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Can the world grow out of its gasoline addiction with the help of biomass?
According to a new article in Wired, saw corn stalks and wood scraps may be the salve to ease the world's seemingly insatiable appetite for oil.
Scientists are hard at work working on 'bio oil,' biomass-derived fuel arrived at via a process known as pyrolysis, which essentially involves heating the organic detritus to 400-500 degrees Celsius without oxygen after it is finely ground up.
Experts now believe that the U.S. has the ability to cut its yearly petroleum reserves by 30-percent by using the more than one billion tons of biomass it produces annually.
[Source: Wired]
(Appreciate the tips, Wintrode and Keith)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Steve C. 1:34PM (3/21/2006)
I keep hearing about these new possibilities that all appear to have the same Achilles heel. Most of them require significant amounts of energy to produce and/or refine the end product.
So, where do we get the energy (gas or electricity) to do the refining??? I know -- from biofuel.
I'm no nuclear physicist, but many of these great ideas are in fact what they call energy sinks which, as I understand the term, means it takes more energy to produce it than it produces when burned.
Help -- any scientists in the house????
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Roanoke 1:38PM (3/21/2006)
No.
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tikirob 1:56PM (3/21/2006)
Looks like the waste material (from the process) can be used as a fule in the process so it would not be as dependant on out side energy to produce it. It makes a point that the cost is close to what it costs today.
As the tech evolves it will get cheaper.
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Richard Warren 2:12PM (3/21/2006)
Not a scientist,
But this seems to involve heat, how about focused Solar, aimed at a reflector, reflector aim at the target area where heat is needed in an airt tight building?
The grinder could also be solar powered using photovoltaic cells.
http://www.solar1.org/about/solar1/index.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/renewable/solar.html
In some areas wind generated power could be used.
It seems like we have this view that ONE solution at a National Level is the only way to do things, when perhaps the best way is regional.
For example if an area has great days of sunshine say the desert, why not use solar to generate more of the power, if an area has very good sustainable wind then why not use windpower, if you have a ready supply of what you need for Ethanol locally, then perhaps that area could use that and other areas not.
Electricity can be made use tidal power, so the coasts might be able to use that.
There is a whole area not even being discussed, that is microwave power, using sunlight, beamed to ground stations from a space station and sent into the grid as power.
There is the ability to heat our water and houses with solar.
While it may be more expensive at first, as the devices mature, those costs might just come down.
There is a neighbor of mine (85 year old by the way) that built a heater for his home. It's strange looking, and not terribly attractive, but was inexpensive. It consisted of building a frame work of 2X4's about 20 feet by 6 feet, the frame work was painted, then filled with Aluminum cans, painted flat black, placed close together, covered with sheets of glass on one side, plywood with insulation on the back side. A large wrapped metal pipe went from the back into the ground, below the frost line, then into the house connected into the duct work of the forced air. He then only used the forced air fan to distribute the warm air. It would keep the house from about 65 to 80 degrees with this simple system, even on overcast days.
Total cost about 500 dollars. and gas usage dropped to nearly nothing.
It seems that the next best X prize might just be for power generation ideas.
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apt 2:18PM (3/21/2006)
Wait, what ever happened to ethanol and butanol?
I agree, anyone who knows a little more about this want to chime in?
What happened to butanol's "promise" of being able to directly replace gasoline with little to no modification?
Beyond all this, however, my question is will these alternative fuels be just that, a direct replacement for gasoline (at its current pricepoint, or perhaps even exceeding) or a cheaper fuel? Obviously, the US uses a lot of fuel, even just for private vehicles. Is there enough supply to meet demand, if it does crop up?
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Shawn 2:22PM (3/21/2006)
400-500 celsius is 752-932 fahrenheit...Plus the energy needed to pump out O2, plus constructing refineries for more than a billion tons of biomass. On top of that, the energy needed to collect more than 1 billion tons of biomass.
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Nicholas 2:26PM (3/21/2006)
You want one that already works? Check out Changing World Technologies. www.changingworldtech.com They have a plant up and running together with ConAgra in Carthage, Missouri that turns 200 tons of turkey guts a day into 500 barrels of high grade diesel, along with biologically clean water (bacteria free & safe enough for local water treatment plant) and some really high grade fertilizer. Natural gas is also produced but is used in the process. They can basically turn anything with carbon in it into oil - old tires, animal and human waste, garbage, plastic. They are currently working on optimizing the inputs to create consistent oil outputs. Based on what I read in the most recent Discover Magazine, 85% of the potential energy of the turkey offal is turned into oil, with the other 15% used to power the system.
The biggest problem? They are seriously considering moving to Europe because of the much higher subsidies available to them over there for the oil that they produce. Only very recently was the law changed to give CWT the same subsidies as other methods for creating biodiesels and ethanol. For instance, Britain is very interested in this to process cow offal (which used to be ground up and fed to the next generation of cows and led to Mad Cow Disease infections) as it will rip apart the prions responsible for this and create diesel to boot.
I don't have any relationship with this company.
To make it more car related, the Discover article mentioned that GM and Ford(?) looked at using CWT to process their leftover noxious paint chemicals and met with similar success - oil and industrially useful byproducts.
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Ani 3:26PM (3/21/2006)
I am not sure about the energy efficiency of the process described here but I do know that people have produced cellulistic ethanol for as less as 20 cents a gallon. At those prices the process just cannot be an energy sink. I do not understand the chemistry but the economics at least point to a significant future for boifuels.
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Asten 4:41PM (3/21/2006)
Wait, this plan would cut reserves? Wouldn't this cut usage of reserves?
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Whydrive 4:55PM (3/21/2006)
Here's a pilot project that's going on at the University of Illinois to convert manure to oil without the need for a catalyst.
http://www.engr.uiuc.edu/research/news/index.php?xId=067608800770
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Tormod Henne 5:46PM (3/21/2006)
Here is another company that works with biofuel:
http://www.choren.com/en/biomass_to_energy/carbo-v_technology/
There is a really cool animation in the right margin - check it out!
By the way, did anyone believe that the oldfashioned crude-oil based gasoline came from the bottom of the sea and all the way through the refineries without consuming quite a bit of energy in the process?
One example is LNG where approx. 30% of the energy available is used to refine and liquify the product.
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Frank 9:19PM (3/21/2006)
Eprida: New Sustainable Energy Technology
Eprida (Earth, People, Research, Innovation, Development, Acknowledgement) offers a revolutionary new sustainable energy technology that could potentially help solve several of the world's energy crises simultaneously. Their closed-loop system removes CO2 from the air by putting carbon into the topsoil where it is needed to nurture and keep it furtile.
Check it out here:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/01/eprida_new_sust.php
And for thoes that don't like to read we have moving pictures:
http://www.eprida.com/eprida_flash.html
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Gundar 9:35PM (3/21/2006)
The solution and the technology exists today; Brazil being a key example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4715332.stm
All that's needed is the will to do this and the infrastructure. Another big problem is BIG OIL. They have the money to lobby against this technology and thwart it at the source ($$) so that they can continue making record profits by ensuring we don't get off our oil independence anytime soon.
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Joel S. Keller 12:10AM (3/22/2006)
In pyrolysis, the chemical reaction which creates the Carbon-Oxygen bond is highly exothermic. Once this reaction begins to take place, it produces more heat (and energy) than is needed to sustain the reaction. This "waste" heat can be captured to boil water, make steam and run an electric generator. This is in addition to the creation of long carbon chains which mimic fossil petroleum.
Another technology that is readily available now, is "gasification," which is similar to pyrolysis but allows a limited amount of oxygen to be present in the chemical reaction. In an "oxygen starved," but not a zero oxygen environment, carbon containing materials (wastes) become gaseous -- typically Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen -- which can then be burnt fairly cleanly and with appropriate pollution control devices, not create signficant emissions. The heat produced during the gasification and subsequent burning processes can be "harvested" to boil water, make steam and create electricity or the steam can be used in industrial processes, if the factory using the steam is close by.
Our company currently has nearly a dozen waste to energy projects in various stages of development that will use dairy and chicken manure, auto fluff, crop waste, sorted municipal solid waste, scrap tires and sewage sludge as feedstocks to gasify and create electricity. All of these source materials would have been disposed of in landfills or simply abandoned if we hadn't developed these projects.
By using these waste feedstocks (and getting paid to take them, by the way), we avoid paying for fuel for our projects entirely. As a matter of fact, the cost of operations is more than covered by the "tipping fees" that we are paid to take these fuels.
Feel free to give me a call to learn more. My number is on our web site. www.southwestbioenergy.com.
Joel Keller
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amp 9:38AM (3/22/2006)
Wired had another article a few months ago (December 2005) that talked about how $5 gas is good for America. The short of the article was that high gas prices create natural, non-government-funded, subsidies for emerging alt fuels that might not otherwise see the light of day. While I don't whole-heartedly agree with the article, it does make a few good points.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/gas.html
and
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/energy.html
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klaatu 10:20AM (3/22/2006)
If you look closely at the web site for Changing World Tech, you'll note that using offal, ONLY, would net the United States nearly enough oil to allow the complete cessation of ALL OIL IMPORTS.
Ergo; therefore; IF we also converted sewage and garbage (wouldn't it be nice to not have any landfills?), we could be in a position to EXPORT OIL from the United States.
I believe one number being bandied about was $15-20 per barrel production costs - which was the case until the supplier of the offal decided that instead of providing it for free, they'd "charge" for it (remember that when the offal used to go to a landfill, THEY were charged money to dump it).
I wrote to our President and encouraged us to put this whole process on a war-time footing, as in LET'S JUST DO IT - but no, never got a reply. While I'm certainly not a liberal nor a socialist, I have to admit I was disgusted that it was so blatantly ignored.
Then again, I'm most certainly not a Republican either.
We need some common-sense people in charge in Washington AND all of our state capitals. OBVIOUSLY this means 1) NO LAWYERS (i.e. no current "career" politicians). 2) NO DUMOCRATS or REPUBLICRATS.
May I make a humble suggestion of either the Constitution Party or the Libertarian Party as the next party you vote for, depending upon which agrees most with your viewpoints as described in their websites? Otherwise we're not going to survive as a nation. I think it's that serious.
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Thinker 1:16PM (3/22/2006)
I like the TDP process, but that estimate of potential oil production is way out of line, as shown
http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=829&whichpage=42 (see the tenth post from the top).
The most impressive thing about TDP is its ability to take a rotting mess (a wet one at that) and convert it into useful products. It is not everything its inventors claim, but it is a HUGE step in the right direction. What makes more sense than WASTE -> OIL?
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klaatu 1:51PM (3/22/2006)
Well, Thinker, your link was very illuminating.
Still, 13% of our national needs from just offal (presumably, I'm guessing, we could get 25% from our prodigious amounts of GARBAGE we produce and maybe another 13% from the SEWAGE we produce, what with overeating and all) we might be able to actually get near the mark of not needing to import oil, with a bit of conservation, expanded use of E85 in flex-fuel vehicles, increased hybrid sales, and bio-diesel.
Yes? No? Any brainiacs out there want to get some real numbers on this and back them up?
Heck, why not just demand that our government (who "is us" or supposedly working on behalf of all of us) just "DO IT" and stop pussyfooting around with importing oil from these maniac nations?
Until we ourselves undo the (oil) dog-collar and (import) leash held by the Islamofascists and idiots of the world who-would-kill-us-all, we're actually no better than SLAVES.
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Thinker 6:39PM (3/23/2006)
According to a report by USDA and DOE,
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/final_billionton_vision_report2.pdf we have the potential to produce 1.3 billion ton of feedstock for biomass to fuel, enough to replace 30% of US oil consumption.
Not quite enough to replace imports, and that is streching. But, yeah, it would be a good start.
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A3K 6:34PM (3/24/2006)
The CWT estimates are wildly optimistic. The major drawbacks to using biomass is that it's generally expensive to collect and transport it. There are exceptions such as the turkey offal example where a thermal conversion plant is sited next door to a plant producing the waste/raw material needed for the feedstock.
Autofluff has a lot of potential as it's produced only where autoshredders operate. MSW does too, as there's already a collection mechanism and a cost associated with disposal, hence the feedstock has a negative cost.
But with ConAgra, they didn't change their minds. The plant was built there in anticipation of the outlawing of using animal protein as food for animals intended for human consumption. That turkey offal has always had a value, which is set by the market. That CWT has had to face that reality is actually a good thing. They've been forced to react and might eventually decide to focus their technology on fluff or MSW.
For biomass grown specifically as an energy crop, we need to stop thinking seeds (ethanol & soy and rapeseed diesel) and instead develop processes that can either efficiently direct burn crops grown in proximity to a plant (as Dynegy is doing in southern Illinois) or gasifying the stuff. But we need to use the entire plant, not just the seeds. Trees and grass are good options.
But the most promising development that appears to actually be close to blowing up as an option for generating energy from waste is algae derived diesel.
It dramatically cuts CO2 and NOx emissions and turns that waste into an energy rich and easily collected/converted crop. One can imagine a sea of automated bioreactors filled with algae eating up CO2 as it gently bubbles up the hypotenuses of the bioreactor triangles with a daily harvest dumped out the bottom and delivered like sewage to a central location for dewatering, pressing out the oil, sending the remains to a digester for ethanol production and the remains of that a protein rich livestock supplement.
Estimates for a 1000MW plant are 50 million gallons per year of biodiesel and 40 million gallons of ethanol. All from the workings of pollution hungry and sunlight energy converting algae.
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