Do Biofuels Hold the Promise They Claim?
I’m one of these people who essentially runs his life off his “to-do” list — a list of incomplete actions in a Word file that is always open, to which I’m constantly adding, deleting, and reprioritizing.
Here’s something I’ve looked at every day for the last few weeks:
Identify and support a few of the top players in biofuels. Short list: Enerkem, LanzaTech, ZeaChem, Virent Energy Systems, Sapphire Energy, Coskata, Terrabon, Mascoma, Cobalt Technologies, Joule Unlimited, Genomatica, Algenol, SG Biofuels.
I suppose I really DO need to do this, but I’m dreading the task. Sure, biofuels are an appealing replacement for crude oil and its derivatives in the form of gasoline and diesel, which comprise 98% of our transportation fuel. Liquid fossil fuels are convenient and extremely dense forms of chemical energy that have accumulated from the sun over the last four billion years — energy that we’ve been consuming at an alarming rate over the last 100 years – the very blink of an eye. But there are two main problems associated with the concept that biofuels can represent a meaningful replacement:
Life forms are built to be efficient. They tend to take in energy from external sources around them, but, generally, very little more than nature tells them that they need to live, grow, and reproduce before dying. They don’t tend to get heavy and fat – only to be killed by us humans who want to harvest their excess energy. That’s why it took four billion years for all this build up. Think about that for a second: we made a huge dent in the stockpile in 100 years, one forty-millionth (0.0000004) of the time it took to accumulate.
As we have seen, there are huge unintended consequences of growing plants for the purpose of providing clean energy. Perhaps the poster child for this is corn ethanol, which everyone and his dog has been second-guessing since we figured out how utterly fallacious the whole idea was. Couldn’t we have done the math here? Shouldn’t we have known that changing the basic economics of corn growing would result in higher food prices, more contaminants in our rivers — and for an extremely dubious benefit in terms of energy when all factors were taken into consideration?
With all the interest in the subject of biofuels, I’m sure there must be something I’m missing here, and I hope you’ll comment here to straighten me out. My short list above contains 13 companies, and I believe they’re the best of the best. (The list began several times that size.) If I can be convinced that biofuels represent a genuine promise to make a difference in the world energy picture, I’ll hit the road, and interview these 13 – and any number of others that I add to the list in the process.
I’ll be happy to promote the living hell out of these companies and their business concepts — if it all makes sense. But if you feel, as I’m claiming here, that the basic concept is flawed, I may just stay home with my wife and kids, take a few extra hikes, and read a few good books.
Thanks in advance for your advice.
Dear Craig
I think you are oversimplifying the biofuels industry. Remember, there are four generations of biofuels: corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, algae and gas-derived (LanzaTech, Joule). Yes gen one may require too much land and fertilizer to be long term viable and gen three is facing challenges, but gens two and four are promising. There will be no clear winner but rather a combination of technologies. My personal favorite is waste-to-fuel. Waste-to-energy is a hard sell in the US (unlike sensible Europe). The greenies go nuts falsely labeling this promising technology as incineration. Waste-to-fuel has a better chance of succeeding here. The feedstock has a negative cost (tipping fees), an established collection system, and proximity to markets. Let’s not forget that every landfilled ton of garbage produces a ton of CO2 and a ton of methane. No wonder Europe is essentially outlawing them! Sadly here we prefer to throw our garbage on the ground where it can pollute the earth for centuries. Landfill liners are only guaranteed for a few decades whereas leachate (garbage juice) can last indefinitely. Archaeologists have uncovered landfills dating back to the Roman Empire where the leachate was still potent. How much worse today with all the household chemicals in garbage.
How about this: Microwave garbage (Plasma2Energy). It produces a rich stream of syngas. Separate out the H2 for commercial use. Use the CO to create ethanol (Lanzatech). Convert the ethanol to gasoline, jet fuel or diesel (Evercat, AlphaKat). The US could produce billions of gallons of transportation fuels from garbage if it so chooses.
Another fun idea: How about finally getting rid of the internal (infernal?) combustion engine and replacing it with an “any” fuel engine (CyclonePower)?
Go Biofuels!!
Yes, I’m too a fan of waste-to-fuels. You’ll notice that quite a number of the projects on the “investors” page (http://2greenenergy.com/investors/) contemplate waste tires, construction/demolition, or MSW feedstocks.
A to-do list is anal, that I am. Calendar on phone ?, yes I need that. I do at times look over my shoulder to see if anyone is watching and just delete or mark completed or move it forward what ever. I do make a choice every morning to be my best. Every day I check to see if I achieved more than I consumed. My goal is to benefit my customers more than I charge them. I apply value engineering to my everything, yes I am OC. shut up, it takes one to know one…..Oh did I admit to being an overachiever? or at least an over compensator . I as well brag, I spoke today at SDSU with Robert F Kennedy Jr. and other give a damm folks in Congress etc. It was an honor.
Greg Chick
Good stuff here, Greg. Keep up the good work.
Follow-up to my previous comment. Craig, you should subscribe to Biofuels Digest. It’s free, informative and a good way to get excited about biofuels.
The Cyclone engine mentioned above is an external (steam) combustion engine. Vast improvement over today’s engines.
Thanks. It really IS something I should learn more about.
I run a diesel Mercedes on 100% biodiesel so I have some thoughts on biofuels. I wish I was running a diesel volkswagon for the much better mileage but all I could afford was the Mercedes. I am not sure how to frame or organize these thoughts but I have come up with them over time and feel they are relevant. I don’t know what the companies Craig mentioned are doing and I will check them out but if the things I mention below are acted on I think biofuels could make a big difference and help a lot.
I believe the thought process about the production of biofuels is not always the most efficient so arguments can always be made about the energy return on the production of biofuels. For starters an argument is made about how much diesel fuel is consumed farming the feedstock for biofuels and I feel this is the first erroneous thought.
Since the majority of farm equipment runs on diesel engines and those engines will happily burn straight vegetable oil if it is heated to 140deg F which can be extracted from crops being grown on the farm, there is no need to ever burn petroleum diesel at all. With an oil press being run by a small diesel engine running vegetable oil a farmer can produce his own fuel from his own crops. Crops do not need carted into town which uses fuel and time to be sold at a low price because there is a glut of crops due to all crops maturing and being harvested at the same time and petroleum diesel does not need to be purchased at a variable and probably high price and then carted out to the farm which also consumes fuel and time. No part of the process needs to leave the farm.
The vegetable oil needs to be heated to 140deg F to get it to work in a standard diesel engine. The engine needs to be started and warmed up on petroleum diesel or biodiesel before it can be switched over to vegetable oil, which takes about 15-20 minutes. Then at the end of the run the vegetable oil needs to be purged from the system back to petroleum diesel or biodiesel again so it doesn’t gel in the system when it cools. Reserving a small amount of the vegetable oil to process into biodiesel provides fuel for this startup and shutdown process. Petroleum diesel will also work for this but I like to think most of that can be avoided.
A department of agriculture chart claimed it took about 5 gallons of fuel to farm an acre of land. Corn yields about 18 gallons of oil per acre and soy yields about 40 gallons of oil per acre according to another chart and there are plenty of crops that yield even more than that up to palm, which is supposed to yield 160 gallons per acre. I wish I could get a real farmer to talk with me about his real world results but so far no luck with that so I have to rely on the figures above. I am sure a farmer could figure out his fuel usage and grow enough oil crops to cover that. Also, there could be plenty of vegetable oil produced above what the farmer needs use for his own purposes. Also, don’t try comparing the price of this to the vegetable oil you buy at the supermarket as some have tried to do to me before. Supermarket oil is food grade and goes through a much tougher process and is sterilized. Fuel grade is going to be lit on fire in an engine and doesn’t need to be anywhere near food grade.
The biodiesel I buy out of a pump is made of virgin soy oil. However, waste vegetable oil can also be burned straight once it is filtered or can be converted to biodiesel. There is a company about 5 miles from me that collects used local resturant oil and processes it down into fuel grade vegetable oil and then sells it. They manage to ship off about 5000 gallons a week and are probably doing more than that now.
The remains from pressing the oil out of a crop are suitable as feed for cattle. Somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the original volume of feed stock will remain after pressing which ends up being a high quality low fat cattle feed since we just pressed the oil out of it. This material could also be boiled to convert the starch into sugar and fermented into ethanol if desired. Yes you can get both oil and ethanol out of the same material and after that there is still some material left over to feed to cattle but it is much lower grade. In the end nothing actually goes to waste.
Ethanol next.
Since we took care of the fuel part of the argument for feedstock growing above I will move directly on to the production with the understanding we are already ahead of the game.
Corn is probably the absolute worst crop to use for this but I will use it as an example here assuming that other crops would show an improvement over corn. Other material like bad fruit from orchards or farms or supermarkets could also be used. Pretty much anything that either contains or can be converted into sugar can be used as demonstrated by the wide variety of alcoholic beverages available to us. When Katrina hit the New Oleans area and the ability to move crops to market was compromised I was thinking that they might as well make ethanol out of it. Once again, we are going to burn it in engines not drink it so it doesn’t have to be food grade although I can’t imagine 180 proof alcohol has many non sterile properties or living organisms in it.
Ethanol is currently produced by boiling the feedstock (usually corn in this country) to turn the starch into sugar so the yeast can consume it and output ethanol to be distilled. There is another method for converting the starch to sugar called malting. Malting occurs when the feed stock is soaked in water and allowed to start sprouting. The sprouting causes the starch to be converted into sugar for the sprout to use for food. Once the sprout starts the material can be processed for fermentation. I envision long flat buildings with the roof covered with conveyer belts with glass over that look like a short greenhouse. Soaked material can be fed onto these belts and conveyed across the roof under the glass and a rate that matches the malting time so when the material gets to the end of the belt it is properly malted and gets dumped into vats for processing. This eliminates the need to consume fuel or energy to boil the feedstock. Another pile of fossil fuel energy in the process eliminated.
Once fermented, the mash needs to be distilled. Since I can boil water (and presumably cook which I haven’t tried yet due to my miserable cooking ability) with a solar oven I made out of an empty plaster bucket, a shiny silver car windshield reflector and a jar that I painted black and distilling happens at a temperature less than boiling water, I can’t imagine it would be impossible to come up with a solar still. This would eliminate the last phase of ethanol production that consumes fossil fuel energy. It might not work as fast as throwing a pile of energy at it but with proper engineering it would produce at the same rate since it could be a nearly continuos process. I think that after a 3 day startup for the malting part, the operation would produce as fast as any plant that uses energy. Even if it didn’t produce quite as fast, the fossil fuel energy it didn’t use would make up for the difference I think. Remember that like the oil above, the equipment for this process doesn’t need to be made out of the high quality materials that drinking alcohol is made from since we are not going drink it and are only going to light it on fire in an engine. Also as with the oil above, any solid material left over from the process is suitable for cattle feed and is used that way now.
Of course a large majority of people do less than 40 miles a day commuting so electric vehicles for them would go a long way to substantially reducing fuel usage limiting the amount of biofuels we need to come up with to begin with. Also having natural gas burning vehicles which could also burn ethanol or gasoline (since these are all the same engine) would give us extended range vehicles that could be filled at homes that have natural gas installed already and also fueled on the road for extended range trips reducing range anxiety. If these vehicles were also plug in hybrids the fuel efficiency would be further increased. Electric for short range and liquid fuels for long range all in one vehicle.
OK that’s it. You can proceed to criticize my thoughts now.
Brian McGowan
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/
You are the ultimate do-it-yourselfer, Brian. I wish I had a fraction of your ingenuity and now-how in this space.
I just wish I could get this ingenuity in front of some of these people to hear me out and consider these ideas. Businesses will fail because these things are not considered or implemented. The arguments about how fossil fuel intensive biofuel production is are valid because they can’t imagine how to do this without using the standard methods which employ fossil fuels. How can I help if I can’t even get in front of these people? Wouldn’t be a bad gig if I could some how make a living at this also. That would allow me to concentrate on solving these problems instead of trying to make a living and only thinking about this when I have spare time.
Craig
You might consider adding IneosBio to your list. Ineos is a huge French chemical company that bought the BRI technology out of the Univ of Arkansas. It’s probably more viable in both technology and financing than Coskata. They also have a pilot plant up and running in Florida.
I see others’ comments have covered much of what I wanted to say, but the main thing is that liquid fuels are being prepared for our existing internal combustion engines. We need them in this transition time, but we should be looking at electric and other engines such as the Cyclone for the future. No one has mentioned Arundo Donax, which grows on poor soil and actually improves it. Here in New Zealand, although Lanzatech started here, we are so small we tend to wait for countries with bigger economies to produce machines for us.
Algenol has recently achieved 9000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year on a 4 acre test site. This is a modular system which should be easy to scale up. If this really works in production it could be a real solution.
http://www.algenolbiofuels.com/sites/default/files/press_releases/Production%20and%20Jobs%20Press%20Release%2003.08.2013.pdf
Thanks, Tom. Please see: http://2greenenergy.com/2013/06/12/biofuels-breakthrough/.