$1/Gallon "Green Gasoline" In Sight 740
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%.
"out of anything that grows" ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm willing to pay $2/gallon (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I say! (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, I'll believe it when I'm pumping it into my gas/ethanol tank.
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)
Re:I say! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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]
Re:This isn't the solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah...let's tear down cities like Houston, and start all over. Right.
Your example of the kids being driven a block to the park is a valid one, but, not the most common. People in the US just don't like being crammed in so close to each other, we like to have houses with yards. And that is in the cities....many prefer to have acres of land, and live further out in the country. Not to mention that many places where you have to go to work, are not places you want to live and raise kids.
I really don't see the US ever going to an all urban way of life. That is just not the way we are....we prefer to have 'elbow room', which necessitates driving distances to work, live and shop.
100% Efficiency (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, given that practically every machine runs at 100% efficiency, it should be no problem getting this operation there.
Wait. What's that? No machine ever operates at 100% efficiency? Oh. Then maybe that's a problem.
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.
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.
It's time to harvest the hemp (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Thanks ethanol for world hunger and beer prices (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who wants to bet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:CELLULOSE != FOOD (Score:3, Insightful)
If it was just a question of land, we could feed the entire plant. Just us. Forget India, Europe, China, Africa, or any other breadbasket.
(And tell your parents that their house really isn't worth a quarter of a million dollars, and they should just sell.)
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.
Oh come on. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I say! (Score:2, Insightful)
but other than these points, it seems like a good idea wouldn't you say?
Careful folks (Score:3, Insightful)
So make sure all the costs are considered when comparing them. Just like sunlight is free, and all those CFLs are mercury laden hazardous waste when spent.
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.
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
Destroy This Technology! (Score:2, Insightful)
Burning hydrocarbons is not the future! It's the past, present, and the whole reason we're in this mess!
What would happen to fuel consumption if gas dropped to $1/gallon? Everyone would consume more, and all the years worth of effort to get people to buy economical cars, avoid wasting fuel, and to think more green would be wasted.
We DO NOT NEED CHEAPER GASOLINE! We need to get rid of it entirely. Zero emissions is the ONLY way forward, and as long as gasoline is economically viable people will continue to burn it and destroy the environment.
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: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.
Re:Destroy This Technology! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have a diesel engine, I run on almost anythin (Score:3, Insightful)
Even the best diesels emit particulates, which aggravates breathing problems. Then you're putting in all sorts of crap that's not really intended to be burned in a diesel engine and might contain additive compounds that might have toxic combustion byproducts, who knows what sort of pollution you're putting out.
Re:nope (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of the process like you put x materials in, perform the process, and you get 1 gallon of gasoline at 100% efficiency. At 50% efficiency you can just run the process twice as long and get twice as much output, but still only 1 gallon of gasoline. So given the information they have in the article, they could produce gasoline at $2 per gallon now.
The problem is with the outputs. If you output 100% gasoline, you just pour it into your car and go. If it is a mixture of only 50% gasoline, you have to refine it and remove impurities. That process might be prohibitively costly.
Re:Think again (Score:3, Insightful)
In 2007, there was something like 90 million acres of corn planted, so this is about 2.4 times the total corn acreage.
If you could figure out a way of pulling off conversion cost-effectively, it might work to some degree, though I'd hate to think what a few big grass fires could do to production. This also presumes that my estimates are correct; I suspect they may understate the issue somewhat.
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...
Re:You heard it here first... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I say! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but, let's be honest. I'd dare say that MOST of the CFLs are going to just be tossed in the trash can like most waste is today. Out of all of my friends, I only know 2 people that recycle anything....and one of them lives in an area where it is required (first I'd ever heard of mandatory recycling). I throw everything in the garbage...no exceptions so far. The one friend I know here takes cans to be recycled....I think he said the place is a few miles away, but, he has to do it. I've only got a 2 seat car...even if I wanted to, I don't really have a way to do it unless I was devoting a lot of time to it every few days to keep the loads small.
Most people around here throw everything out...computers, trash, glass, paper...etc. If CFLs get common, they're gonna end up in the regular trash too.
Re:I say! (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider your car excuse: The total amount of waste is exactly the same. It just gets separated into multiple containers. And when it comes to cans, just bag them and take them with you to the supermarket, recycle them on your way in, get groceries on the way out. It's really not that hard.
Re:"out of anything that grows" ... (Score:4, Insightful)
2. switchgrass doesn't require food-growing-quality land. it'll grow just fine on marginal drought-prone land that is unsuitable for food growing, so no tradeoff needed. put your food crops on the good land and spread switchgrass all over the lousy land, which was likely covered with switchgrass a few hundred years ago anyway.
Re:Econ 101 (Score:2, Insightful)
So either this stuff is already economically feasible, or current crude oil prices are unsustainable...
Re:I say! (Score:2, Insightful)
Is your second sentence a non sequitur, or are you asserting that the only good reason to recycle things is to save energy? I've actually never heard that as a reason. Usually, the reason for recycling is to avoid depleting a resource (we're going to run out of that metal eventually if we keep this up), or despoiling the environment further (sure there's plenty more of that metal around, but do we want more strip-mines?), or just filling landfills unnecessarily (glass is silicon, the most abundant element on earth -- sure we're never going to run out and don't need to destroy the environment mining it, but why keep filling landfills with it if we can find something else to do with it?). Saving energy is not even in the top three reasons for recycling, although if there are cases where you *can* save energy by doing so, that's a pretty nice benefit.
Re:I say! (Score:3, Insightful)
And over time, we could transition to nanoscale solar cells on top of people's roofs so they can charge their cars.
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.
Re:I say! (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, algae biodiesel is probably the way to go because it can use seawater in concrete raceway ponds paved onto otherwise unarable land. Thermal depolymerization looks good too, but we have to wait to see the long-term numbers for the Butterball Turkey test plant.
It powered South Africa during the Apartheid regime.
Not completely. A number of Gulf countries illegally supplied oil to South Africa during aparteid. In Oman, this turned brothers Omar and Qais Zawawi into billionaires.
Re:i couldn't have said it better myself (Score:3, Insightful)
I tend to agree, although I do think as an intermediate step, sufficiently cheap electricity, nuclear or otherwise, also can be used to gasify some of our huge and otherwise very ecologically unfriendly reserves of coal, so that existing ICE and fuel-cell vehicles can continue to run in a cost-effective manner during the transition period.
One thing to keep in mind is that China, Japan, and France already have significant nuclear infrastructure. If we do not begin now to catch up, we will be left behind, and our greatest potential competitive advantages, namely, agriculture, manufacturing and technology, will be lost, possibly forever.
Re:I say! (Score:4, Insightful)
As for replacing the batteries, even with older systems like lead-acid, it has ALWAYS been cheaper to maintain electrics than gas powered vehicles. Things we take for granted like regular oil changes, tune ups, timing belts etc aren't on electrics at all. On top of that, newer battery systems are projected to last the life of the vehicle. Think about the only maint. you need to do is to change your tires.
You are correct that electric cars must be powered off power plants. However, electric cars are so much more efficient that california would end up with GOBS more power if they simply redirected the gas for cars into powerplants. Currently electrics have an 85-90% efficiencey considering battery and motor loses. Gas vehicles have a 26% efficiency at best. Considering transmission losses, about 5% of electric power is lost and a similar percentage is used in the transportation of gas. Finally, the processing. Power plants typically operate on a 60% efficiency. Therefore, gas powered vehicles operate at around 20% efficiency at best while electrics are hovering around 50%. Two and a hoalf times better! Plus much of the US power is generated by hydro electric and wind, solar-termal and nuclear are starting to come back...
Over the last 10 years electric cars have been a niche market. However the current technology actually allows for wide spread use and the price tag (especially when you include power/fuel expenses) are actually comperable. With near term developments in super capcitors and batteries, the range of applications will increase, the fueling times will decrease and the cost will drop.
OT: Asterisks in swear words (Score:3, Insightful)