More stunning stupidity from our elected officials.

We don't need an alternative CARRIER fuel, we need an alternative PRIMARY fuel. The easiest way to get there from here is to promote (waste) biomass gasification/Fischer-Tropsch. In other words, produce the same (liquid hydrocarbon) fuels we are used to, with no concerns about transportation, blending or even changing the existing fleet of vehicles. Simple, eh?

But who is going to have a sensible energy policy when there is PORK to be handed out? So off you go: Hydrogen! No, ethanol! No, methanol! No, biodiesel! No, butanol...

Both of you guys are on track, but the simplest thing of all is to package the dry cellulosic biomass, transport it via trucks to each city and gasify it to produce H2 right on the spot and feed H2-capable vehicles as the biomass is being gasified in the same facility. The heat from gasification can be fed to SOFC for high-temp electrolysis using surplus wind or solar electricity. THe O2 released from electrolysis is then used to feed into the gasifier for more gasification. Waste heat will be fed to Sterling engines for electrical production. Nothing will be wasted and efficiency will be very high. Very low-cost H2 as fuel will be produced. The H2-vehicles will also be NG capable to extend its range even further, or where NG is available but H2 may not be. Coal gasification can also be substituted for biomass gasification if biomass shortage occurs, such in drought times or crop failure. Don't have to walk just because your crop didn't grow!

No need to build the "trillion dollars" H2 dispensing infrastructure as many have suggested. Just build one or two gasifiers per city, generally one gasififer every 100 square mile of urban area, and feed the H2-vehicles directly from the same facility. Rural area can run the same car on NG from pipeline. Why consider about ethanol, grain or cellulosic, or other potentially polluting synthetic fuels, which will be complex and energy-consuming to produce.

Why do we have to spend so much resources to prolong the life of an inefficient unhealty carbon based transportation technology?

ICE vehicles have to be progressively replaced by BEVs even if we have to use interim HEVs and PHEVs for 10 to 20 years or until such time as on board storage units become more performant and cheaper.

All those biofuel plants will become redundant unless they can be converted to food production.

Now is the time to use much more resources to produce low cost high performance electrical energy storage units + clean electricity + higher capacity safer grids.

Harvey:

Your idea is still dependent on replacing a few hundred million vehicles already on the road with EVs, a process that will take many decades, even if the battery technology needed to make it practical for a reasonable cost comes along.

Carbon-neutral biofuels like butanol and algae-based biodiesel will make a much greater impact because there is already a huge market for them, regardless of the inefficiency of the ICE.

In 2004 total energy supply in US (electricity+heat+fuels) was as follows: oil – 40%, coal – 23%, NG – 23%, nuclear – 8%, renewables – 6%. For electricity generation coal was about 40% and nuclear about 20%.

Now the interesting part. From all renewables solar was 1%, wind 2%, geothermal 6%, hydroelectric 43%, and BIOMASS 47%.

Most of biomass was (and is) wood waste, used for heating and most of it – for co-firing in coal boilers (about 5-7% of total calorific input) to generate electricity. More than 20 US utilities use this technology.

Now, in some kind of the virtual world (where couple of posters definitely live), where 100% of electricity is produced by nukes/solar/wind and alike, and we desperately need to replace fossil transportation fuels by something renewable, their vastly inefficient biomass gasification projects would make sense.

In real world, where 40% of US electricity comes from coal, it is way simpler, cheaper, and more energy efficient to combust economically available biomass waste in existed coal plants and heating/steam installations, and gasify saved coal (or NG) into liquid transportation fuels. Actually, this is exactly what China is doing on ever increasing scale.

Does this mean that they still have to create a MSDS standards, for these biofuels? If so, that could be a major problem in getting biodiesel and bioethanol all made to a rigorous standard formula. The EPA and OSHA are pretty strict in regulating chemicals and components. All chemicals must react and behave the same way, hence the MSDS standard. If a standard is not there, this will be a major hurdle to increasing biofuel's growth, if not spelling the end of their use.

Understood - I was not quoting well-to-wheel efficiency. Only the ability for the ICE to turn the chemical energy into mechanical energy. Until we achieve near perfect combustion and stop wasting such vast amounts of energy through heat, I think there is still much room for the ICE to improve, before it outlives its usefulness.

Andrey,
You said: "...their vastly-inefficient biomass gasification project would make sense."

Biomass gasification to BTL via F/T is considered to be 50%-100% more efficient than enzymatic conversion of cellulosic biomass to ethanol. If you would stop right H2 production, you would get even a lot higher efficiency.
Dutch researchers calculated that even with imported biomass transported overseas, BTL via F/T can result in diesel fuel at $2.65/gallon. They concluded that at crude oil price above $60/barrel, large-scale BTL would be competitive with petroleum. Look at the following link for details: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/09/dutch_researche.html#more

Look in GCC index at BTL topic for more info for Biomass to liquid conversion. There is nothing there that indicates BTL is "vastly-inefficient."

It is a sad fact that the majority of US electrical power is still produced from fossil fuel. However, the fact remain that only ~0.5% of desert area in the world is sufficient for electrical needs of the entire world at ~30% efficiency using solar thermal or concentrated PV technologies. Wind electricity and solar PV are fast growing than ever. The day will come when most of our electricity needs will come from renewable energy. It is not a matter of whether, it is just a matter of time! We simply won't have a choice in this regard, eventually.

The virtual worlds of caring, forward-looking, and inventive people of today will become the real world for the future generations, just as the virtual worlds of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla etc. eventually became the real world for most of us!

Mr. Engineer,
One gasifier for every 100 square miles of urban area is not a backyard gasifier. It will be quite a humongous one that will take up one or more city blocks. All the energy generated by the gasifier will be recycled into high-temp electrolysis and for electrical generation via steam turbines or Sterling engines. How can it not be the utmost in energy efficiency? When only a few H2 cars are around, the gasifier station will make synthetic "crude oil" to be shipped to a refinery. When more H2 cars will come out, then less synthetic crude oil will be produced.

Inefficiency of transporting dry biomass? Dutch researchers have calculated that even biomass imported overseas can be competitive with petroleum at current petroleum prices. Biomass gathered locally of course, will be transported with much less cost. With dry biomass packaged into bales, no need for a steel walled tanker used for liquid fuels that can be heavy. Just a flatbed tractor-trailer with the bales piled up high is all that's needed.

Terrorist? The last thing that they would attack would be a hydrogen facility. Fist of all, the H2 tanks will be so strong it will resist any kind of munitions thrown at it, and if it should crack due to a huge bomb, the H2 will leak skyward and will burn at level way way above ground where it will not do much damage.

If I'm a terrorist, I would buy $20 worth of gasoline and let it flow all around the gas station and throw in a molotov cocktail, or trigger a spark via my cell phone. The whole station will engulf in a big fire ball that will burn all the cars around and rupture all the car's fuel tank and like a chain event, the whole neighborhood will go up in flame. It can be done today, in that it does not require any type of explosives or munitions. I hope that no would-be terrorist will read my posting today, or else you'll hear it in the national news tomorrow!

But, I appreciate your feedback, Mr. Engineer!

Roger:

The problem with biomass derived energy is that biomass has low energy density (regular wood waste has 30-50% humidity, and low calorific value even on dry basis), and biomass sources are scattered over big territory with again low energy density. I’ve read many times that max economical radius of wood waste trucking to combustion facility is about 50 miles. Note, that it is for already collected and concentrated biomass waste. Collection of biomass for energy generation purposes is extremely expensive, and requires a lot of labor, time, and ENERGY too. Situation with wet biomass is even worse. Calculated max economical radius for corn stover collection to produce cellulosic ethanol is less than 30 miles.

BTW, it is the reason why some companies (like Dynamotive) are trying to develop mobile small units to convert relatively small amount of biomass to concentrated fuel, like pyrolytic liquid, for economical long distance trucking. Only this will allow for economical operation of large biomass-based gasifiers or alike.

The way they willlikely do switch grass biomass is they will site the plants on rail lines and fill entire trains with heavy compacted rail car sized bails. The modern bailer machines can harvest and bail grass into extremely compacted massively heavy bails.

s for forest based biomass its no different then forest based wood burning power plants. They masicaly mow the forest into shavings and dump that to dry then dump that into the digester. It doesnt have to go far because a forest of fast growing trees can supply a rather big plant without needing to be all that many suare miles. the plant of course would be at the center of said forest.

Forest based bio will be done where fast growing forest farms are the norm. Grass where grass is the norm and algae all sorts of other plances and bah blah blah.

Wintermane said "The problem with biomass derived energy is that biomass has low energy density (regular wood waste has 30-50% humidity, and low calorific value even on dry basis), and biomass sources are scattered over big territory with again low energy density. I’ve read many times that max economical radius of wood waste trucking to combustion facility is about 50 miles." This is only true if one thinks inside the box and considers transporting wet wood. Wood can be dried, made into briquettes or pellets, then shipped in bulk thousands of miles. For example, pellets sre shipped from British Columbia to New England, from Nova Scotia to Sweden. Small pellet mills producing 14,000 tonnes per year can be set up and run profitably using biomass from not more than 5 miles away. Then one is hauling fuel not water with an equal amount of wood added.

Mr Engineer,
Certainly, your point regarding efficiency of liquid fuel via pipeline is valid.
However, transporting dry waste biomass only tens of miles to a few hundred miles is still quite practical cost-wise and not inefficient, in comparison to oil that must flow in pipelines for thousands of miles, since oil wells are not everywhere, while farms and forest are almost everywhere and are quite close to population centers where the H2 will be consumed!

Oil must be imported overseas for quite a percentage of it by tanker, or from Canada via thousands of miles of pipeline to refineries, and then trucked again from the refinery to the gas station.
Waste biomass is processed in the field and is trucked for only a few hundreds of miles to a local gasifier to produce H2, and that's it! no more transportation, as the H2 will be consumed right there in the local community.