20 in 10
 

Bush wants to cut back on greenhouse emissions and regulate higher fuel efficiency.

It seems a good idea, on the surface. Bush gets to look green, car manufacturers are forced to produce higher fuel efficiency cars. What are your opinions? Here are a few of mine:

1) What about now? I'm sure many people would love to buy into a high efficiency car; many of us cannot afford to buy a new Prius or other hybrid. Meanwhile gas prices are through the roof. Are we smoke-screening the issue that gas prices are a hardship on many, that the oil companies still make billions upon billions of dollars with the promise that in 10 years we'll feel better?

2) The burden on our already faltering auto industry is another issue. I'm all for big corporations being environmentally responsible, but another news report I saw last night talked about the eventuality of auto companies being forced to send the work overseas, that a US car will be in name only.

I'm interested in you politically/ environmentally/ economically savvy folks' opinions.

Ethanol is a false god, being touted without full disclosure.

I heard someone on C-SPAN this morning testifying that this was the first year that ethanol made a net increase to the fuel supply.

I'm not sure if he meant last year, or a projection for this year, of financial year, or what.

But at what cost?

These are more things I don't know:

Do you need a certain car to burn ethanol? What does it cost? Is it currently marketed to the general public?

I don't know. What cost?

How about your weekly food budget climbing from an average of 10% of your income to at least 40%. That's until Global warming makes more land unproductive at which point it gets worse.

But not to worry, we can always eat nice safe Chinese exports.
And with the resurgence of food tasters, full employment.

That would be a plus. It would be nice if corn got expensive enough that it wasn't used to simulate every other food. Maybe get some real sugar in our twinkies and some real fruit in our juice.

Now there I'm interested. I never thought about the price of corn going up (duh, shawnee, supply and demand) with increased use of ethanol. Will we end up with no better prices? Will the demand keep up?

This is why I started this thread. I'm a bit clueless on economics and I really enjoy this insight.

we could just eat oil if corn gets too expensive. popoil ....oil flakes.....oildogs! yum!

That's an oily idea! :)

Ethanol is an additive sometimes used as a replacement for MTBE - a minor part of the gasoline blend. Another blend would be 85% ethanol / 15% petroleum. But ethanol does bad things to metal and has a bad tendency to absorb water from the air. (Some should expect to have water problems or even rusting in their gasoline tanks.) Vehicles and gasoline stations must be carefully redesigned to use the 85% ethanol blend - ie so called "flex fuel" vehicles.

Ethanol also cannot be transported in pipelines. Therefore transport costs are increased by truck or train where ethanol is mixed at the refinery. Therefore rail and truck lobbies also pay to have ethanol required.

Ethanol, as made in the US, must break down enzymes that are difficult to process. Compare this to enzymes in warmer weather plants (above 25 degree C) that break down readily. As a result, Brazil is a great source of ethanol using simpler crops (ie sawgrass). But when cost controls and political agendas are more important, then we must pervert the free market. Each gallon of Brazilian ethanol gets slapped a $0.50 per gallon tax. Each gallon of American corn ethanol gets a $0.51 government subsidy. Free markets from 'the Bush'?

What is the actual cost of ethanol? With so many government subsidies, transport costs, and .... well American corn ethanol exists for reasons political and not for reasons science or economic.

Best answer available is that American ethanol is an energy break even. Any energy gained is lost in additional energy consumed to manufacture and transport the stuff. Economically, ethanol is a losing proposition which is why ethanol requires government 'corporate welfare'.

And still, no one can explain why Brazilians - who did the innovation - are denied US markets. If ethanol was all that it is hyped, then Brazil would be a nation of strategic importance to the US. But K-street 'politicians' know better what is good for us.

I agree.

This week I'm in a two-day biomass conference in Wyoming. The presentations are mostly related to cellulosic biomass. Cellulose is the part of the plant that is usually considered waste (corn stover, cobs, the fiber that gets between your teeth). It also includes other woody biomass (wood chips, construction and demolition waste, MSW, etc.)

The parts of plants that are currently converted to ethanol are the starch and sugars. These are also the parts that are edible by humans. Studies estimate that the maximum quantity of US transportation fuel that can be replaced by sugar-based ethanol to be about 5-10%, based on land requirements.

In 2006, US ethanol production was about 5 billion gallons.

Because of high corn prices, farmers are planting more corn for ethanol production. Since there is a limited amount of farm land, this reduces production of other crops, making all food more expensive - including meat.

There are many projects currently under way to produce ethanol from cellulosic sources, including corn waste, straw and switch grass, C&D waste, yard and vegetable waste, and other wood residues.

Other products are also being investigated, including DME - which is an isomer of ethanol that can be used in a special diesel engine (Chemrec and Volvo), and standard diesel from FTL (CHOREN and Daimler Chrysler).

It's thought that cellulosic biomass can be used to replace up to 20% of our current transportation fuels.

Tomorrow's presentations include "Wood Biomass to Ethanol" and "Production of Syngas from Wood Biomass."

That's all well and good but with the fuel mandates and government subsidies more land will be switched over to corn production. How much do you think you'll have to pay for lettuce or carrots in order for the farmer(agricultural corporation) to consider growing them instead of the guaranteed profit in corn?

When they can efficiently make ethanol from non food biomass we'll be in good shape.
When Brazil has a bad growing season they import ethanol from the US and Canada.

One more thing, all the meat that eats grain will go up too.

I wish I'd said that.

Wow. So many implications. The general public (me!) hears a nice cozy story about alternative fuels but don't always consider the far-reaching intricacies of actually using that fuel.

Thanks for the education!

You did, I wrote that before I read your post. Let's just say I was agreeing with you.

I guess we can consider it as independent confirmation.

And you didn't waste as many words saying it.

What's the outlook for home-based bio mass conversion?

Griff - there are some things that you can do right now, for instance wood for heat, which is not new of course, but conversion methods are getting cleaner and more efficient. These methods include pellet stoves and stoker stoves (also called outdoor boilers, stick boilers, etc.). Some of the stoker stoves (generally these are boilers that are located outside the house and are fed whole logs once or twice per day) are very dirty, and they've been banned in several states. But the Colorado Governor's Energy Office is testing equipment from 3 manufacturers, including (I think) Tarm, because the Department of Public Health wants to ban them here also. Here is a link to one discussion of some outdoor boilers.

Residential pellet stoves have been around for a long time, but now there are a few pellet furnaces and pellet boilers available in the US. Some of the pellet manufacturers are investigating bulk pellet delivery, so that you don't have to deal with the 40-lb bags. Bulk delivery should reduce the cost of pellets, but I don't know if it's available anywhere yet. In addition to wood pellets, some of the pellet stoves can also burn corn and some can burn coal.

As for transportation fuels, you can make biodiesel in your kitchen. There are books and videos available if you want to learn how to do that, and you might be able to find websites with that information. Biodiesel isn't the same as diesel - it has a different pour point and cold flow properties, and is not as stable. This means that you have to have two fuel tanks - one for biodiesel and one for regular diesel - and the biodiesel tank might need a heater if it's to be operated in a cold climate.

Making corn ethanol isn't too hard - hill people have been doing it for a long time - but reducing the water content to almost zero (resulting in 200 proof alcohol) might be a challenge. If you do a search for "homemade ethanol" you'll find lots of links.

I'm not aware of any commercially available kits or equipment for making ethanol, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else knows of something.

Last I heard, Takoma Park, MD, which is a bastion of liberals and hippies, has a silo for distribution of wood pellets to home owners with wood pellet stoves. They have some sort of wood pellet co-op. You still have to go to the silo to pick up your pellets. They need to offer home delivery. The bulk is considerable. It's not like filling a heating oil tank in your basement once or twice a season. You need to take weekly trips to the wood pellet silo to get your fuel.

I just looked it up, and I'm wrong... It's a corn silo that Takoma Park has.

HLJ- I built a Russian style fireplace, using a Temp-Cast kit, when I built my house and have a pellet stove in the basement for backup. I was wondering more along the lines of breaking down organic waste/scraps to make electricity?

Griff, I just spent some time looking at the Temp-Cast site and at this site, which shows some more detail about the workings. Those Russian stoves look really nice. What are your experiences with it so far? Are you happy with it?

As far as electricity from biomass, there is nothing that I'm aware of in the home size. Community Power Corporation has been developing some village power-scale equipment (5- to 100-kW), that consists of a feed bin, an auger, a gasifier, an engine (the 25-kW system uses a GM V6 engine) and a generator. The gasifier takes a small wood chip (or they can be designed to use coconut husks or pecan shells, etc.) as fuel. In addition to electricity, you can also use the heat (from the radiator or the exhaust) for domestic or process loads. Unfortunately, they cost $100,000 or $200,000. That's for the small ones. Plus, they require a lot of attention. And they're loud.

Pig and dairy farms have been using anaerobic digesters for a long time, primarily as a means of controlling odors and reducing material bulk. The digester is used to treat animal waste (e.g. pig poop), and works best where the waste is easily collected, such as a farrow barn. Bacteria in the waste (the bugs) digest the waste and produce methane, which can be used to fire a modified diesel engine/genset (typically 80- to 200-kW). Some sewage treatment plants use a similar system, but I don't know if you could do the same thing with your home septic system.

glatt - transport of pellets is definitely a problem. We've considered commercial pellet systems for a few clients, but, as there is no bulk pellet delivery infrastructure in Colorado or New Mexico, we haven't looked at the available hardware. Rob Davis, of Show Low, Arizona, has modified a cement truck for bulk delivery. If something like that becomes more widely available I think it would greatly expand opportunities for pellet boilers and larger commercial systems.

Back in '73... piped up the old fart... we were discussing alternative heat sources and of course wood stoves came up. My Grandmother, having heated and cooked with a wood stove for near 70 years, before moving to a small house with oil heat and a gas stove, said, "What are you crazy? Turn up the damn thermostat."

She was well aware of the difficulty, mess and drawbacks of wood. So am I.

Wood pellet manufacture and transportation is how energy intensive?

A lot less energy intensive than oil drilling, transportation, refining, and more transportation.

There are three primary energy uses in pellet manufacture: chipping/grinding, extruding and drying. The wood starts out at 40 or 50 % moisture content and the pellet finishes with a MC of around 10%. The drying can be fuelled with gas, but it's more efficient to use excess wood (such as bark and fines) to fuel the dryer. The chipping and grinding will either be powered by a diesel or electric engine and the extruder is electric. I have numbers for these processes back at the office, as we've just finished a couple of pellet studies, but I don't have them here.

There's also energy used in the collection and transportation of the wood, but this is often being done already by the State and US Forest Services, utilities or private companies for fire mitigation, forest health, line clearing and landscaping work. In the Intermountain West there are millions of trees that have been killed (or soon will be) by ips beetles, mountain pine beetles, dwarf mistletoe, drought and blowdown. These trees are a huge fire risk, so there is already a lot of work being done to remove them from the forest. In some areas, such as Grand County, Colorado, up to 90% of the trees will be lost.

What's the advantage of wood over something like recycled newspaper for making pellets? Sap?

All of the recycled newspaper is being made into power bars.

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If I had to guess, I would say that the fiber in newspaper is not sufficient to make pellets. But it's a good question. I'll ask Rob Davis next time I see him.

Extremely, I finished ours in fieldstone, making it a nice centerpiece in the house. We use less than 6 face cords each winter to heat our small efficient house. In the coldest part of winter you need two fires per day to keep it at the 68F target. The pellet stove is in the basement and will bring the house up to temp if we're away a while or hit a really brutal cold snap.

Don't you still need electric to operate the fans/blowers to distribute the heat? And if you loose electric you lose the ability to distribute the heat about the house, no?

Griff, That's really nice. Do you have any traditional heat source (e.g. gas or oil) for times when you might be out of town for a week or two?

HLJ- It isn't really necessary, but we can run the pellet stove for a couple days just on whats in the hopper. The house is tight and passive solar, in the winter the sun is low enough in the sky to reach deep into the house and keep it warm enough. We close off the intake and the chimney cap, keeping the heat in. When we close all the fresh air vents the house holds heat very well and evenly. Between the radiant nature of the heat and the low airflow preventing convection we have no problem with heat rising. It can take a couple burns to get the house back up to temp but the pellet stove can help.

That's great. I want a house like that.

Can't one of your minions stoke the fire, Griff?

HLJ- Run up to the Shelter Institute in Maine building your own digs is muy satisfying. I have no morgage.

Brucster- I do have minions to do my bidding locally. My on-line minions are not appropriately pre-positioned, however.

You damn commie, if you don't have a mortgage the terrorists win.






I don't either.

We could save a lot of energy if we lived like they do in Hong Kong.

Bruce, where do they keep their goats?

The goats commute.

I have spent time in HK, before the handover, goats? they eat them. Tastes just like chicken, only more chewy.