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'Energy Beet' Power Is Coming To America
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Gosia Wonzniacka reports that farmers in Fresno County, California, supported by university experts and a $5 million state grant, are set to start construction of the nation's first commercial-scale bio-refinery to turn beets into biofuel with farmers saying the so-called 'energy beets' can deliver ethanol yields more than twice those of corn per acre because beets have a higher sugar content per ton than corn. 'We're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to shift our transportation fuels to a lower carbon content,' says Robert Weisenmiller. 'The beets have the potential to provide that.' Europe already has more than a dozen such plants, so the bio-refinery would resurrect a crop that has nearly vanished. The birthplace of the sugar beet industry, California once grew over 330,000 acres of the gnarly root vegetable (PDF), with 11 sugar mills processing the beets but as sugar prices collapsed, the mills shut down. So what's the difference between sugar beets and energy beets? To produce table sugar, producers are looking for sucrose, sucrose and more sucrose. Energy beets, on the other hand, contain multiple sugars, meaning sucrose as well as glucose, fructose and other minor sugars, called invert sugars. To create energy beet hybrids, plant breeders select for traits such as high sugar yield, not just sucrose production. America's first commercial energy beet bio-refinery will be capable of producing 40 million gallons of ethanol annually but the bio-refinery will also bring jobs and investment, putting about 80 beet growers and 35,000 acres back into production."
There's nothing good about energy beets. We already know we can use algae, and that it is superior in a variety of ways.
Do not cheer this. There is nothing good about this. It is merely less evil than using corn as a fuel feedstock.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...to grow energy instead of food. Which means the price of food rises and the poor riot as they cannot afford to buy food,
So immoral that even Al Gore rejected it, which is saying somethng.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I'm guessing hemp would require a lot less tending to get a similar amount. Instead of having to weed the beets you can just have a field of weed/s.
You will probably get modded into a smoking hole in the ground, but you are right.
Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is of course a good thing, and if we don't start developing alternative technologies now, then we'll be in trouble when it does run out. Although that date does seem to keep slipping, as discovery and extraction keeps improving.
However, mindlessly subsidising things which are patently never going to be competitive makes no sense, except to the politicians and 'green' shills who do not seem to count, or reason, the same as most logical and well-educated folk.
thought when making ethanol from corn, starches were enzymatically converted to sugar? But i suppose if that were true big starchy tubers which are also sweet like sweet potatoes would be ideal.
I still think celluloistic ethanol production is most promising as you can grow for the most biomass/m2. You could also select for plants which put certain nutrients into the soil and rotate them in schedule with other plants while getting paid by mass for the ethanol feedstock.
The summary (and probably the article as well) does not make this clear. Invert sugars are mixtures of glucose and fructose, generated by applying acids, heat or enzymes to sucrose.
So the sentence should be read "...meaning sucrose as well as (glucose, fructose and other minor sugars,) called invert sugars.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Hemp does not contain much free sugar. Almost all of it is converted into cellulose, which is still proving difficult to break down into sugars for conversion to fuels.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
"Can use it" and "are ready to use it on a massive scale" are two entirely different things. There's a ton of traditional farmers out there who could transition from corn to beets in a single season. Algae farmers... not so many.
Well, it's not great, but it is a crack in the monoculture-for-fuel mindset.
That being said, I don't know enough about beets to say whether it's much improvement over corn. They tout a doubled energy output, but without knowing the comparable energy, pesticide and water inputs it's a bit tough to determine whether there's any economic advantage, particularly after factoring in corn production subsidies.
Log in or piss off.
It's all a simple matter of area: With an electric vehicle my entire transportation energy usage can pretty much be covered with a small rooftop solar system. To do it with biofuels would require acres of space.
The problem is simple: Photosynthesis is just vastly less efficient than photo voltaic solar
Test your net with Netalyzr
Incorrect. We use beets to feed deer 'round here. Trust me, anything that's cheap enough to feed deer is cheap enough to convert into ethanol.
Note that it's a government grant, not private industry. This is basically political patronage; whatever people running it will be contributing heavily to whatever political party was responsible for the grant. If sugar beets were a viable fuel source someone would be doing it already.
This just shifts the problem from one of directly increasing world corn (and therefore food) prices by diverting corn production to fuel to one of indirectly increasing world food priced by diverting farmland from food production to fuel production.
The worst part is that large scale farming has a significant environmental impact in terms of pesticide and fertilizer use as well as runoff into waterways. We don't gain much benefit from carbon reductions and a lot of costs from the farming itself.
It's a dead end and everyone knows it. Political hypocrisy at it's finest.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
I clicked through almost expecting a picture of Dwight Schrute.
\\//_ Live long and prosper.
Water.
Sugar beet is less land demanding than corn, but has higher water needs.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The problem with corn ethanol isn't the diversion of farmland, it's that it's a completely artificial diversion. Corn is so subsidized no one knows how much it costs anywhere, and world food prices are creating local scarcity because no one can outcompete US government subsidized corn - so local farming never has any incentive to grow it or other staples, as opposed to cash crops (many of which are incredibly harmful to local soil ecology to do so).
World food prices need to be allowed to rise gradually so the local economies which are importing can transition to growing locally or, people with an actual competitive advantage can move in to drive them down in a non-artificial way. But playing games with how much corn there is predictably creates price shocks because technically there's enough product in the market place, it's just mysteriously not getting to the locals, yet simultaneously can't be expected to reliably stay high either.
Take control of the energy! 1. 2. 3!
"Can use it" and "are ready to use it on a massive scale" are two entirely different things.
That's true. Unfortunately for your argument, we've had this technology for over twenty years. We've had more than enough time to spin up. And the process should have been profitable at least since 2010, and how long does it take to dig some round trenches and line them with plastic, anyway?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Low net energy density by volume or weight; it grabs moisture from the air, but not in any controlled fashion; as a pretty good solvent, it's hard on a lot of plastics; ...
Instead of the sulfur-laden crap the petro-industry dumps on us as diesel fuel, how 'bout some high-quality bio-derived fuel, instead?
We should implement an open-fuel standard, requiring all new cars to be flex-fuel capable. That would break the monopoly of oil as a transportation fuel, bringing real competition for the first time in a century. More importantly, fully flex-fuel vehicles can run on methanol just as well as ethanol (or any mix of these and/or gasoline). Thus, fuel crops would not have to compete with food crops for agricultural resources, since methanol can be made from any type of biomass. This would also have the added benefit of boosting ag markets in developing countries and making them -- the whole world really -- less dependent on petroleum.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I would be interested in seeing more about fuel from algae, as for corn based, I know it is not a good thing. It makes no sense and under no circumstance will it ever become a viable solution. It's good to see that this uses otherwise wasted land, but can it be scaled. If they could find a plant species to use that would grow in land that has no vegetation whatsoever like maybe desert. Then it might make sense. But you would still have the problem with supplying it with water which is becoming ever an increasing precious substance. What's the difference using beats in this respect? I venture none. As for algae, doesn't one run into the same problem, what's the difference? Anyone? Let's invest as heavily in Air Carbon Capture by recycling plastics waste to pay for it and in development of generation IV nuclear reactors based on methods that don't use lot's of Uranium (as in non spent Uranium. Spent Uranium is O.K. since those types of reactors get rid of the long term waste. If we invested in generation IV nuclear reactors, we could convert all our coal plants for 1.6 Trillion in capital cost..
Are they going to water them with Brawndo?
It's got what plants crave!
If they could find a plant species to use that would grow in land that has no vegetation whatsoever like maybe desert. Then it might make sense.
It's called algae.
But you would still have the problem with supplying it with water which is becoming ever an increasing precious substance.
Wrong. Clean water is an increasingly precious substance. Water is plentiful. Algae doesn't care if it's salt or fresh, clean or dirty. Leave it lying and an algae which can live in it will come along and colonize it.
What's the difference using beats in this respect?
If you use beats, you will also need lyrics.
I venture none.
That's because you don't know what you are talking about.
As for algae, doesn't one run into the same problem, what's the difference?
If you read the PDF I linked at the top of this thread, you would know the answer. Please don't attempt to contribute to a conversation until you have something to contribute. Or, short form: Pipe down, son, the adults are talking.
Let's invest as heavily in Air Carbon Capture by recycling plastics waste to pay for it
Recycling plastics waste does not make money. Also, where do you think the carbon in algae comes from, the moon?
and in development of generation IV nuclear reactors
There are many technical hurdles between now and a future in which such a reactor would be a suitable replacement for transportation fuel. But we can use algae as a feedstock for making green diesel, a direct 1:1 replacement for petrodiesel in literally every way, but with lesser emissions of all kinds; or for making butanol, a direct 1:1 replacement for gasoline in literally every way, but with lesser emissions of all kinds. We can do this with the technology of over twenty years ago, and use the fuels directly in our existing vehicles to make them carbon-neutral. We can then save more of our oil for making plastics and lubricants, which are substantially more difficult to make out of other sources because so much of the work has been done for us.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sugar beet will work. There is no working algae biofuel plant. Sure it is not optimal because you are using top soil, but better than corn, and who knows, break the corn monopoly enough and you change metnality / stop with the stupid sugar embargo.
The price of food will rise and aquifers are being mined faster than they can be replenished.
http://www.calwatercrisis.org/problem.htm
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
We should implement an open-fuel standard, requiring all new cars to be flex-fuel capable
Most new cars are flex-fuel capable already. Most diesels will run on B100 and all gassers will run on Butanol, which we are not permitted to buy because BP and DuPont's shell company Butamax has not yet figured out how to legislate all competition out of the market. There is nothing good about mass-market ethanol fuel. I'm told that if you can figure out the magical document number, our own government will sell you a booklet explaining how to produce ethanol from waste with a solar still, and that this used to be a fairly common thing to do on the farm in order to power the family tractor. That's almost the only good example of ethanol as a fuel, because the energy going into the process (which is substantial!) is mostly solar, and because the fuel is being produced from a waste product, and finally because the fuel is used on-site.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
ALL biofuels are inefficient solar energy collectors whose only advantage is that their output is directly chemical. Even if it took no petroleum based, petroleum transported fertilizer to grow sugar beets in quantity, it still takes land, water and sunlight away from other food crops and the natural ecology, on which we will be dependent for the foreseeable future.
Want to keep running a large scale industrial civilization? Forget biofuels. The unpleasant reality is that in the long run, it's thorium nuclear, space based solar, or nothing much, and civilization as we know it now, contracts contracts significantly, along with the world's population.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Since it is supported by university scientists it will not be profitable and will be bankrupt in 3 years or less.
JAM
I'm certainly not a big fan of using food crops for alcohol production, but Brazil seems to be quite successful at sustainably producing alcohol fuel from sugar cane. (Yeah, you'll probably blast me for being ignorant about some aspect of Brazilian agri-biz.) Sugar cane also has the added benefit of being able to burn the waste product as a fuel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
And ordinarily I'd say that (our) government should not be in the business of subsidizing any particular fuel or method of producing it. However, we're just too big and the oil industry has such a tight stranglehold on distribution, we need a way to bootstrap wholesale distribution of alternative fuels and production of cars that can use them.I would (grudgingly) consent to government involvement to achieve that, with a built-in plan to disengage once the markets become self sustaining.
if we don't start developing alternative technologies now, then we'll be in trouble when it does run out
Meh. We've obviously got enough left for quite a while. It might get expensive, though that will provide plenty of incentive to find new sources of energy. Pork barrel grants are not the solution; economically viable technologies are. Too bad the former does not produce the latter.
Really ?
My VW TDI can run on alcohol ? That is kind of news to me. Do you mind pointing out ANY reference to that. The production of biodiesel actually has a alcohol removal process to get rid of ethanol or methanol. I believe you are mis-informed.
Ethanol is to gasoline as sawdust is to hot dogs.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
I'm sure the subsidy balance will be tilted in favor of growers, but what's the energy balance? Is there a significant favorable energy balance?
I would propose that controls be put in place that would make it illegal to use any land that has produced food crops to produce fuel crops. Good farm land is being lost to urban sprawl and other uses as it is. We do not need to destroy the land that feeds us. The worst of this tragedy has occurred in south Florida which is the only place inside the continental US that can raise many crops in the winter months. Instead of preservation growth has stolen the farm lands and covered them with suburbs and highways. Sugar cane is a huge crop here and I wonder what percentage of cane is being grown for fuel.
AFAIK, currently some cars are flex-fuel, but not all, and on many it's optional (plus, not all can handle methanol). If I were buying a car today, I'd certainly go with a fully flex-capable one (since I can't afford a Tesla). Last time I checked, the bulk price of methanol was about $1.50/gal, and as you note, it can be made "at home" from a wide variety of feedstocks... yard waste, for example.
The jump from ethanol to methanol is important because it takes fuel out of competition with food. Ethanol (at the moment) is hard to make from anything that doesn't contain starch or sugar, whereas methanol can be made from sawdust, or just about anything almost.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Buy! Buy! Buy!!!
What concerns me is the effect of bio-fuel on the rate of phosphorus consumption, farming for inefficient energy production while depleting the stocks of a resource which is not quickly renewable may not be the correct call. Also, farming tends to have negative impacts on the surrounding watershed and bodies of water unless fertilized with extreme care. As others have mentioned, water consumption is a other issue. This does not seem like a wise course of action.
From the summary: "Europe already has more than a dozen such plants". So maybe it is viable.
In any case your argument suggests that anything that isn't currently being done isn't viable. So any sort of progress is never possible.
...that store solar energy. There is inefficiency and energy loss at every step of harnessing their energy. TIme to cut out the middle men?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
With apologies to the aptly named Go-Gos
See the people driving down the street
Fall in line just waiting for their beet
They don't know where they wanna go
But they're in the fill-up line
They got the beet
They got the beet
Yeah
They got the beet
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You should read my articles before you point me out for not reading yours. The reason I didn't read your article is it keeps crashing my chrome browser. Also as far as algae, I said nothing about algae, I posed it as a question. It is interesting about algae being able to use any type of water but is it a viable solution right now? Why are we not using it? In the case of LFTR reactors they are not being used today because of the reasons I outlined here: Ulterior Motives. I would be interested in seeing more about the algae solution. Is it being tested? Is it actually producing fuel? What's the power density of the fuel? The CO2 output of the fuel per gallon? Please re-post your your well thought out document in HTML please so I can read it. You stated, "Recycling plastics waste does not make money. Also, where do you think the carbon in algae comes from, the moon?" You are wrong plastic waste recycling can supply us with 74 billion dollars per year in gas at today's prices ( By the way no one is paying me to promote this solution.) With the cost of recycling in USA we would earn 147.16 billion in 10 years. That assumes a life time of the recycling plants of 10 years which is an extremely conservative estimate and is probably closer to 30 years. You said, "There are many technical hurdles between now and a future in which such a reactor would be a suitable replacement for transportation fuel. " Those hurdles are no greater than the hurdles that the US undertook in creating an atomic bomb, or in landing on the moon. With a Manhattan style project which originally took 4 years in the 1940's we could overcome the technical hurdles. Also it isn't a LFTR type of Thorium reactor, but India will have their first 500 MWe plant running in 2013! Six more will follow in the next few years that are meant for commercial use. If India can do it then why can't the US do it? You said, "If you use beats, you will also need lyrics." Very witty, it seems you pay more attention to spelling than substance. I would suggest you read my articles before you judge them as being wrong unlike your article it doesn't crash ones browser to read. (By the way I wouldn't point this out except your being so nasty.) I include all the math necessary to come to my conclusions in my article. I guess it's easier to point out spelling mistakes than it is to read a mathematical analysis of substance. Generation IV reactors can provide the whole US economy with an energy solution for 1000 years. That's every last Watt of power. Can algae do the same? By the way nothing in my first statement statement indicated that there was a reason to not use algae as a solution. On the contrary I feel we should use almost all forms of alternative energy sources. With the exclusion of the use of ethanol. I didn't bother pointing out that your document crashes my browser, I guess I should have pointed that out originally but I assumed it was my browser that had the problem and just posed the questions instead.
From the summary: "Europe already has more than a dozen such plants". So maybe it is viable.
European beet farmers are heavily subsidized. So Europe is an example of beet-energy not being viable.
In any case your argument suggests that anything that isn't currently being done isn't viable. So any sort of progress is never possible.
We need to try new things. But we also need to not squander resources on dead ends. Beet ethanol is not as stupid as corn ethanol, but it is still stupid. If we were serious about ethanol as a fuel (rather than as a source of subsidies for special interests) we would eliminate the prohibitive tariffs on Brazilian cane ethanol.
I'm all for reducing^Wgetting rid of protectionist subsidies. Problem is, of course, that but a few, even just one large enough party has to start and everyone follows suit for fear of being left bereft of local producers because they weren't subsidised enough.
Also, not happy with using things we could be eating to generate energy. Corn is just silly, inasmuch that ethanol-for-energy from it being economic illustrates your point. Purpose-picked and -bred crops are better, but still not ideal.
Much rather I'd try, oh, taking PV or some other collection mechanism to a desert, and somehow use it to provide shade and moisture retention for crops that couldn't otherwise grow there, as well as for its energy collection properties.
Tangentially related is the practice of getting fertiliser from faraway, using it locally, then not transporting the waste that normally would be eventually turned into new fertiliser back. That is a problem that ultimately results in exhausted land and then into more destruction of rainforest for more farmland to exhaust. Not the only factor, but still.
If we'd take out all subsidies, including indirect ones (say on fuel), we might find that prices change but not necessarily up the cost of living. The subsidies are paid for by taxpayers, so the net effect over the total population is going to be a small drop due to less overhead (ideally), even if individual food prices will be higher. What it'd do for the individual? Maybe it'll end up promoting a change in lifestyle, reducing obesity, who knows?
While the exhaustion date keeps slipping, the problem is what's important to our society as it stands today is not the availability of oil, but the availability of cheap oil. The cheap oil is nearly gone, and we're going to have a whole lot of trouble anyway since we're going to have to readjust to a world where energy isn't cheap, at least in the medium term.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You are right. One can make methanol from anything, including coal and gas. So we will never run out of liquid fuel. For example, South Africa has been synthesizing fuel from coal on a massive scale since the 1950s.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Really ?
My VW TDI can run on alcohol ?
You don't have a VW TDI, because you don't exist. You're a figment of your own imagination. If you existed, surely you would have logged in.
Also, what I'm talking about is not running on ethanol. What I'm saying for people like you who disingenuously "fail" to understand what I'm saying, is that diesels are already multifuel vehicles.
With that said, do a little research. By raising compression and altering injection, diesels can be run on E95. Classic IDIs usually have the compression already, but altering their timing and other injection characteristics is often a hassle.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
All moving to biofuels does is destroy the large underground lake called the ogalala that the midwest sits on. Once gone it is hello dustbowl 2.
You should read my articles before you point me out for not reading yours. The reason I didn't read your article is it keeps crashing my chrome browser.
The "article" is a bog-standard PDF which represents a government report. If it is crashing your Chrome browser, then your Chrome browser is shit.
It is interesting about algae being able to use any type of water but is it a viable solution right now? Why are we not using it?
It is a viable solution right now. We are not using it because it is a viable solution right now. You would need BLM land to do it. You can strip mine for coal or drill for oil in BLM land but solar projects have been repeatedly stalled while asking for approval, just try making biofuel from algae and taking a gigantic shit on Big Oil in the process and see how far you get. You're like a child.
You stated, "Recycling plastics waste does not make money. Also, where do you think the carbon in algae comes from, the moon?" You are wrong plastic waste recycling can supply us with 74 billion dollars per year in gas at today's prices
It is more energy-intensive to recycle plastics than to make virgin plastics, which is why we're not doing it. I met a guy who invented a process for air-testing bottles made from recycled plastics, pretty straightforward but hey, I didn't do it. Anyway the truth is that the slightest contamination with other plastics will cause pinholing so recycled bottles are more expensive in every way. Consequently they are often collected, separated, and landfilled in the hope that some future generation will come up with a cost-effective means of recycling them.
ou said, "There are many technical hurdles between now and a future in which such a reactor would be a suitable replacement for transportation fuel. " Those hurdles are no greater than the hurdles that the US undertook in creating an atomic bomb, or in landing on the moon.
We would have to replace all of our cars, since retrofits are not practical and because the automakers have too much hold on politics and would never permit it.
You said, "If you use beats, you will also need lyrics." Very witty, it seems you pay more attention to spelling than substance.
I also care more about formatting. I'm just picking out anything that jumps out at me from your wall of text. If you can't use HTML tags, at least switch over to plain text mode and hit enter twice every once in a while, huh?
I would suggest you read my articles before you judge them as being wrong unlike your article it doesn't crash ones browser to read. (By the way I wouldn't point this out except your being so nasty.)
My being nasty is completely orthogonal to your shit browser.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And oil is probably also.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Well, what I read that I like is over 1000 gallons of ethanol produced per acre-year. Since my family ethanol/gasoline needs are approximately 1000 gallons per year, that means that even evil energy beet fuel production only needs one acre of farm land to produce our energy needs, half that if we update our vehicles to higher efficiency ones. This is, of course, ignoring the cost of production issues.
Now, with nearly 100 million families of four (equivalent, also consider that we might be below average in our fuel consumption) in the U.S. - 100 million acres is a lot of farmland - a bit over 10%, but it wouldn't be a bad transition from oil.
Maybe algae energy is better, certainly is if it can be done on marginal lands, but either way, I'm liking the biofuel implications here.
Without the subsidies, what will they grow? hemp?
we've had this technology for over twenty years.
Algae based fuel has been "just around the corner" for a lot longer than twenty years. I first read about in the 1970s, and even then it wasn't a new idea. Algae energy is like fusion energy: it has huge potential, but also huge obstacles, and those obstacles have not been surmounted even after decades of effort.
Much rather I'd try, oh, taking PV or some other collection mechanism to a desert, and somehow use it to provide shade and moisture retention for crops that couldn't otherwise grow there, as well as for its energy collection properties.
That is precisely what I propose, after others. Read the report linked at the top of this thread! You pump dirty water into the desert, you grow algae on it thus capturing solar energy and carbon as well as nitrates and then you make biofuel, probably using PV for pumps and centrifuges and a combination of solar water heat and direct solar thermal for heating. Waste water is dumped into the desert, eventually replenishing aquifers. Waste material can be shipped out as fertilizer, or used on-site as fertilizer for land reclamation. You can also site the algae production facilities near coal and oil plants and use them as part of a CO2 capture strategy which can reclaim up to 80% of such emissions, increasing algae production in the process. We The People have already paid for the development of many technologies which can benefit us in this fashion if we only demonstrate the wisdom to accept them and the will to make them happen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Algae energy is like fusion energy: it has huge potential, but also huge obstacles, and those obstacles have not been surmounted even after decades of effort.
Well, no. Algae energy is like reprocessing nuclear fuel and using it again in fission reactors. The parallels are clear: in one case we capture CO2 and reuse it again, having rebuilt the bonds we break with the power of sunlight, while in the other case we reprocess the fuel and use it again. Either way we are diminishing waste. And the other parallel, of course, is that the restrictions are political. We know how to do these things already, at least in broad strokes. The technical hurdles are insignificant compared to the political ones.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You mean like eating the beets and then walking?
I believe you are right. People often forget about one of the big driving factors in human civilization: Necessity is the mother of invention.
Where we stand right now is that the necessity to replace fossil fuels does not outweigh costs of alternative energy sources. We will not "be in trouble when it does run out" because fossil fuels will not run out like a tank on empty. They will gradually become less economical and gradually be replaced by newer, more economical alternative sources.
without knowing the comparable energy, pesticide and water inputs it's a bit tough to determine whether there's any economic advantage
Here's a study from 2008 which gives that very information.
"From extensive analysis holding all things equal between the feedstocks, sugar beets is a much more efficient feedstock. Sugar beet ethanol loses only 51.1% of the energy it provides, whereas corn loses 90.35% of the energy in the production of the ethanol."
Since my family ethanol/gasoline needs are approximately 1000 gallons per year, that means that even evil energy beet fuel production only needs one acre of farm land to produce our energy needs,
It doesn't work that way. Even it it's more energy-positive than corn into ethanol, it's still going to require a bunch of energy input in the form of oil that is completely unnecessary while using algae.
Maybe algae energy is better, certainly is if it can be done on marginal lands,
Not only can it be done anywhere you can scrape a flat spot (with decent insolation, anyway) but it can be done with water unsuitable for growing beets even as a feedstock, e.g. brackish or outright sea-salty water. Indeed, it will be one of the few things we can grow once, they're done using the topsoil up by growing fuel feedstocks with petrochemicals.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It takes a huge amount of energy to boil sugar out of beets.
Is this a big sucking sound from big sugar?
See brazil with sugar cane.
The real problem with ethanol was never the fact that it was a bad fuel, but that the agriculture lobby got subsides enabled for it AND got mandates in at least ag states that retail fuel be blended with a certain percentage of it.
This both made it artificially cheap for producers, who could pay closer to market costs for corn, thus encouraging farmers to grown more corn (and widen the political support for subsidies) AND create an artificial demand for it, thus creating an artificial floor for pricing.
Nothing distorts an economy like subsidizing production and mandating consumption.
I think biofuels probably have a place in the upcoming 100 years, but the only thing that should be subsidized is research and small-scale trials. The technologies and systems that get commercialized should happen because they're independently viable from a cost/use perspective, not because ADM, the Farm Bureau and ag state Senators benefit from it.
Personally, I'd like to see some kind of synergy between wind power, hydrogen and biofuels. Wind is common in ag areas (where the bio-inputs are, including ag waste which is marginal for yield if a lot of shipping is involved), wind produces a surplus the grid can't always use, biofuel energy balance could be more positive if some of the energy inputs were "free" (surplus wind's electricity or hydrogen produced from its electricity).
At a minimum we could be talking about cutting the energy inputs for food production and a more localized and sustainable energy cycle.
hemp ethanol is also better than corn.
hemp seed is very nutritious.
hemp fields would piss off the illegal MJ growers in the area.
Algea to biodiesel isn't a complete answer, while algea provides copius amounts of lipids for conversion to FFA, Free Fatty Acids, you still an alcohol like methanol (preferable) or ethanol to complete the process. So where do you get the methanol? Evil techniques like Pyrolysis of bio-material, and Petro-chemical convertion. Next problem is your going to have trouble getting most cars to run well on more than 10% biodiesel because most cars run on gasoline! To get over that you have to convince all the "green-in-theory" soccer moms to become "green-in-reality" soccer moms and buy some "stinky" diesel SUV's; good luck with that.
"Topsoil-based fuels are wrongheaded in every way", not so, beets require soils that are unsuitable for less robust crops, FTA "the beets are an ideal crop: they grow in poor and salty soils, and can use lesser-quality water," furthermore
when beets are harvested, these long tap-roots often remain in the ground, opening deep channels through any hardpan to alow better drainage into subsoil aquafers, bringing plants nutrients and minerals from the deep subsoils and leaving necessary organic material which will produce a deepening of the top-soil. Additionally the top growth is left on the fields providing compost. Sure you can't monoculture beets for long (like anything else), but as part of a crop rotation with science based fertilization it has positive effects on the soil, processing the beets is pretty stinky tho.
Your going to get people to buy flex-fuel vehicles running sugar-beet based E85 a long time before your going to convert our fleet to diesel vehicles running on biodiesel.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Please provide a link for that US government subsidized corn production, I know a lot of farmers around here who would like to get them some of that money.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
End sugar import quotas we could buy all the sugar cane we needed for ethanol from carribean nations and have better coca-cola to boot.
The technical hurdles are insignificant compared to the political ones.
Please enlighten me: What political hurdles are keeping you from growing algae, extracting the oil, and selling it as bio-diesel? I love a good conspiracy theory, so I can't wait to hear about the jack booted, goose stepping algae police kicking in your door and arresting you for unauthorized fuel production.
irrigation would have not prevented the dustbowl; tillage practices and extreme extended drought caused that. The most likely effect of stopping the use of the Ogalala for irrigation would be the return of a lot of acres to wheat production.
And how does the whole equation look compared to solar power? Though electricity may be harder to store than beets or etanol =P
The soil erode less and hold more water with different kinds of roots and trees.
we're going to have a whole lot of trouble anyway since we're going to have to readjust to a world where energy isn't cheap*, at least in the medium term.
* For various definitions of cheap
I said it 10 years ago, I said it 5 years ago, and I'll say it again. If the price of oil rises *gradually* (over a period of years), you will not see doom-and-gloom happen. There will be market shifts, there will be many things that become more expensive or no longer cost-effective.
But if the rise in prices is spread across multiple years or decades, then people have time to adjust habits, purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles / houses / appliances, develop new energy technologies, build new alternative energy facilities, go after the more expensive oil fields, etc.
Frankly, I worry more about access to fresh water in the next 20 years then I do about the price of oil.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
True enough, but one confounding factor is this run up to Homo Industrialis has relied on cheap energy. There will ALWAYS be energy sources - at a cost. If costs rise too quickly, they can take the economy with it (since it's basically a giant Ponzi scheme). How to balance energy costs and supplies in the long run is one of the big questions.
And, of course, there is Anthropogenic Global Warming caused, in part, by these same fuels.
It's complicated.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So no, beet farms, algae, corn ethanol etc..are not going to replace fossil fuels nor are thorium fission reactors (with nuclear waste) going to replace fossil fuels. Only fusion will do that. And there are various methods to achieve it beyond the wasteful tokamak that can achieve it, such as the Polywell which is showing far more promise than the previous methods mentioned.
I'm certainly not a big fan of using food crops for alcohol production, but Brazil seems to be quite successful at sustainably producing alcohol fuel from sugar cane. (Yeah, you'll probably blast me for being ignorant about some aspect of Brazilian agri-biz.
And here is your answer: Brazilian sugar beet production is based on slash and burn of the Amazon. It is as sustainable as a smile on Larry Ellison's face and about as real.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Please enlighten me: What political hurdles are keeping you from growing algae, extracting the oil, and selling it as bio-diesel?
Available land and permitting. You can get permits to strip-mine for coal, clear-cut for timber, or drill for oil on BLM land. Now, go thee forth and try to get a permit to grow algae, and let me know how it works out for you. I can tell you how the story will end, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"There's nothing good about energy beets. We already know we can use algae, and that it is superior in a variety of ways.
Do not cheer this. There is nothing good about this. It is merely less evil than using corn as a fuel feedstock."
We already know how to make even more "biofuel" -- fuel-grade oil -- from things such as corn STALKS than from the corn itself. There are already plants in operation. They can convert almost anything organic. They can also use chicken parts in the same factories (although different sources have to be run in different batches to tune the process).
I agree. This is just turning another food crop into fuel, at the expense of food prices. Bad idea. It is merely less evil than the other.
Available land and permitting.
Are you serious? You actually believe that a permit is required to grow algae? You should see my neighbor's swimming pool. The algae gestapo has never arrested him.
Ahh ... I see now. The government will stop you from growing algae on property that you do not own . Wow, that is a real show stopper. Hmmm ... if only there was a way around it somehow. Hey!!! What if you grow algae on your own property!!! Boy, I bet nobody ever thought of that! Now that this hurdle is overcome, we should see algae oil on the market in a few weeks, and all the big oil companies will be bankrupt shortly after that.
Hence: 'We're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to shift our transportation fuels to a lower carbon content,' says Robert Weisenmiller." means he's a fucking idiot.
And so are most of the Slashdot crowd, who lap this 'global warming' bullshit up.
www.climatedepot.com
And here is your answer: Brazilian sugar beet production ...
Brazilian Sugar Beet production?
..is based on slash and burn of the Amazon...
I'm no authority, but it was my understanding that most of the slash-and-burn in the Amazon was being done by subsistence farmers who are homesteading the Pampas.
... It is as sustainable as a smile on Larry Ellison's face and about as real.
Clearly you've got a jones about a few things. Not sure it gives you much credibility. Not in my book anyway.
The elephant in the room is efficiency. For example, if we increased our efficiency 2X then our energy sources would go twice as far. Increasing efficiency would mean changing our lifestyles to consume less.
Changing lifestyles for greater efficiency would include:
Turn the AC a few degrees more toward the ambient temps.
Ride a bike or walk vs drive a 2 ton car.
Public transportation such as trains or buses.
Drive a car that gets 50+MPG vs 25MPG.
Urban planning for reducing the distance between work and home.
Energy efficiency is the first thing we should evaluate and fix - not the energy sources. Its disturbing how we ignore the affect of our glutenous lifestyle when discussing energy and its a major component.
new letter/phrase: hex-u means "www"
Ahh ... I see now. The government will stop you from growing algae on property that you do not own . Wow, that is a real show stopper. Hmmm ... if only there was a way around it somehow. Hey!!! What if you grow algae on your own property!!!
As soon as you can explain why it's in the public interest to permit coal mining and clear cutting and why it's not in the public interest to permit algae farming, you'll have a point. Until then, why don't you go play with something sharp?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And how does the whole equation look compared to solar power?
The "whole equation" includes replacing all the gasoline- and diesel-burning vehicles with electric ones, and upgrading the electrical infrastructure to match. While this is a desirable goal in the long term, it is not something which can reasonably be accomplished as quickly as producing more biodiesel and transporting it with the existing transportation infrastructure.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ethanol causes expensive problems in fuel systems.
This is all about profiteering, not about what makes sense
from an environmental standpoint.
Algea to biodiesel isn't a complete answer,
Right, you also need Algae into butanol.
The rest of your comment is based on a straw man (when did I say algae into biodiesel was a complete answer?) and thus can safely be ignored.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would much rather see electric cars that have a standard charger and can charge while driving. Yep. I said charge while driving. Let me have an electric car that I can plug into my home with PV on the roof for my day to day under 30 mile a day driving. then let me hook a small trailer with a generator to my car to do my occasional 200+ mile trips. Since it would just be a generator, I could get a trailer that used anything that could produce electricity. Gas, diesel, ethanol, propane, natural gas, hamsters, small children chained to the wheel of pain... You name it. It becomes an any-fuel vehicle.
Fusion also leaves some awfully radioactive byproducts. I'm holding out for rainbow unicorns who voluntarily run in a giant wheel, powering all the dynamos of industry. Wouldn't that obviously be better?
This really reminds me of the 1991 movie where Billy Dee Williams, Dom DeLuise, and Milton Berle starred in “Driving Me Crazy,” about an East German inventor who defects to America and tries to market a turnip-powered Trabant. So all they have to do is figure out how to cut out the middle-man and run the car on raw Energy Beets instead of refined Ethanol!
I've been around /. for a while now, but this post is by far the most unique I've seen. It's one thing to post a 100-word troll or link to something obscene, but this is a whole new class of crazy. It would have taken him a solid hour of typing at 60wpm without a single pause or break... and with that many links and perpetual font/style changes, he obviously spent another hour or so at minimum, just setting it up. This dude is like some B-movies from the 80's; it's one thing to be 'bad', it's another thing to be so 'bad' that you're actually entertaining to watch. Many have tried, but few achieve the greatness of this AC.
My hat's off to you, crazy man.
It's still ethanol. It still damages car and truck engines, and it still isn't efficient as real gasoline.
Just watch a movie documentary "King Corn".
diesels are already multifuel vehicles
And thus you show that you missed my point entirely. When you pass a universal standard on new car sales, you effectively guarantee a market for alternative fuels, and that's when your neighborhood gas station decides to put in a 100% methanol pump, because they know that at least all new car sales will be flex-fuel.
You can talk all day about how many cars are available with a flex-fuel option, but until it's the standard, there won't be widespread adoption among fuel vendors. That is the key element that makes it possible to "flip" the market and destroy the monopoly of oil.
We (the USA) currently spend about $400bn/yr on oil imports. We have plenty of "extra" space to grow the necessary non-food crops for this purpose. Anyone who is interested in reducing our economic losses would be well advised to start with this obvious trade imbalance.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Hopefully something directly from the USDA will suffice:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/policy.aspx#.UU9Txb-9LTo
Not the same thing. Focus.
The raw materials occur in particular places, i.e. it only makes sense to place a coal mine where there is coal. The algae grower is free to chose where to set up from a variety of locations.
"Well, it's not great, but it is a crack in the monoculture-for-fuel mindset."
If you define "monoculture" as "field full of corn" then yes. If you define monoculture as "The cultivation of a single crop in a given area," like, well, the dictionary, then growing several sections of these "energy beets" will be a monoculture as well.
This. Hell, the trailer could just haul a big extended battery, too.
You only wanted a link, right? OK
http://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=corn
It's not controversial at all. If you can find the right lines in the USDA budget (it's a big pdf) you can also see the numbers in black and white.
I also want to know what the energy out for energy in is. Corn based ethanol consumes more fuel than i t produces.AND it uses up valuable fertilizers like potassium and phophate. Those are in more seriously short supply than the fossil fuels.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
Note that it's a government grant, not private industry. This is basically political patronage; whatever people running it will be contributing heavily to whatever political party was responsible for the grant... Political hypocrisy at it's finest.
You are too cynical. The idea is to fund basic research to see if it can be made to work. Even algae is still a net loss in energy. Attempting commercial scale is not necessarilly a waste of money, often that is where many of the problems are. Once the concept is essentially proven, I expect private industry to get involved. Do you really expect private industry to invest in high risk R&D?
Biodiesel != Ethanol. ... not alcohols.
Biodiesel contains oils, like rapseed oil
And no, as others argued and far more others pointed half assed out: a diesel engine (unaltered) can not run on alcohols.
That does not make sense, as Butanolis an alcohol and algae produce oils ... you can mix them and burn it in a lamp, but likely not in a car engine.
an idea so good we need to steal money to pay for it.
More crony capitalism! Yay!
The one bit of good news on the biofuels front has been the end of the US tariff on Brazilian sugar ethanol, which will displace some corn ethanol grown in the US.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324677204578185750536400698.html
And aspartame is Organic too!
No really it is!
More like hello Sahara desert #2. Same thing.
Beets, really?
And thus you show that you missed my point entirely. When you pass a universal standard on new car sales, you effectively guarantee a market for alternative fuels, and that's when your neighborhood gas station decides to put in a 100% methanol pump, because they know that at least all new car sales will be flex-fuel.
No, you missed the point entirely. Ethanol is a shitty motor fuel for a broad variety of reasons. We have long had multifuel technology not based on bullshit, and its name is diesel. Any vehicle with viton or Buna-L seals should be able to run on any proportion of biodiesel, which should be most of them by now. No special tuning, tinkering, or sensors required.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We've been "using up the topsoil" for hundreds of years, thousands in Europe... I question what will happen when cheap phosphate is gone, but there will be "dirt farming" for some time to come, whether or not some of the output is used for fuel.
Personally, I thought the time to get off fossil fuel was when tar-sands became economically feasible, whether that's transition to sugar beets, rapeseed oils, or algae... We'd probably be best off developing a mix, instead of a single dominant tech selected based on current economics.
The raw materials occur in particular places, i.e. it only makes sense to place a coal mine where there is coal.
And it only makes sense to place an algae farm where the required resources exist, e.g. unused flat land and sunshine. The BLM land belongs to The People, in theory, but in practice the rights to use it are granted to corporations (and some small ranchers, driving cattle) and people who actually live in it on isolated pieces of private property have regularly been turned away from the routes to their homes by US Forest Service employees citing ongoing "Exercises" and other specious bullshit. These uses are justified by claiming that the activity is in the public interest, as if clear-cutting and strip-mining fit that description. If those things are valid in BLM land, then there is no reasonable basis on which to claim that algae farming is not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
AFAIK, currently some cars are flex-fuel, but not all, and on many it's optional
That is only true if you define flex-fuel to mean "capable of running on E85" which is a deliberate falsehood perpetrated by the auto industry and Big Oil. Butanol is a 1:1 replacement for gasoline which can be mixed with gasoline to any proportion, which can be made by bacteria from literally any organic material. Green diesel is a 1:1 replacement for diesel fuel which can be mixed with diesel to any proportion, which can be made by cracking lipids in a fractional column in the same fashion as distillation of crude to make petrochemical diesel. (It is a distinct product from biodiesel, and it has better cold-weather characteristics.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can run straight butanol in engines designed for gasoline without problems, it's plausable that butanol could confuse the sensors in flex-fuel vehicle, if any gear-heads know, feel free to chime in.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Let them drink coke.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/Why-are-we-not-Drowning-in-Algae-Biofuel.html
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I've got a standard reply to people who ask whether I believe that our use of fossil fuels is causing climate change, and whether pollution taxes or carbon prices are the answer.
"It doesn't matter so much - fossil fuels ARE a finite resource, and it makes sense to develop sensible alternatives while oil is still cheap, e.g. we can afford to build PV panel factories with cheap energy (electricity, transportation), and transport the PV panels to our homes with cheap fuel. Once the oil becomes expensive, "the market" will become very selective about what the oil gets used for.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
You can't grow farm crops in California without having to talk about water usage. How do "energy beets" compare with corn? They can probably get by with less fertilizer (which is one of the things that make corn-based ethanol a ridiculous fuel source, because producing artificial fertilizers uses a lot of energy.)
And you can't talk about either water usage in California or corn farming in the Midwest without talking about Federal subsidies, because both are heavily subsidized agribusinesses that are heavily tied into politics.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That is not the point. It is only possible to mine coal or extract oil from land that has coal underneath it. What is it about BLM land that makes it more suitable than other land to grow algae for the purpose of creating bio-fuel?
The argument about whether or not the government should allow coal mining and oil drilling on federal lands is completely different from the argument that algae will only become a viable fuel source when someone is allowed to grow it for that purpose on government land. If algae is a viable source of fuel, why is no one using their own land to produce it in quantity?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I wish you gave a reason rather than saying another is superior claiming we already know how to use it. Everything I read on algae is promising but there are issues. It has a tough cell wall which makes it tricky to extract sugars and oils efficiently. Algae has one of the biggest potentials and it can be fed off waste and CO2 but it's still a ways off. We have a lot of experience with alcohol production and beets are an excellent source. They are on pare with sugar cane but don't require the tropical climate. They don't need the intense fertilizers corn does and they even do well in poor soil. They grow well in northern states where other sugar crops do poorly. I hate to break it to you but "less evil" is the best we will ever do. Non evil is living like the native americans and that ain't happening. I dare you to name one energy source without a downside? Other than solar ovens and grinding grain with a mechanical windmill there's always a price. Solar panels are often attacked for the toxics used in their making and even electric windmills have that issue. Most of Slashdot see nuclear as relatively benign but history says otherwise. Nuclear has resulted in massive pollution as have oil and coal. Hydroelectric can have a devastating affect on the environment. Grown organically, and I don't mean hype organic, restoring the soil each season with mulch and rock dust for trace minerals organic, sugar beets can be grown indefinitely unlike most other current sources of energy, especially corn based biofuels. And no we can't replace oil with beet sugar, god I'm sick of that argument. It's the couch potato's argument that if one energy source can't replace oil it must be abandoned. Depending on one source is what got us into this mess! The real solution is algae, beet, recycled cooking oil, plant based oils, Christ soylent green people and squeeze the burger grease out of them. The point is use every source so when there a problem with one source there are dozens to take up the slack so the impact is minimal. I'll even mention the most evil source on the planet, CONSERVATION! We could cut energy use in half in a decade and not change our quality of life we just need to stop all the waste.
The problem is say algae has 60% oil, I've heard 25% to crazy claims of 90% based on species and how it's raised. The cell wall is tough so you may only get half to two thirds and a lot of the extraction processes involve solvents. It's not like squeezing olives for oil it's more like getting oil out of olive pits. Also it would take a vast amount of algae to replace even a few percent of oil. It means dedicating a lot of land and water to algae production. There are efficient systems to produce it but they are all expensive and produce algae in the tons, we need millions of tons to even replace a few percent. Nice idea but it's hard to scale up. Personally I like it better for animal feed. Call the oil a bonus and feed the rest to livestock.
Does it have electrolytes?
why is no one using their own land to produce it in quantity?
There are several reasons:
1. It is difficult and expensive to extract fuel from algae. The algae first has to be dried, then the cell walls crushed, and then the fuel is extracted with heat and expensive solvents.
2. Invasive species, that spend their energy reproducing rather than making fuel, tend crowd out fuel producing algae. They can be controlled with chemicals (expensive) or by growing algae in sealed enclosures (even more expensive).
3. Viral and bacterial diseases, as well as microscopic predators, tend to wipe out algae monocultures.
Research on fuel from algae has been ongoing since the 1960s, with little progress in any of these areas. Algae has so much potential, that (in my opinion) further research is justified. But to claim that it is ready to be deployed at scale is absurd.
when there are hungry people in the world, is stupid. Stupid. Stupid
Pushing the land to make more wheat than what it should have been making was really the root cause of the dust bowl. Modern dust bowls have not been seen even during drought years because we have the ability to dump water from the aquifer on the land. Just plowing in different directions isn't going to be the end all be all cure to dust blowing if we have a drought without the aquifer like we had the last few years. In fact our current drought has seen even drier conditions than in the dust bowl. The difference really wasn't farming practices so much, because a great deal of farmers have abandoned drought tolerant practices, but the changing factor was irrigation. There was enough breakage in irrigation that the dust was caught in the next field over instead of 10 miles away.
With that being said I've seen 3 dirt storms this year, more than in the last 10, and in the Texas Panhandle from birth I've grown up seeing days where we have 100mph gusts. We are the wind belt of the U.S.
I'm told that if you can figure out the magical document number, our own government will sell you a booklet explaining how to produce ethanol from waste with a solar still...
This page is pretty helpful in that regard.
I'm told that if you can figure out the magical document number, our own government will sell you a booklet explaining how to produce ethanol from waste with a solar still...
This page is pretty helpful in that regard.
Ever since Obama lifted the cane based alcohol tariff from Brazil... it's a moot point now. I like E85, it's cheap race fuel.
The idea that food is to be used as a energy source irks me considering the many people starving and that the soil can only grow so much. I would much rather see efforts being placed on clean energy and perhaps research on matter transformation/recombination. The ultimate recycler so to speak. Make something totally new from trash. That would make more sense and be truly beneficial for all mankind.
Converting any crop to fuel is stupid! Water, nitrogen fertilizers, harvesting, and transport all require fossil fuels. It's pointless and the multistage energy conversion to make ethanol is very inefficient. You would be better served burning fossil fuels directly in the engine.
Life is not for the lazy.
Well, we have oceans full of water. Unfortunately, we've pretty much tapped all the oil there is, and once it's gone there won't be any more.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Biofuel or Biomass has been used since the stone age so it's an embarrassment that anyone is seriously considering it as a viable fuel source as it obviously can't and won't be sufficient to replace fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
As for fusion, the D-T fuel cycle does produce radiation in the form of a high neutron flux, however if He-3 fuel is used it's an aneutronic reaction rendering it a non-radioactive power source, which would be more than suitable to replace fossil fuels. Also the reaction of p + 11B can be looked at, as it's also aneutronic.
Actually Europe is an excellent example. We subsidise our farmers so much because we want to have food supply security. Europe will always be able to feed itself, even if that means overproduction most of the time.
We might as well produce something we can use, and then switch to food if the situation ever demands it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There's nothing good about energy beets. We already know we can use algae, and that it is superior in a variety of ways.
Do not cheer this. There is nothing good about this. It is merely less evil than using corn as a fuel feedstock.
Correct and since bio algae is already certified at all levels and WSU/UoW received > $140 million in recent DoE money to expand moreso with the WSU research [jointly with Oregon State and others]: Bio Algae is here. http://www.tricity.wsu.edu/bsel/pnnl.html
Impacts The collective goal at BSEL is to move science to industrial processes in a manner that improves energy security, reduces petroleum imports and decreases the impact of fuels on the environment. PNNL currently has approximately 60 issued and pending patents in the area of biobased processing (30 issued US patents, 19 issued in the last six years). These have resulted in ten commercial licenses and license options. This work has also resulted in one R&D 100 Award Presidential Green Chemistry Award, and provided the basis for creation of a new company.
The advances at WSU, UoW, Oregon State and all the Public/Private patent pending research is probably one reason for this grant to do something alternative--they have to as the other areas are mature and highly patented.
$80 Million to WSU/UofW and later more: http://www.cantwell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2011/9/biofuel-research-at-uw-and-wsu-to-help-power-the-economy
This is long overdue.
Then the BioJetFuel project of WSU with Alaska Airlines: http://researchnews.wsu.edu/environment/338.html
If we were serious about ethanol as a fuel, we would ride bikes more. Yum.
Well, maybe it will break the corn subsity, and you guys can have coke that tastes like coke, instead of like corn syrup.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Are those figures right? That's really expensive compared to palm oil. No wonder many countries are chopping down rainforests and replacing them with oil palm plantations.
I think even solar+batteries is cheaper.
Certainly fossil fuels are a limited resource, the problem is that they're not limited enough for market forces to be useful for reducing CO2 emissions in a timely manner. We're beginning to run out of cheap oil, but at current consumption rates I believe we have enough easy-access coal to last use for a century or two, and one good innovation in tar-sand extraction would keep us in cheap oil for almost as long. If we rely on the rising prices of fossil fuels to push us towards other technologies we'll be pretty firmly committed to catastrophic climate changes long before the price increases dramatically. That said I'd rather we removed fossil fuel subsidies and mandated ongoing environmental cleanup for things like coal ash slurry ponds as a first step - internalize as many of the large, well-understood market externalities as possible before wading into the ones that are harder to pin down.
Then again, I ran the numbers on the sealed nuclear reactors formerly known as Hyperion last year, and if they can deliver as promised they'd cost roughly on par with coal, and that's a straight "nuclear battery" versus equivalent energy worth of coal in terms of $/kWh. Of course you have to pay for a ten year thermal battery up front instead of buying coal as you need it, so you'd need to factor in interest as well to those amortized numbers.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
oil != energy.
Really oil is only special for vehicles, which are a small part of the energy pie and natural gas can actually step in there reasonably well, though it does mean new vehicles with a somewhat more limited range. The real problem though is coal. We have no shortage of coal, and as other fossil fuels get expensive coal looks a lot better than renewables as long as the environmental costs remain externalized, and those costs are by far the worst of any fossil fuel.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Unfortunately making that water drinkable consumes an enormous amount of energy. Until we get either a dramatically cheaper source of energy or a desalination technology that manages to sidestep current thermodynamic understandings of the process we're mostly limited to the stuff that's naturally desalinated by the global water cycle and arrives as rain/groundwater
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Your argument makes no sense. There exist people with private land. Surely at least one of those people would be interested in doing some small scale bio-diesel farming , if for no other reason just to prove it works. Where is it? It's not like algae is terribly hard to grow, most people with swimming pools have to work at not becoming an algae farmer. Meanwhile, plenty of people have grabbed waste fry oil and converted it to biodiesel in their back yards. So, if it's that darn easy, why isn't anyone making biodiesel from algae?
>unused flat land and sunshine
And carbon dioxide. Most every algae-growing analysis I've seen runs afoul of that as the major stumbling block. To be cost effective you need massive quantities of concentrated CO2, which pretty much means nearby factories/energy plants which generally speaking aren't conveniently located near large fields where algae could be grown. Open-air ponds just don't grow algae fast enough to be profitable, and aerating them with atmospheric air wastes an immense amount of energy since 95% of that air is basically useless to algae.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Indeed, a modular serial hybrid would throw the doors open for energy innovation. You don't even need the trailer - basically all the volume of an EV drive system is batteries, the motor(s) and control circuitry consume very limited volume, while you've removed the much larger engine, gas tank, and emission control systems. So make the base system a limited-range commuter car with a bunch of unused standardized space under the hood and in the trunk where you can then add additional batteries or a charging system based on your own needs. Gas? Diesel? Methane? Mr. Fusion? As long as it fits the mounting brackets you just drop it in and drive.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Which of course is the point that you and others (myself included) was trying to get through to "drinkypoo". Who seems to think that the failure of the government to provide the same access to algae growers that they offer to fossil fuel extractors explains the failure of algae growers to have developed algae as an alternative fuel source.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
why is no one using their own land to produce it in quantity?
There are several reasons:
1. It is difficult and expensive to extract fuel from algae. The algae first has to be dried, then the cell walls crushed, and then the fuel is extracted with heat and expensive solvents.
2. Invasive species, that spend their energy reproducing rather than making fuel, tend crowd out fuel producing algae. They can be controlled with chemicals (expensive) or by growing algae in sealed enclosures (even more expensive).
3. Viral and bacterial diseases, as well as microscopic predators, tend to wipe out algae monocultures.
Research on fuel from algae has been ongoing since the 1960s, with little progress in any of these areas. Algae has so much potential, that (in my opinion) further research is justified. But to claim that it is ready to be deployed at scale is absurd.
In short this is the sad story of any farming, including all of the agriculture and husbandry: we are basically trying to pull a single specie out of bonds of ecology and out of food chain and become its sole, monopolistic predator. It is always an uphill battle. We should do the opposite: to learn how to make use of species which succeeded quite well in becoming non-food, or learn how to attack the whole bios indiscriminately, using process which turns everything we catch into our food or our fuel. Then we wouldn't bother about little buggers eating our oily dots, we would just pour the whole soup down into our industrial digestor and turn it all into bio-diesel. Effectively, we should become a either successful, non-specialized predator, or a niche predator which feeds on sturdy species indigestible to most other species.
'Pay no attention to the massive amount of public water usage!'
Study does not mention water inputs to grow -- that's relevant in California. Google was not initially helpful (lots of advice on gardening and beets).
Linky #1
Linky #2
Are you too dumb to use google?
I was thinking about what to do with all that extra beet pulp -- I suppose it becomes more widely used as livestock feed, or could be compressed into stove pellets; what else is done with it today?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
i'm all for it
I would love to see that as well. The benefit of a trailer is that hookup would be dramatically simpler. Realistically both approaches would be desirable. I do think that a trailer would be easier to phase in, as it would give the impression of less commitment and thus the impression of less risk. Current EVs wouldn't need structural resdesigns. They would only need the connector and a tow hitch.
The economics of food prices around the world isn't the only reason to abandon biofuels. The problem with biofuels is that they don't make sense from an energy balance point of view. Photosynthesis is horribly inefficient, we have solar panels that do a lot better (mandatory xkcd ). However, plants are amazing, they can gain additional energy for growth from the ground. We have found a very good way to supercharge plant growth by giving them growth enhancing energy drinks in the form of fertilizers.
/Aside
This use of fertilizers to aid plant growth is the big problem. Fertilizers come from fossil fuels. Converting fossil fuels to fertilizers to be used to grow plants to be converted to fuel is a lot less efficient use of energy, land, water, etc. than just using the fossil fuels as fuel directly
Aside: this is one of the reasons I like electric vehicles. We have the technology to put them on the road today and then we only have a few large, stationary fossil fuel "engines" to focus on instead of millions of small mobile ones.
There is a wonderful article that has been written on the inefficiency of biofuels pdf warning
Also, farming sugar beets and corn takes a lot of fossil fuels to run the tractors, ship the beets, process the beets, etc... I'm sure its still a net gain or they wouldn't be doing it, but all of that will still shave their margins a bit.
The only advantage to burning crops for energy (essentially what they are doing) is that it can be carbon neutral if only ethanol based fossil fuels are used in its production since any carbon released when burning the ethanol is carbon that was captured by the plants that grew to produce it.
However, I'm sure they aren't using just ethanol for the production, and also they are using fertilizer that requires lots of fossil fuels. The real shame though is that it is a waste of farmland that could have otherwise been growing useful food crops, which we need as much of as we can get, and will only need more in the foreseeable future.
it'll never happen. The desert ecosystem is just as protected as any forest land, the greenies will never let the government turn over the first shovel full of dirt. I've seen it happen way too many times locally in so-cal.
The biggest problem I see with a trailer is that you then have untrained people driving around with trailers full of explosives. I don't know about you, but considering the number of stupid trailer accidents I've seen I'm in no hurry to see a bunch of people on vacation with a car full of squabbling kids driving around with unfamiliar explosive trailers. Requiring special licensing could help, but even with training the lack of experience would be telling. Still, it is at least a viable option to get things moving in the right direction. I'd still prefer a standardized modular system - shouldn't be too technically difficult to agree on a few standardized bolt hole postions and a removable exhaust port in the trunk, but getting manufacturer's to actually agree on it, that might not be such a viable plan.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
40,000,000 gallons of bio-fuel annually? So-f'ing-what!?! We buy 40-70 million gallons of gasoline DAILY in California. If you can't even produce 1% of that, why bother?? Just as others have said, bio-fuels are for politicians to pander to low-information voters.
Drill baby, drill!!
Get the EPA and other environmentalist wackos out of the way and let us build MORE refineries. That's the way you lower the price per gallon. The ONLY reason fuels are expensive is due to gov'ment OVER-regulation.
Get the politicians (who don't give two shits about YOU), and others, out of the way and let private industry work the way it's supposed to.
-AC
Actually, not that much energy; the cost of drinkable water is measured in pennies per cubic metre (1000 litres).
Basically, you can use heat exchangers to boil and distil the water using hardly any energy, the water comes out lukewarm and virtually all the heat used is recycled within the process. You can even use solar energy for this.
There's also processes using membranes that are about as good where you just pump the water through the membrane.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Given that trailers are current common as it is, and the trailer is going to be no more explosive than the cars they currently run, I think that safety worries should be negligible compared to people driving cars at all. I would be more worried about people injuring themselves trying to pull the standard in car generator in and out than with the trailers. That being said, I agree that the only reason for a standard in car component should pose a problem would be due to stubborn unwillingness of car manufacturers. I would see an in car component being most useful for handling an individual's "normal" driving. While trailers would be better for a person's "unusual" driving. The two would in no way need to be exclusive of each other.
A sugar plant out in california compostes it bags it up and sells it, which was amusing as it was being sold in a Family, Farm and Fleet store, across the road from a sugar beet plant in Croswell Michigan.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
One wonders why it was there instead of in Calif, where the soil could stand a great deal more amending. (As someone once said of it, "We don't have soil, we have dirt.")
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Apparently the name "Sugar Beet" wasn't a dead enough giveaway.
Seriously I wonder how much thought went into the research...
Well we know sugar cane is really good. We use corn, which is not. I bet sugar beets are better!
Blort!
Never mind the fact that the only reason corn is used in the first place is because of subsidies so it really doesn't matter anyway.
Waste water is dumped into the desert, eventually replenishing aquifers.
Transporting and dumping water... into the desert. To be more ecologically friendly? Dumping water? In the desert? Ecologically friendly?
Sheesh. Talk about ecologically unbalanced and destructive. Real deserts are balanced ecosystems.
re: Are we just spinning our wheels?
;>)
Only/especially if we're using flywheels to store energy in their rotational inertial moment. Then, "just spinning our wheels" could mean that our energy is stored and not being transferred to or from our inertial-moment energy storage device, another "alternate" energy storage system.