Farm Waste to Bio-Oil: Energy from the Darndest Sources

Agricultural researchers are determined to help solve the energy shortages the industrial world is experiencing. Previously I posted on University of Illinois Urb/Champ researchers who developed a process to produce crude oil from pig manure. Now researchers from Iowa State University are mixing corn stalks and cow manure to produce oil and charcoal.

The researchers are working to take wastes from Iowa farms -- manure and corn stalks -- and turn them into a bio-oil that could be used for boiler fuel and perhaps transportation fuel.

"The way I see manure, it's not waste anymore," Sadaka said. "It is bio-oil."

But it takes a few steps to make that transformation.

First, the manure needs to be dried so it can be burned. Sadaka's idea for low-cost and low-odor drying is to mix the manure with corn stalks, put the mix in a big drum, use a small blower to keep the air circulating and use an auger to turn the mixture once a day. Within about five days, bacteria and fungi working to decompose the mix have naturally raised the temperature to about 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Within another 20 days or so the moisture content is down from 60 percent to about 20 percent. Sadaka calls the process bio-drying.

That makes it possible to move to the next step: rapidly heating the mixture in a bubbling, fluidized bed reactor that has no oxygen. It's a process called fast pyrolysis. The process thermochemically breaks the molecular bonds in the mixture. It produces charcoal that can be used to enrich soil. And it produces vapors that are condensed to a thick, dark bio-oil.

Preliminary tests indicate every kilogram of dried mixture produces .2 to .5 kilograms of bio-oil depending on the operating conditions.

Sadaka said the energy content of dry manure is 12 to 18 gigajoules per ton. Canada's Office of Energy Efficiency says one gigajoule of electricity will keep a 60-watt bulb continuously burning for six months. Sadaka figures if half the animal manure in the country were processed into bio-oil, that would produce the equivalent of 45 million tons of oil.

Sadaka is experimenting with the process in 900-liter drums at the Iowa Energy Center's Biomass Energy Conversion Center in Nevada. So far, he has dried a mixture of cow manure and corn stalks. Next he'll test the process with poultry manure. And then he'll try pig manure.

Source.

This process is similar to other processes used to make oil from poultry process waste. Here is more information on the process from the US Government renewable energy program.

These processes are attempts to utilise more of the byproducts of agriculture in producing renewable energy. Growing animals for food is inherently wasteful when viewed in perspective, but there are ways of making it more efficient than it is. Here is a fine overview from Mechanical Engineering Magazine, discussing this family of technologies and their application to farm waste.

Besides thermolyis and thermal depolymerisation to produce oil, manure can produce methane to substitute for natural gas. Corn stubble and rice, wheat, barley etc. straw can be broken down to sugars and fermented to make ethanol or butanol, and the methane from manure used as fuel to distill the resulting "beer" to pure ethanol.

Researchers in agricultural sciences simply do not want to be left out of the action, when it comes to solving the renewable energy problem. There seems to be enough glory to go around, even for manure research.

Peak Oil: Meet Australian Biocrude

Nature took millions of years to turn plant cells into petro-crude. Short-lived human beings are in more of a hurry. Australian researchers have developed a form of bio-crude from ligno-cellulose that is more stable than all previous versions.

The bio-crude oil, also known as bio-oil, can be used to produce high value chemicals and biofuels, including both petrol and diesel replacement fuels. The breakthrough removes one of the major obstacles holding back the development of decentralised production concepts, as the stability of the oil is important in the logistical chain.

Bio-crude oil or bio-oil is a next-generation biofuel obtained from the fast pyrolysis of any type of biomass including waste. Fast pyrolysis is a process in which the organic materials are rapidly heated to 450 - 600 °C at atmospheric pressure in the absence of air. Under these conditions, organic vapours, pyrolysis gases and charcoal are produced. The vapours are condensed to bio-oil. Typically, 70-75 wt.% of the feedstock is converted into oil.

....Dr Steven Loffler of CSIRO Forest Biosciences says his team made changes to the chemical process, which allowed it to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world. This makes it practical and economical to produce bio-crude in local areas for transport to a central refinery, overcoming the high costs and greenhouse gas emissions otherwise involved in transporting bulky green wastes over long distances (previous post, here and here).____Biopace

Biocrude can be made from trees, plant waste, or any organic material--including the dead bodies of politicians who keep insisting on using your tax money to pay for ethanol from maize (corn).

Second Generation Biofuels: We Love CO2!

Many environmental websites are revealing their ignorance of the state of the art in biofuels R&D. If they want to be taken seriously on the topic of biofuels, they need to start up the learning curve of second generation biofuels.

Vijayanand S Moholkar of the Guwahati-based Indian Institute of Technology said, “Pre-liminary experiments show tremendous potential for micro-algae derived oil feedstock for economic synthesis of bio-diesel. Proper cultivation of micro-algae can produce 10 times more oil than Jatropha in the same piece of land. Jatropha and Karanja yield not more than 1 to 1.5 tonne of oil per hectare of cultivation —a major limitation, which adversely affects the bio-diesel Economy.”

Moholkar was in Delhi last week to participate in the 5th International Bio-fuels Conference organised by Winrock International-India. He said largescale production of micro-algae can be done in raceway ponds (closed loop recirculation channels) and photobioreactors. The prices of micro-algal oil and crude fossil oil must differ by two orders of magnitude, so as to make microalgal bio-diesel a cost-effective alternative, he said.

K Subramaniam from the biotechnology department of Sathyamangalam-based Bannari Amman Institute of Technology favoured biochemical conversion of rice straw and other biomass into bio-ethanol. He said that the bio-ethanol production from cheaply available rice straw by separate enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation can be economically viable.

According to Mritunjay Kumar Shukla of the Dehradun-based Indian Institute of Petroleum bio-ethers, particularly Dimethyl ether (DME), Diethyl ether (DEE) and methylal seem to be promising among all the bio-fuels due to their oxygenated molecular structure, better combustion characteristics, superior well-to-wheel efficiency, low GHG emissions and higher production efficiency.

The director-general of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), William D Dar said that his institute has found out the way for production bio-ethanol without comprising food security. The stalks of the varieties of sweet sorghum developed by the institute can produce bio-ethanol and increase livelihood options for farmers in dryland areas.____Financial Express

Many species of algae and seagrass thrive on artificially raised levels of CO2. Land plants such as trees and grasses show the same accelerated growth in atmospheres artificially boosted in CO2 levels.

The researchers report that the elevated CO2 "led to significantly higher reproductive output, below-ground biomass and vegetative proliferation of new shoots in light-replete treatments," i.e., those receiving light at 33% of the surface irradiance level. More specifically, they write that "shoots growing at 36 µM CO2(aq) were 25% larger than those in the unenriched treatment [16 µM CO2(aq)]," while "at 85 µM CO2(aq) shoots were 50% larger than those in the unenriched treatment and at 1123 µM CO2(aq) shoots were almost twice as large as those in the unenriched treatment." In addition, they found that at 1123 µM CO2(aq) "22% of the shoots differentiated into flowers, more than twice the flowering output of the other treatments at this light level."___Source

By coupling the growth of biofuel biomass with the CO2 of power plant effluent gas, you accomplish accelerated growth of biomass while transferring the CO2 and pollutants from power plant effluent to the growing biofuel feedstock.

Algae, seagrass, and other organisms living in the sea, thrive on higher CO2 levels. But if it is politically advantageous to remove CO2 from the air--thus depriving sea life of its food--humans may have to use the "power plant effluent to algal bio-diesel and bio-petroleum" route.

You Don't Have to Be Nuts to Believe in Peak Oil Doom, But It Helps!

Image Source

If all the citizens of Planet Earth were polled, it is likely that most citizens believe in one doomsday cult or another. Peak oil doom is a highly addictive, though irrational, doomsday cult. Like the climate catastrophe doomsday cult, it is a quasi-scientific religion, with just enough factual bits included to snare the unwary.

The first problem one confronts when trying to come to grips with the cult of peak oil, is finding a definition of the phenomena which is both widely held among adherents, and clear enough to be falsifiable. Here is a short explanation from Matt Savinar of Life After the Oil Crash (as quoted by Fabius Maximus)

In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2005 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2030 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.

The issue is not one of “running out” so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. … A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him. In a similar sense, an oil based economy such as ours doesn’t need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10 to 15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty. … _FabiusMaximus

Fabius Maximus analyses Savinar's claims line by line at the link above, and explains in several ways why the peak oil cult is massively overblown, and suitable only for people with nothing important to do or think about. Take one of Savinar's points: oil production follows a bell curve. Does that actually hold up in reality? Not really. Think rather of a curve with a long plateau at the top (yet to be reached) and a gradual skew to the right over decades.

JD at Peak Oil Debunked blog has an interesting recent post explaining how a drop in demand for oil such as we are seeing now, can completely change the equation. Here is more on the demand slump in the US.

New supplies--even new wells that will not produce for 5 or 10 years--will also have a downward effect on oil prices and a re-shifting in markets. Producers who are holding back production will be inclined to sell more at current higher prices before later new supplies kick in. See this non-OPEC outlook (PDF), and consider the coming oil rush to the offshore and the arctic.

In China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, and many other emerging economies, governments are subsidising petroleum costs for residents. This is incredibly expensive for those governments. Some of them are already tapering their supports, and others are making definite plans to do so. The loss of those subsidies will trigger a demand destruction in those countries similar to what we are seeing in North America and Europe. It is like a dimmer switch: high cost of a commodity affects how that commodity is used, and promotes substitution of all kinds. This is one of the many things that peak oil cultists fail to comprehend.

It is very likely that high oil prices (above $90 a barrel) will continue to stimulate massive investment in oil exploration, production, and improved refinement--particularly of heavy, sour, and unconventional oils. It is also virtually inevitable that the headlong rush to develop bio-energy solutions will not only continue but will accelerate--as long as oil stays above $90 a barrel.

The US Democratic Party controlled congress will try to continue to cut off energy supplies to the US by banning offshore drilling, arctic drilling, shale oil exploration and development, coal to liquids and coal to gas technologies, nuclear fission power plants, etc. That is political peak oil which we have plenty of. If Barak Obama is elected, he has suggested that he may even ban Canadian oil sands from being used anywhere in the US--political peak oil in spades!

But the US Democratic Party functionaries such as Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer are playing with fire, considering the mood that US consumers, taxpayers, and voters are in. There will be a reckoning, and the Pelosis, Boxers, and Obamas may not enjoy the final tally. Political peak oil is a useful scam for temporarily wrecking an economy only as long as you can blame the carnage on your political opponents. Once the voters begin to see who is really responsible, an intelligent political crook should know when to back off. It is not clear that the cronies leading the political peak oil charge in the US are intelligent.

Even the election of John McCain will not help the energy equation very much, since McCain is actually a believer in climate catastrophe--and probably peak oil doom--at heart. Much of his current posturing is merely a savvy reading of the electorate's mood.

What we are seeing now is a race between the political peak oilers who are trying to shut the US energy supply down via prohibitions, regulations, and bans, and the energy entrepreneurs, engineers, wildcatters, inventors, and innovators--who want to see continued economic growth based upon ever cleaner and more abundant energy. Who are you cheering for?

Why Peak Oil Doom is for Dummies: Hotelling Rule

The “Hotelling rule”, named after the late US mathematician Harold Hotelling, states that the price of an exhaustible commodity should converge towards the price of a substitute resource. _National

Peak Oil Doom is all about the massive devastating crash of the world economy that occurs, shortly after world crude oil production "peaks." The movement has collected a lot of adherents over the years, and several websites are dedicated to perpetuating the pornographic pleasure that peak oil doomers experience when contemplating the world after peak oil.

There is a serious problem with peak oil theory. It tends to ignore other forms of energy besides crude oil, which can be substituted for crude. Taking all the potential substitutes for crude oil into account tends to change the picture significantly.

From shale gas in North America to big new discoveries off the coasts of Venezuela and Israel, the recent appraisal of a huge Turkmen gasfield, new Australasian, Russian and Yemeni liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and initiatives to reduce gas flaring in Nigeria, Russia and Iraq, it has never been clearer that the world is floating on a party balloon of gas.

Ironically, the more geologists search for oil, the more they usually find gas.

Consequently, gas prices have fallen in markets where the commodity trades freely.

Not so long ago, gas produced from oilfields was considered a nuisance, and it was burned as waste.

Now gas is a valued commodity for heating, power generation, the production of petrochemicals and fertiliser, for pushing more oil out of the ground, and even for conversion into synthetic crude oil and for use in some diesel engines.

Like oil, it can now be shipped around the world in tankers as well as moved through pipelines. If global warming continues, LNG tankers may soon ship gas from the Arctic.

Because of its infrastructure requirements, however, gas has most often been sold under long-term contracts linked to crude prices. In future, if Dr Austvik is right, crude markets may follow international gas prices. _National

Important new crude oil discoveries are being made on the continent and continental shelves of North America. But North America with its massive coal reserves, its trillions of barrels of oil sands bitumens and oil shale kerogens, and its massive new finds of natural gas, is in an excellent position to substitute "home grown" fuels for imported crude oil, if necessary.

There is of course another kind of oil -- bio-oils. Bio-oils from microbes are the next big liquid fuels revolution (after CTL coal-to-liquids, GTL gas-to-liquids, and BTL biomass-to-liquids). It will take 10 to 20 years for microbe-produced oils to begin hitting the market and begin enacting Hotelling's Rule of economic substitution. BTL, CTL, and GTL will hit the markets much sooner.

And then there is the nuclear revolution -- safer and more efficient reactor designs just waiting for more enlightened governments in North America, Europe, and elsewhere to approve the next obvious step in large scale power generation.  It takes about ten years to construct a modern nuclear plant once approved, but the Luddites in the Obama - Pelosi government and its alliance with the reactionary faux environmental factions are obstructing every form of useful new energy as far as possible -- including nuclear.

Peak Oil Doom is the twin of Climate Catastrophe Doom.  The two movements conveniently dovetail, since Peak Oil Doom uses Climate Catastrophe Doom in an attempt to deny the use of coal, gas, kerogens, bitumens, heavy oils, and even regular crude.  These faux environmental political movements are oriented around the hobbling of the industrial base of the western world.  It is simply a matter of the consolidation of political power through energy starvation and a general economic hardship.

But the plan will not work, unless the Obama - Pelosi government is allowed to complete its well mapped agenda. There are several reasons -- including this one -- to doubt that the O-P Reich will have enough time to finish the job.

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the future of human governments and human society. Falling into a zombie panic over phantom doom will help no one.  It will only prevent us from doing what has to be done.

African Biofuels: What to Expect

The 3rd Annual African Biofuels conference is to be held on 10-13 March 2008 in Midrand, South Africa.The African Biofuels conference aims to:

• Provide in-depth insight into the growing African biofuels market

• Offer critical global information for the enhancement of biofuels-related businesses

• Cover every major aspect of the industry from policy and pricing to feedstock crops and CDM

• Give delegates exposure to more than 400 peers and over 50 technology and service providers

• Host a dedicated SMME Workshop for the development of small scale producers___Source

Africa has vast areas of land with great biofuels potential.

...the high rainfall belt between Angola, Zambia and Mozambique alone had the potential to rival the United States as a producer of...bioethanol.

"It's almost as big as the size of the midwest of America. It has the same of type of potential and could actually outperform America___Source

It is important for Africans not to repeat the mistakes of the United States maize ethanol producers.

"Two potential crops have been identified for the fuel ethanol initiative in Nigeria: sugarcane and cassava. Nigeria is currently reputed to be the leading producer of cassava in the world of about 30 million tons annually," states Onochie Anyaoku, group general manager of NNPC's Renewables Division. "The potential must be seen against the background that the average yield in Nigeria is put at about 15 tons/hectare as compared to 25-30 tons/hectare obtainable in other countries.___Source

Cassava and sugarcane both grow well in many parts of Africa. Cane gives much higher yields of alcohol than maize, and cassava fits more growing regions of Africa than maize.

Which crop grown in Africa produces twice as much as maize and three times as much as millet or sorghum? And which crop has seen Africa emerge as overall leader, accounting for more than half of the world output, with Nigeria as the biggest producer? Which same crop has seen production levels triple on the continent over the past 50 years? And now covers one-third of the dietary needs of its population? The answer is cassava.___Source

For biodiesel, we can expect Chinese and other giga-investors to attempt large-scale deforestation in Africa for Palm Oil plantations--just as they are doing in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. But Jatropha is the better oil seed crop for Africa, since it grows in the same fields as other crops--while improving the topsoil from its shed leaves, a rich fertiliser.

Interest is particularly growing in the perennial oil nut bearing jatropha tree, which is viewed as the most feasible plant for dry-land cultivation for the extraction of bio-oil...The plant was often used for snakebites, as an insect repellent and for constipation.

The jatropha tree originates from South America, but was brought to the southern African region by Portuguese explorers....The seeds of the plant grow on low fertility soils in low and high rainfall areas; it has a small gestation period, and can be harvested in non-rainy seasons.

The size of the plant is also convenient for collection of seeds. It produces seeds with a high oil-content (30 to 40 percent) after two to five years, depending on soil fertility and rainfall. According to Mwewa, the plant can yield one liter of oil from three kilogrammes of the nuts, and harvesting can be done over a 50-year period.

The oil from the jatropha plant can be transformed into bio-diesel fuel - which is produced from the reaction of vegetable oil with alcohol in the presence of a catalyst to yield mono-alkyl esters and glycerine, which is then removed - through an etherification process...What makes it more popular amongst protagonists of bio-fuels is because of its toxicity, it is not for human consumption, and therefore not in competition with food crops. Threats to food security are recognised as the primary drawback of large-scale bio-fuels development.___Source

If the Africans can avoid the destruction of large swathes of of rainforest, and stay out of the maize ethanol trap, do not depend on food crops for fuel, and most importantly--do not betray the small farmers in favour of the giga-conglomerates, she may grow into a significant player in the world sustainable energy game, without paying an onerous environmental and sociological price.

The Oil Price Bubble: How Low Can It Go?

While most people are asking "How high can oil go?", a lot of informed analysts are wondering how far the price of oil will drop when the bubble bursts. T. Boone Pickens is shorting oil, the chief of the IMF considers an oil price drop more than just possible, Saudi oil minister Naimi suspects prices may fall into the $60 to $70 range for a while, and the IEA has thought for several weeks that international oil prices are likely to fall for many reasons.

Many "doomseekers" would like to think that oil production has peaked, and prices will keep climbing to $200/bbl, $300/bbl and higher. But the inside analysts in the industry believe that prices are more likely to fall--significantly--before they go that high, if they ever do.

Oil has been on a tear since last summer, when investors began reacting to financial turmoil and economic weakness in the United States – and the resulting decline in American dollar and interest rates – by moving aggressively into crude oil futures markets.

Since then, crude prices have climbed nearly 50 per cent from $70 a barrel. That increase came even as analysts were reducing their forecasts of global demand growth this year, in light of growing economic weakness in the United States and elsewhere.

The stunning price rise has been driven almost exclusively by investors who were bailing out of the dollar and other financial assets and pouring into commodities, Judith Dwarkin, chief economist at Calgary-based Ross Smith Energy Group, said yesterday.

“The fundamentals don't support prices at $80, let alone $100,” Ms. Dwarkin said. She said global demand growth has slowed in recent years, while spare capacity among members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has expanded somewhat, even as inventories of gasoline are at robust levels.

“The greater prices diverge from what is fundamentally supportable, and the longer they stay at a distance from what is fundamentally supportable, the greater the risk of a correction, and a large one.”...She has forecast an average price of $75 a barrel for this year.

Oil consumption in the developed world is dropping more sharply than anticipated just a few months ago because the subprime crisis has contributed to increasing economic weakness, Mr. Lynch said. Even emerging economies have slowed their demand growth in the face of record high prices, he added.

Prices are remaining high owing to speculation. “It's people saying the stock market doesn't look good, real estate doesn't look good, the dollar doesn't look good, so let's buy commodities,” he said.

He said prices could drop below $50 a barrel over the next three to five years, if OPEC is unable to significantly cut production in the face of weaker demand.___GlobeandMail_via__EnvironmentalRepublic

Other analysts think the prices will remain in the US $90 to $110 range for the foreseeable future, if world economies continue to grow.

Al Fin readers understand that far more oil is still in the ground, than has been pumped. The price of pumping and refining that oil will likely rise as the more attainable oil is depleted. High oil prices (above US $60 a barrel) are likely from now on. Anything above $60 at this time is likely due to lively speculation by hedge investors, and perhaps even manipulation by high level traders in the run-up to US presidential elections this November. A lower dollar and higher oil could have a significant impact on US voter mood in November.

In the long run, however, technology is king. Better oil production technologies will keep the EROEI for oil from skyrocketing. Within the decade we will see unexpected growth of the bio-energy sector, reducing demand for petro-crude. Nuclear energy growth in many countries--probably including the US--will reduce demand for other petro products due to shifts in transportation and home heating from oil to electricity. Better utility-scale electrical storage will bring more large-scale renewables into the energy picture. More efficient electricity transmission and distribution (high temp superconductors, HVDC, etc) will make electricity more invisible to the landscape, but more reliably available. And better efficiencies in energy use across the board will further reduce use of oil. It will all add up.

The oil dictatorships of the middle east, Africa, Russia, Venezuela, and the far east will need to find other sources of income if they do not want to end up like North Korea and Zimbabwe.

Update: Brian Wang at NextBigFuture has an update on the huge oil field that straddles the US:Canadian border, the Bakken field. With oil prices high, you can expect oil exploration to enjoy a huge boost.

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.

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.

Manure & Garbage Cut Biofuels Costs

Producing bio-ethanol takes a lot of energy. And energy is expensive--especially natural gas and oil. Bio-ethanol manufacturers are substituting manure, plastics, paper, rice hulls, and other garbage for natural gas--saving many millions of dollars in production costs!

The world's first manure fired ethanol plant is expected to go online in the next two months. Not only will it be environmentally friendly but it will also save Panda Ethanol about $30M a year. ___Source (good video)__via__QiBioenergy

A wider array of garbage and waste can be used to fire bio-ethanol plants using a new flex-fuel boiler developed by EPI.

Substantial savings are realized by using in-plant waste streams as fuel. Paper mills produce a paper sludge waste that is typically land filled but can be utilized as a fuel to produce steam for the paper making operations. Other industries may have plastics, paper, cardboard, oat hulls, rice hulls, distiller’s grains, syrup, glycerin or other byproducts that could be converted into usable energy utilizing EPI’s flexible fuel fluidized bed system. ___Source (PDF)__via__QiBioenergy

This move away from natural gas and oil-fired boilers for bio-ethanol production helps reduce costs of production for bio-ethanol--making it more competitive economically--and it makes more natural gas available to the parts of thegeneral market which may have more difficulty making the same type of substitution.

Such flex-fuel boilers will be equally as useful when cellulosic alcohol processing is more common in 5 to 10 years. The same technology will be useful as well for various biomass to liquid fuel thermochemical processes which are expected to take over most of the biofuels industry within 20 years--unless Craig Venter and his merry band of synthesists can create a new life-form that makes a better, cheaper biofuel from CO2 and sunlight.

Most analysts of bio-energy seem to be lost in a haze of misinformation. Blaming biofuels for high food costs is one clear sign of confusion on an analyst's part. But these things have a way of sorting themselves out.

Oil costs between now and the November US Presidential elections are likely to be kept high, by various machinations. Behind the scenes currency manipulation is only one tactic that seems to be working for now. US government budgetary and Federal Reserve Bank monetary policies have made such manipulation fairly easy. Other reasons for high oil costs--high demand, temporary short supplies due to manpower and infrastructure shortages etc.--are simply part of doing business in any industry. Oil is not just any business, however, and its price has repercussions that propagate throughout the geopolitical globe.

Peak Oil: Meet Biofuels

The entire transportation infrastructure is based on combustion engines. Combustion engines feature very high energy density combined with very high power density. Such a combination is difficult to achieve with electric storage and fuel cell technologies. So it is natural that a lot of venture capital is being invested in the development of liquid biofuels, to substitute for fossil fuels currently used in the transportation industry.

Biodiesel, cellulosic butanol, and now pyrolytic liquid biofuels offer a renewable way to ease the transition from a fossil fuel based infrastructure to an eventual combustion-free transportation and energy infrastructure.

A team of University of Georgia researchers has developed a new biofuel derived from wood chips. Unlike previous fuels derived from wood, the new and still unnamed fuel can be blended with biodiesel and petroleum diesel to power conventional engines.

“The exciting thing about our method is that it is very easy to do,” said Tom Adams, director of the UGA Faculty of Engineering outreach service. “We expect to reduce the price of producing fuels from biomass dramatically with this technique.”

Adams, whose findings are detailed in the early online edition of the American Chemical Society journal Energy and Fuels, explained that scientists have long been able to derive oils from wood, but they had been unable to process it effectively or inexpensively so that it can be used in conventional engines. The researchers have developed a new chemical process, which they are working to patent, that inexpensively treats the oil so that it can be used in unmodified diesel engines or blended with biodiesel and petroleum diesel.

Here’s how the process works: Wood chips and pellets – roughly a quarter inch in diameter and six-tenths of an inch long – are heated in the absence of oxygen at a high temperature, a process known as pyrolysis. Up to a third of the dry weight of the wood becomes charcoal, while the rest becomes a gas. Most of this gas is condensed into a liquid bio-oil and chemically treated. When the process is complete, about 34 percent of the bio-oil (or 15 to 17 percent of the dry weight of the wood) can be used to power engines. The researchers are currently working to improve the process to derive even more oil from the wood.

Source

Many scientists have opposed biofuels as being inefficient and potentially harmful to the public health. The facts of transportation and energy/heating suggest that petroleum based fuels will trend progressively higher over time, as long as there is no significant recession or depression in the world economy. Given these rising costs, one would expect the smart money to invest in ways to produce useful fuels less expensive than future fossil fuels will be.


Many science bloggers have suggested that biofuels are a dead-end for the future. They say that the costs of producing the fuel are as great as the value of the fuel itself. They suggest that there is not enough land to grow both biofuels and food crops.

These are interesting claims, but they are unlikely to hold up in the face of the economic importance of viable alternatives to fossil fuels that can be used with existing combustion equipment, and such equipment as is likely to be introduced in the near term.

Food crops can be grown economically using aeroponic techniques, in the driest deserts, in outer space, or on sea-floating arcologies. Human ingenuity in the growing of both food crops and biofuel crops has just barely been tapped. The importance of liquid fuels in the trillion dollar infrastructures suggest that liquid biofuels will be very important quite soon, and for at least several decades.

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

Biofuels Triumphant--The Folly of Pessimism

Biofuels have a magnificent future, in terms of replacing liquid petro-fuels for transportation, agriculture, heavy machinery, etc. It is important to keep in mind the rapid progress being made in the new science and technology of biofuels, when looking at research showing that [old methods of producing] biofuels are inefficient.

Several recent studies about the carbon balance of first-generation biofuels, including two analyses published in Science, are based on assessments of current land use practises. These studies are important, but the conclusions drawn from them are often seriously flawed. Moreover, if these conclusions are placed in a neo-malthusian perspective on population and natural resources, they cannot be taken seriously at all because there is no credible basis for neo-malthusianism in the first place.

...all these analyses are based on existing, primitive land use practises and on first-generation, inefficient biofuels made from crops like corn or soybeans. They do not take into account new energy crops (e.g. crops that yield far more biomass and are engineered to store far more CO2 than ordinary crops), the use of plantation residues, new bioconversion technologies, and the radical option of capturing and storing carbon from bioenergy production.

Those who use current studies about the carbon balance of today's incredibly inefficient biofuels to conclude that all biofuels are incapable of reducing emissions are making a grave mistake....Decentralised biofuel production plants that can be located close to the land to be cleared are already here. These plants draw on a process called fast-pyrolysis. It transforms any type of biomass into bio-oil, which can be further upgraded into transport fuels or used in power plants....The process works as follows: original biomass (e.g. a woodland) is used for the production of a biofuel such as pyrolysis oil....The fuel is then sent to a facility where it is used for the production of either electricity and heat, a fully decarbonized biofuel (such as biohydrogen) or a low-carbon biofuel....

...Current biofuel crops like corn or soybeans are truly inefficient because biofuels made from them only utilize a fraction of the biomass grown, that is, easily extractible starch or oil. These first-generation biofuels have no future and are no longer of interest to the bioenergy community....A large number of plant biologists and bio-engineers has already developed new crops that either yield far more biomass (which immediately clears much of the carbon debt), or that store far more CO2 than ordinary crops, or that contain in them codes for easy bioconversion.

...an area in which huge potential can be found is in the utilization of plantation and processing residues from existing agricultural operations and biofuel operations. Recently, we referred to the potential for the production of biohydrogen from palm oil residues. A palm plantation yields farm more biomass than is currently used in the form of oil. If these vast amounts of residues are used productively instead of burned or dumped as waste, the carbon balance of biofuels from the oil is seriously improved (previous post). There is similar potential is virtually all agricultural operations today. The same process can be applied in biofuel operations, where residues and byproducts (such as glycerine in biodiesel) is used as a feedstock for a myriad of green products that replace oil, coal and gas.
___Source

The fact is, the people who do studies such as the ones in Science, cannot possibly keep up with the rapidly advancing technology in biofuels. By the time they publish, their results are hopelessly out of date. While the energy return to energy invested ratio is only 1.5 for maize ethanol, for advanced ethanol and biodiesel production methods, the return can be over 10 to 15 times the energy invested.

Many advocates of biofuels favour them for the prospect of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. We at Al Fin see that rationale as trivial and unimportant. Increased energy independence and sustainability are far more important reasons to develop advanced biofuels. The payoff will be most significant.

Peak Oil: Meet Moorella and Her Friends

Bioethanol has the inside track in the race for sustainable alcohol biofuels. While those of us who are salivating for the development of economical bio-butanol processes will have to wait, the race for the best bio-ethanol process is shaping up nicely. The current dark horse is Zeachem, the California startup that is using moorella thermoacetica--the termite gut microbe--to convert cellulose to acetic acid (acetate), then on to ethanol. The hybrid process is illustrated above.

The process can yield 50 percent more ethanol from a given amount of biomass than conventional processes. The net energy ratio of biofuel produced this way is between 10 and 12, compared with first generation biofuels like corn ethanol, which come in at around 1.5. The new net energy ratio benchmark radically changes any biofuel policy debate....The company has demonstrated the new method in a laboratory setting and is now drawing up plans for an ethanol plant that will produce about two million gallons of ethanol a year. Construction could begin as early as this year, says Dan Verser, a founder and vice president of research and development at ZeaChem.

...ZeaChem replaces yeast with a type of bacteria called Moorella thermoacetica, which can be found in a number of places in nature, including termite guts and the ruminant of cows, where it helps break down grass. Instead of making ethanol and carbon dioxide, the bacteria convert sugars into a component of vinegar called acetic acid, a process that releases no carbon dioxide....To convert acetic acid into ethanol, ZeaChem turns to chemistry. First, the company's researchers convert the acid into a common solvent called ethyl acetate - something that chemists have long known how to do. The final step - making ethanol - requires adding energy to the system in the form of hydrogen.___More details at Source___

The frontrunner in competition with Zeachem is Coskata, which claims to be in a position to produce US $1 a gallon bio-ethanol by 2010.

Using patented microorganisms and efficient bioreactor designs, Coskata uses a unique three-step conversion process that turns virtually any carbon-based feedstock, including biomass, municipal solid waste, bagasse, and other agricultural waste into ethanol (schematic, click to enlarge). The technology is globally applicable. The process is environmentally sound, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 84 percent compared to gasoline, as well as generates up to 7.7 times as much net energy as is required to produce the ethanol, according to Argonne National Laboratory____Source

The Coskata process is illustrated in the graphic below:
Both ethanol processes above involve multi-step hybrid processes to yield between 7.7 times and 10 times the energy consumed in the process. Compare those yields to the 1.5 times input from maize (corn) bio-ethanol. Maize is not even in the running.

Finally, there is the algal biodiesel/bio-alcohol hybrid process from Green Star Products, Inc.

First generation algae production can produce 4,000 gallons of oil per acre per year (versus 50 to 100 gallons for other oil crops) and later generations will produce 10,000 gallons or more per acre.”___Green Star

Some of the claims should be taken with a grain of salt, but eventually science will unlock the promise of abundant energy from biology. Whether the key production breakthroughs will occur within 5 or 10 years, the actual high volume production of quality biofuels should occur within 20.

If the newer in situ processes for producing oil from shales and tar sands pay out, there is enough liquid fossil fuel to power world industry for approximately 100 to 200 years. We should not depend on those promises, but conventional oil yields alone should be sufficient for 30 years at current consumption. If prices go too high, economies will slow and consumption will go down. Price drops will follow reduced demand. It is a cyclic process, with negative feedbacks.

Biofuels are scalable far above current projections. Earth's biosphere is extremely expandable and contractible. But it is unlikely that biofuels will be the main long-term solution to human energy needs. Transportation is another story, but aside from aircraft, alternatives to liquid fuels and solid fossil fuels will probably take over within 50 years.

Electricity can drive automobiles, and other forms of transportation aside from aircraft. Electric power is versatile, and better methods for producing electricity are being developed on an almost daily basis.

Nuclear fission energy will provide a necessary bridge to nuclear fusion energy, large scale geothermal, and massively interconnected renewable energy power grids (HVDC HT superconductor transmission interconnect) of much improved reliability and stability. Utility scale storage (eg redox flow cells) will provide further stability.

De-centralised production and storage of energy will also become more economical and feasible, for those living "off the grid." Residential renewable energy generators (wind, solar, neo-bio etc) paired with both electrical storage and fuel cell backups, should provide remote haciendas with clean, safe, reliable power.

The long term goal is technology that allows humans to roam the solar system and beyond, carrying with them all they need for life support and other needs for thriving in the universe.

Bio-Energy Growing Despite its Vocal Critics

Bio-energy is a particularly promising energy for the future, due to its regional and local scale. The sheer variety of approaches to bio-energy to suit almost any region, should induce more humility among the bombastic critics of "biofuels," who generally have no clue what they are talking about. Here is a quick survey of various bio-energy projects in research and industry:

QiBioenergy looks at projects at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and Oklahoma State University, which are helping to perfect sweet sorghum as a better feedstock for bio-ethanol--to replace maize.

New Fischer-Tropsch approaches to creating bio-synthetic fuels are showing promise in Germany and Utah.

Brazil is gearing up to produce biodiesel, jet fuel, and synthetic gasoline from its biomass, by acquiring proprietary technology from California's Amyris biotech company.

University of Texas, Austin, have created a new cyanobacterium that may be used as part of a "biological assembly line" to create fuels from airborne CO2. H/T Brian Westenhaus

Finnish company Wartsila is supplying the "engine" for a Jatropha bio-oil fueled CHP (combined heat and power) plant in Belgium.

HELSINKI,Finland (PRNewswire)- Wärtsilä has secured an order for an engine-driven combined heat and power (CHP) plant that will run on the liquid biofuel, which is extracted from the seeds of the jatropha plant. This CHP plant will be the first power plant in the world ever to produce both electricity and heat using crude jatropha oil as fuel. The contract is valued at approximately seven million euros.

The plant is to be located in an agricultural area in Merksplas, Belgium. The plant will be owned by Greenpower NV, a joint venture between Thenergo (50%), the Belgian developer of sustainable energy projects, four local agricultural companies (40%), and a private investor (10%). Commercial operation of the plant is scheduled to begin in February 2009. ___Source

These projects are only the tip-of-the-tip of the iceberg. Bio-energy is available now, it is becoming more lucrative and more efficient by the month, and it is moving away from the "food for fuels" model faster than our "differently abled" energy journalists and analysts are capable of following.

Returning to the Source

ImageSource
Scientists can detect traces of the green algae Botyrococcus Braunii in oil and coal deposits. This green algae has been producing hydrocarbons for hundreds of millions of years, and continues to do so. So if green algae B. Braunii is still on the job, why is everyone so worried about "peak oil doom?" The time scale involved. Although oil from B. Braunii is of the highest quality, it takes the algae too long to reproduce. It takes too much time to produce oil in the quantities which humans currently consume. So what is the answer?

B. braunii is a prime candidate for biofuel production because some races of the green algae typically "accumulate hydrocarbons from to 30 percent to 40 percent of their dry weight, and are capable of obtaining hydrocarbon contents up to 86 percent of their dry weight.

...Like most green algae, B. braunii is capable of producing great amounts of hydrocarbon oils in a very small land area.

B. braunii algae show particular promise not just because of their high production of oil but also because of the type of oil they produce, Devarenne said. While many high-oil-producing algae create vegetable-type oils, the oil from B. braunii, known as botryococcenes, are similar to petroleum.

"The fuels derived from B. braunii hydrocarbons are chemically identical to gasoline, diesel and kerosene," Devarenne said. "Thus, we do not call them biodiesel or bio-gasoline; they are simply diesel and gasoline. To produce these fuels from B. braunii, the hydrocarbons are processed exactly the same as petroleum is processed and thus generates the exact same fuels. Remember, these B. braunii hydrocarbons are a main constituent of petroleum. So there is no difference other than the millions of years petroleum spent underground."

But, a shortcoming of B. braunii is its relatively slow growth rate. While the algae that produce 'vegetable-type' oils may double their growth every six to 12 hours, B. braunii's doubling rate is about four days, he said.

"Thus, getting large amounts of oil from B. braunii is more time consuming and thus more costly," Devarenne said. "So, by knowing the genome sequence we can possibly identify genes involved in cell division and manipulate them to reduce the doubling rate." _SD

Humans can intentionally grow large volumes of B. Braunii across dry and desert lands -- even over the surface of oceans and seas. But unless a good genetic tweak can be found to speed up the algae's reproductive and oil production cycle, it would be very expensive to do so.

Billions of dollars are going to research to develop such tweaks. Microbial fuels should arrive on the scene within ten years -- just enough to nudge fuel markets a tiny bit. Within twenty years, microbial fuels will comprise close to 30% of the liquid and gaseous fuels markets.

Peak oil is only true in the most trivial sense -- sooner or later, humans will stop using oil because better energies and fuels will be abundantly available.

Between now and then, energy markets will see some turbulent ups and downs. But the end game is in sight, which means that a price ceiling on liquid fuels is visibly descending. Slowly, distantly, but visibly. Adjust your plans accordingly.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

Big Oil Invests In Biofuels: The Bio Future is Near

Most biofuels naysayers haven't taken the trouble to look at all the different ways that biological organisms can create energy and energy feedstocks. Brian Wang recently discussed Sandia National Lab's recent study predicting the production of 90 billion gallons a year of biofuels in the not-so-distant-future. And now, Brian Westenhaus takes a good look at the growing involvement of big petroleum in the research and development of biofuels.

Big Oil is helping the biofuel industry move past the persistent perception that cellulosic-based fuel is five years from reality. “That would have been accurate five years ago,” Riva said. “It’s not accurate today.”

Meanwhile Exxon Mobil is in the media openly talking about its interest in biofuels. With an industry reputation of strong research and high powered engineering skills, Exxon Mobil getting into the business would mark a turning point for biofuels and for the long term viability of oil being an economy dominating club for the market manipulators.

...the news is that BP is in the biofuels business. Big Oil, with all the baggage the industry has to cope with in people’s perceptions has more incentive, capital, skill and management than any other segment of the economy. What the press and media overlook is that for over one hundred years the oil industry drove to lower fuel prices, expanded markets and a higher standard of living. Check your history till 1972 when the first embargo from OPEC began the market distortions. The oil industry had been a boom and bust business before OPEC, even more so since. No one craves a low priced, high volume, steadily profitable business more than Big Oil. Nearly two generations of oil industry people have endured a torrent of troubles. _NewEnergyandFuel

British Petroleum, Shell, Exxon, Valero, Chevron, and other big oil companies are researching, developing, and / or investing in production and refining of biofuels. All of this at a time when oil prices are stuck in the doldrums. This tells you that at least most of these companies can see a time when producing biofuels will be competitive with producing petro-fuels. Sometime very soon, perhaps.

Most analysts expect oil prices to rise sharply as soon as the global economic situation begins to revive. But as biofuels production becomes more economical, and scales upward in volume, petro-fuels will have a strong competitor. And competition generally helps constrain prices. I supppose the oil companies wanted to get in on the ground floor.

Taken from a post at Al Fin Energy

Biomass-->Pyrolysis-->Biocrude

Forget about burning food. Any kind of biomass--including garbage--can produce biocrude. Biocrude is similar to crude oil. It can be refined to the desired hydrocarbon product.

Pyrolysis is a process in which organic materials - any type of biomass - are heated in absence of air in a reactor (schematic, click to enlarge). Under these conditions, organic vapours, pyrolysis gases and charcoal are produced. Depending on the residence time and the temperature to which the biomass is exposed, varying amounts of these products are obtained.... Under fast pyrolysis (temperatures of 450 - 600 °C), the vapours are condensed to bio-oil and typically, 70-75 wt.% of the feedstock is converted into this oil (also known as 'biocrude' or 'pyrolysis oil').__Biopact

Biocrude projects are proceeding at full speed in Europe, Australia, and North America. The main problem remaining to be solved, is the wide dispersal of biomass. It costs energy to collect and concentrate biomass--to bring it to the central pyrolysis station.

Fortunately, pyrolysis is a scalable process. The pyrolysis infrastructure can be built closer to the source of biomass, and the resulting oil can be transported in bulk via pipeline, river barge, or rail, to refineries.

Currently, political obstructionists have prevented construction of refineries. The bottleneck in hydrocarbon refining keeps costs high to end consumers. We can hope that the obstructionists who prevent energy refining and new energy exploration, will relent in the case of biomass to biocrude to bio-refinery.

Algae Biodiesel Gets Closer....Energy Briefs

Algae biodiesel looks better all the time.

Green Star Products, Inc. (OTC:GSPI) today announced that it has successfully completed Phase III for winter environmental testing of its hybrid algae production facility in Montana....The GSPI hybrid algae production system is designed to provide a controlled algae growing environment at an affordable capital and maintenance cost, which has eluded engineers for more than three decades.

The GSPI system endured severe Montana winter conditions, which included many nighttime temperatures below -18º Celsius (0º Fahrenheit) and snowfalls of up to 355 mm (14 inches)....The 40,000 liter demonstration facility is located outdoors and had successfully completed Phase I and II of the project in mid-2007 (see details in press releases dated May 11 and July 9, 2007 at GreenStarUSA.com).____Source

Even more interesting, new algal biodiesel technology allows dual production of biodiesel and bio-ethanol from the same algal crop.

Today, Green Star Products, Inc. (OTC:GSPI), announced that it has acquired a license to utilize a breakthrough processing technology to convert algae biomass to feedstock oil and cellulose sugars for the production of biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol respectively.

The new process uses an efficient low-cost method to extract the oil and cellulose sugars from oil-bearing microalgae that eliminates the need to mechanically dry and press-extract the algae oil using traditional methods. The sugars from carbohydrate-rich cellulose and hemicellulose can be used to make a variety of products including ethanol and other high demand chemical products. The oil can be made into biodiesel and other products.

The removal of oil from the microscopic algae has been a stumbling block for the commercial production of fuel from algae for many years....GSPI has secured the technology license from Biotech Research, Inc. (BTR), one of GSPI’s consortium partners. The process continuously strips the oil from the algae and also reduces its biomass into different carbon chain carbohydrates, proteins and other constituents. BTR’s intellectual property is protected by patent pending status.____Source

Meanwhile, from a new "oilseed report":

The oilseed farming industry includes about 350,000 farms with combined annual oilseed revenue of $21 billion. No major companies dominate. The average annual total revenue per farm is $125,000, which may include some non-oilseed revenue. The industry is highly fragmented: the top 10 percent of farms generate one-third of total industry revenue.

Oilseed farming is the growing and harvesting of soybeans, dry peas, beans, and lentils; and oilseed-producing plants such as sunflower, safflower, flax, rape, and sesame. Farms with less than half of total revenue coming from oilseed aren't included in this industry, nor are farms that grow fresh beans or peas.___Source

Oilseeds are increasingly used for biodiesel production, in competition with food oil production. This competition tends to drive up food prices, which is a good reason for the blooming algal biodiesel industry--which has a neutral effect on food cropland and food prices.

North America appears to be dealing with higher oil prices fairly rationally, with fairly good leadership. Europe, on the other hand, is living in a state of near-constant denial. A few more cold winters such as this one--or even a little ice age around the corner--and Europe will be totally at the mercy of its foreign oil and gas suppliers.

Old Europe is a backward looking continent. Europe is rapidly becoming a retirement home for middle-aged dependents of government. Judging by its actions on energy, defense, immigration, etc., Old Europe lacks the will to do what is necessary to guarantee the future of its culture, its people, its civilisation.

Muslim immigrants without skills are the most rapidly growing demographic across Europe. They will be of no help in meeting the technological challenges facing the continent--and of potentially immense harm. Soon Russia will be controlling Europe's energy lease, and it does not take much imagination to see what Russia's oligarchs have in mind for Europe, once they gain control.