Turning Corn Into Chemicals: Gevo Goes for Profit & Survival

Government mandates and subsidies in the energy field have been largely ineffective, or worse -- destructive. Subsidies to big solar energy firms have resulted in multiple bankruptcies, subsidies to big wind energy projects are resulting in making Warren Buffet richer, but are raising electricity costs and making overall US energy security much worse. And government mandates and credits for cellulosic biofuels are turning out to be worse than useless -- as bio-butanol maker Gevo has discovered.

As the difficulty of producing cellulosic biofuels cheaply becomes apparent, a growing number of advanced-biofuels companies are finding it necessary to take creative approaches to their business, even though that means abandoning some of their green credentials, at least temporarily, and focusing on markets that won't have a major impact on oil imports. This is hardly the outcome the government hoped for when it announced cellulosic-biofuels mandates, R&D funding, and other incentives in recent years.

Cellulosic biofuels still cost much more to produce than either corn ethanol or gasoline. One reason is that startups have had trouble raising enough money to build the large-scale commercial plants needed to lower costs. That's in part because their technology is unproven, and in part because there's no guaranteed market for cellulosic biofuels yet.

Additionally, government mandates that were meant to help create a market for cellulosic biofuels have so far been ineffective; it's typically cheaper for the fuel providers affected by the mandate to purchase credits rather than biofuels. And finally, supply chains for cellulosic materials aren't yet well developed, so companies face a challenge when they try to lock in reliable access to them. _TechnologyReview

Luverne, Minnesota Corn-to-Butanol Plant

Gevo's strategy addresses all these problems. Besides relying on corn in order to overcome supply challenges, the company is reducing capital costs by retrofitting existing corn ethanol plants rather than building new ones; the retrofit of the first plant, in Luverne, Minnesota, will cost about $40 million, a fraction of the hundreds of millions it costs to build a new plant. And rather than making ethanol, Gevo is making butanol, which can command a higher price—especially for use as a feedstock for the chemical industry. Gevo expects that it can make butanol from corn—a readily available feedstock—for significantly less than it costs to make it from petroleum.

Gevo plans to start operations at Luverne within the next six months or so and hopes to produce 17 million gallons of butanol per year there. Most of it is destined for Sasol Chemical Industries, which will sell the butanol to make chemicals.

Butanol can be converted into a wide range of chemicals for making plastics and other products that are now made with oil. Gevo already has an agreement with a major maker of synthetic rubber, and last week it announced a partnership with Coca-Cola to develop plastic bottles made entirely from plants. _TechnologyReview

Versatile Bio-Butanol
Gevo is smart to pursue the high value product which can give them early profits and help the company to survive through these tough early days of advanced biofuels.

There is nothing wrong with using corn (maize) for production of chemicals, since overall production of maize is quite flexible. The additional market in chemicals and fuels gives farmers another market for their product, and helps to maintain stability of price.

Most US corn is used as animal feed, and even after being used to produce bio-chemicals and biofuels, the dried distiller's grain can still be fed to animals as a high protein feed. The oil from the corn can be used for other uses, including food.

It is important to point out that both cellulosic fuels and high value cellulosic chemicals are highly likely to become huge markets in the future. The use of corn will only continue as long as it is more profitable to use corn than to use cellulosic biomass. Eventually corn will lose its advantage in this area -- and at that point, it is likely that much less corn will be planted, as farmers move to other crops to follow the markets.

Those who harp on the tired old "food vs. fuels" refrain are almost certainly people who have never farmed for a living, and who have never had to balance profit and loss in a productive enterprise. Most people who sing that song do so for reasons of political activism, rather than out of any desire to arrive at the actual numbers involved.

But the truth of the matter is that the chemicals market offers higher profits to advanced biofuels producers than the fuels market offers. And that is where many of these companies are certain to go, in the beginning.

The arrival of massive proved reserves of unconventional natural gas is likely to delay the large-scale profitability of advanced biofuels for a number of years -- if not decades.

Ethanol from Corn Much Better than Expected

Brian Westenhaus presents an optimistic story of corn (maize) ethanol triumphing over environmental obstructionists and academic thumb-suckers. Brian points to an amazing study (PDF) that catches the laggard academic research up to the ambitious reality of farmers and the ethanol industry. In other words, while environmentalists and academics have been sitting on their thumbs, real people in the real world have been accomplishing impressive things. Even Al Fin must gasp in surprise at the improvements in all phases of production of corn ethanol.

The study’s ethanol-to-petroleum output/input ratios ranged from 10:1 to 13:1 but could be increased to 19:1 if farmers adopted high-yield progressive crop and soil management practices, according to the study. Using advanced closed-loop ethanol production technology with anaerobic digestion reduced GHG emissions by 67% and increased the net energy ratio to 2.2, from 1.5 to 1.8 for the most common systems. These numbers are much better than the 1.5:1 so often seen and discounted to below 1:1 by non expert pundits. _NewEnergyAnd Fuel

Corn ethanol production did not reduce food production, since the total corn production increase more than compensated for the diversion of maize to ethanol. In fact, since dried distiller's grains (DDGs) byproduct from the corn ethanol process is used as healthy livestock feed, available food corn (for animals and people) has gone up. Apparently, virtually everything we have read about corn ethanol from pundits, academics, and mainstream journalists is wrong -- because the academics and intellectuals were using outdated data -- they cannot seem to catch up to the nitty-gritty reality of the cutting edge present.

The implications of this new study suggest that the transition to biomass (once cellulosic conversion to sugars is perfected) will be much smoother and productive than anyone predicted.  Since cellulosic crops grow on marginal lands, with minimal watering and cultivation, the energy return from biomass alcohol production should be even greater than for corn.

Read Brian's article and try to understand the growing sophistication of the corn ethanol industry. People in the industry have to make a profit -- unlike politicians, journalists, and thumb-sucking professors. And in the age of Obama - Pelosi, making a profit is becoming ever more difficult.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

Biofuels are Part of the Solution, Not the Problem

Hugo Chavez, dictator of Venezuela, is at the forefront of the war against biofuels. How pleased the blubbering fool must be that so many journalists and politicians of the developed world have joined him in condemning one of the best approaches to reducing dependency on oil tyrannies.

At bottom, the entire food versus fuel argument boils down to a Malthusian conceit—that there is only so much that can be grown, so if we grow more of one thing, we must necessarily grow less of something else. But this is simply false. Agriculture is not a zero-sum game. As illustrated in the bar chart below, there are roughly 2,250 million acres of land in the continental United States. About 1,600 million of those acres are arable. Roughly half of that land (800 million acres) is farmland, but only about a third of that (280 million acres) is actually being cultivated. Only about 85 million of those farm acres are presently growing corn, and just a fifth of that land—about 17 million acres—is growing corn that becomes ethanol. In short, there is plenty of farmland in the United States that could be used to grow more corn—or more of the other staple crops needed to meet domestic or international demand. Even more importantly, agricultural technology is constantly advancing. U.S. corn yields per acre have risen 17 percent since 2002, and the state of Iowa alone today produces more corn than the entire nation did in the 1940s. Applied globally, such improved techniques can multiply world agricultural yields many times.

...the two primary reasons for higher food prices are, first, higher demand, and second, higher fuel prices. The increased global demand for food ought to be seen as a very good thing: it represents hundreds of millions of people, especially in China and India, rising out of poverty and moving to more calorie-rich diets. Escalating fuel prices, however, are not good news: they drive up the cost of everything we eat. For example, consider the $3 box of cornflakes you might see in your grocery store. Farm commodity prices basically have a trivial effect on its price. A bushel of corn contains 56 pounds of grain, so at the current “very high” commodity price of $5 per bushel, a pound of corn costs 9 cents. So the 16 ounces of corn in that cereal box cost a total of 9 cents when bought from the farmer. But when the price of oil goes up, that increases the cost of production, transport, wages, and packaging—all driving up the retail cost of food.

And, in this regard, biofuels have already done more good than harm to the world’s poor. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Global production of biofuels is rising annually by the equivalent of about 300,000 barrels of oil a day. That goes a long way toward meeting the growing demand for oil, which last year rose by about 900,000 barrels a day.” The paper cites a Merrill Lynch analyst who “says that oil and gasoline prices would be about 15 percent higher if biofuel producers weren’t increasing their output.” So even though the world’s biofuels industry is still just aborning, it has already begun to bring down oil prices. __NewAtlantis

Oil prices are kept artificially high specifically by the actions of governments. Governments such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela etc. are oil tyrannies and push prices high for purposes of dictatorial survival. Governments such as the EU and the US push prices of oil, coal, and gas high out of the quasi state religion of CAGW, and other misguided policies.

Bioenergy is one of a constellation of sustainable solutions to the onerous dependency upon dictatorships for the energy of everyday commerce, transportation, and industry. It makes sense for Hugo Chavez to scapegoat bioenergy. What about you?

China's Enormous New Appetite Drives Food Price

There are many reasons for higher world prices for food. High energy and fertiliser costs, local droughts-famines-wars, the low value of the dollar driving commodities market speculation, etc. But one particular country appears to be more responsible than the rest of the world combined: China.

A change in Chinese meat consumption habits since 1995 is diverting eight billion bushels of grain per year to livestock feed and could empty global grain stocks by September 2010, according to a new study from Biofuels Digest, now available for download here in an expanded version.

...even if the U.S. ethanol industry were shut down tomorrow, rising Chinese demand for meat, and the ensuing livestock feed demand, will empty global grain stocks as soon as 2013. The report offers gloomy news for policymakers who have hoped to address global food vs. fuel concerns by restraining U.S. ethanol demand.

“It’s not food, it’s not fuel, it’s China,” said Jim Lane, editor of Biofuels Digest and author of the report....The US ethanol industry, which has been criticized as the primary cause of grain shortages and rising prices, increased its grain usage by 31 million tonnes during the 12 year period. By contrast, livestock grain demand to supply Chinese meat consumption increased by 199 million tonnes.

“Given that the US population has grown 15 percent in the past 13 years, the 82 percent increase in US corn production left plenty for people, plenty for livestock, and plenty for ethanol.” said Lane. “The truth is that the grain was Shanghaied, leaving us with a fuel crisis and a food crisis. The good news is that it’s easier to find a good steak in Beijing.” __BiofuelsDigest

While the clueless blankers continue blaming biofuels for high costs of food, the reality of the problem is far more complex--and possibly too much of a political hot potato for most of them to touch! While it is politically correct to blame the US for the world's problems, China is often given a free pass.

The media has made a monkey of itself over global warming (CAGW). Now it is making itself the fool over food prices. It is past time for a new media regime that looks at all the evidence, rather than following cliquish fads and political correctness in deciding what news it will cover, and what spin it will take. It is rumoured that journalism students are required to fail IQ tests before being admitted to journalism school. Perhaps they must also take an oath of oafishness as well.

Update: Another factor adding to food shortages is crop damage from frost and unanticipated cold climate (both northern and southern hemisphere). See here and here. H/T Tom Nelson

Here's a look at a country that is truly facing food shortages.

Lame Attacks Against Biofuels Continue

Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez has emerged as the world's spokesperson for denouncing bio-energy and biofuels--approaches for reducing dependency on petroleum. Enraged that anyone might find a way to reduce demand for oil, the Latin tyrant said the world's poor are going hungry because the US is using maize for fuel. But is something wrong with the math Chavez is using?

Actually, since a bushel of corn yields 2.8 gallons of ethanol, the corn needed to fill a 20 gallon SUV tank is 7 bushels, which at the current market price of $5/bushel, costs a total of $35. According to Mr. Chavez, then, the cost of feeding one person for a year is $5.

...the ethanol program has actually stimulated corn production so much that, after the part used for ethanol is taken away, the net US corn harvest available for food and feed is up 34% since 2002. Furthermore, contrary to claims in many articles, this has not been done at the expense of soy or wheat production. In fact, U.S. soy plantings this year are expected to be up 18% to a near record of 75 million acres, wheat plantings are up 6%, and overall, US farm exports are up 23%. Much more can be produced as demand requires, since of 800 million acres of US farmland, only 280 million are actually being farmed. This is why - $5 per person per year feeding price aside - the entire Malthusian conceit underlying Chavez’s fuel vs. food argument is nonsense. __Source

Chavez' self-interested complaints about biofuels aside, the uninformed cant in condemnation of biofuels is heard far and wide in the world's news media. The biofuels industry is in its infancy and is far too small to be blamed for problems that have been ongoing for centuries and millenia.

Commodity costs are only one component of higher prices at the grocery store. Other factors, such as soaring crude oil prices and fertilizer costs that cut into farmers' profits... [are even more important AF]

Additionally, growing worldwide demand for meat could cause some food shortages if higher percentages of corn, wheat and soy are used to feed livestock. __CheckBiotech

Food is becoming far too expensive to use as feedstock for fuels. Several biofuels companies have already gone out of business due to high food prices. As biofuels feedstocks move from food to cellulose, algae, and other non-edible materials, the rants and ravings of Chavez and his crew will naturally move on to other pet topics.

But always remember: if we run out of all other feedstocks for biofuels, we will always have corrupt politicians . . . and trial lawyers . . . and post-modern liberal arts professors . . . and political activists . . .

Cellulosic Fuels to Come Online 2008-2017

We are just now entering the era of cellulosic fuels, according to a new report from Research and Markets.

1. - The US biofuel industry especially ethanol production is expected to lead the global production during the forecasted period of 2008-2017.

2. - Corn is anticipated to dominate the [Ed: near] future ethanol production in the US, however, cellulosic ethanol requirements are expected to boom during the period 2008-2017.

3. - US biodiesel sector need strong support from the government as well as from technology point of view to sustain growth in future.

4. - Biodiesel prices in the US are expected to see a declining trend to push up commercial usage during 2008-2015.

5. - Supply of raw material (corn and soybean oil) will be a major concern for the US biofuel industry in coming years. Source_via_BusinessWire

Here again, we see a mixture of valid conclusion and popular misconception. Biocellulosic alcohols will lead one charge away from "food as feedstock." Biomass to liquids (BTL) will lead another--ultimately much larger--charge away from foods for feedstocks. Biodiesel from algae and non-edible oilseeds such as jatropha, is yet one more important leap from "foods as feedstocks" to foods and food-prices as a non-issue. Cellulosic electricity--substituting biomass for coal in co-generation plants--is yet another way that bioenergy will help to reduce oil costs--and thus reduce food costs.

Zeachem, Coskata, and a number of other small to medium bio-fuel plants will bring cellulosic biofuel product to market starting within the next year. In Europe, Choren is ready to bring BTL biodiesel to market, and looking to expand within North America in the next year.

Biomass, farm waste, agricultural waste, forestry waste, municipal waste, and industrial waste, are all available for making important contributions to the energy supply. It is a matter of making the necessary technological and managerial adjustments that will allow more industries and regions to take advantages of these resources which are currently going to waste.

Bioenergy is Actually Reducing the Cost of Food

Image Source

The costs of food today are high mainly due to the high cost of energy. The only way to reduce the cost of energy is to economically make energy more plentiful. Since most of the world's oil is under the control of dictators who have no interest in reducing the cost of energy--since they are getting wealthier every day based on high energy costs--the world must look elsewhere for new sources of energy. Bio-energy stands as one of the more immediate and expandable sources of new energy.

A Merrill Lynch analyst recently noted that oil and gasoline prices would be 15 percent higher than they are now without the use of biofuels (subscription).
AdvancedBiofuels

The fashionable "lynch mob" attack on biofuels resembles the "holy warmer" approach to climate in overall hysteria and irrationality. The deeper fundamentals of the problem clearly highlight high petroleum prices as the overwhelming cause of higher food prices. Bio-energy, on the other hand, is one of the long term solutions to the problem.

The only way to reduce energy costs to farmers, food wholesalers, and shippers, is to provide more energy. Bio-energy is still a young industry, with many obstacles to overcome. If it can survive the current hysteria to grow into the regional powerhouse it is capable of becoming, many bio-rich areas of the world will find themselves beneficiaries of a prosperous new industry.

New Texas A&M PDF report detailing underlying reasons for higher food prices (PDF)
From the executive summary:

The underlying force driving changes in the agricultural industry, along with the economy as a whole, is overall higher energy costs, evidenced by $100 per barrel oil.

With rising energy costs, corn and other commodity prices would have to increase. Rising fertilizer costs led to a 3 million acre reduction in planted corn acres in the 2006-07 crop year. Higher production costs will continue to pressure acres.

Speculative fund activities in futures markets have led to more money in the markets and more volatility. Increased price volatility has encouraged wider trading limits.

__Source(PDF)

Much more in full PDF report.

Attacks on Biofuels Poorly Conceived

Image Source

The future of bio-energy involves the use of biomass to fuels, not food to fuels. Current demonisation of biofuels as the cause of current high food prices and future famine, is a wasteful diversion of attention from the productive solution of both energy and food price problems. Current higher costs of food is caused by a variety of factors:

1. High energy prices (which affects production and shipping costs).
2. Increase in demand from developing countries: “going from 1 meal a day to 2 meals a day” leads to an increase in the amount of food needed.
3. More meat in diets in developing countries.
4. Droughts in important growing regions, including Australia and Europe.
5. Reduced food stocks.
6. Commodities trading/futures trading: food being used as a financial instrument.
7. Increased production of biofuels.

_source_[editorial reassortment by order of importance AF]

It is important to understand that all of these factors--in varying degrees--impact upon food prices. Other unlisted factors are even more important to particular regions, such as food being used as a weapon against the people by vindictive governments and officials, civil wars, and other local political factors. Food prices--like all global commodity prices--are subject to multi-factorial fluctuations. When an analyst selects one factor out of many to blame, he is engaging in irrational scapegoating. (This mis-attribution of causes is common among financial analyst commentators in the media. In an attempt to appear omniscient, they instead come across as clueless.)

The use of food crops to make fuel will not last beyond the next few years--so even this minor effect on food prices will be removed.

Now Choren wants to mark the dawn of a new age. The plant in Freiberg uses non-food biomass instead of traditional crops and is the first of its kind to cross the threshold from theoretical research into industrial production. This advanced refinery was designed to furnish proof that the new fuels are feasible - and can be produced on a much larger scale.

Instead of sugar beets and rapeseed, the new plant processes wood as its raw material. In a pinch, it can also use straw. Using these materials significantly increases the yields from cultivated areas. According to estimates provided by the German Agency for Renewable Resources (FNR), the annual energy yields using the Choren process, based on a Central European climate, are 4,000 liters of fuel per hectare (1,057 US gallons), which is up to three times as much as previous biofuel production methods. What’s more, in contrast to production methods using rapeseed oil and ethanol, this technique does not produce fuel of inferior quality. Choren manufactures extremely pure diesel with virtually no sulfur. Moreover, these second generation biofuels do not harm particle filters or engines and meet top emissions standards. __Spiegel__viaCheckBiotech

It appears that the inordinate focus on biofuels--the scapegoating of biofuels--is a terrible distraction and waste of time, when the real problems are crying out for attention.

Intelligent people look for local and regional solutions to both energy scarcity and food scarcity. The misguided tendency to fixate on global solutions to all problems--even if they are local and regional problems--is at the root of many of the disasters caused when the developed world tries to help the undeveloped world. We need a more intelligent approach than most bureaucrats, academics, and journalists are capable of conceiving.

PDF document of images showing available land for crops globally via NewEnergyandFuel

Biofuels vs. Food: The False Debate

Recent exciting breakthroughs in the direct conversion of grass and wood biomass to liquid biofuels demonstrates the absurdity of much of the "food vs biofuels" debate. As one can easily discover by even a cursory search, biofuels/biomass R&D has progressed light years beyond maize ethanol.

Biomass combined heat and power (CHP), high yield biodiesel from algae and other non-food oil crops, thermochemical production of liquid and gaseous biofuels from waste biomass, and a host of new second and third generation bio-energy projects are moving to production. Newer approaches to non-food bio-energy hold even greater promise for bringing local and regional jobs, productivity, and prosperity.

According to Bruce Date, the ethanol expert of Michigan State University, “we could feed the country’s (America’s) population with 25 million acres of farmland, and currently have 500 million acres. Most of our agricultural land is being used to grow animal feed.” About 76% of the corn consumed in the US is used as animal feed. America exports 20% of its corn. Two-thirds of these corn exports go to 28 OECD countries, where they feed animals.

For every tonne of corn that America exports to one of the 25 countries with the most serious malnutrition problems in the world, it exports 260 tonnes to a wealthy member country of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Even in the United States, most energy crops are grown on marginal land where no commercial crops are being raised now. Prime acreage is not diverted to the production of bio-fuels.

A lot of research still needs to be done to identify the best raw materials to produce ethanol or other bio-fuels. Corn is far from being the ideal raw material...It is, therefore, important to explore new and more environment-friendly sources such as agricultural waste to manufacture [biofuels]. Some research studies report that pine groves can be an excellent source of [biofuels]. Perennial prairie grasses are considered to be among the best raw materials to manufacture [biofuels] from.

...Above all, the paramount need is to improve agricultural productivity across geographies. Crop yields can be increased through the introduction of technologies such as drip irrigation or through education and training of farmers. If countries like India and China, which have large swathes of agricultural land, can boost their productivity to the levels attained by the developed world, it will significantly mitigate food scarcity while creating enough agricultural elbow room for the cultivation of crops to manufacture green bio-fuels like ethanol or bio-diesel. ___ET

It is time for the debate to catch up to the reality in the labs and in the new bio-energy plants. For reasons of their own, too many analysts are stuck on ten or twenty year old concepts, and unwittingly take sides in an obsolete debate.

Regional Strengths, Global Weaknesses: Answers to Outsourcing and Global Energy Strangleholds

Economics is boring. Poverty is even more boring, however. In order for a nation or region to avoid poverty, it must be able to run its industrial base without paying exorbitant energy costs. In the year 2008, the term "energy costs" generally refers to the cost of oil and gas.

It seems that if a country or region is not rich in oil and gas resources, its economy is being held ransom to high energy costs. Most oil and gas is controlled by autocratic and oligarchic governments in control of national oil companies. High oil prices put more money into their corrupt government coffers and private Swiss bank accounts, so it is not in the interest of the oil tyrants to produce more oil and gas--which might cause the value of their underground assets to decrease.

Nations without oil and gas cannot grow healthy economies in current circumstances. In order to strengthen local and regional economies, it is important to match the region's strengths with economic opportunities and needs. Find what your region can produce at a reasonable profit, and look for ways to cleanly and economically develop that resource.North America happens to be particularly blessed by bio-potential. The North American economy is the world's most prolific--in terms of all around research, development, invention, and production--and it also has an abundant potential for vastly more bio-energy production to fuel much of its future growth.

Biomass is particularly suitable for regional development--at the small and intermediate scale. Small and medium sized regional hubs of bio-energy are likely to grow up in areas that are currently relatively impoverished, away from the mega-cities that are becoming increasingly top-heavy and unstable.

We propose a network of regional biomass processing centers (RBPC) to address many of these issues. The RBPC, in its mature form, is conceptualized as a flexible processing facility capable of pre-treating and converting various types of biomass into appropriate feedstocks for a variety of final products such as fuels, chemicals, electricity, animal feeds etc. as shown in Figure 3. It is envisioned that a number of such RBPC will form an extended biomass supply infrastructure feeding into large biomass ethanol refineries and other processing facilities.

Preprocessing is designed to improve biomass handling, transport, storageability, and potentially add value by making biomass more fit for final conversion to fuels, power, and chemicals. Preprocessing includes: cleaning, separating and sorting, chopping, grinding, mixing/blending, moisture control and potentially densifying. In most of existing literature, biorefineries have been typically designed to accept baled biomass and carry out all the preprocessing onsite at the biorefinery, followed by further processing stages of pretreatment, hydrolysis, fermentation, ethanol recovery. (e.g. Wooley et al., 1999; Aden et al., 2002; Hamelinck, 2005). We propose to strip both preprocessing and pretreatment steps out of the biorefinery and carry these out at RBPCs. A number of RBPCs will then supply pre-treated biomass to the biorefinery for further processing. While some prior research has looked at potential small scale on-farm preprocessing of biomass, mainly physical state alteration by chopping and grinding to improve transportability, we propose more advanced preprocessing, which will involve both physical transformation and chemical pre-treatment, in relatively large, intermediate, geographically distributed facilities.

...Distributed preprocessing can potentially reduce overall supply chain costs. Because chopping and grinding carried out prior to pretreatment nearly doubles the bulk density of biomass, a two stage collection system where the raw baled biomass from a smaller collection area is first transported to the RBPC, pretreated into more uniform and denser feedstock, and then transported to the central biorefinery may be less costly. However, actual cost savings are a function of the additional costs of handling the feedstock twice, and spatial distribution of the biomass sources relative to the biorefinery and the transportation infrastructure. RBPCs can also be designed to serve as appropriately designed, intermediate storage facilities that can reduce spoilage and deterioration of biomass compared to open on-farm storage. Further, RBPC locations can be chosen to ensure all weather access, so that the biorefinery can draw uniformly from the inventory at the RBPCs even during winter months. Because of high fixed costs, high capacity utilization is critical for financial success of a biorefinery, and on-field storage can be problematic in areas with poor access during some seasons. Distributed preprocessing can also reduce local environmental impacts of biorefineries, e.g. traffic congestion and associated air quality effects, and odor from stored biomass. Distributed preprocessing facilities can also be designed to receive different local feedstocks and mix them appropriately to deliver uniform quality feedstock in terms of composition, size, density, moisture etc. to the biorefinery. In fact, research has shown that growing a mixture of grasses instead of a single variety of grass may increase the biomass energy yield per acre by as much as 238% (Tilman et al., 2007). _Source__Feasiblity of Regional Biomass Centers__via__QiBioenergy

Looking for small and medium sized opportunities is a smart way for a person to get into business for himself. Bio-energy is a ground floor opportunity for those intelligent enough to perceive the energy future for the next several decades.

North Americans have been well-indoctrinated in the "job mentality", working for someone else, indentured servitude. The idea of stepping out on one's own, of taking the risks involved in working for oneself, causes too many academically lobotomised, psychological neotenates to quake in fear.

For all the high school and college dropouts, who rejected that indoctrination, these opportunities for starting small on the ground floor most definitely exist. Even for the well-established professional or working person, the prospect of hundreds or thousands of these small to medium regional biomass pre-processing and processing centers should suggest some investment opportunities.

It is a different way of looking at the world. Locally, regionally, in a distributed and more accessible manner.

Image Sources: Biomass Processing and Anthonares blog

Bio-Energy Exceeds World Energy Use

Bio-Energy stands to become one of the main energy pillars of the Earth within twenty years (alongside nuclear fission, enhanced geothermal, and solar thermal/PV). Failure to understand that simple and obvious fact is allowing fear and confusion about energy prospects to obscure the near-future energy picture. Every year, land biomass alone stores 6 times more energy than the total world annual energy consumption.

• Total mass of living matter (including moisture) - 2000 billion tonnes
• Total mass in land plants - 1800 billion tonnes
• Total mass in forests -1600 billion tonnes
• Per capita terrestrial biomass - 400 tonnes
• Energy stored in terrestrial biomass 25 000 EJ
• Net annual production of terrestrial biomass - 400 000 million tonnes
• Rate of energy storage by land biomass - 3000 EJ/y (95 TW)
• Total consumption of all forms of energy - 400 EJ/y (12 TW)
• Biomass energy consumption - 55 EJ/y ( 1. 7 TW)

SourceExciting and revolutionary breakthroughs with clear implications for Bio-Energy such as this and this, combined with the huge and growing work in biomass, liquid biofuels, garbage to energy projects, and synthetic biology projects suggest that the government-academia-industrial complex has just begun to tap into the potential resources of bio.

Turning the huge potential of biomass into usable energy is the purpose of the rapidly growing Bio-Energy industry. It takes time to develop the necessary infrastructure for a global bio-energy industry, but the economic and energy promise of such an industry makes the project worthwhile. The very de-centralised nature of Bio-Energy should allow much larger numbers of small and medium-scale enterprises to take advantage of the money flow--as opposed to the mega-centralised oil industry.

The biosphere is hugely expandable, unlike global oil deposits. Bio-Energy potential, once developed, dwarfs any conceivable human energy needs projections for the next several hundred years. Bio-Energy should not compete with food for feedstock, and third generation projects are featuring the use of agro-waste and forestry waste as feedstocks.

First generation approaches to biofuels such as soybean biodiesel and maize ethanol, were corrupt and misguided mega-farm industry insider deals, involving US Senators such as Ben Nelson and Chuck Grassley. Corrupt politicians from farm states should be held to account for their huge waste of US taxpayer resources and wasted time.

As long as the media continues to trumpet faux crises such as CAGW and Peak Oil, and demonise hopeful energy solutions such as Bio-Energy and safe nuclear, the public will continue to be "dumbed down" and incapable of making informed decisions on energy.

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.
;-)