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."

Comments

potential for warmongering?

[Anonymous Coward]

but can you use it as an excuse to invade?

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Cryacin]

First you get the sugar, then you get the women.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[phantomfive]

but can you use it as an excuse to invade?

You've got it backwards man, oil is the reason to invade. Evil dictators and terrorists are the excuse.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[wakeboarder]

Don't you think it would be easier to get it in your backyard, considering that the US has tons of it?

Re:potential for warmongering?

[phantomfive]

NIMBY.

There is a major difficulty between the US and countries like Brazil for extracting oil: in the US, all the oil countries are private, so politicians have no problem restricting them for environmental reasons. Politicians in California complain when a new oil reserve is found.

When the politicians have a major stake in the oil company, like Petrobras or Gazprom, they are more than happy to ignore environmental concerns to fund their projects. Politicians there celebrate when a new oil reserve is found.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Anonymous Coward]

but can you use it as an excuse to invade?

You've got it backwards man, oil is the reason to invade. Evil dictators and terrorists are the excuse.

No, the USD as the world's reserve currency (i.e. petro-dollar) being threatened is the reason to invade. Easy to mistake oil itself as the actual reason, though.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? Are you trying to make us believe for a moment that US millionaire politicians have nothing to do with the oil industry? Like, the Bushes? And that the oil lobby has not thoroughly permeated and the senate?

Not saying that Gazprom has not corrupted the Russian government, but your government is quite corrupt.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Anonymous Coward]

but can you use it as an excuse to invade?

Seeing as how the Eucalyptus is already on Chinese soil, we see no need to invade anybody as we already own it.

But thanks for asking, Comrade.
Pandas, beware!

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think it would be easier to get it in your backyard, considering that the US has tons of it?

Growing fuel crops on US soil just creates a new problem when agricultural production is boosted and aquifers become massively overused. They already are overused but making fuel from plants would aggrivate the problem enormously. Then the free market bullshotters would crawl from under every rock preaching how that is nothing to worry about bcause the invisible hand will fix that problem sooner or later and Fox News goes into overdrive with discussion panels full of useful idiots explaining to an eager public how aquifers are an inexhaustible resource and that god will provide. Meanwhile lobbying groups in congress will get busy ensuring that efforts to fix the aquifer exhaustion problem will only get underway when it is way too late to fix the problem anyway.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I see the US government really making things difficult for Exxon all the time. They are always so worried about the environment! Thankfully, because the US government never, ever gives in to big corporations, and always has them in check, the environment is preserved.

Of course, if American oil fields were a property of the State, THEN there would be trouble, because all those environmentalist politicians would have no way to control them, and would have no other choice but to open the taps and let the oil spill onto the tundras and the seas.

Your truth is blinding! Can't see how wasn't I aware of that before. Anyway, you should learn the difference between politicians and the Government. Politicians, as individuals, may have stakes in private companies where the Government might not participate (or might do). Though either way, you make no sense.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[kraut]

Actually, in this case the free marketers are probably right.

If there was a free market, no one (outside of Brazil) would grow plants for fuel-ethanol. It's just too expensive at the moment.

Also, in a proper free market, producers would have to pay for the externalities. Use of common resources - e.g. aquifers - must be paid for properly.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Dragonslicer]

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that all of the oil fields in Alaska are owned by the state, and that the reason taxes are so low is that the state government makes more than enough money from the oil. That was always one of the amusing ironies of Sarah Palin, that for all her neo-conservative talking points, she was governor of what was a pretty communist state.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[jellomizer]

You mean an alternate solution has trade offs!!! My GOD MAN, lets start a global panic, and preemptive make this illegal, because there is a different set of trade offs for a different solution!

Nearly Every solution to a problem has some sort of trade off. In terms of Energy that is normally the case (Stupid Thermal Dynamics).
This helps (Not solves) the problem of carbon in the atmosphere because in order to grow these plants to create energy the growth process these plants pulls carbon out of the air to grow, then we burn it and put it back in the air. But agriculture isn't easy, it takes a lot of resources to keep it running smoothly, if we are producing more agriculture, then we are going to use a lot of land that we can use for something else, there will be more need for constant water.
But the real question is, is Global Warming and using fossil fuels trade offs worse then the trade offs from "agri-power" Or perhaps a balance is needed 50% "Agri-Power" and 50% fossil Fuel, where we could cut our carbon in half, and not overwhelm our other resources.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Anonymous Coward]

but can you use it as an excuse to invade?

Seeing as how the Eucalyptus is already on Chinese soil, we see no need to invade anybody as we already own it.

But thanks for asking, Comrade. Pandas, beware!

Pandas eat bamboo. It's koalas that need to watch out. Eucalyptus is native to Australia, not China, although it is cultivated in other parts of the world.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Mr2cents]

Also, the USA doesn't own China, it's more like the other way around (China has tons of cash, and uses it to invest in the USA, 6.5 billion dollars last year). And it holds about 2 trillion dollars worth of treasurys.
Those Chinese sure are funny people. You can almost hear them think "You no like communism? Ok, then we do capitalism. We beat you with capitalism".

Anyway, that means there's absolutely nothing left of the gp post.. what an enourmous fail.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[mdielmann]

Actually, in this case the free marketers are probably right.

If there was a free market, no one (outside of Brazil) would grow plants for fuel-ethanol. It's just too expensive at the moment.

Also, in a proper free market, producers would have to pay for the externalities. Use of common resources - e.g. aquifers - must be paid for properly.

Ah, the "proper free market". Like working, large-scale communism, fairies, and unicorns, it's never been seen. Now will it.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Duhavid]

You assume the poster was from America. I read it assuming the poster was from China.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[phantomfive]

Yeap. And look how anxious she always was to get more oil. She was the leader of the "drill baby, drill" campaign. That's exactly what happens.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[yurtinus]

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.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Dragonslicer]

Thanks for the clarification. I was going on somewhat vague memory and didn't know the details.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[kaatochacha]

China's as much Capitalist as I am martian.
Of course, china's as much Communist as I am martian as well.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[yurtinus]

S'ok, you can always count on somebody on slashdot to correct your errors (or non-errors, usually :P ) and insult your intelligence! I spose I left out that last part...

...
...you ignorant clod

Re:potential for warmongering?

[operagost]

Actually, Petrobras is the company that the Obama administration handed Gulf oil rights to. And he's a millionaire so, yes, you could say that "US millionaire politicians" are involved in the oil industry. BTW, no Bushes in politics right now.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[operagost]

Oil companies don't "own" the ocean floor that their rigs sit on, either.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[TubeSteak]

Also, in a proper free market, producers would have to pay for the externalities. Use of common resources - e.g. aquifers - must be paid for properly.

Farmers get susidized water from the Federal Government.
Here's one proposal on how to limit those subsidies to the smaller farms that actually need it,
instead of feeding Big Agribusiness' bottom line: http://www.ewg.org/release/feingold-bill-would-limit-subsidies-rich-corporate-farms

Re:potential for warmongering?

[falconwolf]

Don't you think it would be easier to get it in your backyard, considering that the US has tons of it?

Tons of what? Petroleum? The US does not have that much proven reserves of petroleum. Supposedly what the US does have a lot of is Natural Gas. There are other sources that can come from our own backyard. What the US has much more of is sunlight and wind. According to the study by Southern Methodist University SMU Geothermal Lab project: Vast clean energy source confirmed by Google.org-funded geothermal mapping geothermal sources are capable of producing "more than three million megawatts of green power – 10 times the installed capacity of coal power plants today." Relatively clean energy sources, as there are none that are compleatly clean and non-polluting, can prove all of the US's energy needs. The biggest problem, well one of them, is with the infrastructure. U.S. solar power potential untapped as infrastructure is lacking. Yearly cost of U.S. outages: At least $119 billion. If the US is losing this much a year then it would pay to build a new smart grid. Then alternative sources would be able to contribute easier.

Falcon

Re:potential for warmongering?

[buybuydandavis]

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that all of the oil fields in Alaska are owned by the state, and that the reason taxes are so low is that the state government makes more than enough money from the oil. That was always one of the amusing ironies of Sarah Palin, that for all her neo-conservative talking points, she was governor of what was a pretty communist state.

The principle behind a citizen's dividend for private use of a natural resource is at least as old as Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice. Paine was all for private property rights, but unlike modern day right wing hacks, he limited them to where they were justly earned.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[wakeboarder]

No, we have tons that we can't access due to environmental restriction. But we are gaining more access to oil as technology improves. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/energy-environment/report-sees-us-as-top-oil-producer-in-5-years.html?_r=0. This is partially due to shale reserves. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/american-oil-find-holds-oil-opec/story?id=17536852. We have even more if we can hydrofrack. In short, we will be fine energy-wise as long as people allow us to access it.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[catprog]

If there was a free market, no one (outside of Brazil) would grow plants for fuel-ethanol. It's just too expensive at the moment.

Australia has a large sugar ethanol production as well.
Of course no one would produce corn ethanol is my opinion.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[cthulhu11]

Plus the headline is wrong -- the article describes a diesel-like product, not a gasoline replacement, so real-world impact would be limited.

Re:potential for warmongering?

[falconwolf]

No, we have tons that we can't access due to environmental restriction. But we are gaining more access to oil as technology improves. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/energy-environment/report-sees-us-as-top-oil-producer-in-5-years.html?_r=0. This is partially due to shale reserves. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/american-oil-find-holds-oil-opec/story?id=17536852. We have even more if we can hydrofrack. In short, we will be fine energy-wise as long as people allow us to access it.

The IEA report[pdf] linked by the NY Times article says there's an abundance of gas, which I mentioned before, but does not provide scientific data or links to support the idea that the US can become petroleum independent never mind an oil export. And a lot of the gas being pumped now was made possible by fracking. Now the ABC report, which also says the IEA report does not provide data, does say shale oil can be recovered from the Green River Formation of Colorado and Utah. However it also says that large amounts of water required to recover the oil are needed. That presents another problem. The Colorado River is the major source of water for all 7 states in the Colorado River Compact. The compact was created in 1922 when the river's water level was above average, so the river is over tapped now. One of the states that gets water from the river is California, and the river does not flow through the state. Instead through a system of canals water is pumped to the Imperial Valley in Southern CA. And by treaty Mexico is supposed to get some of the water from the river, after all the river is supposed to drain into the Sea of Cortez or Gulf of California, which is Mexican.

And while CO2 emissions are lower burning natural gas than burning coal, oil, and gas, it still emits CO2. Also the IEA report brings up alternative energy sources saying renewable sources can provide one third of the US's electricity. That is half of what an article in SciAm said was possible in 2050. A Grand Solar Plansays Solar power alone can provide 69% of the electricity and 35% of the total energy needs of the US. Elsewhere a study, sorry I don't have a link right now, based on the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States concluded wind energy from the Rocky Mountains alone can provide all the electricity for the 48 contiguous states. And that's just from the Rockies. The atlas shows other places in the US with abundant wind energy as well.

As you say "we will be fine energy-wise as long as people allow us to access it" applies to geothermal, solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources. Unfortunately NIMBYs block solar and wind throughout the US. Along the East Coast from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod can provide significant amounts of energy. Using these sources, and increasing energy efficiency which the IEA report brings up, coal, nuclear, and petroleum can all be fazed out now. Not included here is natural gas fired power plants, that's because they are needed right now for baseline loads. Geothermal can be and is used for that also but can it supply all baseload needs? I don't know. And later storage technologies may enable mass energy to be stored economically.

Of course to bring all these electrical sources online requires the national electrical grid to be upgraded. While it will take Billions of Dollars, if not One Hundred Billion or more, US businesses lose about

Re:potential for warmongering?

[Mr2cents]

State capitalism is also capitalism.

hmm

[buddyglass]

How much energy does it take to create given a requirement of infinite sustainability? i.e. you have to replenish the soil in which the trees grow with fertilizer, etc.

Re:hmm

[ComfortablyAmbiguous]

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.

Re:hmm

[FridayBob]

To put it another way, How many gallons of this fuel will it take to produce one gallon of this fuel?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

And the sun, it has to keep shining! What if the sun gets blown out like a giant candle in the sky?

Re:hmm

[fahrbot-bot]

How much energy does it take to create given a requirement of infinite sustainability? i.e. you have to replenish the soil in which the trees grow with fertilizer, etc.

TFA says grasses might be via source material - "anything fast growing" - perhaps clippings from cutting all our lawns?

Re:hmm

[jhoegl]

About as much shit as people can shit in a week to reconstitute the soil with vital shit that plants need.

Re:hmm

[afidel]

I was listening to NPR on the way home today and the article mentioned that if we took all the biomass from all of the farmland both producing and fallow and were able to convert it all directly to ethanol that it would STILL only account for 14% of the US energy budget. So if we all stopped eating, and stopped exporting food, we'd still only scratch the surface of the energy we use. Converting crops/crop waste is a dead end track, it's simply not in the right order of magnitude to solve our problem, we need to focus on increased efficiency on the consumption end of thing if we want to get a handle on the problem and then we can start looking at non-plant solutions like solar, wind, and possibly large scale algae farming (much higher production per acre and it doesn't have to compete with food production)

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like electrolytes?

Re:hmm

[proca]

Solar and wind and every other new-wave energy source is just a way to supplement base load. If you know anything about electricity generation, you should know that the world depends on base load energy: energy generated from reliable sources that accounts for like 70% of all energy usage, i.e. coal, gas and nuclear. Until we find a solution for base load energy like fusion or invent god-like batteries or power lines made of superconductors that cost $100 per mile, everything else is a pipe dream.

Re:hmm

[maxwell demon]

One would hope that in 4.5 billion years, we'll have figured out space travel.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You understand that we can never produce enough fuel from biomass to even scratch the surface of our energy needs, but then go and start talking about increasing efficiency on the consumption end as if that would do anything to fix this problem. Do you think their is any possibility of any combustion technology being refined to the point that it is able to lower our fuel consumption by 70% or more? Obviously not. Combustion is not the answer there is not sustainable approach to energy production that relies on the release of chemical energy through combustion. All combustion related energy production technologies must end. The answer to this conundrum is simple. Their are 3 options. 1, is to come up with an energy production technology that does not exist such as fusion power. 2, is to cull 80% of the population from the earth. Or 3, the only reasonable answer, full scale 100% adoption of clean safe Nuclear energy using modern reactor design and proper fuel life cycle management and reclamation.

Re:hmm

[OhANameWhatName]

That sounds like a load of bullshit to me.
- What would you be growing on the land to come to the 14% figure? Different plants have different yields for hectare along with differing growth periods.
- What process of refinement was used for the estimate?
- How was the total US energy 'budget' calculated? Note the word 'budget' not 'usage' .. which is indicative of an estimate, not a fact

That '14%' is the most elaborate and outrageous guess I've ever seen quoted by a commentator.

insightful :- characterized by or displaying insight; perceptive.

Regurgitating Exxon's 'scientific research' isn't perceptive, it's blind obedience.

Re:hmm

[Neil Boekend]

Or genetically modify your fuel source to do this by it self. Or maybe alfalfa grass is a good fuel crop. It already has Rhizobia nodules in it's roots, so it can use nitrogen in the air.

Re:hmm

[Neil Boekend]

By that time we may well have found a way to mix the sun. A star dies because it doesn't have enough hydrogen in it's core, but the outer layers are still mostly (guess: 90%) hydrogen by that time. Give it a good mix and enjoy the rays.

Re:hmm

[gl4ss]

there's other elements than nitrogen which are needed too.

but the question is, is a plot of plant going to produce enough to pay for taking care of it.

Re:hmm

[Neil Boekend]

By that time we may have found out how to mix the sun. A star dies because it burned all the hydrogen in the core. The outer layers, where fusion does not occur, are still mostly hydrogen (guess: 90%). If we bring that hydrogen to the core the life of the sun may be extendable by a factor 10.

Re:hmm

[taucross]

If grasses can be used then the OP's idea isn't so far fetched. Could you imagine racks of dirt and grass 1km high? Creating giant tower racks of biomass to support the creation of fuel could be done to create sufficient energy density. I guess we could call it a "Rack-mount Blade server". Boom boom

Re:hmm

[Charliemopps]

And that's why what we're looking for is a water-borne algee that can be converted into fuel. Blanket the oceans with it and watch it soak up the CO2 from the water (where it's doing the most damage) then turn it into fuel. Easy to raise, self reproducing, needs little to no care.

Re:hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Combustion has pretty much reached a dead end in efficiency, we need to find a better way to use our liquid hydrocarbons.

Electric cars are great to drive. They're smooth, quiet, have very few moving parts and are "energy agnostic". They don't care where the electricity comes from, as long as it's there. But they also have issues with energy storage, current battery tech just isn't ready yet.

What I propose is to use fuel cells to provide the electricity. Not hydrogen fuel cells, as hydrogen has way too many problems regarding energy density, storage (embrittlement of metal etc.) and so on, but the University of Maryland had a working prototype of a gasoline-powered fuel cell in 2011. With minor changes that fuel cell tech could be powered by any liquid or gaseous hydrocarbon, such as ethanol or this new fermented biofuel, or even methanol or propane or natural gas. This would allow us the massive advantages of electric powertrains, with the convenience of fast refueling, just like an internal combustion engine-powered car.

The way I see it, the future lies in fuel cell-powered electric cars.

Re:hmm

[Kell Bengal]

Ok, I'm skeptical too. Let's check it out! I apologise in advance for large numbers.

From this website I've got a figure of just over 4 million sq. kilometers of arable land in the United States. This website gives daily cross-year average sunlight falling on a square meter of ground as about 160 W. That's 640 x 10^12 W-days of power falling on the land, per day. Wikipedia cites that plants have a metabolic conversion efficiency of six per cent. This website cites a biomass-to-energy conversion efficiency of 20 per cent. So, if we assume that only 1 per cent of arable land was actually covered with plant, and then turned into electricity, total daily production would be 77 x10^9 W-days of power. This sounds like a lot; obviously there will be some more production and transport inefficiencies in there.

For comparison, the US consumes 1.39 x10^9 litres of fuel per day. According to Wikipedia, the energy density of petrol is 49.2 x 10^6 J/L, so that's 684 x10^12 J of energy per day... or, expressed in Watt-days (86400 seconds in a day), that's 7.91 x10^9 W-days of energy.

There are a lot of real world factors not being included in these estimates, but the 10-to-1 ratio here indicates to me that the energies involved are of a comparable scale; if we devoted 10 per cent of arable land to agriculture, we could (with highly efficient processes), conceivably put a sizable dent in our energy usage.

Re:hmm

[AK Marc]

You don't need base if you have enough peak and storage. Base is a red herring.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

or invent god-like batteries

We have, it's called pumped hydro storage. It requires construction - just like a coal or nuclear plant - but once operating and fed by sources such as wind and solar it provides a very low pollution on-demand power supply.

Re:hmm

[Kokuyo]

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.

Re:hmm

[semi-extrinsic]

Which is exactly what GP said, as we don't have any feasible storage solutions today. Maybe in twenty years we have insanely good batteries, but in the physical reality we occupy today, base is very much the key problem we need to solve. Storage is a solution to this, but it is not the solution.

And don't give me the "electric car and smart grid" solution, that's nowhere near ready for large scale employment even in twenty years, as you'd have to dig up every street in every city everywhere and replace the power lines.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch! My balls!

Re:hmm

[Dodgy G33za]

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.

Re:hmm

[semi-extrinsic]

What you're really saying is that a greenhouse is a Beowulf cluster of plants?

Re:hmm

[semi-extrinsic]

The way I see it, cold weather is the major problem facing electric/fuel cell cars. When Consumer Reports tested the Nissan Leaf at -12 C, the range indicator started at 32 km, but the car went into limp-home mode after 13 km. Li-ion batteries are terrible at handling low temp, just ask winter sport videographers about why they continue to use NiMh batteries in their equipment. If you look at the pink parts of this world map, you see roughly the places that get more than 5 days every year with temperatures below -10 C. That includes all of Canada, most of Russia, Northern Europe, most of China, and the northern US. That's more than a billion people.

TL;DR: Nobody is going to buy a car that they know will be (close to) useless for extended periods every winter.

Re:hmm

[Pinky's Brain]

Not an insurmountable problem ... you could put a void in the heatsink solution which you fill with water+antifreeze during normal operation, but evacuate when the batteries get too cold (they generate enough heat internally during operation to warm themselves up if they can retain the heat).

Re:hmm

[JakeBurn]

Sounds like they were mixing apples and oranges here. We use about a third of the already grown corn for Ethanol and that represents about 20% of fuel used. Trying to suggest that this should alleviate our use of coal, nuclear, solar, wind and hydro power is silly. Take all the corn produced and it amounts to 60% replacement of our oil usage. Sounds like NPR is purposefully skewing their numbers to get attention onto things like solar or wind. Getting rid of all the corn syrups used in food products would be a good start in making this a doubly useful idea.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You think there's enough wind and solar to power the world three times over at a price that we could possibly afford? I mean, that's great if it works, but color me skeptical, you know?

Re:hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The issues you mention are precisely why battery tech is still not mature enough, and why we need non-hydrogen fuel cells instead.

The electric motor is not the problem in cold weather, in fact it actually works better in those conditions!

Electric propulsion is the future, we just need the right energy storage solution.

Re:hmm

[BeaverCleaver]

OK, cars with li-ion batteries will never be a magic bullet that's perfect for everyone. What about the other 5 billion people who live in places where it _doesn't_ get below -10C?

Re:hmm

[whydavid]

Actually, while 14% may or may not be the right figure, it is well-accepted that ethanol cannot scale to meet all of our needs, even in the ridiculous scenario where we stopped producing food and only produced ethanol. This article (http://www.todaysengineer.org/2010/Jan/Biofuels-pt3.asp) talks about several of the studies which have shown this. I was looking for a journal article I read a few years back that explicitly considered "next-generation" ethanol crops at their theoretical maximum yields planted on the all of the arable land on Earth, but couldn't locate it quickly. And am I the only one who finds it a bit disingenuous to suggest that any research that doesn't support biofuels as "the answer" must have come from Exxon? Do you also believe that the gas companies send agents around the world to assassinate researchers every time they get close to discovering "free energy" or carburetors that will make any car in the world get 100 mpg?

Re:hmm

[semi-extrinsic]

The problem is that a lot of potential first-adopters of electric cars reside in those areas. Maybe not Russia and China, I'll agree. But the northern half of Europe currently has the highest rate of new car sales in Europe. The electric car needs to get past the partly infrastructural challenges it faces today, and that requires individuals who can buy an electric car despite its current disadvantages, i.e. people who have a second car etc. If many of those people live in areas where electric cars face even more problems due to cold weather, then that is going to be a hurdle towards large-scale adoptation of electric cars.

Re:hmm

[MachineShedFred]

Can we worry about replacing coal first? Nuclear is better than coal.

Re:hmm

[semi-extrinsic]

I'm not sure fuel cells cope much better with the cold as of right now. When Honda announced in 2004 that their FC stack was capable of starting after being left overnight in a parking lot at -11 C, it was a major breakthrough reported widely in the scientific press. After that, I can't find anything regarding improvements on fuel cells operating at low temperatures.

Re:hmm

[semi-extrinsic]

Just to clarify my post: I'm not saying "electric cars are stupid, full stop". I'm saying we need significant improvements before a significant part of the population is willing to switch.

Re:hmm

[WillAdams]

Yes, but there's a greater acreage of lawn grass in the U.S. than any other single crop --- so if we can use grass clippings, that's a few more percent.

The bottom line is there can't be a single solution to this --- it has to be a mix of solutions _and_ conservation and a change in lifestyles.

Re:hmm

[buddyglass]

Couple thoughts on that study:

1. They price in externalities when comparing against fossil fuels. How to price those in is highly subjective. And, recall, they're not currently priced in and don't look to be any time soon.
2. Pretty sure they extrapolate future price decreases in green tech and price increases in fossil fuels. This is by nature somewhat speculative. Past doesn't always predict future. The prices could shift faster than expected or slower than expected.

So basically their premise is this: "If we assume that existing trends continue for the next 20 years and we artificially inflate the price of fossil fuels to account for their externalities we project green tech will reach price parity around 2030." Those are two pretty big "ifs".

Re:hmm

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Pretend for a moment that our current energy needs are met 100% through non-renewable sources:
gas, coal, oil, fission

What would make you think that there is one solution which replaces these? What makes you think it is biomass?

In reality, we will probably meet these needs through another combination of 'renewable' energy sources:
wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass sources (algae, sugar beets), space-based sources (collection/transmission)

Additionally, our energy issues, like financial issues, are related to spending as well as creating. A more complete solution involves:
more (or less) efficient electronics, 'offer' off states, more efficient heating/cooling/lighting, better reuse of 'waste' heating/cooling, increased storage and storage time for batteries, more conductive transmission of power, quicker start up and cool down of generation facilities, repurposing (or double-purposing) existing land/roof space for generation/storage, and many more incremental improvements.

We have quite a bit of biomass, and we would like to use it for power in addition to all our other supply. This is part of a larger solution, and should not be criticized with the point of "This can only be PART of the solution". Take joy in the advancements when they come.

Re:hmm

[crazyjj]

And how much will the resulting product cost, compared to current energy sources? I'm pretty sure that "It's as good as petrol!" isn't going to be much of a selling point if it costs $100/gallon to make.

Re:hmm

[whydavid]

"For comparison, the US consumes 1.39 x10^9 [eia.gov] litres of fuel per day. According to Wikipedia, the energy density of petrol is 49.2 x 10^6 J/L [wikipedia.org], so that's 684 x10^12 J of energy per day... or, expressed in Watt-days (86400 seconds in a day), that's 7.91 x10^9 W-days of energy." Wikipedia actually lists 34.2 MJ/L as the energy density of petrol. Since this supports your case, I'll use it. 1.39 x 10^9 L/day * 34.2 x 10^6 J/L = 47.538 x 10^15 J/day. I'm not sure what you did when you calculated daily energy use, but you were off by a couple orders of magnitude. Converting to watt-days (47.538 x 10^15 / 8.64 * 10^4) gives us 5.502 x 10^11 Watt-days. If we then divide this by 7.68 x 10^12 (20 percent of 6 percent of total sunlight energy falling on arable land, in accordance with your figures), we get about 7.2% of all land needed to meet energy needs, which is a far cry from 1% of all land providing 10 times more energy than we need. Of course, this is all still a fantasy. Fields need fertilizer or to be planted with crops that will naturally replenish the nitrogen in the soil. If the land isn't 'rested' periodically, yields will drop dramatically. Even with proper farming techniques, yields still will not be close to 100% of the maximum possible biomass. All of this assumes that there is plenty of water to go around; since the majority of US farmland suffered from drought in 2012 (http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/in-the-news/us-drought-2012-farm-and-food-impacts.aspx), and we have known for a long time that aquifer levels are dropping dangerously low, I'm going to suggest that adequate water is not a safe assumption. Another consideration is that 7.2% (hopelessly optimistic as it is) refers to the total surface area of ground covered by crops. Even if we planted the crops such that they covered 100% of the planted area at maturity, we still have to consider the full life cycle of the plant from seed to maturity. So, that 6% figure may be correct, but the denominator is much smaller than the field on which the crops are planted. Also, 4 million square kilometers is way higher than the actual amount of arable land in the United States. You were looking at agricultural land (includes all farmland, including that which is suitable for livestock but not crops). Using your same source, arable land is actually 1,617,800 square km. This adjustment alone would push the 7.2% above to 17.8%, and that is without considering the other factors I listed. Finally, you have only considered gasoline, when it would be appropriate to include ultra-low sulfur diesel, which is used primarily for transportation. According to (http://www.api.org/~/media/Files/Oil-and-Natural-Gas/Gasoline/US_gasoline-distillate-update.pdf), ULSD production from 2007-2011 is 3.5 million barrels per day. Since the US exports a lot of diesel, and I don't know what percentage of that is actually used in the United States, I'll just split it down the middle and say that half is exported. This translates to 1.038 X 10^16 J/day or 1.201 x 10^11 additional Watt-days. If we count other types of diesel fuel (I don't know other types of diesel fuel are used for, so I just played it safe and assumed they could be replaced by grid power) and assume less than 50% is exported, this number could easily double and would more than triple if we used more recent data and assumed zero exports. I could keep going, but I think this is sufficient to show that your calculations were off by at least a few orders of magnitude.

Re:hmm

[Demonoid-Penguin]

There are a lot of real world factors not being included in these estimates, but the 10-to-1 ratio here indicates to me that the energies involved are of a comparable scale; if we devoted 10 per cent of arable land to agriculture, we could (with highly efficient processes), conceivably put a sizable dent in our energy usage.

A couple of factors not included (and I appreciate you didn't spend weeks on your figures)

• How much petroleum based fuels are used just transporting and refining petroleum based fuels
• How much petroleum based fuels are used liberating petroleum rich countries
• How much new technology will increase or decrease our liquid fuel usage - including the expected increasing power demands for the "developing" nations
• How much decentralised vegetable based fuel production would affect the amount of oil products used for road works
• How much of the by-product of petroleum refining is used for fertiliser, chemicals, packaging and how that would compare with by-products of vegetable fuel refining

Re:hmm

[silentcoder]

>Do you also believe that the gas companies send agents around the world to assassinate researchers every time they get close to discovering "free energy" or carburetors that will make any car in the world get 100 mpg?

Two words: Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Re:hmm

[silentcoder]

And if nobody ever eats seafood again, that's a small price to pay. I mean the great white has survived the K2 event and that wiped out the dinosaurs so I'm SURE it will survive your algae blanket !

Re:hmm

[silas_moeckel]

That study is pretty well broken it looks only at aggregate power generation. It assumes the ability to shift energy over long distances and between nation states with near perfect efficiency.

Base load is simple there are two clean methods hydro that's pretty much tapped out.and atomic. The solution has been staring us in the face for decades build more long life reactors of a standard design.

Re:hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

That was most likely because of the hydrogen they use and not because of the fuel cells. Hydrogen is ridiculously hard to store in liquid form. It needs to be cooled to an extreme degree, kept under high pressure and it tends to escape through even the smallest cracks. Which is especially bad considering how it embrittles metal over time.

Gasoline, (bio)diesel, ethanol, methanol, this new biofuel, propane etc. don't have this problem. We have well-proven storage methods that are both portable, dependable and durable. Everyone talks about fuel cells an hydrogen as if that's the only viable combination, but any fuel source that can react with oxygen (ie. all of them) are technically viable alternatives.

If fuel cells operate at lower efficiency when cold, all you need is a battery-powered pre-heater, just like on diesel engines.

Re:hmm

[semi-extrinsic]

I'm not sure it relates directly to the use of hydrogen. As you say, a challenge with hydrogen is that it must be cooled. Most coolers perform better, not worse, at low ambient temperatures. I haven't seen anyone demonstrating fuel cells using other fuels at low temperatures. But if you have links, I would be very interested.

If fuel cells operate at lower efficiency when cold, all you need is a battery-powered pre-heater, just like on diesel engines.

I'm not sure I agree it's that simple. The part you pre-heat in a diesel engine (I assume you're talking about the glow plugs?) is very small, let's say 200 grams to exaggerate. A fuel cell is much larger, so it would drain the battery much faster. If you're not talking about glow plugs, I'm only aware of diesel engine pre-heaters which are simply diesel burners. That could of course work for ethanol/propane/whatever, but then you're emitting CO2 again.

Re:hmm

[BVis]

Can we worry about replacing coal first? Well-run nuclear is arguably better than coal.

Fixed that for you. The problem with nuclear is that it's expensive to run safely (in this case, 'run safely' being defined as 'using newer, safer technology' or 'not cutting corners in the name of profits'). And in the USA nothing happens if someone can't make a buck.

Re:hmm

[Kell Bengal]

I'll concede my calculations are in error. As stated in my post, I was curious to get ballpark figures for whether this made sense or not. This was all done in 5 minutes, using Window's calculator app and the first figures available from a google search - really, it would have been a miracle if it wasn't crap! On reflection, I see I have used the specific energy for petrol, not the energy per litre. In calculating daily energy my error is in vascillating on whether to work in kJ or not, which made me put the wrong unit to the wrong quantity which was then erroneously carried over into later calculations.

It's not my best work, I'll grant, but you do me an injustice by characterising it as 'fantasy'. It's quite possible to make earnest errors without being delusional. I'm not partisan; I'm simply tired of people saying "Won't work! Will too! Won't work! Will too!", without putting numbers to it. Digging out some figures with citations - even hastily googled figures - can at least put the discussion on the civil path of providing some evidence for positions, as you have done. I appreciate your rigour in following up on it.

Re:hmm

[Rogerborg]

Yes, if we had enough storage, but if we're playing "magical hand waving solves everything", I'll go with fusion, or unicorn burps.

Oh, and that assumes that any form of solar, wind or wave actually produces net energy when you subtract the energy required to mine, refine, construct, distribute and maintain it. Said energy to include keeping alive the meat involved in that process, because if you don't include that (and nobody does) then we'll have a planet covered in windmills and emaciated corpses. As I gnaw the last shreds of flesh from your bones, I'll be sure to croak "Told you so."

Re:hmm

[frank_adrian314159]

And that's why what we're looking for is a water-borne algee that can be converted into fuel.

No! Convert it directly to food. But you'd need to come up with a catchy name to market it... How about "Soylent Green"? Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Re:hmm

[Larryish]

Wow.

Windmill pumps to fill the water tank, then when you need power LET HER RIP!

Neat.

Re:hmm

[David_Hart]

In my opinion, there are two ways to attack the base energy usage. The first is to build centralized solar, wind, etc. generating stations, much like the current design of power plants. The second is to build a distributed infrastructure (i.e. every house has solar panels). A combination of the two is necessary but most of the focus has been on the centralized power plants. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that solar panels have become more efficient with lower production costs. This leads to a lower ROI timeline and makes solar more practical, even for low sunlight areas (i.e. North Eastern US/Canada).

I went on vacation to the Canary Islands (lots of sunlight) a few years ago and practically every house, hotel, and business had solar panels on the the roof. If every house in the US had a solar energy system, even just to supplement power for lights, the aggregate would have a huge impact on the base power usage.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like electrolytes?

Brawndo! Its got what plants need!

Re:hmm

[Karzz1]

I believe he might be referring to block heaters. However, block heaters are plugged into an outlet, they are not run off the batteries. I assume they are run off an outlet because the energy demands would drain the batteries. This suggests that a heating solution suitable for a battery pack the size of which OP is referring would probably not leave much reason for using an energy efficient vehicle to begin with.

Re:hmm

[LordLimecat]

You mean that sometimes you cant tackle the problem by trying to increase income, until you address the usage problem first?

Someone elect this man to congress.

Re:hmm

[w_dragon]

So insulate the batteries and put in a tiny heater to keep them from getting too cold. Add a couple fans to provide airflow when it's hot and there you go. This is like complaining that gas cars don't work in the cold because the fuel thickens too much, which is why people who live far north have fuel line antifreeze. As someone who lives in a challenging climate I wouldn't buy a first-gen electric or hybrid car, but by the third or fourth generation they will have worked out all these issues.

Re:hmm

[kencurry]

Good lord, man...

use

breaks

Re:hmm

[kilfarsnar]

It's what plants crave!

Re:hmm

[CKW]

14% IS significant. No one solution "completely" solves any given problem. But you do 5% here and 15% there, and in the end boom, you've solved your problem. If trucks became too expensive, and if we don't have diesel for trains, then we'll have electric trains (like Europe) and shipping might get a little slower and more expensive. This is exactly the type of thing that the marketplace often solves on it's own, and there's less "oh my god" and shock if we help make sure these alternatives are researched and pushed forward so they get a good opportunity to make their mark at the right moment in time in our marketplace and our list of options.

Especially considering that they might be able to use all the stuff that right now rots in the field. That'd be amazing.

Re:hmm

[semi-extrinsic]

If you want to solve the range problem, your tiny heater isn't going to be very tiny, and it won't be able to run on batteries for very long. The Leaf has a winter pack which includes both insulation and heating, but that is merely to ensure that the car is able to start in cold weather. Think about it, the battery pack is 300 kg, and you want to keep that 15-30 C (depending on ambient temp) warmer than ambient. You don't have available the right combination of space available for insulation and energy for heating to maintain that on battery power.

Re:hmm

[operagost]

Too bad they're not free. We already GREATLY subsidize solar installations through tax breaks, and they're still so expensive that it takes 5-10 years for them to pay for themselves-- just in time to be overhauled.

Re:hmm

[AK Marc]

If we just covered man-occupied surfaces in the US, we'd provide twice the power we need. The requirement that we build dedicated solar farms is another red herring. Disrtibuted solar and windfarms can easily hit the 300% mark.

Re:hmm

[AK Marc]

Molten salt solar thermal *is* base load. I've seen hydro batteries that turn base load into peak (TianChi lake, just outside Beijing), and it could just as easily be used to turn peak into base. There are also other battery storage techniques under discussion/development to get solar peaks to last the night.

And transmission is another red herring. If distributed solar with chemical battery-storage was the solution, then there is no transmission. The total transmission would be a trickle from homes into the "grid" and from there, feeding the industrial/commercial sites that generally draw the most at peak solar times. The grid exists for us to go 100% solar tomorrow. "Transmission" is a red herring.

Re:hmm

[AK Marc]

How long does it take the average nuclear plant to pay for itself? In telecom infrastructure, we aimed at a 20 year recovery for copper in the ground. So not everybody is as short sighted as you, and the infrastructure pieces generally have a longer-term view.

Re:hmm

[AK Marc]

They all have a net gain. Windmills, solar, hydro. Again, the nay sayers go for the red herrings to avoid the actual issues.

Re:hmm

[falconwolf]

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.

Nitrogen isn't the only nutrient plants need to grow. There are 3 major nutrients needed, nitrogen being one, but phosphorus and potassium are the others. Then there are many micro-nutrients needed as well. Falcon

Re:hmm

[falconwolf]

Base load is simple there are two clean methods hydro that's pretty much tapped out.and atomic. The solution has been staring us in the face for decades build more long life reactors of a standard design.

In a free market nuclear does not work. Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies
...
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

Falcon

Re:hmm

[falconwolf]

Do you also believe that the gas companies send agents around the world to assassinate researchers every time they get close to discovering "free energy" or carburetors that will make any car in the world get 100 mpg?

De-chartering Unocal. Unocal has been accused of aiding and supporting human rights violations in Burma and with the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2001 President Bush recognized almost immediately the leaders of the coup against the democratically elected president of Venezuela Chavez. Many people believe the Afghan and Iraqi invasions are for oil. Some think the same of the accusations against Iran.

Falcon

Re:hmm

[chrnb]

Or do as the Permaculture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture/ folks do, and use whte cover, afalfa or similar Nitrogen fixing plants as a ground cover to keep away the weeds. This technique was actually first pioneered by Fukuoka.

Re:hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Yeah, I was talking about the glowplugs (I used to drive a diesel car). Realistically, you only need to heat the fuel cell to the point where it can run itself, at that point you don't need the battery for the heater anymore, since the fuel cell provides its own power.

It'll run at lower efficiency until it heats up, but as long as you can get it to the point of "thermal self-sufficiency", it's really no different than having a combustion engine that needs to heat up before it runs at optimal efficiency. The fuel cell will probably heat up faster, too.

As for the CO2 issue, a methanol/propane/whatever will still emit CO2, but it'll emit a lot less for the same distance covered compared to a combustion engine vehicle, and it's more flexible in regards to finding a CO2-neutral fuel to power it.

Re:hmm

[Kismet]

Until we find a solution for base load energy like fusion or invent god-like batteries or power lines made of superconductors that cost $100 per mile, everything else is a pipe dream.

Or change the economic infrastructure to a more sensible one where areas of production and consumption are as close to coterminous as possible. That is to say, supplement with local sources and rely less on centralized mega-sources. If most people had access to ubiquitous local wind and solar generators, base load would be supplemented everywhere. It might then be possible to utilize a "new-wave" source on a larger scale for the base load that isn't so much of a base load anymore.

Re:hmm

[jwhitener]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374

That renewable energy sources can't meet base load appears to be a myth that has been repeated so often, people think that it's true. It won't be cheap building the infrastructure to do it, but it can be done. Geothermal, molten salt reactors, wave energy: all examples of 24/7 renewable power. Pumped water storage for wind and solar, decentralized power by having each house have solar, etc... There are a lot of ways to reach 100% renewable. We just need to get started.

Re:hmm

[proca]

Until we find a solution for base load energy like fusion or invent god-like batteries or power lines made of superconductors that cost $100 per mile, everything else is a pipe dream.

Or change the economic infrastructure to a more sensible one where areas of production and consumption are as close to coterminous as possible. That is to say, supplement with local sources and rely less on centralized mega-sources. If most people had access to ubiquitous local wind and solar generators, base load would be supplemented everywhere. It might then be possible to utilize a "new-wave" source on a larger scale for the base load that isn't so much of a base load anymore.

So you're saying you don't mind lowing power on windless days or when the sun goes down? and you don't mind having giant wind turbines in your yard or paying $15k for solar panels on your roof? Mega-sources? You mean 'power plants'? This isn't organic farming for christ's sake. Power plants ARE local sources. You probably have one within 30 miles of where you live. I guarantee that your power is more local than the food you eat.

Re:hmm

[Kismet]

So you're saying you don't mind lowing power on windless days or when the sun goes down? and you don't mind having giant wind turbines in your yard or paying $15k for solar panels on your roof?

No, I'm saying small, localized generators could augment base load ubiquitously. It has nothing to do with giant wind turbines in your yard. $15k solar panels is a moot point since I am talking about a speculative economy in which such things become commodities because of their pervasiveness.

Mega-sources? You mean 'power plants'? This isn't organic farming for christ's sake. Power plants ARE local sources. You probably have one within 30 miles of where you live. I guarantee that your power is more local than the food you eat.

We have a wind farm within 30 miles, which is supplemental power, and a gas fired plant within 10 miles that is also supplemental. "Base load" comes from a coal plant some 200 miles away. When I am talking "local," I mean more local than that. Anyway, local gas and wind is already the direction I am talking about. The next step is to get more generators in homes and businesses. We could replace the coal fired plant with something more friendly to the environment since we would not require the output it provides.

Re:hmm

[proca]

We have a wind farm within 30 miles, which is supplemental power, and a gas fired plant within 10 miles that is also supplemental. "Base load" comes from a coal plant some 200 miles away. When I am talking "local," I mean more local than that. Anyway, local gas and wind is already the direction I am talking about. The next step is to get more generators in homes and businesses. We could replace the coal fired plant with something more friendly to the environment since we would not require the output it provides.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Until we invent some way to supply over 50% of maximum energy generation (i.e. base load) with inexpensive fuel, like coal, everything you're talking about is a pipe dream. You are talking some fantasy world where we have billions, probably trillions of dollars to spend building out and maintaining a brand new decentralized power grid.

$15k solar panels is a moot point since I am talking about a speculative economy in which such things become commodities because of their pervasiveness.

That seems like a lot of words to describe the economy that we DO have, one that responds to incentives. How could you possible incentivize spending a ton of money just to get the same thing we have now? You sound like a guy I once talked to that truly believed that the Star Trek universe, one where a monetized economy no longer exists and people do things just because it's altruistic, could actually exist.

Re:hmm

[proca]

The reason people say that alternative energy sources couldn't support base load is because it would cost an insane amount of money to remake our power grid enough to meet the demand. Look at the examples you gave. A 1 megawatt geothermal plant costs up to $5 million ($5,000/kw). An average coal power plant generates 667 megawatts. A geothermal plant that size could cost up to $3.3 billion dollars!! I couldn't even find an example of molten salt reactors. I think that wave energy could be promising, but it hasn't been explored much yet and people who don't live close to an ocean wouldn't see a single watt of it.

Re:hmm

[Kismet]

You are talking some fantasy world where we have billions, probably trillions of dollars to spend building out and maintaining a brand new decentralized power grid.

I concede this: That such an economy cannot be "done" to people. This would come about as an emergent system and not as some big program.

That seems like a lot of words to describe the economy that we DO have, one that responds to incentives. How could you possible incentivize spending a ton of money just to get the same thing we have now? You sound like a guy I once talked to that truly believed that the Star Trek universe, one where a monetized economy no longer exists and people do things just because it's altruistic, could actually exist.

There are more incentives in this world besides money or altruism. How about this? Imagine some catastrophe; I don't know, maybe something far-fetched like a super-storm hitting the east coast of the U.S. and knocking out power to a few million people for an extended period of time. Let's say some of these people possess some level of ingenuity and are rather inconvenienced by waiting for some utility company to restore power for them. They determine not to be caught in such a helpless condition in the future and invest considerable expense building out their own contingencies. Sure, their solution can't provide them with continuous, uninterrupted service, but at least they have some capability to take the edge off the suffering and make a bad situation more tolerable. And while they are waiting for the next rainy day, they are putting power back onto the grid.

Oh, it doesn't make a big impact at first; but suppose we take the scenario a little further along and imagine a future in which the climate regularly produces extreme weather of this nature. Who knows? It might happen in this pipe-dream fantasy world of mine. Soon enough, more and more people are wising up to this strange notion that self-sufficiency in some critical things is superior to dependency on remote systems run by experts. Madness, I know. There is a tipping point somewhere in which emergent complexity develops and your trillion-dollar problem has taken care of itself without the help of any money-pushing elites who have all the answers. It doesn't happen over night.

Re:hmm

[proca]

My libertarian side wants to agree with you but my pragmatic side keeps kicking it in the balls.

Mountain Dew Throwback

[gimmeataco]

Nooooooooooooo! You can't take my Mountain Dew Throwback back. All your sugar cane are belong to me.

How is this different from bio-diesel?

[msobkow]

I know bio-diesel requires oil-producing crops vs. sugar producing crops, but other than that I'm curious how this fuel might be "better" than bio-diesel. Given that bio-diesel can be produced using hemp seed oil (a plant that literally grows like a weed in the worst of conditions), I'd think the hemp alternative would be better.

The milled hemp kernels left behind by the oil extraction provide a high-protein animal feed, and the stalks produce fiber that can replace a wide number of products.

I'd guess the remaining hemp stalk material after the fiber has been extracted could still be put through this fermentation process.

So enlighten me.

Why aren't we pursuing hemp-based bio-diesel instead?

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dave's not here, man.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[phantomfive]

The article claims: " about 90 percent of the raw material remains in the finished product." Seems like good efficiency, I guess.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[AshtangiMan]

The article calls the resulting fuel "diesel" a couple of times. This apparently is bio diesel, using an old industrial process and then a new catalyst (I'm betting that the ip for the catalyst will be owned by bp) to convert the output of the old process into the fuel.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[Jiro]

Because hemp is being vastly oversold by people who want to get high on pot and figure that promoting hemp growing is a way to legalization.

Growing hemp is legal pretty much everywhere in Europe. If hemp was as much a wonder material as its promoters claimed it was, Europe would be using it for bio-diesel anyway.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[ColaMan]

Something to do with replacing the half-a-billion existing vehicles that can't run on bio-diesel perhaps?

If someone can figure out how to manufacture a 'drop-in' replacement for normal petrol / gasolene then you can jump start the entire process without waiting the 20-30 years for passenger diesel engines to become the bulk of the market.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[Gothmolly]

Most are blends for cold weather - any diesel motor will run on pure bio.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[afidel]

But modern common rail injectors will foul on pure biodiesel (I know the Volkswagen group specifically allows only a certain percentage for EU warranty coverage and excludes any biodiesel for US spec vehicles)

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[Grayhand]

Actually the fiber extraction process leaves a sugary caustic residue. You can take most any plant material especially grasses then just heat them with regular fireplace leavings. After a while it starts to smell sugary as the caustic ash breaks the long chain sugars holding the plant fibers together. That waste product can be used to make ethanol. Every part of the hemp plant is useful including the waste residues. Another plant called kenaf has the same benefits and is totally legal while industrial hemp remains iffy to grow. One type of Kenaf looks like hemp but the other strains look nothing like it. It's easier to grow Kenaf than jump through the hoops and end up getting Christmas cards from the DEA to grow industrial hemp. Kenaf is unregulated.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[egcagrac0]

If biodiesel was 30% less expensive than gasoline, I would expect to see a market shift within 5 years.

The technology is available now, but diesel cars don't seem to be popular in the US - probably because diesel is 20% more expensive than gasoline in the US. In Europe, where gasoline and diesel fuel prices are much closer to even, diesel cars are far more common.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[shutdown -p now]

I know the Volkswagen group specifically allows only a certain percentage for EU warranty coverage and excludes any biodiesel for US spec vehicles

They actually allow B5 - presumably because quite a few states require the stations to serve it.

The majority consensus on VW community forums seems to be that B20 works great in practice, but anything above that is potentially risky. B100 will definitely make a mess (some people have posted pictures of what it makes out of the engine eventually).

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[asm2750]

This is true AC.

The most common bio-diesel blend out there is B20. Which means only 20% of the fuel is actually bio-diesel. However, slowly phasing in increases to the biodiesel content when car and truck makers can handle it would help wean us off normal diesel fuel. There are also new processes like the McGyan process which should make bio-diesel production cheaper and easier should it take off. Then all we need to do is grow a bunch of hemp or switch grass, heck even regular tallow and cooking fats can be recycled into bio-diesel.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, actually, no. Growing Hemp is pretty much forbidden in all of Europe, except for Switzerland where they allow certain kinds of low-THC strains to be grown. However, this is strictly regulated.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[azalin]

Exactly, there would be no need for new developments (on the passenger car side) - at least for companies that don't exclusively produce for the US market. The only difference would be, that ohter versions of the same cars would be shipped to the US. As far as I recall, most cars in Europe can be ordered with different engine types (usually 3-4 gasoline and 1-2 diesel versions, each with different horsepower) . Most new gasoline engines also can be converted to run on natural gas (mostly a second tank and new fuel lines) as well, but that's a different issue.
If for some reason (fuel price comes to mind) the US would decide, they suddenly all wanted to buy diesels, they would get them with only minor (if at all - depends on how suddenly) delays. The engines are there and are already produced in high volumes, cranking the production up would be no big deal.
One reason why I like the whole biodiesel concept, is that it bypasses the whole chicken/egg issue new fuel types like hydrogen or even electric (to a degree) engines face. You know, the part where no one buys the cars because of lacking infrastructure and no one builds the infrastructure, because there are not enough customers.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[azalin]

Suddenly growing a lot of hemp/gras/whatever causes other problems though. Once farming fuel is more profitable than farming food, you run into a lot of problems - especially for third world countries. If grain prices rise in the US or Europe that's no big deal (especially if fuel gets cheaper at the same time), but for some African countries it could prove disastrous. So coming up with a bio-fuel production method, that doesn't interfere with food production is an issue that needs to bee considered. Algae farming comes to mind, but there are other options as well.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[azalin]

... and end up getting Christmas cards from the DEA ...

Wouldn't it be nice if you could actually buy and send such cards to your friends? A heading like "interesting 'tree' you got there" comes to mind. What about other agencies like the CIA ("We know what you'll get for Christmas"), the IRS ("You're not planning to file this as a business expense, are you?"), the NSA ("The wrapping is pointless"), the ATF (well, the name is already a shopping list), and many more.
If you plan to use this idea and make money I'm cool with it, but then you'll have to write me a Christmas card.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[msobkow]

The same problem applies to this fermentation problem. It produces another form of bio-diesel, not gasoline.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[semi-extrinsic]

Mod parent up.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[dutchwhizzman]

It's using 90% of the biomass of readily available crops and waste of food production. When you produce bio-diesel, you may get a 10-20% or so return on the total mass of the crops you are growing, throwing away the rest. It gets to be so efficient because they added a new part to the old process, a catalyst. Basically, the old and known process makes several light carbohydrates out of biomass through fermentation. These are then refined and processed using a catalyst, much like fossil fuel out of raw oil is processed into fuels we can use. The big difference is that they use the catalyst to combine molecules, rather than break them up. Even though the processing part uses energy to combine the lighter molecules, you still end up cost effective enough to produce fuels cheaper than using the current fossil fuel process.

Given the fact that this is a starting technology and the amount of crops available for this, it will be a niche market for quite a while. Because of the availability, the fuel won't even influence fossil fuel prices, making the process pay for the investments made into it rather quickly. The real big deal is going to be how to produce enough plants to both feed and fuel the world. We're already seeing large palm oil plantations ruin wildlife and local food production in developing countries, just so the west can make "eco friendly" fuels out of it. This is not going to get any better unless some action is being taken.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod them both down, low-THC "technical" hemp is actually allowed in most of EU, though indeed it is heavily regulated and often requires a permit.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[GNious]

I think you manage to answer your own question 5 times in your post...

hint: starts with the letter "h"

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[MachineShedFred]

There's also the issue of the EPA having severe restrictions on diesel exhaust that Europe doesn't have. I'd love to get some of the diesel vehicles from that side of the pond, but they are illegal here.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[egcagrac0]

My understanding was that the vehicles were not inherently illegal, but that they would not pass the EPA emissions standards on the commonly available diesel fuels from 6+ years ago. Now that the US is largely switched over to ultra-low-sulfur diesel, it shouldn't be a problem.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[hubang]

Diesel cars aren't AVAILABLE in the US. I bought a new car about 2 years ago. They sell the same car in other markets with a diesel. I would have paid a premium for the diesel. Not even an option.

There are NO compact or sub-compacts sold with a diesel in the US, except for the Volkswagen Jetta (which I didn't want with any powerplant). When American's complained about getting a joke SMART car that got about half the fuel economy the Canadian diesel version got, they stopped selling the diesel versions in Canada, instead of selling the diesel in the US.

I dream about being able to buy an AWD/4WD Hatchback/Station Wagon with a diesel (like the AMC Eagle Turbo Diesel). Someday, it might be an option again. Dare to Dream.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[asm2750]

Yes, but hemp and switch grass doesn't need ideal soil conditions like wheat, corn, and soy. If most farmers still practice crop rotation in their fields they can easily grow this in the field that is getting rest, and just leave whatever waste there is for the next planting.

Algae would be a great way to produce the oils needed to make bio-diesel, it does require a bunch of water and space however. The desert would be great for this since it's mild weather in the winter, constant sunlight, and low population. The only issue then would be water but if it is conserved, and the algae can handle different water conditions it would probably work out.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[VisceralLogic]

Audi sells the A3 with a TDI in the US. Rumor is that they'll be bringing over additional TDI models.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[egcagrac0]

Most of the traditional "diesel smell" is from older diesel fuels.

The combustion products of low sulfur, ultra-low-sulfur, and biodiesel smell very different.

Re:How is this different from bio-diesel?

[cdrguru]

Imagine if the government could both own a car company that could produce new, diesel-powered cars and be able to pass laws outlawing the use of gasoline-powered cars...

Our tax problems would be over, instantly, and the government could recoup their entire investment into said car company as they would be the monopoly provider of such cars, at least for a while.

Please, one obvious request

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't mix it in with the nation's gasoline and assume there will be no problems with it. Ethanol is such a complete joke because it actually decays parts of the machine that runs it. Oh and the fact it takes more gasoline to create than it makes up for is the other punchline.

Re:Please, one obvious request

[afidel]

Both statements are incorrect, unless you vehicle is pre-1990's by law the components have to be able to handle at least 10% ethanol, and the current ethanol production chains range from 1.5:1 to 3:1 efficiency.

Re:Please, one obvious request

[Anonymous Coward]

by law in what country because this study says you are wrong http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/qinetiq-10-02471-assessing-fuel-system-compatability-with-bio-ethanol-and-risk-of-carburettor-icing/bioethanolstudyreport.pdf

relevant quote from it debunking your 1990 date as it states incompatable fuel pumps were fitted as late as 2007

Discussions with industry and motoring organisations
Although the literature does provide some information on materials used in vehicle fuel systems, very little guidance is provided on the chronological use of materials over the last two decades in the UK market. OEMs and others in the industry were therefore contacted in an attempt to obtain this information
Two electronic fuel injection (EFI) equipment manufacturers, the European Plastic Fuel Tanks and System Manufacturers Association and the European Association of Automotive Suppliers have been contacted requesting information on the materials used in vehicle fuel systems [70, 71, 72, 73] . The latter two organisations did not respond.
One EFI manufacturer has stated that the first generation of direct injection petrol fuel high pressure pumps from all manufacturers are affected by corrosion caused by alcohol if exposed to E10. No vehicle fitted with these types of pumps can operate on E10. Production of these pumps commenced in 1999/2000 and vehicles were sold with this pump type until 2007

Re:Please, one obvious request

[cdrguru]

Yes, but in some states Ethanol in the gas is wonderful!

Here in Iowa the 89 octane blend with Ethanol is $0.10 cheaper than straight gasoline.

This is because of state subsidies to encourage the growth of corn for Ethanol instead of food. Sure, it may use up car engines faster but that is a big advantage for the car manufacturers as well. Everyone wins in Iowa.

Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[A bsd fool]

What is with these people that think we can meet any reasonable amount of our energy needs, nationally or globally, with alcohol? It takes literally seconds to look up the maximum arable land in a country, determine how much fuel you could make if you used all of it at 100% efficiency, and then see that this is nowhere near enough fuel to replace gasoline. During this exercise you're allowed to ignore the impact this would have when that land is no longer available for current purposes.

Until there are major advances in where this stuff can be grown, to get the energy produced per acre much higher than it actually is, and prevent "simple" natural disasters from ruining entire crops for the season, this stuff is never going to take off no matter the hype.

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[shutdown -p now]

Further than that, realize that all of this energy stored in anything "grown" is from the sun so you can put an upper-bound on maximum POSSIBLE yield by determining how much energy the Earth receives in sunlight, multiply that by the efficiency of a plant storing this into whatever the input of some "process" is and you will likely realize that this is completely impossible since we are currently burning more than one day (probably some number of years) of "stored sunlight" (oil) per day just to live our current lifestyle.

Have you actually tried computing how much of Earth's surface area is needed to capture enough sun energy (assuming 100% efficiency, for the sake of simplicity - we can always scale later) to fully satisfy all our energy needs?

Here's a quick attempt. Average insolation of Earth is 1kW/m^2 (on a clear day). So every square meter captures ~8.7 MWh of solar energy, annually. Total world energy consumption is somewhere on the order of 150 PWh. Hence, assuming 100% conversion, you need 17,200 km^2 of area to fully satisfy world's energy needs. And the total surface area of world is 500,000,000 km^2, 30% of which is land (and not everything needs land to grow). So even assuming 1% efficiency, it seems like we could pull it off without reducing the present energy consumption, if we really wanted to.

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[c0lo]

Further than that, realize that all of this energy stored in anything "grown" is from the sun so you can put an upper-bound on maximum POSSIBLE yield by determining how much energy the Earth receives in sunlight, multiply that by the efficiency of a plant storing this into whatever the input of some "process" is and ...

Sure: let's do it.

Consumption: World energy production 2009: 11M kT oil=1.1e+7 kT oil = 4.60548E+20 J

What surface of vegetation would convert (by photosynthesis) the same amount of solar energy as the one consumed?
* Solar constant: for simplified calculation, 1kW/m.
* a flat patch "stuck" to the Earth surface captures during the day only 1/PI of the incident flux (assume equatorial position; take the "cosine law" and integrate between "dawn" and "dusk". Divide by the whole duration of the day). For an year, the "effective exposure time"=365*24*3600/PI= 1e+7 "full sun seconds".
* Photosynthetic efficiency: for simplified calculation, 5%
Equivalent power needed: 4.60548E+20 J/1e+7 "full sun seconds"=4.60548E+13 W=4.60548E10 kW.Because 5% conversion efficiency, we actually need 9.211e+11 kW.
The surface needed to capture that much: 9.211E+11 m=9.211E+5 km. For comparison: Amazon jungle area=5.5e+6 km.

... and you will likely realize that this is completely impossible since we are currently burning more than one day (probably some number of years) of "stored sunlight" (oil) per day just to live our current lifestyle.

Let me call BS on your assertion

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[TheLink]

Total amount solar energy hitting the earth each day:
1.05479452 * 10^ 22 joules
World oil consumption 80 million barrels per day = 4.689216 * 10^17 joules.
USA oil consumption 20 million barrels per day.
(assuming 1 barrel of oil = 5861520000 joules )
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
Total fossil+nuclear energy consumption per day = 1.23641753 * 10^18
So solar entering Earth (nonreflected) about 22500 times the oil consumption, and 8500 times fossil+nuclear.

However we're not the only species on this earth that needs solar energy so 8500 times might not be that high from that perspective ;).

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[AK Marc]

The other thing is, what is more efficient for getting power to the people, a solar plant on the land, or growing crops on the land, and processing the crops?

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[shutdown -p now]

A solar plant, of course.

The sole reason why we're even talking biofuels is because of the issue of power density for car fuel. Batteries still don't cut it for many people. But, arguably, it is a problem that can be solved with 1) true hybrid cars (like Volt) which only use fuel for long-range driving, and 2) slowly but steadily re-engineering our cities so that you don't have to drive more than fifty miles a day more often than once a week.

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[AK Marc]

And my favorite is #3, batteries are leased separately from the car and are swapped at "battery stations" with full sets so that you can drive from LA to DC with stops no longer than a gasoline fuel up.

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[c0lo]

(all m and km above need to be squared; I know, you know... 21 century and UNICODE and all that, /. doesn't know)

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[Grey Geezer]

.... During this exercise you're allowed to ignore the impact this would have when that land is no longer available for current purposes.

Until there are major advances in where this stuff can be grown, to get the energy produced per acre much higher than it actually is, and prevent "simple" natural disasters from ruining entire crops for the season, this stuff is never going to take off no matter the hype.

Consider also that no-till farming requires that the non-crop part of the plant be left behind the haversting machine to form a layer of mulch on the field. This mat helps retain moisture, fertilizer, and herbicides. No-till also saves fuel by eliminating the need to "break" the soil (it also greatly reduces topsoil loss due to run-off). Are we to return to the bad old days of wasteful sod-busting in order to harvestt 100% of the biomas for fuel production?

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[cbhacking]

Unfortunately, electric car batteries are a lot bigger than most people realize. The Tesla Model S? It's the entire bottom ~4 inches of the car's body. Aside from a little but of room to account for very minor collisions and such, the battery bank is literally the size of the horizontal cross-section of a sedan. It also weighs well over a ton (the Model S is shockingly heavy, and over half of it is the battery bank).

Now, could you build a "battery station" designed to remove and replace such batteries, in a reasonably automated fashion, in a few minutes? Yeah, maybe, if the car were engineered for that... and the by "the car" I mean *all* cars you wanted to service at such a station. It would take a fairly large facility and a lot of engineering. You'd have to be able to store and simultaneously charge a substantial number of such batteries (admittedly, the space devoted to tankage in a convention fuel station would probably suffice).

So, the engineering would be hard, but it's probably possible. However, and perhaps most problematically, it would require standardizing on a specific battery. Dimensions, voltage, weight, and probably capacity. Want to build a smaller car? Oops, sorry, the battery won't fit. Want to offer different ranges of car (as the Model S itself has)? Sorry, all batteries are the same (you could argue "OK, just sell the car without the battery then, and pay at the 'pump'" except that the battery is major portion of the cost). Want to use a new battery chemistry that offers higher energy density but 15% lower voltage? Aside from the issues of introducing that into the supply chain (do people pay more to lease the new battery at each station? Do they get some of that back when they drop it off at a station that only has the old style?), those new batteries aren't going to be usable without inefficient voltage conversion, adding components and reducing the advantage of the new chemistry.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, and in time it's probably the way we'll go. But at this point, electric cars are too immature as a technology. We can't afford the weight and capacity penalties of using smaller, more modular batteries, and we can't offer the homogeneity needed to use one standard, massive battery, and we can't offer the future-proofing needed to make the battery exchange stations practical for the coming decade or so... look at what electric cars were just five years ago, compared to today!

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[AK Marc]

Now, could you build a "battery station" designed to remove and replace such batteries, in a reasonably automated fashion, in a few minutes? Yeah, maybe, if the car were engineered for that... and the by "the car" I mean *all* cars you wanted to service at such a station. It would take a fairly large facility and a lot of engineering. You'd have to be able to store and simultaneously charge a substantial number of such batteries (admittedly, the space devoted to tankage in a convention fuel station would probably suffice).

We make requirements on cars that are similar all the time. It wouldn't be hard to come up with an automated battery swap system that has 4 sizes only. We manage to get by with AAA, AA, C, and D for 99% of batttery needs, and some still use 9v, 6v, and CR2032 (or other button cells), but for the overwhelming majority, the top 4 cover it. Do the same with cars. It's not easy, I realize that. But it's certainly far from the "impossible" that so many make it out to be. Most of the hurdles are political, not technical. All cars (new cars, as we rarely force new on the old cars) went from leaded without catalytic converters to unleaded with cats in a few years. Once the law is passed, the makers fell in line, quickly and quietly. Now we find out that the push back for 20 years on lead may have caused massive problems.

I think it could work, and I actually know what that means, even if those who disagree assume I can't know or I'd hold their opinion.

Re:Another pie-in-the-sky plan

[cdrguru]

Do you really understand the requirements of charging 10 car batteries in a fast-charge mode?

I believe today you can charge your Volt with a 220V charger running around 40 amps. 220V at 400A (10 batteries) is 88KW, not something completely out of the question for electric supply but certainly getting there. I believe it takes 2-3 hours to charge an empty battery at this rate.

Figure a reasonable car service station would need more like 50 batteries charging in order to handle cars and you are now at 2000 amps at 220V or 440KW. This is up to a significant electric substation, likely supplied with around 40KV. You can't have that just anywhere, so such a service station is going to have to be out in the boonies and the choice of location will be non-existent - it goes where the power company says it can.

Such a service station would require a substantial infrastructure to support it. You aren't going to find it in a logical place, like near a highway or in a suburban shopping mall area. It is going to be in a fringe area next to a large electrical substation. Moving 440KW of power somewhere where it is not today is not something that is easily done - and the transmission line paranoids are going to block any attempt to do so near a residential area.

Gald to see it is still getting coverage

[Jonah Hex]

When I first submitted this last November I thought it might be something that would be shot down fairly soon by "Real Science" (TM), good to see that it is still considered viable. And you'd get more plant material with less environmental impact from industrial hemp than most of the others. - HEX

Let the fuel wars begin

[jakimfett]

I'm wondering how long it will be before Big Oil starts claiming that this substitute damages your car. Or that somehow, "true oil" is better for the environment. Brings to mind the situation with lab grown carbon crystals...it just isn't a diamond unless it was pulled out of the ground through the sweat and labor of someone making minimum wage, right?

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[phantomfive]

Not to shatter your conspiratorial fantasy, but this research was actually funded by BP. A lot of big oil companies are investing in alternate energy these days as a hedge for when oil is no longer needed. They say, "We're not in the oil business, we're in the energy business."

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[VortexCortex]

Not to shatter your conspiratorial fantasy, but this research was actually funded by BP. A lot of big oil companies are investing in alternate energy these days as a hedge for when oil is no longer needed. They say, "We're not in the oil business, we're in the energy business."

Correction: A lot of big oil companies are interested in patenting alternate energy sources these days, because patents can stifle innovation...

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[phantomfive]

Correction: A lot of big oil companies are interested in patenting alternate energy sources these days, because patents can stifle innovation...

Where did you get that information? Is that something you made up? Go look at BP's wind farms, and ask yourself why they would actually be building things if they only cared about patents and stifling things.

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[swillden]

BP is also one of the biggest manufacturers of solar panels.

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[AnotherAnonymousUser]

Patents are also only valid for 20 years. I see this bandied point around to the point of being nearly trollish - by patenting something, yes, you tie it up, but you've also created 1) an asset you can license out 2) a codified body of knowledge that anyone can refer to. You've done your homework well enough that someone else can look at later and see what you did, in exchange for protection of that process. Big Oil companies have been around a lot longer than 20 years and have their fair share of patents, some of which have already expired. By revealing that they've done the research and patenting the process, they've started the clock ticking on what will eventually become public domain. So yes, they can "stifle innovation" for a short while, but it's not a permanent block, just a temporary stopgap to widespread use, if they found something that would get in the way of their own commercial success.

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[egcagrac0]

I'm pretty sure they don't care what they're selling, so long as they're making money.

If people want to buy biofuel instead of petrofuel, and they (the company) can produce (and distribute, etc... the whole chain) it for less than the price people want to pay, there's money to be made.

I've yet to hear anyone in business say "I don't want to make money."

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[adolf]

Correction: A lot of big oil companies are interested in making money hand-over-fist, whether that be with oil or something else entirely (as are many other companies, many of which lack the financial resources of big oil companies).

Follow the money. No conspiracy needed.

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[feedayeen]

Correction: A lot of big oil companies are interested in patenting alternate energy sources these days, because patents can stifle innovation...

Kodak: Invents the digital camera, then sits on it for fear that it would destroy their film industry.
GE: Invents the fluorescent light bulb and markets it to businesses while selling their incandescents to homes.

According to a pie chart on Wikipedia; in 2009, petroleum accounted for only 1% of us power generation in the US. 'Other renewables', which is going to be made up of wind, solar, and geothermal accounted for 3.6%. Oil companies fund research into renewables because they never made it into that massive market.

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[cheesybagel]

The problem is not power generation. There is plenty of natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. The problem is fuel for transportation.

Re:Let the fuel wars begin

[MachineShedFred]

It goes back to the ridiculous conspiracy claims that some guy invented a carburetor that makes your engine get 50 mpg, but he was bought out by the oil companies and his invention ended up in the same warehouse as the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Indiana Jones.

Never mind that there are carbureted vehicles that get 50mpg - they're called motorcycles.

System efficiency?

[BlackPignouf]

What about the system efficiency?

"Look!
You only need 20kWh of electricity, 1m**3 of water, 2m**2 of land and 3 liters of fertilizer to get 1 liter of biofuel.
We will revolutionize the world in 10 years!"

People complain all the time about low efficiency of PV Panels, but they're still 5 times better than photosynthesis.

Re:System efficiency?

[adolf]

"Look!
You only need 20kWh of electricity, 1m**3 of water, 2m**2 of land and 3 liters of fertilizer to get 1 liter of biofuel.
We will revolutionize the world in 10 years!"

People complain all the time about low efficiency of PV Panels, but they're still 5 times better than photosynthesis.

But water can be free. Land can be cheap or free. Fertilizer can be produced locally (animals, legumes). And if electricity is a concern, you can use your self-blessed photovoltaics to produce it.

Seriously. I'm all for an informative discussion of total system efficiency, but jerking one's knee isn't the right way to get there -- let alone bold claims of photosynthesis being 5 times worse than photovoltaics.

Re:System efficiency?

[Nimey]

Water /isn't/ free. There's only so much freshwater to go around, especially when there's a bad drought like last year.

Land isn't free. See above.

Re:System efficiency?

[invient]

That is why many like the idea of algae... you can take a high salt/acidic water source and turn it into a productive source of fuel... What else are we using it for? The last time I looked into algae an area the size of Virginia would produce enough fuel for the entirety of the US annual use of oil, the problem is keeping the algae growing because they will deplete the nutrients fast, and we will have to somehow collect the CO2 we use and pump it into the production area.

Re:System efficiency?

[adolf]

Maybe not where you're from. Where I'm at we have more water than we can deal with most years (yet another flood just last week, with no proper drought in something like 25 years), and arable land is relatively cheap.

It costs something to move that water around, store it, and use it, for sure, but that's an easily identifiable expense.

(And as to the "omg we're going to run out of water!!!" argument, I don't buy it. Never have, never will -- please don't waste the effort.)

Aerial surveillance

[tepples]

Why aren't we pursuing hemp-based bio-diesel instead?

Because aerial surveillance can't tell the low-THC strains of C. sativa grown for hemp from the higher-THC strains grown for a psychoactive substance. Perhaps one of the U.S. states that has legalized pot on a state level (with President Obama's announced lack of enforcement priority) can experiment with a hemp industry.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Khashishi]

You mean this lack of enforcement?

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Khashishi]

Oops, messed that up. This--> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/03/pelosi-condemns-obamas-continued-raids-on-marijuana-dispensaries/

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Psyborgue]

Hemp is not a low-THC strain. It's the male plant. The female plant is psychoactive. The male plant (hemp) is not. Also, Obama said the feds would not go after recreational users, which they never have, so he essentially said nothing will change.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[matria]

Wrong. http://www.votehemp.com/different_varieties.html

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Psyborgue]

You're right. I'm not sure why I thought that.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Jesus_666]

Wasn't it originally the other way around, ie. wasn't anti-cannabis legislation initially started due to pressure from the cotton and timber lobbies who felt threatened by a plant that could potentially replace wood pulp for paper and cotton for clothing?

Anyway, growing hemp might just be an interesting niche in a state where you can get away with it. It is kind of versatile (even if we discount the recreational uses of certain strains).

Re:Aerial surveillance

[tepples]

I can imagine it would be difficult for aerial surveillance to tell the difference between 3 cannabis plants growing illegally in a closet and a 1,000-acre legal hemp farm.

The issue is telling the difference between a 640-acre hemp farm and a 640-acre pot farm.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Muad'Dave]

...and 640 acres of hemp ought to be enough for anyone.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Psyborgue]

Ha ha. No. I think it's just the fact that the male plants have almost no THC.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Green Light]

With an industrialized process for converting hemp into fuel, it wouldn't be that hard to know which duly registered farms were growing the crop for fuel purposes.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[michael_cain]

The anti-drug movement didn't need any help from those lobbies. The original anti-cannabis legislation was part of a wave of laws controlling narcotics in general, and didn't outlaw growing hemp for industrial purposes. Those narcotics laws were passed at least a decade before the US government report suggesting hemp could compete with wood for paper pulp was published. As it turns out, the report was inaccurate on several counts, and at least with the technology of the time (19-teens), hemp fibers were not price competitive with wood. The same sentiments that led to those narcotic control laws culminated 15 or so years later in the 18th amendment to the US Constitution, which banned production of beverages containing ethanol.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[tepples]

The idea, as I remember it having been explained to me, is that a couple rows of pot could be hidden among the rows of hemp.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[Sabathius]

Yes, but it's not just "kinda versatile". It can replace just about every petroleum product out there. Food, clothing, building materials, plastics, paper, blah, blah blah... Hemp for victory. We should be growing it here...not importing it from Canada.

Re:Aerial surveillance

[cdrguru]

How about a conservation alternative: pick out a state that has legalized all uses of marjiuana and simply take the cars away and replace them with enough pot to keep everyone happy instead.

Imagine what Colorado would be like if everyone simply stayed home and toked up instead of driving? Cleanest air in the country for one thing.

Anyone hungry?

[astro]

With a planet full of starving people I continue to fail to understand how using food crops for fuel makes any kind of rational sense at all.

Re:Anyone hungry?

[GodfatherofSoul]

The problem with food-for-fuel is that it's just not efficient. On top of the damage that ethanol does to vehicles...

Re:Anyone hungry?

[Farmer Tim]

Call it Soylent premium.

Re:Anyone hungry?

[Neil Boekend]

In Europe we already allow 5% ethanol in gasoline. People are lobbying to allow 10%. This does not damage engines, but assuming it is done (and with bio-ethanol) it does put a 5 or 10% dent in the CO2 production.
Now with high percentages (90% for example) of ethanol some trouble does arise. Ethanol is soluble in water. Engines do not like water, so high ethanol percentages could carry to much dissolved water. That can damage an engine.

Now if some chemist could find a way to remove that pesky oxigen, polimerise the resulting ethane (or ethylene) to a bit longer chains with some branching and some double C connections (to get the flammability right) then we'd simply have bio-gasoline and we'd just have the problem that we can't create enough bioethanol to fuel the world.

Re:Anyone hungry?

[semi-extrinsic]

it does put a 5 or 10% dent in the CO2 production

Actually, you would need to slash those numbers in half. Scientific studies on the total life cycle impact of replacing gasoline with 100% bioethanol in Europe report around 30-50 % reductions in CO2 compared to gasoline. See e.g. slide 12 of this presentation.

Re:Anyone hungry?

[gallondr00nk]

People are lobbying to allow 10%. This does not damage engines, but assuming it is done (and with bio-ethanol) it does put a 5 or 10% dent in the CO2 production.

There's quite a lot of debate about that. One thing that 10% ethanol does wreck havoc with is rubber fuel lines on older cars, eventually making them brittle. There's also complaints about it ruining valve seals, again on older cars. Of course these things can be replaced, but it isn't as harmless as the biofuel lobby would suggest, as it seems to dry out and degrade rubber quite quickly.

Biofuels are okay, but we shouldn't be thinking of them as anything more than a bridge from oil burning combustion to whatever will be the next dominant technology for car propulsion. Instead people act like we can replace fossils with biofuels and everything will be fine.

Could you imagine a more depressing human tragedy, letting people starve to death simply because we turned over all our arable land to power our cars.

Re:Anyone hungry?

[Neil Boekend]

Could you imagine a more depressing human tragedy, letting people starve to death simply because we turned over all our arable land to power our cars.

Yes, but then my imagination is not a normal place
By the way: I do think a lot of our fuel needs could be cut if people just quit driving and start biking. For example in bikes like this. Now how to get people who live only 25km or less from their work to take a bike is an important issue. There are ways, but they cost time and money. Luckily many important steps have been made here in the Netherlands.

Re:Anyone hungry?

[fgouget]

With a planet full of starving people I continue to fail to understand how using food crops for fuel makes any kind of rational sense at all.

This does not seem to be limited to food crops. Sure they mention "corn, sugar cane, molasses" but immediately add that it also works with "woody biomass or plant biomass", "grass" and "Eucalyptus". So as long as we (as a species) are smart enough to apply this technology to the right sources it should be fine on the hunger front (sure, us being smart enough is questionable).

What I really wonder is whether that means they've solved the cellulose conversion issues. Given that the article does not brag about it I'm skeptical and thus I don't really see what makes this technique so interesting.

Re:Anyone hungry?

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

his does not damage engines, but assuming it is done (and with bio-ethanol) it does put a 5 or 10% dent in the CO2 production.
Actually, since E10 has less energy density than straight gasoline(33.2 MJ/L vs 34.2) you would use more to get the same amount of work(E85 is even worse @ 25.7 MJ/L) so your CO2 may not be lowered by as much as you would hope.

Re:Anyone hungry?

[Whorhay]

I've actually noticed that my 2005 Corolla gets almost 10% worse mileage using gas with up to 10% Ethanol in it. They might as well just give me straight gasoline and add 10% to the price. The stuff is pretty worthless in my opinion.

Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass

[tepples]

Until there are major advances in where this stuff can be grown

Advances like the ability to process switchgrass, which can grow on marginal farmland, and other sources of cellulose such as waste wood? They're working on that.

Re:Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass

[A bsd fool]

1. Switchgrass average production: 14.6 tons / hectare

2. Ethanol 100 gallons/ton

3. Total land area (not arable, total for CONUS, period) 766 million hectares

Total fuel production per year: 1.1 trillion gallons

Gasoline and diesel consumption in 2011: 200 billion gallons.

So you tell me. Do you think it's realistic to convert 20% of the total land area of the country to switchgrass production? It would certainly make sense to use it to replace corn, once the technology matures, but it's never going to replace petroleum unless they figure out a way go grow it much more densely without raising the cost of production too much. There are better alternatives to solve the oil crunch than plants-as-fuel. CNG is one. LPG is another.

Re:Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass

[shutdown -p now]

How about algae-as-fuel (i.e. biodiesel)? You don't need to convert land area for that, and oceans are vast.

Re:Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass

[TheLink]

How do you propose to manage all the square kilometres/miles of ocean required to grow your algae on? You'd still need a lot of surface area assuming the algae needs sunlight to grow.

These biofuels are basically solar energy. From the efficiencies you can work out how much surface area you need - whether land or sea.

They might be less efficient than solar panels but unlike algae and plants solar panels don't build and repair themselves. But if they are too inefficient, the area required becomes a big issue.

Re:Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass

[shutdown -p now]

How do you propose to manage all the square kilometres/miles of ocean required to grow your algae on?

To what extent do we need to manage them, though? It's not like you need to enrich the soil or weed out weeds for algae. All it needs is water and sun.

These biofuels are basically solar energy. From the efficiencies you can work out how much surface area you need - whether land or sea.

Yes, we would be talking literally about thousands of square kilometers here. But then Earth has hundreds of millions of square kilometers of ocean.

Personally, I think that fusion (and nuclear in the interim) is a better bet, and we should just stop clinging to the notion that our cars must be able to drive 400 miles without refueling/recharging, and convert them to all electric. But I wouldn't dismiss biofuels outright. Then also, we might actually be able to come up with proper hybrids - a car that drives 100% off the battery in the city (commute etc), but for those occasional long trips you'd use biodiesel - I would imagine that it'd cut down on fuel consumption a great deal, at least an order of magnitude if not more.

Re:Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass

[azalin]

I saw an article a few years back where someone suggested large scale algae farming in tanks. The idea was to place these in hot dessert/arid areas relatively close to population centers. This way they could be fed with sewage and other similar biodegradable waste. No waste of farmland, cheap sewage treatment etc.

Doesn't solve the problem

[Casandro]

We just need _so_ much more fuel than plants could produce. Even if we use high efficiency plants like hemp we don't have enough fertile ground to grow enough plants.

Plants are really inefficient when it comes to turning sunlight into carbohydrates. That's simply just a by-product of their life.

Re:Doesn't solve the problem

[dbc]

Compare the efficiency of plans turning sunlight into carbohydrates, with that of a planet's geologic processes turning the results of mass-extinction events into fossil fuels over millions of years. Most of Earths oil was produced during two distinct mass-extinction events long ago. We're on track to use every drop of it up over the course of a couple hundred years. The phrase 'burn rate' comes to mind. If the planet can't produce energy that fast, then perhaps, we need to cut back how much we burn, eh?

Re:Doesn't solve the problem

[Casandro]

Absolutely. Or at least we'd have to move to more sustainable forms of energy gathering like wind or solar.

Re:Doesn't solve the problem

[dbc]

Wind and direct solar have storage problems. Converting plant matter into a transportable liquid bridges that gap. In the end, all energy available to us traces back to two sources: solar, and geothermal. Growing plants to capture the solar energy is good way to shorten the time lag of waiting for geologic processes to create oil and coal, and mitigates the storage problem of letting solar energy create wind which is then captured with windmills. Efficient conversion processes combined with modern agronomy to optimize plant characteristics is a good path to sustainable energy production -- but it won't support Earth's current population. But then again, we are overfishing the oceans, too, so it seems to me we have passed the planet's carrying capacity. So back to your original comment about not having enough fertile ground -- that's one way to look at it, but it assumes the Earth's human population can only grow. When the oil runs out the population will shrink. There is no way around that. Plot the following three curves on a graph: 1) rate of new oil reserve discovery (barrels per year), 2) rate of oil production (barrels per year), 3) earth's population. You will see that #2, follows #1 at a 30 year lag, and that #1 peaked some time ago, and #2 somewhat recently. #3 ramps with #2. I believe that #2 will follow #1 down -- no one has be able to make a credible argument otherwise. I suspect #3 will -- painfully -- follow #2 down, and the ride will not be pleasant. As in 'interesting times' not pleasant.

5 to 10 Years Out

[cosm]

Gasoline substitute....5 to 10 years out.....***puts on shades***...sounds like vaporware.

And the oil majors will join

[tepples]

I'm wondering how long it will be before Big Oil starts claiming that this substitute damages your car.

Given how far BP and the other big energy companies claim to want to extend themselves "beyond petroleum" (as BP rebranded itself), I'd imagine they'd want to get into the ABE fuel business themselves.

5 years

[phantomfive]

According to the article, it will be ready for the market in five to ten years.

Food exists, but you can't have it

[tepples]

Hunger in poor countries is not a production problem quite as much as a distribution problem.

Re:Food exists, but you can't have it

[Demonantis]

Then why did corn prices jump after ethanol was mandated in fuel? I realize in poor countries it is distribution that is the problem, but it still affects food prices here.

Re:Food exists, but you can't have it

[afgam28]

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.

Re:Food exists, but you can't have it

[dadelbunts]

Its also a waste problem. We throw away tons and tons of perfectly good food that we seem unfit for sale because of slight imperfections in appearance.

Re:Food exists, but you can't have it

[Muad'Dave]

The average (median) American eats 1.03 kg per day...

That's per per meal, right? ~sarcasm (Also a healthy dose of guilt - I'm one of those that would burn for years if you stuck a wick in me).

1.03 kg/day with a 70/30 split for calories from carbs+protein vs fat comes to 4944 calories/day. There must be a heck of a lot of fiber in their numbers.

(164.8 g of fat * 9 cal/g = 1483.2 cal from fat. 865.2 g protein or carbs * 4 cal/g = 3460.8 cal from protein or carbs).

My prediction: cancelled by next month

[Narcocide]

Corn-ethanol lobbyists will never stand for this.

Re:My prediction: cancelled by next month

[Narcocide]

I think you may want to check yourself. What part of "but ethanol sucks by comparison" was ever relevant to the push for ethanol?

Let's see some EROEI figures

[Animats]

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.

Re:Let's see some EROEI figures

[jklovanc]

I am usually very concerned with EROEI but there is one instance where and EROEI of less than 1 is not a problem. The is in converting the energy into something much more transportable. For example geothermal heat does not travel well or store well. We currently are very good at converting it into electricity. That travels better but still has limits and storage is very expensive. We can convert the energy into hydrocarbons that store very well and transport very well. It does not matter if we only get half the energy out that we put in if the energy we put in is not usable where it is now.;

Re:Let's see some EROEI figures

[jklovanc]

What I was more thinking of is a longer chain for example;
1. Geothermal heat converted to electricity.
2. The electricity combined with the waste heat to run greenhouses to produce sugar rich biomass.
3. The biomass combined with more heat and electricity to make fuel.
Even at very low rates of return it is still viable because the geothermal energy is useless in the state that is is in at the start.

Re:Let's see some EROEI figures

[afidel]

US cracking operations are largely operating on natural gas at the moment because it's MUCH cheaper per BTU than crude, in fact natural gas is so cheap that the US in a net exporter of refined petroleum products again, primarily because it's cheaper for Mexico to send crude tankers to the US to be cracked by natural gas and then take tankers of gasoline back home then it is for them to use the equivalent percentage of each barrel to perform the cracking. The only thing keeping natural gas from going cheaper than it is now is insufficient pipeline capacity.

Bye bye forests!

[GenieGenieGenie]

Hello, (Subaru) Forester.

Is it cost effective?

[wakeboarder]

By the sound of the article summary, this 'gas' will also make you thin and get you a job promotion. The article itself is much less rosy. It says its compatible and efficient, but how efficient. It suggests that it is for niche markets like the military ect., aka big spenders. And no you can't produce fuel from plants to offset oil because of land area, for more info see http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/a-skeptic-looks-at-alternative-energy

Re:Fossil fuels stored many years of sunlight

[Pinky's Brain]

Electricity to methane is already claimed to be 50% efficient, it's not as ideal as petrol/diesel but we can make do with it for everything but planes (which can run on biofuels). Ideally we will find some high efficiency conversion to convert methane to propane ... but as I said, we can make do with methane.

I see no problem with replacing fossil fuels, other than that as a society we have become completely unable to sacrifice for a communal good and the market is being engineered for a sudden collapse so market forces won't be able to create the transition.

If it seems too good to be true..

[proca]

If it seems too good to be true... then its probably food made into fuel. Or at least I think that's what they say.

Curious the affect on engine seals?

[Grayhand]

Just wondering how corrosive it is to the seals in an engine? That's the downside of regular alcohol it rots the seals on most cars. The description makes it sound even more corrosive than straight alcohol or ethanol. Sounds great but if it kills the engines after a few thousand miles it's hardly a replacement. I love bio fuels but most engines aren't designed to run them. They need to work more with car makers to bring this stuff to market. My guess is that's part of the ten year plan.

CO2?

[spongman]

great, but when you burn it does it still spew CO2 into the atmosphere?

when are we going wake up and start using cars powered by hydrogen separated from water in LFTRs?

Re:CO2?

[phantomfive]

Yes, but when you grow it, CO2 is removed, so it balances.

Re:CO2?

[feedayeen]

great, but when you burn it does it still spew CO2 into the atmosphere?

when are we going wake up and start using cars powered by hydrogen separated from water in LFTRs?

The thing that's great about biofuels is that you're essentially cutting down a plant, burning it to produce CO2. Then you have to replace the plant and that consumes the same amount of CO2 as you created. The problem is just the other atoms* are sustainable like Nitrogen and Hydrogen which come from the soil and water.

*Oversimplification for aesthetic reasons.

Re:CO2?

[azalin]

You seem to have missed the production part (aka photosynthesis) were CO2 is consumed. Plants use CO2 from the air to grow, so even if you burn the plant afterwards, you'll end up with no extra CO2 in the atmosphere. At most you'll end up with the same amount you had before. Fossil fuel (oil, coal, natural gas) is different even because the carbon in it, was stored millions of years ago and has been absent from the atmosphere for this time.
Hydrogen while producing "cleaner" emissions at the combustion location, does not have any net advantage in CO2 over biofuel. There may be some difference in the production process, but I have no idea which fuel source comes up better in that category (once optimized).

Re:CO2?

[abies]

This is assuming that you use desert to grow these plants. If you convert forest/meadows/whatever into biofuel fields, then you are losing CO2 trapping done by things which were growing there originally.

That's not the problem

[atari2600a]

The problem is having synthetic plastics replacing all rubber fittings, o-rings, hoses & gaskets in non-'Bio'/'flex'-fuel cars. This is a common trend for pretty much all biofuels. While the prospect of a gasoline-compatible biofuel with the energy density of standard petrol is promising, it makes more sense to buy a bio-ready diesel vehicle & make B80 a thing. Plus, in countries where industrial hemp is a thing, it could even be sustainable up until we fix the energy density / charge time problem w/ existing electricity storage solutions.

Not all good

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm, aren't we supposed to find a fuel that doesn't pollute?

Not whole energy budget, just stuff like vehicles.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... article mentioned that if we took all the biomass from all of the farmland both producing and fallow and were able to convert it all directly to ethanol that it would STILL only account for 14% of the US energy budget.

(Ignoring for the moment whether the claim is accurate ...)

The idea is not to replace the whole energy needs of the country with biomass fuels. Smelting steel or refining aluminum with it, for instance, would be downright silly. Ditto running power plants: (Even if you wanted to use biomass there'd be no reason to waste part of its energy liquifying it - just burn it directly. But there are lots of cheaper alternatives.)

But there's a small-but-substantial fraction of the load for which liquid fuels is ideal: Vehicles. Liquid fuels provide enormous power-to-weight ratios, which is what you want there. Keeping a vehicle light pays dividends in fuel savings, as does providing energy using easy-to-handle liquid with high energy content.

The base process ferments cellulose into butanol, acetone, and ethanol. Even without this new post-processing hack, butanol is a drop-in replacement for gasoline, ethanol works in otto-cycle engines with a little tweaking and acetone with more tweaking. This new post-process turns the mix into something akin to fuel oil, which is a similar drop-in for diesel cycle engines. So it covers both major types of portable engines.

Even if you can't come up with enough fuel to run the whole economy, or even the whole transportation industry, from locally-grown biomass, there's a LOT of low-value byproducts grown in the process of growing crops. Turning it into high-value portable liquid fuel could make a substantial dent in oil requirements while improving the financial picture both for vehicle users and farmers.

Solar and wind aren't well suited for the enormous energy and energy-density needs of land vehicles (though we're getting closer with modern electric vehicles for limited ranges). But they can make a similar dent in the energy needs of stationary loads.

Calculation to get the fuel?

[andsand]

To get the fermentation done you need to start with sugars. Cellulose and hemi-cellulose are long polymeric sugar (ex: glucose and xylose). If you have a technology that could use the entire plant and to make sugars then you would make a difference. At 20ton/ha and year producing biomass you could make 10+ton sugars/year and after fermentation you would have 7ton of "fuel". That is 7 ton fuel per hectare and year. So if Nebraska:s 20.000.000 hectares would be used (just as an easy calculation example - not the real thing ok?) you would get 140.000.000tons of fuel per year. No more corn but fuel only. That would cover a fair pice of what is needed.

What is missing here? Making sugars from cellulose/hemi-cellulose! That technology at the right sugar price is being done by several companies. My favorite is REAC Fuel....but there are others that can do the trick.

We USED TO burn biofuels and look what happened

[rve]

That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. ....
- How was the total US energy 'budget' calculated? Note the word 'budget' not 'usage' .. which is indicative of an estimate, not a fact

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.

Re:We USED TO burn biofuels and look what happened

[MozeeToby]

You're comparing burning old growth forests that take decades or centuries to grow to burning grasses that can grow 10 ft tall in a single season?

Re:We USED TO burn biofuels and look what happened

[rve]

You're comparing burning old growth forests that take decades or centuries to grow to burning grasses that can grow 10 ft tall in a single season?

I'm saying you are either underestimating how much energy we use today, or overestimating how much net energy you can grow per area unit of land. Switchgrass may be a way of making areas productive that are now too dry for agriculture other than low intensity cattle farming. This means turning land that is now essentially wilderness into mono culture farmland, which is just another form of the same ecological disaster I described earlier.

Bio fuels should not be mistaken for the green, organic, nature lover's wet dream. It will require an awful lot of land to cover the energy needs of our current standard of living. As we will still want to eat food as well, this extra land will have to come from wilderness or forests, rather than from existing farm land. This is not a happy solution for bears, deer and buffalo. The only ones cheering will be people who bought prairie land wilderness for a dollar per acre.

Re:We USED TO burn biofuels and look what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

one word,

Algae

Re:We USED TO burn biofuels and look what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

one word: oceans.

Re:We USED TO burn biofuels and look what happened

[falconwolf]

Bio fuels should not be mistaken for the green, organic, nature lover's wet dream. It will require an awful lot of land to cover the energy needs of our current standard of living.

One, most bio fuels are not organic, so organic nature lover's don't have wet dreams about them. Two, the negawatt is powerful. Turning off electrically powered when they are not needed and using more energy efficient energy users can have a big impact. Californians complain about how high home heating costs are yet a properly designed and built home uses very little energy compared to conventional homes, and yet do not cost much more to build than standard construction. Adding insulation and sealing thermal barriers significantly reduces heat loss when cold outside and heat gain when hot outside.

However other energy sources can provide a lot of energy as well. The Department of Defense (DoD) "could generate 7,000 megawatts (MW) of solar energy—equivalent to the output of seven nuclear power plants—on four military bases located in the California desert, according to a study released today by DoD’s Office of Installations and Environment." The article in SciAm A Grand Solar Plan says that by 2050 solar energy can produce 69% of the U.S.’s electricity and 35% of its total energy by 2050. I didn't find it but another online source said that just 10% of the land in Nevada could produce enough electricity to power the 48 contiguous states. And another said the wind potential in the Rocky Mountains was also enough. Thinking small scale and big scale along with building a national smart gird can allow coal and nuclear power plants to be shut down, leaving natural gas plants operating along with goethermal plants to serve as baseline electrical generators until storage improves.

Falcon

Re:We USED TO burn biofuels and look what happened

[jwhitener]

I think we'll see algae fuel contributing more to our liquid energy needs once the tech has been refined some. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel

0.42% of the US land mass required to replace all gas and diesel. And I've seen algae farms floating in the ocean (long clear plastic tubes), so we wouldn't even need to use up land.

Top secret!

[zmooc]

The discovery, published in the journal Nature, means corn...

If this research was really worthwhile, they'd have published their paper publicly instead of in some elitist magazine. This kind of behavior by scientists is exactly what late Aaron Swartz denounced. Once again important research stays hidden within the confines of paywall-locked information-vaults. Great...

By the way, Berkeley itself already published about this in November.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2012/11/08/more-bang-for-the-biofuel-buck/

Re:Top secret!

[Anonymous Coward]

if you don't publish the paper in Nature though, there is no way to get peer review. The work would have been considered junk science. there is no way to win...

Re:Top secret!

[Dcnjoe60]

The discovery, published in the journal Nature, means corn...

If this research was really worthwhile, they'd have published their paper publicly instead of in some elitist magazine. This kind of behavior by scientists is exactly what late Aaron Swartz denounced. Once again important research stays hidden within the confines of paywall-locked information-vaults. Great...

By the way, Berkeley itself already published about this in November.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2012/11/08/more-bang-for-the-biofuel-buck/

If Berkley already published about it, then it's not really locked behind a paywall. Besides, even if it was, most researchers have access to publications, including Nature and trade journals, etc. It is usually provided by their University. Even students get access, at least at major universities. It seems your complaint is that John Q. Public can't have free access, but then JQP isn't actually doing any research based on it and if they were, the cost of a subscription would be worth it.

Re:Top secret!

[zmooc]

Berkeley published an article that's comparable to the sfgate-article linked here. It is not comparable to the publication in Nature, which is locked behind a paywall.

Why exactly would universities need a subscription to private journals in order to be able to share publications amongst eachother?! The only effect this has, is that they divert some money to things like JSTOR and probably a lot of journal subscriptions.

Also your assumption that this is not relevant to non-university research is baseless. How can we discuss this properly on slashdot if the information is not publically available? The cost of all required relevant subscriptions to find publications in certain fields is way too high for me. Besides that, hiding such publications from the world makes it very difficult to search within them using e.g. Google. Even worse, since all good publications are hidden, this mechanism favors disinformation. And also worse, less eyes get to see the publications so less people get inspired to do more research and less feedback is given. Thereby it harms quality of and progress in science on a global scale.

Re:Top secret!

[Dcnjoe60]

Berkeley published an article that's comparable to the sfgate-article linked here. It is not comparable to the publication in Nature, which is locked behind a paywall.

Why exactly would universities need a subscription to private journals in order to be able to share publications amongst eachother?! The only effect this has, is that they divert some money to things like JSTOR and probably a lot of journal subscriptions.

Also your assumption that this is not relevant to non-university research is baseless. How can we discuss this properly on slashdot if the information is not publically available? The cost of all required relevant subscriptions to find publications in certain fields is way too high for me. Besides that, hiding such publications from the world makes it very difficult to search within them using e.g. Google. Even worse, since all good publications are hidden, this mechanism favors disinformation. And also worse, less eyes get to see the publications so less people get inspired to do more research and less feedback is given. Thereby it harms quality of and progress in science on a global scale.

It sounds like you are upset because you can't get online access to the article for free, just like in the pre-internet days you couldn't get it free, either, unless the public library had it. Nothing has changed in that regard with having to pay for content, just the medium. Obviously, searching Google does bring up the article, so it can in fact be found, and if it is germane to your project, you pay for it. Plain and simple.

As for most universities, they have a bulk license that gives them access to numerous research journals for a very low fee. Why? Because the students and professors need access to the information for research and teaching purposes. If you are affiliated with a university, then you probably have access to this research. If you are doing research in the private sector, then your employer should pay for it, assuming it is related to what you are researching. If you are conducting research on your own, then the cost of the article is no different than the cost of any other supply that you would use for your research.

BTW, the public library in the small town I am in has a subscription to Nature, so I can just go look at the article for free. Maybe your public library does likewise.

What?

[ledow]

Oh come on, Slashdot.

150 comments and not a mention of Triffid oil?

I'm disappointed. What has this site come to?

Oh, you can have food... at a higher price

[dfenstrate]

Putting food stocks in our gas tanks raises the price of those food stocks for everyone. This hits the poor the hardest, of course.
Yes, we can grow plenty. Yes, distribution is often a problem.
The fact is there's still a consequence, and that consequence is price.
You putting corn in your gas tank means the food budget for folks living on a few bucks a day goes up.

Developing countries imported 280 million tons of corn between 2006 and 2011, and spent $6.6 billion more than they otherwise would have because of the U.S. biofuels mandate. Mexico assumed the greatest burden of any countryâ"$1.1 billion more than it otherwise would have, driving up domestic costs for corn and corn products, Wise writes. The cost of tortillas, for instance, has risen 69 percent since 2005. Many Central American countries were equally adversely affected because they feed their growing populations with imported corn. The rising demand for corn that is used to manufacture fuel has spillover effects: prices for other food staples, such as soybeans and wheat, have also gone up, according to the GDAE report.

Source

Re:eucalyptus

[Whiteox]

Yeah. It's called Australia.

Stop burning things for fuel already!

[erroneus]

We need:

1. Better batteries
2. Cleaner sources of power

Ideally, I'd like to see power units in cars and homes that uses decaying radioactive material to charge batteries.

Thunderball!

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

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.

Ah, I see. Wait a minute, what? Was that written from the perspective of Lithuanians or something? In transport petroleum has been the dominant source of fuel for close to a century, for the developed world anyway. Maybe taking the world as a whole some turning point was passed in 1965, along with the first space walk, etc.

Re:Thunderball!

[Dcnjoe60]

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.

Ah, I see. Wait a minute, what? Was that written from the perspective of Lithuanians or something? In transport petroleum has been the dominant source of fuel for close to a century, for the developed world anyway. Maybe taking the world as a whole some turning point was passed in 1965, along with the first space walk, etc.

I don't know about as late as 1965, but early on, with normally-aspirated engines (ie they had a carburetor), alcohol was used quite extensively, particularly in war time. Indy cars burn methanol for fuel, so an alcohol based fuel is very doable from the combustion side of things. Whether alcohol could be produced on a large enough scale to replace gasoline is a different story. You have to have the land to grow the bio-source and you have to have the water for fermentation. Then to top it off, storage is an issue because it is very hydroscopic. While water and oil do not mix, water and alcohol mix quite well, but it doesn't burn in an engine very well at all, when mixed.

Still killing the planet

[gray peter]

Agree, there's nothing clean about biomass fuel. Fine, the nuts with the oil fields won't get our money but we all still die.

But can we?

[SpaghettiPattern]

But can we? Drink it?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Please redesign cars!

[ScaledLizard]

Looking at trains, ground-based vehicles that need to transport fuel are flawed by design. If we had electric cars that took electricity from an overhead line, these cars would be far more efficient for many reasons. Electric cars are normally twice as efficient as combustion engines. Also, many things that increase weight, and thus fuel consumption, are not needed in electric cars. This includes the fuel tank and gearbox. Going further, mounting the vehicle overhead on tracks would allow to integrate the overhead lines into the tracks, further reducing weight and aerodynamic resistance. It would also remove the risk of cars bumping into pedestrians and bicycle riders (may be more of a European problem).

Re:Please redesign cars!

[jjsimp]

They discussed this on Top Gear. They decided that the best electric car was a bumper car. Because it would have a long pole attached to the car. When an accident happened ahead of you in traffic, they could just turn off the power grid and all cars would come safely to a stop. And if they had the bumpers accidents would be less severe. Downtown Seattle already use the power grid for their buses. Has anyone there tried to modify their Chevy Volt to run on this? I think they would get quite the stares from passerby.

Re:OILIX!?

[VGPowerlord]

Where's Dr. Kio Marv?

He thought 01K VRAM was enough for everyone!

Biofuels

[Dcnjoe60]

Don't all of these biofuels that require some sort of fermentation require massive amounts of fresh water? What is the impact of diverting limited fresh water supplies to create this fuel? In the Midwest, where they have ethanol plants, the effect on the water table and agriculture has been harsh. Then there is the problem of what happens to your fuel supply in years of drought and low yield?

Plants are just inefficient solar panels

[gestalt_n_pepper]

whose output is chemical, and inefficient. As long as we're going to use concentrated sunlight anyway, we'd do better to make more efficient batteries instead of needing more biomass, setting us up for even more ecological disaster.

Re:Plants are just inefficient solar panels

[jwhitener]

Algae is pretty efficient. Maybe they could ferment algae mass grown in the ocean (in containers) instead of slower growing plants on land.

Six months later

[tepples]

It's possible for a politician to have a change of heart in the six months from May 3, 2012, the date of the story you linked, to December 14, 2012, the date of the announcement of deprioritization.

Re:Six months later

[Green Light]

I think the GP might be comparing apples and oranges there, anyway. California allows the drug to be used for medicinal purposes, while the two other states recently began allowing it for recreational purposes.

Lack of exportable goods

[tepples]

You putting corn in your gas tank means the food budget for folks living on a few bucks a day goes up.

People live on a few bucks a day because they live in an economy that produces few to no exportable goods. Otherwise, the value of their currency would rise. The Balassa-Samuelson model explains how less-developed countries' currencies become undervalued.

Fuel From Plants!?

[shadowrat]

Isn't gasoline already made from plants?

This will be Supressed

[ClassicASP]

Some billionare company will squish this....just like they did with these other technologies: http://www.trutv.com/conspiracy/in-the-shadows/the-18-most-suppressed-inventions-ever/gallery.all.html

Photosynthesis Efficiency

[Guppy]

Wikipedia cites that plants have a metabolic conversion efficiency of six per cent [wikipedia.org].

As a biologist, this figure seemed a little high, so I took a look around.

Hallenbeck (2012) states on p. 250:

"...maximum photosynthetic efficiencies cannot be higher than 5.5% in theory, and in practice achieving efficiencies of 1 or 1.5% are exceptional".

However, this statement applies only to algae-based biofuels, and the discrepancy appears to be due to the current difficulty in dealing with real-life algae culture problems.

Zhu, Long, and Ort (2008) give some figures for land-plants:

"...the maximum conversion efficiencies of solar radiation into biomass are 4.6% (C3) and 6.0% (C4) at 30C... ...The highest solar energy conversion efciency reported for C3 crops is about 2.4% and about 3.7% for C4 crops across a full growing season based on solar radiation intercepted by the leaf canopy."

"These observed solar energy conversion efficiencies noted above for C3 and C4 crops, while well below the theoretical maximums that we computed in Figure 2, are nevertheless threefold to fourfold larger than the average conversion efficiency attained for major crops in the U.S."

Re:formatting

[Kozz]

It's offtopic, and all that, but... a friendly note to say that if you took some time to format your posts into paragraphs, it's much more likely that someone would read it.

A quick glance shows that you've put some time time and thought into your post, which everyone can appreciate. But at the present time, its composition looks a lot like the emails I get from my mother: one long stream of consciousness with no breaks or separation of thoughts/ideas.

Don't be hating, mods. Just trying to help a fellow out.

Carefully PR-ed comparisons there

[ankhank]

> burns as well as petroleum-based [diesel] fuel
              (in other words not very well at all compared to gasoline)
> and contains more energy per gallon than ethanol
              (in other words, much less energy per gallon than gasoline)

My hat's off to the PR department.

Extended-range electric vehicle

[tepples]

Personally, I think that fusion (and nuclear in the interim) is a better bet

So in the case of "nuclear in the interim", how do you recommend to prevent terrorists or terrorist states from obtaining fuel for making a weapon?

Then also, we might actually be able to come up with proper hybrids - a car that drives 100% off the battery in the city (commute etc), but for those occasional long trips you'd use biodiesel

I thought Chevy already sold the Volt, which is as you describe except using gasoline instead of diesel.

Re:Extended-range electric vehicle

[shutdown -p now]

So in the case of "nuclear in the interim", how do you recommend to prevent terrorists or terrorist states from obtaining fuel for making a weapon?

Same way we do it today, which seems to be working.

By the way, obtaining the fuel wouldn't really enable terrorists to create a nuke (it may look trivial on paper, but it requires some very precise manufacturing to actually get it to work). A true state could make use of it, but, well... NK, the worst state by far, has nukes already, and the world has not collapsed.

I thought Chevy already sold the Volt, which is as you describe except using gasoline instead of diesel.

Yes, Volt is precisely what I had in mind. I'd still prefer a diesel, though, just because of better range due to higher fuel density and better economy. Well, and we already know how to make biodiesel. Also, we'd need something that's cheaper - more affordable to an average citizen.

Re:Extended-range electric vehicle

[tepples]

Also, we'd need something that's cheaper - more affordable to an average citizen.

That often takes 20 years for the patents to work themselves out.

Re:Extended-range electric vehicle

[shutdown -p now]

I doubt the cost of Volt is mostly patents. As I understand, it's rather mostly batteries. We need to work on bringing that down.

Re:Extended-range electric vehicle

[tepples]

I doubt the cost of Volt is mostly patents. As I understand, it's rather mostly batteries. We need to work on bringing that down.

Is the cost of the battery system mostly patents, or is it raw materials?

Re:Extended-range electric vehicle

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not a subject expert, but, again, I believe it to be materials and manufacturing cost. If most of it were patents, I'd expect Chinese to be selling replacements for much cheaper already.

Europe has 50 mpg turbo diesels, but in America...

[singingjim1]

We don't have high mpg turbo diesels and you'll never hear about this plant fuel story again. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but this technology will never hit the pumps or at least not in a pure version. The oil companies won't let that happen. They'll lobby Washington and find a way to make sure they keep their market share/monopoly on mass transit fuels. I hope I'm wrong. But I'm not.

Re:Not whole energy budget, just stuff like vehicl

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Bingo. Its a source of continuous amazement to me how many slashdotters think that oil makes their computers go.

This is a patent troll.

[flayzernax]

They just want to re-lock the technology for another century. 1914, everyone should be doing it.

Not all that fungible.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Most of us understand that energy us fungible and don't always make proper distinctions for pedantic pricks.

Except it's NOT. Transforming energy from one form to another involves losses - often very substantial losses. And that's the whole point of this thread.

For a number of reasons, non-electric vehicles are limited mainly to heat engines driven by fuels liquid at weather-range temperatures and with a number of other limiting characteristics. Converting, say, electricity to a suitable liquid fuel would lose most of its energy. Going from biomass to gasoline and diesel fuel substitutes (which can use the legacy infrastructure of vehicles and fuel distribution) can be very efficient - especially with this development in the path to a diesel fuel.

This is nothing new.

[DrStoooopid]

There was a process that was used and they used switchgrass. I'm not impressed, (i.e. rehashed old technology that has already been talked about recently)

Re:Europe has 50 mpg turbo diesels, but in America

[DrStoooopid]

same thing with algae derived bio-diesel. You'll never see it happen, unless of course the oil companies control it. We have thousands of hectacres of unused land that would be perfect for bio-diesel 'reactors', and they'll either invoke the environmental issue, or "protection of habitat" clause to keep it from happening.

Baseload

[falconwolf]

Solar and wind and every other new-wave energy source is just a way to supplement base load. If you know anything about electricity generation, you should know that the world depends on base load energy: energy generated from reliable sources that accounts for like 70% of all energy usage, i.e. coal, gas and nuclear. Until we find a solution for base load energy like fusion or invent god-like batteries or power lines made of superconductors that cost $100 per mile, everything else is a pipe dream.

There already is a source for baseloads. Of course some are dirtier than others, but coal which is the dirtiest energy source can be dropped as a fuel. Natural gas can be used for baseloads, as can geothermal energy. And with a national smart grid while solar energy doesn't produce energy wind will somewhere, maybe even right next to a solar farm. But until energy storage technologies signficantly improve natural gas can be used, fazing out coal and nuclear power.

And as for nuclear power, in a free market it would not be used. Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies. People complain regulations raise the costs of nuclear power in the US. However the world leader in nuclear power is France and even in France government not businesses decide what's built.

"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

Falcon

Re:Fossil fuels stored many years of sunlight

[Pinky's Brain]

The process I'm talking about is electrocatalytic.

The US is sitting pretty good as far as solar is concerned (unlike say the EU). If you invest the fat bank account you will have enough income to afford to stay in the penthouse before the bank account runs dry.

Interesting but...

[darisd]

So my recent senior project was on the ABE process, but they introduced a twist here. Yes, I am a chemical engineer. Our challenge was to separate the butanol from the acetone and ethanol, then sell it to refiners to mix as an oxygenator to replace ethanol, which tends to separate from gasoline over long distances after mixing (butanol does not do this). The separations ended up being a significant portion of the energy budget for the plant (with some of the energy coming from firing your towers with ethanol and acetone). Doing some digging (I can't see their paper) it appears they are pulling volatiles off the beer and then, without further distillation, introducing the ABE mixture to the catalyst. In our analysis there was no way given current technologies you could profitably sell pure butanol at a price competitive with the going price of gasoline. However, this would not necessarily be the case here. Interesting. However, you can't get away from the problem with the process (and the bioethanol process). We were consuming massive amounts of corn to pull off production targets. And c. acetobutylicum can't act on cellulose: it needs starch. You need corn, sugarcane... and I am not seeing how ABE to diesel is any more efficient than the standard biodiesel process, which is full-scale these days. And you don't need thousands of pounds of palladium to pull off vegetable oil to biodiesel. Interesting academically. I call BS on it though.

"Soylent Green"

[falconwolf]

You mean green chips?

Falcon

the headline is wrong

[JBaustian]

If you read the sfgate article, it clearly says that this product would be a substitute for diesel.