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Author Topic: Ethanol  (Read 10973 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #15 on: August 07, 2015, 10:40:31 pm »
One of the best kept secrets (by the fossil fuel government  >:() out there is that an internal combustion engine DESIGNED to run on ethanol, even though it has higher compression, is actually far more durable, as well as being nearly thirty percent cheaper to manufacture. That's right boys and girls, the witches brew of VOCs and various carbon chain hydrocarbons called gasoline is HELL on internal combustion engines.

WHY? Because ethanol runs MUCH COOLER 100% of the time! You can literally put your hand on the block of an engine running ethanol! The severe wear that an ICE experiences is mainly due to WASTE HEAT. That is HEAT that is UNUSABLE for MOVING THE VEHICLE. So they have to over enginner the metal to withstand all that waste heat. It's STUPID to use gasoline. But we still do it because that's the way the fossil fuel bought and paid for government wants it. 

Combined with other Renewable Energy sources, ethanol from algae or Lemna minor or/and some other plant source can enable us to transition to 100% Renewable Energy NOW, not 50 years from now.

The U.S. Renewable energy Laboratory (did you even know we had one?  :o ) ran a TWENTY YEAR (1976-1996) study on algae to biofuels and SUCCEEDED in numerous breakthroughs that made it economically feasible to make biofuel for ALL our ICE cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes (jet fuel too!). And it is HARDER to get biofuels from algae than from duckweed because algae is so hydrophilic (it loves to have water in it and around it so it can use it with the CO2 to make carbohydrates) because much more energy is needed to dry it than duckweed.

Do you know WHY they dropped the whole thing? I can tell you the boilerplate bullshit excuse they used. The U.S. Government claimed (After 20 YEARS of study with several important breakthroughs that made it DOABLE!) that it "wasn't necessary because the price of oil had dropped so low". 

BALONEY! The fossil fuel industry BURIED it just like they did the fuel farmers made in the 1920's with Prohibition!

But it's back! And it ain't gonna go away THIS TIME. And it IS contributing to the DEATH of fossil fuels. 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #16 on: September 01, 2015, 08:25:54 pm »
Can We Really Do This?  ???
 

Of course we can. There is enough excess ethanol capacity to get started now and the technology to make E100 engines is readily available.

As of June 10, 2015 (Renewable Fuels Association):

   212 operating EtOH Plants -  15.401   bill gals capacity

          New Plants under const -  0.100       "


Total Capacity:                            15.501   billion gallons

Estimated usage 2015                13.180   billion gallons (STEO, 6/9/15, EIA)

Estimated Excess capacity:        2.321   billion gallons


Just the current idle/new capacity is enough to fuel >1,000,000 vehicles (15,000 miles/yr @25mpg, 600 gallons/vehicle). By the time that capacity is used up, the processes to make ethanol using cellulose and algae for ~$1.50/gallon will be available enabling us easily to get to the 36 billion gallon federal requirement by 2022.

To achieve oil independence we need to replace 66 billion gallons of gasoline. We already have capacity to make 15 billion gallons of ethanol, so just 51 billion gallons more is required.

Is there enough waste cellulose to do this? Yes. The DOE published an update of their billion ton annual cellulose availability paper in August 2011. Using the DOE's very conservative yield of 85 gallons of ethanol per ton of cellulose, we could make 85 billion gallons of ethanol without hurting food production or exports.

Ethanol is a carbon neutral liquid motor fuel.
That is, the CO2 produced by burning it goes right back in to growing more cellulose the next year.

No new carbon needs to be brought up from underground. The waste cellulose the DOE talks about in the above paper all biodegrades to CO2 anyway. We might as well pick it up and make ethanol out of it.

Dr. Bruce Dale and his associates at Michigan State University confirmed this study in Environmental Science and Technology, October 2010, with their article Biofuels Done Right: Land Efficient Animal Feeds Enable Large Environment and Energy Benefits. They show beyond any doubt that the U.S. can make over 100 billion gallons/yr of ethanol without "decreasing domestic food production or agricultural exports."

The cost to a retail franchisee to modify an existing storage tank to accept ethanol is quite site specific, but would be between $25,000 and $30,000 including a new blender pump with card reader.

It should be noted  that ethanol is  already ubiquitous at the wholesale level. Where ever there is a gasoline terminal, there is ethanol either in barges, tankcars, or tanktrucks.

An ethanol blender pump is a filling station fuel pump that allows consumers to select the desired blend of gasoline and ethanol from E0 (straight gasoline) up to E100 (i.e., Dresser Waynes's Ovation iX).

The ethanol producer could sell E100 direct to the retail franchisee bypassing the price setting mechanisms of the oil companies.

 For the 12,000 pump infrastructure -- every 2 miles in the 100 largest cities, 25 miles apart on highways-- the total cost would be less than 
$500 million, a pittance compared to other technologies.

Actually, we already have over 2,000 E100 capable stations since the existing E85 stations can just switch to E100 with no futher investment.

 Going with higher level intermediate blends such as E20 and E30 is going to cost as much as going to E100 so why not go all the way to E100?

 Is there precedent for such a change in automotive fuel? Yes, there is -- the change from leaded to unleaded fuel in the 1970's as catalytic converters came on the scene. There was a lot of dispute about whether this could be done. Yet when the mandate stayed in place, we switched in quite a short period of time.

The mandating of at least 50% of new vehicles to be E100 capable by the end of 2016 is a much easier and lower cost venture than the switch to unleaded fuel.

Brazil made themselves independent of imported oil by using flex/fuel engines capable of burning E100. In fact, all retail motor fuel stations in Brazil must offer E100. If Brazil can do this, so can we.

A Shell station in Sao Paulo. Brazil showing  2 grades of gasoline and E100.

This is a political decision to make, not a technical one.   

http://www.e100ethanolgroup.com/Can_We_Really_Do_This_.html

AGelbert NOTE:
Ethanol as a fuel is far superior to gasoline. I have learned that ethanol's octane rating is higher than that of non-leaded gasoline. More thermodynamically important, however, ethanol combusts completely because it has one consistent chemical structure and carries it's own oxygen to aid the process.

In addition, ethanol has extremely low waste heat because, unlike gasoline, it doesn't produce carbon deposits from incomplete combustion on the cylinder walls that increase friction and decrease engine life. Unlike an engine running on gasoline, you can touch the block, or the manifold, of an engine running on ethanol with your hand AND KEEP IT THERE without getting burned. This has huge savings implications for engine design that the fossil fuel industry has done it's best to keep from internal combustion engine designers and manufacturers (more on that below).

"High energy density" calculations  are based on EXTERNAL thermodynamic combustion processes. It is true that gasoline will boil water in an open flame faster than ethanol will. That doesn't have beans to do with automobiles.

But when INTERNAL combustion is involved, ethanol produces more useful work than gasoline. That has EVERYTHING to do with automobiles.

But there is more the fossil fuel industry does not want most people to know. Due to the fact that ethanol burns so cleanly and has such low waste heat, a high compression internal combustion engine specifically designed for ethanol would be about 30% lighter (i.e. a lot cheaper) because the metal alloys involved would not have to be engineered to withstand the engine stressing waste heat that gasoline generates. Of course, said internal combustion engine (ICE) could not be approved for running gasoline. Gasoline would trash an engine designed specifically to run on ethanol in short order. The fossil fuel industry would not like that at all.  ;)

A lighter ICE running ethanol would then get even more mechanical energy out of each gallon because less engine weight would need to be moved along with the car and occupants.

The only way gasoline's higher energy density than ethanol would make it a superior fuel is if cars were run by EXTERNAL combustion processes like a steam engine.

The Fossil Fuel Industry knows all that. That is why they continuously try to demonize and talk down ethanol biofuel with mendacity and dissembling about "low ERoEI", "water in the fuel" and "corrosion".

I, and many others, have exposed all that fossil fuel industry self serving propaganda. We need fossil fuels like a hole in the head.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #17 on: September 02, 2015, 08:59:25 pm »
Shilling for Dollars

Front groups with official and impressive name such as Medicine and Public Health at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) tend to lend an air of authoritative credibility to a given issue. It carries the impression of being an expert source.

To increase the “expert credibility” image, add someone with a few letters before and/or after their name to the staff.

But is the front group or its representatives really an expert and credible organization? 

Full article:
https://frackorporation.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/shilling-for-dollars/

Agelbert NOTE:
The short answer is NO. The ACSH is funded by a rogues gallery of polluters. The scientists they employ are bought and paid for to distort, dissemble and twist the science of applied physics (see "High Energy Density" of fossil fuels happy talk) and climate science along with several other pro-corporate and anti-people propaganda). The ACSH exists to perpetuate the profit over planet polluting status quo, PERIOD.



Why You Can’t Trust the American Council on Science and Health

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Gary Ruskin

The American Council on Science and Health is a front group for the tobacco, agrichemical, fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and other industries.

Personnel

ACSH’s “Medical/Executive Director” is Dr. Gilbert Ross.[2] In 1993, according to United Press International, Dr. Ross was “convicted of racketeering, mail fraud and conspiracy,” and was “sentenced to 47 months in jail, $40,000 in forfeiture and restitution of $612,855” in a scheme to defraud the Medicaid system.[3]
ACSH’s Dr. Ross was found to be a “highly untrustworthy individual” by a judge who sustained the exclusion of Dr. Ross from Medicaid for ten years.[4]


Funding
 

ACSH has often billed itself as an “independent” group, and has been referred to as “independent” in the press. However, according to internal ACSH financial documents obtained by Mother Jones:

“ACSH planned to receive a total of $338,200 from tobacco companies between July 2012 and June 2013. Reynolds American and Phillip Morris International were each listed as expected to give $100,000 in 2013, which would make them the two largest individual donations listed in the ACSH documents.”[5]

“ACSH donors in the second half of 2012 included Chevron ($18,500), Coca-Cola ($50,000), the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation ($15,000), Dr. Pepper/Snapple ($5,000), Bayer Cropscience ($30,000), Procter and Gamble ($6,000), agribusiness giant Syngenta ($22,500), 3M ($30,000), McDonald’s ($30,000), and tobacco conglomerate Altria ($25,000).

Among the corporations and foundations that ACSH has pursued for financial support since July 2012 are Pepsi, Monsanto, British American Tobacco, DowAgro, ExxonMobil Foundation, Philip Morris International, Reynolds American, the Koch family-controlled Claude R. Lambe Foundation, the Dow-linked Gerstacker Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust.”[6]

ACSH has received $155,000 in contributions from Koch foundations from 2005-2011, according to Greenpeace.[7]

Indefensible and incorrect statements on science
ACSH has:

Claimed that “There is no evidence that exposure to secondhand smoke involves heart attacks or cardiac arrest.”[8]

Argued that “there is no scientific consensus concerning global warming. The climate change predictions are based on computer models that have not been validated and are far from perfect.”[9]

Argued that fracking “doesn’t pollute water or air.”[10]

Claimed that “The scientific evidence is clear. There has never been a case of ill health linked to the regulated, approved use of pesticides in this country.”[11]

Declared that “There is no evidence that BPA [bisphenol A] in consumer products of any type, including cash register receipts, are harmful to health.”[12]

Argued that the exposure to mercury, a potent neurotoxin, “in conventional seafood causes no harm in humans.”[13]

Footnotes

[2] “Meet the ACSH Team,” American Council on Science and Health website.

[3] “Seven Sentenced for Medicaid Fraud.” United Press International, December 6, 1993. See also correspondence from Tyrone T. Butler, Director, Bureau of Adjudication, State of New York Department of Health to Claudia Morales Bloch, Gilbert Ross and Vivian Shevitz, “RE: In the Matter of Gilbert Ross, M.D.” March 1, 1995. Bill Hogan, “Paging Dr. Ross.” Mother Jones, November 2005. Martin Donohoe MD FACP, “Corporate Front Groups and the Abuse of Science: The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).” Spinwatch, June 25, 2010.

[4] Department of Health and Human Services, Departmental Appeals Board, Civil Remedies Division, In the Cases of Gilbert Ross, M.D. and Deborah Williams M.D., Petitioners, v. The Inspector General. June 16, 1997. Docket Nos. C-94-368 and C-94-369. Decision No. CR478.

[5] Andy Kroll and Jeremy Schulman, “Leaked Documents Reveal the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group.” Mother Jones, October 28, 2013. “American Council on Science and Health Financial Report, FY 2013 Financial Update.” Mother Jones, October 28, 2013.

[6] Andy Kroll and Jeremy Schulman, “Leaked Documents Reveal the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group.” Mother Jones, October 28, 2013. “American Council on Science and Health Financial Report, FY 2013 Financial Update.” Mother Jones, October 28, 2013.

[7] “Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group: American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).” Greenpeace. See also Rebekah Wilce, “Kochs and Corps Have Bankrolled American Council on Science and Health.” PR Watch, July 23, 2014.

[8] Richard Craver, “The Effects of the Smoking Ban.” Winston-Salem Journal, December 12, 2012.

[9] Elizabeth Whelan, “’Global Warming’ Not Health Threat.” PRI (Population Research Institute) Review, January 1, 1998.

[10] Elizabeth Whelan, “Fracking Doesn’t Pose Health Risks.” The Daily Caller, April 29, 2013.

[11] “TASSC: The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition,” p. 9. Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, University of California, San Francisco. November 21, 2001. Bates No. 2048294227-2048294237.

[12] “The Top 10 Unfounded Health Scares of 2012.” American Council on Science and Health, February 22, 2013.

[13] “The Biggest Unfounded Health Scares of 2010.” American Council on Science and Health, December 30, 2010.

Food For Thought, Hall of Shame

http://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/why-you-cant-trust-the-american-council-on-science-and-health/

Agelbert NOTE:
Here is an excellent example of pseudo scientific baloney published by the ACSH (it's three years old but the same baloney continues to be peddled by fossil fuelers and those that swallowed their mendacious propaganda):

Energy Density: Why Gasoline Is Here To Stay 

By Hank Campbell    | August 2nd 2012 11:00 PM

SNIPPET 1 - The Pretense of Objectivity Wind Up (i.e. tough love "real world" baloney mixed with sympathy laced rhetoric):

Like people who approach geopolitics with the attitude of "If people would just talk to each other, we would all along", there are a lot of naïve assumptions about just dumping gasoline.

We know it causes emissions, and emissions are bad, we know a lot of the money paid for oil goes to fund Middle Eastern terrorism, and that is bad - those things should cause both the left and the right in America to want gasoline gone. And yet it is not gone. The reason is simple: gasoline is a lot more efficient than alternative energy proponents want to believe.


SNIPPET 2 - The pitch:

Energy density is the amount of stored energy in something; in the case of gasoline we talk in America about a 1 gallon volume but I will use both metric and standard for the values. Gasoline has an energy density of about 44 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg), converted to American values that is 1.3 × 108 J/gallon.


SNIPPET 3 (Just ONE of SEVERAL real world AND applied physics LIES):

Ethanol was the last craze of the Anything-But-Oil contingent yet even they had to succumb to reality and recognize that the lower energy density meant 25% worse gas mileage - worse for people, worse for food prices and worse for the environment.
http://www.science20.com/science_20/energy_density_why_gasoline_here_stay-91403


Agelbert NOTE: To begin with, ethanol is not a "craze". It was not a craze in 2012 and, because presently 15 billion gallons of it are made a year, it certainly isn't one now.

But the fact that the author is so ignorant of history (Edison labs in partnership with the U.S. Navy, in the first decade of the 20th century, PROVED that ethanol was a superior fuel to gasoline - It was rather convenient for Standard Oil that Prohibition just happened to come along after Rockefeller funded the temperance movement to the tune of several million dollars...) is informative about the questionable scientific objectivity of the author.  ;)

The author puts up a happy talk graph showing gasoline as the high energy density champion over E85. He leaves out E100 (an informative omission that points squarely at a fossil fuel bias).

The chart is accurate. So what's the problem? The problem is that energy density of gasoline and ethanol is a process determined in the lab, by scientists, in certain standardized conditions. I'm CERTAIN fossil fuelers know this. The energy density of about 44 MJ/kg) for gasoline is determined by heating water, in an open flame in standard atmospheric conditions (a fixed temperature and pressure - sea level at 59 degrees F). 

If the above appears irrelevant to you, let me remind you that heating water in an open flame is an EXTERNAL combustion process. It is true that gasoline will heat that water quicker than ethanol.  ;D

But, unless you have a steam engine running your car, you need to consider how much WORK you can get from gasoline versus ethanol in an INTERNAL combustion engine.

The author neglected to mention that ethanol (E100) has a higher octane rating than non-leaded gasoline, even though E100 has a lower energy density.  ;D High octane ratings give a fuel better mileage as long as you oxidize them in a high compression internal combustion engines. That is why tetra-ethyl lead was invented to help our children's IQ... You see, ethanol was outlawed for fuel thanks to Prohibition... And, by the way, leaded gasoline is STILL LEGAL for use in aircraft internal combustion engine, all of which are high compression engines. Do you live under the approach to general aviation airport? Then you are getting the "benefit" of still another "externalized" cost thanks to the fossil fuel industry.

When you mix gasoline with ethanol (e.g. E85) you LOWER the octane rating. IOW, you are making it LESS efficient. You are making it LESS competitive with gasoline. You are getting the waste heat disadvantage of gasoline and losing the a part of the high octane rating of ethanol. That is Inefficient. That is unscientific. That is STUPID. But that is convenient and profitable for the fossil fuel industry. You might ask yourself why E100 is in common use in Brazil, but not in the USA. I'll give you three guesses - the first two don't count;)

Why ethanol's octane rating is higher than that of non-leaded gasoline if ethanol has a lower energy density? Because ethanol is of uniform chemical structure. Consequently, it burns evenly and does not suffer from pre-ignition (like low octane gasoline DOES) which can severely damage an engine.

More thermodynamically important, however,  the consistent chemical structure of E100 ensures complete combustion, aided by the fact that it carries it's own oxygen.

In addition, ethanol has extremely low waste heat because, unlike gasoline, it doesn't produce carbon deposits from incomplete combustion on the cylinder walls that increase friction and decrease engine life.

Unlike an engine running on gasoline, you can touch the block, or the manifold, of an engine running on ethanol with your hand AND KEEP IT THERE without getting burned. This has huge savings implications for engine design that the fossil fuel industry has done it's best to keep from internal combustion engine designers and manufacturers (more on that below).

IN SUMMARY, "High energy density" calculations  are based on EXTERNAL thermodynamic combustion processes. It is true that gasoline will boil water in an open flame faster than ethanol will. That doesn't have beans to do with automobiles.

But when INTERNAL combustion is involved, ethanol produces more useful work than gasoline. That has EVERYTHING to do with automobiles.

But there is more the fossil fuel industry does not want most people to know. Due to the fact that ethanol burns so cleanly and has such low waste heat, a high compression internal combustion engine specifically designed for ethanol would be about 30% lighter (i.e. a lot cheaper) because the metal alloys involved would not have to be engineered to withstand the engine stressing waste heat that gasoline generates. Of course, said internal combustion engine (ICE) could not be approved for running gasoline. Gasoline would trash an engine designed specifically to run on ethanol in short order. The fossil fuel industry would not like that at all.

A lighter ICE running ethanol would then get even more mechanical energy (i.e. WORK) out of each gallon because less engine weight would need to be moved along with the car and occupants.

The Fossil Fuel Industry knows all that. That is why they continuously try to demonize and talk down ethanol biofuel with mendacity and dissembling about "low ERoEI", "water in the fuel" and "corrosion".

I, and many others, have exposed all that fossil fuel industry self serving propaganda. But they just keep throwing it out there to try to preserve the TOTALLY unscientific basis for claiming fossil fuels are a "better fuel" than E100 (pure ethanol).

Don't believe them. And check to see who is doing the funding when you read happy talk about fossil fuels.

The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) is not objective, science based or credible. Hank Campbell, like the fossil fueler MKing that haunts the Doomstead Diner, is not interested in scientific objectivity; preserving the fossil fuel profit over planet status quo with mens rea mendacity is behind everything they write.



Further reading that methodically takes apart some relatively recent pseudo scientific baloney by the "illustrious" Professor Charles Hall, friend of fossil fuelers everywhere. 



 

 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #18 on: October 27, 2015, 08:48:22 pm »
Sustainability in Bioenergy Videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH_nhmVzjVU&feature=player_embedded
Biofuels can bridge the gap to transition to 100% Renewables. We need fossil fuels like a HOLE IN THE HEAD! 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #19 on: January 09, 2016, 05:33:35 pm »
Fuel choice lost
January 6, 2016
by Nathan Taft

Picture this.

You’re driving down the road and you notice your tank is almost empty — time to fill up. You pull into a fueling station and see the price of gasoline has gone up quite a bit since the last time you were there. Instead of gritting your teeth and shelling out more than you’d like on gasoline, you look to see what the price per gallon is for kerosene and ethanol. And you’re in luck: Both kerosene and ethanol are selling at a lower price than gasoline, with kerosene being the cheapest. You refuel your car with kerosene, keeping that extra money you would have spent on gasoline in your pocket, and go on your way.

Sounds ridiculous, right? Sure, it would be nice if the world worked like that and we could choose what fuel we used, but we simply don’t have the technology. Take your unobtainable, utopian pipe dream somewhere else and talk about realistic solutions to our oil addiction.     

Well, I’ve got some news for you. That paragraph up above? That’s not wishful thinking or science fiction. That’s how many people lived as early as 1908. The first mass-produced car — the Ford Model T — was designed as a tri-fuel vehicle capable of running gasoline, ethanol, kerosene, or a mix of the three. It allowed for competition in the fuels marketplace, keeping the price of fuel low and ensuring drivers weren’t charged a premium to fill up. That’s how the world used to work, and how, ideally, it could work again. That’s what fuel choice was.

Unfortunately, despite Ford’s conviction that biofuels like ethanol would be the “fuel of the future” because it was a higher-octane, cleaner fuel and could be made easily in farms across the nation, that was not to be. Through a combination of dirty market tactics from the oil industry and the introduction of toxic lead instead of ethanol as a gasoline additive, ethanol was strong-armed out of our fuel infrastructure, and the American people lost the ability to choose and make their own fuel. 

However, a century later, America is finally in a position to fight back. There are 19 million flex-fuel vehicles in the U.S. that can run both ethanol and gasoline, and gas stations are adding more ethanol (E85) pumps every day. But that alone won’t be enough to give back the right of fuel choice to all Americans.

To do that, Americans like you and me need to work together. We need to tell our local gas stations that we want them to sell ethanol. We need to check our vehicles to see if they’re already flex-fuel capable. And if we’re in the market for a new car or truck, we should consider a flex-fuel capable model. We need to start converting our existing vehicles to be flex-fuel capable. We need to send a message to the fuel retailers, to the car manufacturers, and to the oil companies that says: We want our fuel choice back, and we want it now.   


Related posts:
These customers love E85, for very different reasons
Americans need fuel choice
Cellulosic ethanol has finally arrived
Next step for Volt, Green Car of the Year, should be E85 capability


Tags: E85, Economy, Ethanol, FFV, flex fuel, flex-fuel vehicle, Ford, fuel choice, Gasoline, kerosene, Model T, Oil Addiction


http://www.fuelfreedom.org/fuel-choice-lost/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #20 on: January 17, 2016, 04:40:35 pm »
Elephant Grass and Prairie Switchgrass: Second Generation Biofuels to Power American Cars

Tim Radford, Climate News Network | January 17, 2016 11:21 am

In tomorrow’s world, it won’t be just the corn on the great American plains that is as high as an elephant’s eye. It will be the elephant grass as well.


To deliver on U.S. promises to reduce fossil fuel use, American motorists in future will drive on miscanthus—as elephant grass is also known—and prairie switchgrass.

Elephant grass has a high biomass yield and grows rapidly to over three metres tall.
Photo credit: Tony Atkin / Wikimedia Commons

Researchers led by Evan DeLucia, professor of biology at the University of Illinois, report in a new journal, Nature Energy, that to exploit biofuels—which recycle carbon already in the atmosphere, and are therefore technically “carbon-neutral”—Americans will have to think again about how they manage the change away from fossil fuels.

Right now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standards foresee that by 2022 American motorists will start up their cars with 15 billion gallons (57 billion liters) of ethanol from corn. But this could be augmented by 16 billion gallons (60 billion litres) of biofuel derived from perennial grasses.

Energy Source   


The switch to the prairie’s native switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and Eurasian elephant grass (Miscanthus giganteus) will be necessary because there are problems with corn as a source of energy.

One is that, in an increasingly hungry world, it reduces the overall levels of food available. The second is that corn requires annual planting, fertilizing and harvesting. Perennial grasses simply grow, and can be mown once a year.

So by turning over surplus land to swift-growing grasses, and at the same time reducing the levels of carbon dioxide released from cultivation, the U.S. could meet its target of a 7 percent reduction in its annual transportation emissions by 2022. If farmers went on gradually to switch from corn to the grasses, the reduction could get as high as 12 percent.

Professor DeLucia said: “Greenhouse gas savings from bioenergy have come under varying levels of attack, and this paper goes a long way to showing that, contrary to what some are saying, these savings can be potentially large if cellulosic biofuels from dedicated energy crops meet a large share of the mandate.

“This is a viable path forward to energy security, reducing greenhouse gases and providing a diversified crop portfolio for farmers in the U.S.”

The researchers used a climate model to test what would happen if land now being used to grow corn (Zea mays) for ethanol—currently, 40 percent of the corn harvest is used for biofuel—was switched to the two candidate grasses.

Store More Carbon   

“Our results were staggering,” Professor DeLucia said. “Since both of those plants are perennial, you don’t till every year. The grasses also require less fertilizer, which is a source of nitrous oxide, and they store more carbon in the ground than corn.”

The switch could turn the U.S. Midwest from a net source of greenhouse gas emissions to a “sink” absorbing them. The study assumed that, rather than the most productive soil, the low-yielding land would be converted to grasses for biofuel.

It also factored in some of the other consequences: if the extra billions of gallons of fuel led to a fall in fuel prices, would Americans drive more, and eliminate the carbon savings? Even if that did happen, such a change has the potential to reduce U.S. emissions overall.

But growers have to be sure that energy policies will be consistent, according to the paper’s co-author, Madhu Khanna, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois.

Quote
“The moral of this whole story is that we need to find a way to expand the production of second generation biofuel crops and maybe even displace corn ethanol,” she said.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/17/second-generation-biofuels/

Agelbert NOTE: Nice article. 

Unfortunately, the mandatory baloney from a fossil fueler  gets spewed out every single time the benefits of ethanol are pointed out in an article...  ::)

Quote
rusty hesson
With a 7-30 % reduction in fuel milage Ethanol never has or will "replace oil".
 

Agelbert responds to propagandized idiot:

That has ALWAYS been a lie fostered by the fossil fuel industry. Once engines have the proper compression ratio, E100 (100% ethanol) gives the same or better mileage with LESS engine wear BECAUSE there is LESS waste heat from the combustion process.

The alleged "greater energy density" of gasoline versus ethanol is based on enthalpy calculations that measure EXTERNAL combustion (i.e. boiling water in an OPEN flame). It is true that gasoline produces more raw heat. BUT, a significant portion of that HEAT is WASTE HEAT that merely increases engine wear and DOES NOT translate to mechanical energy in INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES. Not only must gasoline combustion waste heat be SUBTRACTED from it's energy density, the INCREASED FRICTION created by that WASTE HEAT must be subtracted as well.

Quote
.. the irrelevancy of Btu as a measurement of ethanol performance compared to gasoline that gets into a lengthy dialogue about what a Btu measures and a discussion on engines. “The whole creation of Btu rating and understanding was to determine what it takes to heat water one degree. This was important (and still is important) when dealing with steam engines or water heaters or cooking using fire. Btus have no importance in internal combustion engines. Engine optimization is the key.

Op-Ed: Big Oil Tells More Lies About Ethanol, Only Idiots Believe Them

The truth that the fossil fuel industry propaganda wishes to hide by erroneously claiming ethanol is not a better fuel than gasoline (even though Thomas Edison and the U.S. Naval Laboratories said ethanol WAS A BETTER FUEL way back in 1906!) goes way beyond mere fuel economy.

Modern technology from studies HERE and in Brazil have determined the following inconvenient (for the fossil fuel industry) FACTS:

1) A high compression engine designed specifically to run on ethanol
is at least 33% lighter because the alloys do not have to be engineered to handle the high waste heat of gasoline. Said engine will have BETTER mileage because of the consistency of the fuel (ethanol is only one consistent chemical compound at a consistent and predictable combustion temperature, unlike gasolene) reduced weight, lower maintenance and longer life from running consistently at lower temperatures. Of course, using gasoline in it would be prohibited. Running on the witches brew of volatile organic compounds, industrial solvents ( up to 40% of a gallon of NON-hydrocarbon content of gasoline that dissolve plastics quite well) and various DIFFERENT long chained hydrocarbons called gasolene would ruin such an engine. So you can see how the fossil fuel industry would not be happy campers about allowing such an engine to be manufactured in, or imported to the USA. In fact, your beloved fossil fuel crooks and liars have made it a LAW in the USA that ethanol MUST have a certain amount of gasoline in it in the USA. The threadbare excuse is "to prevent people form drinking unlicensed booze" (LOL!). Brazil is not amused. They use E100 without ANY difficulty whatsoever.

2) Ethanol DOES NOT require REDUCING the amount of crops grown for food,
either for people or animals. WHY? Because crops such as switchgrass, Hemp and SEVERAL OTHERS can be grown on NON chemically fertilized land considered NON arable land for food crops.

3) As Abengoa has demonstrated, the cellulose refuse from food crops, hitherto thrown out (stalks and roots from corn) CAN be processed into ethanol without making a dent in the acreage used for food crops. So the crocodile tears from the fossil fuel industry about ethanol taking food out of people's mouths is ANOTHER LIE.

GASOLENE is a WASTE PRUDUCT
from the refining of crude oil. John D. Rockefeller used to poison horses and cows that drank in the rivers of Pennsylvania (downriver from his refinery)  in the late nineteenth century when he would flush it down the river at night (the farmers tried to mob him for it!) when his main product was lubricants. Rockefeller began the Fossil fuel tradition of "externalizing costs" FROM THE START.

It was John D. Rockefeller that convinced Henry Ford to MODIFY his Model T engines so they run on gasoline instead of what they ALREADY ran on, ethanol.

It was John D. Rockefeller who FUNDED efforts at Prohibition that ended up FORCING farmers to run their tractors on gasoline instead of ethanol. Yes, sports fans, Prohibition WAS NOT really about booze. It was REALLY about cornering the fuel market on behalf of Jon D. Rockefeller's, WASTE product.


It was John D. Rockefeller's fossil fuel Standard Oil empire that introduced LEADED gasoline (tetra ethyl lead additive from Du Pont) when ethanol was accidentally on purpose outlawed as an engine fuel during Prohibition (ethanol has a higher octane than gasoline so a replacement was needed for high compression engines) .

For those who say that leaded gasoline has been outlawed so that is no longer a problem , let me enlighten you.

TO THIS DAY, internal combustion engine powered small aircraft in the USA STILL use LEADED GASOLENE when the technology to run those engines on E100 has been available for several decades. It is LEGAL to run that green died stuff called avgas containing TETRA ETHYL LEAD.

Every single bit of damage to humans and other life forms in the biosphere from leaded gasoline going all the way back to Prohibition, including the children of people living under the approach path to runways of general aviation airports is an "externalized cost" that we-the-people have been FORCED to subsidize for the benefit of fossil fuel industry profits.

It's time to return gasoline to the category of WASTE PRODUCT again. It's time for the fossil fuel industry to PAY WHAT THEY OWE we-the-people for the environmental DAMAGE caused by its waste products, ALL OF THEM. 


Prosecute Exxon For Deliberate Climate Denial

Renewable is the cheaper energy option without fossil fuel and hidden nuclear subsides.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #21 on: January 17, 2016, 06:38:30 pm »
Quote
the growth of the petroleum industry in the 1860s was greatly aided by the heavy federal tax on its primary competitor .The myth that petroleum was at first a dramatic deliverance from the darkness, and then the only important fuel for the horseless carriage, indicates the extent to which oil industry historians have been influenced by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. In fact, early automotive inventors resorted to both petroleum and alcohol spirit lamp fuels as readily available energy sources.
http://www.environmentalhistory.org/billkovarik/about-bk/research/henry-ford-charles-kettering-and-the-fuel-of-the-future/

Quote
U.S. Congress Lifts Alcohol Tax in 1906

American farmers watched the growing use of alcohol fuel in Europe with great interest. Their markets were glutted with grain surpluses created when vast new tracts of virgin prairie were plowed under to produce bumper crops. To absorb these surpluses, many looked to the market for liquid fuels created by the widespread acceptance of the automobile. It seemed logical to replace their declining market for horses by growing fuel for the horseless carriage.

In 1906, the farm lobby found an ally in President Theodore Roosevelt, a bitter foe of the oil industry. Although embroiled in other disputes at the time, Roosevelt sent a message of support for the repeal of the alcohol tax to the House of Representatives, saying it provided a possible check to the depredations of the oil trust.50 In April, 1906, a bill to repeal the alcohol sales tax sailed through the House on a 224 to 7 vote with widespread support from farm-belt representatives. Additional support came from the Temperance Party, which saw in alcohol fuel a beneficial use for a pernicious commodity.

When the Senate Finance Committee  attempted to table the “Free Alcohol” bill
, the president of the Automobile Club of America said that he was considerably surprised and disappointed at the Senate committee, although he did not think Standard Oil would oppose the bill. “Gasoline is growing scarcer, and therefore dearer, all the time… Automobiles cannot use gasoline for all time, of that I am sure, and alcohol seems to be the best substitute that has yet appeared.”51 U.S. Senator Champ Clark of Missouri, however, placed “the Rockefellers”    squarely in the opposing camp as attempting to retain the tax on a potential competitor.52

The Senate passed the bill May 24, 1906, and the New York Times again noted the low cost of alcohol (14 cents from corn, nine and a half cents from molasses) as compared to the high price of kerosene and gasoline (18 and 22 cents, respectively). “The new fuel and illuminant will utilize completely an important class of agricultural crops and byproducts thus benefiting in a double sense the farms and villages throughout the country,” an editorial said.55 Roosevelt signed the bill June 8, 1906.
http://www.environmentalhistory.org/billkovarik/about-bk/research/henry-ford-charles-kettering-and-the-fuel-of-the-future/

Agelbert Observation: In the light of the setback in Rockefeller's bought and paid for Senate, Plan B (i.e. Prohibition funding) was initiated. Rockefeller did profit extensively from gasoline sales when the ethanol fuel market was destroyed by Prohibition.

But, the tax on alcohol after the Civil War is PRECISELY what enabled the big switch to kerosene lighting in the USA and the quick growth of Rockefeller's fortunes.    He was ALREADY used to crowding out alcohol for lighting AND engine fuels. Yes, sports fans, there were engines that ran on alcohol in Europe during the 19th century (long before the Model T). Just go to this link for all the details. From (at least) 1900 until Prohibition, the scientifically proven (Thomas Edison and the U.S. Naval Laboratories) supremacy of ethanol over gasoline as a fuel was being shouted from the roof tops (and the New York Times too  ;D).

Quote
Adocates have seen in alcohol fuels the potential for revolutionizing agricultural economics, for dispelling city smog, and for curbing the power of the petroleum industry over the economy. In addition, the idea that agriculture and biological resources could be primary sources of energy, the idea that humankind could live on solar “income” rather than fossil fuel “capital,” has held a fascination for several generations of automotive and agricultural engineers. Proponents could see in ethyl alcohol the potential to help strike balance between city and farm and the prospect of civilizing and humanizing industrial machinery.


For example, this hope is graphically depicted in the symbolism used at the 1902 Paris alcohol fuel exposition. On the cover of the exposition’s proceedings, a muse with an overflowing bouquet of roses looks down over the steering wheel with a confident smile. She is a portrait of wisdom and beauty, firmly in control of a gentle machine which seems appropriately located in some lush flower garden. 8

You see, most Americans labor under the view that the OIL refinery WASTE product, gasoline, was CHEAPER than ethanol.  So, therefore, gasoline was better able to COMPETE with ethanol. That is a LIE! From the start, the LAW is what priced the competition out and made the "hard working Capitalist" Rockefeller his fortune. The LAW was a back door SUBSIDY from the start!  Efficiency, superior thermodynamic output, energy density and the fuel characteristics did not have ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT. Ethanol was, and still is, the better fuel.

Rockefeller temporarily lost his "competitive edge" in 1906. Rockefeller found himself on a level energy competition playing field. Rockefeller, the model for all fossil fuelers from then on, disliked fair play intensely. He was, as are ALL fossil fuelers in the USA, fervent Capitalists.

Ethical behavior is a weakness to be abhorred by true Capitalists. So, Plan B was set in motion to, once again, obtain the "competitive edge" for fossil fuels.
   


The Great Scheme: Alcohol-based fuels, Ford, Rockefeller, and Prohibition.

Quote
One of the many bits of information I gleaned from my discussions with Tapahpunja yesterday has to do with the prohibition of alcohol. This is a multifaceted issue that concerns spirituality, social control, energy production, and US History. From the standpoint of a Hindu, alcohol consumption is forbidden. This makes sense in the context of social interaction. There is no debate that alcohol abuse contributes to many of our social problems today. Having had ample experience with alcoholics, I know firsthand what addiction can do to relationships. Many domestic incidents and other types of criminal activity involve the use of alcohol. Meanwhile, there is much evidence that alcohol negatively affects more organs of the human body than any other legal or illegal drug. Despite all these possible consequences, I have no plans to stop consuming alcohol. I believe there are some positive social effects that occur with its moderate use, and there is some scientific data that demonstrates that it can be consumed healthily.

But there is an entirely different dimension to alcohol that I wasn't even aware of. Alcohol may be an option in dealing with the impending energy and environmental crises of the Twenty-first Century. It is a little known fact that Brazil is the world leader in the production of bioalcohol fuel. Because of recent concerns of rising gasoline prices, President Bush visited Sao Paulo (on March 7, 2007) to sign agreements on importing alcohol fuel and its technology. Vehicles using this fuel were actually widespread in the late 1970's in Brazil, but gasoline reclaimed its market share in the 1980's. With anxieties about the world oil supply once again in the forefront of many minds, this option has become increasingly attractive.

The advantages of alcohol-based fuels are multi-faceted. They burn completely and efficiently and produce 100% less carbon monoxide emissions because the byproducts of their consumption include only carbon dioxide, water and heat. Interestingly, although alcohol-based fuel produces as much CO2 emission as gasoline, its effect is counterbalanced by the fact that CO2 is actually drawn from the environment in the process of its production. Therefore there is no modern net release. While much of the efforts concerning the manufacture of these types of fuel involve corn... there are much more efficient raw crop materials available. Sugar beets (for example) contain less cellulose, and their waste fibers raise the alcohol yield. So why do so many Americans sing the praises of corn-based biofuel?  ??? For that answer you have to research the political and economic ramifications of our corporate farming monoculture. That lies beyond the scope of this post.

But the most fascinating aspect of the connection between alcohol and fuel use concerns a little known (or discussed) aspect of American history. To understand this relationship, one must examine some contextual information of the early Twentieth Century. Most people are not aware that Henry Ford's Model T came in a variation that allowed the driver to switch the carburetor to run the engine on farm-made ethyl alcohol. This allowed the operator to stop at local farms (equipped with stills) to refuel his/her car during long trips through the backcountry. After all- the gas station wasn't exactly as ubiquitous in those days, as it is now. The Standard Oil Company and its industrialist-founder John D. Rockefeller wasn't too happy with this arrangement. After all, Rockefeller's company had a virtual monopoly on gasoline at this time in our nation's development.

It should be evident to any serious student of history that John D. Rockefeller was no political progressive. His fights with muckraker Ida Tarbell are legendary. She was ultimately responsible for the dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust in 1911. Not that this actually hurt Rockefeller- his wealth actually increased after Standard Oil broke up. Rockefeller held significant interests in the resulting companies, which included the precursors of today's Seven Sisters oil companies. The break-up of Standard Oil actually made him the wealthiest man in the world, as the share values of most of these companies doubled. Yet Rockefeller would find benefit once again within the reform movement that he considered his enemy. Since the late 1800's there had been a growing Alcohol Temperance Movement developing among reformers. Rockefeller saw an opportunity in this. It is well-documented that local efforts to curb alcohol consumption were expanded to the national level when high-profile figures like Rockefeller joined in the anti-alcohol efforts. Was he so concerned with the social problems that abuse of alcohol was said to cause?

No... John D. Rockefeller was not concerned with family dynamics in the working classes. But he was influential in changing the goals of the movement from temperance to prohibition. As we know, his contribution to the outlawing of the production and sale of alcohol was successful. Of course, Rockefeller and the oil companies reaped tremendous profits as a result. Remember that the period covered by the 18th Amendment (1919-1933) coincided with the huge rise in the sale and operation of automobiles. America was on the move, and all of these cars were now operated solely on gasoline. By the time that the 21st Amendment was passed, ending the prohibition of alcohol, the standard was already set and worked completely in the favor of the Rockefeller family.

These events have had a tremendous development on the American economy, foreign policy direction, and the environment. In fact the consequences are worldwide. It is easy to lose sight of the big picture, and concentrate on the many subplots involving Detroit's suppression of alternative fuel technologies. The chapters being written in today's tumultuous climate are indeed the continuation of a story started long ago.

We venerate the capitalist captains of industry (like Rockefeller) without any examination of what they have cost the nation and the world. If we don't re-evaluate our contemporary thinking in light of the events of the past, we are headed for times in which alcohol may be our only escape from a harsh reality. Maybe we have been pouring it in the wrong place all along. 

http://dgrim.blogspot.com/2007/06/great-scheme-alcohol-based-fuels-ford.html

Agelbert NOTE: Ethanol use as a fuel for cars (instead of polluting gasoline) has ALWAYS been a threat to fossil fuel industry profits. 

Consequently, they have nearly a century of disinformation, doubletalk and bold faced lies about ethanol from the crocodile tears about land being "removed" from growing food crops to "corrosive" effects along with gamed mileage numbers and enthalpy happy talk.

Here is an example of the TOTALLY INACCURATE spurious, but quite clever, baloney FUNDED by the fossil fuel industry crooks and liars:
Quote

David Frazier Johnson Jr
Prohibition banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages specifically, not ethanol. Many types of alcohol were still then and have always been used for industrial applications. Don't fall prey to fringe conspiracy theory, it makes all of us people pushing for renewable energy look stupid. Rockefeller supported prohibition because he believed it caused crime and affected the workplace. Even he admitted it was a failed attempt to curb this by the end.

What a dazzling array of lies mixed with half truths mindfork! And didn't you just LOVE that part about appearing to SUPPORT Renewable Energy? They know their propaganda!

Here's another gem of disinformation:

Quote

Anonymous
Ethyl alcohol actually is far less efficient than gasoline and gives your car worse gas mileage meaning you have to burn more of it to get somewhere (This is why you get worse gas mileage filling up in a city that has ethanol mixed with the regular fuel). And the pollution caused by harvesting the corn and making it into ethanol causes large amounts of carbon emissions...so yes, politics are always involved but there are scientific reasons we haven't switched over as well.

And finally, among those with a bit more education and vocabulary, the old "ethanol is hygroscopic so it will corrode your fuel lines and gas tank"  claim. Yes, alcohol mixes readily with water, UNLIKE gasoline. Do you know what that REALLY means? It means the water vapor in your fuel tank WILL MIX with ethanol there, INSTEAD of, as in a tank containing gasoline, condensing at night when your car is parked and, because water is denser than gasoline, going straight to the bottom, where ANY oxygen trapped between the wall and the water will ACCELERATE metal corrosion from oxidation. THAT is why gasoline tanks have corrosion treatment from the factory, even though the fossil fuelers conveniently neglect to tell you about that. So the metal corrosion risk is LOWER with ethanol than with gasoline. The fossil fuelers know that. So, true to their Machiavellian modus operandi , they accuse ethanol of the weakness that, actually,  gasoline has! Clever bastards, aren't they?

The only actual 'downside', if you want to call it that, that ethanol actually has (the water content in the fuel when it reaches the combustion chamber is easily controlled and DOES NOT "reduce mileage") is that anhydrous (the kind used for fuel, not booze) ethanol, as a drying agent (see hygroscopic = attracts and absorbs surrounding water molecules), attacks rubber seals by sucking water out of them, which makes them less flexible and more prone to crack from vehicle vibrations. Gasoline does degrade rubber too, but not as much or as fast.

Since 1980 (yes, that far back! And ONLY because Brazil championed it!) the rubber seals in fuel systems have been modified to handle ethanol. Brazil, of course, has been a leader in this. The USA, of course, has dragged its regulatory feet creaming and crying all the way. But it's a reality now in EVERY car post 1995 or so (i.e 99.999% of the cars and trucks on the road!). So please call BS on anyone that gives you a line about corroded fuel tanks, lines or **** rubber seals from ethanol use.

In fact, the non-hydrocarbon solvents (about 40% of the content of a gallon of gasoline) in gasoline ATTACK plastics, requiring special plastics connected with gasoline powered car fuel systems. Ethanol DOES NOT, and never has, caused **** and embrittled plastics, PERIOD.

The "treatment" that the USA has forced flex-fuel vehicles in the USA to prevent "ethanol mediated corrosion" is a sham. In fact, if cars were prohibited from running on gasoline, the tanks would NOT need the corrosion treatment they all get now. The fuel system could use plastics liberally without durability or reliability concerns. And as to rubber seals, specialized rubber seals are already used to prevent alcohol caused **** seals, so that is a given.

For those who want to know the truth about gasoline versus ethanol, please go HERE. It is a thread I dedicated to all things ethanol. You will find a wealth of OBJECTIVE information HERE. I don't make a nickel from spreading the truth. I just hate how the fossil fuel industry crooks and liars resort to consistently unethical means to make money at the expense of we-the-people and the biosphere. 
« Last Edit: January 17, 2016, 08:57:51 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #22 on: January 18, 2016, 08:28:06 pm »
When the Abengoa process is taken in isolation, the Abengoa business might make sense, but you have to look at the Full Life Cycle, which includes it making sense for the farmer, the harvesters and the road maintainers (usually local authorities, backed by the local people's taxes).  Downstream the fuel has to meet quality standards if it is to meet user expectations - without regulation, gas stations would be selling us all kinds of crap.  Farmers in the early days would put dirty ethanol in their tractors without caring about the long-term consequences for the engine.  Nowadays the machines cost so much money that you really can't afford to do that.

The process itself is in several phases - digesting the cellulose into sugars, fermenting the sugars into alcohol, distilling the water/alcohol mix into "pure" alcohol, and finally polishing the alcohol into ultra-pure alcohol.  Each requires careful temperature control, and the distilling phase requires lots of energy to be input to reverse the "entropy of mixing".  The resulting fuel has a high tendency to undergo that entropy again, which you acknowledge, but you failed to mention that the atmospheric water vapour which enters the fuel, has to be turned to steam in the engine, using the heat of the burning alcohol itself, and is then dumped out the exhaust without that energy (latent heat) being recovered.  That is all a drag on the useful work that the alcohol can do for you.

Australia's CSIRO did a Full Life Cycle study on turning molasses from sugar cane processing (and some other sources) into ethanol, and its use as E10 fuel.  Bear in mind that molasses doesn't need the extra cellulose digestion stage, and the energy cost of molasses is subsidised by the main co-product of sugar cane processing, crystallized sugar.

So E10 has a GHG saving of 5.1%, and E100 would have a 51% saving.  In other words, half the energy of ethanol is actually the energy of the fossil fuels to make it, mostly in the form of diesel fuel for heavy machinery, but also transport, pesticides, fertilisers, and processing.  Ethanol can only be made at these efficiencies while embedded in a fossil fuel-powered economy.

As for bio-gas, you passed quickly over the bit about "methane can be separated out".  Bio-gas is a mixture of lots of things, depending on the feedstock and the degree of digestion.  It contains a lot of water vapour, which is a drag on the heating value of the fuel, like water in alcohol.  It also contains a lot of CO2, which if removed takes energy to reverse the entropy of mixing, and if not removed simply dilutes the heating effect. There will also be some Hydrogen and some Ethane, which can remain in there as they are fuels themselves, but not if you are selling the gas by energy/litre.  It may also contain Hydrogen sulphide, which is poisonous if inhaled, or produces Sulphur Dioxide if burnt - SO2 produces acid rain. 

If the feedstock is human sewage, then you also have the problem of Fluorides from medicinal compounds, hormones from contraceptive pills, and anti-biotics that may poison the digestion process.  They all have technical solutions, but fixing inherent problems with technical fixes after the event, eats away at the economic and energy budgets.

None of this matters in third world India, where they have been producing bio-gas for centuries, but in the first world with planning regulations and opposition from residents who don't want to live next door to a sewage treatment plant, this will be hard to get off the ground.



Palloy said,
Quote
So E10 has a GHG saving of 5.1%, and E100 would have a 51% saving.  In other words, half the energy of ethanol is actually the energy of the fossil fuels to make it,

Shame on you for spouting such bold faced mendacity! Have you not read ANYTHING I have posted here on ethanol? Don't you GET the fact that ethanol EROI is lowballed (while the GHG output is EXAGGERATED!) because of the enthalpy fun and games of TWISTED energy output thermodynamics by the fossil fuel industry? Do you NOT understand what WASTE heat does to mechanical output? Do you not understand that ethanol, as compared with gasoline, DOES NOT HAVE WASTE HEAT!!? Your Australian molasses/sugarcane/etc. numbers for E10 are mostly irrelevant, both in GHG emission output and processing costs BECAUSE 90% of that is gasoline!   

Your negative assumptions about E100 are grossly in error.

Brazil does not use ANY fossil fuels to grow their sugarcane, decorticate it and process it into ethanol! They burn PLANT MATTER and run their farming and processing equipment on ETHANOL!  It's ALL renewable because it is ALL grown. The GHG output is in balance! And when solar panels are used to help in the processing (electrical power demands), there will be a REDUCTION in GHG output overall.

But it is a waste of time to try to get you to see that. And DON'T quote any more stats from Australia on this channel. That government is so in the thrall of fossil fuels that ANYTHING they publish is suspect, PERIOD.
 
And on biogas, Have you not read about what Grand Junction, Colorado is doing with biogas? You want hair split about processes of biogas and ethanol production while BLATANTLY ignoring the COST of the HIGHLY POLLUTING CHEMICAL PROCESSES involved in refining fossil fuels! Your lack of objectivity is breathtaking. You are, once again, exposing your bias for fossil fuels.   


In your clever dissertation you left QUITE A BIT out of your VERSION of the "full life cycle". When I see you talk about the FULL LIFE CYCLE of fossil fuels INCLUDING the BIO-REMEDIATION costs and pollution cleanup costs, I'll begin to take your "full life cycle" assessments seriously.

You do not seem to understand decortication as a function of lignin presence. You do not seem to understand that there is a lignin tradeoff in cellulose product processing associated with costs; MORE lignin = MORE costs while LESS lignin and more starches = LESS costs.

You do not seem to understand that there are a PLETHORA of plant species (e.g. Lemna minor) out there, available and easily grown WITHOUT chemical fertilizers, pesticides or plowing (in the case of duckweed, shallow ponds on non-arable land work quite nicely for the fastest growing angiosperm on earth), that have LOW lignin, thereby changing RADICALLY (i.e. much lower processing costs) the ENTIRE "life cycle cost" calculations you seem to be STUCK on.

What Abengoa is doing is making a go of one of the WORST POSSIBLE products (corn, corn stalks and roots) for ethanol production. Good for them. Bad for you that you don't see that corn is a horrendous choice for ethanol production costs. Bad for you that you do not see that is QUITE DELIBERATE in the USA because of the fossil fuel industry influence.

Furthermore, MANY of these plants (that are even better than sugarcane and beets!) do not need to be processed into ethanol at all, thereby eliminating a lot of your "life cycle" costs. they can be sun dried and pelleted for use as fuel or animal feed! But you just cannot see the VASTLY superior energy REsource that plant matter is and the TREMENDOUSLY DAMAGING effect the fossil fuel based economy is having on our biosphere.   

 
Until then, WHAT PART OF the following reality do you not understand? 


Porter Ranch Methane Leak Spreads Across LA’s San Fernando Valley  :P
Lorraine Chow | January 15, 2016 9:36 am

It now looks like the catastrophic Porter Ranch gas leak, which has spewed more than 83,000 metric tons of noxious methane for nearly three months, has spread across Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander called on the Southern California Gas Co. to extend residential relocation assistance to residents in Granada Hills, Chatsworth and Northridge who live near the Aliso Canyon gas leak above Porter Ranch. These residents reported symptoms related to the exposure of natural gas such as nausea, vomiting, headaches and respiratory problems.

The researchers have developed the Valley’s first comprehensive map of methane exposure. Photo credit: HEET

This latest development compounds with a new analysis from Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET). The Cambridge-based nonprofit sent Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips and Bob Ackley of Gas Safety to take methane measurements around the San Fernando Valley for several days and their findings were disturbing.

As the Los Angeles Daily News wrote, “the researchers recorded elevated levels of the main ingredient in natural gas—10 miles away from the nation’s largest gas leak.”

Quote
“It’s not just in Porter Ranch, it’s going all the way across the [San Fernando] Valley,” Ackley told Inside Climate News.
According to HEET, the researchers drove a high precision GIS-enabled natural gas analyzer down the roads around the gas leak to create a comprehensive map of the leak around San Fernando Valley. The red on the map indicates where they drove and the levels of methane they found is shown by the height of the peaks.

Their monitors showed methane levels at 3.4 parts per billion, about twice the level of natural clean air, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. Another measurement showed 127 ppm, or an astounding 67 times above normal.

“Whatever else may be in the gas—benzene , toluene , xylene that is what people may be breathing,” Phillips told Inside Climate News. “Even though we’re not measuring things other than methane  ;), there is a legitimate concern that there is that other nasty stuff in there.”

As Inside Climate News observed: “The findings challenge assurances from the  South Coast Air Quality Management District , the regional air pollution control agency, and the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment that the leak hasn’t increased residents’ exposure to toxic gases.”    

Dozens of public health and environmental advocates and experts will rally at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington, DC tomorrow to press for federal action on the Porter Ranch leak.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/15/porter-ranch-methane-leak-spreads/

Agelbert NOTE: The is something you should know that you will not hear about in the six o'clock news:

"The millennial atmospheric lifetime of anthropogenic CO2" by Archer and Brovkin .

"The notion is pervasive in the climate science community and in the public at large that the climate impacts of fossil fuel CO2 release will only persist for a few centuries. This conclusion has no basis in theory or models of the atmosphere/ocean carbon cycle, which we review here.

The largest fraction of the CO2 recovery will take place on time scales of centuries, as CO2 invades the ocean, but a significant fraction of the fossil fuel CO2, ranging in published models in the literature from 20–60%, remains airborne for a thousand years or longer.

Ultimate recovery takes place on time scales of hundreds of thousands of years, a geologic longevity typically associated in public perceptions with nuclear waste.

The glacial/interglacial climate cycles demonstrate that ice sheets and sea level respond dramatically to millennial-timescale changes in climate forcing. There are also potential positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle, including methane hydrates in the ocean, and peat frozen in permafrost, that are most sensitive to the long tail of the fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere."
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-008-9413-1#/page-1

  The prolonged existence of atmospheric CO2

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleteing CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or     PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!
« Last Edit: January 31, 2016, 03:41:05 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #23 on: January 19, 2016, 08:52:41 pm »
But you are assuming that I can't do at least as good a job on debunking the fossil fuel industry.  I didn't bother doing that, as that wasn't what your article was about.  None of these "solutions" will solve our energy problems.  ALL of them will only make the problems worse.

Brazil only makes ethanol because of slave labour cutting cane by hand, (try it sometime), while the aristocracy owns all the land, and the means of production, and sells into the US market to earn foreign exchange, to import luxuries for themselves.  That's not sustainable.

China can only make the world's cheapest solar panels because of their version of slave labour, and imported raw materials and energy, and selling to rich people who don't understand or care about the environmental impacts.

There is NO SOLUTION for industrialised civilisation, that's why it will implode, without the need for revolution.  But there probably will be a revolution, and when it's won, everybody will want to live like the rich did.  It can't be done.

There is a possible solution in subsistence farming and hunter/gathering, but only for a much smaller population, in certain places where the climate and soils are good, and ONLY for people that can survive without the trappings of industrialised society.  I'm living in such a place now.  There isn't a square metre of open ground on my block, not even on my driveway - that's why I have just had to buy a secondhand ride-on mower after the last one died 2 years ago,  to keep a 4 metre slot open to the world. My block extracts about 600 tonnes of CO2/year from the atmosphere, so I am still doing my bit for the planet.  If I was young again, I could be out there growing my own food in the heat and humidity and mosquitoes, instead of being stuck in here, sat at my computer, drinking cold beer and generally enjoying my retirement.

Yes there is a solution to industrialized civilization. But you may be right in that it will not be adopted. But that won't be because there is no solution. And yeah, you SHOULD bother to debunk the fossil fuel industry happy talk. That happy talk is PRECISELY what has us in the polluting status quo we find ourselves in.

When comparing sources of energy, it is necessary to discuss and compare everything that is out there on an apples to apples basis. Otherwise, we continue down the path of custom and prejudice   , as opposed to truth hand logic.

For example, this sort of thing happens on a regular basis, yet is considered an "acceptable" cost of "doing business" by the fossil fuel industry.
Quote
blast at Alberta Long Lake oil sands project leaves one dead

Nicolas Torres  January 19, 2016

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/01/blast-alberta-long-lake-oil-sands-project-leaves-one-dead/
It's not. And Renewable energy does not present that level of occupational hazards or dangerous pollution of the biosphere. So all they've got is the baloney that their products are "more competitive". They are not. I am working on an article about flaring at oil and gas extraction sites, both on land and in the oceans AND at the oil refineries all over the planet as well. I am convinced that, if flaring was banned and they had to capture, process and safely store the toxic and carcinogenic gases they now flare when extracting raw product at the rig sites and subsequently when they process that product to make it market ready at refineries, they would not be able to compete, period. That is why they fight so ferociously to keep flaring from being banned. Without flaring, never mind the CO2 from their products, they DO NOT HAVE a viable business model. It should be ready in a week or less.  8)

Agelbert NOTE: I deal with Disinformation on ethanol internal combustion engine fuel (E100) pushed by fossil fuel Industry TOOLS/FOOLS in the following thread.  When an objective person requests a potential solution, I propose it AND explain why, despite the fact that the knowledge and technology is out there, that solution has not been implemented.

rusty hesson
With a 7-30 % reduction in fuel milage Ethanol never has or will "replace oil".

Agelbert reply to brainwashed rusty hesson

That has ALWAYS been a lie fostered by the fossil fuel industry. Once engines have the proper compression ratio, E100 (100% ethanol) gives the same or better mileage with LESS engine wear BECAUSE there is LESS waste heat from the combustion process.

The alleged "greater energy density" of gasoline versus ethanol is based on enthalpy calculations that measure EXTERNAL combustion (i.e. boiling water in an OPEN flame). It is true that gasoline produces more raw heat. BUT, a significant portion of that HEAT is WASTE HEAT that merely increases engine wear and DOES NOT translate to mechanical energy in INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES. Not only must gasoline combustion waste heat be SUBTRACTED from it's energy density, the INCREASED FRICTION created by that WASTE HEAT must be subtracted as well.

Quote
.. the irrelevancy of Btu as a measurement of ethanol performance compared to gasoline that gets into a lengthy dialogue about what a Btu measures and a discussion on engines. “The whole creation of Btu rating and understanding was to determine what it takes to heat water one degree. This was important (and still is important) when dealing with steam engines or water heaters or cooking using fire.
btus have no importance in internal combustion engines. Engine optimization is the key.


Op-Ed: Big Oil Tells More Lies About Ethanol, Only Idiots Believe Them

The truth that the fossil fuel industry propaganda wishes to hide by erroneously claiming ethanol is not a better fuel than gasoline (even though Thomas Edison and the U.S. Naval Laboratories said ethanol WAS A BETTER FUEL way back in 1906!) goes way beyond mere fuel economy.

Modern technology from studies HERE and in Brazil have determined the following inconvenient (for the fossil fuel industry) FACTS:

1) A high compression engine designed specifically to run on ethanol is at least 33% lighter
because the alloys do not have to be engineered to handle the high waste heat of gasoline. Said engine will have BETTER mileage because of the consistency of the fuel (ethanol is only one consistent chemical compound at a consistent and predictable combustion temperature, unlike gasoline) reduced weight, lower maintenance and longer life from running consistently at lower temperatures. Of course, using gasoline in it would be prohibited. Running on the witches brew of volatile organic compounds, industrial solvents ( up to 40% of a gallon of NON-hydrocarbon content of gasoline that dissolve plastics quite well) and various DIFFERENT long chained hydrocarbons called gasoline would ruin such an engine. So you can see how the fossil fuel industry would not be happy campers about allowing such an engine to be manufactured in, or imported to the USA. [b[in fact, your beloved fossil fuel crooks and liars[/b] have made it a LAW in the USA that ethanol MUST have a certain amount of gasoline in it in the USA. The threadbare excuse is "to prevent people form drinking unlicensed booze" (LOL!). Brazil is not amused. They use E100 without ANY difficulty whatsoever.

2) Ethanol DOES NOT require REDUCING the amount of crops grown for food
, either for people or animals. WHY?! Because crops such as switchgrass, Hemp and SEVERAL OTHERS can be grown on NON chemically fertilized land considered NON arable land for food crops.

3) As Abengoa has demonstrated, the cellulose refuse from food crops, hitherto thrown out (stalks and roots from corn) CAN be processed into ethanol without making a dent in the acreage used for food crops
. So the crocodile tears from the fossil fuel industry about ethanol taking food out of people's mouths is ANOTHER LIE.

GASOLINE is a WASTE PRUDUCT from the refining of crude oil. John D. Rockefeller used to poison horses and cows that drank in the rivers of Pennsylvania (downriver from his refinery)  in the late nineteenth century when he would flush it down the river at night (the farmers tried to mob him for it!) when his main product was lubricants. Rockefeller began the Fossil fuel tradition of "externalizing costs" FROM THE START.

It was John D. Rockefeller that convinced Henry Ford to MODIFY his Model T engines so they run on gasoline, instead of what they ALREADY ran on, ethanol.

It was John D. Rockefeller who FUNDED efforts at Prohibition that ended up FORCING farmers to run their tractors on gasoline instead of ethanol. Yes, sports fans, Prohibition WAS NOT really about booze. It was REALLY about cornering the fuel market on behalf of Jon D. Rockefellers, WASTE product.

It was John D. Rockefeller's fossil fuel Standard Oil empire that introduced LEADED gasoline (tetra ethyl lead additive from Du Pont) when ethanol was accidentally on purpose outlawed as an engine fuel during Prohibition (ethanol has a higher octane than gasoline so a replacement was needed for high compression engines) .

For those who say that leaded gasoline has been outlawed so that is no longer a problem, let me enlighten you.

TO THIS DAY, internal combustion engine powered small aircraft in the USA STILL use LEADED GASOLENE when the technology to run those engines on E100 has been available for several decades. It is LEGAL to run that green died stuff called avgas containing TETRA ETHYL LEAD.

Every single bit of damage to humans and other life forms in the biosphere from leaded gasolene going all the way back to Prohibition, including the children of people living under the approach path to runways of general aviation airports is an "externalized cost" that we-the-people have been FORCED to subsidize for the benefit of fossil fuel industry profits.

[b[it's time to return gasoline to the category of WASTE PRODUCT again. [I[it's time for the fossil fuel industry to PAY WHAT THEY OWE we-the-people for the environmental DAMAGE caused by its waste products, ALL OF THEM. [/I][/b]

Prosecute Exxon For Deliberate Climate Denial

Renewable is the cheaper energy option without fossil fuel and hidden nuclear subsides.

John_B reply to agelbert
I'll go with alcohol as soon as you can make it appear out of thin air with sunlight and water or wind and water. Really though. Emissions from alcohol are 99% as pure as liquid hydrogen fueled ICE cars. Of course we know the fossil fuel people lie so skip all that and use your formidable knowledge to seek out that prototype generation process to distill alcohol from abundant naturally reoccurring phenomena. Most people have it in their mind growing stuff to ferment is too time consuming and an inefficient waste of biological life. Seat of the pants..... It would take a hexillion acres of corn crops to power all ICE engines with pure ethanol. Who knows though. Giant algae farms off shore with superfast growing algae hybrids. Something like that. Well?... You're the expert. You need tons and tons of something biological to ferment. (I can hear the fossil fuel-ites after their bird death dissertation. They'll launch a cruelty to amoeba campaign)

Agelbert reply John_B

John_B said,
Quote
You need tons and tons of something biological to ferment.

Exactly right. You need something that grows faster than anything else in out there. You want it to be macroscopic instead of microscopic (algae's microscopic size makes it costly to dry for processing, negating it's fast growth advantage).

You want it to be an almost perfect photosynthetic organism that, in addition to doubling it's size in about a day (EVERY day!), does not waste energy making hard to process stalks and roots, but concentrates on making starches that have low lignin content (cheaper to process). Now you know why ducks and fish would love such a plant. I'm talking about Lemna minor, a species of Duckweed.

The choice for Duckweed, that should have been made long ago, is to place giant shallow ponds on non-arable land (once they are filled, no added water is needed). These ponds, stocked with tilapia and floating Lemna minor (Duckweed is the fastest growing angiosperm - flowering plant - known to man) would go a long way to solving our environmental problems.

First of all, no arable land would be affected, so no food would be taken off of anybody's table, so to speak. The fish feed on the duckweed and the fish feces fertilize the duckweed. You just need to keep the fish population right so your duckweed production is high. No pesticides or chemical fertilizers are needed. If no tilapia are available, pig feces, a rather easily obtainable "product" in most countries, is excellent fertilizer.

Using pig feces would, of course, reduce nitrogen run off from farms to rivers, so that method of fertilization would be a win-win for the environment.

Lemna minor has virtually no root systems or plant stalk, so 40% of it is low lignin (less woody and cheaper to process). It is nutritious too.

Since it floats, it is easy to harvest. It can be sun dried and pelletized, as is, for fuel or animal feed. It can serve, and has already been used as such, as a nutrition supplement for humans.

Finally, it can, of course, be processed into ethanol fuel, plastics, medicines, and textiles, thereby replacing all the fossil fuel based sources of these products at present.

There is more. Placed in stagnant water areas polluted with heavy metals, Lemna minor will readily absorb them, and has been used for this purpose already. Of course that would make it toxic and then could not be fed to animals or burned as fuel, but it can be used to clean up polluted water inexpensively.

So, why is it not grown (except in the wild) hither and yon in the USA? We certainly have plenty of non-arable land (THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of acres) to put shallow ponds (about 3 feet deep) on. We have plenty of pig feces polluting our rivers that could be put to a better use too.

BECAUSE, the government wants GMO CORN, a terrible choice for ethanol that makes both the fossil fuel industry and Monsanto very happy, to be the feed stock for ethanol production.

It makes no sense whatsoever. But prejudice and custom, unfortunately, often rule the affairs of men far more than truth and logic. So it is in our country. It is time for some truth and logic, for a change.

If you would like to learn more about Lemna minor (Duckweed) here's some good info and a video:

Duckweed, The Little Green Plant that Could.

Is Duckweed The Food of the Future?

Duckweed - a potential high-protein feed resource for domestic animals and fish.

jimmywampum
Hemp has historically been one of the top 'miracle plants' with limitless uses, and appears to be, by far, the best crop for bio-fuels. Synthetic gasoline and diesel appear to be the 'happy medium' solution to moving from nasty and dirty crude oil and REQUIRING people to buy expensive and questionable alternative energy.

Agelbert reply to history challenged jimmywampum

When you study a bit of history, not your fossil fuel happy talk version, you will learn WHY hemp was outlawed along with high THC  Cannabis in 1937. The fossil fuel industry AND the paper industry DID NOT WANT the competition, PERIOD.

Ethanol is not the only product that could be made from hemp. You could, and still can, make plastics, paint, pharmaceuticals and paper CHEAPER than you could from petroleum and wood. It was, and is, called CHEMURGY.

Ethanol, as far back as 1906, WAS the fuel for cars and gasoline was the ALTERNATIVE being pushed by Rockefeller. Prohibition FORCED people to move away from ethanol, which was CHEAPER THAN GASOLINE, to   REQUIRING people to buy expensive, polluting and questionable alternative energy, GASOLINE!

How the Promise of Chemurgy Was Dashed by Big Oil


johndubose
Sorry No moonbeam energy while oil is at 30/barrell.

Agelbert replies to johndubose (throwback from fossil fuel industry 1980's successful method of destroying Renewable Energy    ).


You wish. LEARN about what a gallon of gasoline REALLY costs, regardless of what you pay at the pump.
The True Cost of Gasoline is Closer to $15 a Gallon (Video)

http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/17/second-generation-biofuels/#comment-2464084476
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #24 on: January 25, 2016, 06:51:45 pm »
01/20/2016 03:00 PM     
Navy's Great Green Fleet Deploys With Biofuels
SustainableBusiness.com News

The first Navy ships running partially on biofuels as part of everyday operations are at sea after leaving San Diego.

The ships are part of the Navy's Great Green Fleet - its effort to convert to much more efficient ships that run on renewable fuels. While initial fuel blends contain only 10% biofuels, they are on track for 50/50 blends as prices come down, they say.

The Navy's goal is to get half its fuel from renewable sources by 2020.

 A blend of waste fats, they are considered "drop in" fuels as they can be used without any change to a ship's engine, transport equipment or operational procedures. And, as instructed by Congress, they are cost-competitive with fossil fuels. 

Midwest cattle farmers and ranchers sell waste beef fat to California-based AltAir Fuels, which blends it with diesel and then sells it to the Navy under a contract for $2.05 a gallon.

 Sailors prepare to board the USS John C. Stennis for regularly scheduled deployment from San Diego, this time with biofuels:(graphic at link below)


Navy Biofuels 

Republicans tried to block the use of biofuels because they cost $15 per gallon when the Great Green Fleet held its first demonstration, but since then prices have declined substantially as Mabus expected.

 While Republicans still say it's a waste of money  ;)  , Mabus disagrees. "We absolutely have to have - particularly in this constrained budget environment - a stably priced, domestically produced alternative to fossil fuels that don't spike based on world crises. Every time the price of oil goes up $1 per barrel, it costs the Navy an extra $30 million."

To boost production, the Navy awarded $210 million to three companies that are building biorefineries at Department of Defense facilities. They come online this year, with full production in 2017 using cooking grease and oil and other feedstocks that don't depend on cropland.     

On the efficiency side, advances include dashboards that show how much energy is being consumed, stern flaps that reduce drag and the use of LED lighting greatly reduces energy demand.

Greater efficiency gives the Navy and Marines great advantages - they can stay longer without refueling, for example. "It gives us a strategic advantage," says Mabus. "Diversifying our energy sources arms us with operational flexibility and strengthens our ability to provide presence, turning the tables on those who would use energy as a weapon against us. We won't be at the mercy of fluctuating oil prices and oil-producing nations.

"In 2010, we were losing too many marines in convoys carrying fossil fuels to outposts in Afghanistan, and the prohibitive cost of oil was requiring us to stop training at home in order to keep steaming abroad, a dangerous and unsustainable scenario," Mabus explains. Some ships are now electric-diesel hybrids.

Since 2009, when the program began, the Navy has cut oil consumption 15% and the Marine Corps, 60%. The Navy consumes about 25% of the 14 million gallons of fuel used by the Defense Department every day - the world's biggest energy consumer  :P - according to the Defense Logistics Agency.

The Great Green Fleet honors President Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, which helped usher in America as a global power.     :P 

This time it ushers in an era of energy innovation  in the Navy and Marines, they say.   

Read our articles, US Navy Says Biofuels Are New Normal

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26526
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #25 on: January 26, 2016, 06:59:25 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: The following is a back and forth with a (biosphere) math challenged mathematician called Palloy. He refuses to do the math on fossil fuel pollution but pretends to do so.

He refuses to acknowledge that fossil fuels DO NOT have an Energy  Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI). He refuses to acknowledge that fossil fuel industry "profits" are artificially supported by government DIRECT subsidies, on the one hand, and INDIRECT "subsidies" from the LACK of government regulations and oversight on their severely polluting practices like flaring at drill sites and refineries.

And, he refuses to acknowledge the beneficial facts and high ERoEI of biofuels like Ethanol.


The thread includes Palloy's ridiculous claim that solar energy harvested with PV "cannot be scaled up". He games his formulas to conveniently leave out the advantages of Renewable Energy over fossil fuels in order to make a case for the alleged "impossibility" of running our civilization on Renewable Energy.

The exact reverse true. It is, in fact, impossible to run it on polluting energy sources. It just takes a while for pollutants to start severely degrading the biosphere. We are there. Palloy AND the governments influenced (i.e. corrupted) by the fossil fuel industry do not get it.  >:(

I present this rather long thread with a post or two from it (in the approriate sequence) daily for the next several days in order for you to learn how these propagandists for the polluters play their disingenuoos games.

Since most of it is about Renewable Energy (plant based) Ethanol, I have placed it here.


It begins with what seems like an irrelevant topic to Palloy's claims. But it is VERY relevant because Palloy likes to use gamed government data and stats to back his baloney.

Of course not all government data is gamed. But the data published for ERoEI for fossil fuels and ethanol IS gamed BY the fossil fuel industry corruption of governments. I provide evidence of that. Palloy plays dumb and scoffs. Enjoy.   


Research highlight: Enforcement question for pesticide laws
January 18, 2016 at 10:37 am
Helicopter spraying pesticide over pond in a city with ducks flying under it.  :emthdown:

Readers will be familiar with concerns that traditional chemical risk assessment methods give results which are either insufficiently complete (ignoring mixture effects, for example) or insufficiently accurate (e.g. by potentially under-estimating risks from individual compounds).

There is also the concern that chemical regulations might be insufficiently enforced, as highlighted in a recent paper in Environmental Science and Pollution Research (Stehle & Schulz 2015a).

In this paper, the researchers reviewed the published literature measuring pesticide levels in EU surface waters, aggregating a total of 1566 measured insecticide concentrations. Of these, 45% exceeded the maximum limit as determined by their respective risk assessments.

This paints a worrying picture of pesticide risk assessment in the EU: even if the results of the risk assessment are sufficiently protective (which seems doubtful), they are not being adequately enforced. So in what sense are EU pesticides laws sufficiently protective of the environment?

The research follows on from another study by the same authors, published earlier in 2015, which found that more than 50% of global surface waters contain pesticide residues exceeding the limit determined by their risk assessments  :(  >:( (Stehle and Schulz 2015b), and was covered by the Washington Post.

http://healthandenvironmentonline.com/2016/01/18/research-highlight-enforcement-question-for-pesticide-laws/

Agelbert NOTE: The INACCURATE "traditional     " chemical risk assessment methods are part and parcel of the DATA SETS that statisticians and mathematicians like PALLOY use to make their arguments about WHATEVER. 


The government published HAPPY TALK, designed to defend the profit over planet polluting status quo, is certainly NOT limited to CONVENIENT (for business as usual    ) risk assessments.

The "rigorous peer reviewed studies" on energy resources, that produce ERoEI numbers that somehow always manage to low ball Renewable Energy sources as compared to fossil fuels,  from the bought and paid for scientists of the fossil fuel industry (e.g. Charles Hall, et al ), are willingly embraced by the Palloy's of this world as the, sniff,  ONLY CREDIBLE standard. After referencing a few of these "rigorous studies", the Palloy's of this world will claim that any other claims are "not credible" and, since they are serious mathematician/statisticians   ;)   , any allegations that the data sets they swear by are inaccurate are instantly deemed "spurious. wild eyed and worthy of disdain". So it goes.

 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #26 on: January 27, 2016, 03:38:40 pm »
Jan 21, 2016 Authors David Labrador Writer / Editor

How Much Does Energy Storage Really Cost? Lazard Weighs In.

In November 2015, financial advisory firm Lazard released its first-ever Levelized Cost of Storage Analysis (LCOS).

Well known for its Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE) analysis—now out in version 9.0—Lazard publishing an analysis of storage is a major sign that it considers battery energy storage a critical technology that’s here to stay

But a closer look at Lazard’s LCOS shows something RMI’s October 2015 Economics of Battery Energy Storage report noted: a) battery economics are usually evaluated on the basis of single-use cases, b) stacking multiple uses can greatly enhance battery economics, and c) evaluating those economics gets difficult quickly. It’s the use cases and stacked value streams—in addition to per-kWh cell cost declines—that offer tremendous opportunity.

RMI’s report primarily looked at the value, not cost, of a basket of multiple, stacked uses for customer-sited storage systems. Lazard focused on the costs of several physical storage technologies (including the lithium-ion studied in RMI’s report) and not “alternative” storage options such as building-as-storage, water heater-based storage, and other demand flexibility options. It evaluated those storage technologies on the basis of a variety of single-use cases such as frequency regulation and peak shaving/demand charge reduction. Lazard compared those costs to conventional, fossil-fuel alternatives.

Jesse Morris, a manager at RMI and co-author of RMI’s battery report, says, “We did not make this comparison in our Economics of Battery Storage report for a number of reasons but Lazard’s analysis is a great first step. It adds to a strong foundation from which the industry can better understand multiple-use cases.”

Morris adds, “In the end, this is the comparison that we need to be able to make if we're going to convince regulators that a distributed energy resource-focused future is a lower-cost alternative.” Batteries are tricky to evaluate in part because they aren’t strictly a demand- or supply-side solution. They’re an arbiter of supply and demand, serving as either generation or load depending on whether they’re discharging or charging. So the favorable finances of storage can use all the clarity and all the study they can get.

Shifting from single- to multi-use cases

The LCOS examined single-use cases, which is how most batteries are deployed today. But single uses are not how RMI proposes (or how Lazard expects) they be deployed in the future. Batteries today are used for a minority of their useful lifetimes. They can do much more than sit idle the majority of the time, and increasing their utilization rate can greatly enhance the value they provide to customers and the grid.

Jonathan Mir, managing director and head of North American Power and Utilities at Lazard, says, “In point of fact, it will be possible to use batteries for more than one thing, which means their value is higher than is being captured in our study.” Lazard advanced the practice of computing costs for renewably generated electricity with their LCOE series and Mir says, “I think we’re going to have to do the same thing around the stacked use cases.”

Storage costs are dropping       


Both reports find that the age of the battery is here, largely because costs have dropped so far, so fast. Mir says, “This reminds us very much of where utility-scale renewables were seven or eight years ago,” when Lazard began covering renewable costs in its LCOE series. “To us, this seems like an inflection point where you can see external factors causing demand to really take off and then you wind up with price declines as manufacturing scales up,” he says. Lazard’s analysis also predicts significant cost declines over the next five years, based on a survey of industry experts. For example, the median expected five-year price decline for lithium-ion storage is 47 percent below today’s costs.

The LCOS calculates the costs of eight different energy storage technologies for ten single-use cases, half behind the meter (including augmenting residential solar PV) and half in front (including transmission-upgrade deferral). It compares these to the costs of conventional alternatives like natural-gas peaker plants or diesel generators. The study finds that the costs of storage are within “striking distance” of conventional alternatives for many single-use cases, including lithium-ion batteries used for frequency regulation and flow batteries used to defer adding a new peaker plant.   

The challenge of multi-use accounting


What the LCOS analysis doesn’t do is estimate the cost of energy storage when it is utilized for multiple, stacked services, a key to realizing the value of storage to customers and the grid.

Most of storage’s costs are fixed, capital costs. But variable costs—as well as battery lifetime, potentially capacity loss over time, and ultimately replacement—depend on the use or uses to which a battery is put over its lifetime, especially how often it is charged and discharged. This makes it difficult to state the cost of a given storage technology for a variety of multiple, stacked services. “That is our ambition,” says Lazard’s Mir. “It’s important to capture, because we think our study is likely underestimating the value and potential of storage because storage would be used in more sophisticated ways than are being illustrated,” he says,  “but the quantitative analysis and framework to illustrate that is still being developed. It is another indicium of how immature the industry is.”

Evaluating battery energy storage economics is hard, and RMI sees opportunities to build on Lazard’s commendable start. The basic problem is finding a levelized cost that can be added in as services are stacked in different combinations. Garrett Fitzgerald, a senior associate at RMI and co-author of the Economics of Battery Energy Storage report, explains that, “by combining fixed costs and variable costs—that are determined by what services and how often they are being provided—you end up with a total lifetime cost of providing just a single service. It is not possible to then determine the incremental cost of stacking other services on.” For example, “It would be incorrect to simply add the LCOS of frequency regulation and the LCOS of peaker replacement as an estimate of the LCOS of a system providing both,” says Fitzgerald.

The importance of value stacking


Establishing a framework to measure the value (and cost) of stacked use cases for storage should be possible. Mir says, “To us, that is a natural evolution of the study.” But, he notes, “We have not seen a good solution in the public domain for how to demonstrate this idea, so we will come up with a framework. We understood it as a very important qualification to the work we were doing,” says Mir, “which is why we tried to be so clear about it.”

Indeed, the third page of the LCOS is devoted to explaining exactly how the energy storage value proposition depends on the stacking of multiple uses and adding together the value streams they create. RMI’s Morris says, “Their description is very clear and an excellent way to think about the comparison between stacking values and comparing different stacks of value to a given cost.”


The Current State of Play

Lazard considered only unsubsidized costs and disregarded the additional value created by such things as avoiding the toxic or climate-changing emissions of conventional fossil-fueled technologies. Nor does Lazard take into account state incentives, such as California’s SGIP and mandatory battery storage legislation. “Their comparison of all chemistries performing all use cases against a gas peaker plant or a reciprocating diesel engine (depending on the application) is extremely helpful,” says Morris. Should subsidies for storage be introduced at the national level, Lazard will factor them in the same way it does for LCOE.

So what did Lazard find? Of all the permutations analyzed, only one—lithium-ion batteries providing frequency regulation to the grid—was cost effective when performing a single, unstacked service today. The study also predicts that seven combinations (all of them with batteries) will be cost effective within five years. These include two use cases—peaker replacement and industrial peak shaving/demand charge avoidance—for which multiple battery chemistries will be cost-competitive with their diesel and natural-gas alternatives.



The LCOS does contain this encouraging caveat, however: “a number of [technology and use case] combinations are within ‘striking distance’ and, when paired with certain streams of value, may currently be economic for certain system owners in some scenarios.” It is these combined value streams that come with stacked uses that need to be accurately and easily accounted for.

The road ahead

“Costs will come down naturally with scale; they always do,” says RMI’s Fitzgerald, but he cautions that, “storage won’t be mainstream until there are more channels for developers or storage owners to find revenue.” As examples of the new channels being opened up for storage, he cites, “things like aggregated wholesale market participation in California or distributed system platform providers as described in New York’s REV proceeding.”

Fitzgerald says that, “storage can do a lot for the grid, and it can do most when behind-the-meter. Regulation is changing that will allow distributed storage to collect revenue for these services.” In consequence, he says, “most of the industry is focused on opening up new revenue streams and moving toward customer-sited and customer-focused services, such as demand charge management or solar-plus-storage solutions.” Lazard’s Mir adds, “We see that demand increasing pretty rapidly.”

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2016_01_21_how_much_does_storage_really_cost_lazard_weighs_in

Agelbert NOTE: As you can see in the following three quotes taken from the article above:,
Quote
Jonathan Mir, managing director and head of North American Power and Utilities at Lazard, says, “In point of fact, it will be possible to use batteries for more than one thing, which means their value is higher than is being captured in our study.”

Quote
What the LCOS analysis doesn’t do is estimate the cost of energy storage when it is utilized for multiple, stacked services, a key to realizing the value of storage to customers and the grid.

Quote
Lazard considered only unsubsidized costs and disregarded the additional value created by such things as avoiding the toxic or climate-changing emissions of conventional fossil-fueled technologies.


IT WOULD BE A MISTAKE, one that the fossil fuelers commit on a nauseatingly regular basis, to NOT ADD the real world benefits of NON-polluting energy sources WHEN THE FULL COST of ENERGY SOURCES TO THE BIOSPHERE ARE figured into the LCOE data.

THAT MISTAKE is what Palloy MAKES on a regular basis  :P. And that is why, when doing apples to apples comparisons of Renewable Energy ERoEI with fossil fuels, he comes to erroneous, inaccurate and misleading conclusions that FAVOR fossil fuels over Renewable Energy sources.  :iamwithstupid: 

An OBJECTIVE scientist MUST, for Renewable Energy sources, ADD to their ERoEI base numbers, the real world benefits of avoiding the toxic or climate-changing emissions of conventional fossil-fueled technologies  IN ORDER TO GET A REALISTIC ERoEI COMPARISON of clean versus dirty fuels.   

I wonder why Palloy refuses to do that.     ;)
« Last Edit: October 13, 2018, 01:57:37 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #27 on: January 28, 2016, 03:53:47 pm »
Until you can actually substantiate your accusations of ERoEI bias, this argument will never get anywhere.  I propose we agree on a methodology to evaluate Full Life Cycle ERoEI, in the form of a spreadsheet, and I will fill in one column of figures and you can fill in your column of figures, and we can then compare them row-by-row and see where the discrepancies lie.

The Farrel et al report labels the rows like this:
Article title
Journal
Heating Value basis
Agricultural Phase
Nitrogen (MJ/kg)
N Application rate (kg/ha)
Phosphorus (MJ/kg)
P2O5 application (kg/ha)
Potassium (MJ/kg)
K2O application (kg/ha)
Lime (MJ/kg)
Lime CaO application (kg/ha)
Herbicide (MJ/kg)
Herbicide application rate (kg/ha)
Insecticide (MJ/kg)
Insecticide (kg/ha)
Seed (MJ/kg)
Seed rate (kg/ha)
Transportation of inputs, summary (MJ/ha)
Tranport energy (MJ/kg)
Gasoline (MJ/ha)
Diesel (MJ/ha)
Natural gas (MJ/ha)
LPG (MJ/ha)
Electricity (MJ/ha)
Energy used in irrigation (MJ/ha)
Farm labor (MJ/ha)
Labor transportation (MJ/ha)
Farm machinery (MJ/ha)
Inputs packaging (MJ/ha)
Total Agricultural Phase (MJ/ha)
Biorefinery Phase
Transportation of feedstock to biorefinery (MJ/L)
Primary energy (MJ/L)
Electricity (MJ/L)
Coal (MJ/L)
Natural gas (MJ/L)
Diesel (MJ/L)
Biomass (MJ/L)
Capital (plant and equipment) (MJ/L)
Process water (MJ/L)
Effluent restoration (BOD energy cost in MJ/L)
Transportation of chemicals to plant
Totals
Crop yield (kg/ha)
Biorefinery yield (L/kg )
Net ethanol yield per land area (L/ha)
Net fuel energy yield per land area (MJ/ha)
Agricultural energy (MJ/L)
Biorefinery energy (MJ/L)
Recycled biomass energy (MJ/L)
Input energy (MJ/L)
Reported HV of ethanol (MJ/L)
Coproduct credits (MJ/L)
Coproducts as % of total energy
Output Energy (MJ/L)
Net energy value, NEV (MJ/L)
Net energy ratio (see Suppl. Online Material)

Is that acceptable?
I should just add, if I didn't mention it before, that the six reports evaluated were on corn, but the spreadsheet would work in exactly the same way for any feedstock.  BTW I agree with you that corn is not the best feedstock, whole sugar cane (not just the molasses fraction) is probably best for areas that can grow it.

It's a start, but NO, it is not acceptable because it is woefully incomplete. "Crop yield", for example, is one of those loaded terms that woefully FAILS in measuring adequate nutrition and is slanted to WEIGHT. I have posted, years ago now, about the FACT that, with chemical fertilizers, the "yields" went UP while the NUTRITIONAL VALUE of the crop WENT DOWN.

And AT NO TIME was the environmental COST of synthesizing the fertilizers and pesticides from hydrocarbon feed stock SUBTRACTED from those "yield" figures, to the JOY of the fossil fuel industry that claimed we OWED them for their (FAKE) "green revolution" of heavier, but less nutritious, crops.

And please SPARE me that data dump on different energy calculation formulas.

1) Post what YOU think is an acceptable energy density formula. And don't you DARE try to come up with some EXTERNAL combustion raw enthalpy based calculation. You need a DIFFERENT formula depending on the mechanical output obtained in the combustion chamber. You need to COMPARE engine design alloy requirement from operating temperatures and the maintenance costs of among different fuels. IOW, ERoEI does not mean jack sh it if ALL the LOSSES in energy from the combustion chamber to the kinetic drive shaft are not SUBTRACTED. Yes, it's complicated. And its complicated because the SAME fuel will have a different engine efficiency, depending n the design of the engine (compression ratio and engine weight). 

2) THEN, post what you think the cubic feet of flared gas per barrel of crude oil extracted from an oil rig in the ocean or on land is. Also, please provide the cubic feet of flared gas per captured marketable CH4 at a fracked gas rig site.

3) THEN, tell me what the COST of that flared gas, per cubic feet or some metric measurement of gas you are comfortable with, in biosphere damage and human health care. Palloy, SOMEBODY is paying it. And SOMEBODY has done that math. DON'T tell me it hasn't been done or that it is "impossible to quantify". Obviously, that must be done for the full life cycle cost computation, including the flaring caused by crude oil cracking towers at refineries. Also, the energy cost of drying, compressing and/or cooling of gas, along with the energy chemical synthesis costs of making the mercaptan marking gases must be figured in, of course.

4) When we have a CLEAR ERoEI number for fossil fuels, ABSENT fossil fuel Charles Hall PRoPI (Profitable Return on Propaganda Invested  :evil4:), THEN we can proceed to approach Renewable Energy in exactly the same way. I am willing to attempt to quantify each and every energy and environmental downside that ANY Renewable energy technology has.

BUT I WILL NOT do it in isolation. You cannot be allowed to move the energy math goal posts around with rationalizations like slavery in Brazil UNLESS that is THE NORMAL and ACCEPTED method of obtaining WHATEVER. Uzbekistan has a huge slavery problem. People are screaming about it at the U.N. The fact is, ANY country engaging in slavery is NOT going to LIMIT it to Renewable Energy production just to make it "cost effective". They will USE that slavery in production of dirty energy TOO!

I just posted an article that has to do with energy and costs. NOTICE what Lazard, an authority on LCOE, LEFT OUT of their calculations. I will NOT let YOU leave that out.

Then we can talk about rare earth piggery and battery production environmental piggery and ethanol "inefficiencies". Until then, NO DEAL.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #28 on: January 29, 2016, 06:49:28 pm »
We are a long way from comparing ERoEIs - we haven't agreed on an ERoEI for ANY renewable bio-fuel yet.  Can we at least agree on the proposed template for the methodology?  I'll even allow you to require changes to the template once we've got started and seen how it goes.

I'm not sure how to quantify having/avoiding "toxic damage to the environment" and "climate-changing emissions", although I certainly agree that it happens.  Coal contains Mercury compounds, amongst other things, which is measured for coals burned in countries with legislation for it, so those things are well-documented.  The energy cost of scrubbers in the smoke-stack might be one way to look at it.

WE are a VERY long way from comparing ERoEIs. I haven't agreed to what YOU think the ERoEIs are for fossil fuels either. I have observed you dropping ERoEI figures here and there from time to time as if it was accurate data. It's NOT. You should not do that because you, by your own admission, are
Quote
not sure how to quantify having/avoiding "toxic damage to the environment" and "climate-changing emissions".
The fact that you put those quotes where you put them says it ALL.   

You labor under the view that you can divorce environmental downsides from energy return on energy invested formulas, never mind the energy losses from the combustion chamber to the actual WORK produced that should be, but are not, SUBRACTED from the fuel ERoEI. 

For example, if I take a piece of wood and burn it in a chamber in my house, I lose some of that heat energy up the exhaust. But I lose STILL MORE of that heat energy, making the SAME piece of wood LESS efficient (LOWER ERoEI) if I burn it under a boiler to produce steam for locomotion. IOW, there are TWO EroEI numbers for the SAME fuel, depending on HOW you use it.    Enthalpy calculations NEVER MAKE THAT DISTINCTION. Therefore, USING enthalpy as a STANDARD for ERoEI calculations in MECHANICAL DEVICES is BULL SH IT.

FORGET Renewable Energy for a moment.

Tell me, do you think the fossil fuel industry could afford to pay the $44 an hour or more that it NOW does on their fracking and land and ocean oil rigs if they had to capture, process and defang the carcinogenic and otherwise toxic gases they now flare? 

If so , WHY?

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #29 on: January 30, 2016, 10:49:23 pm »
Quote
Tell me, do you think the fossil fuel industry could afford to pay the $44 an hour or more that it NOW does on their fracking and land and ocean oil rigs if they had to capture, process and defang the carcinogenic and otherwise toxic gases they now flare?

Obviously it would be more expensive and energy-intensive to capture and process the crap they flare.  In fact there would be a rising cost as the %age of crap cleaned up rose from 1% to 100% - just like the cost of burning coal with CCS goes up, and only 30% clean up is a target too far.  Believe me, I'm not in favour of doing that.  I want all that stopped, even though it means civilisation collapsing. 

But please don't tell me we can all have solar panels and batteries and electric cars, when none of that new infrastructure can be manufactured without using FFs to power the building phase.


You've thrown quite a few red herrings in there - nutritional content doesn't apply if we're only going to produce ethanol for fuel, and the energy density of ethanol versus gasoline when used in vehicle engines doesn't enter into the ERoEI of making Litres of ethanol.

I was once friends with the chief accountant of an Australian sugar mill, and he was invited over to see the Brazilian sugar industry first hand.  The Australian sugar industry went all mechanised after WW2, and has a sophisticated rail system for getting wet cane to the mill.  They use the waste bagasse to fire the boilers, and to cogenerate a little surplus electricity while the mill is running.  Everything is highly researched and documented to produce the maximum profit.  His impressions of Brazil, where cane is still cut by hand, and moved by donkey carts to very small local mills/fermenters, was that it was outright slavery.  The internet is full of sites that back that up.

A model of that would be very different to a model for how it would be done in US/Australia.  I'm only talking about the latter, and I'm open to directing all the sugars to the fermenters, in fact it would be simpler without the co-product of crystallized sugar, despite not being financially the best thing to do.

>  "I am willing to attempt to quantify each and every energy and environmental downside that ANY Renewable energy technology has."

That's all we need to do for the first try.  The way spreadsheets work means that you can always use X for anything difficult to quantify, and run it with X=low value and X=high value and see if it makes a big difference to the outcome.  I don't know whether gas flaring makes much of a difference or not to the final outcome, but let's see shall we?

I did not throw any "red herrings". The ENERGY needed to take something (plant grown or mineral extracted) and make it DO something involves everything I mentioned. There are widely different ENERGY COST ramifications to the use of the SAME energy source in DIFFERENT ways. That isn't a "red herring"; it's a function of complex systems. Do you have problems with a SLIDING SCALE of ERoEI's for the SAME fuel? I don't. 

That is interesting about Brazil, but considering you quoted a ridiculously low ERoEI number for sugarcane recently, I harbor no illusions about how you feel about that. Ethanol ERoEI is different for every plant feed stock used. And some plant feed stocks can be eaten by people and/or animals or burned after drying, making the proportional use of that plant for the process of obtaining ethanol/food/cellulose combustibles important in determining the energy extracted from a gram of said plant. If I use ALL of a sugar beet crop for ethanol production, the ERoEI of said ethanol will be HIGHER than if I used one third of it because the mechanical plant and equipment, as well as the cost of growing the beet crop, remain the same while the kilos of beets to be processed are reduced.

But you KNOW all this! That is why every time I have these conversations with you, I get the distinct impression that you are playing dumb.      Nevertheless, we will get to that AFTER we agree on the formula for obtaining ERoEI's for fossil fuels. Are we communicating?

You keep wanting to bring the subject to Renewable energy WITHOUT talking about fossil fuels. WHAT is your problem. Palloy?

I have to go now. I'll be back tomorrow. 8)

Here's the last news for today  ;D:

Southwestern Energy axing 40 percent of staff, Devon Energy plans cuts
 

Staff Writers  January 21, 2016   

Two more U.S. independents announced new rounds of layoffs this week as upstreams continue to grapple with low oil prices.

According to Reuters, Houston-based Southwestern Energy will cut 1,100 employees, or about 40 percent of its workforce.
   

The company plans to take a pre-tax charge of between $60 million to $70 million in the first quarter tied to the reductions.

A timeline for the reductions has not been disclosed yet.

Southwestern told Reuters on Thursday  it expects the cuts, along with a smaller round of cuts last August, to save the company between $150 million to $175 million per year.

Shares of Southwestern Energy have fallen by about 70 percent year-over year, Reuters added.

In Oklahoma, Devon Energy is preparing for a round of lay offs this quarter as the company looks to trim costs.

Devon Energy told NewsOK that it is “clear that layoffs will be a necessary part of the company’s near-term cost-management efforts.”    

The Oklahoma-based company has not disclosed how large the reductions will be, but the firm said it expects to “the majority” of its planned cuts to occur by the end of the first quarter.

Devon, an independent exploration and production firm, produced about 214,400 barrels of crude per day in 2014 along with about 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day and about 120,000 barrels of natural gas liquids per day.

The company holds acres in the Permian Basin, Barnett shale play, Anadarko Basin, the Rocky Mountains and Eagle Ford Basin.

Devon Energy also has heavy oil assets in Canada.
http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/01/southwestern-energy-axing-40-percent-staff-devon-energy-plans-cuts/
« Last Edit: January 31, 2016, 03:49:04 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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