both) In any case, it's some mighty cold stuff to have to ship. It would be better to turn the gas into gasoline then put it in a tanker at the source, saving the energy to refrigerate it. Of course, that doesn't help our NG woes.
Thicker insulation means less LNG (inside diameter shrinks as walls get thicker). The whole purpose is to deliver NG and the optimum point is found in design.
Note that the "optimum point" for Nigeria to Spain is quite different than for Qatar to East or West Coast US (thicker for US I guess). So misusing a thinner insulation LNG designed for shorter hauls for Qatar to US will deliver a bit less than designed.
On the June 11, 2006 airing of the Sunday news show "Meet The Press", host Tim Russert was so smitten by the ethanol solution, he simply would not let it go. It became rapidly apparent that he judged the success of American "energy independence" and "energy security" by the big oil companies willingness to go after the ethanol dream with all they had. He repeated the "Brazil example" again and again, despite the 5 Oil compnies CEO's whom he was in the process of questioning expressing serious doubts and concerns about whether the "ehtanol solution" really was all it was cracked up to be.
The portion relavent to our discussion involves the amont of ethanol that is produced in Brazil. I bring it up here to refute what seems to be a popular assertion and belief: That if all else fails, we can throw off the tariffs, and import billions of gallons of ethanol from Brazil, since their conditions seem to favor it. The volumes of ethanol production in Brazil, however, are so small as to make this scenario highly unlikely if not completely impossible:
ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva
MR. MULVA: "Brazil is a unique situation. Reason Brazil is self-sufficient in energy is not so much because of ethanol. It's because they have a very strong, growing, thriving oil production, both onshore and offshore Brazil. It's been for several decades that Brazil uses sugar cane to make ethanol. It does have an impact in terms of the price of ethanol and also on the price of sugar. Just recently, Brazil reduced the amount of ethanol that they applied towards--for fuels for automobiles from 25 to 20 percent. The reason Brazil is self-sufficient--they make great strides in terms of ethanol--but it's primarily be--due to the success of their oil production business onshore and offshore. It's been like a ninefold increase in their oil production in Brazil. It far outstrips the increase of ethanol production."
ChevronTexaco CEO David O'Reilly
MR. O'REILLY:"The problem with some of these alternatives is the scale is so small yet. You know, Brazil's gasoline market is 3 percent of the size of the U.S. market. One ethanol plant makes in a year what a typical refinery will produce in gasoline in two days."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13296235/page/5/
The tariffs, which are now becoming blamed for all sorts of horrors, really have only one effect, and that is to protect the U.S. "homegrown" ethanol industry. There is virtually no danger that any real quantity of ethanol will come to us from South America because (a) they need it to bad for their own market (after all, they are not really making that much of it, despite the perception created by the popular media's glowing reports) and (b) even the amount they are using is already putting upward price pressure on sugar cane and thus food prices.
So for those who dream of tanker after tanker of ethanol pouring in from South America to top up the SUV with E85, first, don't hold your breath, second, it's more expensive than the gasoline you already buy, and third, you give up a quarter of your fuel mileage right off the top (and on a truck that gets 12 or 14 MPH, that can't be good!)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
However, I think the focus on what Tim Russert said or the flaws in the U.S. approach obscures a topic that is far more relevant to this website: Could ethanol play a useful role in helping to transition to a future with less oil supply?
So let's leave the hype behind and instead consider a more modest proposal. Could ethanol provide 10% of global vehicle fuel within the next ten years? If so, I would say it could be one of a handful of solutions that could fill in the gap between oil produced and the amount of oil required to fuel modern lifestyles for the world.
In previous discussions here, we have established that Brazil supplied a little more than 11% of the energy input for its transportation sector from ethanol last year. Since 14% of ethanol produced is exported, this means that the country produces enough ethanol to provide 13% of its energy inputs to transportation. Previous years show even higher figures. Worldwatch Institute and the German government cite figures of 21.6% of transportation fuel from biofuels and 48.24% of non-diesel transportation use (they use 2002 consumption and 2004 production for about 40 countries). Even after adjusting these figures down by 25% for lower BTU content, they are not meaningless.
Yes, Brazil has been extremely successful in exploring for oil. But how does this hurt the ethanol case? Are you suggesting that it would be a solution elsewhere? I suspect that if Brazil had not discovered so much oil, ethanol production would be even higher.
Ethanol in Brazil is unsubsidized and is not more expensive than gasoline on a volume or BTU basis. The price has also gone up since global sugar prices have gone up. However, adjustments can and will be made. The same WW/German study says that sugar occupied 2.4% of agricultural area, half of which can be counted towards ethanol (and half towards sugar). This represents 0.5% of land with the potential for agriculture. So the potential to ramp up production is great.
By the way, the reason the Brazil's gasoline market is only 3% of the size of the US market is that half of gasoline use (by volume) is offset by ethanol and Brazil uses about 50% diesel for transportation. So Brazil's ethanol market is already 3% of the US gasoline market (by volume or about 2.2% by energy content).
Then consider that ethanol can be produced in a wide range of tropical countries using sugar, that there may be technologies that can produce ethanol viably in the US and other non-tropical regions (as Robert's article suggests, that these solutions are EROIE positive at rates of up to 8:1 and that ethanol has immense climate benefits. Why dismiss it out of hand?
I do think that we need to look for a wide range of ways to handle reduced energy supply in the future. Efficiency will be crucial, but I think prices will gradually bring this around. I also think that we will increase the amount of transportation fueled by electricity in the next decade. There are a lot of other things we need to do as well, but don't let your frustration with big mouths and bad policy make you overlook an important part of the solution.
I am not sure it is going to be any cheaper, because the capital costs will surely be higher. The EROEI won't reach the level of sugarcane ethanol, but some of that energy is lost by having to ship the ethanol from Brazil.
Incidentally, legislation has been introduced to make the U.S. ethanol subsidy permanent. I presumed they were going to let the subsidy expire, since ethanol is now mandated. Why mandate it AND subsidize it? I was looking forward to people finally paying market price. See:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/06/new_house_bill_.html
RR
After hearing mention above of Grapes and Hempseed.. (and what that might concievably do to the perrennial 'legalize it' campaign) and rapeseed, switchgrass etc.., I wondered if you or others here have heard of any studies looking at other 'waste biologicals', like the everpresent Kudzu and similar vines that clog roadsides and forests in the southeast- as far as their possible contribution to an ethanol (and methane) economy?
I'm gratified and not really surprised at the combinations described by the E3 group. The growing thirst for fuels is going to produce a whole range of experiments and combinations to improve our outputs.
Here is a story of a Frenchman, M. Jean Pain, who took composting and home methane digestion to a new level, generating heat, gas for cooking and driving and electricity with sustainably harvested underbrush and woodchippings from his land.
- http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic_Gardening/1980_March_April/The_Genius_of_Jean_Pain
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/methane_pain.html
(I'm more familiar with the second article, which covers more of the full spread of his experiments around his rural French farm..
Bob Fiske
(Sitting in a Las Vegas hotel on a Poker-Tournament job, in about the most unsustainable environment and industry I've been in my life!)
Using fossil or ethanol-derived fuel and fertilizers to grow.... more fuel. It's like a perpetual motion machine, you won't get as much out as you put in, if you want to obey The Law (s of physics hehe) so I think what you see in places that are using it is, it's feeding off of the fossil fuel industry, or it's being used in a South American warlord state where the proles work the fields by hand with perhaps some draft animals to grow ethanol so the ruling class can drive.
Your comments about Brazil seem bigoted and insulting, the country is not a warlord state and a lot more people have cars than the ruling class.
Do you mean you don't WANT there to be responsible ethanol?
Not to insult the Brazilians etc., but car ownership isn't what it is in the US and I'm going to be very surprised if ethanol keeps us in the lifestyle in the US "to which we're accustomed".
We're really scared of going back to walking and putting around on bicycles aren't we?
The problem with anti-ethanol arguments, in my view, is that they boost ethanol up to a level that it could never achieve, then take easy potshots at it.
In another post on this thread, I suggested a target of 10% of vehicle fuel from ethanol, supplemented by reduction in overall fuel use, electricity in transportation and other silver BBs. The goal is to ease a transition to a post-cheap oil era and stave of the doom that many think is upon us.
If everyone ate as much sugar as I do, we could probably replace 90% of the world's sugar crops with ethanol and not suffer a bit. Ethanol in Brazil uses up 0.5% of agriculturally suitable land.
Modern agriculture is not very resource efficient. If we produced more nutritious food and less tobacco, meat, sugar and other crap from land, there would be plenty of room to produce a lot more ethanol, especially if some of the promising technologies take off.
Now, if peak oil and climate change aren't crises, maybe this is all a waste of time - but I don't think that is the case.
That is exactly correct. Ethanol can't replace our current levels of gasoline consumption. I don't believe any combination of alternatives can. But, in certain cases, it could make a contribution. We will need many different options, but mostly we will need conservation.
RR
With the fuel saved, we would already be making the transition to a less fossil fuel dependent society and would not need to grow corn to produce ethanol to make the transition. The transition is the transition.
Trees (depending on species/root systems) bring up minerals from deep underground into the bio-sphere. They sequester carbon till they die (and if we use them for structure or furniture, long after that).
We are all familar with fruits & nuts, but chestnuts have a different dietary profile. More protein, less fat, they can substitute for grains in many ways and they can have productivity that rivals wheat fields.
I think orchard based agriculture is a much neglected part of permaculture.
5 million hectares were planted in sugarcane last year,
http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=19061
with over half of that being used for ethanol production.
According to the CIA factbook, only 6.93% of the entire country (or 586,000 sq km) constitutes useable arable land. That's 58 million hectares, of which sugarcane covers 10%.
As a side note, "the global demand for ethanol would be 7.5 times greater than Brazil's current output if the whole world added 10 percent of this fuel alcohol to its gasoline, said Plinio Nastari, the president of Datagro, a sugar industry consultancy firm."
My source was the Wordwatch Institute / German government study, which I should have cited.
http://www.worldwatch.org/ct/20060509/pubs/sow/2006/toc/4
Roughly half of sugar cane grown is used to produce ethanol (and half for sugar), so you need to divide your figure by two.
I am not saying that ethanol is perfect or without problems. I do claim that it is a viable substitute for a portion of our current liquid fuel consumption and that it is not unrealistic to think something like 10% of fuel could come from ethanol in a ten year time frame.
This quote - from your link also seems to support my overall point.
"Moreover, the land that will be used for sugar cane is already deforested, and has been abandoned by the cattle farming industry".
*
- I don't see increasing global production of ethanol to 7.5 times Brazil's current level in ten years as insurmountable. The same WW study says Brazil alone can double production from 12.88 billion liters to 26 bn lt by 2015 (Brazil Case Study pg. 32). Thailand could be producing a billion liters next year. There aer a lot of places where this could happen and the timeframe is fairly quick - seeds to fuel in two years.
- WW uses the same 5.5 million ha figure you cite but says:
Sugar Cane crops presently occupy 2.4% of Brazilian agricultural area, which means almost 5.5 million ha. Since half is sugare, this equates to 2.8 million ha for ethanol which is 1.2% of the surface currently used for agriculture and 0.5% of the surface with potential for agriculture. (Brazil Case Study pg. 18).A long summary of the biofuels report and country case studies are available for free by following the link above.
Yes, I agree, that does not sound like an insurmountable problem to me, certainly not in the timeframe being discussed. Thanks for the link to the case study.
I don't own a car, and I have a long way to work so I use more than two hours for travelling every day, mostly by bus. But this is quite pleasant, and probably a lot less stressful than driving myself (I can't say for sure, as I haven't bothered to try). Get yourself an mp3-player, or something more low-tech if you can't afford it, and some audiobooks, podcasts or music to play on it.
I look forward to my daily commute. It's an opportunity to relax, listen to a book, or get up to date on some interesting topic. If only more people would realize, we'd get cheaper fares and better frequency.
You slim down to tolerate the heat in spring (disabled A/C in a sealed bus) only to bounce around like you're flying through Katrina. You could use an iPod to ignore the TVs but now you become vunerable to the bus bully from behind. Americans are prone to violence! Give me the challenge of city driving any time!
Maybe in Norway the bus systems have their act together, but sure not here in America!