Alternate Fuels

[atr_hugo]

Here is the continuation of the ethanol discussion.

At the Chicago Auto Show, GM - who's been pushing ethanol very hard for the past few years - announced that they have bought into a company called Coskata ( http://www.coskata.com ). Coskata has an intersting solution to make ethanol from a number of different base stocks, including landfill waste. It involves high energy inputs and also water (but less water than corn-based ethanol). Their website has some information on the process and I've seen info from other sources, as I find it (or remember where I squirreled the bookmarks away at - I'll post them).

One of the biggest points in favor of ethanol is that the infrastructure to deliver it from processor to consumer is in place. Gas stations can handle ethanol with little conversion (and in North America it has to be E85, 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline, due to cold start issues with E100).

Two items that need to be defined are 'well to wheels', the cost of getting a given amount of energy from it's source to the point where it's expended, and the other is the notion of 'range, rate of refueling, and performance' - how far can you go before 'refueling', how long does it take to 'refuel', and how well does it perform. No one wants to drive slowly for 125 miles and wait two hours to be refueled.

That said, there are folks in this forum that know a lot more about alternate fuels than I can ever claim to, and I want them to share their knowlege here.

This is about alternatives to fuel as we've known it, gasoline (or petrol) from a base stock of crude oil. (Time out for a book plug, a great history of oil can be found in Yergin's, "The Prize").

Here are the ground rules:

• Partisan politics should not be a part of this - we will run out of oil, we don't know exactly when, but we may have reached peak production already. I'd rather worry about the politics of how do we work across parties to make good choices.
• Quote sources, link to sources, anything you can do to make the information at your disposal available to all.
• Do not take swipes at each other in the process of laying out points/counterpoints, ad hominems are not valid arguments.

There are very few things as important to the western world as weening ourselves off crude oil. How do we do it? It may not be important to us old farts, but youse younguns have a pretty hefty stake in this.

Have at it!

(And with that less than stellar sendoff, watch we'll have three replies and the thread will die in two days. ;-)

[AwesomeBMW]

What? No one has an opinion on Ethanol and alternate fuel sources. I find that kind of hard to believe. So I'll start with a ignorant smart ass remark.

Will it make my car go faster?

[atr_hugo]

If your car is optimized to use it, yeah - especially if it's turbocharged. ; -)

[Stew]

I dont think ethanol is a good solution, at least at the moment anyway. The company mentioned is going in the right direction because corn based ethanol only uses the actual gran, and not the other waste materials of the plant stock. By using actual waste, and other plants in a process that can produce ethanol from the entire plant rather than just the gran is what needs to happen. Also, is ethanol subsidized by the government? A study mentioned on wiki said that if all US corn production were used to make ethanol fuel, it would displace 12% of the gasoline. But what would we eat? And if there is a drought that affected the crops, we would have a fuel and food shortage...so you are really just pushing the same kind of problems around to different areas.

There is no free lunch really, no matter where we get our fuel, there will be some kind of environmental impact...if the demand for ethanol is increasing, there would be a need for more farm land to grow corn or sugar cane. In Brazil they have slash and burning farming that deforestes the rain forest so farmers can raise cattle, that would likely increase if more land is needed to raise sugar cane for ethanol production. Even if we used hydrogen with water as the only byproduct...and all the cars in LA were now hydrogen powered...in stead of a smoggy city, would LA become a foggy city? will it change the environment, with all that water does LA become humid like Houston? Is there more rain, floods, land slides? No one knows, and just like no one predicted pollution and smog due to cars when the gas engine first came out, we may end up trading one environmental problem for another.

One problem with alternative fuels like ethanol from corn/cane, or hydrogen from water, is that they use food that also need to survive. How long would it take for some humaitarian group to figure out that X gallons of ethanol made from corn can easily feed the Y starving people in a thrid world country. There would be that added guilt in that a fun sporty car that gets less milage because the fuel you use up could go to feed some people. A good idea would be to conserve our resources, and make sure we use up all of our current resource, oil and gas, so that we dont leave any behind and waste it...we cant eat or drink oil

[john970]

1/3 of the corn production in this country goes to ethanol - something I will never understand. Brazil is a 3rd world country and they have managed to figure out that sugar cane is better than corn.

I'm sure I am missing some political and other reasons why corn is used here - i'm sure obama will figure it out...

[Nixon]

AwesomeBMW:

Running E85 in your car will give you a 212 Bhp gain. That's 212 more Bhp, just by putting E85 in your tank instead of premium, and running with the computer optimizing for ethanol.

Well, that is if your car is a Koenigsegg CCXR. Otherwise you aren't going to see that full 212 Bhp gain.

http://www.koenigsegg.se/cars_2.html
http://www.supercars.net/cars/3756.html

But yes, in cars that can optimize burning E85, there are significant hp/tq gains from running E85. The Saab BioPower and 9-X BioHybrid are examples of this in more normal cars.

http://www.saab.com/main/GLOBAL/en/m...echspecs.shtml
http://www.saab.com/main/GLOBAL/en/9...id/index.shtml

But there isn't a single Turbo-powered flex-fuel vehicle currently available for sale in the US (according to the US Dept. of Energy). Not even a Saab, even though Saab (owned by GM) sells an ever growing number of Saab E85 cars in Europe.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/prog...-Flexible*Fuel

Just like in Hybrids, there are two ways you can go with building E85 cars. Either you can make a performance E85 car, where you take the same engine displacement and put out more power, at the cost of fuel economy. Or you can make an economy E85 car. Where you use a smaller displacement engine to get the same amount of power (compared to a larger displacement gas engine) while getting better fuel economy.

Saab goes both ways with their BioPower line of cars. Compare these engines in rank for both horsepower and fuel efficiency from top to bottom:

2.3t Biopower 210hp (E85)
210 hp/310 Nm torque
0-100km 7.9 sec
12.8/6.6/8.9 l/100km fuel consumption (lower numbers indicate better consumption)

2.3t 185hp (same displacement, but less power on premium gas)
185 hp/280 Nm torque
0-100km 8.3 sec
12.8/6.6/8.9 l/100km fuel consumption (same as E85 engine, but with less power)

2.0t Biopower 180hp (Smaller displacement E85 engine)
180 hp/280 Nm torque
0-100km 8.5 sec
12.1/6.6/8.6 l/100km fuel consumption (better gas mileage with nearly the same power as the larger 2.3t straight gas engine)

If BMW hired Saab to apply this same sort of optimization to the 135i, it would go from 300hp/300tq to 340hp/332tq. +40 hp, +32 torque straight out the dealership before you even chip it.

But you can't get these kinds of numbers without a turbo. So the entire fleet of current flex-fuel vehicles in the US makes E85 look bad by failing to take any power or fuel economy advantage that E85 has to offer.

Keep in mind that optimization for burning E85 ethanol in engines is a new science. While optimizing gas engines has been going on for decades. There is a current trend among car makers to build more turbo cars. The real benefits of E85 won't be seen until these new batches of turbo engines are sold as flex-fuel vehicles.

To directly answer your question, E85 DOES make MY car go faster.

I mix 105 octane E85 with my gas similar to the way other people mix 114 octane toulene into their gas as an octane booster. My turbo car (not a BMW) is able to increase both fuel flow and boost to optimize for the higher octane. This gives me a performance boost that even my wife can tell. Although E85 doesn't have as much octane as toulene, E85 does already have a full package of lubricants and additives, which toulene does not have. If you have ever thought of running toulene as an octane booster, you might give E85 a look.

So yes, it can make your car go faster.

[atr_hugo]

Sugar cane? - maybe sugar beets in the US. : -)

[Nixon]

New ethanol production facilities are already branching out away from corn ethanol production.

Predicting the future of E85 based upon the assumption of 100% of ethanol coming out of just the existing corn production is a fallacy on many levels.

[atr_hugo]

OK - Nixon, here's a question. One of the things we need for ethanol production is vast quantities of water, we are running the Oglala aquifer dry. I believe we, humans, redistribute water as much as we consume it (or convert it into substances other than water). What are the implications to water consumption with newer ethanol production techniques?

And is the Coskata process similar to the ones you're mentioning?

[Nixon]

Originally Posted by atr_hugo

OK - Nixon, here's a question. One of the things we need for ethanol production is vast quantities of water, we are running the Oglala aquifer dry. I believe we, humans, redistribute water as much as we consume it (or convert it into substances other than water). What are the implications to water consumption with newer ethanol production techniques?

And is the Coskata process similar to the ones you're mentioning?

Coskata is part of it, but the big change is the recent advances in switch grass hybridization that yields much higher ethanol output per bushel than traditional switch grasses. And yeast breeds that put out much higher yields of ethanol much faster. Beer brewers have been breeding yeasts to optimize the production of alcohol from grain for centuries, so there are already breeds of yeasts that give high outputs from corn. Ethanol producers have found a way to bring this characteristic into yeasts that feed upon switch grass. This hasn't been available until now. (Yeasts that love to consume corn die when fed switch grass. Different yeasts are needed, and the old switch grass yeasts weren't very good at their jobs.) Switch grass ethanol at corn ethanol production prices or less is now a scientific reality.

You save some water for brewing ethanol from switch grass by not wasting it on spraying water in the air over corn crops. Switch grass has a fraction of the water requirements as corn for two reasons. First, it simply grows with less water. Second, the entire switch grass that is cut is converted to ethanol, while only the corn kernel is converted to ethanol from the corn crop. There is much less volume of plant matter to grow for the volume of switch grass feed stock required per gallon of ethanol produced. That translates into much less water to grow the same amount of feed stock.

[atr_hugo]

And that leads to a better set of 'well to wheel' numbers.

Could we go astray and also discuss how we best provide the electrical power needed to do the distallation?

[Stew]

Originally Posted by atr_hugo

And that leads to a better set of 'well to wheel' numbers.

Could we go astray and also discuss how we best provide the electrical power needed to do the distallation?

Nuclear power is the only way of producing electricity with out green house gasses and pollution, except for all that nuclear waste you can't deal with, plus the potential for disasters and terrorists....Clean coal power plants would also be good, since the US has a ton of coal...my personal favorite alternative power plant is a solar tower

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower

By the way, I saw on the history channel they had Modern Marvels about renewable energy, some interesting upcoming shows are:

Thrs. March 13 - Modern Marvels: Lube (heh)
Fri. March 14 - Modern Marvels: Oil
Wed. March 20 - Mardern Marvels: The Autobahn

[Nixon]

Originally Posted by atr_hugo

And that leads to a better set of 'well to wheel' numbers.

Could we go astray and also discuss how we best provide the electrical power needed to do the distallation?

Sorry, couldn't tell ya. I couldn't say what the difference is between electricity consumption for refining a gallon of oil and brewing a gallon of ethanol. So I don't know what the delta is, or if it takes more or less electricity per gallon of fuel to brew ethanol vs. refining oil.

Since refining and brewing both require energy input, a certain measure of energy for distallation of a gallon of ethanol would come from not refining the gallon of gasoline that it replaces. I just don't know what those numbers are, and how they would balance against each other. Since yeast is doing the real work in distallation, I don't know if ethanol would come out ahead or behind refining oil. :iono:

[Nixon]

Originally Posted by Stew

Nuclear power is the only way of producing electricity with out green house gasses and pollution, except for all that nuclear waste you can't deal with, plus the potential for disasters and terrorists....Clean coal power plants would also be good, since the US has a ton of coal...my personal favorite alternative power plant is a solar tower

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower

By the way, I saw on the history channel they had Modern Marvels about renewable energy, some interesting upcoming shows are:

Thrs. March 13 - Modern Marvels: Lube (heh)
Fri. March 14 - Modern Marvels: Oil
Wed. March 20 - Mardern Marvels: The Autobahn

I think there has to be a bunch of different solutions for our energy needs. We already have a big mix of energy sources (gasoline, hydro-electric, diesel, nuclear, propane, coal, wind, heating oil, geo-thermal, natural gas, solar, etc...). No single source of energy is going to solve everything.

I think you are right about the need for clean coal, nuclear, solar towers, etc. We'll even need energy sources that haven't been invented yet. Ethanol isn't going to be a silver bullet, it's going to be part of the patchwork of solutions that break our oil dependence.

But first people have to have the will to break the heavy dependence upon oil. People are quick to talk about the downsides of other sources of energy without balancing the downsides with the current and future downsides of doing nothing and continuing our heavy reliance on oil.

[atr_hugo]

Well yeast is just the first component in the distallation process, right? It create alcohol in the liquid by converting sugar into alcohol (actually it eats sugar then poops alcohol ; -). That will get you to maybe 14% alcohol by volume (maybe newer yeasts live better in their waste and can produce higher concentrations of alcohol). Then comes the energy intensive part, removing everything but the alcohol from the 'mash'.

Don't ask me why I'm familiar with that. ; -)

[Nixon]

Think of the new yeasts as an entire breed of Takeru Kobayashi's.

At about 14%, traditional yeasts basically drown in their own waste. MIT has figured out how to get yeasts to survive well past this point, and to digest faster at the same time.

With just this change alone, they have figured out how to get a 50% increase in ethanol production.

http://web.mit.edu/erc/spotlights/yeast_ethanol.html

Higher concentration of ethanol = less work to remove the alcohol from the mash for the same volume of alcohol. (Or more yield of ethanol for the same amount of work, if you want to think of it like that.)

Just this change alone could bump the current production of 4-billion gallons of ethanol to 6-billion gallons of ethanol without changing the amount of crops needed to be grown to make the ethanol. There are no opportunities like that in the oil refining world. There is no oil refining process where you can take two barrels of oil and make it into 3 barrels of refined fuel just by changing how it is refined.

As you can imagine, this sort of 50% boost in output would have a major affect on the "well to wheel" numbers. You will not find any mention of this innovation, or any other innovation in any of the anti-ethanol studies. They all pretend that innovation froze at the turn of the century, and that ethanol production will remain in it's infancy forever. All of their forecasts are based upon the past, not where the Ethanol industry is currently going, or where it will go in the future.

Other recent advances include getting yeasts which traditionally only feed on the glucose sugars in crops to also feed on xylose and other sugars in crops. So a larger percent of the plant matter can be converted into alcohol. Stuff like this isn't included in anti-ethanol "well to wheel" calculations either.

[atr_hugo]

Kewl!!

[e49er81]

Hey this movie is great and i think everyone should watch it.
A crude awakening it won a bunch of awards and it really makes u think of whats to come. heres the website for the movie http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/index2.html

[Nixon]

Originally Posted by atr_hugo

OK - Nixon, here's a question. One of the things we need for ethanol production is vast quantities of water, we are running the Oglala aquifer dry. I believe we, humans, redistribute water as much as we consume it (or convert it into substances other than water). What are the implications to water consumption with newer ethanol production techniques?

I ran across an article on LLN that as an aside compared the amount of water required to refine a gallon of gas, or to distill ethanol from Corn vs. Cellulose. It isn't exactly up to the scientific standard that I'd like to present, but it says Cellulosic Ethanol would REDUCE water needs for producing fuel by up to 33% (from 3 gallons of water per 1 gallon of gas, down to as low as 2 gallons of water per 1 gallon of ethanol).

Note also that the article says Gas and Corn Ethanol require equal amounts of water. So the gallon-per-gallon replacement of gas with corn-ethanol would be somewhere around water-neutral according to this article.


"Cellulosic Ethanol is the flavor of the week and at 105-octane, it is the highest octane rating for fuel on the road today. Made with a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, it is refined not from corn, but from wood waste, switchgrass and citrus by-products. Differing from vegetable-waste-derived ethanol, which takes approximately three gallons of water to yield one gallon of ethanol, cellulosic ethanol takes between 2 and 2.5 gallons of water to produce one gallon of E85. For comparison, it takes three gallons of water to get one gallon of straight gas."

http://www.leftlanenews.com/e85-raci...e85-tahoe.html

Again, when multiplied by other advances going on in the ethanol industry that would increase output for given inputs, there could end up being quite a large benefit with regards to water use in the long term.

Another thing to keep in mind is that as wells start to go dry, one common practice to keep the pumps producing is to pump water into the wells in the extraction process. As more wells run dry, the water demands for a gallon of gas will just go higher and higher.