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$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%.
well, it should be fun driving the Hummer around in all that future desert such "cheapness" will lead to
I'm willing to pay $2/gallon for the opportunity to use the 50% efficient stuff.. Why wait until you reach your target of $1/gallon when what you have is already cheaper than normal gas?
So this technology is 5-10 years away? Kinda like how fusion is always 20 years away?
Basically, I'll believe it when I'm pumping it into my gas/ethanol tank.
More importantly, if they get 50% of the cellulose's energy into hydrocarbons then processing twice as much cellulose should given them a $2/gallon hydrocarbon. What they should tell us is whether a gallon of their hydrocarbon mixture has the same amount of energy as a gallon of oil For example, a gallon of ethanol has about 2/3rds the energy of a gallon of regular gasoline, so if it's only priced at 2/3rd the price of regular it won't break even.
The bottom line: we need price in dollars per kilojoule, not in dollars per gallon.
The minute the government stops subsidizing the production of ethanol, not only will farmers start moving back to wheat and other foods that the world needs, but ethanol will be forced to survive on its own next to gasoline, and it will vanish in the puff of bad logic that brought it into existence. Let's not forget the recent story about increases in beer cost as farmers switch over to corn for ethanol. Also informative is this recent Time magazine article debunking the benefits of ethanol. This is just another political stunt at the expense of the world's food crops and my inebriation. When will Congress learn that manipulating the economy never has the desired effects.
Mr. Fusion only powered the time circuits and the Flux Capacitor, the engine runs on ordinary gasoline, always has, always will.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Actually, it reminds me of thermal depolymerization. Anyone remember that?
Really, though, what we're looking at is one of the things that drives me crazy about a lot of environmental "trends" and congress's role in pushing them. And don't get me wrong; I say this as a hardcore green with CFLs in every socket who is on the waiting list for an electric car.
Most of these new biomass-to-ethanol plants work based on syngas. That is, partial oxidation of carbon-and-hydrogen-bearing matter into a mixture of CO and H2. They then either, through an wasteful catalytic process or an even more wasteful biological process, convert the syngas into ethanol. Great. Except that we've been converting syngas to gasoline, in a rather simple and fairly efficient process, for the past century. The main syngas source was coal. This Fischer-Tropsch process powered a large portion of Nazi Germany's war machine (until their plants were bombed flat). It powered South Africa during the Apartheid regime.
Let's state this again: they typically are using *more energy* to create *less output* of a product with *less energy density* that *can't be transported in normal pipelines* and can only be used in *small amounts* in cars unless they're *specially modified*, rather than, more efficiently, just creating gasoline. Why? Because gasoline is a dirty word. Because there aren't the same sort of subsidies for "cellulosic gasoline" as there are for cellulosic ethanol. Because cellulosic gasoline won't win you green cred, or get the investors lining up. So the inferior solution gets chosen.
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
Cellulose is plant matter. You know. Grass clippings, corn stalks, etc. I see you really must like eating GRASS CLIPPINGS along with the COWS. Similar intelligence, perhaps?
CELLULOSE IS NOT FOOD!
Cellulostic Ethanol: Educate Yourself!
[/rant]
Although collecting large amounts of easy to process cellulose materials will cost money too. You can't just go around picking up everyone's grass clippings and store them, or take a week transporting them. Nature also breaks down cellulose, and dissipates the energy they are extracting. So you would need to gather this material, ship it, process it and/or store it in ways that prevent decomposition....and all that costs money.
And most likely means things like switchgrass farms, or some other dedicated farming, so its concentrated in one place (easy for processing and transport). But then you have the problem of that farm land competing with our food growing farm land...which causes land prices to rise, causing increased food costs.
I think using enzymes to break down the ENTIRE plant is the way to go if we're going to do biofuels. The reason is simple: by using the entire plant, it means all the agricultural waste from conventional farming can be turned into almost any fuel you can imagine using enzyme processing, avoiding the major issue of having to overgrow corn and sugar cane/beets just to make more ethanol.
Suddenly, all those weeds out there become a biomass base, and farmers will be more than happy to ship the plant waste from growing corn, wheat, rice, etc. to a cellulosic processing plant to turn into biofuels.
Here's the home page of the University of Amherst prof who did this. There's a picture of him holding a test tube of synthetic fuel derived from biomass sugars.
I'd be more impressed if he was standing next to a 5000 gallon tank of the stuff. On a small scale, if you're not worried about cost, you can make just about any hydrocarbon from any other hydrocarbon. It's hard to measure operating costs until the process is scaled up. So I'm skeptical of the cost claims.
Any political benefits politicians could get from the oil business would absolutely pale in comparison to the benefit they could get from promising the electorate $1/gal gasoline. Campaign contributions work at the margins, but not against a headline issue like this.
50% efficiency does not imply $2/gallon.
They have to input pre-processing and heat. They don't say where break-even is. Maybe that's at 90% efficiency.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
same reason i was apopleptic about the idiocy of hydrogen power. which, as a fashionable topic for science morons, seems to have run its course thankfully
please, science idiots, learn:
if you expend lots of energy manufacturing your energy medium, you are being more wasteful than just choosing a more intelligent energy medium
hydrogen is great, of course, because it burns clean. but it is a b*tch to store and transport, and most importantly, although something clean is coming out of your exhaust, everything that went into getting hydrogen into your fuel tank created more pollution than if you were burning coal in your car
the solution to our energy crisis is nuclear and electric cars
japan and france: show us the way to a cleaner, cheaper energy future, without the security concerns: nuclear
its safer than it ever was (you can walk away from a pebble bed reactor and it will just gradually shut down: no active management needed), and horrible waste is only a product of the usa's hesitance to use breeder reactors (because they make bomb grade materials). but if you use breeder reactors, you have a tenth of the nuclear fuel waste which loses its radioactivity in a few centuries, rather in 10,000s of years, AND you get way more energy output. as uranium runs out, use thorium like india. and as we begin to run out of thorium in a few centuries, mankind better have been able to master fusion power by then, or we are doomed anyways
i think, to provide security to nuclear plants, you would need one one hundredth of the amount of security resources you need now to make sure oil still flows to our shores
or just keep counting the body bags coming from iraq because your mind still believes propaganda about nuclear power based on 1960s technology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"In sight"? Hardly. The only way to make gasoline is to distill hydrocarbons. As usual, the hyperbole of the title obscures the actual article. $2/gallon combustible organic fuel which is very inefficient compared to gasoline is the real situation. "Hope" of reaching $1/gallon and 100% efficiency is just empty hope
As long as it's ethanol, it's going to be monstrously expensive to transport. Ethanol is, essentially, a food product which rots.
If this process can help make with turning coal and other high-carbon materials into actual gasoline, it might be interesting.
However, do not underestimate the physical space and cost to build new fuel processing factories. No matter what, the world's energy needs will increase.
The goals should be to focus on the most effective methods of converting physical substance into harnessed energy, not the fantasy of "clean" energy. Think of all the people who bought or promote electric vehicles claiming they are "clean". That idea is beyond stupid. The energy has to be created somewhere then distributed. All distribution systems have loss. They might be "cleaner" at the point of use but they are not gross clean.
The cleanest energy would be something like wind or water power. They're not efficient and they can't power wheeled vehicles sufficiently. That leaves the concept of combustion in some form. Little pebble reactors in vehicles? Forget it. That leaves the process of a controlled burn. What is the best substance to burn considering infrastructure, portability and energy return aspects? Hydrocarbon. That's all there is to it.
Having said that, for static location energy needs like an electric grid, there could be some advantage to biomass conversion or forms of incineration when they are also used as a way to reduce the expense of handling trash. They'll never be as efficient as burning hydrocarbons because it takes energy to turn them into hydrocarbons. Oil and coal are the closest forms to carbon which are viable fuel sources for combustion.
I call BULLSHIT on this. It wouldn't matter if gas was $.01 or $10.00 @ gallon, I still have to drive to work, shop and do several other chores. I don't drive any more or less then when I was able to buy gas for $.89 @ gallon. The only difference is that it just costs me much more to do said chores.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Your car is not the problem. Admit it: You are just being lazy. I know, you may not want to hear this. Most people don't, but recycling isn't very difficult.
Consider your car excuse: The total amount of waste is exactly the same. It just gets separated into multiple containers. And when it comes to cans, just bag them and take them with you to the supermarket, recycle them on your way in, get groceries on the way out. It's really not that hard.
Electricity is a practical solution that is here NOW, not some future time which may or may not ever arrive. Well, if you consider "practical" to mean a car that has a third of the range of a gasoline powered car, needs hours to "refill", costs twice as much (when you consider the federal subsidies), needs battery replacements every 18-24 months (if you want to maintain range), and can't tow anything to be "practical" then you're right on the money! I'm sure people are flocking to electric cars because they're so darn practical! They are flying off the showroom floors, aren't they? Aren't they? Hello?
Practicality is only one of the issues facing your "practical solution." Electric cars need to be plugged in to something called "utility power" in order to recharge. Where do those magical electrons come from? I'll take "power plants" for $500, Alex. California already has a utility power shortage crisis, with rolling blackouts and brownouts thrown in for fun. Suppose the entire state went electric with their cars tomorrow? Just where do you think all that juice would come from? Pixie dust? Nano-solar isn't going to save you anytime soon, either.
Electric cars are neat. For some people they fit the bill. For the vast majority of people they do not. You've got a lot of learning to do about what the meaning of the word "practical" is for folks who aren't clones of you.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Actually, most small (sub compact) size electric cars have similar ranges to gas powered cars. Since to this point most electrics have been intended as in-town cars, so long as the recharge time was under 8 hours it didn't make a difference. Now that electrics are trying to go more mainstream, the recharge time is gropping fast. I have seen systems that can recharge in under an hour and this can drop even further.
As for replacing the batteries, even with older systems like lead-acid, it has ALWAYS been cheaper to maintain electrics than gas powered vehicles. Things we take for granted like regular oil changes, tune ups, timing belts etc aren't on electrics at all. On top of that, newer battery systems are projected to last the life of the vehicle. Think about the only maint. you need to do is to change your tires.
You are correct that electric cars must be powered off power plants. 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. Currently electrics have an 85-90% efficiencey considering battery and motor loses. Gas vehicles have a 26% efficiency at best. Considering transmission losses, about 5% of electric power is lost and a similar percentage is used in the transportation of gas. Finally, the processing. Power plants typically operate on a 60% efficiency. Therefore, gas powered vehicles operate at around 20% efficiency at best while electrics are hovering around 50%. Two and a hoalf times better! Plus much of the US power is generated by hydro electric and wind, solar-termal and nuclear are starting to come back...
Over the last 10 years electric cars have been a niche market. However the current technology actually allows for wide spread use and the price tag (especially when you include power/fuel expenses) are actually comperable. 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.