Alcohol fuel - The obvious answer, Yes or No?

Better than alcohol from sugar cane, if true and seems not to be a scam:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/28/al...z_kad_0528fuels.html?partner=daily_newsletter

What do you think?

 

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It's a lot trickier than it sounds to grow the right kind of alga in those quantities for a long time.

They get diseases, they mutate, weed algae invade, etc. You're domesticating a plant there - farming takes experience, usually.

And he's talking about salt water, on the one hand, and desert waste, on the other. And getting the oil out of the mess so it can be piped - not so easy with salt water.

But the principle is fundamentally sound. Beats growing corn for alcohol, easily.

If we're building this kind of thing in the desert, how about some heat engine solar electricity while we're at it ?

 

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One small problem with Alcohol fuel.

LESS TO DRINK! and that which we buy to drink costs more!

yeah, it's a good idea, but it will also kill like 30% of our economy that oil holds steady.

I think we should just deal with the gas prices for now, the technology is out there, it's already produced, but before we bury our economy, we should give more time for taxes to rebuild, kill off a few people who are sucking it dry, and make at least some of the actual AMERICANs happy first.


Seriously guys, if you don't like America, then why are you here?

 

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In several threads and numerous posts I have pointed out that the wealthy's love of Mahogany furniture is what is destroying the Amazon forests, not the production of sugar cane for alcohol production (There are no significant cane fields within 500 miles of the Amazon as alcohol cannot flow thru normal pipelines* and it is too costly to ship more than 200 miles, at the most.) Almost all is produced within 150 miles of either Sao Paulo or Rio and uses less than 2% of Brazil's land now in agricultural production. Approximatley half of Brazil's framland is in pasture. Thus a 4% reduction in beef production could double the current level of alcohol production (and Brazil is now the world's leading exporter and the No2 alcohol producer, with such a glut on the local market that many smaller producers are going under as it now cost only about 45% of what gasoline does at the pump.)

Brazil has the world's largest herd and is world's largest exporter of beef, 100% pasture feed. (By tons, not by sales. Australian beef cost more so by that measure, in some years Brazil is No.2 exporter.) After the criminal loggers selective cut a few mahogany trees (typically worth US$1000 each at the saw mill or greater than 1/3 a year's minimum wage.) they set fire to the forest to hid their crime. I will not repeat now the intermediate stages, but eventually some absentee land owner who can afford to properly clear and fertilize the land will probably turn it into pasture for cattle. So indirectly one can argue that growing sugar cane is partially responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rain forest in that some pasture close to Sao Paulo is being converted to growing sugar cane, forcing a tiny fraction of the beef production into land that the rich of the developed world (US, EU & Japan) have caused to be burned.

The solution is simple, and I have suggested it in prior post also: EAT LESS BEEF. That would be not only good for your health, "doubly good" for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.

Surprisingly, Brazil may be the 3d or 4th country producing the greatest amount of atmospheric CO2 - Mainly by:
(1) Burning Forest trees which were removing CO2 and releasing the tons of carbon stored in each of the larger ones.
RICH STOP demanding MAHOGANY
(2) Cattle farts (and production of their food)
RICH STOP demanding BEEF.

On (2) here is part of the text released today by UN (The Nobel prize winner science group, last year in this field):

"Pachauri, who was re-elected the panel's chairman for a second six-year term last week, said diet change was important because of the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals. It was relatively easy to change eating habits compared to changing means of transport, he said.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has estimated that meat production accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are generated during the production of animal feeds, for example, while ruminants, particularly cows, emit methane, which is 23 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide. The agency has also warned that meat consumption is set to double by the middle of the century. {Billy T's sick hummor insert: "well for a year or two we could eat dead polar bears. - What is the problem?"}

'In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity,' said Pachauri. 'Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there,' said the Indian economist, who is a vegetarian. ..."

Read more at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink?gusrc=rss&feed=environment

SUMMARY (as I have said for years):
FAR more effective than buying an expensive hybrid or pure electric car (both of which make little or even negative reduction in CO2 production, until non-fossil fuels are making most of the grid's electricity) is
(1) Stop buying mahogany furniture and
(2) Eliminate beef from your diet at least two days each week. Becoming a vegetarian is obviously much better action against global warming.

PS I am not a vegetarian, but I am very concerned about good health, so only eat red meat about twice each MONTH. Fish are my main source of animal protein - at least four times per week, but small ones** as toxic heavy metals (brain damage producing) especially mercury becomes quite concentrated as the big ones eat the smaller one. I never eat tuna or shark - have not for > 50 years. I honestly think being clear headed in old age may require this but do not have any scientific proof - it just seems logical as these metals do concentrate up the food chain and meat eating humans are at the top of that chain, some for 100 years now.
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*Recently I learned that my prior idea that the water absorption by alcohol was rusting steel pipelines, may be true but is not the only problem. Even in stainless steel pipe there is a cracking problem. For reasons not yet well understood the alcohol its self cause some sort of embrittlement that then with thermal expansions, and/or earth shifts causes pipeline to crack. I have lost the link that told of this and about a ~200 mile experimental pipeline now being installed to test if their design/ materials can survive OK.

**We have a cook/maid, like all upper class Brazilians. I buy about 30 every week of what is called locally "Norwegian sardines" but I think may be some form of "Herring." - They are bluish and about a foot long. She cleans them and cooks them all at one time in three pans that will fit in the oven. I eat 20 of them, often cold, and all the bones, and wife eats the other 10 each week. (I eat the skin of hers also as it has too strong a flavor for her taste.)

 

Finally, despite huge subsidies, reality is setting in on the: "...corn-based ethanol industry that George W. Bush embraced as the answer to US energy woes. Six of the biggest publicly traded US ethanol producers* have lost more than $8.7bn in market value since the peak of the boom in mid-2006 and the beginning of this month, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. The boom followed a 2005 law requiring refiners to mix billions of gallons of the biofuel with petrol. ... Investor losses come as taxpayers have paid billions to support the ethanol industry. More than $11.2bn has been spent since 2005 on tax breaks for companies that blend ethanol into petrol. Billions more have been spent on direct state and federal subsidies for US ethanol production.

“We’re looking at an industry that’s cost $80bn to get to this point,” said Bob Starkey, a fuels analyst at Jim Jordan & Associates, a research group in Houston. ... Worse, a growing number of influential critics now say ethanol is helping raise the price of food. ..."

From Financial Times at:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8531a8a2-...uid=ca98ca88-6456-11dd-af61-0000779fd18c.html

*Vera Sun, one of the six, just filed chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday (after this article was written) !

Another 80 billion dollar disaster brought to the US by GWB, but hey it only money - not the GI lives he lost when he invaded the country that had nothing to do with 9/11 while ignoring** the one which sent 15 of the 19 attackers. GWB did this because Saudi Arabia has supported his election campaigns even when only running for Governor of Texas. The Saudis supported the "father Bush" also and gave W's father the funds to buy GWB a small oil company (where he first perfected his "bankrupting skills" prior to bankrupting the US.)

** "Ignored" is not quite correct. On 9/12, while US airspace was still closed to all comercial flights, GWB arranged for two planes to take some of his Saudi friends out of the USA, fearing that when the public learned where the attackers came form they might be injured. IMHO, they was probably a good idea, but we will never know if any of them facilated the attack. GWB was surely not going to call them "enemy combatents" in any case.

 

Indeed. There is a pilot project right here which is utilizing microorganisms to do the same. Overall it is much more promising due to the simple fact that you do not need to grow hydrocarbons first.

I am not sure what is meant here. Diseases is a general problem for any crop, however if you use bacteria (which sometimes erroneously are referred to as algae) you only have to worry about phages. Well and keeping the fermenter clean. However this is needed for any fermenter (with the exception of mixed fermenters) and due to hydrocarbon limitations the chances of anything outcompeting Synechocistis is rather low.

I am pretty sure that Sapphire actually is also using Synechocystis, as they refer it to as "algae microorganisms" (just checked Roger Ruan's lab, it is indeed the bacterium).

The rest does not make much sense as it is simply a matter of isolating the fatty acids from the bacteria. You do not pipe out finished biodiesel out of the fermenter...

In any case, the basic system is to use genetically modified bacteria that synthesize a high amount of the required fatty acid methyl esters in large fermenters. It requires less space and less energy than setting up a crop field, and then use the crops to feed a fermenter.
I have not seen (but neither have I actively searched for it) but even using additional cellulolytic activities methanol production would unlikely be sufficient (or cost and space efficient) to solve the energy problem.

 

Do they (the project group) have a name, a link or can you give more details?

I do not understand how salt water, air's CO2 and sunshine can make fuel via "green bacteria" (like Synechocystis, or as Saphire refers it "algae microorganisms") but can not see why it is impossible either.

Think what potential step up in efficiecy may be possible if the air's CO2 were enriched by stometric exhaust of a fossil fuel power plant, at least to near but suitably below any toxic to Synechocystis levels. (For all I know, they love living in pure CO2 saturated water.) Since that exhaust is approximately CO2 +4N2 the max economic enrichment is from 0.04% to 20% or 500 fold with the fossil exhaust bubbled thru the glass-cover-sealed shallow tank trays of Synechocystis where land is cheap with lots of sun (like Brazil)* . They must have some waste product - to ask it crudely: What is Synechocystis's shit like? Do they (or can they be made to with GM enginnering) only shit oils and greases?

Do you have a link to papers on Synechocystis? Who is Roger Ruan and which is his lab? How is it funded?
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*Most climate models show that the Amazon will be a desert with global warming in not distant future and the soil is poor there already. Certainly will still have lots of cheap fresh water too, if that is better than salt water. Perhaps 100 years from now Brazil will not be "the land of the future" but the land of the GM Synechocystis? We are builting the ports, piplines, storgage tanks etc. now to export bio-fuel to the world. It would be nice if the Amazon could continue to be the "terrestrial lungs of the world" and keep releasing O2 into the air.

 

The fuel is essentially a certain fatty acid that is highly expressed in the engineered bacterium. The general disadvantage of using bacteria for producing biofuels is that you need to feed them. By using a photosynthetic bacterium like Synechocystis at least you do not need to feed them hydrocarbons. You still need a number of other macronutrients (e.g. nitrogen sources), though. At this point my estimate is that it is still not financially viable, though with improved fermenter efficiency coupled with some genetic engineering one might push up the efficiency a bit.

There are also approaches using proper algae (though the names listed in the article are associated with guys that, to my knowledge use cyanobacteria). However, cyanobacteria are simply more efficient in converting sunlight into biomass. And much more accessible to genetic manipulations.

Using "salt water" is a bit misleading, I assume the journalist in question just did not really understand the matter. Basically you need a buffered medium in which the bacterium can live in. Essentially water with a number of salts, both those that buffer the medium (pH and osmotically) but also containing certain essential micronutrientslike magnesium, calcium, etc.

Bacteria do not have waste products per se (usually). After complete oxidation mostly CO2 is released. Incomplete oxidation can result in other intermediates (not applicable to Synechocystis). Fermenting bacteria produce a variety acids and/or alcohols (e.g. in ethanolic fermentation...)
Remember, the majority of shit consists of bacteria and stuff that the organism cannot degrade fast enough. Bacteria are the guys that degrade everything.

The main problem tends to be the release of metabolites that may change the pH of the system, but it varies a lot between bacteria. Under ideal conditions you can have the fermenter running indefinitely by pumping in new media while at the same time removing defined amount of cells (and use them to create biofuel).

Roger Ruan appears to be a relatively new player, however his name popped up when following the info provided by Sapphire. It could be that he is (co-) funded by the company.
Other sources:

http://biofuels.asu.edu/tubes.shtml

Also take a look at
Rittman, Biotechnol Bioeng. 2008 Jun 1;100(2):203-12
Ohtaguchi K et al. 1993 JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY AND BIOTECHNOLOGY 56(4) 393-399

Regarding funding, I think much has come from the department of energy (a few millions, I would estimate).

 

"... To further underscore his {Obama} commitment to free trade and take a swipe at the special interest politics of the past, Mr. Obama has moved aggressively to remove absurdly costly protections for ethanol production and opened the door to ethanol imports from emerging markets like Brazil. And the American people, relieved to have real leadership at last, are easily convinced that removing huge subsidies to corn growers in the U.S. will help ease the distortions in the worldwide market for basic food stuffs. ..."

From: http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/04/ob...x_tc_1105cooley.html?partner=daily_newsletter

A speculation hoped for in the article and rationalized the above:

"... In a bold departure from campaign rhetoric aimed at comforting disaffected rust-belt voters, Mr. Obama is now able to affirm his commitment to free trade and the process of globalization. Importantly, informed by his University of Chicago and Harvard-based economic advisers, he has underscored his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, to the great relief of our most important trade partners to the North and the South. ..."

This will come slowly as it was Iowa that opened the chance for change the US now has when the unknown Obama defeated Hillary. Ironically, it had to be there as there are very few blacks in Iowa and at that time it was Hillary who could count on 90+% of their votes. Bill made a significant continuation of their progress. It was a slow and painful, at times even deadly process but:

Rosa sat, so Martin could ride in the front of the bus, but Martin marched so Obama could run. Obama ran and will soon lead so all can be equal when standing before the law. I play a very minor part in this 100 year drama as a leader in Baltimore's "Civil Interest Group" ...

To continue reading personal details; See:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2078712&postcount=11

 

"... In 2007, the United States consumed 6.8 billion gallons of ethanol and 491 million gallons of biodiesel. According to EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2008, ethanol usage is predicted to increase to nearly 24 billion gallons in 2030, which would represent approximately 16% of total gasoline consumption by volume in 2030. Thirty-one percent of corn production in 2008 is projected to be used for ethanol, and this percentage is expected to rise to 36 percent by 2030.* Biodiesel consumption is predicted to increase to 1.2 billion gallons by 2030, or approximately 1.5% of total diesel consumption. Consumption of renewable diesel, made from cellulosic materials, is expected to substantially exceed biodiesel consumption by 2030. ..."

"...In December 2007, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 increased the mandatory levels of renewable fuel blending credits to a total of 36 billion gallons by 2022, including 16 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels. ..."

"...As of August 2008, more than 1,400 of a total of 170,000 gas stations in the United States are offering E85. ..." That is less than 1% still.

From: http://northdenvernews.com/content/view/1515/2/

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*Billy T comment: Impossible to believe that this does not both increase the cost of many foods and also reduce US agricultural export earnings. Blocking import by quotas, tariffs etc. of cheaper tropical alcohol also insures more petrodollars flow to countires supporting terrorists and that Joe American has higher cost per mile of driving. McCain had the honesty and courage, even in Iowa, to opposes this nonesnse. Obama did not, but that may have been necessary for him at the time. It was his surprizing win in Iowa that made many think he was not a sure losser. There are few black in Iowa. His win there, his first, demostrated his appeal to white voters. Before that win, most blacks supported Mrs. Clinton as they too thought Obama did not have any chance. Obama is smart, and more interested in the wealfare of Joe American than a few wealthy corn growers, so I hope he finds some way to stop the corn-to-alcohol nonsense.

 

"Brazilian company Uniduto Logistica will begin building the first phase of a major Brazilian ethanol pipeline in April 2010, with operations due for 2011-2012. The pipeline will run from Brazil's main sugarcane-producing region in Sao Paulo state to the port of Santos.

The first phase has a budget of 1.8 billion reais (€603 million) to build 600km of pipeline. Uniduto was created jointly by 12 groups including Cosan S Industria e Comercio, Copersucar, Sao Martinho and Crystalsev to develop, build and operate an alcohol transportation system by ducts.

Brazil is the world's largest sugar and sugarcane-based ethanol producer. ..."

Form: http://www.biofuels-news.com/industry_news.php?item_id=607

PetroBras recently began operating the E3 plant in Japan. Japan soon to require 3% alcohol in gasoline for air quality reasons mainly, but for a few years now there has beeen a Japanese/ Brazilian firm building ships to take sugar cane ETOH from Brazil to Japan. I think this pipeline is also part of the plan.

Unfortuantely, Pres. Lula did not persuade Pres Obama to even reduce the 54 cent/ gallon tariff on imported Brazilian alcohol during their White House meeting this Saturday. When the US finally wakes up to fact that it can not produce both food and alcohol* for it needs, Brazil will probably have 100% of its production excess already under long term contracts to Asia.

*If Celulosic ETOH is affordable, then the US can produce both but it is not at all clear it will ever be as cheap as sugar cane alcohol. (I think not as so many more steps are required and different "bugs" are required for the converions of the different sugars one gets in the first steps of celulose break down into sugars.) I.e. US is likely to be stuck with both expensive food and fuel.

 

Just a note in passing : you said hydrocarbons above when the word should have been carbohydrates - and even that makes no sense because the microorganisms involved most certainly DO produce carbohydrates. In the form of lipids.

 

For multi-author, online Cornell published book (really a collecion of many published papers) on biofuels, with some focus on alcohol, see:

http://cip.cornell.edu/biofuels/

 

Here is concise discussion of cellulosic alcohol & other "liquid fuels from grass" etc.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/28/biofuels-ethanol-virent-technology-breakthroughs-biofuels.html

Some samples:

"...There are 1,865 biofuels companies out there ...Changing new biological stuff into {liquid fuel} is relatively easy to do in a lab...The problem is finding a way of doing this alchemy on the scale of millions of gallons a year at a cost that comes somewhere near the price of gasoline without leveling the world's forests, sucking the world's fresh water supply dry or starving the world's humans.

Since the beginning of 2007, $1.8 billion has been invested worldwide in the race to these so-called next generation biofuels ... All the methods (except for the algal approach) first require that the plant matter be busted up, usually violently. This is called pretreatment. It is done with a mild or strong acid, or heat and pressure. Then the long chains of cellulose, hemicellulose and the lignin must be chopped up into ever smaller bits, so they can be built back up into the molecules we want.

Cellulose is tough to break down, but yields only glucose, a sugar that is easy handle. Hemicellulose is easier to break down, but yields two types of sugars, so-called C6 sugars, like glucose, and C5 sugars, like xylose. This complicates things, requiring specialized enzymes, bugs or processes. Lignin is almost impossible to deal with. ...

Verenium and Abengoa are working on pilot plants ... enzymes are the trick here, and companies like Novozymes and Codexis are developing specialized enzymes to perfect the process.
Range Fuels and Virent have a different approach. They cut the bugs out. Range Fuels uses heat and pressure to gasify the plant material ...Virent takes a slurry of sugars from broken-down plant matter and, like an oil refinery, uses metal catalysts to ...
LS9, Amyris, Mascoma and Qteros, which are trying to ... engineer bacteria and yeast that will chew up the broken-up plant material and spit out ethanol, gasoline or diesel.
The algae people argue that growing a plant just to break it down is a waste of energy. Algae ... can be trained to just turn out ethanol (Algenol) or diesel (Solazyme). These specialized algae ... must be kept in ... expensive, "bioreactors" for example, so they won't be out-competed by wild algae. Extracting the fuel can also be difficult. ..."

My "insurance money" is on Verenium (own a little stock in them) "But it ain't over til the fat lady sings" is sure true here. (Most of my "liquid fuel from grass" money is on good old fashiond Brazilain sugar cane.)

 

As someone who is working on algae I can tell you right now that algae is even harder to lyse then terrestrial plants!

The dream for cellulose to ethanol (or other fermentation products, of which many may be of greater value then ethanol in the longer term) is a "single pot reactor", were we can minimize pre-treatment and we have an GE organism that has all the necessary cellulase enzymes, and the ability to ferment C5 and C6 sugars, high resistance to its fermentation products and has high throughput, such a goal will be the end all be all of cellulose-to-ethanol and after that the drive will become more focused on improving the feedstock.

Brazilian sugar cane unfortunately can't power the world, not even after wiping out the rain forests.

 

I've heard that the gut flora of roaches & termites is promising- they've got super efficient bio-reactors.

 

I do not know about roache, but by disecting termite guts, is how Verenium got started. That was about 10 years ago and they have come a long way since. They have the worl'd largest pilot plant in operation and are, with BP's support, now designing the first commercial scale uint with ground breaking in less than a year.

 

The Economist made review of Brazil's sugar cane alcohol industry in June 2008, which I missed, but is accurate* and informative, See it at:
http://www.economist.com/research/a...story.cfm?subjectid=8780295&story_id=11632886

Article is called: "Biofuels in Brazil - Lean, green and not mean"

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*I think it is overly generous to corn based ETOH when saying that there is a 50% greater energy out than the fossil input (some studies even suggest their is a net loss.) but agree that sugar cane gives 8.1 times more energy out than the input, which is mainly the transport of the cane to the distilary and some fuel for the harvesting machines, now replacing the manual cutting.

A large part of the advantage is due to fact that the curshed cane is burned to distill the alcohol, not natural gas or oil. Also the 8.1 gain factor considers only the energy in the alcohol produced - Does not include the electric power produced by the burning cane. If that were included, then cane is nearly ten times more energy efficient than corn based alcohol, and much less polluting.*

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*Iowa corn needs a lot of fertilizer to accelerate growth to compensate for the short growing season. Soil bacteria converts much (more than the corn uses) of the fertalizer's nitrogen into NOx. When this pollution is considered, even only as a GHG (not including the production of photo-chemial smog), it turns out that gasoline as car fuel is LESS polluting than corn based alcohol!

 

Just want to thank BillyT for this thread.

 

"...The Obama administration's commitment of $30 billion on Monday to General Motors Corp. (GM) as it files for bankruptcy, brings the total amount of funds allocated and promised to the auto industry to $110 billion, including bailout capital and funds to be made available for green-car component suppliers. ..."

From: http://news.morningstar.com/newsnet...J/200906011854DOWJONESDJONLINE000602_univ.xml

Say 3E8 Americans then 11E10 dollars is nearly $400 from each man woman and child (more when the interest paid to China etc for the loan is considered and this does not consider any tax credits for buying etc.) - Support of the gas power car, at least thus far.