$1/Gallon "Green Gasoline" In Sight

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%.

I say!

Mr Fusion!

Seeing doc putting in that banana peel was just too much :-)

Re:I say!

So this technology is 5-10 years away? Kinda like how fusion is always 20 years away?

Basically, I'll believe it when I'm pumping it into my gas/ethanol tank.

Re:I say!

Well, I can't say exactly how long it will take to commercialize, but the company I work for, which may or may not have been mentioned in the article (wink) has a production-scale run of the catalyst scheduled for later this year. I wouldn't scoff too hard at a 5-10 year projection.

Re:I say!

Actually, it reminds me of thermal depolymerization [wikipedia.org]. Anyone remember that [slashdot.org]?

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.

Re:I say!

Mr. Fusion only powered the time circuits and the Flux Capacitor, the engine runs on ordinary gasoline, always has, always will.

"out of anything that grows" ...

well, it should be fun driving the Hummer around in all that future desert such "cheapness" will lead to

Re:"out of anything that grows" ...

I think that you're confused and assuming that this gasoline will add carbon to the atmosphere. In reality, the carbon that's being added to the atmosphere is carbon that was taken out to make the gasoline in the first place. The reason oil's such a problem is that the carbon was sequestered in the earth's crust and not being released until we got to it. In this case the carbon would have almost certainly made it back into the atmosphere, which means it's effectively carbon neutral (although there might be some electricity costs that would add more carbon to the air).

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?

Re:"out of anything that grows" ...

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...

Re:Think again

"Even assuming we built enough reactors and the bacteria work fast enough, do you have any idea how much organic waste we have to rustle up to make 588 million gallons?"

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.

I'm willing to pay $2/gallon

I'm willing to pay $2/gallon for the opportunity to use the 50% efficient stuff.. Why wait until you reach your target of $1/gallon when what you have is already cheaper than normal gas?

Re:I'm willing to pay $2/gallon

Remember that we use "Heat Engines"... The more BTU's per gallon of fuel translates into more miles per gallon!
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]

Re:I'm willing to pay $2/gallon

For the consumer or in some huge volume?
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.)

Re:I'm willing to pay $2/gallon

Because gas is cheaper than even the USD 1.00 figure. Some countries see prices below USD 0.50 .

This is purely because these countries subsidize fuel costs as part of public welfare programs.

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.

Re:I'm willing to pay $2/gallon

... I, along with a few million of my closest friends, would literally shit bricks....

So this would be a boon for the construction industry as well?

Huh What?

FWIW, we do NOT have an infrastructure for distributing liquid fuels that are predominantly ethanol... thats one of the real big problems. It corrodes the living sh#% out of virtually all of our liquid fuel transportation infrastructure.

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?

The article appears a bit vague, but it appears they are not talking about running ethanol through the pipelines, but gasoline. Infact, talking about converting Biomass into gasoline, not ethanol. Atleast that's the idea I got from the quote:

Huber and his colleagues aren't the first to derive hydrocarbons from renewable sources. Virent Energy Systems, for example, just signed a deal with Shell to produce gasoline from plant sugars and expects to open a pilot facility in the next two years. UOP is working on a project to produce jet fuel for U.S. and NATO fighters from algal and vegetable oils. But Huber's work stands out as likely the first direct conversion from cellulose, opening up as potential fuel sources virtually anything that grows. Commercialization of the technology may take another five to 10 years, the researchers predict.
...
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."

But, then again in describing the process it goes back to vague (emphasis mine:)

Using a catalyst commonly employed in the petroleum industry, Huber and his colleagues heated small amounts of cellulose very quickly for a matter of seconds before cooling it, producing a high-octane liquid similar to gasoline.

The article seems to be trying to distance this technology from ethanol, stating that ethanol has its problems and that it's not going to be the right direction

Re:Huh What?

It also doesn't address the ongoing problem of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate that can't be reabsorbed naturally.

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.

doing research != speaking well

Quoth the scientist:

"Crude oil looks more similar to gasoline than biomass does"

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

The minute the government stops subsidizing the production of ethanol, not only will farmers start moving back to wheat and other foods that the world needs, but ethanol will be forced to survive on its own next to gasoline, and it will vanish in the puff of bad logic that brought it into existence. Let's not forget the recent story about increases in beer cost as farmers switch over to corn for ethanol [slashdot.org]. Also informative is this recent Time magazine article [time.com] debunking the benefits of ethanol. This is just another political stunt at the expense of the world's food crops and my inebriation. When will Congress learn that manipulating the economy never has the desired effects.

CELLULOSE != FOOD

[rant]

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]

PopMech!

I thought this was a joke, then I saw that the article was in Popular Mechanics and thought "whew" (because every story that has ever run in popular mechanics about technologies of the future has been spot on).

i want a car that runs on patent applications

if i had a car that ran on patent applications, i could literally shovel garbage into it and get wherever i needed to go

and it wouldn't cost anything

heck, they'd pay me to take the stuff away

I just tried this E85 stuff.. it sucks

I just bought a car that happens to take this E85 ethanol combo gas.

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?

I have a diesel engine, I run on almost anything.

I've been putting used motor oil, hydraulic fluid, transmission fluid, gasoline, solvents, and misc. oils in my truck's tank for years now. I mix in these waste products with clean bio/#2 diesel at a rate of about 33%. Of course I filter down to 20 microns and check for water in my fuel.

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:no way.

why wouldn't they? claiming ANY process is 100% efficent is plain out lieing.

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.