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Scientists Create New Gasoline Substitute Out of Plants
destinyland writes "California scientists have just created a new biofuel using plants that burns just as well as a petroleum-based fuel. 'The discovery, published in the journal Nature, means corn, sugar cane, grasses and other fast-growing plants or trees, like eucalyptus, could be used to make the propellant, replacing oil,' writes the San Francisco Chronicle, and the researchers predict mass marketing of their product within 5 to 10 years. They created their fuel using a fermentation process that was first discovered in 1914, but which was then discontinued in 1965 when petroleum became the dominant source of fuel. The new fuel actually contains more energy per gallon than is currently contained in ethanol, and its potency can even be adjusted for summer or winter driving."
but can you use it as an excuse to invade?
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.
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?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Gasoline substitute....5 to 10 years out.....***puts on shades***...sounds like vaporware.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
According to the article, it will be ready for the market in five to ten years.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Hunger in poor countries is not a production problem quite as much as a distribution problem.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
... 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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. .... .. which is indicative of an estimate, not a fact
- How was the total US energy 'budget' calculated? Note the word 'budget' not 'usage'
Up to the industrial revolution, our main source of fuel used to be biomass: wood (charcoal). Keep in mind that this was when the population size and total energy use of western civilization were tiny by today's standards. Nevertheless, we managed to run out of wood.
Britain and Ireland were almost completely stripped of trees. Even today, the only trees you'll find older than the industrial revolution are in places that were some noble family's private hunting ground at the time. The eastern mediterranean was stripped of trees as far back as ancient times, and still hasn't recovered. In the low countries, after they ran out of wood, they started burning the soil (peat), turning their land into lakes, which they later had to drain to turn it back into land, which is why they now live below sea level. They did however make a fortune importing timber from the sparsely populated Baltic. Yes, wood had to come from as far as Russia and Finland, because western Europe had run out.
Believe it or not, burning biofuels was an environmental disaster, and switching to coal allowed forests and wildlife to recover.
Now, turning agricultural waste into fuel sounds like a good idea to me (that's what they do in Brazil with the leftovers from the sugar production), but when you're thinking of growing crops with the express purpose of making fuel, you have to consider the fact that modern, high-yield agriculture is effectively our way of using land to turn fossil fuel and sunlight into food. Tilling, sowing, fertilizing, pest control, harvesting, processing and transport together have to use substantially less energy than the fuel you are making will yield.
Clearly, land + fuel + sunlight -> food -> fuel -> energy is an inefficient process. Why not eliminate a couple of conversion steps from the process, and use solar cells to generate electricity? The process land + sunlight -> energy has fewer inefficient conversion steps.
Oh come on, Slashdot.
150 comments and not a mention of Triffid oil?
I'm disappointed. What has this site come to?
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.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.