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Are Biofuels Still Economically Feasible?
thefickler writes "With falling gas prices, and the end of capitalism as we know it (otherwise known as the credit crisis), the
biofuels industry is not looking as viable as it once was. Indeed biofuel production has fallen well short of expectations, with biofuel companies closing down or reducing production capacity. It appears that the industry's only hope is government support."
They didn't push the fuel hard enough to get it standard
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The biofuels of which you speak have always produced more pollution through their manufacture than they have saved through reduced car emissions, so their future is largely political, not economical.
Oh and holy crap what an inflammatory summary. Yes the banks are temporarily not lending at the lower interest rates, no this does not have any effect on capitalism.
The future of biofuel and food production is algae. It's the most primitive plant form there is and is therefore the most efficient at converting solar energy into an energy store (oil) or edible substances. A lot of work is going to have to be done to develop methods of growing and harvesting algae, but that's just engineering. Better get used to the idea of algae steaks as an alternative to soy burgers... Yum!
Are Biofuels Still Economically Feasible?
No
Were they realistically feasible in the first place?
Absolutely not. The quantity of land that would need to be re-purposed if a significant percentage of US oil usage was to be bio-fuels would be enormous.
Perhaps support of bio fuels will at least reduce our dependence on foreign oil... hasn't this been a concern for quite awhile?
Though I am enjoying relief from $4.00/gallon gasoline as much as the next guy, I would hold off on prognostications until summer arrives. I doubt oil will remain cheap for long. The current low is likely due to more factors than just demand destruction. Matt Simmons (author of Twilight in the Desert [no, not playing at a theater near you]) suggests the current lows have more to do with settling derivatives trades between oil companies more than anything else.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
So we destroy a food source just to fuel a very inefficient vehicle .... sure that is the best solution ... for idiots.
With biofuels you get: ... polluting the local water supply.
- 30% of the millage you get with the regular gas. This means you have to fill up the gas tank 3 times more than before. And bip-idiots call that efficient.
- Increase in the cost of FOOD. Since biofuels are more profitable (specially if subsidized), more farmers will switch from food to fuel farms.
- Higher pollution. Since the plants are no longer for food consumption, farmers can use what ever chemicals they want to "make more fuel"
That is just a few cons of biofuels .... I still can't figure out what is are the pros.
It depends on what nations you are talking about. In the USA, bio-fuels might be a non starter but in poorer [tropical] nations, bio fuels are a "Godsend."
These nations put in very little in bio fuel plants like the Jatropha, then get its seeds that can yield up to 40% oil by weight.
The plant is also resistant to drought and needs very little maintenance. The trouble with the USA is that folks look to corn whenever the bio-fuels subject comes up and in many cases, this is not economic at all.
Still? Were they ever economically feasible?
Seems like once you start jacking up the price of everything on the dollar menu to $3 because all the corn is going to make fuel, what you thought was a great idea (ethanol) looks foolish.
Palm oil = destruction of rain forest
ethanol = drives up food prices
I'm sure we can figure something out in the future, but right now this stuff has some pretty nasty side effects.
Many biofules are said to take more energy to produce them than they provide, so with dropping oil prices they are actually more feasible than they were when oil prices were high. Now if they can only pass laws mandating the use of these fuels then they will become extremely feasible.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Swear to God, I didn't have my glasses on and at first I thought it said "Are Brothels Still Economically Feasible?" I was kinda like, strange time for the world's oldest profession to die out...
The naysayers are wrong... biofuels aren't dead. The governments printing presses won't let them die.
Back during the 1970's there was a fuel shortage and the bio-fuels industry picked up. Then we saw $30 a barrel and lower oil that drove all the producers out of business. Some say it was a calculated move on the part of OPEC to make sure that no competition arises. I'm not sure I'd go that far as OPEC nearly destroyed itself due to cheating in that period...
It's not much of a surprise that it's happened again. (Gee what happened to that $200 a barrel mark the media was predicting by the end of the year). Bio-fuels were another way for the agriculture lobby to get more money for corn. So with cheap oil, everyone will go back to worrying about other things and in 10 -15 years when there is another disrupution and the prices sky rocket, people will once again start up bio fuel projects.
You'd think we'd learn, but to quote Mark Twain: History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Let's hope not. Biofuels based on corn and other food crops are bad for obvious reasons, but even non-food biofuels have their risks - among them degradation of the American/Canadian Great Plains, ecological degradation in the Third World, and the risk of invasive species (most of these non-food biofuels are fast-spreading grasses).
The most ecological energy policy is to stop the government from subsidizing oil (by building suburbia with land use restricitons), subsidizing coal, and subsidizing water. There is no magic fuel out there that will allow us to consume infinite amounts of cheap energy - nature made extracting energy expensive for a reason, and the government needs to get out of the business of trying to make it easier.
Steven Chu has been involved in overseeing the most cutting edge research into biofuels, and I expect he is going to be promoting the next generation biofuels very strongly in the new administration.
These fuels are very different than the kind of biofuels currently being produced, and will not have their shortcomings. They will not be made from corn.
Oh for pete's sake.
There's no such bugaboo as "global warming". Freaking Greenland is still covered in ice. Think about you silly ass.
With the exception of cane sugar alcohol there are no biofuels that are commercially feasible. The whole industry needs to be scrapped and would die an immediate brutal death except for subsidies which keep it alive.
The whole industry needs to be scrapped and would die an immediate brutal death except for subsidies which keep it alive.
One could say the same about many American industries which are getting bailouts.
We fight wars and support insurrections world wide to secure for ourselves and our posterity: crude oil.
This crude oil is then piped for millions of miles through inhospitable climates and unfriendly countries (more war and strife-support) and/or shipped through often-dangerous shipping routes (piracy, weather).
This crude oil is then refined into fuels and petrochemicals which are then re-shipped.
Petrochemicals end up in China where they are made into plastic garbage for whiny brats at walmart...after even more shipping.
Every step of this process requires siphoning some capacity to fuel the process (fuel for ships, trucks, pumps, refineries, factories).
Alt.fuels will shine like a diamond in a goats ass soon enough. The companies that make lay the groundwork now (or better yet, in the 90's) will be the winners.
THL phish sticks
As conceptually appealing as biofuels are, sadly they were never really viable. For the most part they compete for resources already needed by the food chain. And how many MILLIONS of gallons of fuel are consumed each day? No bio source can even dream of producing such quantities, day after day after day.
I think makers of internal combustion engines and their fuel suppliers, need to look at this as a temporary reprieve from the Governor while their case is reviewed.
Research into alternate energy sources for transportation must continue.
To give up this research just because petroleum prices are low, would be a grave mistake.
Heck, bump prices up a little and use the surplus to fund research instead of paying CEO salaries and shareholder dividends.
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
Gasoline is cheap because demand has slackened. Isn't anybody scared as fuck that a mere 5% drop in demand can result in such a catastrophic drop in price? It's an inelastic price. That means that small changes in demand cause huge changes in price.
This is the future:
1) economy slows
2) price of gas drops
3) economy gets better and demand recovers
4) WHAM gas goes through the roof.
5) Goto 1
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Think about it:
1) A big cartel controls a lot of the world's oil.
2) This big cartel can tell when investing in alternative fuels is rising.
3) The big cartel can change prices when they want.
Jack us until alternative sources are feasible, and then make them unfeasible by lowering prices.
Gasoline might look cheap, but it's not. ...
You forgot to include the enormous government subsidy in the form of (military) security.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot.
Ethanol in the US has nothing to do with alternative fuels, or replacing gasoline. It is primarily a subsidy to American corn farmers. Corn can never be a worthwhile source of ethanol.
Fact is, gasoline is cheap. Arguing about nebulous unknown "costs" in the future doesn't change it's price today. In fact, gasoline isn't just cheap, it's rock bottom dirt fucking cheap. The economics are simple, as long as gasoline is cheaper than any sort of biofuel, people will continue to use it.
This isn't the fault of the oil companies, who have been for years reshaping themselves into "energy" companies. The minute biofuel becomes competitive with gasoline, the oil companies will begin sinking their billions into controlling it. They already have the infrastructure, so it's logical for them to take it over.
Until some new process is created which can demonstrate large volume production of biofuel at prices better than gasoline, we're stuck with gasoline. The moment such a process is created, auto makers, consumers, and the oil companies will all switch on their own.
I'm currently studying bio engineering and majoring in agricultural economy. I once compared the amount of ethanol globally produced for use as biofuel to the amount of ethanol produced in the production of beer (leaving out other alcoholic beverages like wine or hard liquor). I came to a ratio 6/1000. I ask you slashdot: What is more of a waste?
Wasting our energy- food and watersupplies for the pleasure of people. Or saving on our carbondioxide-output and building the infrastructure for second generation biofuels.
Let I remind you that the recent problems with foodshortage were not at all a product of a bigger focus on biofuels. There were some major failed harvests in wheatproduction. The consumption of meat and milk rose steeply in countries like china which requires a lot of wheat. And the rising price of oil also had an effect on the costs of the farmers.
Up untill now, the foodprices have been lowering continuously for the past 50 years and I am not at all surprised that farmers are looking for alternatives like biofuels.
Research into biofuels is still going full speed. I'm involved in a project using switchgrass to produce diesel (and other products) directly through pyrolysis and the Fisher Tropsch process. Other projects are looking at using switchgrass as a feedstock for conversion to ethanol, or as a "lignocellulosic material" that can be co-fired with coal, reducing costs and pollutants.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
The difference is that most of those industries have actually been profitable at some point in the past and have some potential for making a profit in the future. I don't foresee a future in which biofuels could possibly be economically viable unless you are talking about at a very small, local level where you can use waste material from restaurants to run a half dozen cars or where farmers grow corn for human or animal consumption and use some of the leftover biomass to make fuel for their tractors. As soon as you cross the line from recycled biomass to newly grown biomass specifically for fuel, you find an entire industry based on a fundamentally flawed economic model. Basically, it's the dot-com boom all over again---a company loses money on every sale but tries to make it up in volume.
The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it. Therefore, by definition, short of a significant change in the fundamental technology of farming or in the types of crops grown, biofuel will never---can never---be commercially viable. (Source: Cornell/UC Berkeley study circa 2005. And then, there's the fact that the U.S. seems myopically focused on using corn as a source, which is quite possibly the worst thing you could possibly plant for fuel purposes by almost any useful metric---output relative to soil damage, output per acre, etc. It's a joke.
About the only thing slightly promising in that area is the whole algae thing. but I'm not holding my breath. Even if it eventually proves financially viable, you're still dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. And I suspect that when you factor in all the hidden maintenance costs, etc, it will end up being unprofitable just like the rest of them.
The GP poster may have said it in a flamebait-like way, but that doesn't mean the post was wrong. On the contrary. it was dead on accurate, at least if you limit biofuel to current farming technology and current sources of biomass. Realistically speaking, dumping more and more money into biofuel research is not the answer. We already have much better sources of energy---solar, wind, geothermal, tidal---that don't pollute our atmosphere significantly, don't contribute to global warming significantly, and at least in the case of solar and wind, don't require nearly the overhead in terms of maintenance, repairs, infrastructure, etc. because they can be set up at the local level (or, in the case of solar, even the household level). Power storage. That's where we should be spending research dollars. That's a problem that will still be needed even if biofuels did become commercially viable, but with better power storage, biofuels would have no real purpose for existing.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Okay, I just reread the GGP post. The bit about global warming does strike me as a troll.... I missed that before. My bad. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It's a recession, and businesses are closing down or scaling back? Unheard of!
Nuclear comes first. You get the biggest bang for the buck that way.
Biofuels have always been economically viable. The question has always been economically viable to who?
I kinda hope that I don't get any nuclear bang for my buck. The nice hum of electric generation yes, but please no bang....
I'm just here to regulate Funkyness
A lot of people posting so far seem to confuse corn subsidy biofuel with biofuels in general. But there are other biofuels already which are not energy-negative such as alcohol made from sugar cane waste in Brazil, where the nonconvertible cellulose is burned to provide the heat input to the process. Here in the UK we have limited production of alcohol and charcoal from coppiced shrubs and timber processing waste; there are several other initiatives. Given that the price of oil is controlled more by speculation than demand, and given financial instability, we can expect it to change wildly over the next few years. Industries needing long term investment should be protected to some degree from the fluctuations. A working biofuel industry would help to stabilise the oil price, because it would introduce an element of competition into the fuels market. Speculators do not like competitive industries because it is harder to manipulate them.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
[citation needed]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The whole industry needs to be scrapped and would die an immediate brutal death except for subsidies which keep it alive.
One could say the same about many American industries which are getting bailouts.
Aussie companies are being bailed out also. KRudd not only bailed out the auto manufacturers to the tune of several $AU Billion, but also the salesmen with a separate bail out.
Geez, don't be so damned quick to jump on the Septic Tanks when you haven't checked out your own shit first !!!
There are fundamental fallacies to our existing economy. They assume a workable environment in which to do business, and that the environment is infinite and free. If you look at the economic cost of global warming over the next hundred years, the global price rises to hundreds of trillions of dollars. A few of the costs include;
A) Land lost by sea level rise
B) Damage caused by increase flood and drought
C) Loss of critical biostocks (crash in fish populations, ocean acidification, key land ocean and air species)
D) Storm damage
E) Increased spread of tropical diseases
F) Wars caused by loss of water, food, and habitable land
G) Loss of land for agriculture
H) Failure of environmental systems supporting a minimum quality of life
Algae based oil is an excellent fuel alternative. Another is bioengineering new fungii discovered to produce diesel fuel directly from cellulose. Both of these technologies are utterly plug and play in our current petroleum base infrastructure. Both sequester carbon from the atmosphere, so their burning adds no new carbon and using them for other purposes like petrochemical feed-stocks actually removes carbon from the atmosphere. Both create tremendous new economic opportunities, and if supported by the government and the current petroleum business point us to a workable gap stop solution until helium cooled pebble bed fission and fusion are perfected.
They just signed a long-term contract with China.
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/081212/0460039.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/081211/0459633.html
the Algae farmers did not comprise a big enough voting bloc for the US Congress to consider their viability in saving the current environment, of course by environment I mean keeping one's seat.
Corn Ethanol/Switchgrass etc was more about who was who than what was what
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You don't even have to invoke the spectre of global warming for this (of which /. has many doubters anyway); to avoid being raped by ludicrous oil prices ever again, it's in our best interest to get personal transport with great MPG numbers (so even if it rises, you'll still be laughing - and what's now spent on hauling 1 pair of buttocks from A to B is simply gross inefficiency) and independence of oil since there's so many ways to generate electricity - but none to generate oil.
You might want to watch the story of Brazil's petroleum independence and almost total conversion to ethanol:
http://current.com/items/89112645/the_world_s_sugar_daddy.htm
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Actually your biggest bang for buck is coal, but nuclear is consistently $0.04/KwH whereas the long term cost for coal increases. On shore wind power is also very competitive with nuclear and there is lest chance of a catastrophe.
Wow you obviously haven't read any of the material released in the last year and a half. When corn is used as the feedstock the energy yield is marginal however several companies have increased the yield considerably. Coskata for instance can use any carbon based material as a feedstock and produces a much more efficient result, and Petroalgae has a process that can produce 14000 gallons of diesel/acre per year. So if we stop using food as fuel and use more energy intense renewables it is completely viable.
If we had kept even moderately higher oil price levels after the scare of 73' then we would have a way less dependence on all the middle eastern oil. When the price went down after that it just killed the efficiency and alternate fuels industry that had sprung up, all the ideas(patents) to be bought out by oil companies. Now it could happen again, and in 20 years well wonder why we didn't ever do anything about our dependence on foreign oil.
We blame this crisis fully on the mograge market but some blame is surely to put on the oil prices, and now as they go back down we'll forget. Just like you would be crazy to have a nation import all its food, its stupid to import most of your energy, an equally important resource. There is a reason Japan has such high tariffs on food, and there is a reason we need to subsidize ways to make our economy less reliant and more self-sufficient.
These waves of volatility in energy are very bad for ventur capitilism into energy fixes but that does not meen they are bad ideas. Toyota makde great strides by continuing to invest in efficiency well afer the 70's scare and it worked. Governments need to realize this and help new companies that are not Toyota.
What's your methodology for dividing up the benefit of military security among the beneficiaries? How did you factor in non-monetary benefits?
Sugar-cane is a fast-growing weed where most of the mass of the plant can be used for creation of fuel. America's problem is that ethanol production out of corn is tied up in the farm bill, which not only pays farmers not to grow sufficient amounts of anything to keep the price high, but causes a diversion of product away from food, forcing the price high.
The increase in production of corn-based ethanol in the US caused the price of tortillas to jump in Mexico a couple of years ago, leading to increased numbers of illegals being captured at the border (and of course, the number that get through are far, far greater than the number that get caught).
I **WISH** we could use sugar instead of corn here... the corn industry has us on lockdown and is fucking everything up. They're in collusion with our domestic sugar growers to keep sugar tariffs as well. We're practically the only developed country that has a sugar tariff, and that's why we have "high fructose corn syrup" in everything, and why American Coca-Cola tastes like filthy, disgusting shit, compared even to the Coke in Canada.
Its a bloody agricultural mafia.
Here in Brazil ethanol is used by cars more than gasoline.
We don't use it because there's a government subsidy or because we love the environment or any such nonsense.
Sugar cane ethanol is *cheaper* than gasoline.
Biofuels are seen as expensive in the US because you're using the wrong sources. Of course it won't be cost-effective to extract ethanol from corn.
ostrich behaviour. There is ice, but...
When you use more energy to produce a biofuel than the amount of energy that would be provided to the end user, then it is hard to argue that the fuel was ever economically feasible. When corn that could be used to feed hungry people is instead used to prevent a **possible** catastrophe that **might or might not** be caused by humans, then I say that is an irresponsible use of our resources.
He also forgot to include the enormous quantity of snacks I am compelled to purchase at the gas station.
Capitalism is still alive - it's all about supply and demand. Too much supply or too little demand - price drops. Too little supply or too much demand - price rises.
It's all about the economics.
The big increases in corn prices (mostly, this gets complex, but I am a farmer-not a corn grower though but I know about this subject - so I'll make it simple for you) were due to the wall street thieves getting bumped out of speculating on repackaged mortgage debt instruments and taking their cash and getting into commodities skimming/speculating.
All those people do is rape industry after industry and then pass along the misery and use the controlled press to try and put the blame anyplace but their greed. Biofuels and natural gas are now our two most credible alternative sources for domestically produced energy for the existing vehicles and equipment we have out there, and knocking this industry off right now goes right along with what they did in the 80s when we had a renaissance of alternative energy. they flooded the planet with cheap oil then and squashed the alternatives. They are doing it again, right on schedule just when it started to look decent.
There are NO "electric tractors" or road trucks out there now for replacements, and even if there were, it would still be way more expensive to switch to them. Personal light vehicles are another matter, but again, there just aren't any electric cars out there beyond a pitiful small handful of big golf carts masquerading as cars and a few dozen Teslas and so on, again, it would take dozens of trillions to change over our infrastructure to all electric. You need something to feed those ICE powered vehicles.
There is no one size fits all energy solution, but knocking off the only credible thing we have to insure against wildass price swings in petroleum fuels along with supply issues (hello, the mideast is daily always one bad "executive decision" away from a huge war, not the tiny wars they have no,w I mean a BIG one, imperilling the supply) is remarkably short sighted and naieve. The farm I am on now could be powered with biofuels, the trucks and trains that get that food to you in your mom's basement could be powered with biofuels, but having to replace way over a million dollars in equipment with unobtanium brand electric equipment is crazy. Multiple that crazy by..EVERY farm out there and you fail it.
Biofuels create hundreds of thousands of new points of production for SOME fuel alternative, and increased R&D HAS been helping. Everyone in the industry knows corn is just a stepping stone, now you know as well, consider yourself informed now. We've been doing corn because that is what the farms are set up to produce in bulk, that's all. Farming is a specialist industry, you don't throw yout mp3 player at a server problem when a rack of blades is the correct tool. And we don't grow as much sugarcane in the US because *it can't be done most places*. We do grow sugar beets, and they have been used, but again, speciality production. And they just took a huge area out of sugarcane production down in the Florida to help with the long term water supply around the 'glades, so that the cities can have some water mostly so they can keep wasting it on fountains and golf courses.
There has to be thousands of really smart biogeeks working on better biofuels right now, telling them to stop what they are doing and slashing funding is GUARANTEED to cause massive energy shortfals off the practical kind in the future.
Jeebus, how soon do people forget? The same wall street pirates were responsible for a lot of the near 5 buck a gallon prices of fuel this summer. Wake up.
My guess is, you are both too young to remember previous fast oilshocks, and also not even remotely related to anything agricultural, because your statements and conclusions are 100% wrong. No offense but, get the data first. One of the points about insuring DOMESTIC supply is that it is a national security issue, you can't trust everything to the capitalist pig globalist market, haven't you seen how that works lately? Want to help Mexican campesinos? End NAFTA, everyone wo thought about it predicted
Yes, they are. Or will be. I don't feel that they were "there" just yet, but that progress is being made. Early oil production would be disastrous and our cars would be ridiculously priced, but improvements in the technology allowed us to enjoy cheap gasoline.
It will be that way for Biofuels too. The problem is we don't need 1 solution, we need several solutions combining to form a good solution. And hell, it may involve some old style oil/gasoline too, but at least we won't be dependent on one.
The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it. Therefore, by definition, short of a significant change in the fundamental technology of farming or in the types of crops grown, biofuel will never---can never---be commercially viable
As it applies to Corn based ethanol, true. But there are a lot of different options for biofuels. Ethanol is an unrealistic option for many reason, the limitations of corn is only one of the thorns in its side.
Soy-Diesel is a net gain, but at ~50 gallons per acre there is no way to get the volume needed to make a dent. There are other slightly more exotic that can push bio-diesel up to 200 gallons per acre, but they require a growing climate that is only available in a small section of the US.
Algae farms on the other hand, can pump out thousands of gallons of bio-Diesel per acre, can be designed to run in low pop/non-farmland south west US, and can be used to clean exhaust from existing coal fired power plants. Of all the bio fuel options, these are really looking like the hot ticket right now.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The current approach to biofuels is brain-dead anyway. Sugar beets grow easily in the right climate and have such a high energy density per production cost that it makes sense to convert them to ethanol. No US crop compares. The notion that we can do as well from low-density biomatter, like corn stalks, is just plain asinine.
That doesn't mean biofuels are a bad idea altogether. I saw a carbon sequestration scheme a few years ago where algae was used to scrub carbon from coal plant emisions. After sufficient growth, the algae could be harvested and converted to biofuel. That sort of process where the biomatter growth is an in-between step without an inherent cost is not an altogether bad idea.
But growing corn to make ethanol is ridiculous.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Sadly, HFCS is almost just as common in Canada as it is in the US. Coke in Canada, for example, is made from HFCS. The reason you may not have realized this by reading ingredients is that HFCS doesn't need to be labeled as such in Canada! Up here, we simple list it as "Glucose-Fructose" or "Glucose/Fructose". Good luck if you have a corn allergy...
While I'm not a fan of corn based ethanol, I am a fan of having a heavily subsidized and regulated agricultural industry in the US combined with import tarrifs and controls in imported food stuffs.
The combination of those factors ensures that farming in the US remains profitable to most farmers and guarantees that even in a global economic melt down, getting food to the plates of Americans will not be an impossible problem.
It does screw with the global economy something fierce though and pisses on all of the non-developed countries that would typically be able to compete on the global market through agricultural exports. But personally, I'm a bit more worried about health and stability in my own country.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
There are plenty of sources of biomass that are waste. In fact the US has an abundance.
Biomass waste goes well beyond the 'resturant running a few cars'.
How about the tonnes of used coffee grounds?
The millions of acres choked with Kudzu?
Agricultural waste?
Seaweed?
Just because the US policy on biofuel is as dumb as the policy of fossil fuel, doesnt make biofuels any less viable in the real world. And the fact that we are running out of oil means that the price will only go up. Not to mention the price of other oil based products.
Then bear in mind that the rest of the world pays more and uses less, so you are behind the curve in terms of efficiency and economics.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
You guy do understand, that if we mass produce crops, it will have an irreplaceable impact on our oceans right?
The upside is make O2 down side is contaminate the oceans with CO due to the massive change to soil.
I prefer a more NUCLEAR friendly future ^_^.
just make it cold fussion.
I was under the impression that the Pimentel study had been discredited, and that many of his assumptions were poor.
http://biomass.age.uiuc.edu/index.php/Fermentation
The article was refuted by Dr. Bruce Dale a year later in testimony before US congress and that according to Dale, at least 6 gallons of ethanol are produced for every gallon of gas or diesel fuel.
Another refutation was published in 2006 in Science magazine:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5760/506
Why do people continue to cite older articles from 2001 and ignore later ones that do not support their views?
Energy storage is indeed the biggest issue. However, note that gasoline is one of the most efficient forms of energy storage around. So, how about synthesizing the gasoline (and diesel) via thermal depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) of agricultural waste, garbage, sewer sludge, etc., using a nuclear power plant for the process heat (i.e. cogeneration)? Eventually we can use a fourth generation nuclear reactor that can burn the U235 and actinides in "spent" fuel from current reactors, and solve several problems at once (http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/nucleargen4.aspx).
The best question to me is, why are we continuing to persist with a failing model? Its one thing for research, but quite another to replace petroleum with something it takes more petroleum to make than it will save us in its use.
Is it because in our state we see a day where we have diminishing petrol and rising demand?
Would US automakers be in the position they are now if they were making fuel Efficient cars?
Don't forget that you're getting the carbon from the atmosphere: By growing algae, you're converting the CO2 in the atmosphere into a solid/liquid carbon-compound (the algae) and oxygen, using sunlight and water to energize the reaction. Then at some point, the algae is converted to ethanol but again, you can use non-fuel energy to make the process happen.
With a closed system in place and low-tech energy storage facilities (e.g., using sealed pools of water & water towers to effectively create dams), you can have these facilities out in the desert if you wanted and just ship in a tanker of water every now and then.
Done correctly, this isn't an energy neutral process but it IS a CO2-neutral process. The only downside to going bio are the details and unforseen disease, which is why we shouldn't ever rely on closely-related groups of algae.
I'm interested in the concept of "seasteading," the idea of colonizing the ocean surface. It's been proposed that a sea-farm can produce a profitable crop by using the huge "land" area available to grow algae and/or seaweed/kelp. Seaweed has many industrial uses as well as being edible, while simpler algae might be used for biofuels. Does this concept seem plausible to you -- doing it at sea? On one hand there's free "land" with solar energy, and less regulation and taxation, but on the other there're probably high maintenance costs and no subsidies. It seems as though the key to doing this profitably would be volume, which means developing dead-simple algae buoys of some kind plus a way to get the stuff to market.
Even the authors of a book on seasteading, who emphasize the need for practicality, seem to assume that you need a multi-million-dollar giant techno-platform to get started. What do you think of a homestead-style biofuel farm consisting mainly of a boat and a raft?
Revive the Constitution.
Many (ignorant) people think that. But they don't take into account the tremendous amount of energy captured by the plants, sitting out in the sun for all of those months and growing.
Of course, it may be completely true for corn; it's a horrible source of biofuel.
Perhaps if gasoline distilled from non-renewable source is taxed ruinously (US$3/gal federal) they would be. Not holding my breath though.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=biofuel+net+energy
Cleaning the exhaust from coal fired plants is a non-starter. You're just taking the CO2 from the coal plant and holding it in the algae-based fuel until it's burned in a vehicle, and the CO2 finally makes it into the atmosphere.
Sooo... Soylent Green Fuel then?
It's PEOPLE! Soylent Green Fuel is PEOPLE!!!!! /Heston
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Switchgrass grown for biofuel production produced 540 percent more energy than needed to grow, harvest and process it into cellulosic ethanol, according to estimates from a large on-farm study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109110629.htm
convictushome.blogspot.com
As I understand it, biofuels are entirely about energy storage (specifically for vehicles). You're absolutely right that we shouldn't be thinking about using them for our energy needs, but we still need to figure out an alternative for our cars. And I don't think wind/solar/geothermal/nuclear will work in that application.
It's all about energy storage. AFAIK we only really have two options, batteries and combustible fuels. So it simply becomes a matter of where we get our combustible fuel. Pulling it out of the ground is finite, so eventually we can't rely on that, it will run out. When that happens our only options for transportation will be batteries or biofuels. So unless you're absolutely sold on batteries (maybe you are), we definitely need to dump a bunch of money into researching biofuel.
Call me when cellulosic ethanol can be put into production with a substantial yield (i.e tens or hundreds of thousands of gallons a day). You're still faced with a 20% efficiency at the vehicle engine (vs 80-95% efficiency of an electric vehicle).
almost total conversion my @$$...
happen to go there once a year...
the MAJORITY of cars still use good 'ole CRUDE refined Unleaded...
and they pay nearly 3x what we pay in the states for a tank of the texas tea
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
"The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it."
That is very misleading. I could say the same thing about gasoline.
Bottom line, even the most productive method of generating biofuels takes more land then we have.
The industry need to focus electric cars, and the government needs to focus on IFR and Industrial Solar Thermal.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah, that hasn't panned out so far. Let see some large acrage and processing going on.
Really too soon to tell.
If what you say about algae pans out, that would be great.
Lets see. an acre is 40,000 square feet
You claim "can pump out thousands of gallons of bio-Diesel per acre"
According to this site, it's 100K per year:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/algae-biodiesel1.htm
over 2 gallons a year per sqr foot.
I use 300 gallon of gas per year. I would need 15 sqr feet.
Nice. a home conversion station and I could create my own biodiesal for my needs.
So
1) Create a home processor
2) create an easy to set up algae farm in the home
3) profit!
nice
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Correct, which is why ALL Bio-fuels are 'carbon neutral'.
If you did not have the algae farm, nor the car that was being powered by the bio diesel the farm produced, there would still be the exact same amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
But we are talking about replacing a non-carbon neutral fuel (petro-diesel) with the carbon neutral bio-diesel. So the net effect is that there will be less carbon being released into the atmosphere. But if all vehicles were runing on bio-Diesel, there would be no reduction in CO2 exhaust.
In the short term, bio-diesel presents a chance to reduce our carbon foot print. Long term it allows us to get the maximum amount of work out of the given polution. And infinite term, it will at least in part need to be replaced by some net carbon negative fuel source.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Wrong!
That study is fundementally flawed in that it does not consider the valuable byproducts at each stage of the process. One such is dried distiller's grain from whats left of the corn after the ethanol is distilled out. This is a high protein low carbohydrate food source. Its current use is in animal feed, but in the old days, it was used to make high protein low fat low cost meat mixes such as hamburger. When standard hamburger was $1.00/lb, a 50%/50% hamburger/DDG mix cost $0.60/lb, yet had only 15% fat compared to all meat hamburger at 30% fat. When you include the cost of making DDG level foods at the amounts made by the process, the energy gain is positive.
Corn is becoming cheaper as the commodity index speculation bubble has burst, but the lag factors are making it temporarily uneconomic to produce. In a few months, the cost of corn will drop and thus the cost of ethanol with it to again be below gas prices. By the time the next corn crop is grown with vastly cheaper diesel and biodiesel fuel, the corn prices will drop back to their normal ranges and the cost of ethanol would return to its normal margin wrt gasoline. That is about 9 months from now. Even gasoline production is uneconomic right now as refiners are complaining of the negative refining margin for gasoline. Thus by your statements looking at gasoline, it will never be economic and thus should be stopped forever according to those assumptions and the infrastructure be destroyed. Which is silly even on its face. Thus your assumptions are wrong.
Another is that only a straight non regen process was considered. A regen process is more like one being used in Johnson Creek, WI by Utica Energy. Corn is brought into the plant and distilled into ethanol. The DDG that results from that process is then used to feed fish in a fish farm. The fish are then cut into two parts, the first being used in resturants for fish dinners and the rest for biodiesel production. The waste from the biodiesel production is burned to produce process heat for all three operations. That waste is then made into fertilizer which goes back onto the corn fields completing the cycle. So it not only produces ethanol, but edible fish, biodiesel and fertilizer. The study forgets the other three in calculating the energy returned. But the other three are quite valuable in their own right and would take additional energy to make even with oil as the only input.
By making those byproducts be zero as pure unused waste, the study biases the results toward the conclusion they wanted. That's bad science. And that makes the study's results garbage.
Simply put: do you want to eat or do you want to fill 'er up?
Every area that goes into producing bio-fuels cannot produce food anymore.
In addition to our current way of producing food not being sustainable without the availability of cheap oil, using agricultural areas to produce crop that isn't even eaten is insane.
Does anybody actually have an idea how small the world's surplus on corn etc. actually is? Does anybody have an idea how much land would have to be wasted (literally) to produce enough crop to satisfy the world hunger for fossil fuel?
I don't think, one earth would be enough.
I don't believe, bio-fuels make any sense at all - even economies aside.
Stop the lunacy!
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
You can make bio-oils, which is a good thing because you can't make plastics without hydrocarbons.
Gasoline might look cheap, but it's not. Global warming now threatens the majority of Earth's species with drastic implications for food production. Fisheries are being destroyed and most North American crop production will be reduced. Losses of ice cover are already so large that a total stop to fossil fuel burning may not be enough to stop this unfolding disaster. The US and world can not rely on market forces to avert this large scale tragedy of the commons because everyone's short term economic interest is in doing the same stupid things.
Cellulose based fermentation might provide fuels for the few applications that really need it. The rest of our energy needs should come solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal and so on.
IMO gasoline/petrol is currently the best solution as there are many automobiles on the road that are unable to use e-85. While some are upgradable to use flexfuel others are simply too old.
Diesel is another issue. Almost all diesel engines will work with biodiesel with a few diesel engines that are so finicky they are unable to handle biodiesel very well.
Purchasing a new car or truck may not an option as it can be too expensive to purchase. As for global warming I am not entirely convinced we are causing it. I do, however, feel we are contributing to it. Either way it would be an excellent idea to switch from coal based power plants for at least one reason, coal plants do not generate much electrical energy. Once fusion becomes a viable solution there will be no need for coal-powered plants.
So why use any sort of carbon output device? Why not just blow atmospheric air over the algae ponds for them to grow? Coal plants produce far too much CO2 for them to exist in any shape or form.
I wasn't commenting on Australian, Canadian, New Zealandan or Anyoneelsean because the parent was American so I was assuming they were talking about biofuel in America not being kept alive only because of government subsidies.
For the first half of your post, because when you burn coal in most cases you do not burn 100% of the available fuel, unspent hydrocarbons are released with the exhaust. By piping the exhaust through the algae not only are you sequestering CO2, but you are also reclaiming those unspent hydrocarbons. Additionally, the CO2 rich exhaust from coal plants can cause the algae to grow significantly faster and produce more oil than algae farms with out exhaust.
For the second half of your post, the US has coal. Lots of coal. Lots and lots and lots of coal. Coal is cheap. Coal is really cheap. So long as coal is plentiful and cheap, it will be a significant part of our enery infrastructure. As much as I wish otherwise, that is just a fact. Biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, hydro-electric (which has its own nasty side effects) all have significant subsidies going that attempts to make them more competetive with coal.
So the answer has to be a combination of reducing the cost of alternative energy sources, combined with improved emission regulation and export limitations. But honestly, nothing significant is going to change in the coal industry in the US in the next 20 years, and likely not in the next 50 years. Where as we can get algae farms up and running in under 4 years that can dramatically effect the growth rate of CO2 emissions in the US.
Not a permanent solution, but in the short term, it is a great bandaide.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Do they take into account the sunlight that went into the plants that went into fossil fuels?
In either case, they shouldn't - the sun would have shined whether or not there was a plant there.
In any case, I don't believe Brazil are secretly consuming oil to hide the fact that biofuels are a net energy loss.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I grew up farming and ranching and I agree with all you stated except for subsidized farming. If a crop is crap then plant something else. If everyone forgoes crap this year then demand will be higher next year and planting it may be worthwhile again. Crop rotation is usually considered a good thing. Government need not be involved.
The successful farmers I know have planted what would sell and usually had buyers before they planted. Sure we all planted some speculation crops, but they paid for new toys - or not.
Seriously.... the idea of creating a bio-fuel economy out of corn is f'n retarded.
I'm GLAD these companies won't be ruining the corn economy of the WORLD for such a piss-poor return.
Now HEMP on the other hand is a WONDERFUL source of ethanol and can be used in just about every internal combustion engine in widespread use in the country.
Bummer that our govt now consists of a hypocritical bunch of assholes that won't admit wrongs as they are and work to change them.