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$1/Gallon "Green Gasoline" In Sight
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Apr 22, 2008 05:16 PM
from the happy-earth-day dept.
from the happy-earth-day dept.
mattnyc99 writes "We've gotten excited here about the startup that claims it can make $1/gallon ethanol out of anything from trash to tires. But we've also seen how cellulosic ethanol is a better option, and how ethanol demand in general is only adding to the worldwide food crisis. So what about $1/gallon gasoline? NSF-funded researchers at UMass Amherst just completed the first direct conversion from cellulose using a new method of hydrocarbon refining, which they claim can be commercialized within 5-10 years and essentially make fuel out of anything that grows. Quoting: 'We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels. We're using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that's what we'll be using in 10 years and in 50 years,' Huber says. 'And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go.'" The process is running at about 50% efficiency now; the $1/gallon figure is based on getting to 100%.
Related Stories
[+]
Ethanol Demand Is Boosting Food Prices Worldwide 599 comments
hereisnowhy writes "The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, the CBC reports. Increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American — an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006. In Mexico last year, corn tortillas, a crucial source of calories for 50 million poor people, doubled in price; the increase forced the government to introduce price controls. The move to ethanol-blended fuel is based in part on widespread belief that it produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline. But a recent Environment Canada study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol-blended fuel. Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol — whether from corn, beets, wheat, or other crops — requires more energy than can be derived from the product."
[+]
Switchgrass Makes Better Ethanol Than Corn 560 comments
statemachine writes to mention that the USDA and farmers took part in a 5-year study of switchgrass, a grass native to North America. The study found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver around 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can only yield around 24 percent. "But even a native prairie grass needs a helping hand from scientists and farmers to deliver the yields necessary to help ethanol become a viable alternative to petroleum-derived gasoline, Vogel argues. 'To really maximize their yield potential, you need to provide nitrogen fertilization,' he says, as well as improved breeding techniques and genetic strains. 'Low input systems are just not going to be able to get the energy per acre needed to provide feed, fuel and fiber.'"
[+]
Science: Startup Claims to Make $1/Gallon Ethanol 456 comments
gnick writes to mention Wired is reporting that an Illinois startup is claiming they can make ethanol from most any organic material for around $1/gallon. Coskata, backed by General Motors and several other investors, uses a process that is bacteria based instead of some of the other available methods. The bacteria processes organic material that is fed into the reactor and secretes ethanol as a waste product.
[+]
Consumer Ethanol Appliance Promised By Year's End 365 comments
Newscloud brings us news of a startup called E-Fuel promising to ship a home-brew ethanol plant, the size of a washer-dryer, for under $10,000 by the end of this year. We've had plenty of discussions about $1/gal. fuel — these guys want to let you make it at home. The company says it plans to develop a NAFTA-enabled distribution network for inedible sugar from Mexico at 1/8th the cost of trade-protected sugar, to use as raw material for making ethanol. A renewable energy expert from UC Berkeley is quoted: "There's a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It's entirely possible that they've done it, but skepticism is a virtue."
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I say! (Score:5, Funny)
Mr Fusion!
Seeing doc putting in that banana peel was just too much :-)
Re:I say! (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, I'll believe it when I'm pumping it into my gas/ethanol tank.
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Re:I say! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I say! (Score:4, Funny)
So, what you are saying is that the Test is 5-10 Months away, and getting it to 100% efficiency is 5-10 years away.
So in theory we could be seeing this with $2 or $3 a gallon gas fairly soon, and after a while the production cost will be reduced (though the price will probably stay where it is.) :)
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nope (Score:4, Insightful)
They have to input pre-processing and heat. They don't say where break-even is. Maybe that's at 90% efficiency.
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Re:I say! (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, though, what we're looking at is one of the things that drives me crazy about a lot of environmental "trends" and congress's role in pushing them. And don't get me wrong; I say this as a hardcore green with CFLs in every socket who is on the waiting list for an electric car [youtube.com].
Most of these new biomass-to-ethanol plants work based on syngas. That is, partial oxidation of carbon-and-hydrogen-bearing matter into a mixture of CO and H2. They then either, through an wasteful catalytic process or an even more wasteful biological process, convert the syngas into ethanol. Great. Except that we've been converting syngas to gasoline, in a rather simple and fairly efficient process, for the past century. The main syngas source was coal. This Fischer-Tropsch process powered a large portion of Nazi Germany's war machine (until their plants were bombed flat). It powered South Africa during the Apartheid regime.
Let's state this again: they typically are using *more energy* to create *less output* of a product with *less energy density* that *can't be transported in normal pipelines* and can only be used in *small amounts* in cars unless they're *specially modified*, rather than, more efficiently, just creating gasoline. Why? Because gasoline is a dirty word. Because there aren't the same sort of subsidies for "cellulosic gasoline" as there are for cellulosic ethanol. Because cellulosic gasoline won't win you green cred, or get the investors lining up. So the inferior solution gets chosen.
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i couldn't have said it better myself (Score:5, Insightful)
please, science idiots, learn:
if you expend lots of energy manufacturing your energy medium, you are being more wasteful than just choosing a more intelligent energy medium
hydrogen is great, of course, because it burns clean. but it is a b*tch to store and transport, and most importantly, although something clean is coming out of your exhaust, everything that went into getting hydrogen into your fuel tank created more pollution than if you were burning coal in your car
the solution to our energy crisis is nuclear and electric cars
japan and france: show us the way to a cleaner, cheaper energy future, without the security concerns: nuclear
its safer than it ever was (you can walk away from a pebble bed reactor and it will just gradually shut down: no active management needed), and horrible waste is only a product of the usa's hesitance to use breeder reactors (because they make bomb grade materials). but if you use breeder reactors, you have a tenth of the nuclear fuel waste which loses its radioactivity in a few centuries, rather in 10,000s of years, AND you get way more energy output. as uranium runs out, use thorium like india. and as we begin to run out of thorium in a few centuries, mankind better have been able to master fusion power by then, or we are doomed anyways
i think, to provide security to nuclear plants, you would need one one hundredth of the amount of security resources you need now to make sure oil still flows to our shores
or just keep counting the body bags coming from iraq because your mind still believes propaganda about nuclear power based on 1960s technology
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Re:i couldn't have said it better myself (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that electric cars the way to go, I am not convinced that batteries are the right way to store the energy. The are netoriously environmentally dirty both to make and dispose of, expensive, and and just don't last very long.
It certainly isn't stupid for someone to think that the problems with storing and transporting hydrogen can be solved easier than solving the huge problems with batteries. It is entirely possible that the real solution will be a hybrid solution.
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Re:i couldn't have said it better myself (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, no, at least not nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium.
No. There's already been one accident with radiation release at a pebble bed reactor [wikipedia.org], and adding a whole bunch of graphite - the stuff that caught fire at Chernobyl - to a reactor is not a good idea.
And you have plutonium factories all over the place. If you don't see the problem with that. Google the news for "Iran nuclear". >
And remember that that these plutonium factories would not be built to U.S. safety standards, no; many would be being built in China or other developing nations. If you don't see the problem with that. Google the news for "China contaminated".
And the waste problem remains unsolved.
Skip uranium entirely. Go to an "energy amplifier [wikipedia.org]", where thorium is hit with a proton beam. It's subcritical - pull the plug and it shuts down. It's proliferation-resistant, and it can even be used to burn up plutonium. And it produces a lot less waste.
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Re:i couldn't have said it better myself (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, you're wrong. That's a POSSIBLE consequence, but not a necessary one. The reactors do not need to be of a type useful for making weapons-grade material in order to be useful for making useful nuclear reactor fuel.
The reprocessed waste has a half-life which at least seems manageable on a human time scale, and is not nearly as nasty in any case.
Per your source, This design is entirely plausible with currently available technology, but requires more study before it can be declared both practical and economical.
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Re:i couldn't have said it better myself (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, "Hydrogen" supporters are "Nuclear Energy" supporters, even if they do not know it yet...
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Re:I say! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you trashed the CFLs, the amount of mercury released would be less than the mercury released by coal-fired plants to power the equivalent in incandescent lights.
And CFLs can - and should be - recycled, so no mercury is released except for the occasional broken bulb. If you break one, you just take some simple precautions to clean up. [epa.gov] They have about 1/100th of the mercury in a old thermometer, the type everyone had in their house not very long ago.
Environmentally, mercury in CFLs is a very very small issue.
And an electric car powered by a coal-fired generating plant still emits much less pollution than a gasoline car.
So what's your point?
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Re:I say! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's very, very simple. Gasoline engines are very inefficient. Non-hybrids average less than 20% tank-to-wheel efficiency. Hybrids, just over. Fuel-burning power plants, 30-50% efficiency. Transmission losses, ~8%. Charger losses, ~7%. Battery losses, ~0.1% in Li-ion. Motor losses, ~10%. Do the math. I can give you several peer-reviewed studies on the topic if you're prefer.
As for batteries, you're just not up to date with the technology. These aren't lead-acid or nickel-cadmium batteries here. For example, my Aptera is to use lithium phosphate batteries. These last 10-20 years and are almost completely nontoxic. Their raw ingredients are things like iron, phosphoric acid (the same stuff as in soft drinks -- made from fluoroapatite, the same stuff as in well cared-for teeth, plus sulphuric acid, which is an oil industry *byproduct*), graphite, and even sugar (for the carbon binding). These aren't "in a few years" -- they're already here. They're becoming the new standard for cordless power tools, for example.
Considering low emission gas vehicles currently exhaust cleaner air than they take in
That's nearly always a myth promoted by the manufacturers. If you look at the actual numbers, they usually lower one pollutant by a tiny amount (say, particulate matter caught up in the air filter) while still emitting the other pollutants.
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Re:I say! (Score:5, Insightful)
Practicality is only one of the issues facing your "practical solution." Electric cars need to be plugged in to something called "utility power" in order to recharge. Where do those magical electrons come from? I'll take "power plants" for $500, Alex. California already has a utility power shortage crisis, with rolling blackouts and brownouts thrown in for fun. Suppose the entire state went electric with their cars tomorrow? Just where do you think all that juice would come from? Pixie dust? Nano-solar isn't going to save you anytime soon, either.
Electric cars are neat. For some people they fit the bill. For the vast majority of people they do not. You've got a lot of learning to do about what the meaning of the word "practical" is for folks who aren't clones of you.
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Re:I say! (Score:5, Informative)
True. The problem is that most subcompact cars aren't practical either. Maybe for single people or childless couples, but for people with families these vehicles are entirely impractical. Thus the popularity of SUVs.
This one is COMPLETELY wrong, and shows a real lack of understanding of basic mechanics. Most of the "Electric" cars out there are actually HYBRID cars. Why? Because of the inherent problem of the lack of range of full electrics Since they are hybrids, they have small gasoline engines in them. These engines need all the maintenance of any other engine. So take the normal maintenance costs of a standard automobile, THEN add the costs of replacing the battery pack (roughly 3-5 grand US each 3-5 years) ON TOP of that. NOT cheaper.
Even for full electrics, the maintenance costs are still comparable, because even though there is no Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) in the vehicle, it still has plenty of moving parts that need regular lubrication and get worn out and need replacing over the life of the car. The average full electric vehicle needs about 50% to 75% of the year-to-year maintenance that a hybrid or a standard ICE vehicle needs. But you still need to calculate in the cost of replacing the battery pack every 3-5 years, which pushes the maintenance costs of an Electric to WAY over the cost of an ICE vehicle. if I may demonstrate with a simple chart:
ICE vehicle expected maintenance costs on a yearly basis over 5 years: $1000.00 US
Total average maint. costs: $5000.00 US
Hybrid vehicle expected maintenance costs on a yearly basis over 5 years: $1000.00 US
Hybrid replacement battery pack costs within a 5 year period: $3000.00 - $5000.00 US
Total average maint. costs: $7000.00 - $10,000.00 US
Full Electric Expected Maintenance costs on a yearly basis over 5 years: $500.00 - $750.00 US
Electric replacement battery pack costs within a 5 year period: $3000.00 - $5000.00 US
Total average maint. costs: $5500.00 - $8750.00
These are rough figures, but I'm sure you can spend some time on edmunds.com or Google and find similar numbers.
One additional point, you aren't taking in the disposal costs of the HIGHLY TOXIC batteries. Yes, some can be recycled, but many cannot. What do we do about those? ICE vehicles are 99% recyclable. Hybrids and Electrics are not, due to the batteries.
Power plants DO NOT run on gasoline. MOST are coal-NG plants, some are Nuclear, some are Hydro power, and a very small number of low-capacity plants run Diesel. So you CANNOT re-direct the gasoline to power plants, they can't use it!
Also, California's power grid problem is twofold:
1) Over-regulation by the California government has economically strangled the power plants, making it a loss-proposition to run a power plant in California.
2) The Eco-Freaks and NIMBYs have wrangled a practical ban on building any NEW power plants in CA, such that demand has now FAR outstripped supply. Thus the rolling blackouts and brownouts. There simply isn't enough power to go around, and no way to get more power plants built.
You will notice that NEITHER of these problems are IN ANY WAY related to Gasoline or automobiles.
You can talk all about supposed efficiency gai
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Re:I say! (Score:5, Insightful)
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"out of anything that grows" ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"out of anything that grows" ... (Score:5, Informative)
That brings an interesting thought to mind, though. I know that we can't sequester carbon very well in a gaseous form, and that other forms are expensive to produce, but what if we were to grow plants, cut them down, and stick them underground in some salt mines or something?
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Re:"out of anything that grows" ... (Score:5, Funny)
That brings an interesting thought to mind, though. I know that we can't sequester carbon very well in a gaseous form, and that other forms are expensive to produce, but what if we were to grow plants, cut them down, and stick them underground in some salt mines or something?
It's been done before. Works great, until some stray asteroid happens by and wipes out your civilization, and 65 million years later those scrappy little mammals that survived the nuclear winter in their cozy burrows have evolved a civilization of their own and are busy pumping all your carefully sequestered carbon back to the surface to be burned and released into the atmosphere...
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Terra Petra - burying your stable carbon biomass (Score:4, Interesting)
This is being done/worked on. It's called Terra Petra "Black Earth" and is being developed for use in biomass gasification.
Basically you gassify carbonaceous materials such as wood or other biomass. Instead of allows all the biomass to be consumed in the process, you pull a portion of the charcoal out of the gasification stream and then disc it into the earth. Charcoal, being a fairly stable version of high density carbon will remain in this state for a very long time and in a sense becomes fertilizer for the soil (over time). Charcol is a more stable form of carbon than just raw biomass which will otherwise decay into CO2 as it rots
In fact, in the amazon, this has been going on for 1000s of years and is a way to make otherwise not so great tropical soils fertile.
Gasification combined with Terra Petra has the possibility of not only being carbon neutral, but carbon negative. If you gassify existing biomass (in particular the waste wood and garden clipping stream of most municipal wastes) you start out carbon neutral. The carbon in the waste stream is already destined to either be incinerated or 'mulched' which releases the carbon as CO2 either way.
If during the process of gassifying this biomass stream, you extract a portion of the charcoal that is created, you can then sequester it in the soil. Thus becoming carbon negative to the extent you pull from your gassifier. The trade off is that you have less carbon to convert to CO for use as a producer gas.
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Burying plants? (Score:4, Funny)
This is essence what happens to most of the paper that enters most American homes (newsprint, magazines, junk mail) - it gets put out in the trash, and ends up in a landfill, where it gets buried and takes decades to centuries to break down.
So, don't recycle that paper! Put it in a landfill and sequester that carbon!
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Re:Think again (Score:5, Interesting)
I do wonder how much organic waste we are just letting go in the garbage every year now, though? I mean, millions of yards get mowed weekly (or more depending on where you live)....not to mention golf courses, stadiums, parks...etc. Then as someone said, we have tons of paper and boxes that are garbage each day. How about recycling most all of that waste paper into fuel?
I'd say at the start...that amount of ethanol, combined with the domestic oil reserves we have....could get us off the world 'grid' pretty quickly. Eventually..we could get off the fossil fuel altogether, but, this would be a huge stop-gap answer.
I wonder how much organic waste we currently just throw in the trash now, which could go for this type of ethanol generation? We could quit using corn for ethanol (well, except for consumption) right away too.
Now, if we could just do away with the fscking corn subsidies, and lift the sugar tariffs we could also kick the HFCS problems we have, get food prices back down a bit, and have real Coke with real sugar again in the US.
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Incinerator (Score:5, Interesting)
The only drawback is that the landfills are being refilled with ash, and eventually will run out of room again.
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Recycling SAVES Oil (Score:5, Informative)
2) If the garbage was not being separated then the one garbage truck would fill up faster and have to make more trips back and forth between the 'distant landfill' and the pickup route.
Think about it. The total amount of garbage didn't magically triple overnight. They didn't suddenly have to purchase and run three times the number of garbage trucks; the existing trucks are just used for different tasks now. I bet the total fuel consumption won't be all that different.
3) Where Portland wastes diesel fuel in the garbage industry is that they have multiple companies serving the same routes which is less efficient than it could be. This would be true whether they are recycling or not.
4) You are seriously underestimating the energy saved by recycling. The energy saved by recycling aluminum cans alone will probably cover all the fuel costs for the whole garbage truck fleet. A can manufacturing industry website states that for every 40 aluminum cans recycled the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline is saved.
http://www.cancentral.com/recFAQ.cfm [cancentral.com]
Please find something more constructive to bitch about.
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I'm willing to pay $2/gallon (Score:5, Insightful)
$2/gal to produce = $3/gal at the pump (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:I'm willing to pay $2/gallon (Score:5, Informative)
With the new mandate for 35 MPG cars on the horizon, I'd imagine they will be using Diesel. (Anyone notice the new Volkswagen "clean Diesel" commercials?)
Also, the US Government pays a $0.50 per gallon as a subsidy. (I think this is at the production level). Otherwise, Ethanol production could not compete with oil.
FYI:
Methanol 64,600 BTU per gallon
Ethanol 84,600 BTU per gallon
Gasohol 120,900 BTU per gallon (10% Ethanol to 90% Gasoline)
Gasoline 125,000 BTU per gallon
Biodiesel 130,000 BTU per gallon
Diesel 138,700 BTU per gallon
Most from this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline [wikipedia.org]
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Re:I'm willing to pay $2/gallon (Score:5, Interesting)
1 US gallon = 3.78541178 litre
Over here in Sweden the taxes put the gasoline price at something like 12.49-12.99/litre in this town right now according to a webpage.
Say 12.70 sek / litre * 3.785 = 48.07 sek.
8.36$ / gallon in the gasoline station.
So yes, people would gladly pay 2$/gallon here. In face people already pay almost 1.5 $ / litre for etanol/E85. (And we do have tax reduction / no taxes(?) on that.)
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Re:I'm willing to pay $2/gallon (Score:5, Informative)
See here [ca.gov] for a nice, detailed breakdown, week-by-week of gas prices in California. Admittedly, CA is one of the most expensive gas markets in the country, but as of April 21st, $3.08 of $3.85 in average gas prices there come purely from the fuel itself. 11 cents goes to marketing & distribution. 66 cents goes to taxes (many of which rise with fuel costs).
Dropping $3.08 to $1 or even $2 would be a *huge* savings in gas prices there.
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Re:I'm willing to pay $2/gallon (Score:5, Funny)
So this would be a boon for the construction industry as well?
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Re:Who wants to bet... (Score:4, Informative)
If the oil companies are at all sane, they'll be investing heavily in this if it's technologically feasable. They don't care where the oil comes from so long as they're the ones refining and distributing it. If they can get feedstock from someplace that isn't perpetually on the brink of all-out war, so much the better.
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Oh come on. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Huh What? (Score:5, Informative)
Cheap ethanol is good if the production of biomass to produce it doesn't displace food production, and $1/gallon would certainly be nice, but we have to be realistic about ALL the problems an ethanol-based fuel economy will entail... replacing all the pipelines being just the start.
Re:Huh What? (Score:5, Informative)
Developments in so-called "green hydrocarbons" arrive as ethanol continues to come under attack as expensive, inefficient and a contributor to rising food prices around the world. (More than a billion bushels of corn are diverted to ethanol production each year.) "There's certainly a lot of historical inertia for ethanol. It's gotten us off to a great start, but I can't see the country transitioning to flex-fuel," says John Regalbuto, director of the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at the National Science Foundation. "I almost think, long term, that we will go to plug-in hybrids. But we're still going to need diesel and jet fuel--you can't run trains or fly planes with ethanol or hydrogen."
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Re:Huh What? (Score:5, Informative)
The carbon in biomass comes from the atmosphere. You have to take it out of the atmosphere before you put it back into the atmosphere via your tailpipe. Increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere by burning biomass is like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
Of course the reabsorption process isn't natural, but that's the point. It kind of balances the books on humanity's use of atmospheric carbon.
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doing research != speaking well (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly, if they get 50% of the cellulose's energy into hydrocarbons then processing twice as much cellulose should given them a $2/gallon hydrocarbon. What they should tell us is whether a gallon of their hydrocarbon mixture has the same amount of energy as a gallon of oil For example, a gallon of ethanol has about 2/3rds the energy of a gallon of regular gasoline, so if it's only priced at 2/3rd the price of regular it won't break even.
The bottom line: we need price in dollars per kilojoule, not in dollars per gallon.
Thanks ethanol for world hunger and beer prices (Score:5, Insightful)
CELLULOSE != FOOD (Score:5, Insightful)
Cellulose is plant matter. You know. Grass clippings, corn stalks, etc. I see you really must like eating GRASS CLIPPINGS along with the COWS. Similar intelligence, perhaps?
CELLULOSE IS NOT FOOD!
Cellulostic Ethanol [wikipedia.org]: Educate Yourself!
[/rant]
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Re:CELLULOSE != FOOD (Score:4, Insightful)
And most likely means things like switchgrass farms, or some other dedicated farming, so its concentrated in one place (easy for processing and transport). But then you have the problem of that farm land competing with our food growing farm land...which causes land prices to rise, causing increased food costs.
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Re:Thanks ethanol for world hunger and beer prices (Score:4, Insightful)
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PopMech! (Score:5, Funny)
i want a car that runs on patent applications (Score:5, Funny)
and it wouldn't cost anything
heck, they'd pay me to take the stuff away
I just tried this E85 stuff.. it sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
It dropped my mileage from city 22 to like 16, highway 30 to 22.
It was a little cheaper due to government subsidies ($2.77 vs $3.30 at the time), but it didn't come close to breaking even with the drop in mileage.
Overall very disappointed.
Where are the plug-in hybrids?
You heard it here first... (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty soon after that, we will cut down perfectly good trees for no other reason than to make liquid fuels. Darn. There goes the forest. And the parks, etc. Not so good.
It's just not that easy. But it's attractive, and will keep us until we can do the electric car thing and do away with liquid fuels altogether.
Maybe.
I have a diesel engine, I run on almost anything. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I calculate my fuel mileage based on ONLY how much diesel I actually pay for, I get about 30-33 highway mpg in my 7900 pound 3/4 ton diesel truck.
Gasoline engines are a flawed design and gasoline/ethanol is a flawed fuel. It does have a place such as in motorcycles or small engines. I'll take my diesel powered vehicle any day of the week over some inefficient gasoline powered vehicle.
Re:I have a diesel engine, I run on almost anythin (Score:5, Funny)
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Cellulosic processing is the way to go. (Score:4, Insightful)
Suddenly, all those weeds out there become a biomass base, and farmers will be more than happy to ship the plant waste from growing corn, wheat, rice, etc. to a cellulosic processing plant to turn into biofuels.
Still at test-tube scale (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the home page of the University of Amherst prof [umass.edu] who did this. There's a picture of him holding a test tube of synthetic fuel derived from biomass sugars.
I'd be more impressed if he was standing next to a 5000 gallon tank of the stuff. On a small scale, if you're not worried about cost, you can make just about any hydrocarbon from any other hydrocarbon. It's hard to measure operating costs until the process is scaled up. So I'm skeptical of the cost claims.
Hyberole and empty "hope" vs. physical reality (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as it's ethanol, it's going to be monstrously expensive to transport. Ethanol is, essentially, a food product which rots.
If this process can help make with turning coal and other high-carbon materials into actual gasoline, it might be interesting.
However, do not underestimate the physical space and cost to build new fuel processing factories. No matter what, the world's energy needs will increase.
The goals should be to focus on the most effective methods of converting physical substance into harnessed energy, not the fantasy of "clean" energy. Think of all the people who bought or promote electric vehicles claiming they are "clean". That idea is beyond stupid. The energy has to be created somewhere then distributed. All distribution systems have loss. They might be "cleaner" at the point of use but they are not gross clean.
The cleanest energy would be something like wind or water power. They're not efficient and they can't power wheeled vehicles sufficiently. That leaves the concept of combustion in some form. Little pebble reactors in vehicles? Forget it. That leaves the process of a controlled burn. What is the best substance to burn considering infrastructure, portability and energy return aspects? Hydrocarbon. That's all there is to it.
Having said that, for static location energy needs like an electric grid, there could be some advantage to biomass conversion or forms of incineration when they are also used as a way to reduce the expense of handling trash. They'll never be as efficient as burning hydrocarbons because it takes energy to turn them into hydrocarbons. Oil and coal are the closest forms to carbon which are viable fuel sources for combustion.
Re:no way. (Score:5, Informative)
Only if it's claimed that the thermodynamic efficiency is 100%. The word "efficiency" is also used in other contexts where values of 100% or more make sense, and do not violate the laws of thermodynamics.
For example, home heat pumps are generally given an efficiency rating that indicates the ratio of heat output vs. electrical input (i.e., how many watts of heat are blown out the vents divided by how many watts of electrical power are consumed). This value is usually greater than 100%, but this is OK because this definition does not include the heat which is removed from the outside air and transferred to the indoor air. In other words, that specific definition of efficiency does not consider the complete system, and it deliberately ignores some of the energy that's being consumed.
Heat pump efficiency is defined this way because it allows useful comparisons to other kinds of climate control devices. A plain electric space heater would consume 1000W of electrical power in order to dump 1000W into the room, while a heat pump might only consume 500W of electrical power (I made that number up) in order to dump the same 1000W into the same room. While that doesn't reflect the thermodynamic efficiency of the heat pump, it does let you see that this example heat pump will consume half the electrical power of a space heater in order to heat the same room.
I'm not trying to debate whether the "100%" value in TFA makes sense here, because I haven't read TFA yet. I'm just pointing out that there are valid and honest uses for the word "efficiency" where values of 100% or more make sense, without implying any sort of perpetual motion.
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