Why Johnny Can't Predict the Future

All Images: BP Energy Outlook_via_BitToothEnergy
Although the human brain is thought to be a prediction engine, there are limits to the predictive precision and accuracy of even the best human brains and brain products, eg computer models. If the brain or model uses faulty assumptions and data, the output prediction will fail.

BP recently released its annual Energy Outlook report, which projects the world energy future to the year 2030. The report was parsed most helpfully by the Bit Tooth Energy blog, with several images extracted from pdf to html format.

A number of things about the imaged predictions tend to jump off the page:

• The extremely slow predicted growth for nuclear energy
• The rate of growth of energy utilisation for undeveloped countries
• The rate of expansion predicted for "biofuels"

...and a few other things best kept for future examination.

Notice the flat rate of growth for nuclear in the plot above. The best way to understand that prediction is to understand how much of a threat clean, cheap, and abundant nuclear energy poses to the petroleum industry overall. The rapid development of small modular reactors and molten salt reactors in particular, promise to make available huge quantities (trillions of barrels of oil equivalent) of bitumens and kerogens at a much lower cost than are presently feasible. Nuclear energy would also allow oil producing countries to export more oil which would otherwise be spent on cooling, desalination, and other electric power uses.

Notice the apparently rapid rise in biofuels supplies in the graph above. This prediction came as something of a surprise to many readers of the report, although Al Fin energy analysts believe that the prediction is a self-serving underestimate -- although not as blatant an underestimate as BP's nuclear power growth estimate.

Petroleum companies feel that they can live with ethanol as a fuel additive, and ethanol supply is mainly what is being predicted to rise in the graph above. Unfortunately for BP, by 2030 ethanol will be among the least of the biofuels. Ethanol is far inferior to butanol as a fermented biofuel. By 2020, methods for mass production of bio-butanol are very likely to begin to push bio-ethanol aside. In the same fashion, advanced hydro-treating of lipids along with Fischer-Tropsch fuels will produce far more valuable commercially available fuels than ethanol by 2020. Finally, microbial hydrocarbons should be ready to begin scaling up to industrial levels by 2020, with significant market impact by 2030.

So while BP predicts that biofuels as a whole will provide about 10% of liquid fuels by 2030, Al Fin analysts predict that (non-alcohol) microbial fuels alone will provide at least 10% of liquids by that date. Advanced hydrotreated biodiesels, F-T fuels, other advanced catalytic biofuels from bio-syngas and pyrolytis products, plus bio-alcohols will add at least another 10 to 20% of total liquids by 2030.

If you can imagine the impact that replacing 20% of petro-fuels by advanced renewable bio-fuels would have on world markets, you will have a small idea of how the established and highly centralised markets will be shaken by this simple trend alone. If you add to that the impacts from expanding nuclear, expanding shale oil & gas resources, and increasing use of coal to liquids and gas to liquids, and expansion of Canada's oil sands and Venzuela's heavy oils (after Chavez is ejected) -- your image will be closer to the truth, although still a likely underestimate of what is possible.

The US President is very strongly influenced by members of his administration with roots in the environmental movement. The environmental movement has been predicting catastrophic resource depletion, with associated economic ruin and mass human dieoff, for several decades now. Far wiser persons who have pointed out the fatal flaws in the environmentalist's predictive process have been largely ignored and scoffed at. And so we see US national energy and environmental policies being set and enforced by persons enmeshed in a system of thought that has invariably led to failed predictions of doom. The same is true for most European and Anglospheric nations.

If the developed world becomes hog-tied by regulations spurred by visions of doom and resource scarcity, we will fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy of energy starvation -- political peak oil. Political peak oil combined with the demographic contraction of Europeans, Koreans, Japanese, and other advanced cultures of high achievement -- the groups who have largely spurred technological improvement and the environmental improvements of the world from the mid 1900s onward -- the world will indeed be plunged into a serious state of turmoil.

Those optimistic predictions BP made regarding the rapid energy use growth in the undeveloped world, will surely fail in an environment of political peak oil, falling demographic global "smart fraction", and increased autocratic controls over most economic aspects of every person's life. The current president of the US is setting policies which lead unerringly toward that destination, and he is joined by most of the political leadership of the developed world.

Al Fin futurologists do not expect things to work out the way that the US revolutionary-in-chief intends. That is a good thing. Because there are actually revolutions which can lead the planet in a good direction. Revolutions which Mr. Obama will never be capable of comprehending.

It is not important that BP or any other institution or conglomerate be able to predict the future accurately, as a whole. It is only important that enough persons understand the mechanisms which drive innovation and human economic activity. Even if the masses continue to tend toward an Idiocracy, the competent cores of individuals with the better ideas will find ways to network and interact with each other.

Peak Oil: Meet Cellulosic Biofuels 2030!

German researchers have published a study revealing that by 2030 cellulosic biofuels using pyrolysis and gasification can provide transportation fuels to meet global needs using land not suitable for growing food.

According to Prof. Jürgen O. Metzger from Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, and Prof. Aloys Hüttermann from the Universität Göttingen, a global energy supply based on biomass grown to generate electricity and produce fuel is both a sustainable and economical scenario, contrary to some other current research. Their findings are published online this week in the journal Naturwissenschaften.

The solution, according to Metzger and Hüttermann, is to plant fast-growing trees on degraded areas, and harvest the biomass for energy usage. This afforestation would not compete with the need for arable land for food production. The authors argue that the investment required for afforestation and transformation of the biomass to electrical energy, heat, fuels and chemical feedstock is actually sustainable and not more, probably even less, than what would need to be invested in infrastructure for non-sustainable fossil energy.

For their global overall estimations for transportation fuels, the two used the conversion of the lignocellulosic biomass to biooil (“bioslurry”) via pyrolysis and its subsequent gasification to a syngas followed by Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (biomass-to-liquids, BTL). _GCC

These conclusions suggest that there is no "food vs fuels" issue, and that current technology can solve the global transportation fuels demand in the intermediate future.

Al Fin feels that this study did not go far enough, since huge areas Earth's surface can be used to grow ocean biomass and haplophytic organisms on salty soil. In addition, the potential for growing abundant algae in desert areas using saltwater will multiply potential biofuels much more.

Further development of plant genetics, chemical catalysts, other synthetic and separation technologies, etc. will be helpful--but not necessary for biofuels to play a huge role in the future energy menu.

Previously published at Al Fin Energy

Coal to Liquids: Smart Coal

Coal can be converted to liquids profitably as long as the oil price remains over 80$ a barrel. Brian Westenhaus has an article today on coal-to-liquids (CTL) that looks at some of the details.

The developed world can solve its oil and gas problems with F-T. All the facts and sources are enough to make an oil exporter very nervous, indeed....

...even today with oil coming back to near $100 a barrel the F-T processes can be highly competitive. It’s the carbon and hydrogen available in the feedstocks that make pricing work or not. Coal at $50 a ton, as shown by Sasol can yield 1.25 barrels of oil equivalent, can be worth twice the feedstock price. South Africa found that Sasol profits got so high that excess profit taxes were levied.

In the U.S. several companies have started coal to liquid process experiments that range from pilot plants to commercial installations. The big oil firms like Shell, Exxon and StatoilHydro are already running in South Africa, Malaysia and New Zealand closing in on 60,000 barrels a day of production.

The little guys like American Clean Coal Fuels who is developing a 30,000-barrel per day combined biomass and coal plant in Oakland Illinois uses carbon capture and sequestration to keep the unused CO2 from the atmosphere.

Baard Energy is building a 53,000-barrel per day combined biomass and coal plant in Wellsville Ohio with a market for the excess CO2 headed to oil field enhanced recovery. _NewEnergyandFuel

The CO2 produced can be piped to an algae oil operation conveniently located next to the CTL plant. Biomass can be easily integrated into the gasification and F-T process as well, providing a multi-feedstock, multi-product operation.

Biomass to Petroleum Equivalent Gold: National Science Foundation Report

Oil has become the new gold in the modern world economy. The US National Science Foundation has discovered what Al Fin has been telling readers: there is gold in biocrude and biofuels.

1. * First, green hydrocarbon fuels are essentially the same as those currently derived from petroleum, except that they are made from biomass. Therefore, it will not be necessary to modify existing infrastructure (e.g. pipelines, engines) and hydrocarbon biorefining processes can be tied into the fuel production systems of existing petroleum refineries.
2. * Second, biomass-based hydrocarbon fuels are energy equivalent to fuels derived from petroleum. In contrast to the lower energy density of E85 flex fuel, there will be no penalty in gas mileage with biomass-based hydrocarbon fuels.
3. * Third, hydrocarbons produced from lignocellulosic biomass are immiscible in water; they self-separate, which eliminates the need for an expensive, energy-consuming distillation step.
4. * Fourth, biomass based hydrocarbon fuels are produced at high temperatures, which allows for faster conversion reactions in smaller reactors. Thus, processing units can be placed close to the biomass source or even transported on truck trailers.
5. * Fifth, the amount of water needed for processing hydrocarbon fuels from biomass can be greatly reduced, compared with the dilute sugar solutions to which enzymes are constrained. This is because organic or heterogeneous catalysts work well in concentrated water solutions or even in the absence of water if ionic liquids are used.
6. * Finally, heterogeneous catalysts are inherently recyclable. So they can be used over the course of months and even years, which significantly reduces costs compared to biological catalysts. The elimination of energy-intensive distillation, the higher reaction rates, and the much smaller process footprints can also lead to lower biofuel costs than are possible using currently available biological pathways for producing cellulosic ethanol.

[Here are the six areas of concentration in the NSF report]

1. * Selective thermal processing of lignocellulosic biomass to produce liquid fuels (bio-oils) in distributed biorefineries.
2. * Utilization of petroleum refining technology for conversion of biomass-derived oxygenates within existing petroleum refineries.
3. * Hydrocarbon production by liquid phase processing of sugars to a heretofore “sleeping giant” intermediate, hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), followed by HMF conversion to “green” diesel and jet fuel.
4. * Process intensification for diesel and gasoline production from synthesis gas (CO and H2) by Fisher-Tropsch synthesis (FTS), which dramatically decreases the economically viable size compared to traditional FTS processes with petroleum derived feedstocks.
5. * Conceptual design of biorefining processes in conjunction with experimental studies at the beginning of research projects to allow rapid development of commercial biofuel technologies.
6. * Design of recyclable, highly active and selective heterogeneous catalysts for biofuel production using advanced nanotechnology, synthesis methods and quantum chemical calculations.___NSF(PDF)___via__Biopact

According to the NSF report, petroleum-equivalent biofuels can be made for the equivalent of US $15 a barrel!

This is energy dynamite, virtually unknown in the mass media--although well known to readers of Al Fin. While bloggers and journalists on all sides of any conceivable debate have joined together in condemning "biofuels", the real story has gone virtually untold. I recommend a close reading of the above linked documents, for anyone who wishes to be in a position to take advantage of the new "gold rush".

We can hope that now that the NSF has given its "official blessing" to this new potential economic oil boom, the media, academia, and mainstream science reporting will finally catch on to what has been happening. After all, most modern people have been psychologically neotenised and academically lobotomised by normal modern upbringing and education. We cannot expect them to be able to think for themselves.
;-)

Peak Oil: Meet Alan Goldman and his two Friends, Fischer and Tropsch

The conversion of coal to liquid hydrocarbons has a long history. But only recently has the process become clean and efficient enough to make a difference. This Physorg.com newsrelease discusses a breakthrough in the coal to liquid fuel process.

Goldman explained that the breakthrough technology employs a pair of catalytic chemical reactions that operate in tandem, one of which captured the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This dynamic chemical duo revamps the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process for generating synthetic petroleum substitutes, invented in 1920 but never developed to the point of becoming commercially viable for coal conversion.

The FT process recently gained national attention through the efforts of Brian Schweitzer, governor of coal-rich Montana, who has been publicly extolling the potential of Fischer-Tropsch. The Goldman group's innovations eliminate shortcomings in the process that can finally make it a workable solution to dwindling domestic oil reserves.

"The key to energy independence in the next five decades is Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, amended and enhanced," said Goldman, a professor in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. "The study of catalysts, the little molecular machines that control chemical reactions, is my field. With our new catalysts, one can generate productive, clean burning fuels with Fischer-Tropsch, economically and at unsurpassed levels of efficiency."

This discovery is reported in the April 14 issue of the journal Science by Goldman and his colleagues. Source.

This link provides much detailed information on the Fischer-Tropsch process. For a briefer discussion, try this Wikipedia article.

The best sources of energy are renewable sources. But in the meantime, while gearing up for biofuels, solar, wind, tidal, OTEC, wave, etc., it is nice to see more evidence that all the doomseeking of the peak oil crowd is circular wrist flexion-extension.