Slashdot Mirror
$1/Gallon "Green Gasoline" In Sight
mattnyc99 writes "We've gotten excited here about the startup that claims it can make $1/gallon ethanol out of anything from trash to tires. But we've also seen how cellulosic ethanol is a better option, and how ethanol demand in general is only adding to the worldwide food crisis. So what about $1/gallon gasoline? NSF-funded researchers at UMass Amherst just completed the first direct conversion from cellulose using a new method of hydrocarbon refining, which they claim can be commercialized within 5-10 years and essentially make fuel out of anything that grows. Quoting: 'We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels. We're using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that's what we'll be using in 10 years and in 50 years,' Huber says. 'And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go.'" The process is running at about 50% efficiency now; the $1/gallon figure is based on getting to 100%.
FWIW, we do NOT have an infrastructure for distributing liquid fuels that are predominantly ethanol... thats one of the real big problems. It corrodes the living sh#% out of virtually all of our liquid fuel transportation infrastructure.
Cheap ethanol is good if the production of biomass to produce it doesn't displace food production, and $1/gallon would certainly be nice, but we have to be realistic about ALL the problems an ethanol-based fuel economy will entail... replacing all the pipelines being just the start.
this process uses non-feedstock/waste materials so it shouldn't have an impact on food supplies.
Gotta be careful with how they're defining "efficiency" here.
They are not talking about thermal efficiency, they are talking about conversion efficiency: how much of the input gets converted to final product. The thermodynamic limits on efficiency do not apply here, so 100% is technically doable.
=Smidge=
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Different articles. First link is about a company that can convert ethanol to gasoline. (And the advantage of that is that you don't have to buy a new car -- your existing car, which runs on gasoline and not ethanol, will still work with the new fuel.)
The fourth link is about converting cellulose (i.e., plant material) into something that seems to resemble gasoline. The 100% efficiency they're talking about isn't thermodynamic -- they're talking about doing 100% of the conversion that is possible, when they're doing 50% of it right now.
I still don't trust it; as someone above commented, with gasoline costing more than $3/gallon in the US right now, being able to do it for $2/gallon would mean they could raise as much financing as they could produce. (On the other hand: one of the reasons gasoline is so expensive in the US is because of the refineries, and this stuff would -- one presumes -- still need to be refined. And might need a different refinery, which would raise the cost even more. The article, sadly, doesn't give any significant details.)
It's amazing how many things are 5-10 years away.
USA also _buys_ food in other countries. Reduced internal food supply causes less exports and more international purchases.
See here for a nice, detailed breakdown, week-by-week of gas prices in California. Admittedly, CA is one of the most expensive gas markets in the country, but as of April 21st, $3.08 of $3.85 in average gas prices there come purely from the fuel itself. 11 cents goes to marketing & distribution. 66 cents goes to taxes (many of which rise with fuel costs).
Dropping $3.08 to $1 or even $2 would be a *huge* savings in gas prices there.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I think that you're confused and assuming that this gasoline will add carbon to the atmosphere. In reality, the carbon that's being added to the atmosphere is carbon that was taken out to make the gasoline in the first place. The reason oil's such a problem is that the carbon was sequestered in the earth's crust and not being released until we got to it. In this case the carbon would have almost certainly made it back into the atmosphere, which means it's effectively carbon neutral (although there might be some electricity costs that would add more carbon to the air).
That brings an interesting thought to mind, though. I know that we can't sequester carbon very well in a gaseous form, and that other forms are expensive to produce, but what if we were to grow plants, cut them down, and stick them underground in some salt mines or something?
Right. That's always been the argument against plug in cars "The power comes from the dirty powerplant!"
Except, there's one simple fact, larger power plants will always be cleaner, and more efficient per Watt of power, than cars will be. So while you still need the energy from somewhere, it's cheaper, and cleaner overall. However, it'll greatly increase the strain on an already drawn-thin power grid. Nothing is free.
Because they don't have a process... According to the article they can make this high-octane cellular extraction in small quantities.
This is not a large scale production process running at 50% capacity, its an lab-scale process which can see a 50% energy extraction. Extracting more energy might require a completely different method.
Also where they heat the cellulose 1000 degrees per second will probably not scale very easily to the hundreds to thousands of gallons needed in mass production (its easy to do to a few ounces...a lot harder for a few gallons).
Only if it's claimed that the thermodynamic efficiency is 100%. The word "efficiency" is also used in other contexts where values of 100% or more make sense, and do not violate the laws of thermodynamics.
For example, home heat pumps are generally given an efficiency rating that indicates the ratio of heat output vs. electrical input (i.e., how many watts of heat are blown out the vents divided by how many watts of electrical power are consumed). This value is usually greater than 100%, but this is OK because this definition does not include the heat which is removed from the outside air and transferred to the indoor air. In other words, that specific definition of efficiency does not consider the complete system, and it deliberately ignores some of the energy that's being consumed.
Heat pump efficiency is defined this way because it allows useful comparisons to other kinds of climate control devices. A plain electric space heater would consume 1000W of electrical power in order to dump 1000W into the room, while a heat pump might only consume 500W of electrical power (I made that number up) in order to dump the same 1000W into the same room. While that doesn't reflect the thermodynamic efficiency of the heat pump, it does let you see that this example heat pump will consume half the electrical power of a space heater in order to heat the same room.
I'm not trying to debate whether the "100%" value in TFA makes sense here, because I haven't read TFA yet. I'm just pointing out that there are valid and honest uses for the word "efficiency" where values of 100% or more make sense, without implying any sort of perpetual motion.
Oil closed at $119.37 this afternoon , which works out to $2.84 a gallon for unrefined crude. I don't know how you decided that refined gasoline was only worth $2.50, but it really doesn't sound right that refined gasoline is worth 15% less than unrefined crude oil.
And, this article is about the direct production of gasoline from cellulose, not ethanol. It's certainly possible that the energy density would be different than gasoline refined from crude oil, but I really don't think your guess at 60-65% of the density is accurate.
i probably need to get out my reading glasses, you since parent clearly stated that the Fischer-Tropsch process was used to make gasoline. On a side note, one thing that seems feasible (if we solve the corrosivity issues) is Steam reforming of biomass to methanol, which is an exothermal process.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
Remember that we use "Heat Engines"... The more BTU's per gallon of fuel translates into more miles per gallon!
With the new mandate for 35 MPG cars on the horizon, I'd imagine they will be using Diesel. (Anyone notice the new Volkswagen "clean Diesel" commercials?)
Also, the US Government pays a $0.50 per gallon as a subsidy. (I think this is at the production level). Otherwise, Ethanol production could not compete with oil.
FYI:
Methanol 64,600 BTU per gallon
Ethanol 84,600 BTU per gallon
Gasohol 120,900 BTU per gallon (10% Ethanol to 90% Gasoline)
Gasoline 125,000 BTU per gallon
Biodiesel 130,000 BTU per gallon
Diesel 138,700 BTU per gallon
Most from this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline
Shouldn't you be doing something useful?
"The fossil fuels burned in 1997 were created from organic matter containing 44 Ã-- 10^18 g C, which is >400 times the net primary productivity (NPP) of the planetâ(TM)s current biota."
http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf
Yes that's right, we consume 400 years worth of ancient biofuel production per year currently.
The same author says we can do better in solar energy capture efficiency now, so we might only need to use 22% of Earth's biota for fuel going forward, plus the other 22% we use for food etc.
Seems like we're going to have to plow under all
those pink and grey suburbs and plant biofuel
hemp farms on them.
If the oil companies are at all sane, they'll be investing heavily in this if it's technologically feasable. They don't care where the oil comes from so long as they're the ones refining and distributing it. If they can get feedstock from someplace that isn't perpetually on the brink of all-out war, so much the better.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Uh, no, at least not nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium.
No. There's already been one accident with radiation release at a pebble bed reactor, and adding a whole bunch of graphite - the stuff that caught fire at Chernobyl - to a reactor is not a good idea.
And you have plutonium factories all over the place. If you don't see the problem with that. Google the news for "Iran nuclear". >
And remember that that these plutonium factories would not be built to U.S. safety standards, no; many would be being built in China or other developing nations. If you don't see the problem with that. Google the news for "China contaminated".
And the waste problem remains unsolved.
Skip uranium entirely. Go to an "energy amplifier", where thorium is hit with a proton beam. It's subcritical - pull the plug and it shuts down. It's proliferation-resistant, and it can even be used to burn up plutonium. And it produces a lot less waste.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well, maybe there's something in the Oregon air that just makes people stupid. Here in Toronto, we have mandatory recycling as well, but only ONE truck is needed to pick up the papers, plastic, and glass - it just has three different compartments. The trashmen put paper in one, plastic in another, and glass in a third. What's so hard about that?
What was once true, is no longer so
title says it all
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
1) The whole point of recycling is to keep from having to drive stuff way out to a landfill. It gets, you know, recycled instead. I believe that Portland has over %50 less waste going into their 'distant landfills' since they have started recycling.
2) If the garbage was not being separated then the one garbage truck would fill up faster and have to make more trips back and forth between the 'distant landfill' and the pickup route.
Think about it. The total amount of garbage didn't magically triple overnight. They didn't suddenly have to purchase and run three times the number of garbage trucks; the existing trucks are just used for different tasks now. I bet the total fuel consumption won't be all that different.
3) Where Portland wastes diesel fuel in the garbage industry is that they have multiple companies serving the same routes which is less efficient than it could be. This would be true whether they are recycling or not.
4) You are seriously underestimating the energy saved by recycling. The energy saved by recycling aluminum cans alone will probably cover all the fuel costs for the whole garbage truck fleet. A can manufacturing industry website states that for every 40 aluminum cans recycled the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline is saved.
http://www.cancentral.com/recFAQ.cfm
Please find something more constructive to bitch about.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
That's great, except that to the extent that it is gradually broken down by bacteria, in a dump, it's done anaerobically, which releases methane gas instead of just carbon dioxide. And methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Dumps emit a whole lot of methane, which more than offsets any carbon sequestration going on there.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Citation needed. Wikipedia says glass recycling saves 5-30% of the energy, and 20% of the air pollution. Bimetal, I don't know about, but recycling aluminum can saves 95% of the energy, and steel 60%; recycling bimetal cans would only waste energy if it took a tremendous amount of energy to separate the parts, and if that's the case we ought to redesign or eliminate them.
Where do you live that paper, aluminum cans, and glass bottles, are supposed to be specially marked for recycling? Here in the U.S. the only things marked are plastic, so you can tell what type it is. It was the same way when I was in Japan (where they do a tremendous job of recycling).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
True. The problem is that most subcompact cars aren't practical either. Maybe for single people or childless couples, but for people with families these vehicles are entirely impractical. Thus the popularity of SUVs.
This one is COMPLETELY wrong, and shows a real lack of understanding of basic mechanics. Most of the "Electric" cars out there are actually HYBRID cars. Why? Because of the inherent problem of the lack of range of full electrics Since they are hybrids, they have small gasoline engines in them. These engines need all the maintenance of any other engine. So take the normal maintenance costs of a standard automobile, THEN add the costs of replacing the battery pack (roughly 3-5 grand US each 3-5 years) ON TOP of that. NOT cheaper.
Even for full electrics, the maintenance costs are still comparable, because even though there is no Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) in the vehicle, it still has plenty of moving parts that need regular lubrication and get worn out and need replacing over the life of the car. The average full electric vehicle needs about 50% to 75% of the year-to-year maintenance that a hybrid or a standard ICE vehicle needs. But you still need to calculate in the cost of replacing the battery pack every 3-5 years, which pushes the maintenance costs of an Electric to WAY over the cost of an ICE vehicle. if I may demonstrate with a simple chart:
ICE vehicle expected maintenance costs on a yearly basis over 5 years: $1000.00 US
Total average maint. costs: $5000.00 US
Hybrid vehicle expected maintenance costs on a yearly basis over 5 years: $1000.00 US
Hybrid replacement battery pack costs within a 5 year period: $3000.00 - $5000.00 US
Total average maint. costs: $7000.00 - $10,000.00 US
Full Electric Expected Maintenance costs on a yearly basis over 5 years: $500.00 - $750.00 US
Electric replacement battery pack costs within a 5 year period: $3000.00 - $5000.00 US
Total average maint. costs: $5500.00 - $8750.00
These are rough figures, but I'm sure you can spend some time on edmunds.com or Google and find similar numbers.
One additional point, you aren't taking in the disposal costs of the HIGHLY TOXIC batteries. Yes, some can be recycled, but many cannot. What do we do about those? ICE vehicles are 99% recyclable. Hybrids and Electrics are not, due to the batteries.
Power plants DO NOT run on gasoline. MOST are coal-NG plants, some are Nuclear, some are Hydro power, and a very small number of low-capacity plants run Diesel. So you CANNOT re-direct the gasoline to power plants, they can't use it!
Also, California's power grid problem is twofold:
1) Over-regulation by the California government has economically strangled the power plants, making it a loss-proposition to run a power plant in California.
2) The Eco-Freaks and NIMBYs have wrangled a practical ban on building any NEW power plants in CA, such that demand has now FAR outstripped supply. Thus the rolling blackouts and brownouts. There simply isn't enough power to go around, and no way to get more power plants built.
You will notice that NEITHER of these problems are IN ANY WAY related to Gasoline or automobiles.
You can talk all about supposed efficiency gai
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Actually, most small (sub compact) size electric cars have similar ranges to gas powered cars
Do you have figures on that? I've always figured that the range for a gasoline car is ~300 miles. All the EV sites I've seen touting economical EVs(excludes the Telsa) is around 100 miles.
As for recharge time, it's all dependant on two factors. Well, one usually ends up being the limiter. The first is battery chemistry. You can only charge a lead-acid battery so fast. NiMH is a bit faster, and you have a better 'fast charge' ability. LiIon is better yet, though it gets really slow near the end. The second is the wattage capacity of your charging system.
If all you have is a 120V outlet, you're only going to be able to push about 1.5KWh into the batteries in an hour. 2KWh for a 'heavy duty' 20Amp dedicated circuit. Switch to a dryer type outlet at 240V@30A, and you're up to 6KWh. Which would fill most EV batteries in about 3 hours. The Tesla, sportscar that it is, has a 53KWh battery. That dryer outlet would take 9 hours to charge it from empty. There's nothing except the pain of handling 000 gauge* wires and running most of a modern house's capacity to it to keep you from charging it in just over an hour. Well, assuming the charging system can keep up. Of course, at that point a transformer and kicking the voltage up to levels only line workers normally see**.
However, electric cars are so much more efficient that california would end up with GOBS more power if they simply redirected the gas for cars into powerplants.
Better yet, just burn the crude oil, better still, build nuclear plants, wind farms, etc... Leave the gasoline for other areas.
Over the last 10 years electric cars have been a niche market.
They've been a niche market for the last 100+. Look up Jay Leno's antique electric car.
However the current technology actually allows for wide spread use and the price tag (especially when you include power/fuel expenses) are actually comperable.
Not yet. You can obtain a ~35 mpg gasoline car for around $15k. Zap wants $14k for a truck with a max speed of 25mph, a payload capacity of 770 pounds, and a range of 30 miles. Great for zipping around a warehouse, not so great for commuting in most areas. The Zap-X, which looks like a car has a ESRP of $60k. The Tesla is $100k.
Conversion kits seem to run around $10k, excluding the batteries.
Even if you assume power is free, in many cases battery aging and replacement needs exceed the cost of the gasoline in and of itself.
It is getting better, but slowly.
With near term developments in super capcitors and batteries, the range of applications will increase, the fueling times will decrease and the cost will drop.
Fueling times, at this point, are generally limited by infrastructure. There's not magic bullet out there to make batteries cheap enough to make them the right choice anytime in the near future, I'm afraid.
*IE bloody huge
**lethal very quickly if not done right. I'm thinking 600-1000V. A thousand volts could handle the charge using 'only' 4 or 5 gauge wire. Still going to look and handle worse than a garden hose full of water.
I don't read AC A human right
Second, maintenance costs for a hybrid are much less. As the link to the hybrid taxi cab experiment shows, while standard maintenance costs were about the same, the unscheduled maintenance costs were dramatically lower, around 19 cents per 100km of driving, vs. around $2 per 100km for the other vehicles. That's with over 60 hybrids, not one vehicle, so it should not be a statistical anomaly. That's big-time savings, and since 'unscheduled maintenance' is going to be a euphemism for stuff breaking, they're more reliable as well.
So no battery pack replacement needed and almost a 50% reduction in total real maintenance and repair costs over the life of the vehicle and a lower failure rate = you're saving thousands of dollars and have less hassle.
Add in the savings for the better gas mileage ($10,000 to $20,000 in savings over the life of the vehicle) and that hybrids are almost free in terms of their cost vs. a regular new car even with the slightly higher premium you pay for them.
One other thing. Hybrids hold their value. You don't take a 30% reduction to the value of your car the moment you drive it off the lot, and used hybrids can go for almost as much as new ones.
So your 10-20 year lifespan of the battery isn't documented on the website anywhere that I can find.
They've stated they're using lithium phosphate in news articles (example here). Lithium phosphate batteries have a 10-20 year lifespan in normal use. Normal laptop cells have a few hundred to a thousand or so cycles before 50% degradation. A123 cells have 1000 cycles to 5% degradation (in an Aptera, 1000 cycles is 120,000 miles). And everyone I've seen who's talked about using A123 cells in their own experience says that if anything, the spec sheet is too pessimistic. A123 was initially saying "10+ years and 7000 cycles+" for the Volt's pack (which will be a lot more stressed than the Aptera's, since it's a PHEV). Now GM is saying they expect it to be good for 15, and are planning to give it a very long warranty. And even then, you're not talking about the battery dying; you're talking about it being down 20% capacity or so. Spinels can last even longer -- LG Chem expects theirs to be good for as much as 40 years in typical EV use.
There's nothing inherent about batteries that means they have to rapidly degrade. Jay Leno has a 1909 Baker Electric that still runs on its original Edison cells. It all depends on the stability of the battery chemistry. Lead-acid and LiCoO2/graphite li-ion are not stable chemistries. LiP, titanates, and spinels are.
I also note on the Aptera site that the car isn't designed for cold climates.
Says who? Aptera has only said that it's not initially going to be *tested* in cold climates. A123 lithium phosphate cells are rated for -30C for operation and -50C for storage. And lightweight tadpole configurations like the Aptera can do exceedingly well in the snow -- for example, the Messerschmidt KR200 (which is a far more primitive and less stable design). Smaller vehicles have lower moments of inertia, so they're easier to stop. Compare the stopping time on a semi with a typical sedan, for example.
Availability is almost non-existent as well
Availability *is* non-existant because it's pre-production; only the prototypes exist. They've fully raised their final round of funding for production and they brought on board the head of production for the Dodge Viper and Ford GT projects to manage it (a perfect match, as he's used to working with low volume cars with light alloys and composite structures). The first deliveries to customers are scheduled for late this year.
Last, and perhaps most distressing, Aptera offers no warranty on the vehicle.
Wrong. The site explicitly says, "The details of our financing and warranty are still being defined" and "We will announce further information regarding the battery lifespan and warranty policy well before we begin manufacturing the Typ-1 next October.", not "There will be no warranty". How do you have terms on a warranty when there is none? Perhaps you were looking at the terms of use of the *Website*? ("Aptera PROVIDES THIS WEB SITE, AND ALL CONTENT AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEB SITE "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY OF INFORMATIONAL CONTENT, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.")
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
>>"Hybrid GAS cost may be half that of a traditional vehicle, but did you factor in what you pay to charge the batteries up with electricity? No? Try again."
As the saying goes, "People may think you're dumb; don't open your mouth and confirm their suspicions." My Honda Insight doesn't use ANY electricity. It doesn't even have a plug!!! It's 100% gasoline powered, with a battery to capture & recycle any excess energy (example: braking).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.