Great start, but when will a "Industrial"-scale plant be built?

URL to Florida University story on their BioFuels
program: http://tinyurl.com/3x7zka

Couple of questions
1) how does EROEI compare to corn and sugar cane based ethanol?
2) if the GMO bugs escape will they turn everything to mush?

Ben, I didn't want to be the first to point out that this "commercial" scale plant is designed to produce 24 barrels a day. I know of lots of pilot plants that are larger than that. Also, I wonder about the licensing arrangement. How much volume was the production for?

Aussie, the EROEIs that you often see quoted for cellulosic ethanol - in the range of 4 or 8 or even more, have certainly not been achieved. They are hypothetical based on driving the distillation with the waste biomass from the reaction. (Or course it is going to be wet, and I don't think those scenarios ever consider this). At present, cellulosic ethanol certainly has an EROEI of less than 1. I don't care what anyone claims, I know what kinds of ethanol concentrations they are getting off of these fermentations, and right now the distillation portion alone is a huge energy sink. I have run the Hysys models on the process; they still have a long, long way to go before actually being viable without huge subsidies.

I also don't think people realize that we have been working on cellulosic ethanol for over 40 years - since before Moore's Law was with us. Some advocates like to claim that cellulosic ethanol is going to scale up like Moore's Law. My question: Why hasn't it for the past 40 years as computers did?

I think this path we are going down right now is wrong, but it will take a few years for the cellulosic producers to concede what they can no longer hide. The model I prefer is to start putting money into getting solar panels on more houses, and pouring money into PHEVs. The efficiency of direct solar capture versus photosynthesis, plus all of the available rooftops that won't compete with any kind of arable land, make this a no-brainer to me.

Cheers, RR
R-Squared Energy Blog

Robert Rapier,
There have been plenty of reports that show net positive energy for cellulose ethanol with existing or laboratory scale projects, but as you said you ("I don't care what anyone claims") will disagree with them vehemently, say just like how climate change denialist disagree with evidence and no proof can sway them otherwise. Since you are not open to arguing with a open mind I will not arguing with you on any further point on this issue, it would be a waste of mine and your time, I might as well be trying to change your religious beliefs.

swen,
1. Yes net positive production using cellulose is possible and achieved, there have been plenty of report of such especially on this forum.
2. No, GMO E. Coli is not very survivable in nature, and could be engineered as such (though I would have the see the specification on BW34 and KO11 E. Coli strains).

I like step 7 in the diagram......BEER!

As an old bootlegger who knows how much work and energy it takes to produce 200 proof alcohol, I have been very skeptical about efforts to use it for a transportation fuel.

However - Man seems to be making remarkable progress with non-food sources and I am becoming much more optimistic. My money is still on O2 BioDiesel, but if someone designed and built an engine that would take advantage of ethanol's higher octane, likely it would be a step in the right direction.

Also should have mention the Cellulose ethanol is more energy positive then corn ethanol. With recent DOE reports show Corn ethanol averaging 1/1.25 (1 unit of energy in, 1.25 out), while cellulose ethanol averaging 1/1.66.

Robert, with all due respect I tend to disagree with some of your points.

Cellulosic ethanol, biobutanol, algae biodiesel, oil shale, fuel cells, and to that matter solar PV or PHEV are not economically sound (and hence are wasteful from broad EROEI point of view) at present state of the technology. As such, it is premature to waste huge amount of money for their commercialization. Yet, they hold huge promise, and as such justify substantial private and governmental R&D investments. Still, with all money available, nine pregnant women will not produce single child in one month.

As for cellulosic biotechnology, the chocking point is inefficiency and high price of cellulose hydrolysis into simple sugars. Once this problem will be solved, all possibilities – ethanol, methanol, butanol, hydrogen, cattle feed, etc. will be viable. BTW, Iogen survived only because his cellulose breaking enzymes was also good to stone-wash jeans...

EROI matters very little compared to monetary ROI.

Is there a company out there willing (yet) to tell us how much a gallon of ethanol from cellulose costs today?

Forget projections 5 or 10 years down the road - what does it cost NOW?

I predict these companies will be asking for significantly MORE subsidies than corn-based ethanol producers.

And will have a hard time producing more than a small fraction of what corn-based producers make.

Bill,

Any new project will be asking for subsidies, as the price of corn goes up cellulose will become more competitive, as agriculture waste and energy crops are much easier and cheaper to grow then corn is. Also as the price of oil goes up the ethanol becomes more competitive and the need to subsidies drops. Strangely enough the oil industry "needs" subsidies, so I don't see how subsidies are such a detrimental point.

I've seen estimates for the fully encumbered "real" cost of oil ranging from $120 to $480 per barrel. Even if you just consider all the grants, low-cost land leases, and tax credits ever given for oil exploration, extraction, refining technology, and distribution, it certainly runs into the hundreds of billions for an industry that is approximately a century old.

I think it is very much about the EROIE. The financial ROI can be very high for unsustainable industries. The US only becomes energy self-sufficient if the EROIE is high enough on processes that can scale. The financial ROI for renewables will follow over time if the EROIE is favorable enough. At a guess, to replace 50% of our oil, we would need a cellulosic biofuel with an EROIE of 6+.

RR, Photovoltaic may be here sooner than you think. NanoSolar is building 430 megawatts of annual solar cell production capacity (in San Jose and Germany), and says the energy payback on their cells is less than 1 month. Conversion efficiency is ~19%, but they expect the cost to be less than $1/watt.

Then we just need really good storage...anyone? Anyone?

HealthyBreeze,

EV and grid energy storage solutions such as sodium-sulfur batteries.

HealthyBreeze, Unfortunately Nanosolar has failed to deliver on their claims. We're two years past their original 2005 ship date. They raise more money, win more government grants, and produce...... nothing. Also note that semiconductor equipment giant Applied Materials just hired away their chief scientist. The other CIGS companies seem to have similar trouble getting into production. I remain hopeful, but we need product, not more promises.

Well, Nanosolar has leased 645,000 square feet of production space in San Jose, raised 100 million in venture capital, hired away IBM's top manufaturing executive, and claims late 2007 for first product ship, so...maybe they were just trying to get it right the first time? Their claims are very specific. Doesn't mean they're not hype, but it would sure be nice if they're borne out.

"There have been plenty of reports that show net positive energy for cellulose ethanol with existing or laboratory scale projects, but as you said you ("I don't care what anyone claims") will disagree with them vehemently, say just like how climate change denialist disagree with evidence and no proof can sway them otherwise."

Hi Ben,

I love your climate change ad hom. Herr Goebbels would be proud (see, I can do it too). But I will listen to your argument. Do note that this was the topic of my graduate school research, and I am well versed in 1). The current status of cellulosic conversion; and 2). The energy requirements to purify a dilute mixture of cellulosic ethanol. So, please show me the numbers. Just understand that my disagreements are based on more than just "I don't want to believe it." They are based on a sound technical understanding of the science.

So, show me the reports (and not merely projections).

Cheers, RR

"I've seen estimates for the fully encumbered "real" cost of oil ranging from $120 to $480 per barrel."

Just to show how ridiculous such arguments are, $480 per barrel amounts to significantly more than the entire U.S. budget.

While I in no way support any subsidies - direct or indirect - for fossil fuel consumption, don't kid yourself about whom they are really for: The U.S. consumer. They are there to keep that cheap fossil fuel supply going for consumers. True, this benefits oil companies by keeping demand high, but if you put all of those indirect costs on the price of oil, then biofuels would become much more expensive. Why? Because of the crappy EROEI of all the contenders. That means as the price of oil goes up, the costs for all the contenders go up.

Cheers, RR

"if you put all of those indirect costs on the price of oil, then biofuels would become much more expensive"

Uhm, the argument of lackluster EROEI of biofuels is quite exaggerated, is primarily an issue with ethanol, and in any case comes primarily from natural gas or coal inputs, not oil. If oil's costs were internalized, that would rapidly reduce the use of oil in the making of biofuel, because it would encourage more efficient methods and oil would be more expensive than the biofuel or another renewable, especially right on the farm. Ditto for the other fossil inputs.

The consumer gets the shaft from the oil subsidies, because he first has to pay the taxes (or deficits) to pay for them and then is induced to waste a lot (hard not to when everyone is doing it and it's the standard) and then we pay again for the more subtle costs like high military costs, air pollution health costs, economic instability, lack of freedom in the world and related insecurity and reduced global prosperity, growing dependence which means higher oil costs later when prices are higher, encouragement of those prices to go higher because of depletion overall and increased dependence/lower elasticities of demand, poor balance of trade and thus higher import prices, and loss of opportunity to make money on efficient gear or biofuels instead. If the same subsidy money were spent on one of the latter two options (like cellulosic ethanol), we would be making a positive investment in a sustainable option instead of an unconstructive, negative investment in just moving to a worse unsustainable position.

Robert Rapier,

Your aware of ad hominems that good, then you know what burden of proof is: technically its on you as you need to present evidence that celluloses ethanol is highly energy negative and you have yet to do so. Argument like we been working on it for 40 years is not an argument (technically been working on batteries for over 200 years, does that mean its a waste of time or that success is not withing range?) it present no viable premise. I have never seen claims of Moore's Law or 4-8 times energy returns applied to cellulose ethanol either, even if there are proponents that grossly overly optimistic you have present no evidence that they are wrong, only claims. And where you got 24 barrels a day is beyond me, again presenting evidence would be helpful. But all this is moot as you said your self "I don't care what anyone claims" means that there no point in arguing with you: either be you right or wrong there no point in finding out as your not open to concession.

Ben:

In response to your question of "where [Robert] got 24 barrels per day," I submit the following calculations:

24 bbl/day * 42 gal/bbl = 1008 gal/day;

1008 gal/day * 365.25 day/year = 368,172 gal/year;

Where --

a) 24 bbl/day was Robert's figure,

b) 42 gal/bbl is the standard conversion rate from gallons to barrels in the petroleum industry,

c) 365.25 day/year is the conversion rate of days to years,

d) 368,172 is equal, to two significant digits, to the article's stated yearly output of 370,000 gal/year (see first paragraph).

Robert's statement was simple arithmetic.

NBK-Boston,

Well ok I didn't think of it that way. Likewise life seems a lot shorter when you consider most of us won't see our 30,000 day. I guess that calling it 370,000 gallons a year over 24 barrels a day is marketing spin on their part. Even so I was aware these were low production values (370,000 gallons a year verse USA demand of +660,000,000,000 gallons of gasoline per year is not much) and I openly wondered when industrial scale plants would be built.

Ethanol is mainly good for gasoline additive up to 10% only. Anymore than that, and the EROIE and economics of even cellulosic ethanol production will contrast with reality. However, the Brazilians have demonstrated a very viable sugarcane ethanol process with EROIE of 8x, in comparison to 1.25x for corn, or
?x for cellulosic ethanol? But, too bad, we can't grow sugarcane here, and the farm lobby et al using the government, has erected high tariff against Brazilian ethanol.

Meanwhile, waste cellulosic biomass can supply clean and efficient energy for power generation or fuel production (H2 and F-T synthetic hydrocarbon) right now.

I have to agree with one of RR's central points, namely that as the solar conversion efficiency of PV is so much better than photosynthesis via any of the commonly discussed biofuel feedstocks our long-term solution to energy issues seems pretty clear.

Nevertheless, even assuming PV/PHEV plays out to match our wildest dreams there will still be plenty of need for liquid fuels. In fairness to the cellulosic ethanol industry I don't think it's reasonable to extrapolate the next 40 years' progress from the last 40 years given recent developments in nanoscience and genetic engineering. There have been two articles here on GCC alone very recently discussing new membrane technology from two different research groups both claiming dramatic energy efficiency improvements in the very step (ethanol separation from water) that concerns RR the most.

EROEI of current cellulosic procedures may indeed be low, but if the energy in is coal and the energy out is liquid fuel (and we can sequester the coal CO2, a might big IF) then the procedure may well be worth the effort to transition us past peak oil. I would be very interested to hear an EROEI comparison between current cellulosic technology and CTL. I think this would be more immediately useful.

On a side note, HealthyBreeze, can you quote a source on your 19% efficiency from Nanosolar (or any other CIGS thin-film)? I was under the impression that thin-film efficiency is still well below traditional silicon which runs about 22%. Although I too am very hopeful about thin-film I think that number may be a bit optimistic at this time.

Your aware of ad hominems that good, then you know what burden of proof is: technically its on you as you need to present evidence that celluloses ethanol is highly energy negative and you have yet to do so.

Do you recall what you wrote above? “There have been plenty of reports that show net positive energy for cellulose ethanol with existing or laboratory scale projects.” I want you to show me what you claimed existed. I have worked with this stuff before, and I am well-aware of the energy inputs into the process. I have documented them a number of times. See for instance:

The Logistics Problem of Cellulosic Ethanol

and

Cellulosic Ethanol Reality Check

Now I would like for you to show me those papers, or admit that they were actually projections and not based on measurements from actual projects.

Argument like we been working on it for 40 years is not an argument (technically been working on batteries for over 200 years, does that mean its a waste of time or that success is not withing range?)

Let me rephrase then. We are technically still about where we were 40 years ago. We were getting yields back then that we are getting now. There have been some improvements: Nancy Ho’s work for instance. But not much progress for 40 years of work. The reason for that is that cellulose has evolved over billions of years to be resistant to attack. It doesn’t give up it’s secrets easily.

I have never seen claims of Moore's Law or 4-8 times energy returns applied to cellulose ethanol either

Vinod Khosla does it all the time. See his “Outside the Barrel” presentation. The scale-up he does is a Moore’s Law scale-up, and he frequently mentions this in his speeches.

even if there are proponents that grossly overly optimistic you have present no evidence that they are wrong, only claims.

Well Ben, “grossly overly optimistic” means wrong. But see my essays about.

But all this is moot as you said your self "I don't care what anyone claims" means that there no point in arguing with you: either be you right or wrong there no point in finding out as your not open to concession.

For the second time, Ben, give me a reason to be open to concession. So far, you are the one who is providing nothing but claims. What I have provided is an order of magnitude greater than what you have provided, yet you claimed that the studies exist. Show me. If you are going to fall back a 3rd time on “you aren’t open to concession”, then I must conclude that you have nothing.

Cheers, RR
R-Squared Energy Blog

How about using Solar heat for ethanol distillation? If they are going to position the ethanol close to fuel production, there should be a lot of summer sun there.

-Michael McMillan