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Scientists Create New Gasoline Substitute Out of Plants
destinyland writes "California scientists have just created a new biofuel using plants that burns just as well as a petroleum-based fuel. 'The discovery, published in the journal Nature, means corn, sugar cane, grasses and other fast-growing plants or trees, like eucalyptus, could be used to make the propellant, replacing oil,' writes the San Francisco Chronicle, and the researchers predict mass marketing of their product within 5 to 10 years. They created their fuel using a fermentation process that was first discovered in 1914, but which was then discontinued in 1965 when petroleum became the dominant source of fuel. The new fuel actually contains more energy per gallon than is currently contained in ethanol, and its potency can even be adjusted for summer or winter driving."
Well, if you wanted to really keep your energy usage down you'd grow a nitrogen fixing plant like peanuts every other year, avoiding the need for petroleum based fertilizers.
Until cost and EROEI figures come out, this is vaporware. There are lots of ways to make fuel from biomass, but most of them are too expensive. Some consume more energy than they produce (EROEI < 1). Any useful process needs an EROEI over 5, and preferably over 10, to be worth the trouble. Photovoltaic is now up to 7, which is encouraging. Ethanol from corn is listed as 1.3, and some studies put it at less than 1. (Ethanol distillation plants, unlike oil refineries, don't run on their own product; they take in natural gas or some other fuel.)
I see the hemp enthusiasts are out in force again. Hemp isn't a good fuel crop. If you just want biomass for cellulose, you use agricultural waste - corn husks and cobs, straw, bagasse from sugar cane, etc. Hemp seed oil is useful, but only a small part of the biomass comes out as oil. There are better plants for direct oil production.
According to this site total global food production is 4.4 billion tonnes per year, so in a world of 7 billion people that's 629 kg per person per year, or 1.7 kg per day. The average (median) American eats 1.03 kg per day, and the 90th percentile eats 1.73 kg per day, according to the EPA.
About 2.4 billion tonnes is cereals (e.g. corn, rice, wheat).
So yeah, if we're producing enough to feed 7 billion 90th percentile Americans, I think it's safe to say it's a distribution problem not a supply problem.
That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. .... .. which is indicative of an estimate, not a fact
- How was the total US energy 'budget' calculated? Note the word 'budget' not 'usage'
Up to the industrial revolution, our main source of fuel used to be biomass: wood (charcoal). Keep in mind that this was when the population size and total energy use of western civilization were tiny by today's standards. Nevertheless, we managed to run out of wood.
Britain and Ireland were almost completely stripped of trees. Even today, the only trees you'll find older than the industrial revolution are in places that were some noble family's private hunting ground at the time. The eastern mediterranean was stripped of trees as far back as ancient times, and still hasn't recovered. In the low countries, after they ran out of wood, they started burning the soil (peat), turning their land into lakes, which they later had to drain to turn it back into land, which is why they now live below sea level. They did however make a fortune importing timber from the sparsely populated Baltic. Yes, wood had to come from as far as Russia and Finland, because western Europe had run out.
Believe it or not, burning biofuels was an environmental disaster, and switching to coal allowed forests and wildlife to recover.
Now, turning agricultural waste into fuel sounds like a good idea to me (that's what they do in Brazil with the leftovers from the sugar production), but when you're thinking of growing crops with the express purpose of making fuel, you have to consider the fact that modern, high-yield agriculture is effectively our way of using land to turn fossil fuel and sunlight into food. Tilling, sowing, fertilizing, pest control, harvesting, processing and transport together have to use substantially less energy than the fuel you are making will yield.
Clearly, land + fuel + sunlight -> food -> fuel -> energy is an inefficient process. Why not eliminate a couple of conversion steps from the process, and use solar cells to generate electricity? The process land + sunlight -> energy has fewer inefficient conversion steps.
I think that's exactly what the parent poster said: Without storage capabilities or the means to redistribute the energy across the world from anywhere to anywhere at any time, base load is still the most important factor. And in this, I absolutely agree.
Not that we shouldn't use wind and solar, mind you. We should just stop fantasizing about it replacing nuclear anytime soon.
We should just stop fantasizing about it replacing nuclear anytime soon.
That is more about politics than it is about capability. You don't even need storage if you are prepared to oversupply enough. 180% covers 90% of the time, and a 270% oversupply will give you 99.9%. Figures based on the US continent I believe, so does not assume a world grid. The later oversupply figure is expected to be cost effective by 2030 as green tech becomes more cost efficient.
A breakthrough in energy storage technology in the next 17 years would short circuit that time frame.
In other words we can start the process of phasing out dirty energy right now.
Source: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-about-99.9-percent-renewables.
Alaska doesn't own the oil production facilities, it just receives money from land leases and royalties on the oil fields as well as property taxes on the pipeline and other structures. So you can't specifically call it "communist" since the state doesn't own the means of production. Still doesn't change the fact that it isn't exactly the pillar of neo-conservatism what with the redistribution of wealth through the Permanent Fund.
+1 Disagree