Vinod Khosla Talks Ethanol

IamTheRealMike writes "Vinod Khosla, venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun, has a new obsession these days. Ethanol is the fuel touted by many as an alternative to dwindling oil stocks, but is it all it's cracked up to be? Whilst Khosla is an avid supporter of ethanol as an alternative fuel (video link) his optimistic views have been rigourously challenged by Robert Rapier, an oil industry insider who is also engaged in a quest to discover alternatives. Recently the two debated via phone the merits of an ethanol economy, and Mr Rapier has now written up a report of the debate. What will be powering our cars 10 years from now?"

Comments

What will be powering our cars 10 years from now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably oil.

Still.

Look, this is simple.

[drinkypoo]

Ethanol has shitty energy density. The solution, if you are using liquid fuel, is to use biodiesel for diesels and butanol for gasoline engines. You can run E95, 95% ethanol and 5% gasoline, in diesel engines just by increasing compression and changing fuel delivery (not sure if it's increase or decrease; I'd guess increase.) You can run butanol in gasoline engines without modification, though low-compression engines may need to have their timing advanced since butanol has a higher octane rating than gasoline, IIRC.

Regardless what we make biofuel out of, the most important point is that it not be topsoil-based. Agriculture is the most destructive technology ever unleashed upon the Earth by mankind. Hydroponic crops make dramatically more sense as fuel feedstocks.

Re:Look, this is simple.

[drinkypoo]

The problem with biodiesel is that it congeals at temperatures that are commonly found in the winter in the united states.

Very true. There are three solutions to this problem.

The first is a fuel stabilizer added to the fuel. This can be a toxic solution, but is not necessarily. One possibility is (as you say) to thin it with petrodiesel. Another is to thin it with alcohol, which as we know is already known to be run in diesel engines with only minor additive and modifications. A modern TDI diesel with high compression (One report I read featured vehicles running at 23:1 compression pre-turbocharging, which is fairly high except that some of your old school mercedes diesels are 22:1 anyway) but I'm not sure if an additional additive would be necessary to prevent the alcohol and biodiesel from interacting somehow.

The second is some sort of heating mechanism. For instance, a small, electrically-heated fuel reservoir could provide enough fuel to start the vehicle, and operating heat could be used to heat the fuel tank. This does add some weight and complexity but it could be a working solution. This could even be a subreservoir inside the fuel tank, that the driver is not necessarily even aware of.

The third solution is basically just a modification of the second, in which we have a completely separate fuel system. We fill this with petrodiesel and start up on it. Even petrodiesel requires heating at very low temperatures, of course, but we can use an additive with this fuel, and not feel too bad about it almost regardless of what that additive is, because we're only using it to come up to temperature.

I still believe that butanol has the most promise, however. To quote from butanol.com (a business, mind you):

July 14 to August 15, 2005 was the first run across the Nation on 100% Butanol. Demonstrating to the public that there is an alcohol made from corn that replaces gas right now if we had it. The sooner we start making Butanol the sooner you will see it in your tank and go down the road - it works. The '92 Buick Park Avenue got 24 miles per gallon on butanol with no modifications - normally gas is 22 mpg. That is a 9 % increase. In ten states Butanol reduced Hydrocarbons by 95%, Carbon monoxide to 0.01%, Oxides of Nitrogen by 37%, this in a 13 year old car with 60,000 original miles. It runs great up hill and across the deserts. Let's make more.

The primary reason is that it's a direct replacement for gasoline, and even at current prices it's not dramatically more expensive than gasoline. Most butanol is currently made from petro sources, but (again, as per the front page of butanol.com) "The historical ABE fermentation technology produces a variety of fermentation products. The ABE process uses bacteria to produce Acetone Butanol and Ethanol. This fermentation process yielded a 6:3:1 ratio of Butanol, Acetone and Ethanol".

Thus the biggest problem with this process is "what do we do with the acetone"? :)

(The ABE process was first used to make chemicals for TNT.)

The best part is that the process works on any biological material, the only thing that changes (based on how tightly the constituent parts are bound to each other) is how long it takes to break down. All of our organic waste could simply be ground up into mush (whatever isn't already) and fed into reactors for this system.

Well, actually, the best part is that it's energy-dense, cleaner than gasoline, and works in gasoline vehicles without modification.

This is my day job

[Ignignot]

I'm at my work right now, where I am employed as an energy analyst. It is the opinion of every single person in the industry that there is no real possibility of replacing gasoline with ethanol. It would take the entire corn harvest of the United States to make that much ethanol, not even counting how much ethanol you would have to burn to harvest the corn. We will continue to burn gasoline until it becomes so expensive that people use alternate transportation, or until we all die in some horrible war. The whole ethanol thing is just another wall street fad that's brought in a bunch of suckers.

Vinod Khosla is interested in one thing

[winkydink]

making money.

He's a VC. He sells you on hype. You buy the stock of the companies that he invests in early. He cashes out at or shortly after IPO. He couldn't care less what happens to you afterward.

The only reason Vinod is interested in ethanol is because there is money to be made. For him.

Period.

It is not oil, ethanol, or [insert silver bullet]

[AHumbleOpinion]

It is not oil, ethanol, or [insert silver bullet technology here]; it is all of them together.

We don't need a 100% replacement for oil. If we can replace 10% with one economical technology, 5% with another, and 2% with yet another then good. Repeats as additional technologies become economical. Tony

Re:Ethanol is NOT the silver bullet!

[mypalmike]

And lastly, most ethanol is produced by corn in an extremely wasteful process that requires an enormous amount of energy which cuts in on its overall efficiency.

Worldwide, most ethanol is actually produced by sugarcane. The corn thing is a US-specific thing based largely on the economics of government subsidies. Per-acre ethanol yields for sugar cane (Brazil and India) and sugar beets (France) are reportedly double that of corn in the US.

We wouldn't even be talking about ethanol...

[Alfred, Lord Tennyso]

The first caucuses of the Presidential campaign season are always in Iowa. It's always the first news of the season, and the winner of Iowa gets huge amounts of free, positive press coverage.

Iowa is where the corn comes from. No politician who ever expects to run for President can afford to piss off Iowa. Even if you're not running today, if it's even on your mind, you vote the way Archer Daniels Midland (the immense agribusiness that can ruin your political life in the farm belt) tells you to vote.

We wouldn't even be talking about ethanol if it weren't for that little quirk of politics. I'd love to see some party say, "Ya know what? Let's make Iowa third rather than first and see what happens." We might still be talking ethanol, but we sure wouldn't be talking about getting it from corn.

BIO DIESEL

[tacocat]

• Diesel technology is over 100 years old.
• Bio Diesel is obtained from a variety of sources, not just corn.
• Bio Diesel is 100% compatible with any diesel engine on the market today.
• Bio Diesel is bio-degradable.
• Bio Diesel is non-toxic.
• Bio Diesel doesn't blow up.
• Bio Diesel produces less emissions than ultra-clean Dino Diesel.
• Bio Diesel may produce less emissions than gasoline (hard to test with different engines)
• Bio Diesel has a 2% lower energy density than Diesel. Ethanol is 30% less than Gasoline. This means you pay more at the pump to drive 100 miles.
• Bio Diesel smells like fries, really!

If you want to get energy independent quickly and reliably, this is the answer. If you want to create a lot of sloppy hype and get people to spend stupid amounts of money on shoddy technology that's going to be under development for decades, then micro-pile atomic reactors are a better bet than Ethanol.

Ethanol is not perfect. It's only being hyped because GM et al are selling E85 engines. They aren't selling Diesel engines because they don't know how to make small ones. VW, BMW, Peugot, Reanault, and Mercedes all have decades of experience with small block engines. E85 is being pushed because if they pushed Diesel engines what little is left of the big three would collapse over night. Personally, I prefer Diesel. It isn't going to explode.

Re:BIO DIESEL

[Desert Raven]

Having worked in emergency services for a number of years, I can tell you that diesel is far more stable, and less likely to explode under normal conditions than gasoline.

Try this: You go into your garage (door closed), and pour two gallons of gasoline on the floor. Wait 20-30 minutes, then light a match. I'll do the same thing with 2 gallons of diesel. I can already tell you the results. In your case, your garage will be reduced to splinters, if not your entire house. In my case, I'll be looking at the floor trying to figure out the best way to clean up 2 gallons of spilled diesel.

Re:I have read...

[CapsaicinBoy]

The EROI for ethanol is 1.67 to 1 while the EROI for biodiesel is 3.2 to 1. That is, both have a positive energy balance. But that still doesn't change the fact that corn and soy are crummy energy crops. It just so happens that they have huge agribusiness lobbies behind them. Of course, trading ExxonMobil and Chevron for ADM and Monsanto isn't a big improvement.

That having been said, ethanol and biodiesel don't have to come from these feedstocks. The folks at SUNY ESF have figured out how extract simple carbs from cellulose for fermentation using only heat and pressure with only water as a solvent. And then you have the enzyme approach the Iogen folks in Canada are pushing. Likewise, the algae biodiesel folks are really close to turning the corner.

My point? Just because corn and soy based biofuels aren't a magic bullet doesn't mean that liquid biofuels don't have an important place in our energy policy.

Disclaimer: I drive a 2003 VW TDI that gets 46mpg lifetime (paper log, not dash readout). By using the B20 pump near my house, I can go 57.5 miles for every gallon of petrodiesel consumed.

Re:What will be powering our cars 10 years from no

[SatanicPuppy]

Whenever someone pushes ethanol that hard, they're really pushing for corn subsidies. If he starts talking wood chips or sawgrass, that might be something worthwhile, but as it stands it's just another pork project.

Re:I have read...

[QRDeNameland]

Actually, Brazil (which encompasses much of the Amazon basin), manages a great degree of self-sufficiency for vehicle fuel using ethanol, and they haven't had to use 97% of their land to do it. A large part of their success stems from the fact that they use sugar cane, not corn, to make ethanol, which I read is far more efficient in terms of both land use and energy required for conversion than corn.

Corn is not a great source for producing ethanol, but the reason it is the highly touted source in the US is because there is already a massive and highly subsidized infrastruture for growing corn in the US, and corn farmers have a powerful lobby. Ethanol from corn may well not be a long-term energy solution, but that doesn't mean that ethanol form other sources can't be viable, and Brazil has shown that.

Re:BIO DIESEL - MOD PARENT INFORMATIVE

[EnderGT]

Too bad I've already posted on this topic, or I'd mod you myself.

As a kid I went with my dad to his job in facilities for a large company. This company had a bank of diesel-powered generators in their basement - huge 24-cylinder beasts. On this trip there happened to be a 20 gallon bottle (think old water-cooler bottle) sitting on the floor with about 6 inches of diesel fuel in the bottom. I inquired as to whether this was a safety hazard - and then watched as a co-worker deliberately struck a match and dropped it in the bottle.

The match fell to the liquid and was extinguished.

As a slightly older youth I attempted to repeat this experiment - only this time with a) a plastic container, b) gasoline, and c) outside on the driveway.

I think my eyebrows grew back within a week or two.

Please stop quoting Pimental. He was wrong.

[Valdrax]

Not only are Pimental's figures grossly incorrect for corn, but there are much more efficient feedstocks that blow them completely out of the water.

This doesn't even account for ethanol from cellulose. If we can devise a way to efficiently break cellulose down to sugar, then ethanol become trivial to produce.