Ethanol: Our Answer to Reducing U.S. Dependence on Foreign Oil 58 comments
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I have come across a couple of interesting news items recently that point towards continued viability and growth for the U.S. ethanol industry. As I have written in the past, I believe the U.S. corn based ethanol industry will grow as a viable part of the country’s vehicle fuel structure. The current environment of high corn prices is pushing these companies towards efficiency and innovation. The ground work they are laying now will lead to increased profitability as ethanol becomes a larger portion of total fuel consumption.
The first item is this article about ethanol producer POET expanding into cellulosic ethanol. POET is a privately held ethanol producer that is one of the nations largest, producing over 1 billion gallons per year from 23 plants. The company has announced it has developed the technology to process the corn cobs for additional sugars to refine into ethanol. According to the press release, using the corn cob along with the corn will increase ethanol production by 11% per bushel and 27% per acre of corn. It will be a simple process for farmers to harvest the cobs along with the corn and transport the crops to POET’s ethanol facilities.
Construction of the company’s pilot cellulose processing plant should be completed in the 4th quarter of 2008. POET and the Dept. of Energy are investing $200 million in the new technology. To me it makes a lot of sense for the corn ethanol producers to expand into cellulosic production than to try to start up a whole new industry from scratch.
The second item I found of interest was several articles on the use of ethanol blender pumps. Blender pumps allow the buyer to select the blend of ethanol he desires at the pump. These types of pumps now offer the different combinations of E10, E20, E30, E40, E50 or E85 with the corresponding higher octane rating as the percentage of ethanol increases. Prices also decrease as the percentage of ethanol increases. Recent studies show that blends of up to E30 work well in modern cars with positive effects on mileage. From a press release on one study:
These studies show that moderate 20-30 percent ethanol blends can reduce air pollution, improve gas mileage, and save drivers money in the most popular cars on the road today,” said Brett Hulsey, president of Better Environmental Solutions, an environmental health consulting firm. “Moderate ethanol blends are homegrown in America, can be delivered with existing pumps to current vehicles, and cost less than gasoline. Ethanol lowers CO2 emissions 20 percent from gasoline, making it one of our most effective greenhouse gas reduction programs currently in place.
Fuel retailers in corn states noticed when they installed E85 pumps many of their customers were blending the E85 and regular gas by hand to achieve optimum performance. Blender pumps had long been used in northern states to blend diesel fuel during cold weather, so the solution to offer ethanol blender pumps made sense. From a happy customer courtesy of DakotaFarmer:
“I found E30 was best. It costs less than unleaded or E10 and didn’t reduce my mileage,” says Al Kasperson. He is a former instructor at the Lake Area Technical Institute in Watertown.
By the end of 2009 ethanol producers will be producing enough ethanol to replace 10% of the 140 million gallons of gasoline consumed in the U.S. each year. As E10 is the standard for regular gas in many parts of the country, the ethanol industry needs to find ways to increase demand for their product. At this point there are only a handful of blender pumps installed in states like Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas and South Dakota, but their spread will definitely increase the demand for ethanol.
I have been making the point here that corn ethanol is an integral component of this country’s fuel structure. Those that are calling for an end to grain based fuels will not succeed and the ethanol companies will have a major (and profitable) role on reducing our dependence on foreign oil. I will close with this quote from the website of Senator Barack Obama:
"Twenty years from now our nation’s transportation fuels sector will be powered primarily by domestically produced biofuels, if we have the vision and the will to make that happen,” Obama said. “Just as we sent a man to the moon, we can harness our technological skills and entrepreneurial spirit to end our dangerous reliance on foreign sources of oil. In doing so, we will not only protect our national security, we will also protect our public health, create quality jobs for the next generations, and keep billions of dollars here at home, rather than sending them to nations that want to do us harm.”
Disclosure: None
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This article has 58 comments:
I agree that ethanol is a crucial component toward lowering our foreign oil dependence. However, I completely disagree with corn being the answer. It is well documented that grasses (cellulose) blow corn away for ethanol yield per unit acre input. For example, see:
www.sciam.com/article....
www.nsf.gov/news/news_...
Corn for ethanol drives up food prices and is carbon positive, whereas prarie grasses are carbon negative and would ease pressures on corn prices. For now, perhaps corn is the only way to go until this relatively new find is brought from R&D to actual production and market....none to soon.
-Dave
For once, let's think about out fellow man!
I think your article comes from the right place in illustrating some of the alternatives for ethanol production, particularly in the cellulosic space where harvesting existing plant yields are not neccesarily put at risk. The extensive work being done in alternative biodiesel and biogas production, especially in Europe is also worth investigating, particularly from a vehicular perspective due to the higher mpg yields of these fuels.
Thanks for writing on the topic and getting more exposure out there.
The solution is very very simple, and very very cheap - drive less or drive more economically (= smaller more efficient cars). Pushing 'technology' as a solution is simply a cop out. Oil industry propaganda to keep full production into the future.
Not that you will find me doing any of those things. Why should I care about the planet when the US continues to produce 25% of the pollution from 4% of the population.
Wake up!!!
If you read the current literature, fantastic strides are being made in discovering unbelievable sources of minimally polluting power. The answers are out there, but ethanol is not even a good bandaid.
If the government outlawed the manufacturing of internal combustion engines by 2010 you'd see some quick answers from industry. An absurd statement, I know, but GM is not about to get off it's ass for anything.
We've only begum to see the change over and yet, arbitrage is a significant key to any sort of ethanol speculation as much as the concept. The possibilities of blending may well benefit all sectors of fuel, although the author carefully states that as much ethanol that can be produced can be used for transportation needs. The criticisms of ethanol do not consider a reduction for the demand of fuel, or the cost to transport that fuel and are therefore not fully warranted.
The basic means test will be the day when a gallon of home heating oil once again, cost less than a gallon of gas. At that stage ethanol will have effectively saturated the market.
Corn is a type of grass.
Tim:
Sugarcane based ethanol is a far superior choice to corn based ethanol. We can import it from Central and South American countries.
Of course Barack Obama supports corn based ethanol. He answers to the Acher Daniels Midland company and he is from a corn producing state, Illinois.
T.C.
What is the future is cellulosic ethanol (which uses non food-based feedstocks) . Energy balance and yields are significantly higher than traditional ethanol with the only problem being the expensive conversion process. That's why the U.S. DoE and companies such as POET are investing so much money into developing cellulosic ethanol. With government policies such as ten in twenty, ethanol will continue to grow in the U.S., but more so the 2nd generation biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol and BTL biofuels rather than traditional biofuels.
1 using less energy
2 switching to a vegetarian diet (healthier and 5 times more efficient)
3 switching to electric cars
Ethanol will be part of the bridge to the future, but only for perhaps 5 years.
No amount of vote buying, lobbying, propaganda and poor science can change that. None of this alters the physical fact that it takes MORE energy to make the product than is DERIVED from it.
This is simply a case of Medieval conjuring at work. Indeed, the Sun will orbit the Earth, we'll make gold from lead, and the ICE will run on water before corn ethanol makes economic sense!
But, no, not satisfied with that, this is how they repay us. Pigs at the government trough (81 cents a gallon's worth, not to mention milk at $4 a gallon), and nothing else!
aoxomoxoa - we do have an energy policy in the US. It is: "send your money to Exxon et al".
There are some bio techs out there that could make ethanol realistic, if only that the big oil guys dont buy it up and bury it.
It would take GM to come up with that. After all, they've got to do something to deserve the $50 billion handout the D's and their Green minions (or is that Greens and D minions?) have voted them.
Regardless of the fuel, the ICE is only 30% efficient. We throw away 70% of the energy. Only 5 Quads of useful energy come from the 40 Quads of crude (5 Quads go to PLASTICS, ETC.; THAT MEANS ONLY 1/7 OR <15% IS REALLY USEFUL).
So the answer is the burner* with waste heat recovery* that captures 90% of the energy* and makes it useful energy (as electricity*).
Immediately, then, we've reduced our consumption to 7 mb/d from 21 mb/d of fuel. How's that for reducing crude (import and local)?
Now that 1.5 mb/d biofuel looks pretty significant, doesn't it. And if we were to take the rest of the dryland farming community that gets paid to do NOTHING, and we put celulosic switchgrass, et.al., and canola where possible, etc., we can reach the 7 mb/d a lot easier than going for 21 mb/d which the roadblockers use as negatives, lies, etc.
*So here we go again: A biofuel injected burner encapsulated with solid-state waste heat direct conversion to electricity devices powering a ChorusMotor and the only on-board energy storage device is the GRASS TANK; unlimited range; power of the Tesla; refuel at existing service stations with whatever % of biodiesel to ethanol desired. No drill, drill, drill (Houston) and no ICE, transmission (Detroit) and no capacitor, motive power battery, flywheel, etc (Storage).
Let's see, two trillion for SS and Medicare, another for free health care (Esp. for illegals - Oh, sorry, excuse me, undocumenteds), a half trillion each for Green energy and tax giveaways (Excuse me, stimulus) to people who didn't pay taxes in the first place, and another trillion or so before the next election just in case we missed buying anybody.
That about sums it up. Maybe we can pay for it by just skipping the funding for our national defense entirely. The Russians and Chinese would certainly favor that, not to mention the terrorists (Sorry, enemy non-combatants).
farm.ewg.org/farm/dp_a...
www.ncga.com/news/notd...
Numbers Show How Livestock Benefits From Ethanol (8-14-08)
When the U.S. Department of Agriculture came out with corn production numbers Tuesday that were revised upward to a bountiful 12.3 billion bushels, two areas of corn demand also saw an increase – the amount projected for ethanol use was increased by 150 million bushels to 4.1 billion bushels, and the corn for livestock feed was boosted 100 million bushels to 5.3 billion.
Although the USDA estimates that more corn will go into livestock feed than any other use, these figures leave out another important statistic, according the National Corn Growers Association – the amount of livestock feed that will be produced from the same corn that goes into (is used for) ethanol.
In fact, if the USDA projection holds true, then there will be an additional equivalent of 1 billion bushels of livestock feed derived from the corn for ethanol, in the form of distiller grains (25.3 million metric tons), corn gluten feed (2.6 million metric tons) and corn gluten meal (500,000 metric tons).
“Critics lament how much corn goes into ethanol but often ignore the coproducts and calculate too high a figure,” said NCGA President Ron Litterer. “Distillers grains offer a high-protein feed for livestock and help us meet all needs.”
And the link to the ACE study is great. That piece of propaganda disguised as a "study" is hysterical. Has anyone actually read it?
We should buy the Brazilian ethanol, they would buy the harvesting equipment, fertilizer, etc from us. Sugar cane ethanol returns 8 times the energy used to produce it, corn returns 2.8 times. (or so I've read recently). Globalization benefits everyone. We could grow more sugarcane in the south??
Also not mentioned is Algae. There are quite a few pilot plants around the world growing algae, extracting oil and refining it into super clean deisel. Algae growth can double its volume in 24 hours. Genetic engineering, I'm sure, could increase the oil content. The residue after pressing can be used for animal feed.
Thanks for the botany toxonomy caviat, but it's completely irrelevant to the conversation (unless you were trying to inject humor, in that case: lol?). In case you were actually serious, mixed prarie grasses are not traded on the NYMEX, corn is, and that is one of MANY significant differences between the two. Take a look at the links I provided.
Algae is a good grow method.
So call it a GROW TANK instead of a GRASS TANK.
If your number is correct at 140 million gallons/yr, and we use my biofuel injected burner with waste heat recovery capturing 90% of the energy and making it useful, then we need only 50 million gallons of biofuel per year.
You say POET is already producing 1000 million (that's 1 billion) gallons of ethanol a year (your number) - where's all of it going? Some of your numbers are not adding up.
However, whichever you arrive at, I only need 1/3 as many gallons with my no-moving-parts/no-tra... biofuel-injected-burner with waste heat-to-electric devices, an electric motor and a grass tank with fueling stations where they are today. Goodbye drillers and diggers. Come-on growers.
You really believe that, Tim?
The CAFE standards has a loophole, that being that an E85 vehicle operating on E85 miles per gallon are ONLY figured against the actual amount of gasoline in the blend (15%) if you divide 100% fuel by 15% gasoline you get the multiplier to the mpg (666) therefore a gas guzzling 10 MPG SUV is given credit for 66.6 MPG. If you sell one SUV like this you can have 5 vehicles only achieving 20 MPG and this gas guzzling SUV and you average more than 27 MPG overall while not one of their vehicles really met the standard.
GM is not the only one taking advantage of this free ride Ford and Chrysler are too. The big three are heading down the toilet and this is just their hands clinging to the rim.
Ethanol fires require specialty chemicals not found at 99% of Fire Departments. Don't remember where I read this.
For all of you sugar fans, did you read U.S. Sugar gave all of their Florida sugar land back to the U.S. government to stop the destruction of the Everglades.
Using E-blends greater than 10% voids a new car warranty. After the warranty period it does not make a difference. How many diesel pickup owners run biodiesel in their trucks (against warranty)? Google it sometime.
Mr Eye: At current total production of 9 billion gallons per year every gallon is being bought immediately and ethanol imports from Brazil are growing rapidly and will exceed 700 million gallons for 2008. And 10% is 10%. No equivalent anything. 10 gallons of ethanol + 90 gallons of gasoline. Coming to every gas station near you!
I repeat: what matters is energy, not volume. If cars could be modified to run on a mixture of gasoline mixed with 2% water (with a corresponding loss in gas mileage per gallon), would you trumpet water as contributing to reducing dependence on oil?
Cars can also run on blends of gasoline and methanol. But methanol has only half the BTUs of gasoline, instead of ethanol's two-thirds. So if an equal volume of methanol as ethanol were being used, would you consider their contributions the same?
Methanol is a known carcinigen and poisons the ground water. You cannot substitute it for Ethanol without getting your butt kicked in court. MTBE would have made the Asbestos judgments look small if the oil companies had continued using it.
My comment on methanol was not a recommendation to use it. I was merely referring to it to illustrate my point that the energy content of a fuel (or, ultimately, how far it can move a vehicle with a given volume) matters much more than simple volume, so when people speak of the contribution than any alternate fuel is making to total transport fuel demand they should adjust for its lower energy content.
www.thetruthaboutcars..../
"E85 Boondoggle of the Day: Good To The Last Cob
By Edward Niedermeyer
August 27, 2008
It's always fun to see analysts justify their way to a predetermined conclusion, especially when the facts do not come close supporting it. At the usually on-point SeekingAlpha blog, Tim Plaehn tries his hand at another round of corn juice justification, this time with a new twist: cobs, baby. Claiming that high food prices create incentives for "efficiency and innovation" rather than say, cutting the cord, Plaehn lays out the roadmap for the ethanol industry's next big thing.
Since everyone and their senile grandparents know that cellulosic, not feedstock-based, ethanol is the future, Plaehn appropriates what little future the biomass-based fuel has into the ethanol farm subsidy racket. He points to a company (POET) that uses cellulosic ethanol extraction to squeeze some extra juice from corn cobs, rather than non-feedstock biomass crops, arguing that the expensive technology will extract 27 percent more ethanol per acre of corn.
If we're talking about investing in cellulosic extraction, it makes far more sense to base it off of such low-impact, high-efficiency crops as switchgrass. Except that this far more logical approach would mean the end of government ethanol subsidies to corn producers. So what other miracles does Plaehn forecast to allow ethanol to reduce dependence on foreign oil? More expensive technology of course, only this time we're talking blending pumps which could dial in the exact amount of ethanol consumers want in their gas. Choosing between E20, E30, E40, etc sounds great, but at what cost an all-new infrastructure? That's precisely beside the point for the ethanol lobby, who know that infrastructure-buildin... is just another great way to get the government to subsidize their marginally-viable product.
But this is exactly what you should expect from a heavily criticized, multi-billion-dollar pork project that claims to be chasing "efficiency and innovation" without ever truly exposing itself to market influences."
(And, no, my name is not Edward Niedermeyer.)
Do you know the difference between potential energy and realized energy?
If I buy E30 I have no reduction in, "how far it can move a vehicle," therefore I use 30% less gasoline.
This article points out the big breakthrough in ethanol marketing. No wonder the shorts and ethanol bashers came out in mass. If I can buy E30 and get the same mileage, pay 30 cents a gallon less, send less money to the terrorist, and create less pollution, I will do it every time.
One can be concerned about the dead zone as well as the food supply, they are not mutually exclusive. Ethanol is not produced from food grade corn. You will not "create less pollution." The excess fertilizer that will be released in the gulf will cause severe damage to the gulf and the fisherman working there. What I think you fail to understand is what Subsidy Eye keeps pointing out, ethanol is not as effecient as gasoline. "There is no free lunch." Friedman had it right
Restore the wetlands around New Orleans. It fed off the runoff for centuries untill we wiped it out.
Other than that your response made little sense. If we grow more corn, we have more nitrogen run off. Corn is also not our only source of nitrogen run off. Have you ever seen what seeps from cattle feeding operations? The cattle feed off of the same corn we grow for ethanol.
There are millions of Flexfuel vehicles out there. They all go just as far on E30 as gasoline.
Lets talk subsidies for a minute. For 30 years the price of corn was below the production cost of corn. Farmers made money on price supports ie subsidies. Farmers grow 13 billion bushels of corn per year. They were selling at $2/bushel and getting a subsidy to $2.95/bushel. that cost the American cosumer $12 Billion/year. And that was just corn! There are price supports for Soybeans, wheat, and even tobacco. If we subsidies ethanol 45 cents per gallon and make 9 billion gallons, that only cost $4 billion per year. We are saving tax payer money with ethanol.
Lets convert Tobacco farms to produce food!
On Sep 06 03:59 PM crudeoilcrac khead wrote:
> Dear Rickh,
> One can be concerned about the dead zone as well as the food supply,
> they are not mutually exclusive. Ethanol is not produced from food
> grade corn. You will not "create less pollution." The excess fertilizer
> that will be released in the gulf will cause severe damage to the
> gulf and the fisherman working there. What I think you fail to understand
> is what Subsidy Eye keeps pointing out, ethanol is not as effecient
> as gasoline. "There is no free lunch." Friedman had it right
E30 is as effecient as gasoline, ane you will soon be able to buy it at a station near you. that is what the article was about.
I never said there was a free lunch. Are you suggesting we stop growing this "non food grade corn?" If we do we have nothing to feed our cows and chickens.