Startup Claims to Make $1/Gallon Ethanol

gnick writes to mention Wired is reporting that an Illinois startup is claiming they can make ethanol from most any organic material for around $1/gallon. Coskata, backed by General Motors and several other investors, uses a process that is bacteria based instead of some of the other available methods. The bacteria processes organic material that is fed into the reactor and secretes ethanol as a waste product.

Comments

Ethanol 89 MJ/gallon, Gasoline 132 MJ/gallon

[MacDork]

According to the gubmint So that's $1.48 a gallon of gas. I haven't seen that price on gas in a loooooooong time.

Re:logic

[TykeClone]

The worst estimates are that we're getting 124% energy out with ethanol with current technology - a net gain. And those numbers are based upon old data for crop and ethanol yields and equipment.

Need to make Butanol, not Ethanol

[Nick Driver]

Ethanol has about 84K BTU/gallon of energy for use in a piston engine. Butanol has about 110K BTU/gallon, compared to an average of 115K BTU/gallon for unleaded gasoline. Butanol also does not absorb water out of the air like ethanol does readily. Butanol can be made by via bacteria fermentation of biomass similar to like ethanol can. Butanol does have a problem with not vaporizing good enough for cold starts in very low temperatures, but that could be overcome with electric heater incorporated in a vehicle's fuel injector system for operation in cold weather.

Re:the memories

[Harl_Delos]

Seems to me that the Metropolitan Sewer District already uses bacteria on organic matter, without getting any ethanol. Milwaukee is selling their organic matter as Milorganite, but most other cities just *waste* human waste. Of course, there's always the possibility that your E85-ready vehicle will run like merde. And if your neighbor's RV running biodiesel smells like french fries, what will your E85 car smell like?

More on Butanol...

[Nick Driver]

I guess I might as well karma-whore some more...I completely missed the Wiki page for Butanol Fuel. I also think that Wiki article is wrong about butanol's melting point being 25.5 deg C, that is for pure "tertiary-Butanol", not "n-Butanol" which is the isomer that is preferred for fuel.

Re:logic

[Martin Blank]

How many acres are we going to have to devote to ethanol feedstock to supplant oil?

That depends on the feedstock. We can never do it with corn, as the math just doesn't bear out. Consider the following, based on the recently-published Crop Production 2007 Summary:

Planted area: 93.6 million acres
Average yield: 151.1 bushels per acre
Total production: 14.1 billion bushels

Ethanol production from corn usually nets about 9.5 liters of ethanol per bushel. A conversion of all of the corn to ethanol would net about 134 billion liters of ethanol. Ethanol has an energy density of 24 MJ/L, and gasoline's is 34.6 MJ/L, so E85 would come in at about 25.6 MJ/L. Daily average gasoline consumption in the US is about 1.47 billion liters per day, or about 50.9 billion MJ. To match that with E85 would require 1.99 billion liters of E85, which would require 1.69 billion liters of ethanol. Unfortunately, converting all of the corn production to ethanol would allow only 79 days of consumption of E85 at current energy use rates.

It's an extreme, unrealistic calculation, as we could never do a complete conversion, and it doesn't factor in energy used for the planting, care, or harvest. But it does help to drive home the point that it's infeasible to use standard plants for ethanol production. Even switching to sugarcane or sugarbeets isn't going to help because of the massive acreage required. The only mechanisms that will be able to reliably replace our reliance on fossil fuels are those that are able to take advantage of volume of organic materials, including excretion methods such as algae and bacteria, and possibly methods such as cellulosic conversion and thermal depolymerization (if they work out profitably).

Re:What! GM backing cheap fuel!

[jawtheshark]

with cars lasting longer these days, people will sell their old one just because the new one gets like double the gas mileage

Which would be a quite dumb thing to do. Okay, it depends a bit on the car and how long your commute is per day. Let's see an example:

• I have an 8 year old car which does 10l/100km (23.5mpg), and as such it's a gas guzzler for European standards. It still is in prime condition though.
• I do 15000km per year (9320miles)
• My current car, new cost 35000€ (± 51000$)in 2000, and is currently valued about 10000€ (± 14500$) on the second hand market.
• A new, smaller, more fuel efficient car, like the one my wife has, does 5l/100km(47mpg)
• My wifes car cost 23000€ (± 33500$) in 2006.
• Gas currently costs 1.2€/l (6.66USD/gallon). While one car uses less gas, the prices will soar in the same way and as such the evolution of said price doesn't really matter. It shortens the final calculation, which I admit.
• One gas tank in both cars is 50l (13.2gallon). Coupled with the above information, one gas tank costs 60€ (88$)

Now look what happens: I sell my car for 10000€, and buy a new fuel efficient one for 23000€. I now have 13000€ spend, that I have to justify with future gas savings. That's the equivalent of 13000/60 = 217 fill ups! The equivalent of 217*50 = 10850 litres, which means I can drive 108500km with my old car, or 217000km with my new car. That's the equivalent of a bit more than 7 years for the old car and 14 years for the new car. Now look at those figures! In 7 years, my car will be 15 years old and have no value (10 years later it will be a vintage car though) That's a very long time to recoup costs.

Anyone saying the buy a new car "because it has better mileage" should first do this small calculation. If the cost is not recouped in a short time (which means you drive a lot), then it simply is not worth it. Sure, you might have other reasons, but "saving money" is not a valid one.

Re:logic

[AKAImBatman]

hydrogen has a different octane than gasoline (so does ethanol by the way), so both require a modified (more expensive) engine.

Hydrogen requires more significant changes to the engine. That's what drives up the price. Ethanol only requires shifts in the timing and better fuel lines to handle the corrosive effects of the Ethanol, thus making it a fairly inexpensive conversion. Flex vehicles are able to detect information about the fuel and adjust the timing of the engine.

As for your next point, both hydrogen and ethanol require new infrastructure if they are to replace oil.

That's a fair point, but I think you overestimate the amount of new infrastructure needed by ethanol vs. that needed by hydrogen. We have methods of building pipelines that can handle ethanol. What we DON'T have is a consensus on how to produce, store, transport, or even fuel hydrogen vehicles. Which leaves a rather massive infrastructure gap between ethanol and hydrogen. Ethanol requires some behind-the-scenes changes. No real biggie. Hydrogen requires brand new vehicles, brand new storage systems, brand new transportation methods*, and brand new production methods. We simply aren't ready to build this infrastructure, no matter how much I wish we were.

They only reason they haven't taken off is because ignorant Americans (yes, I'm an American too) have a stupid idea that diesel is dirty technology.

It's not a stupid idea. Up until 2006, the US allowed really crappy quality diesel to be sold on the fuel market. This reduced the pump cost of the fuel, but meant that it was extremely dirty and bad for the environment. There was no way that car makers could create cars that burned these fuels clean enough to meet emission standards. Thus the disappearance of diesel in small vehicles. From Wikipedia:

In contrast, the United States has long had "dirtier" diesel, although more stringent emission standards have been adopted with the transition to ULSD starting in 2006 and becoming mandatory on June 1, 2010 (see also diesel exhaust). U.S. diesel fuel typically also has a lower cetane number (a measure of ignition quality) than European diesel, resulting in worse cold weather performance and some increase in emissions. This is one reason why U.S. drivers of large trucks idle their rigs all night rather than risking a cold-weather start.

In fact, the only reason why ethanol is taking off is because it's a fairly good additive to gasoline to increase the octane rating

That's been true for decades. As a former resident of Wisconsin, I can tell you that nearly all fuel sold in that state used Ethanol as an octane booster, with many pumping stations advertising as much as "10% Ethanol". What's changed is that ethanol is now being blended in at higher quantities while car makers rush to support these "new" fuels. For the first time in my life, I'm actually seeing E85 fuels pop up at your average, everyday gas station. So no, ethanol is not being driven by its use as an octane booster. Your information is out of date.

(* Hydrogen leaks out of nearly any container. That's one of the reasons why it's so hard to transport and store.)