Blogging Ethanol & Biodiesel

Start brewin' your own ethanol

A new start-up company out of California wants to sell you a $10,000 home upgrade for the true blendstock fanatic. E-Fuel's 100 MicroFueler is about as big as a stackable washer-dryer and will use sugar as its main fuel source, along with "specially packaged time-release yeast" the company has developed.         

         Depending on the sugar cost (plus water and electricity), the company claims it could cost as little as a dollar a gallon to make ethanol with the MicroFueler. We're not sure if the math works out, though. It takes up to 14 pounds of sugar to make one gallon of ethanol, and raw sugar is currently selling in the U.S. for about 20 cents a pound.

         And are you supposed to blend your labor-of-love into the gasoline yourself? It's illegal in the U.S. to run a car on 100% ethanol, except for off-road vehicles like Indy cars and farm equipment.

Continental's virgin biofuel flight

The airline industry hasn't always been the most forward looking in solving systemic efficiency problems, but a new effort appears to be taking hold. Following closely on the coat tails of Virgin's publicity stunt in January, Continental is now to perform virtually the same demo in 2009.
       What with the internecine bankruptcies, runway strandings, baggage handling x-games, and mollifying Naomi Campbell you would think there'd be little left in the budget for R&D. But right now, the average jet fuel price for 2008 is $118.8 a barrel, which will raise the 2008 fuel bill by more than $54 billion, according to the International Air Transport Association.
        The Continental flight will use a Boeing Next-Generation 737 equipped with CFM International CFM56-7B engines. CFM is a 50/50 joint company of General Electric Company and Snecma (SAFRAN Group).
        More details, including the flight plan, will be announced closer to the demonstration flight date.

A rolling stone is gathering moss

PetroSun commenced operations yesterday at what is believed to be the first-ever commercial algae-to-biodiesel facility. The Rio Hondo, Texas plant won’t be making fuel immediately, but operations at the algae farm, comprising about 1,100 acres of saltwater pond, have begun.

        Scottsdale, Ariz.-based PetroSun said the facility will produce a minimum of 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million pounds of biomass on an annual basis. And, plans are in the works to expand the size of the algae farm at some point in the future.
        "Our business model has been focused on proving the commercial feasibility of the firm's algae-to-biofuels technology during the past eighteen months," said Gordon LeBlanc, Jr., CEO of PetroSun.
        "Whether we have arrived at this point in time by a superior technological approach, sheer luck or a redneck can-do attitude," LeBlanc said, "The fact remains that microalgae can outperform the current feedstocks utilized for conversion to biodiesel and ethanol, yet do not impact the consumable food markets or fresh water resources."

The Corn Ultimatum

Concerns that environmentally sensitive lands will return to crop production owing to corn ethanol's voracious demand requirements were not allayed when a USDA Agricultural Research Service economist confirmed that even Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands are not sacred.
        “There is discussion about taking land out of CRP land and putting a portion into corn, said Harold Collins, speaking earlier this week at the National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants annual meeting in Seattle.
        That is not to say that all 37 million of the CRP acres could be feedstock, as the USDA considers only about 7 million acres suitable for corn production.
         “If we are to make ethanol from corn grain, we would need 68 million acres, which is 72% of the corn grown in the United States. I doubt very seriously that’s going to happen,” Collins said.
         An additional 15 billion gallons of ethanol fuel would most likely come from the Great Cellulosic Covenant.
        Even if tomorrow's vaunted technology were now upon us, switchgrass “is not for the grower who is faint of heart because it takes so long to get started,” Collins said.
         Interestingly, Collins spoke of wide variation in expected yields from switchgrass, based on factors such as irrigation. Ironically, those states rich in corn would ironically come in last. Iowa got 6 tons of switchgrass per acre in the recent USDA study versus Washington's 13 tons.

Science Mag author hits back at pro-ethanol critics

Timothy Searchinger, the lead author of one of the Science pieces that found "there was little little doubt that ethanol is making global warming worse”, struck back at the RFA's coalition of ethanol backers, issuing an 11-page rebuttal against the bad science claims, including that the comparison between the oil and ethanol industries had been unfair.
        "The amount of land used to produce a gallon of gasoline is extremely small ... it is less than 1% off the amount of land used to produce a gallon-equivalent of ethanol," wrote Searchinger, a visiting scholar at Princeton's Public and International Affairs School. "And many oil-drilling lands, such as desert, support little carbon."
        Responding to criticism from the New Fuels Alliance (NEFA) and Argonne National Laboratory's Michael Wang that his study should have included the indirect impacts of oil, Searchinger responded: "Much of the world’s oil is either produced in deserts or offshore or on land that still remains in productive agricultural use. Because the effect of oil production on emissions from land use change is small, it is reasonable to omit it."
        Searchinger also took critics to task for claiming that the indirect land use study used an irrelevant ethanol usage figure.
        "This criticism could be valid if the study focused on the total increase in emissions from expected increases in corn-based ethanol," wrote Searchinger, "But the study focuses on the rate of emissions for ethanol, in other words, the level of greenhouse gas emissions per gallon (unit of energy) of ethanol.
        Searchinger added: "NEFA’s criticism could also be valid if the agricultural model used by the study calculated that more land use change would occur per gallon of ethanol at higher levels of ethanol than at lower levels ... But the agricultural analysis used for our study does no such thing. The results vary somewhat at different levels of ethanol but tell a comparable story."

Not all biofuels made energy bill's 'nice' list

Tom Gilbert for The New York Times

        The energy bill received applause from not just corn but from backers of many advanced biofuel technologies that stand to gain from the increase in the RFS to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022.
         That is not to say that all biofuel interests were politically convincing. Among the most vocal of the disenfranchised has been Syntroleum, the Tulsa, Okla.-based company which is using a chemical process to make synthetic liquid fuel from sources including natural gas and animal fat.
        As recently explained by Richard Bond, CEO of Tyson Foods, which is working with Syntroleum to bring the product to market: "Part of the beauty of those plants is you could take very low-cost, cheap feedstocks, grease that no one else can use, and convert those not only into diesel, but into very high-end jet fuel."
        Lawmakers yanked a provision that would have extended the 50¢/gal  federal tax credit that makes viable the whole project, which is also backed by ConocoPhillips.
        ConocoPhillips officials last week warned that change could shelve the project, including plans for a 75 million gallon plant at which by-product fat leftover from Tyson food operations would be converted into biodiesel.
        House Democrats has hoped to pay for their tax incentives largely by rolling back tax breaks for oil and gas companies that were enacted in 2005, but that didn't sit well with many in the Senate, not to mention the White House.

But will it fit under a tree?

        'Tis the season to wonder what to get for the enviro who has everything. A U.K. shop called Green Fuels Ltd. is marketing a five-foot canister it says can churn out 13 gallons of biodiesel a day from waste cooking oil.
        Assuming you're on the inside of some fast food franchise procurement scheme, the Mr. Fusion-aspirational device is "incredibly easy and safe to use", Green Fuels says, using external, thermostatically-controlled band heaters to pre-heat the oil, so the warming takes place prior to the addition of chemicals.
       Customers will also receive a "comprehensive operating manual" and access to a dedicated helpline in case of emergency, but as a discerning consumer you might expect that from hardware starting at $3,600.

Unpassable energy bill delayed on way to House floor

        House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is working with a singular focus to bring the revived energy bill to the House floor though certain facets of the current version are unlikely to stick.
        It didn't show up today, as had been expected, because Pelosi is hitting resistance in attempting to force into the package measures that would raise taxes on oil companies by around $15 billion during a 10-year period.
        If the bill passes the House, it faces an even greater hurdle in the Senate from its insistence on a Renewable Portfolio Standard - the proposed requirement that electric utilities produce 15% of their power from renewable sources by 2020.
        Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), for one, is strongly opposed to the measure, and it is not clear whether Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) can collect enough votes among moderate Republicans to resist a filibuster if Domenici’s camp decides to mount one.
    President Bush is also opposed and has hinted that he would veto the entire bill if the version that shows up on his desk contains either the tax increase on oil companies or renewable electricity provisions.
        Meanwhile, in the Senate today, Democrats introduced a $21 billion tax package that excludes income of major integrated oil companies derived from the production, refining, processing, transportation, or distribution of oil and natural gas, permanently setting the deduction allowed at its current law level of 6% of qualified production activities.
        The proposal would also eliminate the distinction between foreign oil and gas extraction income and foreign oil related income.

The biofuel from the black lagoon

Photo courtesy of Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources

        Algae has been getting some media attention lately. Some researchers think they can use algae to make ethanol and biodiesel.
        At first glance, algae looks like a dream feedstock. In addition to using the lipids of algae to make biodiesel and the starches of algae to make ethanol, algae also can be used to make methane, hydrogen and nutraceuticals. Its proteins can be used to make high-grade livestock feed.
        Algae can also be harvested daily. Proponents say that an acre of algae can produce 8,000 gallons of algae oil, which can be used to make biodiesel. Compare that to 52 gallons of oil per acre for soybeans.
        However, algae has several major drawbacks. The first is cost. It’s expensive. Because the technology is still in its experimental stages, mass production would be heavily dependent upon subsidies. There also isn't infrastructure available to make and distribute algae oil. As a result, more readily available feedstocks, such as soybeans, will get more attention.

Why We Don't Blend More: Ethanol's Vapor Pressure

With U.S. ethanol prices continuing a downward trend, why isn’t there more blending occurring? While lack of adequate infrastructure is one answer, another answer is vapor pressure.

Although ethanol by itself has a relatively low vapor pressure, when it’s blended with gasoline, the final product has a high vapor pressure. A lower vapor pressure, especially during the summer, is better because that reduces evaporative emissions from the vehicle.

Since gasoline blended with ethanol has a high vapor pressure, some hydrocarbons have to be removed, including butanes or pentanes. That’s economically unattractive, from a blender’s perspective. Even though there are co-blending agents that could be used, use of those agents reduces the value of ethanol as a blending agent.

This is why Valero Energy said in July that it wasn’t encouraging more discretionary blending, among other reasons.

“Even though ethanol prices have fallen significantly, if you take the vapor pressure hit we are getting here at least in the summertime, relative to some of the other blending components and their values, some of the discretionary blending is still not economic as people think it is, because they see the price of ethanol. But when you look at our full cocktail, it is not necessarily so,” said Bill Klesse, Valero’s CEO.

Now that you know a little more about vapor pressure, do you think fuel companies should be given more incentives to blend fuel, or is vapor pressure more of an excuse?