Archive for the ‘Biofuel’ Category

Bioethanol: Regional Scourge

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Researchers at the University of Minnesota reported recently that the production of ethanol fuelstocks may consume as much as three times more water than previously thought, depending on where they’re grown.
They found that ethanol fuelstock grown in Iowa uses the least water — about 6 gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol. While fuelstock grown in Minnesota uses about 19 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol.
And that’s just on the farm. The researchers found that total water use in the production of a single gallon of ethanol is up to 2,100 gallons of water — from farm to fuel pump — depending on the regional irrigation practice in growing corn. Although a dozen states in the Corn Belt consume less than 100 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol, making them better-suited for ethanol production.
Annual bioethanol production in the U.S. is about 9 billion gallons, according to the University of Minnesota researchers, who published their findings in an article titled “Water Embodied in Bioethanol in the United States” in the April 15 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal.

Previous studies estimated that a gallon of corn-based bioethanol requires 263 gallons to 784 gallons of water from the farm to the fuel pump. Trouble was, those estimates were calculated without considering regional irrigation practices.
No doubt water usage needs to be weighed in policy discussions involving the location of ethanol plants. If not, there’s a good chance we’ll see ethanol plants about as sensible as an ice factory in the Mojave Desert. It’s important for policymakers to scratch from their lists those regions that have high water-usage ratios. Let’s instead steer them to places like Idaho, to encourage a smarter and more sustainable approach to biofuels. By Lee Bruno

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Posted in Biofuel, Ethanol, Land Use, Politics, Water | 1 Comment »

Biofuel Myths and Realities

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

Pamela Contag is a microbiologist who’s as comfortable in the lab as she is in the boardroom, dealing with the business of running a company. She has plenty of experience there, having helped found two startups: Cobalt Technologies and Xenogen. She also sits on the Department of Energy’s Biomass Advisory Board.

Contag is an astute observer of the biofuels industry. With much of the discussion today focused on second-generation biofuels, she points out that it’s still critical for people not to mix up biofuel feedstocks with human foodstocks. That sure spelled a lot of trouble during the first-generation corn-ethanol buildout, which alarmed the public and still dampens enthusiasm for the biofuels market.

Contag says there’s a list of myths that need to be addressed in order to keep biofuels on track.

“I think the three biggest myths are, one, technology or feedstock will solve our problem. The second is that climate change, energy security and water security are not somehow related. And the third myth is that solar energy to electricity is going to solve all of our problems.”
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The biofuels life cycle - can biofuels eventually
compete with petrochemicals, and if so, when?
(Photo: U.S. Dept. of Energy)

 

As for feedstocks, she says, “I don’t think we have the answer now. But I think we’ll have it in the next five years. What’s needed is for entrepreneurs and investors to look at smaller crops with a unified theme of being able to keep a lot of different seed crops. Think of crops as being renewable but also sustainable in terms of agricultural practices.”

Contag is putting her views to work in her latest startup, Cygnet Biofuels. The company is approaching biofuels with three core fundamentals: low energy, low water and local biomass. It wants to harvest local feedstocks and create fuels like biodiesel for communities, mirroring the early days of electrical utilities in the U.S. “Cygnet believes this isn’t an engineering project but an ecosystem project,” Contag says.

Part of Cygnet’s plan is to integrate a wide-variety of technologies into its power-generation plants, including solar, biodiesel, biobutanol, co-generation and digesters. In the company’s first phase, it plans to produce biodiesel with a business model that calls for extensive partnering to sell the company’s capabilities.

No doubt it will take several years to build out on a local biofuels model. But it sounds like an important step forward. –Lee Bruno

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Posted in Biodiesel, Biofuel, CleanTech, Energy, Ethanol, Land Use, Politics | No Comments »

India’s Jatropha Tussle

Monday, December 1st, 2008

The Indian government has welcomed biofuels with open arms. Faced with a rapidly growing economy, the world’s second-largest population and an eye-watering fuel import bill, finding a renewable domestic power source has become a top priority.

The country’s recently-revised national biofuel policy, announced in September 2008, sets out the government’s intentions in black-and-white: to produce 20 per cent of the country’s diesel from crops by 2017, primarily from plantations of jatropha (Jatropha curcas). This means that the oilseed-bearing shrub, already introduced in some states, needs to be planted on an additional 14 million hectares of the country’s so-called ‘wasteland’. This has ignited fierce debate: supporters see the move as the solution to the fuel-versus-food conundrum, while critics are fearful that millions of peasants, who rely on these lands, will lose out.

Wasteland - a misnomer

A far cry from the post-industrial ‘brown field’ sites familiar to planners in the developed world, India’s wastelands have historical resonance. Classified in colonial times as areas that could not be cultivated and which were, therefore, unable to produce revenue, everything from forests to semi-jungle to wetlands fell into the category of ‘wasteland’. But, quite unlike the idea of a barren wilderness, these vast areas - comprising about 25 percent of India’s landmass - are more appropriately described as marginal lands, and have supported millions of the country’s poorest people for centuries.

‘Wastelands’ are a vital source of
fodder for poor rural livestock keepers.
(Photo: WREN Media)

Traditionally, local communities have looked after these lands as common resources, coming to depend on them for food, fodder, fuel wood and medicine. In terms of their day-to-day importance, the figures speak for themselves: around 20 percent of poor households’ income and over 60 percent of their fuel wood come from common property resources. In the mixed farming systems of the country’s semi-arid regions, some three-quarters of people depend on the commons for grazing. Nationwide, the India-based NGO Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) estimates that the commons contribute up to US$5 billion to poor rural households. And, with investment and proper management, the organisation believes the commons could supply a quarter of the country’s fodder needs. These commons also perform important ecological functions, providing habitats for wildlife, harbouring rainwater and absorbing greenhouse gases.

For whose benefit?

India’s common lands have been under threat for at least the past half-century, with between 25-50 per cent already lost due to population pressure and increasing degradation. Little wonder the proposed jatropha plantations are contentious. “By pursuing the energy security of the few - the middle classes and the rich - we are compromising the livelihood security of the poor,” laments Subrata Singh of FES.

The government has tried to find a win-win solution. In an attempt to help the poor share the rewards of the country’s anticipated biofuel boom, the expansion of jatropha production is taking place through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Under proposed plans, local communities will be paid to plant, tend and harvest the crop on common land. But critics argue that once jatropha is in the ground, livelihoods will become irrevocably tied to the productivity of the crop and the stability of its market price.

While jatropha supporters point to the crop’s near-magical ability to tolerate harsh, drought-like conditions, others have suggested that official estimates of its productivity on suboptimal land have been exaggerated. If the crop fails to live up to expectations the poor will have traded access to precious land in return for neither food, fodder, fuel, medicine - nor a source of income. “Eventually, planting these areas with biofuels might force people from the land,” continues Singh. “We are concerned they might become ecological refugees and migrate to urban areas for their livelihoods.”

Jatropha farming on common land
has begun in Andhra Pradesh.
(Photo: WREN Media)

FES has been working with state governments to help communities achieve legal recognition for the wasteland commons. It has already assisted communities in six states to establish long-term leases over the areas they depend on and is promoting investment in land restoration through the NREGS. The organisation is also working with the South Asia Pro-Poor Livestock Programme to document the value of the commons to poor livestock keepers, to protect the land and to help other communities diversify into animal husbandry.

Despite progress in these areas, India is simply too large for FES to protect all the affected communities and jatropha plantations have already swallowed-up pockets of common land. Significantly, in the same month that the government unveiled its new biofuels target, state-run refinery Bharat Petroleum announced plans to invest US$480 million in jatropha production. The race for ‘wasteland’ is well underway.

This report originally appeared on the website of The New Agriculturalist and is republished here with permission.

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Posted in Biodiesel, Biofuel | 3 Comments »

The X-Games, Microbe Edition

Monday, November 24th, 2008

Rugged microbes equipped with a unique set of survival skills find high-temperature and acidic conditions a welcome home. And scientists have a peculiar fondness for these “extremeophiles,” freaks of nature that live outside the boundaries of normal existence. These are bugs that can grow in the harshest of conditions, from sulphuric acid to high-salt environments.

Part of the reason scientists are interested is extremeophiles potential to be put to work to produce next-generation cellulosic-based biofuels.

Sandia’s Rajat Sapra examines assays
for the screening of engineered enzymes.
(Photo: Sandia National Labs)

How? These microbes can perform feats that bioengineers till now only dreamed of. They offer, perhaps, the best hope to tear down rigid plant material without using specialized chemicals or high amounts of energy and, perhaps, one day to create new fuels to power autos and trucks. Scientists and engineers at Sandia National Labs are taking the lead in the effort.

“We are looking at extremeophiles that can thrive in high temperature and acidic conditions,” said Rajat Sapra, staff scientist and engineer with Sandia National Labs. “Bugs that can grow in sulphuric acid are of great importance because nature has already done all of the genetic customization and adaption. It saves scientists trying to create superbugs with these modified capabilities.”

Over the course of the next few years, Sandia scientists are planning on working with the three different parts of the cellulosic biofuel process, which include deconstruction technologies for breaking down cellulosic materials and engineering extremeophiles for pretreatment processes.

“What we look at in terms of processes is trying to streamline these extremeophiles,” says Sapra. “If you look at stonewashed jeans, that process is achieved through the use of a bacterial extremeophile.”

The world of biofuels and cellulosic ethanol comes down to a pretty simple equation. Cellulosic sugars are based on six carbon sugars, which is common among plants. The longer the length of the carbon chains, the more energy density is stored inside the plant material. The researchers explain energy density with a simple equation of one gallon of ethanol having the same energy density as 0.6 gallons of gasoline.

Trouble is all of that energy density is locked up pretty snugly in the cellulose and lignin materials of plant, which means you have to pay an energy or chemical cost to break it down to get at the rich density of energy. It isn’t the challenge of converting sugars to ethanol, it is how to break down the plant material into a mulch that can then provide sugars.

Sometimes missing from the big discussions about biofuel processing is the energy cost of getting the foodstuffs to the place where the fuel is going to be refined. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, for example, to transport large volumes of poplar trees from one region to another by truck.

That’s why scientists like Sapra are clear about the real Achilles’ heel for making biofuels economic and scalable. It comes down to looking at the entire process as an integrated one. And the key focus is taking into account the enormous scale of the process.

At the end of the day, the real answer for sustainable, economically viable biofuels resides in grasses and woody plants, instead of food crops. Agricultural waste is a starting point. Growing and extracting for corn stover and rice straw is all about converting waste plant material that would otherwise be burned into a high-energy-density material from which ethanol can be processed and refined.

There are three basic steps in biofuel production. First is taking the biomass and breaking it down. Second is deconstructing the material into polymers. Third is converting the sugars into fuels.

Researchers and engineers are focused on the goal of taking the entire conversion of biomass material into sugars and ethanol and doing it in one large vat or container. This is called consolidated bioprocessing and has obvious advantages over other approaches in both economics and efficiency.

Even though second-generation biofuels are still years off, the ability to harness the mysterious ways by which nature has solved extremeophiles’ problems of survival is surely going to be a boon to efficient fuel production. — Lee Bruno

Posted in Biofuel, Ethanol | 2 Comments »

Mid-Level Ethanol Blends & Impact on Automakers

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Mid-level ethanol blends such as E12, E15, E20 and even as high as E40 have garnered a lot of attention lately. Mainly because ethanol producers want a quick and easy way to soak up a surplus of ethanol that will soon reach the saturation point for the current supply in the marketplace.

Under current federal law, conventional fuel cannot contain more than 10 percent ethanol, known as E10, but proponents for higher mid-level blends would like to replace the current gasoline mixture with higher levels of ethanol, which would change the fuel used in vehicles and small engines.

GM’s concerns with higher ethanol blends include the capability of our engines and fuel systems to handle them. Anecdotally, some might do fine. But there are 250 million vehicles on the road in the U.S. and only about 7 million of them are designed to handle higher ethanol blends.
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The 2009 E85 Ethanol-Capable Buick Lucerne. GM has sold over 3.0
million flexfuel cars in the U.S., operable on any mixture of gasoline
and ethanol up to 85% ethanol. Conventional engines, however, are
not necessarily equipped to run on ethanol mixes greater than 15%.
(Photo: GM)

In addition, there are marine and industrial engines, plus a host of outboards, lawn and garden equipment, motorcycles and various off-road vehicles that would be impacted as well.  None of this equipment was designed to use mid-level ethanol blends and some was not designed to use ethanol at all.

Higher ethanol blends run hotter in many non-flex-fuel equipped vehicles and virtually all of the non-automotive equipment, and the way this process works is that a small change in temperature produces a very large change in behavior.

The biggest question is long-term durability.  The only durability study conducted on these fuels to date was done for the Australian Department of the Environment (ref. Fuel Quality Publications, Australian Government).

It found corrosion, seal attack, and catalyst damage due to the engine control system’s failure to adapt to the ethanol and using the wrong mixture at high power.

When the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released its preliminary test findings on E15 and E20 last month, little was said about six of 13 vehicles tested exhibiting catalyst overheating.  A damaged catalyst is less effective at eliminating pollutants and allows increased tailpipe pollution.  The leaner fuel mixture – ethanol is 35 percent oxygen – also lead to drivability and operability issues in older vehicles and non-automotive equipment.

GM is working with other automakers, the oil industry, DOE and EPA to develop and execute test programs to determine and document the effects of these higher blends on the existing fleet.  This work takes time.

At GM, we think E85 ethanol is the best alternative to petroleum in the near term, but in order for ethanol, or any alternative fuel, to succeed it needs the good will of the public and government behind it.  Prematurely implementing a higher ethanol blend that damages the gasoline-fueled equipment could cause irreparable harm to ethanol’s reputation.  And ethanol took a big hit with the Australian public following the introduction of mid-level blends in limited areas.  This is what prompted the Australian Department of the Environment to fund the E20 study performed by Orbital Engine Co.

GM has worked to expand the E85 infrastructure in this country, assisting more than 300 stations in 15 states with securing state and other grants to help offset the cost of installing E85 pumps.  We are now implementing a partnership with the National Governors Association to help 10 states grow their E85 infrastructure (ref. States to Enhance Access to E85 Fueling Stations, National Governors Association).

Our commitment to E85 includes making 50 percent of our vehicles capable of running on gasoline, E85 or any combination of the two by 2012, provided there is sufficient infrastructure in place.  Let’s be clear about the math: No combination of mid-level blends will add up to enough ethanol use to meet the Renewable Fuels Standard that calls for 36 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2022.

E85, which is an alternative fuel vs. a fuel additive, is a choice we provide free to GM customers.  We know choice can work, as it has in Brazil and Sweden, where governments required fueling infrastructure to support FFVs.  Customers typically choose between ethanol and gasoline, depending on which is the best deal.

The bottom line is GM supports and encourages greater ethanol fuel availability for our flex-fuel vehicles, but we are concerned about customers misfueling conventional vehicles by using fuels containing more than 10 percent ethanol.  The long-term durability of higher ethanol blends in conventional engines needs to be tested thoroughly because advocates are proposing to change gasoline for all of us, forever.

Coleman Jones is the Biofuels Implementation Manager at General Motors.

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Posted in Biofuel, Ethanol, Green Cars, Vehicles | 10 Comments »

Blending & Retailing Ethanol

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Today the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), along with the Ethanol Promotion & Information Council (EPIC) presented a webinar that dealt with several of the key challenges facing ethanol retailers as they begin to offer increasing quantities of E85 (85% ethanol). Although the presentation was targeted at gasoline retailers, the information was of interest to anyone watching the emergence of ethanol in the U.S. as a significant transportation fuel. The presenter was Ron Lamberty, VP of Market Development for ACE, and himself an owner of gasoline retail establishments.

Currently there are just over 1,500 retail refueling stations offering E85 ethanol (85% ethanol), not quite 1% of the 160,000 total stations throughout the U.S. About 70% of the retail refueling stations in the U.S. offer ethanol blends, usually E10 (10% ethanol). There are 171 ethanol plants with a capacity of 10.4 billion gallons per year, and there are 28 plants under construction with the capacity to produce another 2.8 billion gallons per year. Ethanol now supplies 7% of the fuel for used in the U.S. for light vehicles.

The first topic covered regarded the question of food vs. fuel. This is a broad topic, of course, but Lamberty made the point that in the case of corn grown in the U.S., even though the corn allocated to ethanol distillation rose from 2.3 billion bushels in 2007 to 3.1 billion bushels in 2008, an increase of 35%, the total corn crop in the U.S. rose from 10.5 billion bushels to 12.9 billion bushels, an increase of 24%. Put another way, the quantity of corn grown for fuel in the U.S. between 2007 and 2008 increased by 800 million bushels, but the quantity of corn grown for food during those same two years increased by 1.7 billion bushels, more than twice as much.

In some respects the question of food vs. fuel is going to go away pretty soon anyway, both because crop yields continue to increase worldwide faster now than human population increase, and also because cellulosic ethanol is on the verge of being produced in commercial quantities. In the table below, it can be seen that the federal renewable fuel standard calls for corn ethanol production to peak at under 15 billion barrels per year, which they are fast approaching. The rest of the targeted 35 billion barrels, nearly 20 million barrels, is mandated to come from cellulosic feedstock. As we document in our feature “Cellulosic Ethanol,” there is feedstock in the U.S. sufficient to supply many times this 20 million barrel annual target.
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RENEWABLE FUEL STANDARD
The U.S. renewable fuel standard calls for 35 billion gallons per year
by 2022, with cellulosic ethanol taking over the primary share by then.
(Source: American Coalition for Ethanol)

One of the most interesting challenges to blending and retailing ethanol relates to the so-called “blend wall,” which refers to the gap between how much E10 consumers can absorb, and the supply of ethanol. Basically if the supply of vehicles who can utilize E85 doesn’t increase fast enough, too much of the ethanol being produced has nowhere to go but into the E10 mixes, and at current annual production of 10+ billion barrels per year, ethanol is already being mixed into 70% of all gasoline sold.

The table below shows the gap projected between the rise of E85 capable vehicles who can use up 8.5 times as much ethanol with every gallon they purchase, and the projected supply of ethanol. As can be seen, in the period beginning around 2010 and lasting about six years, there is a gap between line that depicts total supply of ethanol, and the solid light (E85) and dark (E10) green area that depicts the total consumption capacity of ethanol.
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THE ETHANOL BLEND WALL
Beginning in 2010 there is a projected gap where the supply of
ethanol could exceed the capacity of the U.S. vehicle fleet to aborb it.
(Source: American Coalition for Ethanol)

The solution to the challenge faced by the projected blend wall is to put more E85 flexfuel vehicles onto the road. But the U.S. automotive fleet only turns over once every 17 years, and out of 240 million cars on the road, only 7 million are currently E85 capable. U.S. automakers are moving quickly towards offering 50% of all new models in flexfuel mode, but it will take several more years before enough of these cars are on the road.

Along with flexfuel vehicles that are explicitly designed to run on E85, however, there is another solution to the blend wall, which is to adjust upwards what percentage of ethanol can be mixed into regular gasoline. Currently E10, 10% ethanol, 90% gasoline, is considered a safe fuel blend for any vehicle. But “mid-blend” fuels, such as E15, E20 and E30, containing 15%, 20%, and 30% ethanol respectively, according to Lamberty, can also run reliably in regular vehicles. Just moving the blend wall standard from E10 to E15 would solve the blend wall problem, and allow ethanol production to continue to increase without disruption.

There are studies now in progress that were noted by Lamberty, including a DOE Oak Ridge finding that E20 is fine in regular engines. Lamberty also cited recent University of North Dakota study which he said indicated non flexfuel cars can run well on E20 and E30 and even on E40. Lamberty also noted the retail stations who have been offering mid-blends have yet to receive a complaint or damage claim from a vehicle owner. Currently the question appears not whether or not a mid-blend ethanol fuel will immediately damage a regular vehicle, but what the long-term impact may be. One of the commenters during the presentation stated they had been fueling their car with E20 and E30 for 70,000 miles - on a car that already had over 200,000 miles logged - and had no problems to-date. Additional study of the long-term impact is going to be needed before, for example, major automakers are going to be comfortable providing warranty protection for regular cars that use mid-blend fuel.

Another barrier to adoption of ethanol fuel is the cost of the pumping systems at the retail outlets. To install a new tank, pipes, pumps, wiring, island, canopy, etc., in order to sell E85 can cost a retailer $100,000 or more. A terrific innovation that can greatly reduce this cost is to use what is called “blender pump” technology, where existing tanks are used. Since retailers offering E85 typically use the same underground tank they previously used to store premium gasoline, the blender pump can draw from an E85 tank as well as from an unleaded tank, and mix the fuel to whatever specification the retailer chooses.
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HOW AN ETHANOL BLENDING PUMP OPERATES
A blending pump can utilize two tanks, one with either E85 or E100,
one with unleaded gasoline, and blend any mixture the owner specifies.
(Source: American Coalition for Ethanol)

Blender pumps have a variety of benefits. Because they cost between $10,000 and $20,000, but take away the need to install a new underground tank, they greatly reduce the costs for a station to begin to offer E85. They also can blend E85 on demand, meaning the retailer can purchase 100% ethanol directly from the refinery if they wish. They also make it possible to vary the blend of E85 onsite - allowing the retailier to comply with state regulations that actually vary the percentage of ethanol in E85 from between 75% to 85% depending on the region and the time of year. Finally, blender pumps make it possible for retailers to use the same equipment to offer mid-blends whenever they choose.

The future of ethanol in the U.S. appears promising from several perspectives: If vehicles indeed can run on mid-blends, there is less pressure to precipitously introduce flexfuel vehicles. Using blender pump technology, retailers may be able to begin introducing ethanol at their stations at far less expense. It is already clear there is cellulosic feedstock in the U.S. - in the form of forest slash, municipal waste, flue gas, crop residue, as well as energy crops - to supply raw material for 100+ billion gallons of ethanol per year. The real remaining question is how fast cellulosic ethanol refining technologies can be commercialized and brought into production.

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Posted in Biofuel, Ethanol | 1 Comment »

BlueFire Ethanol

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

Concentrated acid hydrolysis will transform virtually any cellulosic feed into fermentable sugars. BlueFire Ethanol, located in Irvine, California, has developed an advanced, proprietary version of this process which they believe could make them the first company to deploy a commercial scale cellulose to ethanol refinery that generates a return to its investors.

The process relies on reusing more than 96% of the sulphuric acid that is used to initially break down the cellulose from the lignin, as well as using the lignin to provide up to 70% of the total plant’s energy requirements. Although from the diagram (below) it doesn’t appear BlueFire’s process is simple, in reality it is one of the most straightforward and proven cellulose to ethanol processes known. BlueFire has adapted and improved a process that was used in WWII era Germany at an industrial scale to refine vast amounts of ethanol from cellulosic feedstock, and pilot plants already operated by BlueFire have successfully refined ethanol from sorted municipal solid waste, wood chips, as well as rice and wheat straw.

In summary, the process might be described as follows: Waste biomass, ground and dried, is mixed with sulphuric acid and reduced to a paste and heated in the 1st stage hydrolyser - depending on the feedstock this process may be repeated in a 2nd hydrolyser.  The hydrolyzed cellulose and hemicellulose, along with the acid, is then separated from the lignin in a plate and filter press.  The lignin is used for fuel for process steam, feedstock drying, and plant power.  The acid and sugar solution that has been separated from the lignin is itself separated, with 96% of the acid being extracted for reuse.  The sugar solution is then fermented with yeast and distilled, with the water captured for reuse and the ethanol collected for distribution.
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CONVERSION OF CELLULOSE TO SUGARS USING CONCENTRATED ACID HYDROLYSIS

A proven method, reusing the acid and water inputs, and using the waste lignin
to generate most of the energy required, makes BlueFire’s technology an
attractive contender to be first to commercially refine ethanol from cellulose.
(Photo: BlueFire Ethanol)

One convincing aspect of this process regards the synergy created by using the lignin for heat energy and the cellulose for ethanol fuel.  If all of the biomass were burned to create electricity, the energy efficiency would be about 25% - that is, an efficient biomass plant will require 13,000 BTUs of biomass feedstock to generate one kilowatt-hour, which is about 3,420 BTUs.  At 15.0 million BTUs per ton (on the high side) of biomass and at a wholesale electricity price of $.07 per kWh a biomass electricity plant operating at a 25% efficiency will earn $77 per ton.  But using BlueFire’s process, each ton of biomass can be refined into 70 gallons of ethanol, which at $2.00 per gallon earns nearly twice as much, $140 per ton - and, the manufacturing costs are lowered because the lignin from the feedstock is still used to provide most of the energy requirements of the refinery.

BlueFire Ethanol has already received DOE funding and a conditional use permit from Los Angeles County to begin construction of a commercial scale refinery to produce ethanol from biowaste.  Sited next to a landfill in Lancaster, California, this plant will be able to use municipal waste feedstock for which there is already a preexisting collection and delivery.  One of the advantages of processes such as BlueFire’s, that can use municipal solid waste as feedstock, is the yield of waste relative to the territory surrounding the plant is quite high, and already serviced anyway.  But instead of going into the landfill, the BlueFire’s Lancaster facility will divert 125 tons per day into the refinery to produce 3.2 million gallons of ethanol per year.

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Posted in Biofuel, Ethanol | 3 Comments »

Biofuel Feedstock

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

When analysing the potential of biofuel, one of the prevailing questions is whether or not there is sufficient land on earth to deliver adequate food if substantial percentages of land are allocated to biofuel crops. In our report earlier this year “Cellulosic Ethanol” it is clear, in the U.S. at least, that while substantial quantities of ethanol per year may eventually be refined from municipal waste streams, crop residue, winter cover crops, and forest thinning, in order to completely replace petroleum-based transportation fuels, dedicated energy crops will also be necessary. So is there enough land?

One of the key variables often overlooked when asking this question regards yield per acre - not only for energy crops, but for food crops. For example, new strains of dedicated energy crops such as miscanthus, switchgrass and sorghum are already yielding 12+ tons per acre, which at 100 gallons per ton translates into 1,200 gallons per acre.  By contrast, first generation distillation of corn ethanol is only yielding about 400 gallons per acre.  Several experts, including Dr. Richard Hamilton, CEO of Ceres, Inc., a Southern California based company who is genetically engineering energy crops, and also Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, the noted venture capitalist who has invested in several biofuel companies, maintain the yields of dedicated energy crops can go as high as 25 tons per acre.  This would equate to 2,500 gallons per acre, or 38,000 barrels per square mile per year.

This is a dramatic contrast - the difference between what dedicated energy crops yield today vs. where they might go within a generation. To replace roughly 30 billion gallons of petroleum per year, which is current global consumption, using distilled corn at a rate of 400 gallons per acre would require nearly 5.0 million square miles of land; using refined cellulose from dedicated high yield energy crops at a rate of 2,500 gallons per acre would require about 750,000 square miles of land.  This is still a staggering amount of land, but given there are about 10 million square miles of arable farmland on earth, it is not an unthinkable amount of land to allocate to energy crops - particularly since ethanol and other transportation fuels will also be sourced from waste streams and other sources.  So is there enough land?

The answer depends on what assumptions one makes regarding yields per acre for food crops.  And in this area the data indicates surprising potential for yields worldwide to register sharp increases in the coming years.  Despite the often heard suggestion that we have already had our global revolution in yields (the first “green revolution”), there is still a vast disparity between yields using modern agricultural techniques and modern strains of crop seed, and the yields using traditional subsistence agriculture.  Crossing this gulf by bringing significant portions of the world’s agricultural land into the 21st century would completely eliminate food scarcity.

For example, corn yields in the USA in 2005 averaged 149 bushels per acre.  The global average, however, was only 75 bushels per acre.  Agricultural powerhouses such as Brazil and Argentina, respectively, only averaged 54 bushels per acre and 109 bushels per acre.  Technologically advanced nations with the capacity to increase yields if they prioritized this effort, such as China and India, only delivered 80 bushels per acre, and 31 bushes per acre, respectively. 

Another way of analysing this is to compare the global average yield for major food crops as a percentage of the commercial yields being delivered by the top 10% of acreage for that crop.  The figures, again, are dramatic:  For corn, the global average yield is only 29% of the average yield by the top 10% of corn producing acreage; for wheat, 38%; for rice, 43%.  Major grain crops worldwide have the potential to increase their yields sufficiently to easily feed 9.0 billion people simply by adopting 21st century techniques.  As Richard Hamilton at Ceres puts it, “we don’t have a shortage of crop land, we have a shortage of agricultural technology.”

Clearly there are issues with food production that go beyond land - ensuring adequate irrigation and addressing concerns about genetically modified crops, for example.  But these modern crops are designed to replace nutrients in the soil and deliver these high yields with relatively minimal water inputs.  Nations that embrace modern agricultural methods are likely to experience food abundance as well as have land left over to allocate to energy crops - a prospect so positive in its humanitarian implications perhaps it may stimulate another, more balanced look at the risks and benefits of genetically modified crops.

 

AVERAGE U.S. CORN YIELDS
Commercial yields of corn per acre now routinely
exceed 160 bushels per acre, but advanced test crops are
actually delivering yields as high as 300 bushels per acre.
(Source: Ceres, Inc.) 

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Posted in Biofuel | 1 Comment »

Biofuel in Colombia

Monday, August 11th, 2008

When economic interests have precedence over common sense: Since April 2006 our lawyer, Dr. Jose Pablo Duran Gomez, sued the Colombian government, demanding for more research be carried out on the production and combustion of biofuels to better understand, anticipate and mitigate as far as possible, the mechanical, environmental, social, economic and public health effects that these biofuels have and will have. The phenomena associated with biofuels are not well understood and even worse, ignored or underestimated, which have lead to recent and strong pronouncements from organizations such as FAO, World Bank, UN, EU and a significant number of environmental and human rights organizations throughout the world.

Despite a large number of international studies demonstrating risks and dangers associated to the use of biofuels, added to those that appear every day worldwide, Judge Matilde Lemos Sanmartin, ex-fifth Administrative Judge of Bogota, said that “the evidence presented is insufficient,” and thus refused the request of more and deep studies, ignoring the precautionary principle and the legal mechanisms followed to obtain these studies, mandatory when the discussion is so important for the citizenry and the country, what can be applied to many other Latin American countries.

It sounds like she does not read newspapers or hear the news. Curiously, our demand was the last judgement signed by Lemos Sanmartin before being promoted to Judge of the Administrative Tribunal in the Arauca Department.

In Colombia there were only 2 studies on 8 automobiles, which anyway show that ethanol harms some components, especially in older carburetor cars, more than a half of the colombian vehicle fleet.

It is ironic that while in countries like Germany, large automobile manufacturers, have decided to reduce the proportion of ethanol blending from 10% to 7% because of the damage it can cause to their vehicles and have postponed until 2009 the usage of ethanol, in Colombia the government is trying to accelerate the process to force an increase in the mixture, raising the minimum to 20% by 2012 and starting with 12% in the period 2009-2010. There are no vehicles in Colombia that can withstand these mixtures, and even if the new cars are made with the required specifications, nothing is said about the possible mechanical damage to nearly 5 million vehicles currently circulating in the country, which demonstrates improvisation and irresponsibility about the topic.

By the other hand, the Health Secretary of Bogotá reported for 2007 an increase of more than 1700 cases of acute respiratory illness in children under the age of 5 years old, only in this city, with respect to 2006. These cared-for cases are linked, probably, to the increase in the concentration of tropospheric ozone caused by the higher volatility of gasoline when it is mixed with ethanol, which leads to a greater amount of volatile organic compounds, VOCs, in the atmosphere, which due to photochemical reactions, produce this and other pollutants hazardous to health, such as ozone, nitrogen oxides and acetaldehyde.

This increase, about 6% compared to 2006, is surely much higher taking into account that many of those affected children have no access to health care system and therefore these cases of morbidity and mortality are not recorded. Moreover, is also necessary to include other risk groups such as elders and those already suffering lung disease, throughout the country; this increase should be carefully evaluated, global warming and climate change can not be the unique and magical explanations for these phenomena, the colombian government must do everything that is feasible and humanly possible to address this situation.

The increase in food prices, of which Colombia is no an exception although the government affirms otherwise, is only the visible tip of the iceberg, perhaps the most painful of the problems that if not widely studied, monitored and controlled, can lead in the nearby to very serious consequences as has happened in Malaysia, the third CO2 donor in the world due, in large percentage, to african palm monoculture.

Nothing is mentioned by the colombian media about the imposition of an environmental quality stamp by the European Union to palm oil exportations from Colombia due to the negative environmental effects caused by the clearing and burning carried out to sow sugar cane and african palm, low-paid work in harsh conditions, the forced displacement and crimes committed in relation to the appropriating of farmlands, with the only exception of a paid notice in which the stamp is presented like a generous gift for all of us from palm oil sowers.

Unfortunately, there are many more unwanted consequences; in the medium and long term we can expect more forced displacement and killing of peasants, changes in the use of farmlands, desertification, pollution of soils and water, economic and technological dependency, impoverishment of large population groups, concentration of farmlands in the hands of large economic groups and corporations, severe ecological damage due to intensive use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, to name just a few unwanted results of this “boom.”

Ethanol contains a third less energy than gasoline, so vehicles travel less kilometers per gallon, however around 800 gallons of water are needed to produce one of ethanol. The search for new energy sources is necessary but we can not simply change some pollutants for others, affording the risk of creating more serious problems than those to be resolved; all efforts to fully understand the whole consequences that the production and usage of this biofuels are necessary and urgent.

We will not relent in our efforts to demand that ethanol and oil palm production be carried out with human and social sense, and not only commercial objectives like what are happening right now in Colombia. Biofuels should be seen as a temporary and partial solution, not as a total remedy. We do not consider acceptable nor secure the omission of serious and conclusive studies in order to protect economic interests that hardly benefit persons other than the owners of this profitable business; we will appeal to all possible instances in Colombia and abroad to force that precautionary principle be applied in order to protect ourselves and future generations of irreparable damage which could result prohibitively expensive in terms of environment and public health.

C. Fernando Marquez M.
Executive Director
Colombian Society of Motorists S.C.A.
http://www.sca.com.co

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