David already pointed to it, but it bears repeating: House Ag Committee Chairman Colin Peterson, a tireless champion of ethanol and any other big-ag project he can get his mits on, has declared that cellulosic ethanol could well never "get off the ground." At best, he declared, cellulosic ethanol stands at least 10 years away from commercial viability (exactly what cellulosic boosters have been saying for three decades).
Wait a minute. Ethanol's champions have long claimed that we should indulge corn-based ethanol its obvious weaknesses, because the corn-based brew is a mere bridge fuel to the real environmental panacea: cellulosic ethanol.
Over its 30-year run as a major "alternative fuel," ethanol has enjoyed two constant champions. One is the U.S. Congress, particularly its farm-belt members; the other is the USDA, the federal agency through which Congress funnels much of its ethanol largesse.
Last September, the USDA expressed what I considered to be shocking pessimism about cellulosic's promise: it held that while the technology offered "some longer-term promise" ("some"?), we shouldn't hold our breath for any major breakthroughs before 2013.
Now we get Peterson's bleak pronouncements. If cellulosic ethanol is a bust, maybe we should stop dropping $5.5-$7.3 billion a year -- and causing all manner of ecological havoc -- propping up what's supposed to be its bridge, corn ethanol?
I wonder what Vinod Khosla thinks about this.
Ask Umbra on green moving companies
Et tu, Al? Franken gulps the ethanol-spiked Kool-Aid
Comments
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Tom McKinnon Posted 5:11 am
17 Jan 2008
Cellulosic biofuels
Rep. Peterson is making two serious errors in his dismissal of cellulosic biofuels. First, he is assessing the state of biochemical conversion of cellulose. While, in principle, this is a promising approach, reduction to practice has been problematic. Thermochemical conversion of cellulosic feedstocks, on the other hand, is already moving ahead commercially with the first 20 million gal/yr plant to come on line next year.
His second mistake is to assume that ethanol is the only biofuel option for cellulose, which brings along a host of infrastructure problems such as pipelines, etc. When starting with cellulosic biomss we have a suite of biofuel options such as methanol, dimethyl ether, Fisher Tropsch diesel, synthetic gasoline, hydrogen, etc. Ethanol is almost always the worst possible choice.
Professor of Chemical Engineering Colorado School of Mines
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JMG Posted 6:07 am
17 Jan 2008
A second-hand comment on this
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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GreenEngineer Posted 6:27 am
17 Jan 2008
biofuel != ethanol
And fermentation is not the only way to get there.
To amplify what Tom M. said: we can produce all kinds of interesting chemicals (including fuels) by gasifying biomass and synthesizing what we want from the syngas thus produced.
You can make ethanol, if you really want to. This is what Range Fuels is doing, I believe. Much more sensible would be to make syndiesel (and I think you can even make synthetic gasoline this way, but I'm not sure); I assume Range is focusing on ethanol in order to tap the ethanol subsidies, but hopefully the technology they develop will be generalizable.
Gasification systems are apparently capital intensive, but they are a proven technology (unlike biofermentation of cellulose). Their conversion rate is apparently not very efficient, but on the other hand they can convert the entire plant (including difficult parts like lignin). The synthesis is a dry process, so there's no distillation energy. And (I think) the gasification process can be self-sustaining once it's started. The residue of the process is essentially charcoal, which might be usable in terra preta for agricultural enhancement or carbon sequestration.
The best part is that you can use a range of biomass without much concern for exactly what it is. This means you can get away from using terrestrial plants altogether, and use algae instead, which is HIGHLY productive of biomass. The problems traditionally associated with algae for biodiesel production (contamination of the culture with low-oil varieties) go away because you no longer are much about the oil content of your algae -- you just want the biomass.
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odograph Posted 7:27 am
17 Jan 2008
Hey, I don't care
Just kill the subsidies and let the innovators sort it out.
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Charlie Peters Posted 8:06 am
17 Jan 2008
Cellusic ethanol: It might be a bust
Who is BP/DuPont, what is biobutanol?
* Clean Air Performance Professionals
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:09 am
17 Jan 2008
Who you ask?
They are a company which said they would have their product to market last summer, and yet still haven't done anything yet.
And biobutanol is largely similar to ethanol, but so far has had all the same production faults as cellulosic ethanol.
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2007/06/problem-with-biob ...
_
As for Khosla's Coskata claims.
Funny thing to note, they won't be distributing a single drop of fuel to the public until 2011.
And don't anticipate their magical $1 pricepoint until 2017.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_70iNUF3fE
Sure goes to show how "confident" they are.
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Sam Wells Posted 1:06 pm
17 Jan 2008
Cellulose derived fuels available today
I liked the comment that subsides should be eliminated and the free market should dictate supply and demand. The fact is that ethanol or similar oxygenate is required for reformulated fuels. Bio-diesel stocks are extremely low because of the high costs of soy, rapeseed, and other source plants. Switchgrass seems hearty but is not the only plant matter that can be processed into alcohol or distillate fuels. It's not a bad investment and does not have the stigma of working with corn.
One upstart company came into the Rio Valley and started asking farmers to grow switchgrass and other stuff, hundreds of acres at a time this spring. If it works, more power to them. Why be resentful of that? If it doesn't work here, does that mean that bio-mass fuel doesn't work anywhere? Of course not. Ease up, brah.
Onward through the fog
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biofuelsimon Posted 7:51 pm
17 Jan 2008
fuel from pyrolysis
Tom, I get the feeling that ethanol from chemical or enzyme catalysed reactions with cellulose to sugars and then to ethanol is like nuclear fusion that's been "five years away" for the past 50 years. There's a lot to be said for using pyrolysis, not only of celluose but also other waste material like garbage to make producer gas that can be further processed.
Automotive efficiency needs to be greatly improved though.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 11:00 pm
17 Jan 2008
Thanks for the plugs, Tom
But in the future, could you please refer to the 2007 Update of the GSI's estimates of government support for ethanol and biodiesel in the United States. The numbers have been revised since the report to which you provide a link. The update can be found here.
By the way, here's more bad news for biofuel enthusiasts. According to a report in today's Financial Times newspaper, "EU scientists query bloc's biofuel strategy", an unpublished study by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's in-house scientific institute, is reported to say that the EU's plan to increase the use of biofuels in Europe (more details are to be revealed next week), may do nothing to help fight climate change and that the costs incurred to meet the targets are likely to outweigh the benefits.
To quote from the article:
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Patrick Mazza Posted 5:48 am
18 Jan 2008
Royal Society view
The new Royal Society report, "Sustainable Biofuels: prospects and challenges," is as thorough and balanced a perspective as I have seen on the issue. http://royalsociety.org/document.asp?id=7366 For instance, it notes, that "widespread deployment of biofuels will have major implications for land use, with associated environmental, social and economic impacts that must be assessed. Here, in particular, unintended consequences may reduce or override the expected benefits."
Point is this is not an industry-biased document.
Re cellulose the Society says, "Biofuel production from lignocellulose holds very considerable potential, given the amount of energy in the biomass and the extent of biomass that is available globally, particularly in residues, co-products and waste from many sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, forestry, paper and pulp and food processing. When dedicated energy crops and forest trees are added to the sources of lignocelluloise, the immensity of the opportunity for conversion to biofuel can be readily recognized."
The Society recommends low carbon fuel standards and sustainability certification for biofuels, and "to find approaches to biofuel production that address the problem of restoring degraded lands and watersheds."
That is one of the promises for perennial grass crops seen as feedstocks for cellulosic biofuels. University of Minnesota has field demonstrated the potential to soak up more carbon in roots than is released in the biofuels cycle. The grasses can also produce amino acids for animal feed, so this is food + fuel.
These are the kind of solutions we are going to need, and they are worthy of public RD&D support. As I survey modern technology industries, from computers and telecommunications to aerospace and biomedicine, I do not find an example of a major new industry that was not substantially seeded by public support. Wind and solar are in the same position today, and one can look at the example of Japanese solar subsidies as seeding the takeoff of a now globally leading industry that is selling significant unsubsidized product in is domestic market. See Travis Bradford's "Solar Revolution" for that story.
The 2010-2015 timeframe will see six 700/ton-day cellulosic demonstration plants come on line in the U.S. Federal plus private capital is funding them. They use a range of processes, from bio to thermo to traditional acid hydrolysis. They will use a range of feedstocks from wood and farm residues to corn cobs to municipal waste. This will be where "rubber meets the road." If these are successful and oil prices stay high, which is likely, commercial-scale operations should appear 2015-2020. Maybe before, if we really are at an oil peak or plateau. Details here, slide 21 and beyond. http://www.ostpartnership.org/events/biofuels2/presentati ...
Patrick Mazza
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