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Straw Converted to Gasohol in Canada
An anonymous reader writes "The Government of Canada announced that its vehicle fleet is the first in the world to use cellulose-based ethanol. Iogen Corporation produces the ethanol from wheat straw at its leading-edge demonstration facility in Ottawa."
master blaster run barter town, eh?
e.
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is spinnging straw into (black) gold?
It had to be said. Sorry. I'm leaving now.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
For all the grief the US people give Canada, they're really kicking our butts on the reality checks. The lobbyists and SIGs would have the US tied in knots trying to move any significant bulk of vehicle fleet to something like this.
At least I think so. I'm sure someone will find some obscure example of some community in CA that does it...
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I'll never know when I'll go to sleep one night and wake up in a gas tank on a highway in Hamilton, Ontario, powering a Pontiac Firefly. I'm sure I'll have nightmares of this "straw to fuel" scheme. It took me years to get over nightmares of that damn green witch.
Sincerely, the Scarecrow of Oz.
If they could use melted snow as fuel...
1. Lower Emissions
2. Lower Price
3. ?
4. PROFIT!
About one fourth of brazilian cars have been running on cellulose-based ethanol since the late 80's.
:-|.
The whole system is only economical when we subsidize sugarcane farmers though
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, gasohol... A little for you, a little for me... A little for you, a little for me....
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
Good on you Canada, I hope other nations pick this up and help run with it.
Which must explain the US's extremely Islamist domestic policy, and how Bush seems to do everything Hugo Chavez asks him to.
Both the US and Canada are oil producers, too. The difference? The US is "led" by Texas (sitting president is from which state?), while Canada's leaders cannot consistantly point out "Alberta" on a Canadian map.
on soil where wheat wouldn't grow before (go check...) in order to grow the wheat, then use the straw to make ethanol to burn in the car that was originally designed to run on the oil. Not to mention the oil products it takes to run the combines, discers, etc. and the power it took to run the fertiliser plant.
While this gets an "A" for using a product that would ordinarily not have a high value, straw does rot back to its initial components and forms a major source of nutrients for upcoming wheat crops. Removing it for fuel just means you have to put more oil-based fertiliser.
Seems to me that if you shorten this chain the efficiency might go up a little...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
I'm waiting for the day Bush declares Alberta the 51st state. It'll sure come as a shock to Albertans, who weren't consulted on the matter, but wouldn't dream of offending the 130,000 troops that just crossed the undefended border to "protect Canada from oil-targeted terrorism".
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
If today's vehicles can only use up to 10% ethanol, how much does it cost to convert an average vehicle to use up to 85% ethanol?
Is this financialy feasable for your average vehicle owner and will it save them money, or just help save the world one kilometer (0.62 miles) at a time?
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Since oil is now more expensive than alternative fuels, the alternatives will now be used... There many are groups in Canada's prairie provinces (Saskatchewan, Manitoba, yes even Alberta) trying to get ethanol plants built. They are trying to catch up to states like minnesota, the dakotas. On a recent trip through the Dakota's nearly every truck stop sold bio-diesel.
I moved to Canada after being placed on the US no-fly list by trying to bring flammable materials on board an aircraft just by stepping aboard. Now Canada does this! They might as well declare open seasons on me.
I'll never know when I'll go to sleep one night and wake up in a gas tank on a highway in Hamilton, Ontario, powering a Pontiac Firefly. I'm sure I'll have nightmares of this "straw to fuel" scheme. It took me years to get over nightmares of that damn green witch.
Sincerely, the Scarecrow of Oz.
Give me a break. That's just a straw-man agrument and you know it.
I know many Albertans who would welcome it ;-) My constituency had one of those "Alberta separatist" party clowns running in the last provincial election. Sad thing is that they didn't get zero votes...
(I'm neither for nor against Alberta separating from Canada in principle. However, I don't trust anyone to do it properly, so I'd never vote in favour.)
There are huge numbers of data points missing from this article:
I know no one here will know this stuff necessarily, but it would be great if science articles like this could give the geeks in the room a nod and give __SOME__ of this info...
-- Kevin
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Back to the topic, though... cars that run on muffins.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
I can now use grass clippings to power my lawnmower!! I wonder if that will somehow lead to a case of Mad Grass Disease?
straw does rot back to its initial components and forms a major source of nutrients for upcoming wheat crops. Removing it for fuel just means you have to put more oil-based fertiliser.
Except that for the ethanol you only take out the carbon portion of the straw - the stuff that doesn't stick around when it rots anyway. You don't fertilize with carbon, you use (fixed) nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron and other micronutrients (basically salts). "Using oil to make fertilizer" means burning the oil for fuel to process rocks to get fertilizer.
What's left behind after the ethanol is extracted is a sludge which probably works nicely as a fertilizer, as it is rich in all the stuff which plants are made of.
"EcoEthanol(TM) is the patented name of Iogen's cellulose ethanol process. The process uses an enzyme hydrolysis to convert the cellulose in agriculture residues into sugars. These sugars are fermented and distilled into ethanol fuel using conventional ethanol distillation technology."
Cellulose ethanol differs from conventional ethanol in the following ways:
a) the manufacturing process does not consume fossil fuels, but rather uses plant byproducts to create the energy to run the process (this leads to a net zero greenhouse gas emissions profile),
b) the technology is new and emerging and has only recently become practical, and
c) the raw material does not compete as a food source for humans and is available today based upon existing farm practices.
*How much ethanol do you get from a tonne of feedstock?
Exact output depends on the condition of the feedstock that is put into the process, however approximately 300 litres of ethanol are produced from one tonne of feedstock. There is also approximately 200kg of lignin left after hydrolysis. The lignin can be burned to generate power.
Please, don't do that again. :(
How does it taste?
I'm looking for a smoothness without that old straw taste.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I was going to post something like this. I'm all for non-petrolium energy sources, but unless the corn is grown with an organic crop rotation system, it often consumes more oil to grow the crop than if it had just been tipped straight into the car. I notice the article is seriously lacking in any information about the way the crop is grown.
Unfortunately nobody in charge really cares how the planet works as long as they pump their black gold from the ground. There is only so long we can operate our economy in direct opposition to nature before something bad happens.
savethedollhouse.com
straw does rot back to its initial components and forms a major source of nutrients for upcoming wheat crops
Presumably you could put the leftover sludge from the ethanol production back onto the field and get a similar effect. The only elements that end up in the ethanol are hydrogen (which plants get from water), carbon, and oxygen (which they get from atmospheric CO2).
You ought to do a little research before you make statements that have not been true since the early 1990s.
one (start here) two Three, just to list a few links that I found.
Now if you go back to the techniques of the 1970s, yes ethanol is an energy sink, but you won't last long in the farming buisness if you try that.
Is there enough agricultural residue in Canada to support a commercial cellulose ethanol industry?
There are substantial quantities of straw and other crop residues already produced in Canada. In the Western provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta alone, annual production of straw is about 40 million tonnes. If 1/3 of this material was used to make fuel, the nation could replace 10% of its gasoline usage.
So, Alberta alone can provide enough oil to power the equivalent of all of Canada's cars. But ALL the biomass of Canada's wheat belt can only produce 10% of the energy needed to power our transportation network? Yeah, they said 1/3, but that is about the amount of straw they can expect to not be moldy when they get around to picking it up off the fields. And how much of that 10% will be spent trucking otherwise worthless straw from outside Moose Jaw, Sask to the processing plant in Regina that I'm sure the socialist government of Saskatchewan will want to build?
And just when was Alberta separating from Canada? Oh, sorry, that was Newfoundland who was separating. Silly me.
-AD
In any case since the mid 1970s or so the fuel system is compatable with ethanol.
Your right it is a matter of fuel/air ratios after that, but it is more complex than you might think. E-85 is 105 octane, and needs to run at a higher compression ratio to work best. You can run at less, in fact this is what most cars do, but you it comes at the cost of needed to burn more fuel. (Ethanol has less energy per gallon, run at high compression and you essentially get more efficiency)
Ethanol has a fairly high vapor pressure compared to standard gas. Enough that in winter you cannot run E-85, so the mixture is really E-70. (this could be dealt with, but it isn't) Keep this in mind as you read the rest.
Most fuel injectors are not big enough to get the correct amount of fuel in, at the moment needed. (you can't open the injector longer because then you are pouring fuel in at the wrong time, particularly if you are running close to red-line rpms) You need just slightly more ethanol in a standard engine. With a carb you can easily change the jets, but it is really hard to find different size injectors.
There is one other problem: most people want to switch between gas and ethanol depending on cost and what they can find. (MN, where I live has E-85 everywhere, but it is rare in most states) If you are willing to go to e-85 only this would be easy. For a manufacturer, they need a more complex computer, one that can sense how the fuel is working, and adjust air/fuel ratios in real time.
Overall I agree the difference is peanuts if they put it in all cars. Perhaps less, considering that there is a push for E-85, and keeping track of which cars can't run E-85 costs some bookwork too. This only applies to engines where they have done the engineering work to make E-85 work.
Petroleum is still pretty cheap even after the recent runup in oil prices. If you want to get people to stop using so much petroleum, you have to make petroleum expensive enough to get their attention. Making ethanol as cheap as petroleum is just going to feed the increase in demand.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The grandparent poster may have meant that natural gas is used to make fertilizer (methane steam-reformed to hydrogen, the hydrogen combined with nitrogen to make ammonia [NH3] in the Haber process, ammonia either applied as-is or oxidized to nitrate). As I am not a chemist or agricultural scientist, I have no idea if the nitrogen removed with wheat, rice, etc. straw can be used to make as much fixed nitrogen as the plant removed, more, or less. Perhaps someone with more expertise in these matters will see this and respond.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Such are the insanities of subsidy economics. You might notice that ethanol isn't subsidized on the basis of net energy created, but per gallon. A 34% gain means that the subsidy costs nearly $7.60/gallon equivalent of energy created; if the gain is only 25%, the subsidy is $9.50/gallon equivalent! The discontinued coal-liquefaction subsidies did have the virtue of being cheaper.
I suggest that we tax fossil carbon releases or petroleum imports (whatever is more important to get rid of), eliminate the subsidies and let the chips fall out where they may.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If 90% of the waste biomass could be captured it would replace about 27%, and perhaps something else (like electricity from the abundant wind resources of western AB, SK and MB) could replace the remaining 73%. Just a thought.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
(Disclaimer: I've worked in the auto industry, on engine-control software. I am not an expert on flex-fuel matters, and I don't know what the state of the art is at the moment.)
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The synthetic fuel goals in northern Alberta keep getting funded by the billions for some reason (I'm currently working on a side project - nothing impressive to the average Slashdot reader). The cost of extraction is high, but the available resources are quite impressive.
Anyone want to take a shot as to why why all this money is being spent on crappy oil?
If you guessed self-sustainability for North America you're probably right. All the while we learn more about clean production, co-gen, etc.
If middle east oil dried-up tomorrow, we'd be able to supply the continent for quite a few decades, albeit at somewhat higher prices.
Generally, the straw is already being taken of the land and being used for various agricultural/household purposes. E.g. it's commonly used to mulch gardens.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I understand that water in "gasohol" leads to emulsification (phase separation) and nasty running. I guess you need more people from Weights & Measures taking samples, testing composition and issuing fines (or even shutdown orders) for violations.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The fact that Canada's fleet uses ethanol is vacuously true, sort of like saying that all green elephants like to play bridge. I've never seen a green elephant, and I'd sure like to see this "fleet" of ours. ;-)
Those troops will find they are a lot less welcome here than they are in Iraq. I've got a couple of 30-30's that'll be happy to help explain it to them too.
Preferably an old diesel (European rather than the USian monstrosities). It will run perfectly well on waste cooking oil. If you're fussy you can process the oil with a rather nasty alkali and turn it into biodiesel. I didn't bother, and ran my old Citroen CX 25DTR on waste veg oil for months (and paid the appropriate fuel taxes, pennies per litre). It was quieter, less smoky and a seemed a bit smoother, maybe a little down on power but not really noticeably.