Biological Substitutes for Petroleum Scaling Up Economically

As the price of petroleum edges up in fits and starts, booms and busts, substitution products are coming on board to replace petroleum in many uses -- including fuels, plastics, high value chemicals, lubricants, and more.

Making plastic from sugar can be just as cheap as making it from petroleum, says Dow Chemical. The company plans to build a plant in Brazil that it says will be the world's largest facility for making polymers from plants. _TechnologyReview

Rather than jumping on board the peak oil bandwagon of doom, many dozens of startups and large industrial players are lining up to produce substitution products and feedstocks.  The process of substitution takes time, of course.  But given the abundant energy resources of the planet, and the political will to develop them, there will be more than enough time to make the different transitions which will be needed.

Bio-based chemicals production has grown quickly in recent years, but it still represents just 7.7 percent of the overall chemicals market. Production has been limited in many cases to specialty chemicals or niche products. But Dow now says chemicals made from plant feedstocks may be ready to compete head-to-head with petrochemicals made in large volumes.

Most large-volume chemicals are made from petroleum. About 80 million tons of polyethylene are made annually around the world. But high oil prices have increased the costs of petrochemicals. And in Brazil, long-standing government support for sugarcane ethanol production has allowed the industry to drive down costs, making ethanol competitive with fossil fuels. Making polyethylene from sugar "would not necessarily be attractive in other regions," says Luis Cirihal, Dow's director of renewable alternatives and business development for Latin America.

The technology for converting ethanol into ethylene, the precursor for polyethylene, is not new. "The dehydration process for converting ethanol to ethylene has been known since the 1920s. The only thing that's really new here is the scale," Cirihal says. _TechnologyReview

Oil prices have been bouncing around from very high to very low for over 150 years.  Boom and bust has been the name of the oil game since it began.  Predictions of global oil depletion and consequent economic doom have been made over that same 150 year time period, and all have failed.  But that does not stop a lot of people from selling books, newsletters, seminars, and workshops in order to cash in on the cyclical sentiments of impending depletion doom which seem to come on with every boom cycle.

Trivial truisms lie at the heart of most mass delusions. The delusion of impending peak oil doom (POD) is no exception. The truisms at the heart of POD include: "the total supply of oil in the Earth is finite," and "oil wells deplete rapidly, once tapped." But the truisms can only take you so far, without questionable assumptions and educated guesses. A lot of people want to believe in doom, and are willing to take those leaps of faith into the unknown.

But there is no need to do that, if all you want to do is live a full, abundant, and satisfying life, despite the finite nature of world oil supplies. To do that, you merely need to keep a few general concepts in mind, and follow a small number of central parameters. More on that later.

Contrary to Peak Oil Orthodoxy, Oil Industry Reacts to Prices

Khaled Al Buraik, executive director of the government-controlled Saudi Aramco, announced that new technology could add as much as 2 trillion barrels of oil to global proved reserves.

Although the current global oil reserves in place are estimated at 14 trillion barrels, only about 1.2 trillion can be recovered, said Khaled Al Buraik, executive director of the government-controlled Saudi Aramco.

Speaking at a seminar in Riyadh, Buraik said the quantity of oil extracted so far worldwide does not exceed one trillion barrels.

"Advanced technology in hydrocarbon production could add around two trillion barrels to the existing proven crude reserves in the near future," he said in his address, published by Saudi newspapers on Monday.

"The real challenge for scientists and engineers is how to access to nearly 11.8 trillion barrels to meet the growing world needs of hydrocarbon in the future...what is needed now is more effort by scientists and specialists in this field to invent new methods and very advanced technology." _Zawya

Higher oil prices are spurring oil companies to increase their spending for exploration and production.

Brazil's rich offshore reserves keep growing larger

Brazil announces ambitious new underwater technologies to provide easier access to its vast undersea oil wealth

Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is a growing component of national energy budgets from Britain to Japan, as a compensatory move against higher oil prices.

A new and ambitious approach to increasing the value of cheap, abundant natural gas, is being advanced by San Francisco startup Siluria Technologies.

Siluria has decided not to go after gasoline or diesel but instead to produce ethylene, a building block for plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, beverage bottles, tires and lots of other materials that are now made from oil. Ethylene can also be turned into alkanes, a class of hydrocarbons that are a component of gasoline.

A more important difference, though, could be the energy needed for conversion from the natural hydrocarbon molecule, methane, to the synthetic one, ethylene. In Siluria’s process, using a new kind of catalyst, that conversion gives off heat instead of requiring it. _NYT

I will present more information on Siluria in the future.

As you can see, advancing technologies will bring about both new proved oil reserves and production, AND new substitutes for crude oil in both fuels and chemical uses. Gas to liquids and LNG are certain to achieve traction for significant scaleup within the next 2 years.

It will take about 20 years for advanced biofuels and small modular fission reactors to get approved, licensed, and scaled up to provide significant quantities of energy and fuels. In the meantime, unconventional hydrocarbons such as shale gas, oil sands, coal to liquids, and heavy oils will scale up to ease the transition. If needed, oil shales and methane clathrates can provide more hydrocarbon energy than all other resources put together.

Taken from an earlier posting at Al Fin Energy

Doing More with Less -- No Limits

There are two dominant themes in the western world today: the limited world view that wants to slash energy use, slash human populations, and release most of the human world back into the wild -- and there is the theme of upward evolving, and growing into a peaceful world of abundance, without limits. Julian Simon represented the latter view, par excellence.

The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when Paul Ehrlich bet Simon $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent.

Buckminster Fuller was another person who believed that human ingenuity would allow humans to continue to do more -- with less.

Doing "more with less" was Fuller's credo. He described himself as a "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," setting forth to solve the escalating challenges that faced humanity before they became insurmountable.

The key to humanity evolving (as opposed to devolving into a collectivist lifelong larval colony) is in learning to do more with less. Recent spikes in commodities prices convinced many superficial students of resource economics that Simon would finally be proven wrong. But scientists and engineers are beginning to catch the spirit of Fuller and Simon in their work. We may yet escape the collectivist larval farm.

Brian Westenhaus at New Energy and Fuel describes an Australian innovation that will allow the substitution of a cheap Teflon compound in place of ultra-expensive Platinum in fuel cell catalytic membranes. The cost savings will be immense, and should rapidly speed the transition to fuel cell applications for automobiles and stationary installations. It will also greatly extend the world's supply of platinum.

Brian Wang at Next Big Future presents several innovations that will make automobiles lighter and more fuel efficient. These include several new uses of carbon nano-fibers, ways of making titanium cheaper for use in cars, and the use of graphene enhanced plastics.

The ability to substitute cheaper, smaller gasoline engines for larger more expensive diesel engines, should introduce cost savings into many industrial applications.

Of course, the holy grail of "more with less" is molecular nano-assemblers that can manufacture an almost limitless array of products quickly, precisely, and relatively cheaply. Brian Wang presents an update on carbon nano-assemblers.

When confronted with a challenge, humans can either try to find workable solutions, or they can hide behind "limits." Whether "peak oil doom", "climate catastrophe", "overpopulation", the challenge of militant Islam to secular western ideals--a dominant refrain from modern left-limitists is "cut back!"

Instead of cutting back, however, ingenious and resourceful humans will substitute and innovate, and do more with less. The limits are in the mind. Think laterally, as well as logically.

Furfural from Bagasse, and the Algae Shade Wall

Furfural is a diesel substitute that can be produced from bagasse--the hemicellulose "waste" byproduct of sugar manufacture from sugar cane. Furfural is produced from bagasse by steam distillation, water separation, and purification.

An alternative biofuel, called furfural, is gaining new levels of attention because, like cellulosic ethanol, it is produced from waste biomass such as sugar cane bagasse. After pressing cane for sugar, furfural is produced by steam distillation; it has been produced since the 1920s on a commercial basis and imports for $2.24 per gallon. Avantium has successfully tested furfural as a diesel substitute. Avantium branded its furfural-based biofuel as Furanics, and tests showed a significant reduction in soot emisions and and elimination of sulphur emissions, when compared to conventional diesel. __BiofuelsDigest

On the algal biodiesel front, attempts to scale up production of oils from algae are running into the "shade wall" problem: too much algae in the mix blocks the sunlight needed to grow more algae. Algae growers are successful in using algae for water purification, however, as algae grows quite well in waste water. This Biofuels Digest article provides a good rundown on current algae biofuels research. Current production costs for algal biodiesel are near $20 a gallon, revealing how far algae research and development must go to be viable. Of course, if speculators and oil dictators have their way, gasoline itself will cost $20 a gallon at the pump soon. That is not likely, however, since Coskata and other cellulosic ethanol producers are promising to make ethanol at costs of $1 a gallon within the next 2 to 3 years.

Clean Burning Bio-Coal From Torrefaction Processing of Wood and Biomass

Biomass that has been treated by the torrefaction process is very close to coal in energy content, but unlike coal, torrefied biomass is virtually pollution free and smokeless. The torrefaction process is self-sustaining and relatively simple and fast. It creates a biomass derived coal substitute that is virtually pollution-free.

Torrefaction (300-400º C) liberates water, volatile organic compounds (VOC), and hemicellulose (HC) from the cellulose and lignin.
The VOC and HC are combusted to generate process heat.
TW can easily replace coal in combustion or be a feedstock for further pyrolysis or gasification for combined heat and power or Fischer-Tropsch liquids.
The warm lignin acts as a binder when the torrefied wood (TW) is pelletized. __PDFTorrefiedWoodPPT

Torrefied biomass, or biocoal, can be fired along with coal in power plants, or can be used altogether in place of coal in unmodified plants. More on clean biocoal:

1. Very Clean burning
2. Cheaper than coal
3. Very safe for the Environment
4. Only True Solution to Global Warming
5. Green House Gas Neutral
6. Tree plantations clean environment
7. Virtually no water pollution
8. Infinite supply
9. Equal or more BTU’s to coal
10. Low moisture __Source

More on biocoal here.

H/T QiBioenergy

Torrefaction processing of biomass can be seen as a parallel energy path to gasification or other thermochemical processes for turning waste biomass into world-class energy products.