Carbohydrate-Based Synthesis To Replace Petroleum Derived Hydrocarbons? 166
someWebGeek writes "From PhysOrg's 'Taking biofuel from forest to highway,' University of British Columbia biofuel expert Jack Saddler says, 'we will become less dependent on fossil fuels and will become more dependent on fuels made from the sugars and chemicals found in plants.' Nothing too new there; the idea of biofuels eventually taking over from petroleum distillates has been around for ages. However, Saddler contends further that 'Similar to an oil refinery that processes crude oil to make thousands of supplementary products like plastics, dyes, paints, etc., the biorefinery would use leftover agricultural and forest material to make many of the same products, but from a sustainable and renewable resource.' I remember my organic chem instructor back in '81 telling us that eventually the textbooks would have to be rewritten. There would be no presumption of fractional distillation of thousands of basic compounds from petroleum, and the teaching emphasis would shift to synthesis from simple hydrocarbons. He noted that we'd all miss 'the good, ole days' when synthetic fibers, plastics, etc. were cheap... or even an economically viable option. I can live without rayon, but, dang, I'm gonna miss polyvinyl chloride!"
Wood wasn't enough to fuel the Middle Ages (Score:5, Interesting)
Another couple of factors (Score:4, Interesting)
Right now, I've read we're burning about 400 years worth of laid-down plant carbohydrate per year, in the form of fossil fuels.
That's right. To obtain the equivalent amount of energy from non-fossil biofuels as we're currently getting from fossil fuels, we'd have to increase the amount of plant material being grown on Earth by a factor of 400 times current production, and use all of that for biofuels. (Assuming various conversion factors work out roughly equivalently for the two processes.)
Second, people need food more than cars, and forests need trees (and the Earth ecosystem needs robust biodiversity as opposed to massive tracts of mono-culture biofuel tree-farms).
Re:End of oil for fuel != end of oil. (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting, Rayon and PVC (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, this is new? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like they jumped into the game a little too early, or just weren't able to find enough venture capital to perfect the system. Certainly as the price of oil continues to rise and the technology improves this is a process that could certainly be brought back. And note that since they're using organic waste the process is carbon neutral.
nutrient cycling (Score:5, Interesting)
As an agricultural scientist, I always feel slightly uncomfortable when biofuel producers start talking about using 'agricultural waste'. Increasingly, this 'waste' is now used by farmers as an integral part in boosting soil carbon and increasing biological activity as it breaks down, improving soils and improving subsequent crop yields.
The value of this, though often difficult to measure is significant and very real. But I worry shortsighted farmers looking for a quick buck may lose these less tangible benefits, leading to further soil degradation and lower yields in the future.
Re:Factor in one more thing though? (Score:5, Interesting)
A barrel of crude is 42 gallons. So one barrel of crude would make, by your calculations, about 4 gallons of vegetable oil. At current prices of $105/gallon, that would be a cost of about $26 her gallon of vegetable oil.
However, I believe those 10-to-1 figures are for energy, not volume. According to wikipedia, a gallon of crude oil is a standard measurement: 1.7 MWh. Per gallon, that's 40.4 kWh. I can't readily find the energy in vegetable oil from google, however a quick conversion from calories (120 kcal/tbsp = 80,832 kcal/gal) gives us 94 kWh/gal.
That's quite a but more per gallon, giving us only 1.8 gallons of vegetable oil per barrel of crude oil, raising the cost to $56.66 per gallon. Obviously these figures aren't right.
Is that the whole story? Let's consider how vegetable oil is made. Corn oil is rather cheap, so let's look at it. You have to extract the oil from the germ of the corn. Wikipedia again tells us that one bushel of corn yields 1.55 pounds of oil. One bushel is 35.24 L dry. Corn oil has a density of 9.25 g/c^3 (g/mL). Conversions (9.25 g/mL = 77.2 lbs/gal).
Phew! So that 35.24 L (one bushel) of dry corn only yields .02 of a gallon of corn oil! So you need FIFTY bushels of corn to yield one gallon of corn oil!
How much energy is in 50 bushels of corn? Conversions again: one cup of corn (raw) is 132 kcal. So that's 2112 kcal/gal. A bushel is defined as 8 gallons dry, so there are 16,896 kcal/bushel of raw corn. 50 bushels of corn means you need 844,800 kcal of corn to make one gallon of corn oil, which is only 80,832 kcal.
There's your missing energy. You need about 10.5 calories of corn for every calorie of corn oil. Or to put it another way, you need 982.5 kWh of corn energy to produce 94 kWh of corn oil energy.
Take our earlier estimate of 10-to-1 gallon-for-gallon of $56.66, divide by 10.5, and you get a much more reasonable $5.40 for a gallon of corn oil. Figure in some government subsidies, and differences in the two markets and some market fluctuations, and you are very close to your $4 a gallon bulk price for vegetable oil.
Use your brain, think for yourself, but be sure you have all he data and knowledge you need to draw a valid conclusion. The 10-to-1 figure is a general estimate that I just demonstrated is reasonably accurate. Adjust your tinfoil hat and start scrutinizing your conspiracy theories a little more closely. :)