Yesterday the Prime Minister John Howard announced a $1.576 billion funding package over eight-years to promote alternative fuels. The package included rebates for converting cars to LPG and $17 million over three years for petrol stations to install new pumps or convert existing pumps to E10 blends and to encourage sales of E10. E10 is an ethanol-blended fuel.
And yesterday I received an email from Ray Wilson with the comment:
“I read a lot about the production of ethanol by agriculture. Ethanol is not a good fuel because a standard petrol engine needs to be extensively modified to use 100% ethanol as it has only half the energy density of petrol.
However, just as one can produce petrol and diesel from coal using the Fischer-Tropsch process, one can use cellulosic (Wood, leaves, grass, grains, etc) matter too to make petrol and diesel by this method. This can be done profitably and the process is well-known.
So instead of setting up plants to make ethanol why not set them up to make diesel and petrol instead?
I would do this myself, but I lack the basic access to funds to do much. However, perhaps there are farmers or other industrialists who may be able to use the information, to the benefit of our country and the environment.
I would very much like to ensure too that anyone who is intending to produce ethanol is aware that the technology already exists to make environmentally-friendly diesel and petrol before they take the step to go ahead and make ethanol. I believe they would be making a mistake.”
I responded suggesting that it was presumably uneconomic, and Ray emailed back:
“Strangely enough, the Fischer-Tropsch process used to convert cellulosic matter into diesel and petrol has not been mentioned by anyone that I know about. I hear no debate about it at all.
I think the reason for this is simply that it has not occurred to anyone yet. I would like to at least ask the people who are thinking of making ethanol whether they have considered this process. But I do not know who they are or how to contact them.
The Fischer-Tropsch process is normally used to convert coal to fuels, but it works equally well with cellulosic matter as a feedstock.
So instead of just using the sugar cane juice to make ethanol and discarding the residue, one can convert the entire plant into diesel and petrol and discard very little. Any plant material will do too.
The subsides are available for anyone who wants to proceed with this R&D and the project itself, provided one has the collateral to cover 50% of the Federal loan. I do not have this, so it is very difficult for me to do anything myself. I actually looked into this in some detail recently.
Plant oils are suitable for use as a diesel fuel, but the rest of the plant is discarded as waste. For example, oil-palm nuts are crushed to yield their oil, but the pulp is discarded. Not very efficient.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
“Plant oils are suitable for use as a diesel fuel, but the rest of the plant is discarded as waste. For example, oil-palm nuts are crushed to yield their oil, but the pulp is discarded. Not very efficient”
Not only that, but recent German studies have shown that “Bio-diesel” ( Made from Rap seed oil )emit more particulate matter and are more polluting than normal diesel …
Guess which Diesel is cheaper? it gets taxed less and gets farmers subsidies if they grow it
The FT fuel synthesis process is particularly interesting because it uses basic cellulosic materials to feed it (or coal in South Africa for the last few decades), and those biomass materials are generally of low value and are not foodstuffs. In addition, biomass for FT synthesis feedstock generally involves low levels of inputs per unit of energy contained within the biomass material.
In comparison, producing ethanol from corn and biodiesel from canola uses about as much fossil fuel to produce as is contained in biofuel. For every joule of energy that is contained in the canola/corn biofuel, almost one joule of fossil fuel energy has gone into producing that biofuel. As a lot of the energy input into these crops is in the form of fertiliser, biofuel from corn and canola is virtually a way of turning coal into liquid transport fuels via fertiliser manufacture.
Ethanol from sugar cane is a different story; it is more efficient because the crop itself is relatively efficient at converting sunlight energy and CO2 into sugar.
Wood is more efficient again because the levels of inputs into growing plantation wood is generally much much lower than the level of inputs required for agricultural crops. Ethanol from wood contains 5 to 10 times more energy than the energy required to produce the wood and the ethanol.
The Dutch and the Germans are pretty keen on FT biodiesel and I believe Shell has built a US$600 million pilot plant in Malaysia to produce FT fuels from wood waste. I don’t know how close to commercial reality this process is, but I read a report from mid-2005 that claimed they could produce FT diesel for 0.49 euro per litre ex-factory. This analysis was based upon importing wood pellets from Brazil and placing a FT factory on the dock at Rotterdam.
Why don’t we do this? Perhaps there are still technical hurdles. However I suspect that human factors are also at play.
Novel industries often require direct government support or policy adjustments to facilitate the start up. Access to Canberra is obviously often on the basis of who you know more than what you know.
Most people in the alternative transport energy field have a pet process. Some are ethanol enthusiasts, some prefer gasification to produce bio-oil (a sort of crude oil equivalent), others are keen on hydrogen. It’s not feasible for an engineer to jump from one preferred process to another. Committment to a technology such as ethanol from wood is a long term decision. It’s difficult for an individual person to change positions quickly as circumstances change and new technologies emerge. It’s even more difficult for a private or government bureaucracy. Australia doesn’t seem to have a FT advocate – perhaps Ray will change that.
Ethanol from sugar, corn or wheat is an easy option that has no technical hurdles for low-ethanol blends with petrol. However sugar cane seems to be the only source of sugar that produces a positive net energy return. But not much of Australia can grow cane, much of that land is under competion for other uses and sugar is priced according to its vaue as a foodstuff. Canola biodiesel and corn ethanol are just hobbies and agricultural subsidies; charlatans dressed up as planet-saving technologies. At least these alternatives are introducing the concept of alternative transport fuels.
It would be encouraging to see our government take a comprehensive look at all the alternatives, choose a few of the best options for active support, and just as importantly, continuously review all the new technologies as they emerge. Perhaps in common with Ray, I am concerned that government can say “support for ethanol, done that, therefore, alternative transport fuels are receiving our support”. No, ethanol from sugar cane or wheat just barely scratches the surface. They are merely a very tiny tentative step in right direction.
Hi Boxer,
I have not come across the FT process before and I like the idea that there is very little waste. I have just one question how does this fuel process do on carbon emissions, since as I understand it plants bind up CO2? Does this process get round that?
I really value Boxer’s comment coz I know he knows a fair bit about wood technology. I’d like to throw in the fact that energy use efficiency in the Brazil sugar cane industry is running close to 1 unit in to 10 out, and rapeseed is around 1 in to 3 units out.
So maybe sugar to ethanol can compete with wood on this energy parameter.
Currently I have a very open mind and postulate several different systems for biomass to liquid fuel may have a place. Wood and straw will certainly be converted to liquid fuel, but how and to which liquid fuel, who knows?
There are several recent reports of new catalysts and new products for these processes. Shell (from memory) are involved in a new venture turning sugar beets into butanol in the UK, presumbly coz its easy to separate from water, and the government provide tax breaks and carbon credits.
The recent ASX announcement of a new big ethanol plant at Rockdale Beef,NSW, where they claim synergies coz they can feed by-products to cattle, shows by products have value in the stockfeed chain so don’t write them off as waste.
Maybe FT at a large scale makes sense in large EU markets, but ethanol and biodiesel make sense in outback Australia?
I store a lot of techno stuff on this topic at GMO Pundit. Biofuel is driving a huge Monsanto cash flow surge in the US at the the moment through a corn and soy seed bonanza
Hi detribe,
Interesting info, so Monsanto is making big profit to sell GMO corn and soy seed for biofuel production….hmmm, wonder what Greenpeace and other NGOs say about this?
Lamna
Biofuels made using the FT process are neutral regarding CO2. Put simply, plants use sunlight to combine CO2 and water into carbohydrates; the FT process turns these carbohydrates into liquid fuels, and your car turns the fuel back into water vapour and CO2.
Hi Jerry.
Thanks for the clarification.
Farm Online has a piece by Gregor Heard, Tuesday, 15 August 2006:
US ethanol industry requires an extra 130 million tonnes of corn to meet demand over next five years. So 32 million acres in the US will be converted from wheat or soybeans to corn? The entire Australian winter crop production for 2005-06 was 40 million tonnes.
http://www.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=36585
And Fortune Magazine has a piece by Lester Brown about ethanol for americans competing with corn for africans : http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/08/21/8383659/index.htm .
Re Lester Brown, a different view comes from IFPRI
as found through
Biofuels: Clear strategy needed
Farmonline Australia
http://www.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=36666
Thursday, 17 August 2006
GMO Pundit take on this was:
Joachim von Braun, director-general, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI0), speaking in Australia this week.
His message was carried by Farmonline.
There are opportunities for farmers and trade offs in the biofuel boom, and higher and less stable food prices may well be the immediate result….continues at link
More details:
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/newsletters/ifpriforum/200606/IF15Biofuel.asp
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/08/opportunities-and-trade-offs-in.html
There is a fair bit of surplus grain production capacity in many parts of the world and as Jennifer’s comment mentions, our grain production is very modest on the global scale. While our grain farmers are very good at what they do, growing grain is not our national strength compared to many parts of the world where soils and climates are more favourable and yields are potentially much higher than ours.
Perhaps we should not be thinking in terms of building a biofuels industry based upon grain. There is an alternative strategy. Our native vegetation includes a vast number of tough woody species well adapted to our soils and the variability and dryness of our climate. It may be better for this country to focus more upon the types of vegetation that have adapted to the conditions that exist over so much of inland Australia.
An advantage of something like the FT process is that the biomass feedstock is gasified and the fuel synthesised from the small molecules that result. It doesn’t matter very much what the source of biomass is: chipped wood and foliage, wheat stubble, waste wood or even grain if it’s cheap enough. The gasification reduces everything to a relatively uniform condition that suits the sophisticated industrial process that produces diesel, petrol and waxes.
We should take a lead from Brazil where Ethanol produced from sugar-cane has already replaced much of their petrol consumption.
Sugar-cane very efficiently harnesses solar energy to combine CO2 and water into base stock fermentable intop ethanol.
The Ord River Dam is Australia’s biggest, under-utilised water resource; the Ord River flood plains is a large under-utilised irrigable land resource with climatic conditions providing enormous solar energy resources; all conducive to maximum yields of sugar-cane. It’s Australia’s greatest opportunity to reduce our dependancy on imported petroleum.
I read a 2003 presentation by Bob McCOrmick of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab that listed ‘biodiesel’ (from oil & fats) and ethanol as ‘near term’ and Biomass-derived FT diesel as ‘medium term.’ So perhaps part of the answer is that the FT diesel from biomass is newer technology than trans esterification (and probably doesn’t have any lobbyists yet!).
Biomass to liquid hydrocarbons is definitely a serious alternative energy option. Three possible routes to achieve this:
1) Gasification followed by FT –> hydrocarbons,
2) Mild pyrolysis followed by char acid hydrolysis to convert the cellulose/char to sugars, followed by fermentation to alcohols,
3) Physical-chemical-biological —> alcohols.
For 2 and 3 to get a commercially viable start one has to be able to separate the cellulose away from the lignin/hemicellulose components of the biomass, and this seems to be a critical barrier right now.
Can anyone shed some light on developments in this area?
Then (for 1 and 2) there is the added problem that most microbes and fungui produced enzymes for stages in these processes are sensitive to substrate mix, and also to the products (e.g. monosaccharides and ethanol) of their actions.
quik cash quik cash
Butanol is a more efficient fuel than ethanol so why don’t we hear more about it? The reason? Butanol is a four-carbon alcohol and typically produced via petroleum distillation methods. Now, DuPont & BP are converting an existing Ethanol plant in England to produce Bio-Butanol.
Butanol is used primarily as an industrial solvent. The worldwide market is about 350 million gallons per year with the U.S. market accounting for about 220 million gallons per year. Butanol currently sells for about $3.70 per gallon in bulk (barge) but with the new methods being used using organic Biomass prices can drop to around $1.20 per gallon. Butanol can also be a replacement for gasoline as a fuel without major engine modifications and can be shipped through existing fuel pipelines.
Butanol has a high energy content (110,000 Btu per gallon for butanol vs. 84,000 Btu per gallon for ethanol). Gasoline contains about 115,000 Btu’s per gallon. Butanol is six times less “evaporative” than ethanol and 13.5 times less evaporative than gasoline, making it safer to use as an oxygenate in Arizona, California and other states, thereby eliminating the need for very special blends during the summer and winter months.
Even the U.S. Department of Energy funded a study of butanol, under a federal DOE/STTR grant from the Department of Energy through the Small Business program (DE-F-G02-00ER86106), in association with Dr. S.T. Yang of the Ohio State University.
There has been little to no effort to promote butanol as an alternate fuel because of historically low yields and low concentrations of butanol compared to those of ethanol; that is, for each bushel of corn you would garner (1.3) gallons of butanol (0.7) gallons of acetone and (0.13) gallons of ethanol with concentrations of 1-2%.
Butanol is presently manufactured from petroleum. Historically (early 1900s – 1950s) it was manufactured from corn and molasses in a fermentation process that also produced acetone and ethanol known as an ABE (acetone, butanol, ethanol) fermentation. However, as demand for butanol increased, production by fermentation declined mainly because the price of petroleum dropped below that of sugar when the U.S. lost its low-cost supply from Cuba around 1954.
If you compared ABE yield to that of the yeast ethanol fermentation process, the yeast process yields 2.5 gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn; with concentrations of 10-15% it becomes very clear why ethanol is considered a better alternative fuel source over butanol. One company, Environmental Energy Inc. (EEI) has developed and patented technology that they believe overcomes the limitations that have to date kept the cost of butanol production from corn and other forms biomass high.
EEI claims they can produce 2.5 gallons of butanol from corn with no acetone or ethanol, whereas most other processes have not been able to achieve better than 1.3 to 1.9 gallons of butanol per bushel and still utilize an ABE process. Some experts in the automotive industry have been publicly praising butanol, so don’t count it out by any means, as new flex-fueled vehicles come to market.
About the ft process using ‘waste’ organic material grass waste wood etc. If you look into the concept of organic farming… organic carbon is the great moderator and life force of and in the soil. Australian soils are on the whole lacking in organic carbon and have been aggravated by the use of chemical methodologies in farming practices. Leading to a long term decline in the productivity of Australian farms with a lowering of the soils water holding and nutrient holding [cation exchange capacity] of the soils. However, I dont know the residue properties left over from the brewing process but from my own experience of the brewing beer there is very little residue.
Therefore, the ft process may be a good idea in the medium term and contribute a small part of our energy needs but I feel that it may do more harm than good.
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Now that petrol prices in Australia are fast approaching $2.00 per litre, I am sure that interest in this subject will dramatically increase. Australia must address the emerging energy crisis if it is to succeed as an economy, otherwise all the hard work of the former Howard Government will be frittered away and wasted. If we can generate more electricity using wind, and transfer our coal to producing petroleum, then that would fulfil several objectives for us here in Australia.
Hi
I have this liquid (see below) it is from wood and i was hoping someone could tell me if this was any good for any type bio-fuel, at present it goes to land fill but there has to be something that can be done other than dumping it, thanks in advance. Ron
Protein %w/w 0.3 Arsenic Mg/Kg 0.107 Boron Mg/Kg 0.20
Total C 18.5 Cadmium 0.02 Calcium 3460
Fat 1.7 Chromium 4.79 Chloride 3850
Moisture 80 Copper 3.97 Cobalt 0.6
Solids 20 Mercury 0.01 Iron 944
Ash 2.1 Nickel 6.37 Potasium 1630
PH 3.55-4.50 Lead 0.331 Magnesium 1280
Selenium 0.5 Maganese 199
Zinc 22.2 molybdenum 0.7
Sodium 4610 Phosphorus 238
Sulphur 399