Are Biofuels the Answer?

Hi Jeff,

Sure it's encrypted to foil harvesters: {psst just sound it out}

Sea Tea Yankee [at] Ess Tea Eks Vee Eye [daught] calm

And think of a New Englang accent.

OBJOKE:

I was telling my young 'sun' a story about

a puppy named 'Phydeaux', and

a feline name 'Qitea', and

a guppy named 'Ghoti', which is 'fish' tale of course.

I have come up with a highly advanced scientific equation that can be used to express my position on biofuels. It is completely irrefutable if you agree with me. It will certainly be published in all the major peer reviewed journals. Here it is:

biofuel from crops = bad

biofuel from waste oil, waste plant material, and algae grown in the desert = good

p.s. - I like solar power too.

My old 9th grade algebra teacher would be proud. I hope the Nobel prize people know where to find me.

ctyankee in King G. W. s' Court,

I'll see your litre of desalientated water and raise you two kilos of genetically modified food stuffs!

Over population beckons the harbinger of resource short comings. I do not consider myself a pessimist, yet optimism seems as of late an evasive creature. Two hundred years in this exponentially accelerating world is a LONG time. Viral contagions compounded by rising density and compromised human immune systems will play a role in the future. Genetic mutations and variants will also have an impact on overall human health.

I believe the tipping point is not that far away and as we all know, when it is reached it will be too late. What can we do in the interim? You said it, CONSERVE! Yes, a ten percent reduction would buy us more time. Also, if we could just look within ourselves and ask if we really need something to make our "lives" better to facilitate better judgement and avoid consuming everything that gets in our way, what a difference that would make!

To get the GREENROOTS ,for lack of a better word, off the ground. We must collectively hound our local, state and federal representatives incessantly. I do, and little 'ol me likes to believe I have accomplished a goal, from the replies I recieve.

I educate and guide my children daily to espouse the ideologies of conservation. They and their progeny will be the ones picking up the tab and I for one, don't want my great great grandchildren looking back in disbelief, denouncing their heritage because of my actions!

I think most of the posters here are well intentioned, but honestly are missing the bigger picture by quite a long margin

- Biofuels vs. Food production: Absolutely true that biofuels made from corn, soy and other crops are in competition with food supplies. This is an INCREDIBLY complex issue, however it would be easy to solve by simply saying "No.. no fuel from industrially produced sources that use food crops as origin. No biofuels from arable land that is currently in use to produce food crops. No ploughing of virgin land to produce fuel crops." which would force production of cellulosic ethanol.and other by product type fuels, as well as have other positive effects. The downside is that generally the quality of corn, wheat and soy in this country is complete crap anyway, and I don't know that  raising its price so that organically grown, heritage varieties can compete is a -bad- thing. Like I said.. complex.

-  It could also be done that NO tax breaks for crop produced biofuels exist whatsoever, and that ONLY alternative methods recieve subsidy, such as cellulosic ethanol, algae oil, and bio waste reprocessors. We should also implement methane strategies that wouuld allow its use for home fuels (cooking and etc).

But really, the absolute problem here is that we have too many people on the planet. Just before I was born, the world's population was 3.3 Billion.. now it is more than double that. And by the time I die, if people are not reigned in, it will be something like 9 Billion. My hope is that we don't die as a species through the inability to understand that we don't have unlimited reproduction rights.  Because that is what is truly driving the problem.. not just oil consumption.

jeff

 I'd love to have your marketing plan but your site is obviously not finished or working properly.  

What you are offering looks like a public offering of securities which is something that can only be offered by established companies with $100,000 a year revenue, $1 million assets and  approval of the Securities Commission.  Without that you can get into a lot of trouble.

The urban centres we have produced to date are causing global destruction,  so we have to reduce their environmental impact, but from now on if  ALL  new communities do not have zero environmental impact we will continue to destroy our environment.

If your village is truly environmentally neutral the Chinese and Indians definitely need them, and we need them to have them.

A major problem is waste of all kind, and  that has to be recycled locally to  eliminate the waste of unnecessary transportation. 

ANY waste that can be converted into usable energy is doing as much for pollution abatement as it is for conservation.  That is why I believe that Biogas is a major player. 

Developing countries copy "developed" countries, so we just have to build them for ourselves.

As I see it, a sustainable community can exist inside an ecological disaster, but it will have to be off the grid and growng its own food, and processing its' own sewage.  

Happy New Year. 

Jeff, Very nice concept village. I think a lot of people would be interested but don't want to move or leave their know area and jobs.

In Arizona we have a few areas with similar objectives. One in Patigonia and one in Arcosanti . Them seem to be growing and have many artist type who can work from any location. I think this trend will grow and include more and more people.

  It seems to be a prefect retirement location. Then people could have a peaceful location, very little commuter traffic and a slower lifestyle. www.veessa.com  

the solar stacks

ctyankee - if you send an "e" mail address to projectathena.ca@gmail.com we will give you the background that started our sustainable community planning. We need everyone on the team to know "everything".

Hi Synthisol,

  You said: "
If solar panels were doubled in efficiency (with no increase in production costs) then ..."  I agree!  How about if the price of solar panels was reduced by a factor of 4?  Even if the efficiency stayed the same? 

Because that's just what my company is doing.  We've got a
technology that's not PV, it's called CSP (Concentrating Solar Power). 

So that's why I'm here.  I'm trying to spark some interest &
enthusiasm for what my company does.  I also enjoy the forum and the
debate.

Now I just hope I can get some decision makers to keep reading!

The concentrators / collectors are made of aluminum & steel.  Two of the most recyclable commodities around.  Because of their simplicity they'll last almost forever.  The electricity is produced by a generator, copper & more steel.  Then entire system is simple to produce, easy to operate, and has zero-emissions.

 Your also correct about the money for research problem, except it's not a research issue; it's a manufacturing challenge.  The technology is so simple and so stable that investors are afraid that there aren't enough "barriers to entry".  Try convincing an investor to invest in a project where he can't profit at the expense of some other poor SOB...  They want guarantees of big profits, not to attract competition.

When I designed the system, the green aspects were one of my first criteria.  I could have designed it to use exotic materials, and damaging chemicals, but them I'd have had to justify those choices.  So I chose simple & clean.

I knew that there were scams out there too.  The perpetual motion crowd make fantastic claims, and will never deliver, but somehow they attract funds, go figure?  So I set my sights on 15% thermodynamic efficiency. That's significantly less that the best thermal processes out there, and on par with the best commercial PV today.

Then I aimed at the hard target... $50/MWh, that was the brass ring in 2001  That was the price of new commercial generation equipment.  I manages to get it down to $86.  Close, but when you realize that there's no fuel required, and the O&M would be only a few $/MWh, I knew I had a winner.

I think we all want fusion reactors.  Remember "Back to the Future" and Mr. Fusion?  Imagine every home, completely self sufficient for energy... Non-polluting, non consuming vehicles, metals, ceramics, plastics all made without pollution, or CO2, NOx, SOx, dioxins...  Sign me up for that future!

 In the mean time, yup, 'the powers' want more & bigger centralized power, that makes them more $$$, and for as long as folks are willing, or are required, to buy energy, that's going to be the model.

So I'll plug my product again.  We us the DG (Distributed Generation) model for production.  Every commercial building you can think of could deploy one of our systems, from 2500W to 250kW we can put it on the roofs.

From its general appearance, the system's main module is indistinguishable from a commercial air conditioner.  It's a box with a big fan and some pipes & conduits that sits on the roof.  It does it's job unnoticed and unseen.

What is actually accomplished is to reduce some or all of the electrical demand of the building, saving the customer money, and reducing the peak demand on the central generation facilities when the loads are the greatest, usually mid-day to the early afternoon, the dog-days of summer.

Remember, CSP-DG won't replace the utilities, it complements them.  The utilities supply the power when the sun doesn't, and they transport the excess when the local demand is low.  Everybody wins!

Thanks for reading, so who has an idea for harnessing "used oak leaves"  I live in New England, and boy do I have a supply of those!

Hey C.S.,

Your points are valid, if they were correct.  True, they don't use "sweet corn" for the production of EtOH, but the field corn is neither sub-standard nor unfit (unpalatable, but wholesome).  It does demand  water, fertilizer, and pesticides in large quantities.  As far as non-food crops go, no farmer will depend on fallow growth for his livelihood.  So again,  more irrigated fields, more fertilizer & pesticides.  This practice also does not fallow the land, it could be considered crop rotation though.

Lastly, just this year we've seen significant price increases in milk that that are *directly* attributable to the rise in the price of corn, caused by diversion from feed to fuel.  Remember this is just the tip of the iceberg, it takes time for farm practices to propagate through the system.

It's also a detrimental positive feedback effect.  When petroleum is cheap, there is no incentive to divert food to fuel.  So food is abundant & cheap.  As food is diverted to energy at the higher energy prices, food becomes less plentiful and more expensive.  Sure we're not on th path to starvation (yet), but much of the 3rd world is...  And what will happen is that "guilt" fill force us to try to feed the world.  They will take out food and aid, and while we might save lives, they will grow to to hate us, even more than now.

The real danger is wealth envy.  A starving man will gratefully take any assistance offered.  A man who was starving and now has a little food in his belly, might become foolishly brave... I'll leave the implications to you.

We need a new source of energy!  We need to make obsolete the old-fashioned model of scarcity.  We can do it by striving for the elusive "Electricity too cheap to meter" that they promised 50 years ago.  We'll never reach that goal (who would want to?) but we can work towards it.  Imagine that energy costs were slashed by 90% from *everything*...  We can get there, and there are only two technologies we need to fully develop to accomplish it;  Solar and nuclear(not "noo-cue-lar").  I'm championing solar.

It's a difficult situation.  The notion of what to do with a 'waste product' some 20 years from now, is as much a philosophical question as an environmental one.

Many products were developed with the best of intentions and the 'toxic' effects weren't discovered for decades and are still disputed by some.  Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Asbestos, Chromium and a whole collection of "natural" materials have mixed utility and mixed toxcicity.  Lead in a battery is recylcable, lead acetate (sugar of lead) may have contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, and Lead Chromate is on public display in museums and art calleries around the world.

 Slightly less natural chemicals like Freon & DDT saved countless lives my giving us refrigeration & eliminating malaria.  Others like PCB's saved $$$ by increasing the reliability of electric components.

There are no perfect solutions,  everything is a compromise.  What we need to do is look at both the short term and long term challenges and make  the  best informed decisions we can for now.

There will be those that choose to ignore the long term in favor of the now, you mention the third-world recyclers.  They'll take just about any 'garbage' and chop it up.  They rely on ignorant labor, and will likely kill or maim many of  their own workforce before someone or something shuts them down.

In the mean time, we have to look at the scale of things.  If I use
a pound of Chlordane, to kill ants and termites under my house for 30
years, or I drink a case of bottled water a month, which practice is
more destructive to the environment?  Which is more sustainable?  Which
is more cost effective?  The list of questions goes on and on.  More to
the point the 1 lb of soil treatment can eliminate 30 years of topical
treatments... but I digress.

It's not my point that we should be
allowed to poison the ecosphere (Note: I refuse to say "poison the
planet" because it's not wihthin our capability as a species.), but we
need to consider the effects of our decisions.

Now, the big question... Whose responsibility is it?  And here's an important proviso on your answer: You can't legislate morality.  What we need to do is to improve the overall state of mankind.  Not by saying "You can't do that." but by making it unnecessary to do the things that are inherently destructive.  :-)  (aside) I really enjoy a good political/philosophical debate.

DC good points. All items can be abused or used. Even clean solar produced energy can be wasted.

All energy is a trade off, we just have to be efficient and trade off the right things to better the world.

Even the so called cadmium dangerous material to make First Solars panels can be used or abused. It's already produced from zinc mining and a hazard. Putting it into the solar panels makes it rendered nutreal and put to use. What else could you do with it ? I think it turns a bad thing into a good thing. Very similar to using the methane off land fills to run generators. It used the bad gas to produce energy.

We all have to be more open to all types of fuels and work to make and use them in a good way. If we can make a wal mart go green it can take a potential large energy using company and turn it to the good side. Look at GE that makes nuclear plants. It now makes solar panels and wind generators. I think they have seen the light (profits for them) and can do more good than bad.

the solar stacks

     It's not easy but we have to all work together. Forgive 70 times 7. Then we can make progress instead of war. We can make good instead of evil. We can have peace instead of conflict.

I've had to beat folks up with the ethanol/energy ratio issue saveral times... There is a net gain in usable energy by growing biomass anf distilling EtOH, but it's slight when you balance the books on the grand scale.  Yes, there are a hunderd things you can do wrong and turn the process into an energy sink, but if you're careful, the yield can be >100% of the energy invested.

The algae still requires fresh water, even if we could pump seawater into the Utah desert, the salt would accumulate and we'de either have to flush it back out to sea, or spread the brine on the salt flats.  The algae would certainly capture carmon from the air, but we'd still have to supply soluble nutrients and make up for the losses.  What you need to keep in mind is that algae harnesses a fraction of 1% of the energy of the sunlight it intercepts >99.9% simply evaporates the water.  But it is fairly cheap.

Thanks for the plug on concentrating solar-thermal-electric (that's my game).  I believe that it's possible we'll be producing enough energy in 5 years to offset about 1/2 million barrels of oil per day. Yes, it's an aggressive business plan, but once we produce the first few installs and "prove" that we can deliver the systems as promised, our model is inherently scaleable.  Then it's just a matter of managing the growth of the franchise opportunities. No this isn't the like the Citizenre plan of having the largest PV module plant in the world.  Those of us in the business knew instantly that there was no source for the Silicon boules they'd need to make good on their promise.  It's a shame, because the FRA concept is a good idea, an a great benefit to the consumer.  The real tragedy is that the suits will certainly blame the engineers for failing to deliver on their impossibly fantastic promises.  I suppose you can tell where my sympathies are. 

There are certainly some problems with II-VI PV, but some of these are common industrial issues that can be addressed in the normal course of operations.  I'm referring to the toxicity and flammability issues mentioned.  All the hydrides mentiones are flammable; silane, arsine, selenine, etc, but so is propane, butane, octane, alcohol, yada yada yada.

Honestly, I never gave CdTe much credence in the commercial arena.  As an exotic cell material sure, there will always be some small demand for it, but the Tellurium will always be the limiting factor.  It's just not that abundant... The high prices will keep it out of the main stream.  Same goes for CIS & CIGS.

There are good and bad ways to create biofuels, produce solar power and harness other new technologies.

Making ethanol from corn, for example, is an extremely inefficient use of resources. Not only do you have to use prime farmland and a lot of chemicals, water and fossil fuels to grow the corn, but it takes a large amount of energy to turn the corn into ethanol. There is a debate as to whether making ethanol from corn even produces more renewable energy than is consumed in the process of making it.

See: http://www.igreens.org.uk/ethanol_from_corn_.htm

In contrast, making biodiesel from algae farms in desert regions using shallow saltwater pools to grow the algae has great potential. This would theoretically not threaten food crops, use freshwater reserves or require the other intense energy inputs that making corn ethanol does. I read one article that claimed that enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels used in the U.S. could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert. Instead of wasting money and time on producing corn ethanol, this is the direction in which we should be moving.

See: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

I am a big fan of solar energy, but even that can be produced in the wrong way. CdTe (Cadmium Telluride) based solar panels, for example, are not a good thing. Cadmium is an extremely toxic heavy metal that can cause all kinds of environmental problems if it gets into the water and soil. Fortunately, there are many other ways to make solar panels that are not harmful, and new advancements in the field are being made rapidly. There is definitely enough potential solar energy to meet all of our energy needs. It's expensive now, but the costs are coming down, particularly when solar thermal energy is used to generate electricity rather than pv panels.

See:

http://www.renewable-energy-world.com/display_article/272799/121/ARTCL/n...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower

In other words, while there's no good thing that we can't screw up if we try hard enough, there's also great promise for many new technologies including biofuels, large scale solar, etc. The biggest obstacles are ignorance, greed, dirty politics, etc. -- basically the same vices that got us into this mess in the first place. We need to address these core issues in addition to technological barriers.