Author Topic: Alternative Ethanol Sources  (Read 16459 times)

AZRedhawk44

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #25 on: November 03, 2011, 05:49:44 PM »
Its fine, IF:
1. There is sufficient peak sunlight
2. There is sufficient average sunlight
3. There is sufficient storage capacity
4. 1 AND 2 AND 3
5. 1 AND 2 AND the average generated cost is comparable (with zero subsidy) to other GENERATION methods
6a: 5 AND the user-borne cost of running the utility lines to the grid combined with generating costs to the grid is comparable to existing power cost OR
6b: 5 and 3 is comparable to conventional remote generated power and grid
7. 6a AND The incremental cost to add to the existing infrastructure to account for load and generating peaking by the user
8. All impacted grid and/or opportunity costs are levied on the user causing the cost
9. Zero subsidy

So, 9 AND 8 AND (6b OR 7) must be true for it to make sense. (if 4 and 6b arent true, regardless of 8 or 9, the user is stupid)  The problem is 8 and 9, as our current (and likely future ) "alternative energy" pushes decouple the costs from A user and place them on the rest of their region (grid costs) or on all taxpayers (subsidy), thus penalizing the whole for the choices of a single user.  

So it's all or nothing if 8 or 9 is false, and since we can't do ALL (land area and massive cost), we should morally (on the moral code of not penalizing others to make ones self better) have to make 8 AND 9 true.

 ???


lol.

tl;dr


I scanned through that...

I don't understand your point with 6a.  Tying solar to the grid is a 100% bone-headed move.  You pay for the equipment, you generate power during the day and get credited 50% (some amount less than 100%, I don't know what) of the value of your Kwh generated, but you pay 100% of the cost of your Kwh consumed.

Whereas if you implement dedicated off-grid circuits in your home... and the remainder of your home circuits remain on-grid, you get the best of both worlds.  You adjust your power load by locating outlets to the off-grid circuits near your preferred appliances.  As you increase your off-grid power generating or power storage capabilities, you then increase the number of circuits that are off-grid.

The result:  You cut power consumption of on-grid demand for your home, and are fractionally independent of the grid based upon the size of your off-grid installation.  In a pinch, run an extension cable from an off-grid circuit outlet to your refrigerator or other dark places in the house.


7:  Are you talking about the molex runs in the house? 
8:  Are you talking about billing the person who uses less grid power, because he uses less grid power?
9:  A given.  I don't want to subsidize anybody.  Including the buggy-whip-company power company that is getting fewer billed Kwh's because everybody put 10A worth of solar panels on their roofs and a battery store and inverter to take all their TV viewing and home office activities for the day off the grid demand.
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drewtam

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #26 on: November 03, 2011, 08:58:32 PM »
Ethanol and biodiesel increases demand for the feedstock, raises the price of corn & soy.

Farmers switch marginal land to more corn and soy.

Other crops are reduced in supply. Those prices also go up.
Beef, chicken, and pork all depend on feed crops, as feed goes up, so does meat.

The general crop value increase causes more land to be "converted to agriculture".

"Converting to agriculture" means cutting down forest and rain forest to plant crops.

Converting to agriculture is the main cause of deforestation ever since the switch from wood to coal for fuel in the 1700's. Ethanol/biodiesel sets us back 300years, back to the days of cutting down trees for bio-energy.

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Northwoods

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #27 on: November 03, 2011, 09:02:53 PM »
EtOH belongs in your beverage, not your fuel tank.
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GigaBuist

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #28 on: November 03, 2011, 09:33:07 PM »
<snipped out the nice math stuff>

Basically, biofuels are a niche, that only exists due to subsidy, and can't possibly grow to meet our current, let alone future, energy needs, even with an investment of >10% of the GLOBAL GDP.

As I've said before, the only long term energy future that can accommodate growth (I hope the third world becomes more like the 1st world in economics, which would require 5-6x increase in global energy production and raise the standard of living of everyone) is safe nuclear...and it requires the least land and is 100% carbon neutral.  We also have sufficient uranium and thorium reserves at CURRENT prices, to last centuries, if not more.

Figured you'd be the one to lay it all out there.  And I'm not in disagreement at all with what you said, nor does it surprise me.  The only thing I didn't know was that we're just not able to process the cellulose based fuels like we are simple corn sugars, which makes perfect sense.  If cellulose was easy to get a better yield than corn sugars rye whiskey would still be the leader and corn based whiskey would be a gimmick instead of the other way around.  Though I do suspect subsidies had a hand in that one, as I understand rye whiskey is still popular in Canada but not in the US.  I could be wrong on that one.

Anyway...

Where I'd like to see energy go is the same place you do:  Nuclear.  It's carbon neutral, safe, and sustainable.  Do it right and we could have cheap power.  Use that stuff for the mundane daily things like powering up EV cars and such.

After that we just use ethanol or biodiesel for niche things that aren't used all that frequently.  Lawn equipment, tractors, ATVs, boats, etc.  Ideally grown locally, harvested using some of last year's fuel generated from the same field, and sold to locals for the non-critical stuff we're still using combustion engines for.

Ideally I'd like to see small systems suitable for home use.  Personally I run through maybe 20-30 gallons of fuel for lawn gear in a year.  If I could get that fuel by dedicating 0.05 acres of my yard to miscanthus giganteus and feeding it to a Mr. Ethanol in my garage that'd be pretty sweet.  Sure, it won't make a dent in global consumption, but it's a start.

Northwoods

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #29 on: November 03, 2011, 10:38:18 PM »
Figured you'd be the one to lay it all out there.  And I'm not in disagreement at all with what you said, nor does it surprise me.  The only thing I didn't know was that we're just not able to process the cellulose based fuels like we are simple corn sugars, which makes perfect sense.  If cellulose was easy to get a better yield than corn sugars rye whiskey would still be the leader and corn based whiskey would be a gimmick instead of the other way around.  Though I do suspect subsidies had a hand in that one, as I understand rye whiskey is still popular in Canada but not in the US.  I could be wrong on that one.

Since it's at least related to beverages, I will need to correct you on this point.  Rye (or barley or wheat) can have a very good fermentable yield per acre, though still not as good as corn.  The reason rye and malted barley whiskeys aren't as popular as corn based is that corn overall is cheaper to produce.  Rye is more popular in certain areas because it's what they got used to a long time ago and they'd just rather not change.  Kind of like why I prefer ketchup over mustard.

Cellulosic EtOH has nothing to do with it.  The sugars for whiskey come from the kernels, whereas cellulosic carbohydrates come from the stalks, leaves, and other parts not otherwise suitable for making beverage EtOH from. 

Where I'd like to see energy go is the same place you do:  Nuclear.  It's carbon neutral, safe, and sustainable.  Do it right and we could have cheap power.  Use that stuff for the mundane daily things like powering up EV cars and such.

After that we just use ethanol or biodiesel for niche things that aren't used all that frequently.  Lawn equipment, tractors, ATVs, boats, etc.  Ideally grown locally, harvested using some of last year's fuel generated from the same field, and sold to locals for the non-critical stuff we're still using combustion engines for.

Ideally I'd like to see small systems suitable for home use.  Personally I run through maybe 20-30 gallons of fuel for lawn gear in a year.  If I could get that fuel by dedicating 0.05 acres of my yard to miscanthus giganteus and feeding it to a Mr. Ethanol in my garage that'd be pretty sweet.  Sure, it won't make a dent in global consumption, but it's a start.

GAAA!  NO, NO, NO.  On so many levels.  Lawn equipment, boats, ATV's, etc are particularly susceptible to damage from EtOH, and no matter the source it is not a good substitute for gasoline.  It's only a good idea if it can be produced on site and transport of gasoline to that site is impracticle or prohibitively expensive.

As far as EV's go, Google (or Bing or whatever) "It's time to kill the electric car, drive a steak through its heart, and burn the corpse."  It will explain the problems with EV's (battery powered ones anyway) far better than I ever could.

Your intentions are good.  But the path you advocate is not. 

If you want to reduce carbon emmissions (a dubiously valuable goal) the only solution I see given the current state of the industry is fuel cell vehicles to replace IC powered vehicles.  Use the nukular plants you want (and I do too), and run them at a level load 24/7/365.  Whatever power is not demanded by the general grid use gets diverted to making H2 or whatever fuel is made standard for fuel cells.

A better argument for reducing our use of gasoline/diesel than "carbon" and AGW is that those chemicals are useful for a lot of industrial purposes that would be more valuable that moving steel cages from Point A to Point B.  Or that we'd be better off without the economic disruptions from oil price shocks.
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GigaBuist

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #30 on: November 03, 2011, 11:52:22 PM »
Cellulosic EtOH has nothing to do with it.  The sugars for whiskey come from the kernels, whereas cellulosic carbohydrates come from the stalks, leaves, and other parts not otherwise suitable for making beverage EtOH from. 

Well, that figures.  Good to know.

GAAA!  NO, NO, NO.  On so many levels.  Lawn equipment, boats, ATV's, etc are particularly susceptible to damage from EtOH, and no matter the source it is not a good substitute for gasoline.  It's only a good idea if it can be produced on site and transport of gasoline to that site is impracticle or prohibitively expensive.

Easy there.  I know that your average engine is going to go to pot if you don't prepare it for ethanol fuel.  It'll eat the snot out of any rubber gasket and you've got to go with polymers the whole way through. Thing is it's easier to jimmy that stuff into a lawn mower than a Honda Civic and the mower probably isn't all that picky about timing... and the user probably isn't terribly concerned about efficiency either.  Especially if the fuel is coming out their own garage.

Summary:  EV bad, fuel cell good.

I actually agree with you on that one.  I got into a discussion about 7 years ago with another tech guy and he took the position that battery cars would appear before hydrogen fuel cell cars. I took the other side.  Well, he won.  Unfortunately he died before it came to fruition.  I don't really like it, as I'd like to see nuke plants busting water water into hydrogen for fuel cells when they're not at peak usage, but that's not in the cards just yet. 

Nick1911

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #31 on: November 03, 2011, 11:55:05 PM »
As far as EV's go, Google (or Bing or whatever) "It's time to kill the electric car, drive a steak through its heart, and burn the corpse."  It will explain the problems with EV's (battery powered ones anyway) far better than I ever could.

That was a really good read.  Nice find!

Link

birdman

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #32 on: November 04, 2011, 07:42:28 AM »
If you want to reduce carbon emmissions (a dubiously valuable goal) the only solution I see given the current state of the industry is fuel cell vehicles to replace IC powered vehicles.  Use the nukular plants you want (and I do too), and run them at a level load 24/7/365.  Whatever power is not demanded by the general grid use gets diverted to making H2 or whatever fuel is made standard for fuel cells.

A better argument for reducing our use of gasoline/diesel than "carbon" and AGW is that those chemicals are useful for a lot of industrial purposes that would be more valuable that moving steel cages from Point A to Point B.  Or that we'd be better off without the economic disruptions from oil price shocks.

Having worked on hydrogen generation projects with nuclear as the source (both electrolysis and thermochemical H2 generation) and fuel cell projects, I think the suffer from the same problem as electric cars--infrastructure costs.  That's why I recommend the nuclear power to synthetic methanol/Dimethylether approach.  The efficiency of converting energy from a power plant to energy in those fuels is the same or better as it is in making hydrogen, and the round trip efficiency (nuclear power to motor output power in a vehicle) using those fuels in a high efficiency IC engine hybrid is very close to that of a hydrogen cycle using fuel cells.  When the cost associated with the hydrogen in both energy terms (compression/liquification) and infrastructure (requires replacement of all the engines, distribution, and storage infrastructure) is levelized over the delivered vehicle miles, the synthetic alcohol/ether cycle wins hands down.

I used to have your viewpoint, but when I dug into the true costs, the simple solution (minimize modifications required to all the existing infrastructure by choosing the fuel to allow normal combustion) won over the more "efficient" (at first blush) solution. 

Same with the nuclear plants I've designed...I used to try to make them more and more efficient, but that complexity increased costs more than the extra power made in revenue, so now I am going the ultra-simple route.

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #33 on: November 04, 2011, 10:46:26 AM »
Two words, cellulostic ethanol.  That is still a grass (cellulose, not short chain sugars), which means you can't mass produce ethanol from it (currently being worked), so while it has the potential, it's not there yet.

Also, even if you grew that on every acre of arable land currently being farmed world wide, you still wouldn't replace oil and gas..LoR even a large fraction of it.

Ethanol makes close to zero sense as an alternative, as you show in a later post.  Methanol is still not great, but is a whole lot better as a fuel than ethanol, even ethanol's cold-fusion-wannabe, cellulostic ethanol.  Given lotsa nukes pumping out lotsa waste heat and electricity, methanol makes more sense.

Ethanol makes only political sense.
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Northwoods

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #34 on: November 04, 2011, 08:34:09 PM »
Having worked on hydrogen generation projects with nuclear as the source (both electrolysis and thermochemical H2 generation) and fuel cell projects, I think the suffer from the same problem as electric cars--infrastructure costs.  That's why I recommend the nuclear power to synthetic methanol/Dimethylether approach.  The efficiency of converting energy from a power plant to energy in those fuels is the same or better as it is in making hydrogen, and the round trip efficiency (nuclear power to motor output power in a vehicle) using those fuels in a high efficiency IC engine hybrid is very close to that of a hydrogen cycle using fuel cells.  When the cost associated with the hydrogen in both energy terms (compression/liquification) and infrastructure (requires replacement of all the engines, distribution, and storage infrastructure) is levelized over the delivered vehicle miles, the synthetic alcohol/ether cycle wins hands down.

So, are you saying methanol/dimethylether for IC or fuel cells?  I know fuel cells can run on natural gas, so I'd think the syncahol would work too.
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zxcvbob

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #35 on: November 04, 2011, 11:13:45 PM »
I think fuel cells can run directly from methanol.  But birdman is talking about fuel for internal combustion engines.
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birdman

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #36 on: November 05, 2011, 09:02:02 AM »
While there are fuel cells that run on methanol, they have limited life and power density compared to hydrogen fueled systems, and thus unsuitable for vehicular use.  You can find one's that use a reformer to convert natural gas or methanol to hydrogen, but it's much more complex, and have limited power density.

As said, I was referring to simply running existing engines on the synthetic fuels.  The whole point is to enable as much reuse of the existing infrastructure as possible, as a transition to a different set of distribution and vehicles would take decade given its cost.

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #37 on: November 05, 2011, 11:21:57 AM »
^^^ A key point; to be able to continue to use our existing fuel distribution infrastructure.
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birdman

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #38 on: November 06, 2011, 06:18:57 PM »
^^^ A key point; to be able to continue to use our existing fuel distribution infrastructure.

Not to mention existing vehicles.  If one forces a switch, it either REALLY penalizes both business (fleet investment) and the poor (who can't afford new cars), or has massive subsidy to remediate those effects...which also penalizes (albeit indirectly) through the resulting taxation or through inflation as a result of deficit spending.

zxcvbob

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #39 on: November 06, 2011, 07:31:43 PM »
Butanol or isobutanol or a mixture thereof would make a good fuel, and can be made just like ethanol, using a different fermentation process.  And they can be burned in an unmodified gasoline engine.  (Birdman can correctly me here if I'm wrong) the problem is how to get rid of the water without using massive amounts of energy, because they boil at a higher temperature than H20 -- so distillation is not the right answer.

 
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charby

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #40 on: November 06, 2011, 07:51:53 PM »
The problem with plant based fuels is bulk of the feedstocks and the cost of shipping. If we went to cellulose based fuels then there would have to a processing plant every so many square miles where the biomass is grown and then some way of getting the fuel to the markets.

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zxcvbob

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #41 on: November 06, 2011, 08:01:21 PM »
The problem with plant based fuels is bulk of the feedstocks and the cost of shipping. If we went to cellulose based fuels then there would have to a processing plant every so many square miles where the biomass is grown and then some way of getting the fuel to the markets.


But if you could use some form of waste as feedstock, like old tires, or slaughterhouse or rendering plant waste, the feedstock will come to you.  That's why Changing World Technology's thermal depolymerization process looked so promising.  I don't know how they managed to lose money converting garbage into diesel oil, even while oil prices were sky high.  They had a beta test refinery in Carthage, MO near a turkey processor.
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Firethorn

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #42 on: November 06, 2011, 08:49:51 PM »
My 'pie in the sky' bet would be algae based fuels - grown using trays in the desert, avoiding the arable land requirements for other methods.  Even then, it wouldn't be a 100% replacement - we'd need a major transition to the more efficient hybrids at the least, and most cars would be straight EV. 

zxcvbob - they managed to lose money because after they got the plant built, the turkey factory discovered uses for the waste, so rather than getting the waste effectively for free, the turkey processor wanted to charge money approaching $1/pound.

That and they had some expensive emissions problems.

As a research plant, it generated a lot of research(good).  As a test plant, it wasn't very good(not able to turn a profit).

charby

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #43 on: November 07, 2011, 09:04:23 AM »
But if you could use some form of waste as feedstock, like old tires, or slaughterhouse or rendering plant waste, the feedstock will come to you.  That's why Changing World Technology's thermal depolymerization process looked so promising.  I don't know how they managed to lose money converting garbage into diesel oil, even while oil prices were sky high.  They had a beta test refinery in Carthage, MO near a turkey processor.

well... used to be you could get all the chicken or hog manure you wanted for free as fertilizer (and they would apply it), with the cost of anhydrous ammonia where it is, the chicken/pork producers can actually sell the stuff as fertilizer.

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brimic

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #44 on: November 07, 2011, 10:18:41 AM »
Quote
- It's perennial, so once you plant you're done.

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Brad Johnson

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #46 on: November 26, 2013, 03:42:12 PM »
Hydrogen FTW.

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zxcvbob

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #47 on: November 26, 2013, 06:00:27 PM »
The problem with butanol (iso or otherwise) is it boils at a higher temperature than water.  So how are you going to purify it without expending *huge* amounts of energy to boil off all the water?
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charby

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #48 on: November 26, 2013, 06:06:27 PM »
The problem with butanol (iso or otherwise) is it boils at a higher temperature than water.  So how are you going to purify it without expending *huge* amounts of energy to boil off all the water?

What is the freezing point of it?
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zxcvbob

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Re: Alternative Ethanol Sources
« Reply #49 on: November 26, 2013, 06:12:10 PM »
What is the freezing point of it?

It depends on the isomer, but... really really cold.  It would make good antifreeze.
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