Comments on: Will These 4 Biofuels Be Bonanzas or Busts?

By: Oralia Quivoz

Oralia Quivoz — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:15:01 +0000

Enjoyed reading this post, thanks a ton :-)

By: vince

vince — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:38:53 +0000

Here’s a suggestion,

Why not give up on corn based ethanol and just buy ethanol from tropical countries that can produce it more efficiently. Sugarcane is much much more efficiant than corn. But this will never happen because politics (lobbyists) trumps good science anytime

By: Arturo Velez

Arturo Velez — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:37:20 +0000

Michael,
Great info! Thanks!
The big issue with biomass is that even though there’s still ennough, the logistics are tough! We should produce high yield energy crops. Like agave.
One hectare of agave annually produces 500+ tonnes of biomass -by year 3 after the plantation is established-, yielding 3X more sugars than sugarcane in Brazil, 4X more cellulose than fast-growing eucalyptus and 5X more dry biomass than GMO poplar tree.

The cost of production of one tonne of dry biomass is around thirty US dollars.

Agave thrives on marginal land in semiarid and temperate climates, even on saline or acidic soils and steep hills, requires no watering nor fertilizing, is very prolific and easy to cultivate.

Tens of biofuels and value-added bioproducts can be derived from agave: methanol. ethanol, biocoal, biodiesel, biojet fuel, H2, inulin, biopolymers, bioplastics, phenols, acids, detergent, pressed boards, geotextiles, fructose syrup, concrete additive, healthy sweeteners… making it the perfect feedstock for a biorefinery where electricity, biofuels and bioproducts are produced.

Agave will play an important role in the bioeconomy of the XXI Century.

Arturo
agaveproject2@gmail.com

By: ECSL

ECSL — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:29:34 +0000

Jimbo,

burning fuel obtained through these methods means that we return to the atmosphere the CO2 extracted to produce them (then re-extract from the atmosphere it to create more fuel), so they’re carbon-neutral.

The problem with fossil fuels is that the first stage of the cycle (extracting CO2 from the atmosphere) occurred a long time ago, and we’re returning it now, which is not carbon-neutral over a human time scale.

By: Jimbo

Jimbo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:15:21 +0000

Research into greener fuel methods is a good idea, but I feel that many are missing the point. Even though we may have other cheap sources of liquid fuel for vehicles, the problem remains that we will be burning the fuel and releasing CO2. If we use ethanol, then the emmissions of CO2 will be greater than gasoline because ethanol burns ~20% less efficiently. If the move to ‘greener’ sources of fuel is to reduce CO2 emmissions, then this is the wrong move. Perhaps if biomass fermentation was to be used to fuel electric generators to power electric cars and the exhaust from the generators was scrubbed to remove the CO2, then we have a ‘greener’ method than simply burning something else than gasoline. Please chip in to the discussion!

By: michael hepworth

michael hepworth — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:27:48 +0000

If I’m not mistaken, the process you are referring to for converting biomass to synthetic fuels was invented in 1923 by two German scientists; Karl Fischer and Hans Tropsch. It was based on coal as the feedstock primarily because of the scale required. South Africa currently produces 30% of its fuel requirements using this process as it has no oil.

Recent developments out of a South African university, have resulted in a biomass to liquids process which can be profitable at a much smaller scale, which is good for biomass. The biggest problem with biomass, is that it is expensive to harvest and transport, so will only work with very small scale plants and these are difficult to make any money on.

There is another option and that is to include municipal solid waste as a supplement to biomass or to use MSW alone. Its free, there’s plenty of it and no one likes landfill. However at present few people recognize MSW as a distributed energy resource.

Every year North Americans send about 1.3 billion tons of MSW to landfill. Each ton can yield approximately 1.7 barrels of ultra-clean green synthetic fuels that can be seamlessly blended with existing fossil fuels. This is one of the truly scalable options we have for substituting fossil fuels.

You can learn more about the process at http://abillionbarrels.blogspot.com

By: annie avery

annie avery — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:04:36 +0000

can you say HEMP!!!!!!!??????????????????????? crickey!