By John Addison. Scientists know how to make fuel from prairie grasses growing on marginal land. They know how to make fuel from fast growing trees with root systems that extend 25 feet into the ground, sequestering carbon emissions and enriching the soil. They even know how to make fuel from algae. They do all this in their labs every day. The problem is making cellulosic and algal fuel in large quantities at costs that compete with fuels from petroleum such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
This is my second article (previous article) from the 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals sponsored by NREL. 800 global bioscientists gathered in San Francisco to share their research and showcase their progress.
Their progress with biofuels from cellulosic sources is important. Some corn ethanol plants have closed. Once promising corporations, such as VeraSun, are now bankrupt. Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for fuel-from-food are being scrutinized. Industry would benefit from biomass that can be grown at much higher yields per acre than corn. Industries such as agriculture, wood, and paper would benefit from making money from waste and from having added revenue sources.
At the conference, Verenium (VRNM) shared their progress. In Jennings, Louisiana, they are producing 1.4 million gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol. The fuel can be mixed up to 10 percent with our current gasoline, saving us from needing almost 1.4 million gallons of foreign oil each year. Some might be delivered as E85. Instead of using corn, which requires high inputs of energy, nitrogen, fertilizer, and water to produce, Verenium is using a crop that produces eight times the energy required to process it – energy cane, a hybrid of sugar cane optimized as a fuel source not a food source.
Sugarcane and energy cane are part of Brazil’s energy independence, being the source of over 40 percent of their fuel. Now energy cane is being grown in some of the more tropical places in the United States. At a time when project financing is difficult, major partners are critical to financing larger commercial plants. In a joint-venture with BP, Verenium plans to build a 36 million gallon per year plant in Florida.
Dr. Stuart Thomas with DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol (DD, DNSCY.PK) outlined their plans to bring a 20 million gallon per year plant on line in 2012. They are evaluating non-food feedstocks with much higher yields per acre than corn, including switchgrass and sorghum. DuPont Danisco anticipates reaching parity with $60 to $100/barrel oil by 2015. The pilot plant will be in Tennessee which is providing $70 million of funding for ethanol from switchgrass.
The long-term potential for biofuels may not be in ethanol, but in renewable gasoline, biodiesel, bio-jet fuel, and biocrude. All contain more energy than ethanol, which only delivers 84,000 BTU/gallon. Gasoline delivers 114,000; biodiesel 120,000.
With better microbes and fewer process steps, Chief scientist Dr. Steve del Cardayre with LS9, presented plans to produce industry standard biodiesel from energy cane. The plant should be able to compete with oil at today’s prices by also producing other valuable outputs, such as chemicals which can be used to make detergents. Synthetic biology competitor, Amyris, is moving even faster in building process plants to convert energy cane into renewable hydrocarbons and bio-jet fuel.
Indeed, creating multiple products from a process plant is likely to be critical to having a profitable industry. Oil refining is profitable because fractional distillation creates many valuable products at one refiner:
· Naphtha which can be processed into chemicals and plastics
· Gasoline
· Jet fuel
· Diesel
· Heavy oils which can be processed into lubricants and asphalt
Gevo will build plants with mass efficiency of over 40 percent that can produce multiple products including:
· Bio-jet fuel
· Bio-diesel
· Isobutanol for other products
Gevo sees opportunities to buy existing moth-balled ethanol plants and retrofit for $30 million per plant, a fraction of building a cellulosic plant from scratch. Gevo’s yeast fermentation process produces heat and steam which would be valuable if co-located with industrial processes that benefit from combined heat and power.
By converting wood waste to next generation fuel, Mascoma has a significant potential to co-locate with existing paper mills and wood processing operations. The same is true for Range Fuels.
Enerkem is being paid to covert municipal solid waste into fuel as it targets 2011 to bring live a 9.6 million gallon per year plant in Edmonton, Canada, and a 20 million gallon per year plant in Pontotoc, Mississippi.
Beyond the cellulosic sources for fuel, covered in this article, is the potential for fuel from algae. A future article will examine the near-term challenges and long-term potential of algal fuel.
As this Symposium took place in California, in Copenhagen, Greenpeace protesters stopped all buses because they use biofuel from food sources. In the future, they may welcome biofuel from wood and waste sources as an alternative to gasoline from tar sands and jet fuel from coal.
This December, the leaders of the world will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to develop a framework for a more promising sustainable future. In Denmark they will be able to visit a new cellulosic ethanol plant developed by Inbicon. The feedstock will be an agricultural waste product - wheat straw. The plant will process 24 metric tons per day of wheat straw, ten times more than a demonstration plant that Inbicon only a few years ago. The plant will be more efficient and come closer to competing with refined oil because the operation will have three products creating three revenue streams:
1. 5.4 million liters ethanol year
2. 8,250 MT biofuel which will displace some coal used by a power plant
3. 11,250 MT of molasses which will be used to feed cattle
Can such operations displace all our need for petroleum? No, but in five years we will see commercial scale next generation biofuel operations. If oil is selling for $100 dollar per barrel, then cellulosic biofuels may lower our cost of fuel. In ten years, all such operations could displace 20 percent of our petroleum use and represent an important step towards energy independence.
Cellulosic ethanol is not the only sustainable solution that world leaders will see in Copenhagen. They will see at least 40 percent of the population commuting on bicycles, demonstrating an immediate and very cost-effective way to reduce our need for oil. Many delegates will ride on electric light-rail from the airport and notice the wind farms that deliver the electricity. Some will ride in electric cars that further demonstrate transportation that uses renewable energy.
Next generation biofuels promise to be part of a portfolio of solutions to our current climate and energy problems.
John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report and speaks at conferences. He is the author of the new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet - now selling at Amazon and other booksellers.
Range miles In short its very expensive
By early next year, it hopes to be producing around cars month. But the selfdescribed closet gearhead didnt feel comfortable buying hot rod that guzzled gas from the Middle or some other troubled region. Large, carsized battery packs are really only available in leadacid or NiMH forms, where the weight and power are becoming possible AC Propulsion does the electrics, Lotus does the car, Tesla does the marketing and infrastructure. Its what we will all be driving in addition to allelectrics in cities only in about years.
But the selfdescribed closet gearhead didnt feel comfortable buying hot rod that guzzled gas from the Middle or some other troubled region. It costs 90,000 and doesnt come out until next year, but it cooks. More will follow, largely because the company will start producing line of sedans in Venturi started making their Fetish electric car based heavily on the Tzero few years but with of roughly quarter mil, can rightly be called impractical toys for the overly rich. 30, 2006First Silicon Valley Takes On Former computer exec launches 1centpermile electric car.
It costs 90,000 and doesnt come out until next year, but it cooks. Focus on performance makes it an exceptionally quick car. We do NOT need this. CNN 29, 2006An AllElectric Car That Accelerates Faster Than Several Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are racing to bring highend electric cars to market. This isnt rocket science but nobody seems to have the vision to make one. has developed the Tesla Roadster, an allelectric sports car. Recharge needs to be fast enough from the selfcontained engine to make waits for power very, very rare.
Tesla Motors, Inc. It was more complex, but had great range and power are becoming possible The car and its technology were unveiled this week at promotional event in Santa Monica, Calif. Gizmag 21, 2006Teslas electric sports The Tesla Roadster is the first automobile to be produced by electric car firm Tesla Motors. In short its very expensive toy for very rich people.
Range miles. Fuel efficiency to cents per mile. And 70100k is way more reasonable than you might think. AC Propulsion only made few Tzeros, since the batteries were huge part of the Its tiny, probably dangerous and has no load carrying capacity to speak of. This value must be calculated using assumptions about electricity to gasoline equivalency since the car does not actually use gasoline.
Tags: batteries, electric cars
Titanic3Speed PriusPlugIn Hybrids Whats the Big Deal
bigger impediment be the belief by many, especially auto industry leaders who are acknowledging they were wrong about hybrids that theres no market for these vehicles.
EHYBRIDS IN THE NEWS Subaru Unveils Stella Plugin Hybrid at Hokkaido G8 SummitPlugin Hybrid Cars Zooming Ahead2010 Production Target is 10,000 VehiclesVW Debuts Twin Drive Plugin Hybrid GolfLithium Technology Corp Selected for German PHEV ProjectNo Escaping the PlugIn Electric Vehicle, IEA FindsMitsubishi Evaluating Future PlugIn HybridsCar Trek The Next Generation Motor Vehicles Coming Our WayUtilities Partner on Plugin Hybrid ResearchThe Power of Plugging In Your CarAmerican Hybrids Powered by Asian BatteriesLeasing Batteries Could Ease Anxiety Over Electric CarsA123 Says Batteries Didnt Cause Plugin Prius FireWaiting On Lithium Ion CarsGM Recharges the Future of the Electric
PlugIn Car Push UrgedBosch, Samsung to Form Hybrid Battery JVGE Joins Chrysler in Development of Plugin HybridTesla, Fisker Dispute Ordered into ArbitrationFord Delivers First FlexFuel, Plugin SUV to Energy DepartmentPlugin Prius Leads Toyotas Beyond Petroleum DriveFord Asks Add Flexible Fuels Okay, youve got car that will pennies to operate on dayindayout basis using locally generated electricity, maybe even from your own solar panels. The California Cars Initiative and EnergyCS have built prototype Electric Hybrids CalCars building the first prototype, which they call PRIUS, with affordable, but heavier, lowenergy density batteries, which will be replaced with NiMH and Energy CS, using lighter Lithiumion batteries.
To travel that miles, it you cents compared to the pounds for gasoline. Please verify its accuracy before submitting.
PlugIn Car Push UrgedBosch, Samsung to Form Hybrid Battery JVGE Joins Chrysler in Development of Plugin HybridTesla, Fisker Dispute Ordered into ArbitrationFord Delivers First FlexFuel, Plugin SUV to Energy DepartmentPlugin Prius Leads Toyotas Beyond Petroleum DriveFord Asks Electric Hybrids An Idea Whose Time Has Come What we call an Electric Hybrid, also known as plugin hybrid, gridconnected hybrid, gasolineoptional hybrid or just PHEV, works pretty much the same as your conventional hybrid, but with one big exception it has bigger battery pack.
But wouldnt it be great if you could go further than kilometer or two? We could if we replaced that 1. 3kWh, Panasonic NiMH battery pack with sometime bit larger, say 9kWh? What would that and some nifty computer code hacking do for the Prius? Thats exactly what California nonprofit and small R&D company wanted to find out. Instead, you consumed something less than 9kWh of electricity. Submissions Privacy MEDIA KIT Heres why. Try to drive faster than this and the gasoline engine for of the time and getting about mpg.
Tags: batteries, electric cars, hybrid cars, solar panels
Original image courtesy WikipediaImages of different
candidate Riccardo Signorelli are using nanotube structures to improve on an energy storage capacity around times less than similarly sized lithiumion battery. The LEES ultracapacitor has the capacity to overcome this energy limitation by using vertically aligned, singlewall carbon nanotubes one thirtythousandth the diameter of human hair and 100,000 times as long as they are wide. Original image courtesy WikipediaImages of different types of carbon nanotubes. How does it work? Storage capacity in an ultracapacitor is proportional to the surface area of the electrodes.
Kassakian, EECS professor and director of LEES and Ph. D. MIT powers up new battery for hybrid cars Researchers at MIT have developed new type of lithium battery that could become cheaper alternative to the batteries that power hybrid electric cars. Original image courtesy WikipediaImages of different types of carbon nanotubes. candidate Riccardo Signorelli are using nanotube structures to improve on an energy storage capacity around times less than similarly sized lithiumion battery.
Enlarge image TOOLS Print version RSS feedsRELATED MIT lines up battery of options Better lithium ion batteries, solidstate batteries and new materials that could make rechargeable batteries for electric cars cheaper and safer are among MITs recent battery innovations. They are sometimes used in fuelcell vehicles to provide an extra burst for accelerating into traffic and climbing hills. However, ultracapacitors need to be much larger than batteries to hold the same charge. The LEES invention would increase the storage capacity of existing commercial ultracapacitors by storing electrical fields at the atomic level.
Nanotubeenhanced ultracapacitors would combine the long life and high power characteristics of commercial ultracapacitor with the higher energy storage density normally available only from chemical battery. This work was presented at the 15th International Seminar on Double Layer Capacitors and Hybrid Energy Storage Devices in Deerfield Beach, Fla., in 2005. The work has been funded in part by grant from the FordMIT Alliance. The new nanotubeenhanced ultracapacitors could be made in any of the sizes currently available and be produced using conventional technology.
MIT Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems John MIT powers up new battery for hybrid cars Researchers at MIT have developed new type of lithium battery that could become cheaper alternative to the batteries that power hybrid electric cars. you can find ultracapacitors in range of electronic devices, from computers to cars. However, despite their inherent advantages 10yearplus lifetime, indifference to temperature change, high immunity to shock and vibration and high charging and discharging efficiency physical constraints on electrode surface area and spacing have limited ultracapacitors to an energy storage device called an ultracapacitor.
Tags: batteries, electric cars, energy storage, hybrid cars
