LCA on Renewable Diesel

Thanks to a reader for this tip. Argonne National Laboratory has just published a Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) of biogasoline, biodiesel, green diesel, and petroleum diesel:

Life-Cycle Assessment of Energy and Greenhouse Gas Effects of Soybean-Derived Biodiesel and Renewable Fuels

I have just skimmed the report so far, but noted a few items of interest. Table 2-1 shows “Current and Planned Renewable Diesel Facilities.” If I had time, I would convert to a table, but I don’t:

Company Size (bpd) Location Online Date

ConocoPhillips 1,000 Ireland 2006
ConocoPhillips 12,000 United States To be determined
British Petroleum (BP) 1,900 Australia 2007
Neste 3,400 Finland 2007
Neste 3,400 Finland 2009
Petrobras 4 × 4,000 Brazil 2007
UOP/Eni 6,500 Italy 2009

In Table 3.3, they list the energy inputs into soybean farming from three different sources. The lowest input? Surprisingly, it came from Pimentel and Patzek.

Also, note this very important note on Page 4 that could throw all of these results out the window:

Note that this study does not consider potential land use changes. Increased CO2emissions from potential land use changes are an input option in GREET, but it was not used in the current analysis since reliable data on potential land use changes induced by soybean-based fuel production are not available. Furthermore, the main objective of this study is to concentrate on the process-related issues described above.

I presume this is in response to the recent Science articles that looked at land use changes from ethanol, and concluded the carbon footprint was worse than for gasoline. For soybeans, it is likely to be worse, because soybean farming is reportedly encroaching into the Amazon.

One thing that would have been a lot more reader-friendly would have been an actual energy balance equation. That is, for 1 BTU of energy input, X BTUs of energy is returned for the various fuels.

Off to Switzerland tomorrow until Friday evening, but I will post something if I get a chance.

Barack Obama Panders

He’s got my vote. He doesn’t take money from oil companies, and is going to punish them for their “windfall profits.” For some reason, Oil Watchdog does show him as having taken $157,390 from oil companies, and I still haven’t heard anyone define “windfall profits.” Of course he does take money from ethanol companies, but that’s OK because this is our key to energy independence (cellulosic ethanol, according to Obama, is our best “short-term” solution).

The best I can hope for is that if he does win the presidency, Bill Richardson is his running mate. I think Richardson is the one of the most knowledgeable politicians around on energy issues.

I have to be honest. Of all the candidates, I thought Obama was a breath of fresh air. But the more I hear him talk about energy policy, the more concerned I become about our future. I don’t think there is any doubt that he will be bad news for oil companies. On the other hand, I can’t stand Hillary. At one point, I really respected McCain for speaking out on the ethanol fiasco. That was before he flipped. I also fear that McCain will keep us in Iraq forever.

Regardless of who wins, I think they are going to preside over one of the most difficult economic periods in American history.

How Corn Ethanol Destroys Rain Forests

At least according to a new story in Time, which is a blistering critique of our ethanol policies. It also documents the change of heart that has taken place among some prominent ethanol boosters.

The Clean Energy Scam

In Brazil, for instance, only a tiny portion of the Amazon is being torn down to grow the sugarcane that fuels most Brazilian cars. More deforestation results from a chain reaction so vast it’s subtle: U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon. It’s the remorseless economics of commodities markets.

It is a sobering article, and well worth a read. It does contain some errors. First, the author repeats (and actually embellishes) the claim that ethanol “provide(s) 45% of Brazil’s fuel.” As I have shown previously, from actual energy usage statistics, it is about 17% of transportation fuel on a volumetric basis, and 10% on an energy equivalent basis. Second, on carbon emissions, the author mentions that the “gains approached 90% for more efficient fuels.” Important to note that while these 80 or 90% carbon emission reductions for next generation ethanol are liberally thrown around, they are all based on models. Nobody has actually demonstrated this. To demonstrate it requires a cellulosic ethanol plant that is highly integrated. The waste biomass must be used to provide power for the plant. There are a number of problems to be worked through - if not we would already have a cellulosic ethanol industry - but these numbers continue to be repeated as if they were demonstrated.

One other paragraph that I want to mention:

There isn’t much sugar in the Amazon. But my next stop was the Cerrado, south of the Amazon, an ecological jewel in its own right. The Amazon gets the ink, but the Cerrado is the world’s most biodiverse savanna, with 10,000 species of plants, nearly half of which are found nowhere else on earth, and more mammals than the African bush.

I haven’t seen a lot of mainstream coverage of the situation in the Cerrado, but I did write about it in the renewable diesel chapter that I recently contributed to a book that is still pending publication. When proponents say that sugarcane isn’t grown in the Amazon, they are right. But the story is much more complex than that.

Truckers Back Speed Limit

In my opinion, one of the quickest ways to reduce our oil consumption in the U.S. is by lowering the speed limits. I suggested this in an essay a couple of years ago: I Can Drive 55. There were a fair number of negative comments regarding that essay from people who didn’t want to be inconvenienced in this way. For me, I prefer the inconvenience now of taking 5 extra minutes to get somewhere over simply not having the oil later on.

Over at Beyond the Barrel, Marianne Lavelle reports that some of the big trucking companies are ready to embrace lower speed limits:

Truckers Back a National 65-mph Speed Limit

A highway slowdown has begun in response to high energy prices—and the big trucking companies are leading the way. Con-Way Freight, one of the nation’s largest trucking firms with 8,500 rigs, has announced it is turning back the electronic speed limiters in its entire fleet from 65 miles per hour to 62 mph.

The company estimates that by keeping its drivers below that speed, it will save 3.2 million gallons of diesel fuel a year, while eliminating 72 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions—the equivalent of removing 7,300 automobiles from the nation’s highways. And with diesel fuel at the current price of about $4 per gallon, Con-Way will be saving $12.8 million per year, a significant figure for a company that saw its operating income drop 27 percent last year to $235 million.

She notes that the move isn’t embraced by all truckers, but I think high gas prices will continue to dictate responses like this.

I am not sure if the airline industry has any viable options for reducing their fuel bills, but they are another industry in trouble from higher oil prices. I had read recently that with oil at $50/bbl, they were very profitable. With oil at $100/bbl, all of their profits were gone. They are in a tough spot; higher ticket prices will reduce demand, but the current ticket prices are losing them money. This is akin to the situation with oil refiners; with oil at $100/bbl, it is tough to pass on price increases and maintain decent margins.

Biogasoline from Shell

I think the general consensus was that the recent claims of agricultural researcher J.C. Bell don’t appear to be too compelling. However, as I mentioned, the conversion of biomass into oil or gasoline should be technically achievable. And today, Bob Rohatensky sent me a link to a story that would appear to have a little more meat to it than Bell’s claims:

Shell and Virent announce collaboration to develop biogasoline

Shell and Virent Energy Systems, Inc., (Virent (TM)) of Madison, Wisconsin USA, today announced a joint research and development effort to convert plant sugars directly into gasoline and gasoline blend components, rather than ethanol.

The collaboration could herald the availability of new biofuels that can be used at high blend rates in standard gasoline engines. This could potentially eliminate the need for specialized infrastructure, new engine designs and blending equipment.

Virent’s BioForming(TM) platform technology uses catalysts to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules like those produced at a petroleum refinery. Traditionally, sugars have been fermented into ethanol and distilled. These new ‘biogasoline’ molecules have higher energy content than ethanol (or butanol) and deliver better fuel efficiency. They can be blended seamlessly to make conventional gasoline or combined with gasoline containing ethanol.

The sugars can be sourced from non-food sources like corn stover, switch grass, wheat straw and sugarcane pulp, in addition to conventional biofuel feedstock like wheat, corn and sugarcane.

The companies have so far collaborated for one year on the research. The BioForming(TM) technology has advanced rapidly, exceeding milestones for yield, product composition, and cost. Future efforts will focus on further improving the technology and scaling it up for larger volume commercial production.

“The technical properties of today’s biofuels pose some challenges to widespread adoption,” Dr. Graeme Sweeney, Shell Executive Vice President Future Fuels and C02 said. “Fuel distribution infrastructure and vehicle engines are being modified to cope but new fuels on the horizon, such as Virent’s, with characteristics similar or even superior to gasoline and diesel, are very exciting.”

Dr. Randy Cortright, Virent CTO, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President said, “Virent has proven that sugars can be converted into the same hydrocarbon mixtures of today’s gasoline blends. Our products match petroleum gasoline in functionality and performance. Virent’s unique catalytic process uses a variety of biomass-derived feedstocks to generate biogasoline at competitive costs. Our results to date fully justify accelerating commercialization of this technology.”

This also reiterates what I have said before: Thermochemical processes such as this are an area to watch. There would be multiple advantages over biological processes for producing fuels. Something tells me that Shell will find this more fertile ground than their investments in Iogen.

Newsflash: Chavez to Increase Oil Taxes Again

When ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips walked out of Venezuela last year instead of accepting radical changes to their previously agreed upon contracts, I think they could see the handwriting on the wall. As long as Chavez has influence down there, oil companies are not going to be allowed to consistently make money. If oil prices are up, he is going to demand a bigger cut. But if oil prices are down, he isn’t likely to reduce tax rates. So I think XOM and COP viewed the situation as high risk, low reward, and decided to exit instead of continue to play games with Chavez.

It should come as no big surprise to the companies who decided to stay - Chevron, BP, Statoil, and Total - that the deals they agreed to would be voided if it looked like they were going to start making money:

Venezuela to impose new tax on oil company earnings

CARACAS, March 24 (Xinhua) — Venezuela will impose a new tax on oil companies for their “unexpected earnings” from the soaring global oil prices, President Hugo Chavez said Monday.

“They’re earning money that they haven’t accounted for,” Chavez said in a speech televised Monday, adding that those large additional earnings are not “a product of any extraordinary effort.”

The government has prepared a bill outlining the tax, he said, but the tax rate has not yet been determined.

The tax will represent the fourth rise in oil taxes in as many years as part of Chavez’s drive to increase revenue from the oil industry and tighten state control over oil fields.

Over the past two years, the Venezuelan government has raised taxes for oil exploration, extraction, processing and selling to foreign companies.

This is the business climate in Venezuela: Take risks, and if there is a reward Chavez will take it. This is already hurting investment there, and I think Venezuela - after seeing an initial windfall - will see much lower revenues in the future as investment there dries up. He is employing an incredibly short-sighted strategy.

Any Biomass into Oil

I have mentioned LS9 here on several occasions, because I think what they are trying to do is pretty cool. They are trying to engineer bacteria that can consume biomass and excrete hydrocarbons. I have said before that I think someone will crack this problem sooner or later.

Then today I just ran across this story:

Anything that grows ‘can convert into oil’

Company finds natural solution that turns plants into gasoline

After three years of clandestine development, a Georgia company is now going public with a simple, natural way to convert anything that grows out of the Earth into oil. J.C. Bell, an agricultural researcher and CEO of Bell Bio-Energy, says he’s isolated and modified specific bacteria that will, on a very large scale, naturally change plant material – including the leftovers from food – into hydrocarbons to fuel cars and trucks.

“What we’re doing is taking the trash like corn stalks, corn husks, corn cobs – even grass from the yard that goes to the dump – that’s what we can turn into oil,” Bell told WND. “I’m not going to make asphalt, we’re only going to make the things we need. We’re going to make gasoline for driving, diesel for our big trucks.”

The agricultural researcher made the discovery after standing downwind from his cows at his food-production company, Bell Plantation, in Tifton, Ga.” Cows are like people that eat lots of beans. They’re really, really good at making natural gas,” he said. “It dawned on me that that natural gas was methane.”

Bell says he wondered what digestive process inside a cow enabled it to change food into the hydrocarbon molecules of methane, so he began looking into replicating and speeding up the process.”Through genetic manipulation, we’ve changed the naturally occurring bacteria, so they eat and consume biomass a little more efficiently,” he said. “It works. There’s not even any debate that it works. It really is an all-natural, simple process that cows use on a daily basis.”

Is it for real? Hard to say. The concept is not science fiction. This is not that far removed from what I worked on in graduate school. Cows utilize microbes in their stomachs that break down cellulose into organic acids like acetic, propionic, and butyric acid. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility that the bacteria could be tweaked to produce butane instead of butyric acid.

However, longer chain hydrocarbons are going to be more difficult. It will take more than minor tweaks (IMO) to get rumen microbes to produce something like gasoline or oil. Long chain acids are produced, but in very low concentrations. Even if they got hydrocarbons produced instead of acids, the hydrocarbons in the gasoline range would be of very low concentration. I also find it a bit odd that “it dawned on him that natural gas was methane.” That’s not really a comment I expect to hear from someone on the cutting edge of biofuel research.

The article mentions a patent - presumably pending - but I have spent half an hour searching for it at the USPTO site without any luck. If anyone runs across it, let me know. That will give me a better idea of whether this is more like TDP - in that very big promises were made that never materialized - or whether there is actually something to this.

Condensed Summary of India

My Host Kapil in the Back

Overall Impressions of India

Here is a condensed summary of my overall impressions of my recent trip to India. The trip was business, but I got to see a lot of country. For a full blow by blow, see my trip reports at my travel blog: India Part I and India Part II.

When I was in high school, the Men at Work song “Land Down Under” was one of my favorite songs. One line speaks of Bombay, which to a farm kid from Oklahoma was the most exotic sounding destination in the world. For me, it was always one of these mystical places like Timbuktu. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined then that someday I would be walking the streets of Bombay (although the name has now been returned to the original Mumbai).

The Poverty

The poverty in India is just stunning. We don’t have anything to compare it to in the West. The people that would be considered very poor in the West have it far better than the poor in India. They are literally starving to death. I once asked what happens if someone has a medical emergency in the slums. “If they have money, they live. If not, they die.”

I think in the West we just tune it out when we see it on TV. But you can’t tune it out when you drive by mile after mile after mile of people living essentially in garbage dumps. I think we treat our unwanted pets in the West with more concern than we have for a starving 2-year-old half way around the world. I was frequently asked what I was thinking about, and once I replied “What it would be like to have everyone in India experience a little of America, and everyone in America come see this.”

A Familiar Site in Bombay

The Traffic

It really isn’t accurate to call it traffic. It is more appropriate to say that chaos reigns on the roads. It’s just a free-for-all out there. I would never recommend that a Westerner rent a car and attempt to drive. You will spend all of your time in a state of confusion, and you will hold up traffic while you try to figure out what to do. The constant honking (in lieu of signaling) was unnerving. For me, Hell would be having to be a cab driver in Bombay for all eternity.

Sitting in an Auto Rickshaw

The roads are shared by people, bikes, motorbikes, auto-rickshaws, and cars. I frequently observed traffic going the wrong direction, and it was quite normal to have someone turn directly across your path. We had drivers who took us from place to place, and they would pass people on blind curves and hills, and sometimes they even passed someone in the act of passing someone else. I don’t think we have a proper frame of reference in the West for the “traffic” in India; especially in the big cities.

The People

The population density is something else. I once wondered aloud just how many people I had seen on this trip. Kapil, the guy I was traveling with, said “Probably a good fraction of all the people you have ever seen in your life.” That is not an exaggeration. We traveled around the country, and with very few exceptions there were people lining the streets everywhere. Several times I would observe a crowd and wonder what was going on, but there was nothing going on. It was just a crowd. But it looked like a constant stream coming out of a major sporting event.

Despite the crowded conditions, I only saw violence once – when a man tried to drag another out of a car after a wreck. The people seem to cope quite well. Crime doesn’t seem to be nearly the problem you might expect in a city that size.

But with that many people comes a great deal of garbage. There was trash everywhere, and most of the time you could smell rotting garbage. One night we stayed well north of the city, but every once in a while my room would fill up with a garbage smell. I presumed the wind had shifted from Bombay.

Travel

It takes forever to get anywhere. You look at a place, and think “It’s only 100 miles.” 3 hours later, you still aren’t there. We spent 20 hours on the road over the course of 4 days. They don’t have rest stops and such with facilities that I could see. But the people I was traveling with never needed them. We would spend 7 hours in the car and never stop for a bathroom break. Needless to say, I limited my water intake on the trip, as I found that bathrooms were treated as a precious commodity. On a couple of occasions when I was in a meeting, I asked for the restroom and found someone standing outside of it, and a sign that said “VIPs and guests only.”

I traveled by train as well. It isn’t for everyone. If you like hot, sweaty bodies packed in like sardines (and that’s in 1st Class), then go for it. The auto-rickshaw was an interesting concept. The fuel efficiency on those things must be outrageous. They are run by a small motorcycle engine, and they sound just like a motorcycle.

Food

During the week in India, I had meat twice. The total I had was about 3 ounces. I would have guessed that I would be constantly starving, but the food is very filling, and very good. I haven’t had vegetarian like that in the West. They have a carbohydrate (usually a flat bread), a vegetable, and a protein. Rice is always part of the meal. This is one thing that I will take back with me: I plan to incorporate some of these meals into my normal diet.

Energy

I will make a separate post on the energy scene in India. I had some very interesting energy discussions while we were there, and toured a sugarcane ethanol factory. India has great potential for producing renewable energy, but with a population over 1 billion, they are unlikely to be able to export that energy in the long-term.

I asked everyone about jatropha. It was funny, because everyone had heard of it, but nobody knew where you could find it. What I was told is that the fertile land is all being used, and marginal land where one might grow jatropha has no infrastructure. Jatropha also takes a few years to mature, so that is an additional complication. My impression is that claims of jatropha in India have been wildly exaggerated.

“Hi, I’m Robert. From Dehli.”

I like to joke around, so this became one of my favorite lines when someone looked at me strangely, or I did something that perhaps was not quite expected. “It’s OK, I’m from Dehli.”

Overall, the trip was a real eye-opener for me. I mean, sure, I knew of these things, but at least for me actually seeing them first hand really sears the memory into my brain.

Off to India

Update: March 19 - Updated my travel blog. I will probably have to split that up into two essays when I have time, and I will add some pictures.

Some Local Color

Update: March 18 - I have been without Internet for 2 days, and just got to a hotel in Bombay. (I have been on the road for 20 hours in the past 4 days). It’s 10 p.m., and I have 52 e-mails to answer. I will try to update this tonight, as I have been working on it offline.

Today I spent my entire morning in a sugarcane ethanol plant. I really went over those bagasse boilers. In fact, I am still covered with bagasse as the entire factory had bagasse dust in the air. I have also been in search of jatropha. I am finding that it is like Bigfoot: Everyone has heard about it, nobody has seen it. More later.

Update 3-16: Just a quick update as I briefly have Internet access. I am experiencing sensory overload. The sights and sounds here are amazing. I saw seven people riding a motorcycle today. Seven people at the same time! I have seen some of the worst poverty I could have imagined, and yet people are still incredibly friendly and helpful. I am learning to speak a little Indian. For instance, the word “bland” means “less spicy.” There apparently is no Indian word for what the West would call bland food. I suspect something that they consider spicy might be fatal if I tried it.

I was attacked by one of those famous sacred Hindu cows today, after she figured out I wasn’t packing food. She tore my Blackberry lose with her horn, and then hit me in the arm. I started to take her down like a steer-wrestler, but didn’t want to cause trouble. But my colleague did snap a couple of pictures that I will have to post.

And since I left my hotel in Bombay, I must have seen a million faces. Not a single one of them from the West. People look at me like they have seen Bigfoot. I am told that in the rural areas we have been in, they may have never seen a Westerner before.

————–

I am off to India early in the morning until next Thursday. My Internet access is likely to be spotty until then. However, provided I avoid malaria - and I am told that I probably will since this isn’t the rainy season - I will update on my travel blog as time allows.

Solar in Abu Dhabi (and Arnhem)

One of the consequences of higher oil prices is that a tremendous amount of cash is flowing into the Middle East and funding business ventures there. I see this a lot in my business dealings, as more and more ventures are being backed by Middle Eastern oil money. Here is a recent example:

Abu Dhabi’s solar venture

Abu Dhabi is not content to just sell you the oil that fuels your SUV; now its going to sell you sunshine to keep your lights on and power your electric car when the internal combustion engine goes the way of the buggy whip. Masdar, the oil-rich emirate’s $15 billion renewable energy venture, and Spanish technology company Sener on Wednesday announced a joint venture called Torresol Energy to build large-scale solar power plants in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the United States.

I think this trend will continue, as the cash-rich oil exporters will be able to fund loads of new business venture. I was speaking with someone about a deal there, and they said “We are only talking about $100 million.”

On the topic of solar, a factory is being built right next to our wood acetylation plant in Arnhem, where I am currently working. I asked a colleague one day what it was, and he said that it was a new thin film solar plant. Like me, he thought that was pretty ironic. I was told that the name of the company is Nuon, but there isn’t a whole lot of information out there on them. Here is a job listing that is apparently for that specific site (location given as Arnhem):

Research Scientist Reliability at Helianthos Solar Cells

Nuon Helianthos is a young, dynamic company that is developing roll-to-roll technology to produce flexible solar cells. Helianthos solar cells will be used in building integrated applications, feeding electricity into the grid directly. The aim of the company is to produce solar cells that enable generation of electricity at competitive kWh costs.

In the period ahead, the Helianthos team will focus on:

Optimization of pilot line production of solar cells, product development and test marketing

Further development of the roll to roll technology towards a full-scale production facility

Producing flexible solar cells requires a series of complex, high-tech process steps. All these steps may have an influence on the outdoor lifetime of our products. To establish this influence and to maximize product lifetime is a very challenging task, both scientifically and technologically.

I found a bit more on a Wikipedia page for Helianthos:

Helianthos is a program focused on the development of solar cell modules that can be manufactured via roll-to-roll processes on long foil substrates. Helianthos is run by a core group of industrial partners and is supported by universities, technology institutes, and other partners. Since 2006, Helianthos is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nuon, an energy company from the Netherlands.

Using this process, flexible photovoltaic (PV) laminates will be fabricated that can substantially reduce the per-kilowatt hour costs of solar electricity. Further, the resulting photovoltaic laminates are lightweight, unbreakable, aesthethic, and offer freedom of design.

PV laminates have the potential to be used for a range of applications, including:

- Large area roofing and other large area applications to generate electricity
- Rural electrification
- Industrial applications
- Consumer applications, e.g. solar cells for portable applications.

Maybe I can trade them some acetylated wood for some thin film solar.