1 what up?

2

Wait a minute... energy from cellulose?

We are the Saudi Arabia of Cullitic Women!!

3 1 what up?

Posted by: HawtConservativeKiltMan at October 25, 2011 10:10 AM (GvYeG)

Not your kilt... I hope.

4 And so the thread died... it died not with a bang, but a whimper...

5 And so the thread died... it died not with a bang, but a whimper... Posted by: CoolCzech at October 25, 2011 10:14 AM

I'm not dead.

6 25 Million gallons per year equals roughly 1/2 million barrels.  That is equal to about 5% of the amount of crude oil we import in ONE DAY.

7 Mitt Romney will support or oppose this if you vote for him.

8 it's all bullshit.. and how much fossil fuel does it take to create and transport those 25 million gallons of ethanol?

9

How to collect and compact the corn stover:  Mexicans.  Pay them pennies on the dollar for every basket of corn stover they gather and compress using a retrofitted panini press.

Since neither the Dems nor the Repubs seem to mind using illegal aliens as virtual slave labor, they'd LOVE the idea.

10
Current combines are configured to spread out the corn stover on the ground behind the combine as the corn plants are processed & the corn is collected.

Um, really? so all those farmers cutting corn for silage is a figment of my imagination? now, granted, they're not shipping that to a remote destintation, but they are moving it to a location convenient to their cattle operation.

11 3 I'm not tellin' ...

12 Any energy plan that diverts food production to energy production while we still have huge reserves of fossil fuels and uranium is a crime against humanity (and I say that seriously). The marginal increase in food costs will deny those at the margin of life and starvation. They don't live in this country, so nobody gives a shit about them, but they exist.

Ethanol is killing people.

13

crop residue leftover when you harvest the corn

What usually happens with that? Thrown out or does it go to feed animals?

There was a bunch of corn planted around here this year and it all died. We could see there were ears of corn there, but I guess it never grew enough to be worth picking. Eventually all the dried up corn plants were taken away. I had a faint hope that that was what someone wanted in the first place...

14 Let them drink ethanol!

15
Ethanol is killing people Third World Terrorists.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo (NJconservative) at October 25, 2011 10:24 AM (UYLrj)

- Don't be so negative...

16 Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

17

Posted by: Mama AJ at October 25, 2011 10:26 AM (XdlcF)

 

Under this energy scheme, Mama AJ, you could make some real $ selling your cellulose!

18 ethanol....is not as efficient and costs more.....

19 They built one of those wood chip plants near where I grew up a few years ago. It went belly up last year even with all the gov subsidies. Yes, another green boondogle gone bust.

As for corn ethanol, sugar beets work better. Why are we not using them?

20 Just for a moment, let's assume that ethanol is a good idea.

Let's not, and say we didn't.

I understand what you're saying, but I can come up with counter points for at least the first and last of your arguments, and could probably write off the the second as an "acceptable cost" (if I believed that ethanol was a good idea).

The problem is that we (Conservatives in general) concede that ground far too often.  Our argument needs to be over whether ethanol is a good idea or not first.  Then if, and only if, we lose that argument, can we fall back to "practical" arguments.

This is because the American people (for good reason) have enormous faith in our ability to overcome any purely "practical" or "technical" problem.  So people need to be convinced that Ethanol in gas is a bad idea from the get-go, even if it really were "free."

21

What usually happens with that? Thrown out or does it go to feed animals?

Mama, the corn stover is left in the field to help mitigate soil erosion.  Using it for other purposes would require trucking in some other form of soil control.  Apparently these proponents have never heard of Occam's Razor?

22

Ethanol tastes better if you drink it wearing a kilt ...

23 A few Welfare sows could provide you with a mountain of cellulite.

24 Corn stocks are currently Baled In huge round bales, just like straw or hay. Take a drive through corn country.
Poet has told politicians it has reached the point where it doesn't need extensive Gov't subsidies. Thats for converting corn not cellulose I don't believe.
Cellulose was Bushs' idea from the start. There is plenty of highly erodable acres planted to grass that we the people subsidize as set aside acres and there is no reason that grass could not be harvested and used about three times per year here in the midwest. The techology to turn it to ethanol without expending more resources than it creates is the problem but that window is narrowing.
It is crazy to turn food that feeds people and livestock into gas for cars, better to export food and drill here drill now and use cellulose where it is economically viable (doesn't require long distance transport)
Disclosure I own crop land and Poet stock.

25 As for corn ethanol, sugar beets work better. Why are we not using them?

Two words: Corn Lobby.

Cane Sugar works even better than sugar beets, why not use that?  Or, better, why not NOT use stuff people are eating to make an additive to gasoline, especially considering we had (have?) a perfectly acceptable synthetic (that we'd been using for years before the ethanol mandate) that doesn't reduce the world food supply?

26 Ignoring physics, technology and reality, as is their wont, Congress in 2007 mandated that the US will produce 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2011. Last year, the DOE revised the expected production for 2011 down a bit ... to less than 4 million gallons.

You can write bills and spend money on it, Congress, but you can't mandate technology. Not that you fucking care.

27

Ultimately, the answer to our energy needs is: Drill, Baby, Drill.

 

There is simply no real substitute for fossil fuels in the immediate future, though nuclear is a sensible & truly useful supplement.  Which is why the Liberal Killjoys that simply hate modernity despise it so.

The good news is, there is so much fossil fuel on the Earth, it's absurd we'll be running out in the foreseeable future.  I frankly don't care about a century or two down the line; everyone will be an avowed Gaia-worshipping hardcore Leftist Socialist by then, so they'll take their return to the Stone Ages and love it.

 

28

Ethanol subsidies or no, Europe is DOOMed! Via Slone on twitter.  (hot is only scratching the surface)  The hotness of the ladies on our team makes me soooÂ… tense.  Yes, thatÂ’s one way of putting it, I suppose.  Tense.

29 But what about hemp??

30 I'll throw another problem at you: Science and math.

There is only a limited amount of energy a square yard receives each year from the Sun. That's your upper limit. Now, you're going to capture some of that energy using a plant. That plant won't be anywhere near a 100% coverage of that square yard. Next, the plant isn't 100% efficient at using all the energy from the area it does cover. Nor is it 100% efficient at converting that energy it does capture. Now, some of the energy it does capture is used in the growth process and does not get converted to cellulose or seed. Also, and this is well know to livestock producers, green biomass has more "energy" than dry biomass. (And: Don't forget, these plants didn't grow for free; there's water, fertilizer, tilling, harvest, etc. costs as well.)

But wait, it gets better: So we throw in the transportation and infrastructure costs you mentioned and we've lost even more of the initial 100% from the Sun. But now, we're at the biomass plant. And once again we run into the same problems: The bacteria doesn't use 100%, they doesn't convert anywhere near 100% of what they do use, etc., etc.

But hold on! There's more: We now have ethanol. Now, we're going to spend energy transporting it to market and burning more of it as it isn't as efficient at producing energy as oil.

Somewhere along the line we passed into negative energy production territory--and it was well before the distribution to market phase.

Bottom line: It will never work. For fuck's sake, all this "green energy" bullshit is fingers-in-the-ear, I-can't-hear-you noise. I mean, imagine the US with double the population (which will happen in the not too distant future): How the hell are we going to feed all these people and keep the lights on if large swathes of our arable land are devoted to biomass crops? It ain't happening. The only realistic, long-term energy solution is and always has been nuclear.

31 The true answer is to remove ALL subsidies and mandates from all forms of fuel.

32 You are probably right, especially about corn stover, but I wouldn't count out switch grass.  Switch grass can be grown anywhere, it need not even be a farm. It's is what covered the entire great Plains after all. They could plant it in  national parks . In upstate NY they cut hay on the highway dividers. It's perennial and animals love the crap out of it. We would just be doing some mowing each year. It's not going to solve our problems but it could help in some areas.

33 31 The true answer is to remove ALL subsidies and mandates and government-imposed regulatory restrictions from all forms of fuel.

Posted by: Vic at October 25, 2011 10:37 AM (YdQQY)

 

FTFY

34 Take away all the subsides and the unseen hand will resolve all your queries.

35 Sooo...the economy of the state you live in depends somehow on making ethanol from food crops, which is a good thing, because that juices the demand, keeping prices high, right?

36 31 The true answer is to remove ALL subsidies and mandates from all forms of fuel.

Posted by: Vic at October 25, 2011 10:37 AM (YdQQY)

Amen!  Thunderdome that shit

37 The technology has existed for forty years to suck up hay or whatever and compress it into 1 ton cubes perfect for transport via tractor trailer.  So I don't think that part of your argument holds much water.
On the other hand it can't be stressed enough that corn stover (never heard that term before!) is freakin' cattle feed and cheap fertilizer!1  The farmer sure isn't going to give it away for free.

38 These materials such as wood chips would seem to be more suited for the production of methanol which is a better (but still not economically viable) fuel.

39 There is already a huge demand/market for wood chips, - it's not like they have no value and are discarded to rot.  As an example, there's enough value in wood chips that Japan will pay to have them shipped overseas for beverage carton production.  How could ethanol producers actively looking for and competitively bidding for a low cost fuel source compete with this application?

Or are we naively talking about the types and volumes of wood chips locally produced by Joe Sixpack and Suzy Homemaker when they groom the shrubbery?

40
City kids....

Stalks are left in the fields at harvest for ground cover and to replenish organic matter in the soil. 

Sometimes we would bale up the stalks in big round bales to use as bedding if straw was scarce or cost prohibitive.

Dried field stalks have almost no nutritional value and the livestock wont eat it unless there is nothing else available.

41 Corn Ethanol also ruins the engines that they fuel. Another 'not so hidden' cost of Ethanol.

42 38 And a far better beverage.

43 Stalks are left in the fields at harvest for ground cover and to replenish organic matter in the soil.

AND to bring in the doves

44

The fact is, Energy in this country would be inexhaustibly plentiful and wonderful cheap if it wasn't for the Liberal War on Cheap Energy.  No new refineries built in 30 years... more and more land locked up permanently under federal ownership... the nculear energy effectively destroyed, save for ever creakier existing reactors... 

Liberals have been systematically starving America of Energy for decades now.

45 I used to go to Instapundit. But they were blacklisted by the County Government that I work for.

Meanwhile I can peruse HuffPo all I want.

Yay for freedom! Yay for SEIU!

46
AND to bring in the doves.


..... side benefit!!!!

47 ...and what Jimmuy (30) said.

48 A compelling case could be made for using hemp - the entire plant - for energy.  The plants grow in marginal soil.  During WWI, rail road right of ways were used to grow hemp.  Henry Ford developed an engine to run specifically on hemp seed oil.  Plus, when you're DOOMed, you can smoke it.

49 Canola Oil. It isn't edible. Maybe it is useful for fuel?

50 Insurance Scam Fail, Democrats turn to other ways to raise funds:

http://tinyurl.com/4x453t2

51 A compelling case could be made for using hemp - the entire plant - for energy.

I'll bet a more compelling case could be made to open up ANWR, the California coast, and the like.

52

What horsepucky....

Let me rephrase that:

"Infrastructure? there is no infrustructure for those horseless carriages? we have HAY, and lots of it, no one is going to set up any sort of network of gas pumps, for crying out loud!"

"and besides, Professor Wrigley says that the amount of oil in the ground is almost played out, been saying it since 1875, so there is no point in even investigating this stupid idea!"

"and most of all, There are 125 Million horses in this country, and there is NO way that you could possibly replace them with these new fangled awtomobiels! Everyone knows that"

This is an embarassing post, clearly not thought out. Do not confuse problems with the ethanol lobby with ethanol itself. (oh, and do remember, ethanol does not replace oil, generally, it replaces gasoline)

BB

 

53 But mainly the barren wasteland of ANWR.

54

I'll bet a more compelling case could be made to open up ANWR, the California coast, and the like.

Nah, we saving that to exchange for our Chinese debt, sorry.

55

Using Corn to make ethanol for cars......causes the price of Whiskey and Doritos to go up. ...So, right there we have a problem.

Rick Perry has been against Corn Subsidies all along. ....He is in favor of incentives instead of subsidies. Perry has said many times, that the rising cost of Corn is hurting our Protein Producers. .....Cattle, pork and poultry producers have been having to raise their prices just to break even.

So if you want to keep your whiskey and steaks at a good price.....vote for Perry!

56 Here is a novel idea, how about we make fuel from our abundant resources like oil and coal? That way we don't have to starve millions of 3rd world children to run our vehicles.

57 Oil is the closest thing we have to dirt. I predict we run out of oil the same time we run out of dirt. If we have to subsidize something then how about trying to get hydrogen from seawater. I look back at the hindenburg and wonder why hydrogen was cheaper than helium almost a hundred years ago.  The question is why is all this green bs taking us away from hydrogen research.

58 Another major point that no one ever addresses: Ethanol does not have near the energy that Hydrocarbon fuels, such as gasoline, have. A prime example is when I used to drive from Washington DC to Northern Ohio. I can make that trip, door step to door step (just barely), on one tank of gas. However, making the same trip, in the same vehicle, using E-85 (and yes, it's an E-85 rated vehicle), means I have to fill somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of the way through the trip. I've made this trip on gasoline and E-85 both ways in multiple types of driving conditions and weather. It's always the same. Yes, because of subsidies, E-85 is cheaper per gallon than gasoline, but when you have to use half again as much E-85 fuel as gasoline to make the same trip it's no longer fiscally viable. V5

59 Ronald McDonald in the sidebar is frightening me. I don't know where that finger has been.

60 How little blurbs become long posts. by Russ

61

Hmm. Well, maybe they chopped it up into really small pieces and I just think they hauled it away.

But I still think they really did haul it away...

62 (oh, and do remember, ethanol does not replace oil, generally, it replaces tries and fails to replace gasoline)

Fixed for accuracy.

But this was my point earlier: purely "technical" or "practical" arguments are sub-optimal and should only be used if absolutely no progress is made in the theoretical (is this even a good idea) argument.

As for the theoretical- I'll point out that automobiles came through the regular market-place, not through government fiat.

63 Posted by: Bootstrap Bill at October 25, 2011 10:53 AM (rPFjk)

Weird how all your straw men never occurred, because the market decided what worked best, not a bunch of central planners throwing around money the nation doesn't have.

64 The only realistic, long-term energy solution is and always has been nuclear.
Posted by: Jimmuy
......
+10
And I would further add that not enough research and testing has been done on mini-nukes.  The "smart grid" needed to move all this energy around is simply stupid.  Generate the energy where it's needed.

The same goes for small-scale Natural Gas power plants.  Distribute generation and cut down on transmission costs/loss.

I have no doubt that electric cars or hybrids with acceptable range will continue to improve in the next decade or two.  Start building nukes and NG plants now.  At the same time drill, drill, drill and get us off of foreign oil as quickly as possible.

65

Cunning correspondent cunningly lures naive politician into interview for tough question.  Naïve politician cries like an eleven year old school girl throwing a tantrum then throws tantrum.

66 Did you know that Corn Pops are not made of corn? Just Pops.

67 Remember SUGAR SMACKS?

68

Posted by: Bootstrap Bill at October 25, 2011 10:53 AM (rPFjk)

BB, automobiles were innovative and cost effective.  The market saw them, liked them, and their popularity necessitated the building of an infrastructure to accomodate them.  Demand drove the automobile industry (no pun intended).

What is the demand for ethanol?  What exactly does increasing ethanol production do that would make the cost of building new infrastructure and updating equipment more economically viable than opening up our energy fields to exploration, drilling and frakking, and then mobilizing the refineries needed to process the oil into gasoline, etc?

69

It sickens me that we've convinced ourselves that coal and oil are bad. It is within our ability to reduce energy costs to the point of economic boom. But instead we lend credence to the likes of Al Gore and willingly place our hope in fucking windmills and choo choo trains.

I have zero patience for liberals today. I should just back away from the Internet and do something less aggrivating, like write assembly code.

 

70 "Our argument needs to be over whether ethanol is a good idea or not first. "

Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) is tired beyond tired of the trolls at October 25, 2011 10:32 AM (8y9MW)

Exactly.

And if it is a good idea then the private sector will fall all over each other in their rush to produce ethanol, and we won't have to subsidize it.

And if it is a bad idea, then we shouldn't be subsidizing it!

71 65 OMG Hussein THANK YOU for that. That was hilarious! Mattera is my new hero!

72 Here in western WA state, the Injum reservations(mostly casinos and huge shopping centers) are moving away from 10% ethanol gasoline. Why? I don't know. I get my gas on the Rez now. It's much cheaper because they're skating on the taxes.

73 Corn stover is best processed by bovine digestive tracts. The same ones that fuel the tasty steak and hamburgers I find on my table.

74 66 Did you know that Corn Pops are not made of corn?

Just Pops.

Posted by: soothsayer at October 25, 2011 11:00 AM (vzLhi)

Did you know 100% USDA Beef means all parts of the cow, and I mean all parts of the cow.

75 Did you know that Corn Pops are not made of corn?

Just Pops.

Dad? Oh noes!

76 Well are you just a Negative Nancy.

77 Russ, the difference between "magical thinking" and "sound planning" can be summed up in two words: Analytical rigor. This post, as free of numbers as it is, contains far more analytical rigor than everything I've seen from celluose ethanol advocates. It doesn't provide the answers; it DOES ask the right questions instead of hand-waving them away. Excellent post.

78 The People's Republic of Maryland is looking at a 15-cents-a-gallon hike in the gas tax. I'm looking at property in West Virginia.

79

This is an embarassing post, clearly not thought out. Do not confuse problems with the ethanol lobby with ethanol itself.

Posted by: Bootstrap Bill at October 25, 2011 10:53 AM (rPFjk)

I have always loved ethanol.

80 Ace told him to write a post on pron - not cron. 

81

Cunning correspondent cunningly lures naive politician into interview for tough question.  Naïve politician cries like an eleven year old school girl throwing a tantrum then throws tantrum.

Posted by: Hussein the Plumber at October 25, 2011 10:59 AM (jx2j9)

He needs his binky and a nap.

Possibly Biden is just upset that there haven't been enough rapes and murders yet to convince people to vote for Obama's "jobs" bill.  Maybe that's why the administration is throwing its lot in with OWS.  They've already got the rape covered; they just need the murders. 

Oh, and arson (for the firefighters).

82 "65 Cunning correspondent cunningly lures naive politician into interview for tough question.  Naïve politician cries like an eleven year old school girl throwing a tantrum then throws tantrum." A cat may look at a king. Biden is only a joker. With hair plugs

83 Batman cereal is not made from Batman.  OK, maybe a little Robin.

84 Don't look at me. I've been on the algae band-wagon for years. All the cool kids dig algae. Algae is the shizzzzz, people. You corn people got nothin'

85 Open a gas station near checkpoint charlie.

86 There is not a damned thing to recommend ethanol as a fuel unless its all there is to burn. Not a damned thing.

87 If cellulosic ethanol can be made to work approximately as badly as fermented and distilled ethanol then cotton will become one of many new crops to be fed to the ethanol subsidy nightmare.  Lots of cotton in Texas, where would Perry stand on the cotton ethanol subsidy issue?

88 I really think sea algae is the most viable biofuel. This isn't a rigorous analysis, but see if you follow:

1. Oil deposits, according to widely accepted theory, result from organic matter subjected to heat and pressure.

2. Sea algae is organic matter. There ought to be a way to process it into something oil-like.

3. Sea algae is environmentally icky, anyway. And we don't eat it. So why not process it into fuel?

But I'm thinking bio-diesel, not ethanol. I was at a massive Halloween party Saturday, and the hosts kept the bonfires going with a mix of kitchen grease and biodiesel. It kept the fires burning hot and didn't smell like diesel fumes. Actually, it had a delicious scent of funnel cakes.

89 Ethanol is a beverage.

90 88 The men driving the cultivators keep drowning.

91 Captain Crunch is made from captains. Not really. Midshipmen.

92

Do you know how much energy is released from one burning hippie?

 

Neither do I, but I'd like to find out.

93 The thing about stalk bales is right on the money.  Having a cheap grandfather, I have thrown my fair share of stalk square bales, bean and corn. 

Not to go all hippie on you fine morons, but stripping out organic matter that is normally put back in the ground year over year, is not a recipe for great yields in five years. 

94 There's Batman cereal?

95

Ronald McDonald in the sidebar is frightening me. I don't know where that finger has been.

 

Grimace knows...

96
You're welcome, f*cksticks.

97 So Girl Scout cookies really are made from Real Girl Scouts?

98 What are Moon Pies made from?

99 Don't you get it? It's Free, Freeee! Another way of looking at it is energy density. Left over corn stalks have energy but it's diffuse. We want concentrated energy (gasoline, coal, uranium). Converting diffuse energy to concentrated energy USES energy. Oh, if there were only some way to take the Sun's energy and convert it cheaply to concentrated form. Some way to just pick up the concentrated energy of millions of years of solar energy. It would be nice of such hypothetical energy were neatly tucked away underground so it wasn't in the way until we needed it. But that's just a dream. Drill, Baby, Drill.

100 Ethanol from cellulose has been 5 years away for the last 20.

101 Sine we have at least a hundred years of oil and natural gas to fuel our economy. Why are we fast tracking questionable replacements? Well we know why Al Gore and George Soros need bigger and better stuff.

102 Volatile fuels and the Otto cycle are not the way forward. The Diesel cycle, fed by non volatile bio-oils, from both cellulose from non arable land and algae (which produces ten times the fuel per acre as any form of ethanol) are probably the future of liquid fuels. 

103 Is this an article you wrote for a class?  It feels like a college paper without the footnotes.

104 Which is not to say it's bad or amateurish.  It just feels a little more formal than we usually see here.

105 Corn is the fruit of the plain.

106
Gee, good thing ethanol doesn't cause any problems or anything.

107 "100 What are Moon Pies made from?" Green cheese.

108 100 What are Moon Pies made from? Posted by: FlaviusJulius at October 25, 2011 11:16 AM (ieDPL) Lost yankees.

109 new post.

110 The details provided by Russ are fascinating and show real knowledge about this industry.   But to me the real point is simply that this level of detail exists in every industry -- what you might call "local knowledge" -- and it's simply not accessible to a central planner.   This was the essential point of Hayek seventy years ago, and it's even more true today as society grows more complex.   The inability of the central planner to know enough to plan effectively is precisely why we shouldn't have the federal government trying to pick winners and losers based on an ideological paradigm called "green energy," and precisely why we should instead let market forces determine whether a new technology such as cellulosic ethanol is viable.  

111 You want to know where Count Chocular comes from?

112
Damn.  Link fu.  http://tinyurl.com/6cq5v3s

Ethanol is a major issue in anything other than a car, and even then it's crap.  I don't care so much where it comes from; I JUST DON 'T WANT IT!

113 Was it noted that you can't ship ethanol by pipeline?  Yet another inefficiency.

114

Oh it replaces gasoline just fine, thank you. Again, don't confuse the lobby with the product.

 

and yes, I agree with the fact that the govt needs to butt out. But that does not mean the article is making any points....

BB

115
I am now convinced the corn lobby has taken Russ's kids hostage.....

116 What are Moon Pies made from?

So that's what they did with all those rocks the Apollo astronauts brought back!

117

Any energy plan that diverts food production to energy production while we still have huge reserves of fossil fuels and uranium is a crime against humanity (and I say that seriously). The marginal increase in food costs will deny those at the margin of life and starvation. They don't live in this country, so nobody gives a shit about them, but they exist.

Ethanol is killing people.

 

We'll just add ethanol to the list of left-wing causes that kill people.   Alphabetically, it comes right after DDT.

118 Jimmuy is right. Ethanol at best provides no net energy benefit. Another problem is water usage.  Depending on the area the material is grown in, the amount of water needed per gallon of ethanol can be enormous.  If we were to confine the growth of the crops to the areas that have optimal water supplies, we would never produce enough to make a real dent in our total demand. 

Biofuels are nothing new, if the physics and economics made any sense at all they would be in wide use already without taxpayer subsidies propping them up. You can throw wind and solar in that category too.  As of now there is nothing on the table that can truly replace fossil fuels in terms of efficiency, supply and cost. The search for viable alternatives does not need to be subsidized and in fact the subsidies are harming the effort.  We are tying up capital and human resources on failed ideas.  A truly workable alternative energy idea would be a license to print money so there would be no shortage of private capital to deploy it.

119 doesn't that stuff usually get left where it is so it can biodegrade and return nutrients to the soil?

120 So, other than giving ADM a huge return on their investments in the political careers of Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley, does corn ethanol provide any benefit to anyone?

121 I have one counter point on your corn stover issues (it doesn't really change the economies but still, better to get it 'right').

There already are machines that would do the compacting of the stover, hay bailers (my parents farm hay). All that would need to be added would be a new harvesting end to the bailer itself, as farmers that have them already would have the equipment to collect them from the fields (assuming it would be bailed as 'round bails') which is a giant spike attachment to a tractor.

But regardless of that, its still crap for energy density. I wish I had kept a link to an article I read about the correlation to energy density and human advancement (eg, from wood to coal to oil to nuclear).

122 Ooh, time for me to be unpopular again.

Russ, your arguments are true, but there are ways around them.  First of all, you have to understand that the potential for cellulosic biofuel is really a binary system.  It is either a limited industry because of the problems you state, only contributing a billion or two gallons of fuel a year, or it will be a huge industry of potentially 100 billion gallons/year.  It all depends on how transformative it can be.  Yes, it will be limited at first, but the potential is there.

1) Infrastructure.

I can assure you that these problems are taken into account.  Nobody thinks that corn stover is a free feedstock, at least nobody seriously involved in it.  The cost for new equipment, etc, is already built in to the assumptions for the cost of corn stover.  Even with those assumptions, its still cheaper than switchgrass and still close to commercially viable.

The issue with transportation is also well known and has gotten a lot of attention recently in the cellulosic community and among the industry.  Yes, compaction will most likely be necessary and will likely be performed close to the farms.  No, the costs are not as high as you think they might be.  You'll have to trust me on this one, because it's one of the technologies my company works with and we have a unique approach.  And yes, the densified biomass can be shipped wherever you want.  A high efficiency device can densify corn stover to the same density as corn, and corn is transported everywhere on rail.  Why can't the same be true for corn stover?

2) Corn cobs, at the very least, have no positive environmental benefit to leaving on the soil.  Various studies suggest you can collect between 1/4 and 1/2 of the stover as well.  Or, alternatively, you can change your farming practices to allow for more stover to be removed (moving to no-till planting helps a lot, for example).  Obviously there are trade-offs involved, but since when did a conservative not realize that one should consider tradeoffs?  Mentioning an environmental negative and saying that we should never ever ever do something because of it sounds like liberal thinking.  Corn is already a really bad crop environmentally speaking; should we stop planting that too?

3) Yeah, switchgrass isn't going to replace corn.  So no worries.  But there's an awful lot of states outside of Iowa, you know =)  I noticed you moved out west when considering where grasses can be grown, but didn't move South.  Corn ain't grown down there.  Chances are, the first switchgrass-based biorefinery will be in Tennessee, and there are plenty of people looking even further south as well.  And also, there's no reason a refinery needs to be chained to a single feedstock.  Even in the corn belt, there's areas of land not suitable for corn.  Grasses can be grown there and mixed in with harvested corn stover for a refinery to use.

As for a more general comment, I mentioned the binary vision earlier, that cellulosics will be either very small or very large.  Right now, trying to fit celllulosics into our starch/oilseed/leafy forage agricultural system is very difficult, and hard to see if you don't know the potential of cellulosic biomass. 

But believe me, the potential is there.  Ethanol is the tip of the iceberg.  The savvier companies are already thinking of ethanol (or other biofuels) as practically a by-product and are salivating over the thought of using this feedstock for some serious high-profit endeavors.  The technology I'm working with has the potential to be a huge money maker regardless of government subsidies (I don't even look at that possibility) and practically regardless of what the cost of the corn stover is. 

Seriously, there were practical limitations to all of the transformative technologies that we now take for granted.  Saying "it'll never work" just because there are serious hurdles sounds practically Malthusian in its pessimism.

123 Bootstrap Bill, you illiterate heel: We've been making ethanol for the better part of 15,000 years. If they technology isn't in place by now to make it a viable fuel source it never will be.

124

One more thing:

 

I know back in the day (2000 ish) there was a company that used plants to soak up contaminints, you know, poppies for Lead, clover for Copper, etc, etc. Daimler Benz made a big deal about cleaning up a Manufactory with it, using a series of plants. I followed the company, the technology seemed very interesting....anyways, they set up a tailings pond for a Coal mine, I think it was. And to absorb the excess water, etc, they looked at corn, and said no way, too much work, etc. The demon of choice was the Aspen tree, or Poplar. Around here, the western poplar is a weed, and grows like it. So I think harvesting that, just like they do for pulp and paper, is quite feasible. And there is a lot of it. Remember, for the free market, they goal is not to replace oil, but to make cheaper fuel. Save the oil for higher end uses, like plastics and paints.

 

Bill

125 About the equipment to collect corn stover. The farmers use hay rakes and balers to bale the cornstalks. It's a quite common practice nowdays.

126 Also a true farmer would make his own alcohol to run his equipment. Excess would be sold off. I'm not talking about the 40 acre hobby farmer either. 

127

Boned, I am a very literate heel, thank you.

 

Actually, we have used it for fuel before (and do, some, now). Am I the only one who remember alcohol burning funny cars? 3000 HP monsters that threw fire back and made the kids squeal?

 

I wish more people here were ECONOMICALLY literate. Oil at 12 bucks a barrel? maybe ethanol is a non starter. Oil is....93.58 right now, (nymex WTI). maybe ethanol is a better idea. No reason not to invest in it. The thing is, the people who should be investing in the tech is Venture Capital, not Government. VCs follow risk better, and respond to the reality of the situation... Energy Czars, not so much it seems.

 

I don't know why people are confusing the subsidies with the idea of using ethanol. ethanol makes good sense, and I have NO idea why the greens are pushing it. Still puts carbon dioxide in the air, and I still get my little plebian hands on my own automobile, so I would assume they are against it....but no.

 

Bill

128

Posted by: Vic at October 25, 2011 10:31 AM (YdQQY)

 

Soperton,GA?

129

  Balers do a good job of collecting cornstalks for feeding to cattle or using as bedding, but what you need for this sort of operation is a machine that collects the corn byproducts right out of the combine and compacts it for transport by semitrailer.  Balers pick up material right off the ground, which is an inefficient way to collect it if you intend to use it for fuel production.  It would work in a pinch, but your transportation costs for moving baled material would be more than the costs for moving compacted material on a per pound basis.

 

And for the guy who suggested that sileage equipment would work for this sort of thing.  You DO realize that sileage chops up the WHOLE DAMN THING, right?  Corn, stalk, everything.  I'm talking about a system that collects the leftovers AFTER you separate off the corn for other uses.  Not exactly oranges & oranges, now is it?

130 49 Canola Oil. It isn't edible.

What? (And it is used for bio diesel.)

131 Bootstrap Bill at October 25, 2011 12:02

ethanol makes good sense,.....

The thing is, the people who should be investing in the tech is Venture Capital,..

The reason ethanol doesn't attract venture capital (without subsidy) is because ethanol does NOT make sense.  BTW, I'm an ag economist.

132 Anyone have familiarity with Brazil's experience with ethanol from sugarcane?  They are the world's largest producer.  Any sense (after addressing sugar quotas) importing cane from Brazil with the transport costs added?

133 "The reason ethanol doesn't attract venture capital (without subsidy) is because ethanol does NOT make sense. BTW, I'm an ag economist. Posted by: Alamo at October 25, 2011 12:18 PM" I know nothin bout nothin, but the the real question is, why aren't the VC guys all over this super-awesome opportunity?

134 I made no sense. Nevermind.

135 it's all bullshit.. and how much fossil fuel does it take to create and transport those 25 million gallons of ethanol?

 - The equivalent of about 7 million gallons.  And most of it isn't petroleum.

Any energy plan that diverts food production to energy production while we still have huge reserves of fossil fuels and uranium is a crime against humanity (and I say that seriously).

 - US food production has gone up at the same time that ethanol production has gone up.  Meanwhile, tehre are plenty of studies that suggest low food prices hurt the worldwide poor as well.  If you want to use that argument, everything you do kills people, because everything you do drives the price of food up.  Hardly a good startign point.

They built one of those wood chip plants near where I grew up a few years ago. It went belly up last year even with all the gov subsidies. Yes, another green boondogle gone bust.

 - Range Fuels?  Their business plan was atrocious.  Maybe not Solyndra bad, but bad.  Any new industry is going to attract winners and losers.  The losers will lose.  Isn't that how capitalism works?

As for corn ethanol, sugar beets work better. Why are we not using them?

 - Because the economics don't necessarily work out, despite what it looks like on paper.  Are you including the high value of distiller's grains in the value of corn ethanol?

You can write bills and spend money on it, Congress, but you can't mandate technology.

 - Well, duh.  But that's a problem with government, not a problem with the technology itself.  The market crash pushed cellulosic technology back multiple years.  Let's face it, this is the sort of thing that makes more sense in a growing economy when oil consumption is growing and money is flowing freely.  So yeah, all those plants planned for 2009-2010 are now planned for 2013-2014.  But now several of them are already under construction, so don't expect the timeline to keep being pushed back indefinitely.

I'll throw another problem at you: Science and math.

 - All true, of course.  But you ignore your own conclusions from this.  If you say that the conversion of solar energy is too inefficient to use for day to day use, you doom our civilization to a fixed timeline.  You are dooming us to use only our reserves of fossil fuels and uranium, and not trying to stretch it out by capturing the energy that will remain available to us for billions of years.  Only the idiot greenies are saying we should rely solely on renewables.  But if there are resources there for the taking and it is economically attractive to do so, why wouldn't you?

The true answer is to remove ALL subsidies and mandates from all forms of fuel.

 - No arguments here.  Well, I still support some ability to let new forms of commodities break into the market, but this support should be very limited.  And yet I still believe in the cellulosic industry.  Why is that?

On the other hand it can't be stressed enough that corn stover (never heard that term before!) is freakin' cattle feed

 - Yeah, but other than silage (which only a small percentage of stover is used for), it's a crap cattle feed that isn't used much.  Value addition is definitely possible here.

These materials such as wood chips would seem to be more suited for the production of methanol which is a better (but still not economically viable) fuel.

 - Actually, wood chips make more sense for gasification (carbon monoxide + hydrogen).  At the moment, methanol is the easiest fuel to make from it, but you can conceivably make whatever you want.  The nazis made diesel out of it in WWII, so it's not like this is crazy futuristic technology here.

There is already a huge demand/market for wood chips, - it's not like they have no value and are discarded to rot.  

 - Generally speaking, the demand would be for wood waste residue, not for the wood chips.  

Canola Oil. It isn't edible. Maybe it is useful for fuel?

 - Canola produces very little fuel per acre, far less efficient than even corn.  Doesn't really make sense to replace soybean or corn land with canola.

Using Corn to make ethanol for cars......causes the price of Whiskey and Doritos to go up. ...So, right there we have a problem.

 - I'm going to keep beating the drum here, but the price of petroleum and the weather any particular year have a much greater impact on corn prices than our ethanol consumption.

Another major point that no one ever addresses: Ethanol does not have near the energy that Hydrocarbon fuels, such as gasoline, have.

 - Actually, people make this point all the time.  And don't expect ethanol to be the primary biofuel forever.  Already, commercial butanol production is planned, and producing gasoline-equivalent biofuel is making huge strides.  By the time a serious cellulosic infrastructure is in place, ethanol will be on its way out.

This post, as free of numbers as it is, contains far more analytical rigor than everything I've seen from celluose ethanol advocates.

 - Probably because you haven't looked in detail at the cellulosic ethanol advocates.  Anything you want to ask me?

I really think sea algae is the most viable biofuel.

 - It certainly has long term potential, but it hasn't been solved yet.  I was talking to an expert a couple months ago who consulted with many companies associated with algae.  He said none of their plans would work, but if they could all share their information freely with each other instead of IP issues, it probably would work.  Really, the cost of building the ponds and piping in CO2 have yet to be adequately solved, although I've seen a few unique approaches that show promise.

And we don't eat it.

 - Tell that to the Japanese =)

Ethanol at best provides no net energy benefit.

 - Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.  This canard was destroyed back in 2006.  Why do people keep repeating a myth?

The demon of choice was the Aspen tree, or Poplar. Around here, the western poplar is a weed, and grows like it. So I think harvesting that, just like they do for pulp and paper, is quite feasible.

 - Oh yeah, totally.  Poplar is probably the cheapest of the dedicated energy crops to get to a refinery.  The problem is, it's a lot easier (via the biochemical route) to convert grasses into biofuels than poplar.  Poplar would work well for the gasification route.

Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

 - Well, can't argue with that.

136

Posted by: SkepticalMI at October 25, 2011 12:31 PM (UwY65)

 

 I worked at Range Fuels, I don't think that process will ever work.

137

Living in the heart of corn country in Nebraska,  I can tell you that at least in this part of the world,  corn stover is already being utilized to capacity.  And not in hopes of receiving some pie in the sky free money subsidy.   Corn harvest is in full swing now and as soon as the corn is out of the field,  those same  fields are filled with cattle.  Corn stalks are a MAJOR source of winter forage for the beef industry and virtually every corn field within a hundred miles will be converted to winter pasture in the coming months.   Right now there is a huge influx of cows coming up from drought ravaged Texas.  All of those cows are going to winter on corn stalks.  I can't see a bunch of producers giving up this cheap high quality winter feed  for a few bucks.  It would cost way too much to replace.  Right now,  hay is over $200 a ton. 

The  most economical way to harvest the left over energy in a corn field is to run it through a cow.  Besides,  ribeyes is gooood!!!

138 Why don't we just end all this welfare for farmers (and ADM and ConAgra) bullshit?  Cut all the goddamned subsidies and mandates and let the market set the corn price.  Oh I know, why....because of Iowa and their sacrosanct caucus.  Fuck Iowa.

139 Ethanol is a great octane booster.  It also works in cars.

140 Burning cellulose makes economic sense we can profitably just throw it in with the coal at power plants.

141 And I would further add that not enough research and testing has been done on mini-nukes.

All the security, catastrophe, waste disposal, etc. with 1/10 the output.

142 143Why don't we just end all this welfare for farmers (and ADM and ConAgra) bullshit? Cut all the goddamned subsidies and mandates and let the market set the corn price. Oh I know, why....because of Iowa and their sacrosanct caucus. Fuck Iowa.

Posted by: DanInMN at October 25, 2011 01:14 PM (pI80w)

 

  Fuck you too, squarehead.  Like I'm going to take criticism of my state from a damn Minnesota communist.  And when you criticize government interference in farming & fuel choices, you don't have to leave your own freakin' state to fight that battle.  Minnesota REQUIRES that all gas stations sell 20% ethanol - Iowa gas stations OFFER 10% ethanol but you can also buy straight gas. 

143 Okay, fuck Minnesota too.  I never once defended Minnesota.  I'm not from here and I think the Republicans up here are the biggest bunch of pansies I've ever seen (See e.g. Tim Pawlenty). What's your next argument? 

My argument is, because of the scheduling of the Iowa caucus, the Iowa corn cartel plays an inordinate part in the nomination of presidential candidates from both parties.  This had led directly to the deeply flawed national energy policy we have today.  

Every third post of yours is some dogshit defense of corn based ethanol and the attendant subsidies and mandates.  Now we get this "corn ethanol is good because cellulose ethanol is bad" post.  It almost makes me wonder whether you're hooked into the ethanol teat somehow?

144 Let's see, we consume 378,000,000 gallons/ day of gasoline and they are "going" to produce 68,493 gallons ethanol / day. That's 181 parts per million. If only we could get our CO2 concentration down that low think how many polar bears we could save.

145 Infrastructure:  Not a tough problem. $100k for a stover collector?  You kidding? Hitch a freakin' bailer to the back of the combine. The cost equation is complex, and obviously you can't spend too much transporting the stover to the plant. But the answer is that you simply use nearby sources, rather than trucking it across country. This has been going on for decades in places like California. Prunings from permanent crops like grapes and almonds are chipped and shipped to bio-generation plants. Manure is trucked from dairies to methanol generation plants. There are pretty definite break even points, and I don't know what the specific numbers are, but you don't either, apparently, judging from your lack of them.

Sustainability: Soil scientists have calculated that you can harvest a majority of the stover, return the rest, and maintain soil quality.  I have not personally done the math, but I do have an ag background and this is not at all implausible. Organic matter (stover) does not replace soil lost from erosion, by the way. Not at all. It simply helps maintain certain beneficial structural and chemical properties of soil, and there's little reason to think that every last ounce of plant matter must be returned to the soil to do so. 
Think the farmers won't allow it? Think again. You won't have to pay them more than a few bucks an acre and they'll jump at it. It's a few bucks more in their pocket, for no outlay or effort on their part. They will do it, trust me. At least some of them.

Scale: The reason (one of the reasons, at least) corn is in short supply is because land is ALREADY being used for ethanol. Now just add the stover into that equation and you can see how much more efficient this all becomes. Also there is lots of land that was taken out of production (thanks to  Govt subsidies, BTW) for conservation. This is good land not being used for corn or any other crop. Growing switchgrass allows it to remain conservation land, AND produce a crop. With almost no inputs.

Summary: Cellulosic ethanol is a good idea on paper. But it's only an idea until someone actually builds a functioning plant. Nevertheless, if the technology matures, it holds enormous promise. If it can't be done at a profit, without subisidies, I'm against it. But many of the arguments against ethanol which are valid criticisms for CORN ethanol, do not hold up with cellulosic ethanol. Maybe it won't pan out, maybe it will. How about we let these entrepreneurs figure it out for themselves, instead of deciding for them?

146 Post Super Sugar High Fructose Corn Syrup Golden Crisp

147 Summary: Cellulosic any ethanol is NOT a useful replacement for gasoline until we've burned up another 100+ years of oil. good idea on paper.

And anyone telling you different is WRONG.

148 Didn't Carter start the whole idiotic ethanol thing back in the 70s?  40 years later and it's STILL not working?  Time to pull the plug, methinks, although the government never lets something an insignificant as failure be a criteria in whether or not a program continues.

149 Posted by: SkepticalMI at October 25, 2011 11:52 AM (UwY65) You are a *much* better shill than this Bootstrap person. Bravo. Not good enough, mind you, to get me to sign onto intrusive regulations, mandates, subsidies and various other forms of Central Planning, but there you go. I think it's a lousy idea but if people want to put their own money and time into it, and no one else is required to cooperate with them, they can do it all day long. More power to 'em. But that is emphatically *NOT* what is actually happening now.

150 Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

151 the machinery is all ready built to bale the corn stover. john deere's combine seperates cobs and shucks from chaff. the trucks are allready built to haul the bales. farmers here own their own semi's.abengoa allready has private financing to build the plant here.and the seed corn companies are working on more easily processed corn stover. i put 145,000 miles on my 540i bmw and used nothing but E-10. crawl out of your plastic life and go look for self what the world is up to.

152 Russ from Winterset, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

153 @157 uh...yeah, seconded. this reminds me of when y'all used to let "purple avenger" post mind-numbingly ignorant posts on physics, &c. now you've got this farmer joe type pretending he's the go-to guy for All Things Energy (or at least Corn, y'all!). apparently, russ thinks that living in bfe qualifies him as a corn ethanol expert. that's not the way it works, jack. monty CLEARLY knows econ. gabe CLEARLY knows law. you'll note that the knowledgeable, borderline pedagogic tone is APPROPRIATE for their posts, in which they are often explaining concepts in the study of which they have gained a measure of "expertise". ace is a "master" of politics, i think we can all agree, but you realise even HE is careful to couch his posts in the language of "one man's opinion". russ could REALLY take a lesson: the juxtaposition of the condescending, all-figured-out tone he's taken in this post against the rambling, speculative nonsense presented in the form of Absolute Fact is fucking sickening.

154 add: oh, yeah, let's not forget how fucking thin this guy's skin is. someone offers an indictment of corn subsidies -- perfectly in-line with the no-crony, no-kickback fuscal conservatism of this blog, and the brilliant iowan scientist offers "FUCK U FUCKFUCK FUCK UR STATE" in retort? this guy is a fucking embarrassment to y'all, seriously...regurgitated, non-fact-checked talking points? massive ego rivalled only by self-elevating authoritarian tone? responds to criticism with malicious personal attacks (totally ignoring substance of argument)? daresay, am i noticing...a PATTERN? RUSS FROM WINTERSET: AOSHQ RESIDENT SCOAMF so: can you at least make his posts only OPTIONAL? like a by-subscription-only thing? he's like the jazz shaw of this blog...only a much less-capable writer!

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160 Livestock farmers already have the large square balers to collect crop stover

the baler vacuum's it off the ground then compresses it as very large bales

otherwise the cows can't get to the stover when the ground is covered with snow & ice

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162 yes, john deere, new hooland, case,the machinery companies of the free world are on top of the development of the required equipment.here in ravenna,ne. our alchahol plant is providing the equipment to harvest the cellulose.also purdue university has developed a switch grass with corncells in it. it has 2 and half times much sugar in the plant. also it resists maturity for easy harvest and less ensymes to convert.ans a new seed corn is developed just for alcahol that carries it own enzime to reduce production costs,america and the free world are on top of this .