Re: Even Low Efficiency Energy Storage Devices Become Competitive With Spiraling Fuel Costs

On 2008-08-16, The Trucker <mikcob@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:26:29 +0000, B Richardson wrote:

["Followup-To:" header set to sci.energy.]
On 2008-08-15, Rob Dekker <rob@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"The Trucker" <mikcob@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:pan.2008.08.13.15.38.29.259486@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And biofuels are a big part of that which fills the gap.


I hope so. But there is a lot of work to do.

The promising biofuel segment of fuel production from biomass is very, very small right now.
Here is an example plant (in Germany) :
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3938#more
Unfortunately, this process in still not cost effective (even though the biomass is free, the plant still looses money).
With that free enterprise will not jump on it....


My opinion is that the best near term use for cellulosic biomass is
for applications that need low grade heat. Displacing high quality
fuels like heating oil and nat gas for residential heating. You can
displace a quad of heating oil and nat gas with a quad of switchgrass
pellets, that same quad of switchgrass nets at most .7 quads of liquid
fuel (probably more like .55 in practice). Pellet presses are much
cheaper than FT reactors.

My $0.02.

That may be the right way to go on switchgrass. It looks like the
cellulosic ethanol might be a winner in Georgia using trees that would
have otherwise went to paper (my guess). They claim they can compete
down to $50 a barrel oil.


The feedstock they start with could still displace more heating fuel than
they could produce. We use 11 quads of nat gas and oil for residential
and commercial heating; using high quality fuels to produce low grade heat.
Choren's process has one of the higher conversion rates for biomass to
liquids, they produce 18 million litres of fuel from 68k tonnes of forest
biomass. That same 68k tonnes if used in residential applications could
displace about 30 million litres of residential heating oil, and with
fewer energy inputs. The US currently used about 1/2 quad of biomass for
residential heating, ramping that up to two or three quads could be
done quicker and at less cost than producing two or three quads of liquids
from cellulosic feedstock while using a little more than half the feedstock
volume. Sales of wood stoves and pellet stoves are on the rise so market
forces are moving in that direction, I have no idea if it could have an
impact in any type of reasonable time frame on market forces alone.


http://www.rangefuels.com/Range-Fuels-Raises-over-$100-Million-in-Series-B-Financing

And there is a lot of stuff going on right now in the way of ethanol from
algae.

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2008/04/23/biofuel_microbe/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9966867-54.html

Unlike biodiesel from algae that requires harvesting and drying and
pressing the algae and replenishing the basic feedstock, this stuff
does not require destruction of the actual algae. The little suckers just
sit there putting out the sugars for making ethanol. If one builds 20
million boireactors the cost per unit gets pretty cheap.


Without knowing any of their numbers, I'm going to guess that you
could beat their yield of fuel by producing methane from random
wild-type prolific algae. Not sure if methane from algae is worthwhile,
haven't been able to collect a few pertinent details.


Meanwhile: The good ole boys are not to be outdone either. The farmers
are more pissed off and ready to wing it then the average Americans. They
are looking at biodiesel as more a piss on Exxon thing than they are
trying to save a few shekels. And it is turning out that localization and
planning can, in fact, be financially, as well as, personally rewarding.
The farmers are cooperating and expanding the grist mills to do more with
the oils. And they do canola in over winter, mill it for the meal that
makes cow feed and the oil that makes biodiesel to run their equipment.
The soybean crop is the cash crop and the yields are improved by
rotation with the canola. There is a huge dent in diesel demand that can
be made by the farmers and the truckers and the consumers are the
beneficiaries.

.

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