BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

 Without a total change in US(and world) ag, we could do about 250,000 barrells a day of BD. About the diesel that is needed for US ag, apples thru zuccini. That's 7.5% of the 3.3 million barrells used a day. 

I think this is well known & is - was the reason behind the idea of using algae.

Non BD biofuel is a different deal. 

Martin  

Voltaire:

4=  I then reduced my per acre yield assumptions even further for non algae bio-oil yields and therefore increased my required land assumptions accordingly.  The assumed land plant yield was based on studies at Hawaii where gen modded and cloned oil palm varieties were getting yields of 1200-1600 gallons per acre.   I assumed these were best cases that could not be consistently obtained but that the average yield of these crops and others like them would improve to ~2/3 of the lower of those best case numbers.  Or about 900 gallons of bio-oil per acre of bio oil stock given selective breeding and gene mods well within present Agri-science.

Even if we assume I was overly optimistic in some step above, there is still plenty of margin of error in my favor for my analysis.

QED we =can= replace all crude oil used for transportation with domestically raised and produced biodiesel using only a fraction of the arable land in the USA.

I think you are overly optimistic in estimating how warm it is in the Midwest. And the rest of the cont US for that matter.  

But keep looking. Not only now, but on & off in the future. The only thing I've found is hazelnuts. That's only about 140 gal per acre.  

I'm not anti BD, just have seen nothing that will work in the US as a total replacement. 

Martin 

perotter:

I think you are overly optimistic

That's an understatement. Idealist is closer.

perotter:

   That's only about 140 gal per acre.  

Miscanthus x 10t dry weight/ac x FT = 2bbl/t = ~800gal/ac. And because its a perennial... EROI is high. 200m ac in the USA under plow x 800g/ac = 160,000,000,000gal.

USA uses 22mbbl/day x 40gal/bbl x 365 = 321,000,000,000gal and whatta we gonna eat?

The more south (tropics) one goes... the higher the tonnage goes up. Ive heard there are 30t+/ac cane in production now. Still, cant 'solve' our issues, is only a move in the right direction of getting off the juice.

This is why we need to move to e' society. Its our only well rounded answer. Mirror the desert, harness the waves and wind, gasify the garbage and fill the rest with nuke. You can do e' anywhere on the planet and it never freezes. Storage is existing and getting better all the time. Eventually fision likely solves most of our e' issues. IMO, if one is really looking for a 10yr billion $ project, its fision to e'. Dino juice role moves into industry and not for energy usage.

IMO, the next prez should spend bazillions on our e' infrastructure research so that by 2025, we can have a e' super highway like our Interstate.

perotter:

I think you are overly optimistic in estimating how warm it is in the Midwest. And the rest of the cont US for that matter.  

But keep looking. Not only now, but on & off in the future. The only thing I've found is hazelnuts. That's only about 140 gal per acre.  

I'm not anti BD, just have seen nothing that will work in the US as a total replacement. 

The way to check how optimistic or not I'm being about crop growth in the continental US that is to look at data like the DoE's degree days and solar insolation statistics.  Or the Dept of Agriculture's land use and crop yield statistics.

I do not think any =one= crop is going to make sense as a bio-oil stock throughout the entirety of the continental US.  My suspicion is that the optimal bio-oil land crop will vary from location to location in the US.

Southern climes are lucky in that they should be able to easily grow the existing high yield bio-oil land plants.  More northern locations are going to have greater challenges in obtaining high per acre yields.  The folks in WA and ID have managed to 2x and 3x canola / rape yields to ~254-380 gallons per acre in some cases with experimental strains.

One thing I have not yet seen is an optimal crop rotation plan like that of corn-beans-corn-beans-... for bio-oil stock.  It would be great if we could find a crop rotation along the lines of food crop, fuel crop, food crop, fuel crop, ...  That would take a lot of pressure off the "use land for food or fuel" debate.

In the ultimate, it seems clear we =must= make algoil work if we want biodiesel to be a reasonable large scale solution.  The per acre yields for algae are so high that no land plant can be expected to be able to compete.  That some on this forum evidently have financial incentive to "talk trash" or nay say algoil is a sad testament to individual desires standing in the way of what is best for the overall population.  The numbers will hopefully keep that sort of thing from distorting the discussion away from what are provably the best overall solutions. 

I've never argued that we've got a lot of learning and work to do.  This is a nascent field compared to the literally 1000's of years Native Americans have been growing and optimizing corn or Asians have been growing soy.  But the misguided naysaying of biodiesel by some is simply slowing the process of getting real answers down rather than helping. 

Voltaire math is math, it doesn’t lie. So here is some simple math for you, I will use very idealistic numbers just for you (impossible unrealistic crop yields of using Jatropha of 2200 barrels per square mile per year). There are approximately 677, 000 square miles of usable crop land in the USA including Alaska.

2200 barrels x 677,000 = 1.49T/bbl per year production. Mind you that is idealistic, not possible.

The USA uses just over 8 trillion barrels of oil per year. 1.49 to 8 = (1.49/8) x 100 = 18.625%. I do not care how you try to spin it, it's impossible to replace crude oil with BD period. If you tried, we would all starve to death.

dereckbc:

Voltaire math is math, it doesn’t lie.

At least we agree on this.

dereckbc:

So here is some simple math for you, I will use very idealistic numbers just for you (impossible unrealistic crop yields of using Jatropha of 2200 barrels per square mile per year). There are approximately 677, 000 square miles of usable crop land in the USA including Alaska.

2200 barrels x 677,000 = 1.49T/bbl per year production. Mind you that is idealistic, not possible.

A= Let's not change units this late in the discussion.  1 mi^2 = 640 acres.  So 677K mi^2 =  ~433M acres.  Hmmm.  Good thing I checked.  Your number is too low.  There is ~460M acres of easily arable land in the USA.  There is ~2.3B acres of land in the USA.  Modern land management can grow or raise =something= on about 1B acres of it.  1 barrel= 42 US gallons.

dereckbc:

The USA uses just over 8 trillion barrels of oil per year. 1.49 to 8 = (1.49/8) x 100 = 18.625%. I do not care how you try to spin it, it's impossible to replace crude oil with BD period. If you tried, we would all starve to death.

B= AT NO POINT IN TIME HAVE I SAID BIODIESEL COULD REPLACE ALL CRUDE OIL USE!  How loud do I have to shout this?

I have said that biodiesel could replace all crude oil presently used in TRANSPORTATION.  Only transportation.

I have always stated that burning fossil fuels to make electricity is stupid and has to be stopped.

I've also consistently said that hybrid diesel-electric vehicles are the best path to follow for transportation given the present state of the art.

As for heat, that's a complex sector where the best solution is highly dependent on the environment and use case being analyzed.

There are in fact some products, like many plastics and fertilizers and ..., that ATM =must= be made using petrochemicals.  There are =no= realistic ways of not using petrochemicals for those products.

SO PLEASE STOP CLAIMING THAT I"VE SAID BIODIESEL COULD REPLACE ALL CRUDE OIL USE.  I have never made such a claim.

1= Let's use a realistic crop yield.  5000 gallons per acre =for algae=.

2= 5K gallons per acre * 1M acres= 5B gallons of oil per mega acre= more than 119M barrels per mega acre.  Or more than 11.9B barrels of oil out of 100 mega acres when we've got ~1000 mega acres available.

Even if you decide 5K gallons per acre is too optimistic and cut assumed efficiency =another= factor of 3 to ~11% (1666 gallons per acre), we've got plenty of land to produce enough algoil biodiesel to replace the crude oil presently used for transportation.

FOR TRANSPORTATION, we've got easily got the ability to replace crude oil use with biodiesel if we can make commercial scale algoil.

...and it gets easier if we replace crude oil spark ICE's with hybrid diesel-electrics.  Even easier if the diesel engines are Stirling Engines or something equivalently efficient instead of diesel ICEs.

..and all of the above assumes the USA makes all the algoil it needs domestically.  There is !NO! reason to assume that restriction is required.

Votaire, there is no algae production. My numbers are not too low, you are not accounting for we loose about 16M/2 acres per year from development. Your numbers are too high.

dereckbc:

Votaire, there is no algae production.

Not quite true given folks like Ecogenics, Liberty1, Patrick Ward, and all the other folks working in the algoil biodiesel field at present. 

And of course there are companies that have been raising algae commercially for things like food and drugs for decades.    

But I will give you that there is no large scale =commercial= =algoil biodiesel= production at present 

My numbers are not too low, you are not accounting for we loose about 16M/2 acres per year from development. Your numbers are too high.

The 2.3B acres of total land in the US and 460M acres of easily arable land in the US numbers come straight from the US Dept of Agriculture.  Argue with them if you think those numbers are wrong.

The fact that algae and other non traditional crops along with modern land management techniques will allow us to use ~1B acres for food or bio fuel production is also the result of US Dept of Agriculture studies.

All of my numbers are as realistic as I can make them.  Feel free to provide better if you think you can.

I have not seen the claim that the US loses 16M^2 acres annually to development before.  I have no problems believing it, but there has been too much hot air and too little rigor in most energy policy discussions.  Source?

dereckbc:

No Voltaire it is not BS just simple math. You need to go read your own referenses. I have respect for Mike, but he is talking about theory using Alg-oil with a rate of 15,000 gallons per acre. We all know alg-oil is a pipedream.

Dereck,

I must repesctfully disagree with your assertion that algoil is a "pipedream". There are far too many companies (with a great deal of money) and research labs working on the technology for it to be considered chasing rainbows. I think you will be pleasantly surprised in the next 24-36 months. I've talked with a great number of people who are working in the field and they are absolutely certain it will get to be commercially scalable.

Let's not forget: Current generation biofuels are not THE answer. Biofuels ARE part of the answer and a stepping stone to a clean-hydrogen economy. (Crawl before you walk, walk before you run, run before you fly.)

I've done the research and I know we can be free from foreign oil by 2040 and off petroleum completely by 2050. That's not to say that it will be easy but then nothing worth doing ever is.

Another part of that solution must be doubling and tripling efficiency of all vehicles. 

dereckbc:

Doc, I honestly hope the dream becomes reality, really I do. However I am a biz man/engineer and until I can see positive cash flow, production, and earnings, I will remain skeptical.

By all means remain skeptical.  But the true skeptic is =objective=.  Statements like "we all know algoil is a pipe dream" are not objective.  Nor are many of the other nay saying comments you've made about algoil or biodiesel.

One of the other qualties of a true skeptic is being realistic.

Realistically, one can not make a final determination of the ultimate viability of a nascent area of study like algoil.  There simply has been too few researcher man hours and too little monetary investment in it.  Less, in fact, than any of the other "alternative fuels". 

Voltaire:

Southern climes are lucky in that they should be able to easily grow the existing high yield bio-oil land plants.  More northern locations are going to have greater challenges in obtaining high per acre yields.  The folks in WA and ID have managed to 2x and 3x canola / rape yields to ~254-380 gallons per acre in some cases with experimental strains.

254-380 gallon yields are good & a breakthru. Hopefully these strains(and others) will prove out, thru the whole US. Thanks for the info.

Voltaire:

One thing I have not yet seen is an optimal crop rotation plan like that of corn-beans-corn-beans-... for bio-oil stock.  It would be great if we could find a crop rotation along the lines of food crop, fuel crop, food crop, fuel crop, ...  That would take a lot of pressure off the "use land for food or fuel" debate.

Not doable in the US, but in the sorghum(growing & eating) areas of India they have started growing a sweet sorghum that they get the same grain yield from & then press the stalks for making ethanol. 

The price of food & fuel is to low in the US - today - for something like this. There used to be alot of intercropping(gone together on the same land & the same time) done in the US. In fact, if one checks into a little history, after WW1 one of the main sales point for tractor was to increase intercropping & dual cropping. In practice, it didn't work out that way. 

One BD example of intercropping would be corn/pumpkins - very long successful history. Pumpkins yield 57 gallons of oil per acre.  Math for the 90 million acres of corn.

57/42 = 1.357 barrells per acre of oil

90,000,000 * 1.357 / 365 = 334,602 barrels a day. An sig amount. 10% of daily engine fuel. Plus pumpkin are a good livestock feed. But $

Voltaire:

In the ultimate, it seems clear we =must= make algoil work if we want biodiesel to be a reasonable large scale solution.  The per acre yields for algae are so high that no land plant can be expected to be able to compete.  That some on this forum evidently have financial incentive to "talk trash" or nay say algoil is a sad testament to individual desires standing in the way of what is best for the overall population.  The numbers will hopefully keep that sort of thing from distorting the discussion away from what are provably the best overall solutions. 

 If algae could be made into a different fuel than BD at a greater per acre/ton yield & at a lower cost would it be a disaster?

There is other tech out there that may make algae more easily doable & affordable more world wide.

Martin 

perotter:

   If algae could be made into a different fuel than BD at a greater per acre/ton yield & at a lower cost would it be a disaster?

There is other tech out there that may make algae more easily doable & affordable more world wide.

Good job Martin.

perotter:

Voltaire:

In the ultimate, it seems clear we =must= make algoil work if we want biodiesel to be a reasonable large scale solution.  The per acre yields for algae are so high that no land plant can be expected to be able to compete.  That some on this forum evidently have financial incentive to "talk trash" or nay say algoil is a sad testament to individual desires standing in the way of what is best for the overall population.  The numbers will hopefully keep that sort of thing from distorting the discussion away from what are provably the best overall solutions. 

If algae could be made into a different fuel than BD at a greater per acre/ton yield & at a lower cost would it be a disaster?

There is other tech out there that may make algae more easily doable & affordable more world wide.

The problem with making algoil into something other than biodiesel as an alternative fuel is that whatever you make has to compete with both the greater energy density of biodiesel plus the greater efficiency of diesel engines.

So for instance if we are talking about making cellulosic ethanol rather than biodiesel from algae, we need crop yields =at least= 2.25x better than those we get making biodiesel just to break even with the efficiency of the biodiesel life cycle.

Now the =real= problem for those who want to make some other fuel than biodiesel from algoil. 

Even using conservative yield efficiency numbers, the life cycle EROI of algoil biodiesel is greater than 100.  Relaxing the pessimism on the initial yield assumptions even slightly increases the EROI of algoil biodiesel to considerably better than 100.  Perfect algoil yields (which I do not think are likely to ever happen so this =is= just theoretical) have a theoretical life cycle EROI of close to 1000.

No other biofuel has a life cycle EROI that is anywhere near that of algoil biodiesel's potential.

Only nuclear and extremely high efficiency PV have better life cycle EROI than algoil biodiesel; and neither one of those is at present a feasible general purpose crude oil replacement in the transportation sector. 

...and =that= is why I'm an algoil biodiesel advocate in preference to any other biofuel.

As I have seen stated many times, THERE IS NO ONE ANSWER!  We as a society must look at the whole problem.

Not only do we use MASIVE amounts of oil for transportation but we use LOTs of power for heating & cooling, we have, in the past 30--40 years spread out across the land into subdivisions that tend to eat the farm land that we will need for FOOD & FUEL crops, global populations are still increasing & as is said, they ant maken any more land..

 If we as a people & a race are to survive we will have to look at changing behaviors as well, things like local community farms for food stuff, higher density housing in urban areas, MORE EFECENT HOMES (i.e. monolithic domes)

Why do we still build homes out of tooth picks, then rebuild them the same way when the wind blows a little hard (tornadoes or hurricanes), a forest fire comes thru, or any of a number of other natural events that tend to destroy the average house?

Its part of the same mentality that drives us to by the “Cheap ____ instead of the quality ____ that will last” insert what ever you want.  I have some tools that I bought 2^nd or 3^rd hand, made in the 40-50’s that still work fine,  I’ve bought new tools that didn’t last a year..  Which is better for the environment? 

Something that I haven’t seen on this site is the use of multiple technologies together to get a MUCH better result.  Such as using algae to filter CO2 from the exhaust of coal fired power plants,  or use manure from a farm to produce methane, & turn the methane into electricity in ether a fuel cell or a piston engine.  (Just 2 examples)  I see that many of you are technical people, look at the entire system, not just a little piece.

The most important change we can make is in our thinking and buying habits. Don’t always go  the easy way,  sometimes a little extra thought can have long lasting paybacks if it is thought thru in the 1^st place.