The Energy Blog

Virent: Biomass to "Biogasoline"

Shell and Virent Energy Systems, Inc., (Virent™) have announced a joint research and development effort to convert plant sugars directly into gasoline and gasoline blend components, via the BioForming™ process, rather than producing ethanol. The process is a simple reactor system operating at relatively low temperatures and pressures and once it is functioning, no additional energy inputs are required. The resulting "biogasoline" could potentially eliminate the need for specialized infrastructure, new engine designs and blending equipment.

The production of gasoline via BioForming™ is a new pathway for the production of liquid fuels and chemicals from biiomass rather than from fossil fuels. Virent has received significant commercial interest and entered into key strategic industrial collaborations, including with Shell for the development of liquid fuels, which will speed the technology’s time to market and enable broad commercial penetration

Virents process is a technology that economically transforms the sugars from biomass into universally usable fuel. The sugars can be sourced from non-food sources like corn stover, switch grass, wheat straw and sugarcane pulp, in addition to conventional biofuel feedstock like wheat, corn and sugarcane. It produces gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels with with twice the net energy yield per acre as traditional ethanol processes and with a small CO2 footprint. Gasoline made via the BioForming™ process will enjoy a 20% to 30% per BTU cost advantage over ethanol.

The resultant biofuels have the same properties as their petroleum based counterparts.  They have the same energy content (for example, gasoline has 52 percent more energy per gallon than ethanol). The fuels produced through this process are fully compatible with existing engines, pipelines and fuel pumps. Virent’s products are universally usable, requiring no new infrastructure investment. They are compatible with existing engines, pipelines, and fuel pumps.

“Virent has proven that sugars can be converted into the same hydrocarbon mixtures of today’s gasoline blends. Our products match petroleum gasoline in functionality and performance. Virent’s unique catalytic process uses a variety of biomass-derived feedstocks to generate biogasoline at competitive costs. Our results to date fully justify accelerating commercialization of this technology.

-- Dr. Randy Cortright, Virent CTO, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President

FYI: New Path to Produce Butanol

A team of researchers headed by an environmental engineer at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new techniques to produce butanol, a biofuel superior to ethanol.

It can be derived from lignocellulosic materials, which are plant biomass parts that range from woody stems and straw to agricultural residues, corn fiber and husks, all containing in large part cellulose and some lignin.

Butanol is considered to be a better biofuel than ethanol because it's less corrosive and has a higher caloric value, giving it a higher energy value.

The lignocellulosic biomass is placed into digesters comprised of a selected mixed culture of thousands of different microbes to convert the biomass into butyrate.

From there, the material is sent back to Peoria where another collaborator converts the butyrate to butanol using fermenters.

Researchers Modify E. coli to Produce Biofuels

Biopact also reported that Researchers have modified E. coli to produce efficient higher-chain alcohol biofuels

Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a new method for producing next-generation biofuels by genetically modifying Escherichia coli bacteria to be an efficient biofuel synthesizer. The method could lead to the mass production of higher-chain alcohol-based biofuels like butanol and isobutanol, which are more efficient than ethanol. The technology has been licenced to Gevo Inc., a next-generation biofuel company supported by Khosla Ventures and the Virgin Green Fund.

Biofuels Can Match Oil Production

Biopact has a post on a sure to be controversial article by a Harvard professor that claims that biofuels can match oil production.  Read the post and the Financial Times article and form your own opinion.

Even though some vested interests are trying to downplay the potential of biofuels, energy analysts and scientists know that their potential is truly vast - at least in theory. The director of Harvard University’s Center for International Development (John F. Kennedy School of Government), professor Ricardo Hausmann, joins those analysts and presents a well argued view on what would be needed for a sustainable bioenergy future to emerge. Writing in the Financial Times, he goes so far as to state that 'biofuels can match oil production'.  . . .  more

U.N. Rapporteur Calls for Moratorium on Building Biofuel Plants Using Food Feedstocks

Biopact reports that Jean Ziegler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, presented his annual report to the General Assembly in New York, which calls for a 5-year moratorium on the production of first-generation liquid biofuels made from food crops such as corn, wheat, palm oil and rapeseed.  A UN special rapporteur is an independent expert, who does not receive any financial compensation for his or her work.

The Energy Blog supports this position except in locations where it can be shown that the production of first-generation biofuels are not causing a significant increase of food prices and are not causing an adverse effect on the environment. This policy should also encourage the building of second-generation plants, that use less water and energy and building of cellulosic biofuel plants that use non-food feedstocks. Additionally The Energy Blog believes that any subsidies on first-generation plants should be phased out over a five year period. This would encourage first generation plants to be converted to second-generation plants or where applicable to cellulosic plants that use the whole plant as feedstock.

IMF Warns About Impact of Biofuels on Food Prices

(Thomson Financial) - The IMF warned that an increasing global reliance on grain as a source of fuel could drive up food prices in poor countries.

'The use of food as a source of fuel may have serious implications for the demand for food if the expansion of biofuels continues,' the International Monetary Fund said in its twice-yearly report on the world economy. . . . more

Maize for Biofuels: The Ultimate Energy Crop

According to research conducted by Fred Below at the University of Illinois (U of I), maize may prove to be the ultimate U.S. biofuels crop. This comes at somewhat of a surprise, because U of I has been studying and advocating Miscanthus for some time.

The chief advantage of maize, when grown in the Midwest, is that it requires much less nitrogen fertilizer input than corn because it does not produce any ears.  The sugar is in the stalks, not in the ears and is in the form of sucrose, fructose and glucose.

This differs from conventional corn and other crops being grown for biofuels in that the starch found in corn grain and the cellulose in switchgrass, corn stover and other biofuel crops must be treated with enzymes to convert them into sugars that can be then fermented into alcohols such as ethanol.

It also is easier for farmers to integrate into their current operations than some other dedicated energy crops because it can be easily rotated with corn or soybeans, and can be planted, cultivated and harvested with the same equipment U.S. farmers already have. Finally, tropical maize stalks are believed to require less processing than corn grain, corn stover, switchgrass, Miscanthus giganteus and the scores of other plants now being studied for biofuel production.

USDA: High Oil Prices Push Up Food Prices More Than Biofuels

Biopact reports:

First-generation biofuels like ethanol made from corn and biodiesel from rapeseed have effects on food prices. However, new evidence from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggests high oil prices play a much larger role in this trend. The situation is far more complex than some want to believe, because some biofuels even succeed in pushing inflation down. Researchers point at the situation in Brazil: there inflation indices have dropped because of record ethanol output and record low prices for the biofuel. Competitive biofuels bring down costs for all the economic sectors that would otherwise have to rely exclusively on very expensive oil products. More . . .

Are Biofuels Sustainable?

Robert Anex, left, an Iowa State associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, is leading several studies to determine whether a bioeconomy that produces fuel and chemicals from biorenewable resources will be sustainable. One study found an integrated process for producing ethanol from plant fiber could recycle plant nutrients back to the soil.

Innovative bioconversion processes configured to recover key plant nutrients from biomass will allow recycling nutrients to crop fields, thereby closing nutrient cycles and reducing the energetic and economic costs of fertilization. Such advanced bioconversion matched with complementary biomass production may promote the development of highly productive agricultural–industrial systems that protect environmental quality.

"It may well be that the development of biomass-based crops production systems can have as profound an impact on agriculture and its environmental footprint as it does on energy security and the global climate," Anex and co-authors Andrew Heggenstaller and Matt Liebman of Iowa State's agronomy department and Lee Lynd and Mark Laser of Dartmouth College wrote in a recent paper. "Whether this is a positive impact or a negative impact will depend largely on how biomass feedstocks are produced and converted, and the extent to which these two activities are integrated."

Growth in Biofuels Production Remains Strong

Growth in the biofuel industry remains strong for both ethanol and biodiesel, according to a presss release for the Soyatech's Biofuels Index, newly updated for Q2 2007. However, the data also shows signs that the corn-based ethanol build out may be leveling off.

Soyatech's Biofuels Index, which tracks planned and actual build-out of biofuels production capacity, reports dramatic growth in planned capacity for ethanol plants over the past year, from 6.761 billion gallons per year (BGY) as of July 1, 2006, to 13.03 BGY as of July 1, 2007 - an increase of 93%. During this same period, growth in ethanol capacity under construction increased 199%, from 2.417 BGY to 7.226 BGY.

During Q2 2007, total online capacity for ethanol increased by 564 million gallons per year (MGY), or 10.7%, from 5.289 BGY to 5.853 BGY. Capacity in planning rose by approximately 6% during the quarter.

However, the Index also points to a slight leveling off in construction of ethanol plants during Q2 2007 - the first time since the Index began tracking these numbers. According to the Index, capacity under construction decreased slightly by 1.7%.

"While the percent change is too small and the time frame too short to identify this as a definitive trend, we understand from industry sources that it is more difficult to secure debt financing for new refineries due largely to increased equity requirements on the part of banks providing this funding. We suspect that an additional cause may be constraints on the amount of corn available as a feedstock to produce ethanol," said Jacob Golbitz, director of research for Soyatech and its parent company, HighQuest Partners.

Bodman Speaks on Transportation Fuels

In an interview on CNBC a few minutes ago, U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman responding to a question about what he saw for the future supply of power for the transportation market said that he saw solar power, wind power, plug-in hybrids using solar and wind power, and biofuels such as ethanol and butanol as being the future power sources.

I view this response remarkable in two respects 1) the mention of plug-ins with such importance and without (the apparent need for) any attempt to explain what they were and 2) the mention of butanol as an important biofuel.  This represents a change in the administrations attitude over the past couple of years as plug-ins and butanol were not in their vocabulary before that.  This points out the success of the efforts of CalCars (California Cars Initiative) and Plug in Partners in promoting plug-in hybrid vehicles as well as the efforts of the various biofuel advocate groups.

UOP to Develop Biofuel Technology for Military Jets

UOP Project sponsored by Defense Department to Develop Process for converting vegetable and algal oils to Jet Propellant-8 (JP-8)

Based on UOP press release - UOP LLC, a Honeywell (NYSE: HON) company, announced today it will accelerate research and development on renewable energy technology to convert vegetable and algal oils to military jet fuels.

The goal of the $6.7 million project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to develop and commercialize a process to produce Jet Propellant 8 (JP-8) used by U.S. and NATO militaries.

“The focus of our renewable energy efforts has been to develop technologies that align with today’s standard refinery practices, but allow a broader range of feedstock options,” said Jennifer Holmgren, director of UOP’s Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit. “We are confident that we have assembled a strong team of experts that will be successful in proving the viability of biofeedstock technologies for JP-8 and other jet fuels, while offering the U.S. military another option for sustainable liquid fuels critical to their programs.”

UOP will work with Honeywell Aerospace, Cargill, Arizona State University, Sandia National Laboratories and Southwest Research Institute on the project, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2008. Fuel produced by the new process is expected to achieve 90 percent energy efficiency for maximum conversion of feed to fuel, reduced waste and reduced production costs. UOP expects the technology will be viable for future use in the production of jet fuel for commercial jets.

University of Wisconsin Engineers Develop Higher-Energy Liquid-Transportation Fuel from Sugar

A University of Wisconsin press release, announced that university chemical and biological engineering Professor James Dumesic and his research team have developed a two-stage process for turning biomass-derived sugar, fructose, into 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF), a liquid transportation fuel with 40 percent greater energy density than ethanol, similar to that of gasoline.

By engineering sugar through a series of steps involving hydrochoric acid and copper catalysts, salt and using butanol as a solvent, UW-Madison researchers created a path for a sustainable, carbon-neutral fuel to reduce global reliance on fossil fuels.

Not only does dimethylfuran have higher energy content than ethanol, it also addresses other ethanol shortcomings. DMF is not soluble in water and therefore cannot become contaminated by absorbing water from the atmosphere. DMF is stable in storage and, in the evaporation stage of its production, consumes one-third of the energy required to evaporate a solution of ethanol produced by fermentation for biofuel applications.

Dumesic and graduate students Yuriy Roman-Leshkov, Christopher J. Barrett and Zhen Y. Liu developed their new catalytic process, reported in the June 21 issue of the journal Nature, for creating DMF by expanding upon earlier work, previous post.

UOP, ENI Building "Green Diesel" Facility in Italy

UOP AND ITALY’S ENI S.p.A. ANNOUNCE PLANS FOR FACILITY TO PRODUCE DIESEL FUEL FROM VEGETABLE OIL

UOP LLC, a Honeywell (NYSE: HON) company, and Eni S.p.A. (NYSE: E) announced today that Eni will build a production facility using EcofiningTM technology to produce diesel fuel from vegetable oils.

Green Diesel is a high-cetane diesel fuel, using UOP technology. Green Diesel is superior to that of petrodiesel and biodiesel with cetane values in the 70 to 90 range for significant blending benefits. The technology, developed in partnership between UOP and ENI, integrates seamlessly into existing refinery operations and is currently available for licensing. The first commercial unit is expected to go into operation in early 2009.

The facility, to be located in Livorno, Italy, will process 6,500 barrels per day of vegetable oils to supply European refineries with a high-cetane “green” diesel fuel, to meet growing demand for high-quality, clean fuels and biofuels throughout Europe.

It will be the first facility to use the Ecofining technology developed by UOP and Eni. UOP has already completed the basic design for the first unit. Eni, a leading European oil company with operations in 70 countries and 2006 revenues of more than 86 billion euros, also plans to install several additional Ecofining units at its other wholly-owned and affiliate refineries throughout Europe.

Biofuels from Sorghum does not Compromise Food Production, Saves Water

A project to produce ethanol from sweet sorghum, is described in the biofuel review.  The project being implemented jointly by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and Rusni Distilleries, has achieved a significant milestone with the first batch of ethanol flowing out of the distillery at Mohammed Shapur village in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Through its ethanol from sweet sorghum project, ICRISAT has been promoting the idea of generating bio-fuel without compromising on food production.

“Our emphasis with the sweet sorghum project is that ethanol is produced from the sweet juice available in the stalk of the crop plant, unlike in the use of grains in other plants. The farmers will continue to use the sorghum grain, while they can earn an additional income from selling the juice,” said Dr Belum VS Reddy, ICRISAT's Principal Sorghum Breeder.

Sweet sorghum has other benefits over sugarcane and corn as feedstock for ethanol production. It requires only one half of the water required to grow maize and around one eighth of the water required to grow sugarcane; and has the least cost of cultivation which is around one fifth of the cost for growing sugarcane.

A D Little to Study Sustainability of Biofuels

Arthur D. Little is undertaking a study on the Sustainability of Transportation Biofuels aiming to answer the question “given dependency on high oil prices and political support, are transportation biofuels economically sustainable?"

Quoting from their press release:

Despite the current support, there are uncertainties regarding the long-term sustainability of biofuel technologies and applications. This is due to the fact that most biofuels are cost competitive only in times of high oil prices. Also, the competition between fuel crop and food crop needs and the impact on biodiversity may lead to withdrawal or reduction of government support in the long-term. Finally, there is uncertainty regarding those who will be the active players in the value chain. For instance, will there continue to be on-off joint ventures supported by private equity, or will the market be dominated by energy majors and others?

“The biofuel market is thriving in countries which have the most favorable political incentives and availability of cheap feedstocks. But long term survival of the various biofuel options is far from clear, as virtually all are dependent on government support and/or high oil prices,” comments Roger Hill, Head of Arthur D. Littles Global Energy Practice.

Their biofuels website gives some preliminary answers regarding the profit potential. As can be seen from their chart above, only sugar cane ethanol from Brazil is profitable at a $40/bbl crude oil price, and U.S. corn oil is profitable at a slightly higher price of crude. The other supplies require a much higher oil price or substantial subsidies. At this point (in the study) cellulosic ethanol and biobutanol apparently are not considered. Factors other than cost will obviously be studied.

IEO2007: Liquid Fuels

The International Energy Outlook 2007 (IEO2007) presents an assessment by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the outlook for international energy markets through 2030. Selected excerpt's regarding total energy consumption and liquids are given in the remainder of this post. Other topics will be reviewed later.

In its reference case World marketed energy consumption is projected to increase by 57 percent from 2004 to 2030. Total energy demand in the non-OECD countries increases by 95 percent, compared with an increase of 24 percent in the OECD countries.

The IEO2007 reference case projects increased world consumption of marketed energy from all sources over the 2004 to 2030 projection period (left). Fossil fuels (petroleum and other liquid fuels, natural gas, and coal)

Liquids remain the dominant energy source, given their importance in the transportation and industrial end-use sectors; however, their share of the world energy market in this year’s outlook is lessened in the projection, as other fuels replace liquids where possible outside those sectors.

World consumption of petroleum and other liquid fuels, grows from 83 million barrels oil equivalent per day in 2004 to 97 million in 2015 and 118 million in 2030. liquids production is projected to increase by 14 million barrels per day from 2004 to 2015 and by an additional 20 million barrels per day from 2015 to 2030. OPEC producers are expected to provide more than one-half of the additional production in 2015 (8 million barrels per day) and more than two-thirds in 2030 (23 million barrels per day). Non-OPEC production in 2030 is projected to be 12 million barrels per day higher than in 2004, representing 35 percent of the increase in total world production over the 2004 total. The estimates of production increases are based on current proved reserves and a country-by-country assessment of ultimately recoverable petroleum, as well as the potential for unconventional liquids production.

Biofuels Reduce Meat Prices

Contrary to many reports, Biopact has an article that leads off:

Distiller’s dried grains (DDGs) are the leftovers from converting corn into fuel ethanol. In the US Midwest alone, ethanol producers generate 10 million tons of DDGs annually. Farmers buy the residue for between US$85 and US$110 per ton and feed it to livestock. The rapidly expanding ethanol market may imply that meat prices will drop because of lower feed prices. This is the case in Europe, where, according to an EU study, the large new stream of biodiesel residues (glycerin) and ethanol byproducts suitable as feed components will result in lower meat prices.

Green Star Products Completes Phase One Testing

Green Star Products, Inc., previous post, (OTC: GSPI), announced Friday that it has completed Phase I of its 40,000 liter microalgae demonstration facility and has been successful in controlling the most important variables in algae production, i.e. temperature of water in large systems, salinity (salt content), evaporation, pH (acidity-alkalinity) and most of all initial costs of construction.

In summary, GSPI has developed the field expertise to build and operate the patent pending, proprietary Hybrid Algae Production System (HAPS), a cross between an open and closed pond system. The demonstration, prototype facility is located in Montana with an individual pond capacity of 40,000 liters, which can easily be scaled up to larger systems and acreage.

Joseph LaStella, President of GSPI, explains, "The industry hurdles are mainly associated with costs of construction of algae farms and process systems that can economically control the growth environment of the algae. This is exactly the purpose of GSPI's Phase I demonstration algae facility."

Sustainable Fuel for the Transportation Sector

Purdue University scientists Rakesh Agrawal, Navneet Singh, Fabio Ribeiro, and Nicholas Delgass have proposed a hybrid system of hydrogen and carbon that can produce a sufficient amount of liquid hydrocarbon fuels to power the entire U.S. transportation sector. The H2CAR process uses carbon produced by biomass and hydrogen supplied from carbon-free energy. The following is summarized and paraphrased from the online publication of their report cited above.

The process has several advantages:

• The land area needed to grow the biomass is <40% of that needed by other routes that solely use biomass to support the entire transportation sector.
• Prior known processes were estimated to be able to produce 30% of the United States transportation fuel from the annual biomass of 1.366 billion tons, while the H2CAR process shows the potential to supply the entire United States transportation sector from that quantity of biomass.
• The synthesized liquid provides H2 storage in an open loop system.
• Reduction to practice of the H2CAR route has the potential to provide the transportation sector for the foreseeable future, using the existing infrastructure.

Bush seeks to scrap current ethanol standard

Reuters, March 20, 2007 -- The Bush administration has proposed scrapping the current U.S. renewable fuels standard that requires ethanol  ...

Under the legislative proposal sent to Congress on Monday, the new standard would require U.S. ethanol and alternative fuel consumption to reach 10 billion gallons in 2010.

The alternative fuels standard would then slowly rise through 2014, and ramp up the following three years to reach 35 billion gallons annually in 2017. ...

In addition to ethanol, alternative fuels under the bill would include biodiesel and motor fuel made from municipal solid waste, natural gas, hydrogen, coal-derived liquid fuels, electricity and other fuels to be determined by the Energy Department. ... more

The change in definition of renewable fuel requirements from only ethanol to the other listed fuels makes attainment of the 35 billion gallons annually goal by 2017 more achievable, as I have stated previously.  Combined with greater emphasis on PHEVs and BEVs our greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil can be greatly reduced. The coal liquids should be required to be produced from coal mined in an environmentally consious manner and the CTL process be required to sequester all emissions.

LS9: Biofuels that Resemble Petroleum

Biofuel company  LS9 Inc., the Renewable Petroleum Company(TM), is using synthetic biology to produce proprietary biofuels that resemble petroleum — but which are designed to be “renewable, clean, domestically produced, and cost competitive.”  The company said today that it raised $5 million in its first round of venture funding from Flagship Ventures and Khosla Ventures, two early-stage investment firms.

The San Carlos, California company was founded in 2005 by Khosla Ventures, Flagship Ventures, along with two scientists, Chris Somerville, Director of the Carnegie Institution and Professor of Plant Biology at Stanford University, and George Church, Director of the MIT-Harvard US-Dept. of Energy GTL Center and Professor of Genetics at Harvard.

The companies products, currently under development, are designed to closely resemble petroleum derived fuels. Derived from diverse agricultural feedstocks, these high energy liquid fuels are renewable and compatible with current distribution and consumer infrastructure.

Dupont Provides Update on its Biofuels Activities

A DuPont (NYSE: DD) executive says his company's cellulosic technology delivers more energy output for energy input than conventional grain ethanol... or even gasoline.

Speaking as one of the keynote speakers at the World Biofuels Markets, DuPont Biofuels Vice President & General Manager John Ranieri provided an update on the company's initiatives to deliver technologies to produce biofuels.

DuPont has a three-part biofuels strategy that includes:

1. Discovering new technologies to make advanced biofuels, such as biobutanol
2. Developing technologies to convert agricultural feedstocks and energy crops into biofuels
3. Improving the yield of grain ethanol production through by increasing yield per acre of energy crops

Biobutanol Partnership with BP and Advanced Biofuels Pipeline: DuPont's partnership with BP to develop biobutanol is based on its strategy to bring advanced biofuels to market to expand the use of biofuels in gasoline. Biobutanol will be the first advanced performance product available from this partnership. It resolves fuel stability issues in that biobutanol-gasoline blends can potentially be distributed via the existing fuel supply infrastructure; it improves blend flexibility allowing higher biofuels blends with gasoline; it improves fuel efficiency (better miles per gallon) compared to incumbent biofuels; and, it enhances ethanol-gasoline blends by lowering the vapor pressure when co-blended with these fuels. Biobutanol is targeted for introduction later this year in the United Kingdom. Additional global capacity will be introduced as market conditions dictate.

The Need for Both Biofuels and Battery Based Vehicles

Based on the response to this mornings post on the governments cellulosic ethanol program, I think some of you may have misunderstood the reasoning behind The Energy Blog supporting this cellulosic ethanol program and some of the basic causes and remedies of The Energy Revolution. Our most pressing energy problem is our decreasing supplies of increasingly expensive oil for the transportation industries. The high use of petroleum products for transportation is one of the primary causes of global warming (the other being coal fired power plants, which will not be discussed in this post), fortunately the solution to the problem of increased use of petroleum products also decreases the emissions of global warming gases.

This is not a short term problem, but one that has taken years to develop and will take years to solve. The timing is hard to pin down. I believe we have passed the peak production of inexpensive sweet crude oil. Each year we are now using larger quantities of expensive (either to harvest and/or refine) oil, whether it be sour oil, very deep offshore oil, heavy oil or perhaps eventually shale oil. At some time, as prices of oil go up, market forces will cause the use of oil to decrease. This would require changes in lifestyle, some of which would be beneficial, as there is much waste and some of which could reduce the the standard of living that we have become used to. More use of mass transportation and driving more efficient vehicles are certainly required. 

Government Nets Out Positive on Ethanol, Biobutanol Coming to US

Expert: Ethanol industry will grow

Jerry Perkins, Des Moines Register, February 21, 2007

... Keith Collins, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief economist, has estimated that the ethanol-fueled increase in corn prices lowered federal payments to farmers by $6 billion last year. Dinneen said $2.7 billion from the ethanol industry in new federal tax revenues meant that taxpayers gained a return on their investment in government subsidies paid to ethanol producers.

... Biobutanol ... could be marketed in the United States as early as 2010, said Dennis Magyar, industry manager for North America for DuPont Biofuels. ...

Magyar said the partners are looking for a U.S. site to build a biobutanol plant. He said biobutanol will complement - not compete with - ethanol.

Iowa is a contender for the plant, he said. That's because existing ethanol plants can be retrofitted to make biobutanol. ...

Jetropha: Europe's Answer for Biofuel?

The Cinderella Plant
Africans used to think jatropha was a worthless bush.
Now it may be an important new source of energy.
By Karen Palmer, Newsweek International, Feb. 19, 2007 issue

Jatropha Circas is the Cinderella of the plant world. Throw a seed in the poorest soil on the planet, and up comes a bush that will likely last 50 years. During a drought, jatropha bushes simply drop their leaves and keep pumping out seedpods. ...

Now this humble bush appears poised to become a global star. In recent years studies have shown that jatropha oil burns with one fifth the carbon emission of fossil fuels, making Africa's hardscrabble ground a potentially fertile source of energy. Scientists estimate that if even a quarter of the continent's arable land were plowed into jatropha plantations, output would surpass 20 million barrels a day. ...

The European Union has decreed that consumers will use 5.75 percent biodiesel in motor vehicles by 2010 and 20 percent by 2020, which means that Europe has to come up with a 10.5 billion-liter supply of biodiesel in the next four years. ... so far, jatropha is the only [new energy crop] ready for commercialization.

NCSU Licenses Centia Biofuel Process to Diversified Energy

Diversified Energy Corporation has been granted an exclusive worldwide license for the Centia (TM) process, an innovative and breakthrough biofuels technology, by North Carolina State University (NCSU). It provides several key advantages when compared with other biofuel processes like biodiesel, ethanol and others, including:

• Delivers a more advanced and complex hydrocarbon fuel, suitable for demanding applications like jet fuel and as a biodiesel additive for cold-weather operations.
• Provides up to a 50% reduction in external energy required in the process.
• Utilizes any renewable lipid-based oil compound (soybean, canola, animal fats, algae, etc), thus avoiding being beholden to the price and availability of any one supply source.
• Produces an aviation fuel competitively priced with petroleum-derived fuel, before considering the additional financial incentives available from the government.
• Offers a "100% green" biofuel product containing no fossil fuel components.

The patent pending Centia (TM) process can utilize feedstock oils from edible and inedible animal fats, waste oils, agriculture crops like soybean, algae, newly proposed energy crops, or any other lipid-based feedstock.

Economists Favor Rasing Taxes On Fossil Fuels

Is It Time for a New Tax on Energy?
By Phil Izzo, Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2007

Economists Say Government Should Foster Alternatives – But Not How Bush Proposes

The government should encourage development of alternatives to fossil fuels, economists said in a WSJ.com survey. But most say the best way to do that isn't in President Bush's energy proposals: a new tax on fossil fuels.

Forty of 47 economists who answered the question said the government should help champion alternative fuels. Economists generally are in favor of free-market solutions, but there are times when you need to intervene," said David Wyss at Standard & Poor's Corp. "We're already in the danger zone" because of the outlook for oil supplies and concerns about climate change, he said.

A majority of the economists said a tax on fossil fuels would be the most economically sound way to encourage alternatives. ...

This may be the popular view of economists, but would the public like it.  This approach is used in Brazil and parts of Europe.  What do you think?

Purdue Researchers Develop "Tactical Biorefinery"

Scientists Develop Portable Generator That Turns Trash Into Electricity

By Douglas M Main, Purdue University, Feb. 1, 2007

A group of scientists have created a portable refinery that efficiently converts food, paper and plastic trash into electricity. The machine, designed for the U.S. military, would allow soldiers in the field to convert waste into power and could have widespread civilian applications in the future said Michael Ladisch, a Purdue University professor who leads the project, shown here with the "tactical biorefineary", 

"In a very short time it should be ready for use in the military, and I think it could be used outside the military shortly thereafter" said Ladisch.

The "tactical biorefinery" processes several kinds of waste at once, which it converts into fuel via two parallel processes. The system then burns the different fuels in a diesel engine to power a generator. Ladisch said the machine's ability to burn multiple fuels at once, along with its mobility, make it unique.

Could USSEC Proccess Revolutionize Biofuel Industry?

U.S. Sustainable Energy Corp. (USSEC) (OTC:USSE.PK) announced that they have completed the assembly of their new reactor system located at the USSEC Bioenergy plant and fuel production facility in Natchez, Mississippi. The new reactor includes a number of component upgrades, and process improvements made since introducing the prototype last year. The patent pending process is claimed to be a major advancement for green energy that creates a quality 7-3-7 organic-based fertilizer, while also producing unique biofuel and biogas byproducts at very low cost.

The Rivera Process, named after the inventor, John H. Rivera, CEO of USSEC, is a modified pyrolytic process with hydrolysis. The new reactor is capable of producing 6000 gallons of biofuel daily, producing five gallons of fuel from each bushel of soybean stock -- a conversion ratio three times higher than the ratio for traditional biodiesel. The biofuel has a thermal value similar to petroleum diesel, displays no corrosive behavior, and is resistant to temperatures as low as -70 degrees Fahrenheit. The technology is also claimed to be also to run on cow manure and wood chips.  Further announcements of additional site locations for operation in 2008 are expected by March.

Solix Biofuels/Colorado State Deleloping Novel Algae Production System

Colorado State University and Solix Biofuels, Inc., a Boulder-based start-up company, are working in partnership to develop technology to mass-produce algae that create oil that can be converted into biodiesel fuel.

The Solix photo-bioreactor system, beta model shown here, which grows algae in temperature controlled closed plastic bags is the novel part of their process and the focus of development at Colorado State University.

Solix plans to commercialize the technology over the course of the next two years and expects to be able to compete commercially with the wholesale price of crude petroleum.

"Algae are the fastest growing organisms on the planet, and can produce 100 times more oil per acre than conventional soil-tilled crops that are now being grown for biofuel use," said Solix founder Jim Sears.

Prairie Grasses Yield More Energy Than Corn

A new study led by David Tilman, Regents Professor of Ecology in the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences, published a study showing that prairie grasses are more energy efficient that corn ethanol or soybean biodiesel and are better for the environment. The findings are published in the Dec. 8 issue of the journal Science. According to a University of Minnesota press release:

The study shows that mixtures of native perennial grasses and other flowering plants provide more usable energy per acre than corn grain ethanol or soybean biodiesel and are far better for the environment. Grass-based fuel can lead to a net decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide, whereas ethanol and biodiesel increase it.  Grass-based fuel can even lead to a net decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide, whereas ethanol and biodiesel increase it.

The beauty of mixed prairie grasses, say the researchers, is that, unlike corn, they can grow in old farmland or in marginal, degraded lands with little or no application of water or fertilizers. The challenge is finding enough such land.

"Biofuels made from high-diversity mixtures of prairie plants can reduce global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," says Tilman. "Even when grown on infertile soils, they can provide a substantial portion of global energy needs, and leave fertile land for food production."

Rand: 25% of Energy from Renewables by 2025

The Wall Street Journal reports that a Rand Corp. study shows that if the the falling costs of ethanol, wind power and other forms of renewable energy continue to fall, as they have historically, such sources could supply as much as 25% of the U.S.'s conventional energy by 2025 at little or no additional expense.

This is certainly good news if costs continue to drop as they forecast, the problem they didn't mention is whether the manufacturing infrastructure can expand that rapidly.

The Rand study concludes that because prices for gasoline, natural gas and coal are likely to remain high, their cost advantage over renewables will erode, furthered by the hope that ethanol from farm wastes will be available by 2020.

I would agree that fossil fuel costs will remain high and that would allow cellulosic ethanol to be, not only competitive, but lower in cost than fossil fuels.

Vertigro Algae Bio-Fuel Oil/C02 Sequestration System

Global Green Solutions Inc (OTC BB: GGRN.OB) has announced that it will fund a demonstration pilot plant of the Vertigro bio-fuel oil/C02 sequestration system developed by Valcent Products Inc.(OTC BB: VCTPF.OB)) of El Paso, Texas at an estimated cost of $ 2,500,000. The Plant will be built on Valcent's lands located in the El Paso area by mid July of next year.  Global Green will have earned the exclusive world rights to a bio-fuel oil technology from Valcent on completing the pilot plant. Global Green will have earned a 70% joint venture interest, leaving Valcent with a 30% carried joint venture interest.

The Vertegro system consists of a series of closely spaced vertical bio-reactors constructed of thin film membranes allowing high levels of light penetration. This new bio-reactors are tailored to grow a species of algae that yields a large volume of high grade vegetable oil, which is very suitable for blending with diesel to create a bio-diesel fuel.

The membrane is configured for an optimum flow for the growth of algae. This dynamic system produces much higher algae growth rates than conventional static systems. It uses certain algae that consume up to 90% of their weight with C02 using sunlight as the energy source to drive photosynthesis. Approximately 50% of the dry weight of the algae is an oil suitable for bio-fuel blending with diesel and for other uses. When fully operational, the system yields a constant supply of algae which is harvested, dried and processed to remove the oil, leaving a residue of some 50% by weight, which can also be sold for a variety of commercial products. The system will be a continuous closed loop, which allows for a greater retention of water in the system, and eliminates cross contamination by other algae species.

Plankton for Biofuel

A Spanish company, Bio Fuel Systems, based in Alicante, Spain claims it is on the verge of producing an limitless source of biofuel based on plankton (algae).

BioFuel Systems was formed earlier this year after three years of research by scientists and engineers connected with the University of Alicante. The company has been researching the potential of breeding the tiny sea-borne plants then extracting oil from vat-grown phytoplankton.

They have been able to extract the unrefined oil, but has been unable to refine it into a usable fuel.  The plan on being able to refine it within 18 months. Bio Fuel Systems has drawn up industrial plans to make the fuel and says it will be able to start continuous production in 14 to 18 months.

They hope to sell the fuel for $0.25 pear litre, with a sales price of 1 euro with distribution and taxes added in.

its main benefit will be the speed at which the fuel 'crop' can be grown and harvested.

American Energy Security Study

The American Energy Security Study (AESS) is the official name of the report referred to in the previous post. In a brief review of the executive summary I picked up the following items that give a little more background about the report.

The American Energy Security (AES) Study shows that the United States can eliminate dependence on oil imports entirely by 2030. It establishes a bold plan to replace approximately five percent of imported oil each year for 20 years, beginning in 2010 (see Figure 1 below). Assuming aggressive implementation beginning in 2007, under the SSEB American Energy Security initiatives domestic liquid fuels production and transportation efficiency savings begin gradually after 2010 and ramp up to produce most of the nation’s liquid fuels requirements by 2030.

To establish U.S. energy security and independence by 2030 all feasible supply and demand options must be aggressively pursued. There is no single answer:

• Transportation energy efficiency improvements are important but, by themselves, can contribute only a small portion of the required solution.
• Renewable biomass fuels are a critical part of the portfolio of required initiatives, but can produce less than one-fourth of the required liquid fuels.
• CTL, oil shale, and EOR will all contribute substantially, and all three technologies must be aggressively deployed.

The U.S. is endowed with the largest alternative oil resources in the world. This includes five hundred billion tons of coal (oil equivalent of approximately 750,000 billion barrels), the potential to sustain 1.3 billion tons of biomass collection/harvesting for liquid fuel production by 2030 (oil equivalent of approximately 4.5 million barrels per day to perpetuity), more than a trillion barrels of oil shale liquid fuels, and 80+ billion barrels of oil stranded in conventional reservoirs that are technically recoverable using CO2 injection and sequestration to enhance oil recovery. These resources rival estimated worldwide conventional oil resources of 1-2 trillion barrels.

Proposed Plan to End Oil Imports

American imports of oil could be eliminated by 2030, a new study claims, if the U.S. adopts an aggressive 20 year program of energy efficiency and commercialization of four already-demonstrated technologies for making transportation fuels.The New York Times reported on Saturday that the study sponsored by a nonprofit group of legislators and governors called the Southern States Energy Board, to be released on Monday, urges a crash program to meet fuel needs without imports. The study, authored by Roger Bezdek, claims that more than a million new jobs would be created and the deficit reduced by $600 billion.

The four technologies are:

1. Coal liquefication which would replace 29% of oil.
2. Use biomass to make syngas which would be converted to liquid fuels by a gasification-Fischer-Tropsch (FT) Process.
3. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using CO2 produced by the other processes which would also eliminate CO2 emmisions that cause global warming.
4. Production of oil from shale.

The study indicates that oil prices of $35 to $55 a barrel are necessary for these process to be competitive.

The study does not endorse corn ethanol, but it does anticipate the production of cellulosic ethanol, in a process which it points out is not yet commercial.

Fuel Economy and Biofuels: The Answer to our Liquid Fuels Crises

The Union of Concerned Scientists have two articles in its Clean Vehicles series: Fuel Economy: The Single Most Effective Step for Cutting Oil Dependence , and Ethanol: Frequently Asked Questions which are well worth reading and generally support my views as to what we need to do to reduce our dependence on oil imports. They have put some numbers on the scenario that they develop.

Their conclusion is: "The importance of fuel economy is thereby twofold. First, it delivers bigger savings in the near to medium term. Second, it makes it conceivable that biofuels could almost completely replace gasoline for our cars and trucks in the long term because we would need much less fuel."

The top edge of the blue area on this graph indicates the total gasoline demand for our cars and light trucks under a business-as-usual scenario. 

If our average fuel economy is increased  to 40 mpg in 10 years, we have some modest fuel economy improvements beyond that date, and also add in some policies to help reduce miles traveled, all of the oil in the blue area can be saved. The green area represents the potential savings from ethanol, if everything goes well in growing that industry. In the near term our saving from biofuels is modest, but by the end of the period biofuels nearly replace all gasoline usage. Projected demand would drop to the line between the blue and the green.

RE: The False Hope of Biofuels

The Sunday, July 2, edition of the Washington Post had a column titled "The False Hope of Biofuels" which had the basic premise that biofuels could only supply half of our transportation fuel needs by 2025 and that food supplies would be compromised if it did so.  I don't think that any responsible person has argued that we could supply more than 30% of our current transportation fuel requirements, rather a diversity of fuels and conservation methods, featuring plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, will be required to provide relief from our increasingly expensive oil supplies.

In the most authoritative report on this subject "Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply", an ORNL study determined that enough fuel could be produced from biomass to meet more than one-third of our current demand for transportation fuels in the U.S. by 2030. As far as the arguments about land usage, the land necessary for producing the biofuels includes currently unused marginal land on which switchgrass or similar crops could be grown, land that is currently idle, and cellulose products produced from forestry wastes and the like, that do not require any additional land usage, as well as a fraction of the land currently devoted to the production of food, which is currently used to produce food for export or to produce food that is bought by the government to subsidise farmers. This study did not include the very significant amount of fuel that could be made from municiple solid waste, or methane from landfills and animal wastes (manure).

The answer to our increasingly expensive fuels is a diversified utilization of several technologies, not just biofuels.  The combination of biofuels; vehicles that use less fuels, such as energy efficient hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs): those made by Toyota, the Honda Insight and Civic and the Ford Escape Escalade; more importantly plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs); all electric vehicles (EVs); fuels made by coal liquefaction; vehicles running on CNG; our remaining domestic supplies of oil; and gains in efficiency made possible by more widespread use of mass transportation are more than sufficient to supply our transportation needs for the foreseeable future, even after allowing for population growth and land needed for growing food crops.

Biomass R & D Initiative

I came across a website Biomass Research & Development Initiative that covers the multi-agency effort, especially DOE and USDA, to coordinate and accelerate all Federal biobased products and bioenergy research and development.

Their feature article for April, is based on the article "The Path Forward for Biofuels and Biomaterials", which appeared in Science  "outlines how advances in genetics, biotechnology, process chemistry and engineering are leading to a new manufacturing concept for converting renewable biomass to transportation fuels and other useful products. In the article researchers at Georgia Tech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Imperial College, London outline how the integration of agroenergy crops and new biorefinery technologies will converge in new manufacturing units called biorefineries. " It is an interesting read for anyone with an interest in how biofuels could be developed and the need to accelerate the program.

More blogs about biofuels, alternative energy, renewable, renewable energy, energy, technology

Biofuels, Batteries and Power Plants

I must say that I agree with most of what U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman's said in remarks as reported in the referenced article, but they were too short, as mine are usually, to really reflect viewpoint. Our research dollars spent for biofuels and batteries may be in the right direction, but not enough is being spent soon enough and much too much is being spent on hydrogen. I believe that government spending for batteries and biofuels is a pittance and is worth it if it reduces the time until implementation by the smallest amount.  I also think we should reduce all subsidies for ethanol production as soon as possible by tying them to the price of gasoline. Corn ethanol subsidies should be phased out  as soon as cellulosic ethanol is commercial. Congress needs to appropriate the money for the cellulosic ethanol demonstration plants! I am glad to see that batteries are moving to the forefront, but they are so close to commercialization that I don't know how much government research can be justified.  We will need more power plants powered by either coal or nuclear. I prefer coal with sequestration because they can be built faster and the nuclear waste problem is reduced, but a parallel building program may be required.  No mention was made of conservation.  The greatest amount of conservation occurs with electric vehicles getting their energy from advanced power plants operating at above 60% efficiency. The government has sheparded this development much faster than industry ever would have.  Changes in lifestyle and better building insulation standards are very important also. The most immediate impact would be to raise vehicle efficiency standards immediately! But no matter how much conservation is used we will require more power plants. Renewable energy, although important, is not the subject of this discussion because there is no way it can significantly impact our power production in the next 10 years.

He was quoted that he's "surprised" that oil price increases haven't had a greater impact on the U.S. economy and that he is  "worried" that the economy will suffer if oil prices stay above current levels. He further stated that "we are going to reach a limit and we will see a real impact of increased oil prices on our economy. Whether its $95 or something north of that I don't know. I can tell you I'm worried about anything above the current levels."

He went on to say that the administrations policy to increase research dollars for bio-fuels, hybrid battery technology and hydrogen fuel has the country on the right track. "But this country has been decades in getting itself into the fix we're in now. And it'll be a significant number of years working our way out of it."

He also called for the approval of the Yucca Mountain project to dispose of our nuclear waste. "This country doesn't need four (nuclear power) plants. We need 14 or we need 24." In order to support this kind of construction "will require Yucca Mountain be built."  Bodman said demand for electricity in the U.S. will increase 50% over the next 20-25 years and "the only thing I see meeting that is nuclear power."

US Energy Secretary:Oil Prices Eventually Will Impact Economy, Terry Kosdrosky, Dow Jones Newswire, April 6, 2006

Technorati tags: biofuels, batteries, nuclear, electric power, ethanol, coal, energy, technology

More Proof of Global Warming

Dr Michael Coughlin, head of the National Climate Centre was reported as saying that the world is now hotter than any time since prehistoric times.  He is supported by research using gas trapped in Antarctic ice going back 650,000 years that found that current levels of carbon dioxide in the air are 27% higher than at any tiny time during that period.  This goes along with NASA's report that says that 2005 is the hottest year on record.

Effects that have been attributed to the warming include that the Artic sea ice dropped to its lowest level ever, the record hurricane season and an unprecedented drought that reduced the flow of the Amazon river to its lowest ever rate.  Canada and Australia had their hottest ever weather this year, while India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Algeria suffered heatwaves reaching 50C.

If this isn't strong enough proof that global warming is real, what do you need Mr President?  It certainly should be enough to convince you to take all possible measures to reduce global warming, which should include as its main point the reduction of burning of fossil fuels. The time required for any mitigating measures to have any impact is so great, that all stops have to be pulled out now.  Items that have been repeatedly indicated as being necessary include:

Bioenergy Feedstock Information Network

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently redesigned its Bioenergy Feedstock Information Network (BFIN), dramatically increasing ease of access to feedstock related data and analysis. The U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Information Network (BIN), housed at ORNL, had become a central location for information related to biomass and in particular feedstocks. Information available at the site includes:

* Reports  * Fact sheets  * Databases  * Presentations  * Images  * Links
* News  * Events  * Contacts

Biomass feedstock types with information featured on the site includes:

• Agricultural residue
• Forestry residue
• Herbaceous crops
• Municipal/Urban residues
• Oil crops
• Short-rotation woody crops

The new website, renamed Bioenergy Feedstock Information Network (BFIN), is now available publicly at http://bioenergy.ornl.gov

The site's overall design and structure is predicated on primarily two publications: The 2003 Roadmap for Agricultural Biomass Feedstock Supply in the United States and the 2005 Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply. The industry segments, outlined in the Roadmap, help to partially structure the site's content into five distinct supply system processes; harvesting, storage, preprocessing, transportation and system integration. The Billion-Ton study provided the structure by which feedstock types were categorized. The study also drives many of the numbers and projections that form the basis for information on the site.

More blogs about biofuels, biomass, energy, technology

Promising Future for Biofuels

Science News Online has a great article reviewing the emerging technologies in the biofuels area which inspired me to write a similar post adding some of the technologies from The Energy Blog.  Many of them have been subjects of previous posts in The Energy Blog, but putting them all together puts a fresh perspective on the future of biofuels.  Despite the excesses that make up much of the Energy Act of 2005, advocates of biofuels should be fairly happy with provisions of the act that directly promote their agenda.  With the rising prices of oil products biofuels are about the only answer to augmenting our liquid fuels supplies, not to diminish the importance of the conservation benefits of more fuel efficient vehicles, plug in hybrids, electric vehicles and mass transportation.  Neither conservation efforts or biofuels alone can totally mitigate increasing prices, but without extreme efforts on both fronts supply and demand can do nothing but increase the price of fossil fuels. 

The Energy Act of 2005:

• Requires gasoline to contain 7.5 billion gallons/yr of renewable fuel by 2012, this is almost double the 4 billion gallons produced in 2004.
• Provides incentives for the production of renewable fuels from non-traditional sources;  plants, grasses, agricultural residues and waste products with greater credits for ethanol produced from cellulosic biomass or waste.
• Establishes loan guarantees and grants for the construction of facilities to convert municipal solid waste and cellulosic biomass to fuel ethanol and other commercial byproducts.
• Allows tax credits for alternative fuel vehicles
• A grant program is established for rural and remote communities to use biomass, landfill gas, and livestock methane,
• Provides for grants to those owning/operating a facility using forest biomass as raw material to produce electric energy, transportation fuels, or other petroleum-based substitutes.
• Calls for projects which address the production of hydrogen from biomass and biofuels.

ORNL published a report early this year that projected that we could get 30% of our liquid fuels from biomass without displacing any land used for crop production or grazing.  Government funding as provided in the Energy Act will be of great assistance in assuring that some of the technologies outlined below get developed and brought to the commercial market to allow attaining this goal.

Natural Gas Power Plant Converts to Renewable Energy

A natural gas fired cogeneration power plant in New York state is being converted to run exclusively on a renewable source.  Work has started to convert the 7 MW Laidlaw Energy Group plant so that it can run on wood chips to supply of electricity to the national grid as well as supplying heat and power to operate an on-site hardwood lumber dry kiln.

Aided by a $1m grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Laidlaw has completed the design and engineering for the project, procured the requisite equipment and entered into an agreement that provides for the fixed price construction of the project. The facility is expected to resume commercial operations midway through next year.

Is this a great sign of the times!  Natural gas is just too expensive and too scarce to be used for power generation.

Technorati tag: natural gas

Biorefineries Overview

A biorefinery is a plant that converts biomass into useful products such as fuels, chemicals and power.  Three types of refineries are being used and developed:

1. Sugar platform biorefineries, as exemplified by ethanol plants, are in widespread use, are based on the fermentation of sugars.
2. Close coupled systems that primarily produce fuel that can be used to produce power or heat from either syngas or pyrolysis oil.
3. Thermochemical refineries that are more analogous to petroleum refineries which can produce an array of products in addition to fuel and power.

The sugar platform refineries refineries are in common use, producing  3.41 billion gallons of ethanol, in the U.S., in 2004.  These have been developed significantly since they were first used.  In the 1980's they were rather simple facilities that fermented corn to produce ethanol.  The process has developed rapidly and today they are highly integrated facilities that are much larger, use much less energy, less manpower and produce byproducts as well as ethanol; thus reducing the production costs significantly.  However the cost of the feedstock, the largest single cost, has not gone down significantly and the quantity available will be limited by land availability at some time in the future if only corn is used as the feedstock.  New pretreatment techniques are now starting to be used that permit recovering the sugar from the cellulose in the corn residues that were formally wasted, thus increasing the supply of feedstock greatly.  In the next few years it is anticipated that the industry will be able to process any cellulosic material, such as grasses, willows, municipal solid waste and forest residues; increasing the availability of feedstock by orders of magnitude.

Close coupled pyrolysis systems are available commercially and are used to produce fuel for engines or gas turbines or to supply heat for boilers for either heating or generating electricity.  These systems are relatively small, but fill a need for generating energy in relatively remote locations.  These systems are more widely used in Europe where energy prices are higher than in the U.S.  It is expected that they will be more widely used in the U.S. as more conventional energy prices escalate.

Thermochemical refineries, also known as Bio-Gas Fischer-Tropsch refineries (BG-FT), are still in the early developmental stage with only a few small commercial units in operation.  They offer the advantage that almost any fuel or petroleum like product can be produced using this method.  This is the only way that diesel fuel can be produced in large quantities using biomass as the feedstock supply. The supply of biodiesel will eventually be limited by available land unless a more efficient feedstock, such as algae, is able to be used. Their are some technical problems to be solved in the BG-FT process, but suppliers are finding some niche markets where these problems have been overcome. 

Biomass Could Displace 30% of Transportation Petroleum

A Renewable Energy Access (REA) article summarized a new report, titled "Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply," published by ORNL, determined that 30% of our petroleum consumption could be replaced with biomass fuels.

In the REA article, Bob Perlack, co-author of the report was quoted as saying "We wanted to know how large a role biomass could play, whether the United States has the land resources and whether such a plan would be economically viable."  The report found that nearly half of the 2,263 million acres of land in the United States has the potential for growing 1.3 billion dry tons of biomass. Under the most optimistic scenario only 1.0 million acres would be required to produce 80 billion gallons of ethanol.  The report also stated that biomass has recently surpassed hydropower as the single largest renewable energy  resource in the United States, producing nearly 3% of the total energy consumption using 190 million dry tons of biomass.

REA went on to say that the current production of ethanol, 3.4 billion gallons a year, could be increased to 80 billion gallons a year by 2030.  Biomass would supply 5% of the nations power, 20% of its transportation fuels and 25% of its chemicals. This goal is equivalent to 30% of current petroleum consumption.  This would also result in a 10% reduction in greenhouse gases.   

Some details of the report reveal the following -- From agricultural lands alone 998 billion tons of biomass could be harvested while still meeting food, feed and export demands.  The agriculture production assumed significant improvements in yields of food and feed products, as currently assumed by USDA, to free enough land to produce the feedstock for biofuel production.  No additional acres of land are required to meet these figures. The use of more waste material, increased yields from cropland, changes in uses of cropland and growing of perennial crops would be the largest factors in obtaining the biomass.  Existing forest lands could produce 368 million tons annually through higher utilization of existing biomass.

Technical Note: Gasification

Gasifiers convert carbonaceous feedstock (coal, wood, cornstalks, most any biomass) into gaseous products.  The process usually takes place at high temperatures and pressures and with a carefully controlled amount of oxygen.  The oxygen can come from air, pure oxygen or from steam. At operating conditions a chemical reaction occurs that converts the feedstock into a synthesis gas or "syngas".   The syngas is a mixture of predominately carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2).  The amount of heat that can be recovered from burning syngas can be as much as 50% higher than direct combustion of the feedstock.

Gasifiers can divided into three general catagories:

1. Moving Bed Gasifiers (dry ash)
2. Fluidized Bed Gasifiers and
3. Entrained Bed Gasifiers

Descriptions of several specific types and subtypes can be found at this NETL site.

Technical Note: Fischer-Tropsch Process

The Fischer-Tropsch process often comes up in the discussion of new technologies for producing liquid fuels from solids or gases.  The Fischer-Tropsch process produces high value, clean-burning fuels.  FT fuels can be used in conventional engines with no modification and have improved combustion which reduces emissions, but may have a lower fuel economy.  The resulting fuels are colorless, odorless and low in toxicity.   FT fuels have less sulfur, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter emissions than petroleum fuels.