Slashdot Mirror
Ethanol to Hydrogen Reactor Developed
guacamolefoo writes "CNN reports that researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a small (2 ft. high) hydrogen reactor that turns ethanol into hydrogen and then uses a fuel cell to turn the hydrogen into electricity. It notably does not use fossil fuels in the process. I knew that liquor would save us all some day."
It notably does not use fossil fuels in the process.
:-)
It'll never make it in this country. Bush and Cheney will make sure their funding gets pulled.
Foster Brooks takes a drive: "Honesht Offishur, I washunt drinking, I hadda shiphon shom gash *hic*"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
My dad has one of these apparatus, but it works the other way. It's about 8ft tall and converts hydrogen (and some other chemicals) TO ethanol
The cause of, and solution to, many of the world's problems.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
So, I see that part of the saying "Beer is the solution to all lifes problems" is partly true.
Evolution or ID?
It notably does not use fossil fuels in the process.
It most certainly does use fossil fuels.
Ethanol takes energy to make. Lots of energy, possibly more than it contains. That energy comes from fossil fuels. Ethanol is not an energy source; it is a different way to store energy, and not a particularly efficient one.
Using Ethanol as a fuel is mostly a way to funnel money to Corn Belt farmers.
A 40 of bacardi still costs more than the amount of gas to fill a geo..
.. than an ethanol powered engine?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
One item of interest is that this new technique converts ethanol to hydrogen at a 60% efficiency rate, compared to the 20% efficiency rate with current technology.
This kind of reminds me of when marty got stuck in the 1800s and the doc tried to put alcohol in the delorean, and it blew out some part of it...
Um.... anyway. This technology is a much better thing than the movie.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
I wonder how much Fossil Fuel is needed to produce the Ethanol? I seriously doubt this is a truly Fossil Fuel Free[tm] method of making Hydrogen fuel.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
Hmmm... Now all we need is a way to take electricity, turn it to hyrdogen, and then turn into ethanol. That would be a real achievement. As a matter of fact, I'll get started on that right away.
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
to create a 1-1.5 gallons of ethanol. Cover article of Harpers last month...
Homer: "one for you" [fills tank]
Homer: "one for me" [fills mouth]
Cop
Me
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Trolling is a art,
Unfortunately it still takes fossil fuels to grow corn. I didn't see any mention of this in the article, but it would be insteresting to find out if the total amount of fossil fuels (from things like farm equipment, fertilizers, etc) that goes into growing the corn to create the ethanol to create the hydrogen is the same, lower, or even more than that required to turn fossil fuels into hydrogen directly. If its the same as or higher than the direct route, then this "breakthrough" isn't all that great.
The Minnesota researchers envision people buying ethanol to power the small fuel cell in their basements. The cell could produce 1 kilowatt of power, nearly enough for an average home.
But not anywhere close enough for your average Slashdot user.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
That article is pretty damn skimpy on the details. Check out this one which I found at ArsTechnica. Perhaps the most important detail is that a rhodium-based catalyst needs to be heated to 700 celsius for the reaction to have any efficiency.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Why not work on fuel cells that can work directly with ethanol. Hydrogen is a pain to store and transport. Alcohol is trivial. IIRC, methanol has better energy density but ethanol is ubiquitous and has other wonderful properties instead....
The problem is the Drug War won't allow it .
Beer has taught me that yeast create ethanol as a metabolic waste product, right? I believe that yeast also create carbon dioxide as a waste product.
I doubt that large-scale industral ethanol plants are using yeast colonies for production... but what do they use? And what are the waste products from that process?
I understand that reducing our reliance on fossil fules is a good thing. However, if substantial amounts of greenhouse (or other undesirable) gas emissions result from the ethanol production process, aren't we just playing Whack-A-Mole with the source of the pollution?
This is very good news. I already use ethanol blend gasoline in my car. Although it is a bit more expensive, it burns cleaner and (obviously) uses less fossil fuels to produce. There was a saying in the mining engineering department at university: If it can't be grown, it's gotta be mined. If we can move more and more toward the growing, then we're finally truly moving toward a renewable energy economy.
Those GM Hywire commercials are pretty to look at, but don't make it clear to the general public how difficult energy-wise it is to actually produce hydrogen. I hope more research funds get pumped into this kind of technology so we can move toward a hydrogen future at a meanginful pace.
We have an Ethanol plant in our town. It smells awful. When the wind changes a bit - usually when it's getting colder, around football season - it blows right across campus. Freshman used to think it smelled like baking bread. OT, I know. But I wouldn't wish Ethanol on anyone. It'll make you sick, and you don't even have to ingest any..
Yeap, the second law of thermodynamics IS a problem. Let's see, efficiently convert ethanol into hydrogen? Fine. Have a fuel cell that efficiently converts hydrogen into power we can use? Great.
But it uses no fossil fuels? Well, maybe not directly, but... let's see, where do we get ethanol? Hmm. Well, most of it comes from corn. Corn treated with heat. That heat comes from natural gas, usually. So there's a fossil fuel. What else? Corn has to be harvested. Usually this involves tractors, harvesters, and other large pieces of farm equipment that generally run on.. d'oh! More fossil fuel!
According to the US Dept. of Energy, creating ethanol takes about 29% more energy than it provides. Since most of that energy going into the ethanol-creation process is fossil fuel-based, we'd probably be better off just burning the fossil fuels directly. Using ethanol just burns them up even faster.
A source for more ethanol numbers: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031128.html
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Ever noticed how most foods and drinks are sweetened with "high fructose corn syrup", rather than the simpler "sugar", and thought it was a bit odd? I'd always just assumed that it was to disguise the ingredient, but that seemed pointless given the nutritional listing of sugar content. Apparently the resolution is that the US government mandates a price for sugar which is about twice the global one. It does not mandate such a price for corn syrup, so corn syrup is cheaper. The major manufacturer of corn syrup (Archer Daniels Midland) "donates" generously to both parties to ensure the continuation of this policy.
(ADM also runs a mammoth ethanol boondoggle based on government subsidies. Every dollar of profits earned by their corn sweetener operation costs consumers ~10$, every dollar earned by their ethanol operation costs taxpayers ~$30.) (ADM also runs a mammoth ethanol boondoggle based on government subsidies. Every dollar of profits earned by their corn sweetener operation costs consumers ~10$, every dollar earned by their ethanol operation costs taxpayers ~$30.)
The little news blerb definately peaked my interest. But it left me asking what happens to the Carbon and oxygen? when the Ethanol is processessed to make the hydrogren. Sure the Hydrogen is clean, but you have two carbon atoms and an oxygen atom left as by products. Oh well just have to go check out the Journal.
I keep seeing comments talking about how much fossil fuel it takes to grow the corn.
;)
Y'all just aren't looking far enough down the road. When hydrogen power is cheap and available, all of the places that we currently use fossil fuels to produce the corn can change to hydrogen power as well. If this is pooh-poohed now, we'll never get to the point where we can make the transition.
I look forward to the day when the harvesters, trucks used to transport the grain, air conditioners cooling the fermentors, and heaters powering the industrial stills are all powered by nuclear and/or hydrogen power right along with my SUV.
Now where's my jet-pack?
>ethanol from fermented corn is not gonna work, >primarily since all of the farm machines need >gasoline
Uh. Diesel. Almost all farm equipment have run on diesel for the last 40 years. And bio-diesel is a reality....
Maybe someone with more expertise can clarify this or tell me I'm missing the point...
Since ethanol is usually made from plants which have to be cultivated by equipment that burns oil -- combines, tankers, pumps, etc -- my understanding is that the production of ethanol is actually wasteful of fossil fuels. I've read (but haven't been able to corroborate) that the energy required to produce a gallon of ethanol is actually more than the energy produced by a gallon of ethanol.
So, is it really cleaner when you look at the big picture? Is it more efficient?
There's also the cost. Corn-based ethanol is inexpensive because of the huge subsidies the US government gives corn growers. There have been some primetime specials lately connecting the dots between lobbyists, corn production, and the ever growing waistlines of Americans. The small blurb in the article regarding economic potential for farmers is a huge understatement considering these subsidies.
Is this just cool a Good Thing?
But there are two considerations to make here that are not part of the above statement:
From the article: "The cell could produce 1 kilowatt of power, nearly enough for an average home."
) turns up numbers showing that an iron takes about 1.2KW, or just over 1KW for a toaster. So almost enough for an average home, so long as I wander round the house turning off everything else before flattening my shirt or browning some wheat. That's handy.
A bit of googling (http://www.arctic-cat.com/generators/wattage.asp
(This occured to me because I have a fusebox that can't cope with me using a medium iron and an electric heater on low in the same room. Domestic bliss.)
The reactor pushes a mixture of watery ethanol and air over a rhodium-based catalyst heated to about 700 ?C. It takes only five seconds to start up, and produces a steady stream of hydrogen and carbon dioxide with very few other waste products.
So after liberating some (all) of the hydrogen we are left with C2 and O I would assume it would pick up O2 from the air and make C02 as a by product, with potentially some water also.
Last time I checked C02 was a greenhouse gas. It doesn't add to CO2 levels if (big if) the sources for ethanol production extract the CO2 from the atmosphere at the same rate. Keep in mind it isn't just the raw materials, but energy needed to process and create the ethanol, which may cause pollution in the process.
I would have expected CNN to give the actual chemical by-products, and not just summarize as "no greenhouse gasses" which is extremely misleading. I would also be interested to know how many of the H6 get truly extracted, and what remainder go into water (which would say something about efficiency and power density). Or whether some more exotic compounds are left behind that just C02 and H20 (even if only in trace amounts). A molecule here, a molecule there, and sometimes things aren't as benign as one might first assume.
Good news in any event, just wish there where more details.
Letter To Iran
Ethanol causes Pollution too
Ethanol wrong for CA
I've seen other materials cited saying that ethanol is not harmful. Regardless, I'm sure that the pollution that is generated by your corn-fed in-house ethanol-hydrogen fuel cell will be contained by the time this thing gets to market.
"The problem is having to choose between booze and electricity."
That's easy: drink enough that you can't see. That way, it doesn't matter that the lights don't work.
This is a laudable achievement.
The hydrogen is envisioned to replace petrochemicals in automotive uses and small-scale electrical generation with fuel-cells.
The only problem is the ethanol source. Right now it is pretty much corn, period. With present technology, much petrochemicals must be expended to grow the corn and refine it into Ethanol. The fact that no petrochemicals are used in the subsequent conversion to hydrogen is lost on the fact that a large amount of petrochemicals were burned to get the ethanol in the first place.
If a suitably-credentialed person does the math, I think we'd probably find that less petrochemicals would be burned in generating the electricity conventionally, or powering the car conventionally.
We'll have to wait for future tech that can generate the ethanol or hydrogen without using, or by using significantly less petrochemicals.
My idea shouldn't be surprising, because no process is ever 100% efficient.
USNG: 14TPU4605
Well I'm no professor, but corn has been grown long before gasoline was ever concieved of. Couldn't electric tractors be made? And as another poster already stated there is already bio-diesel. Seems to me that electric power from things like Nuclear Power plants and the 77,000 (FEMA Statistic) dams in the US, could provide enough power to create enough ethanol.
That can't work (at least not as a closed system)...you can't run the corn production and ethanol distillation process on the ethanol produced and expect to have an energy surplus (or even break even) unless the operation is so large, and so efficient, that the energy input from sunlight is larger than the loss through various inefficiencies. This converter was a breakthrough, and it still only reaches 60% conversion efficiency, so it doesn't sound like things are going to be that efficient anytime soon.
Ethanol has been used as a fuel for a long time in many countries, often substituted on a percentage basis with regular gas. It was especially useful during wars etc when petroleum were in short supply.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As if no-one had ever used a C compiler to compile their original New-Language compiler, and then threw the C away entirely.
/nothing/ else - the energy independence is a huge step forward.
the shift here is from using fossil fuels that take many years of pressure and heat to create, and mostly lie across oceans - to a fuel source that only takes bacteria, the sun, and a few weeks to create, and can be produced in abundance locally.
if
and the numbers for ethanol creation are referring to -engine-grade-ethanol- which must be (expensively) purified. the ethanol source for the reactor in question -doesn't-.
not to mention that the IOP article says that this ethanol->hydrogen reactor is 3x as efficient as an ethanol engine directly.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
To the nay sayers pointing out that it takes 1-1.5 gallons of fossil fuels to make one gallon of ethanol you missed a important part of this. "Ethanol can usually only be burnt if it is completely free of water - and getting the water out is an energy-intensive process. Schmidt's reactor works with wet ethanol." So this doesnt require PURE ethanol, it can accept the water being left in, which according to that statement is a large part of the energy intensive process to make ethanol. So this isn't the 'pure' ethanol.
So in the furture our robots will be alcoholics?
Using Ethanol as a fuel is mostly a way to funnel money to Corn Belt farmers.
The New York Times ran an interesting story about agriculture and obesity in October, basically discussing how, among other things, American corn has traditionally been so overproduced that corn-growers are desperate to find ways to use it. In the 19th century, the solution was to use it to make alcohol-- the average US citizen's consumption of corn-based alcohol then was more than FIVE times what it is now.
Following the backlash against drinking alcohol around the turn of the century, now much of the corn glut is used as a cheep sweetener. Corn syrup has replaced sugar in most sodas, candy, etc since the 1980s. The article suggests that the move from corn-alcohol to corn-syrup is responsible for the 60% obesity increase plus dramatic increases in "adult-onset" Diabetes.
So is the corn-as-fuel studies a similar way to answer the question-- how do we get rid of all this corn?
Also, see this NYTimes editorial. Some interesting stats in there as well.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Sorry for the flame, but why the #$% do you guys keep putting stories like this on slashdot's front page? This ethanol-->hydrogen thesis is for crack smokers. As pointed out in posts above, the second law of thermodynamics implies that the production of ethanol will kill any energy plus in the equation. For god's sake, all these discussions make me think I'm watching the matrix again with the human battery concept.
Here's from FTW:
One conclusion generally accepted by almost every attendee was that hydrogen, contrary to popularly accepted comfort promotions by writers like Jeremy Rifkin, was not a solution either in the near or long term because of intensive costs of production, inherent energy inefficiencies, lack of infrastructure and impracticalities. Speaking for Daimler Chrysler, which paid lip service to Peak Oil yet acknowledged that it had done extensive research on hydrogen vehicles, Dr. Jorg Wind told the conference that his company did not see hydrogen as a viable alternative to petroleum-based internal combustion engines.
"We use fossil fuels to make hydrogen. That does not result in a significant CO2 reduction. We predict that by 2020 only 5% of fuel use will be hydrogen and that infrastructure and the political framework is the most important factor. In order of relevance and likelihood from the standpoint of the auto industry Wind stated that we would see improved conventional vehicles, starter hybrid vehicles, electric hybrid vehicles and, finally, fuel cell vehicles as solutions, but he had little optimism that fuel cells would ever amount to a significant market share. In a telling left-handed acknowledgement of Peak Oil, Wind noted that one third of all diesel fuels currently used in Germany were biodiesel relying on recycled waste and or plant feedstock. He was particularly critical of ethanol stating that it was not energy efficient.
French presenters confirmed that ethanol was only viable in France due to a three hundred per cent government subsidy to farmers. Otherwise it was a net energy waster.
Ethanol can be produced by many things, other than corn. It can be produced by wood chips, and other waste products... And as for the energy input in making ethanol, there is indeed the sun, and there are many other things that burn other than fossil fuels. One that comes readily to my mind as being appropriate to the production of ethanol is methane gas, easily produced from shit, including our own, which is a resource far defying the limits of abundance! The thing about this development I don't understand is that most gasoline engines can be converted to run on ethanol, so what is the point of using ethanol to produce hydrogen to produce electricity to run a car when you can just burn the ethanol in a combustion engine and get the same energy that way... especially considering the amount of engines out there that could readily run the fuel. Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
The cell could produce 1 kilowatt of power, nearly enough for an average home.
That's about enough to power all the wall-warts in my house.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
8.3 light minutes.
Why did GEAR crush RDP?
First off: I'd love to see a process that "turns ethanol into hydrogen and then uses a fuel cell to turn the hydrogen into electricity". This would be the first scientifically verified instance of alchemy and element transmutation EVER!
On a more serious note, from an earlier post:
Producing ethanol requires nothing more than the sun, some corn, and bacteria.
If you don't care that your ethanol also contains about 60%-80% water, mash residue, and other contaminants, that's correct. Some processes can produce a fermentor concentration of up to about 50% EtOH without killing the organisms but require a gas stripping operation which uses energy to pump the byproduct CO2 back through the fermentation reactor.
You may not care about that, but I guarantee your fuel cell or internal combustion engine cares.
Purification of ethanol is the most energy-intensive part of the whole process. There are a bunch of novel purification processes out there, but so far none uses less energy per unit mass of ethanol produced than is available for later use per unit mass.
I used to be a 100% booster of ethanol fuels, but I've since changed my thinking. I've done the mass and energy balances, and with current technology, there's no way you can produce ethanol cheaper (read: by spending less energy making it than you get out of it later).
Ethanol looks, on the surface, to be a great "renewable" fuel source, but one has to take into account an enormous number of inputs to determine whether or not there's a surplus of available chemical energy at the end of the day.
Consider, for instance, the costs of:
Fuel for farm implements
power for pumping irrigation water
power to transport the corn to the factory
power for the fermentation equipment
power for the solids separation equipment
power for the purification equipment (i.e., distillation, gas absorption, pervaporation (which can't be done yet on a large enough scale to matter), etc.)
Unfortunately, no one has been able to demonstrate a process that, when taking all the energy costs into consideration, that can show a positive energy balance once you subtract the energy expended during ethanol production from the energy input from the sun in the first place.
The old chemical engineering standby (backed by the Laws of Thermodynamics) equation for energy balances:
A = I - O + G -C
Accumulation = Input - Output + Generation - Consumption
At the end of the day, with current separation technology, A is always negative for ethanol production processes from biomass. That is, the net available energy on earth is actually less at the end of the process than when you started.
It's an unfortunate reality, but it's reality.
The reaction heated the catalyst. http://www.iop.org/news/697
HFCS is 75% sweeter than sugar. Manufacturers can use less sweetener for the same amount of finished product to obtain the same flavor.
Other attributes of HFCS over sugar (from http://food.oregonstate.edu/sugar/hfcs.html):
# retain moisture and/or prevent drying out
# control crystallization
# produce an osmotic pressure that is higher than for sucrose or medium invert sugar and thereby help control microbiological growth or help in penetration of cell membranes.
# provide a ready yeast-fermentable substrate
# blend easily with sweeteners, acids, and flavorings
# provide a controllable substrate for browning and Maillard reaction.
# impart a degree of sweetness that is essentially the same as in invert liquid sugar
# high sweetness
# low viscosity
# reduced tendency toward characterization
# costs less than liquid sucrose or corn syrup blends
# retain moisture and/or prevent drying out
In short, in a mass-production environment, sugar is used where it needs to be used, and HFCS is used where it can be used. I imagine ADM donates liberally to political parties for other reasons. The biggest one that comes to mind is genetic patents.
Science article, full article available to those with access to Science
More at EurekAlert
Hehe...even if they don't make ethanol for fuel, the mere fact that real Mardi Gras celebrations kick off this weekend through Fat Tuesday here in NOLA will create a pretty good spike in all alcohol sales...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If ethanol is actually to play an increasing role in the energy needs of the first world (or the US specifically), it will not come from corn, it will be a result of the refining of sugar cane in Latin & South America & the Caribbean. Sugar cane has a much higher energy level and is much easier to convert to ethanol.
Quick quiz: which nation is the largest producer of ethanol, and what is its feedstock?
And as long as we are injecting facts into this discussion (yes, I'm new here...), while corn production does require lots of water, less than a third of US corn production is irrigated.
And finally, as for all of the "Does producing ethanol require more energy than it uses" discussion, the real question is whether ethanol is an efficient mechanism to capture solar energy and store it in chemical form. The evidence is mixed. The professor at Cornell who is frequently cited is David Pimentel, an entymologist. According to those who specialize in energy, the conclusion for corn-based ethanol is much, much more nuanced. Newer processing plants (those built in the last 3 years) fed by farmers using appropriate nitrogen application techniques are energy-positive. But there are many legacy plants (as well as legacy farmers). Again, in the long-term, the cost of conversion & transport from warmer climes is actually more relevant, though.
And yes, by the way, IAAAE (I am an agricultural economist). In fact, IAAGE (I am a grains economist for a Big Ten University)
Answer: Brazil, sugar cane.
While production of ethanol can be inefficient rarely does it result in a net energy loss. Several different studies show anywhere from a 38% net gain in energy to over 100% depending on methods use. The generally cited claim of a net energy loss from producing ethanol all seem to come from only one paper written by David Pimental. To support his claims he seems to have taken a worst pratices view for every step in the production process, a realworld combination found in less than 5% of current ethanol production. The more comphrensive studies I've been able to find show a slight, albeit not stellar, net gain in energy. The most recent (2002) by Michigan State shows a net gain of 0.56 MJ/MJ of input for corn based ethanol production. If one looks at Cellulose based ethonal production, studies show almost a 2.5 net energy gain and it is easier on the environment since it requires less maintenance and fewer fertilizers.
o ne tenergybalance.htm
For reference this site has some good links, including a rebuttal of the Pimental paper (as well as showing the Pimental article).
http://www.econet.sk.ca/pages/issues/ethanolinf
Wow. A Cato Institute article that quotes a Mother Jones reporter. Politics sure does make for strange bedfellows...
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
If you notice the picture, look at how "homebrew" it looks, right? I think such a thing could be built in a garage:
For the catalyst structures, you would need to find and use two separate automobile catalytic converters. I haven't found a confirmation yet, but such converters typically use platinum *or* rhodium as the catalysing agent, in (usually) a honeycomb ceramic matrix. In theory, one could cut/saw the matrix into portions from two separate cat converters, stuff it into a pyrex pipe (look into laboratory surplus) one after the next, with a gap (I think) in between, and run the ethanol through.
I am not sure what the wire (or tubing - in the picture and mention in the text) is for - I don't think it is a part of the actual reactor (maybe for sensing of temp?). You would probably need to heat the reactor up pretty damn hot to get it going, but it might be self-sustaining after that - probably a combo of oxygen injection prior to the platinum honeycomb with some heat to get it charged up, then after that it should be self-running.
Anybody up for dangerous experimentation?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
So what does your message say? "You can't possibly understand the pain of being a farmer!" or some other content-free statement.
As to your suggestion I try farming some time, let me just say that there are ALREADY TOO MANY people TRYING to make a living farming - why would I be stupid enough to create a business that has no hope of succeding without government subsidy?
Why dont farmers who are being paid not to grow crops just get in to some other business? There are two primary reasons. 1) why work when i can get paid to do nothing? (great reason to get rid of the subsidies in the first place) and 2) My 'quality of life/lifestyle' will change - my family have always been farmers! (tough - the world changes and you need to too)
I hear complaints like "The farm has been in our family for generations and now because we can't compete with the 'big' industrial farms, we are in danger of loosing our way of life and our livelyhood!" To which I reply "Great - get out of farming, go get an education and do something ELSE. Tell your kids to get an education and do something else." I don't do what my fater did for a livng and it doesn't hurt me or him a bit. If big 'mechanized' farms are driving the little guy out of business then the little guy should go into business doing something else.
The reason we have all these subsidies is because there are too damn many farmers - if we stop paying them to do NOTHING with their land then perhaps they'd go do somehting else and actually contribute to society.
Free Online Dark Fantasy RPG - http://www.blackmud.com
there are fuel cells that operate using ethanol instead of hydrogen -- why not use the ethanol directly and save the step of converting ethanol to hydrogen? anyone here know why?
Retail cost of gasoline: ~$1.65/gal
_Wholesale_ cost of fuel-grade ethanol: $1.71/gal
[Chemical Market Report, January 2004]
The ratio of profits to subsidy is completely meaningless number. For example, if they were to turn around next year and give their employees a small raise which cut into their profits in half, it would mean that we pay $60 for every dollar of profit they make, but that doesn't mean they are wasting twice as much money.
A more usefull number would be the ratio of revenue to subsidy. I couldn't find that in the report you linked, but assuming their profit margin is about 10%, then for every dollar I pay for ethanol another three dollars comes from the taxpayers.
The flaw in the claim that this thing doesn't use fossil fuels is in the source of the ethanol; most fuel ethanol comes from grains - in the U.S., from government-subsidized grain corn. Due to the poorness of overcultivated soil in nearly every temperate region where grains grow, it takes a lot of petroleum-derived fertilizer to grow that grain - multiple calories of hydrocarbon energy for each calorie stored in the grain, in fact. Fermentation and refinement of the ethanol, of course, reduces the net energy yield of this process.
Find a better source of ethanol, though, and I'm sold.
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Ethanol is a lot easier to transport, refill,... than hydrogen. I bet a lot of energy is wasted in the ethanol->hydrogen reaction. So why not just use the ethanol directly?
More energy is used to purify the ethanol to standards that make it compliant with current internal combustion engines than is ever won back from burning the ethanol. I.e. the ethanol must be modified to emulate gasoline in order to be burned directly, and that takes a lot of energy.
Ethanol having its hydrogen extracted doesn't require any such purification process, making the conversion of ethanol->hydrogen, then burning the hydrogen, vastly more effecient than burning the ethanol directly. three times more effecient, according to the article. This leads to a situation where we can remove traditional energy sources from the equation, using the sun+soil+water to grow the crop, using sun+some small amount of energy to ferment, using some small amount of energy to extract the hydrogen, then burning the hydrogen. As long as the energy won from the sun is greater than the energy used to ferment the ethanol and to extract the hydrogen we have a self-sustaining energy economy (assuming we aren't draining acquafers and the like).
Best of all, we can produce the energy here at home, and stop pouring dollars into countries with regressive religions and toxic idealogies...which in turn might do something to slow the spread of toxic idealogies in our own countries.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Actually, the reason we have the subsidies is to maintain capacity for that time (in the not so near future?) when we finally piss off the entire world and we have to feed ourselves.
We need to be able to feed ourselves if things go bad... isolationist that we would rather be.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
And I'm sure there will be a point in time when the non-renewable sources (gasoline, diesel) will have too high of a cost-to-produce/profit-to-sell ratio, and the street price of 1g of ethanol will be cheaper than 1g of gasoline.
If, of course, the major oil companies don't patent all the technology (we do know how brilliant the patent office is...) and prevent anyone from developing the technology further.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
What is this miracle crop, you might ask?
This miracle crop scares our government, and numerous other larg-scale entities (such as various corporations), because of its multitude of uses, and the fact that it is so easy to grow. At one time, it was grown in plentiful amounts right here in the United States. Then a ban was induced in the early part of the twentieth century (but was lifted briefly for World War 2), and farmers couldn't grow it. Recently, products made from it came under our government's eye again - but the courts beat them back once more (of course, these products are made mostly in Canada, or from the crop grown in Canada). We, the people, are being denied access to growing this crop, and reaping its benefits, by our own government. A government started with a document entitled the "Declaration of Independence" - written on paper made from the very fibers of the crop denied to us today!
So, what is this wonderous crop, you plea?
Say it loud - say it proud - let the world and our corrupt politicians know it: HEMP! HEMP! HEMP!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
So, basically, I call bullshit on not having enough biomass to run the farm equipment. Actually converting farms over is another story.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Yes, but you don't use that iron or toaster 24 hours per day, do you?
... but not 24 hours/day, I'll grant you that.
I could, if I put my mind to it.
Really what I want to do is make a first slice of toast, then iron that slice while toasting a second slice
-kgj
-kgj
Corn isn't exactly the best plant to use? maybe something with higher sugar content and easier extraction? maybe a grass? Ethanol only needs sugar, there are some pretty high sugar content grasses (umm.. sugar cane but there are others) or even somethign like left over canola biomass?
Or how about a genetically modifie solutions. Take a very simple and robust grass and add a snippit of DNA for fructose/glucose with a super promoter in front, copy it a few dozen tiems and you'll have soem pretty sweet weed. ahh weed.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Now, Lanny Schmidt of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Xenophon Verykios of the University of Patras, Greece, and colleagues have developed a potentially portable ethanol converter. In it, a solution of ethanol and water passes through a fuel injector--a nozzle that ordinarily pumps gasoline into a car's motor--and into a gently heated chamber, where it vaporizes and mixes with air. The mixture then passes through a porous plug of aluminum oxide covered with rhodium and cerium oxide, which catalyzes reactions that yield hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The reactions heat the catalyst to over 700C, which keeps the process going. The gadget converts essentially all of the hydrogen in ethanol into hydrogen gas, the researchers report.
"Their process has the advantage that it is very, very fast," says James Dumesic, a chemical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who is working on producing hydrogen from sugars. But he points out that the ethanol process also generates a lot of carbon monoxide, which the high-power fuel cells that might someday propel cars cannot tolerate. Gabor Somorjai, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, points out that rhodium happens to be "the most expensive catalyst you can ever make."
Earth is closest to the sun (perihelion) when the northern hemisphere is experiencing winter, and furthest (aphelion) when the northern hemisphere is experiencing summer. (In 2004, perihelion was on Jan 4, and aphelion will be July 5. [source])
Earth's perihelion: 147,000,000 km = 8.17 light-minutes
Earth's aphelion: 152,000,000 km = 8.44 light-minutes [source]
My SO is doing leading edge research on photosynthesis. She occasionally comes home with green splotches in her hair. It's really fascinating how the actual specific chemistry of photosynthesis works, harvesting energy from light.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Even proponents of biodiesel realize that it is not for the mass market
Can you show me some sources? Biodiesel already is in the mass market. Many citys run it as B20 in their buses.
Essentially, there isn't enough refuse biomass for biodiesel.
Who said you only have to make biodiesel from refuse?
It'll work as long as a small amount of us use it
No one has ever suggest we switch to 100% biod. It can be just another part of the alternative energy mix. Going just 5% bio would mean a lot of cash that stays in the US and not going to Suadi Arabia.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Just think about it folks. Why is oil so cheap (compared to its energy cost) to harvest right now? Because there's a century of infrastructure built around its harvest. There are researchers making things more efficient, oil wells galore, efficient refineries, and why? Because we put a whole bunch of money and time into the research of it.
/NEED/ a ton of upkeep to grow, we just do a ton of upkeep to keep it edible. No one gives a sweet damn if the corn they use to power their vehicle was infested with ergot or weevils or blight, or little green bugs. It's all hydrogen in the end.
The total cost of delivery of a single gallon of gasoline is still quite high. It has to be mined, shipped to refineries (which uses oil!) refined in several stages (also uses oil), then shipped in individual semi-trucks (also uses oil) to get to it's final destination, which is for the most part a huge network of individual mom-and-pop owned gas stations. In addition to this, tankers fall over, refineries produce the occasional bad batch, pipelines break and need repair (oh boy, how about those SUVs needed to get to the point the pipeline broke in alaska), there are oil spills in Alaska, oil tanker ships. All these indirectly use oil to harvest oil.
As opposed to the infrastructure surrounding ethanol -- a fledgeling (no, I don't mean ADM) industry with some government and corporate funding and only 30 years of poorly funded research backing it. In 100 years, where will we be with this? One really darned great thing about grain alcohol, is that nearly every place in the non-desert world is suitable for growing some kind of grain that can be changed. Sugar cane, barley, hops, corn, rice. All can be turned into alcohol organically, with yeast, and the varieties of each can be grown in nearly every clime in the world, as opposed to having to be mined and distributed on the hub-and-spoke system. Locally managed stills can make enough ethanol to power entire towns for the most part, with a surplus. Believe me, we know the volume homemade, illegal, inefficient, made-by-the-village-drunk 'stills can produce in Arkansas and Tennessee. How about efficient stills made by corporations with the money to put into the research of draining every last drop out of the infrastructure they create? No long, hazardous shipping across outdated hub-and-spoke shipping lines. Fine-grained (no pun intended) distributed, low cost production facilities are a much better way of creating electricity and vehicle fuel.
The really great thing is that all these grains don't
This can be the key, folks. This can avert the disaster heading our way once oil becomes expensive to mine. We just have to put the money in now while we can.
Guinness does give you strength...
it takes more energy to produce the ethanol than you get back in stored chemical energy. I am sure that no one disputes that.
I dispute this. Having grown up on a grain farm I have a very good handle on the fuel and fertilizer inputs. Being a hobbiest beer and winemaker I have a very good handle on the mashing and fermentation processes. Being very good friends with a fellow who runs a commercial water distillation plant I have a very good handle on the state of high efficieny distillation systems.
This idea stems from work by David Plimentel at Cornel. (see my other post) David analysed horribly ineffecient coal fired distillation systems. His assumptions are incorrect.
One example is as follows. corn can easily produce over 100 bushles per acre. Barley can easily produce over 40 bushels per acre in the dry land farming areas I grew up in. Since barley weighs in at 48 lbs/bushel - that is nominally a tonne of grain per acre.
A 40 acre feild can be plowed in about 6 hours using a tractor and plow that runs about 3 1/2 MPH and burns about 3-4 gallons of fuel per hour. This means that plowing the feild can be done with under about 20 gallons of fuel - or about 1/2 barrel. A tractor of this size is about 70 horsepower and that compares favorably to your SUV which burns 3 gallons of fuel per hour while running down the highway at 60 MPH while it gets 20 MPG fuel economy.
It takes about 4 trips over the feild - one for 1st spring working, another for sowing the grain, another to take it off and another for working the field in the fall. Typically it will lay fallow for one year in 4 and during this year it will need to be worked 3-4 times. Since each trip requires in the ball park of a 1/2 barrel of fuel, the farmer will use about 1/2 x 4 x 1.5 = 3 barrels per crop for the 40 acre feild. To this we need to add fertilizers and these typically are applied when I was doing it at about 40 lbs/acre and each sack of fertilizer weighted 80 lbs so that 40 acre field needed 20 sacks of fertilizer or about 3/4 tonne. Present day fertilization levels are much higher mind you.
Nevertheless, chemically the fertilizer was something like 11-48-0 or 11-55-0 and this translates to 11% nitrogen by weight - typically in the form of ammonium phosphate. The chemical formula is NH4H2P2O5. If we look at jsut the nitrogen which is typically made by starting with Methane (CH4) and replacing the Carbon with a Nitrogen then we are looking at about 11% by weight Nitrogen (which is what the 1st number stands for) and that works out to adding about 11% of 3/4 of a tonne of Nitrogen to the feild. This works out to about 165 lbs of Nitrogen.
On a per pound basis the energy in Methane is not all that much different than liquid fuels... a few percent but within 15%. There is more energy in the carbon bonds than the hydrogen bonds so fuels like Diesel carry more BTU per pound than gasoline (predomenantly parafines: C(n)H(2n+2)) and similarly gasoline carries more BTU per pound than methane.
atomic weights: C=12, N=14, H=1 This implies that CH4=16 and NH4=18. They are within 12% of each other. Thus it is fair to say that 165 LBS of Nitrogen on the feild is about the same as 18/14x165=212lbs NH4.
Since the methane is lighter it is fair to say that we'll need in the ball park of 200 lbs CH4 as a chemical feedstock. At 8 lbs/gallon (Gasoline), 200 lbs represents about 25 gallons or just over 1/2 barrel of oil equivalent (BOE).
Well - we started with the farmer using 3 barrels of oil in the form of liquid fuel to plough the land. Next we calculated the energy input by way of Nitrogen in the form of NH4 and got about 1/2 barrel more - albeit at a low fertilization level so lets double it!!! Now our farmer is up to 4 barrels for his crop of 40 acres. That is 10 acres per barrel... but we do have other unaccounted for energy inputs like the coal used t
This is a really important question, and I wish I knew the answer, but keep in mind that the toxins resulting from solar panels are fixed costs--you pay per solar panel, not per kilowatt hour acquired from the solar panel. Or so I'd imagine.
I also heard one time that there was this carb that got 100 miles to the gallon, but then the big oil companies stole it fromthe guy who had.
Oh, and a few more things that turn into ethanol quite readily.
1. Potatoes (really good. soil-healthy crop)
2. Grapes
3. Wheat
4. Sugar Beets
5. Honey
6. Rye
7. Apples
8. Peaches
9. Oats
10. Several types of hardy grasses, including milkweed, dandelions, cattails.
The list goes on. What's more, there's a surplus of all these every year. Regularly, crops simply get dumped into the ocean to mitigate price drops caused by low supply/demand ratio. We already farm too well. What if farmers could sell their entire surplus, every year? The revival of agriculture as a way of life. Even the >gasp small-farm -- remember what I said about local farming being a better way to produce energy because you don't have to ship it?!
"Getting more energy out violates the second law..."
The energy comes from hydrogen fusion inside our sun. The solar radiation which results is absorbed by plants and converted by photosythesis into the complex molecules that eventually are converted into ethanol. In short, it's a solar power scheme.
"the efficiency of ethanol production is low..."
So long as more energy comes out than goes in the process is fine. Estimates range from 25% excess to 2.5 times.
"it takes fossil fuels..."
Anyone should be able to imagine that eventually the tractors, etc will be powered by ethanol, biodiesel and hydrogen.
"the catalyst must be heated to 800C"
The rhodium catalyst heats itself as a byproduct of the reaction with the ethanol.
"you're still putting CO2 into the environment"
There is no net increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because the next corn crop (or whatever green crop is grown) reconsumes the carbon dioxide byproduct of the previous hydrogen production. In other words the CO2 is self recycling.
Finally:
This kind of research is a good thing! Just because some big corporations want to profit from it doesn't mean it's fraudulent or a violation of the laws of physics and chemistry... and code geeks who skipped the chemistry and physics curriculum should be smart enough to know what they don't know... hehe
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
Right now affective PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells require two elements that are expensive and hard to maintain. First the solid state acid or Nafion 112 (by Dupont) is very fragile and hard to manipulate, and second the catalyst MADE OF PLATINUM (bling bling) is too damn expensive. Currently both of these issues are trying to be resolved, mainly developing a nano-ceramic catalyst or the other option an enzymatic catalyst. Both of these once perfected would be cheap and increase efficiency. For now we have no reason to be getting excited over this excess hydrogen.
... here in Brazil. Since the 80's the Brazilian Govt. have implanted a project called Pro-Alcool and since then millions of car (a good slice of the total ammount) is runned by Ethanol. It is cheaper (at lease here because we have a huge ammount of sugar cane planted), it is less polutive but isn't that efficient at all ... You still have to use some fossil fuel (like gas) to start the engines.
Erm... surely the real question is: Why do you still grow all this corn in the first place?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
The next step is to begin working to genetically engineer plants that produce more of the kinds of materials that benefit the distillation and catalysis of ethanol. Corn is a poor energy source when you consider what it takes to grow it, and how devastating modern agriculture is to the soil.
Not to mention the fact that agriculture is essentially owned and regulated by Big Oil, who also own the companies that make seeds and the companies which make nitrogen fertilizers. No serious progress is likely to be made in agriculture or energy technology as long as the interests of Big Oil remain paramount.
The smart direction, I think, is to look at aquatic plants, algae, bacteria, and the like. If a bacterium or yeast could be developed to produce ethanol in sufficient quantity, and a closed system could be developed that takes in sunlight and produces all the kinds of things bacteria and yeasts produce - ethyl, nitrogen, methane, etc., it would go an amazingly long way towards improving the efficiency of these processes.
The trouble with our current crude methods is that they are simply unsustainable and produce far too much pollution and waste.
Recently a technique was developed to convert any kind of solid waste into constituent materials, including a rich form of oil. This project was undertaken with support from ButterBall because the costs of waste disposal for their turkey abattoirs are hilariously high.
Now imagine a similar kind of energy plant, except instead of slow-heating wastes and so forth, it has a chain of vats containing various forms of bacteria, single-celled organisms, simple plants, etc., in a closed ecosystem. Wastes and other materials from one vat are leeched out and channeled to the next vat in line. Nitrogen and CO2 are funneled to the plants, and their oxygen is fed to some single-celled creatures. Round it goes, probably feeding back into itself in a closed loop. Except, of course it isn't a closed loop. Free materials like oxygen, CO2, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc., are constantly being added to the system along with plenty of sunlight. The result is that you end up with a huge abundance of excess which can be siphoned off.
The grail of energy will be to engineer or discover bacteria capable of freeing hydrogen itself. Maybe some of those deep-sea hot vent varieties have some creative genetic ideas!
We are so used to thinking of energy in terms of limitations, and so there seems to be a rush to knock energy out quickly and with great force. The fact is, slower, gentler, more methodical methods are available using the power of living cells. We only have to learn how to utilize and program these molecular machines to do our bidding.
I have a friend who is utterly convinced that Free Energy Devices (also known as Zero-Point Energy Taps) are possible, they exist, and they are suppressed by Big Energy interests. I am naturally skeptical of the idea, but at the same time I'm open to the possibility, if only because at the atomic level everything is going a million miles an hour all the time. If you could tap that energy at the molecular scale I believe you could produce - essentially - a perpetual-energy device.
For example, if you were able to build a device on the nano-scale which captures electrons - like a cashmere sweater - and then instead of just forming a diffuse cloud of electrons were able to channel those electrons into a medium and hold them... well you get the idea. We know static is real, and we know a little bit of it can produce a pretty impressive shock. If a trillion of these devices could fit into a square foot then I imagine you could extract a pretty impressive amount of electrical energy.
There have to be thousands of ways to efficiently borrow excess energy. Another method that occurs to me is to layer materials in a manner such that electrons are caused to flow in a specific direction. I'd be interested to know if layering materials - let's say nickel and copper - can produce energy flow passively, or if a catalyst such as acid or NaCl is always required to "pull" electrons out.
-- thinkyhead software and media
For a bunch of people who call themselves nerds, the /. crowd has certainly been short-sighted lately. Nerd!=whiner.
A compact ethanol to hydrogen reformer means that at least two of the the LARGEST problems stopping the adoption of hydrogen have been solved
1) Transportation:
The existing gasoline transport/storage/dissemination architecture can be used for ethanol
2) Net production of CO2
Until now, the cheapest ways to produce hydrogen have relized on fossil fuel consumption. Now hydrogen can be derived from biomass.
To everyone who complains about ethanol subsidies: corn is NOT the only way to make ethanol. You could probably find a way to ferment whatever is fastest growing--after all, this is not for human consumption.
In summary, I hope this thing is for real...
The energy that went into making that oil was expended millions of years ago, and it all started as solar energy that was converted into plant and animal matter by the appropriate biological processes. [...] It's just that those hundreds of millions of years produced a large reserve of oil, so that the energy expended in finding it, drilling it, refining it, and transporting it is less than the amount of energy we get out of it -- but the total amount of energy that's gone into getting the oil into a usable form *is* still greater than the amount that's produced when it burns.
According to one fairly rough, recent estimate, each gallon of gas in your car required ninety-eight tons of prehistoric plants over millions of years to create. Talk about redefining "fuel efficiency," this is something that will eventually come into play should global oil reserves hit the downward slope of output that will inevitably come, unless we figure out a way to rush-fossilize a few hundred billion tons of plants per year into new fossil fuel reserves. Considering the total amount of plant biomass on Earth, suddenly that inefficient ethanol car or unreliable wind generator may be ultimately worth the drastic lifestyle change. Hell, it may be eventually necessary to maintain any kind of lifestyle involving advanced technology at all.
Put it this way--barring a freak discovery of nearly unlimited, accessible hydrocarbon reserves and a way to use them without causing more damage to the global environment, the end of the fossil-fuel civilization is an eventual certainty. What comes after it depends on what we do, or fail to do, to prepare for it. This is not fearmongering, it is realism of the most critical sort. After all, we still have to live here for the next few hundred years at least.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
The real key to biofuels would be the ability to use cellulose as the feedstock instead of just simply sugars.
Currently there is work going on to reduce the cost of using cellulase enzymes in the bioethanol process. Currently, cellulase-based bioethanol requires 30-50 cents of cellulase per gallon. To be economically competitive with sugar processes, the price has to be brought down to 5 cents per gallon.
At that point, bioethanol production could use the entire plant, including a large amount of plant waste that is simply thrown away today.
From the (Science, not CNN) article:
The formula of the process is:
C2H5OH + 2 H2O + 1/2 O2 -->
2 CO2 + 5 H2
The process produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide, which we know is a greehouse gas.
The CNN article does NOT say the process doesn't produce greenhouse gasses. It says "Hydrogen does not emit any pollution or greenhouse gases. But unlike oil or coal, hydrogen must be produced..." That production produces, in this case, CO2.
Now if the CO2 is trapped, fine, it's not vented to atmosphere and causing greenhouse problems. But it has to go somewhere and how much soda can we drink? It could be recombined as:
2 CO2 --> 2 C + O2
but then you've got a lot of carbon to dispose of, and the process would probably require so much energy that you'd lose the energy benefit you'd gained by making H2 out of C2H5OH in the first place.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Most days have 24 hours so 1.2kW would give 28.8kWh/day not 1.2kWh/day,
Do you go to a University or live near one?
Go to your local University library (or if they allow online access..) and take a look at yesterday's issue of Science.
It has articles on both the microreactor and the human embryonic stem cells that were cloned.
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