Ultra-High Efficiency Methanol Engines w Advncd Exhaust Energy Recovry: 50% Efficiency gain over ICE

[Bill USA]

16. DoE study, Fuel frm Forestry & Agricultural waste could produce biofuel to meet 1/3rd our fuel needs

Last edited Wed May 6, 2015, 03:38 PM - Edit history (1)

.. for light surface transportation.


BIOMASS AS FEEDSTOCK FOR A BIOENERGY AND BIOPRODUCTS INDUSTRY: THE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY OF A BILLION-TON ANNUAL SUPPLY

Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to determine whether the land resources of the United States are capable of producing a sustainable supply of biomass sufficient to displace 30 percent or more of the country’s present petroleum consumption – the goal set by the Advisory Committee in their vision for biomass technologies. Accomplishing this goal would require approximately 1 billion dry tons of biomass feedstock per year.

[font size=+1"]The short answer to the question of whether that much biomass feedstock can be produced is yes. Looking at just forestland and agricultural land, the two largest potential biomass sources, this study found over 1.3 billion dry tons per year of biomass potential (Figure 1) — enough to produce biofuels to meet more than one-third of the current demand for transportation fuels.[/font]

NOte that the figure of "one-third" is based upon the erroneous assumption that ethanol can only deliver 65% of the fuel economy of gasoline based on the Heating Value of gasoline vs ethanol. (ethanol has 65% the HV of gasoline). THe only problem with this is that it ignores the importance of octane rating when burning a fuel in an internal combustion engine. Ethanol has a much higher octane rating than gasoline and can be burned under higher combustion chamber pressures (as with turbo-charging).

This assumption is nonsense. It has been demonstrated numerous times (countless times if you considered the experience of automobile racing) that ethanol/methanol have much higher octane ratings than gasoline and when the engine in which the ethanol or methanol are used is optimized for it's octane and higher heat of evaporation you can get better fuel efficiency with ethanol than you can with gasoline.

Just assuming that the engine used achieved comparable miles per gallon on ethanol/methanol as with gasoline that would mean to adjust the percent of the fuel supply met by ethanol based on the .65 relative mpg for ethanol to relative mpg of 1.00, you calculate: (optimize engine rel mpg - Ethanol) = 1/.65 or 1.53. Applying that to the 0.3333 (0.333 x 1.53) yields .51 .

Thus, when the Dept of Energy study said that forestry and agricultural waste could produce enough biofuel to replace 1/3rd our gasoline demand, to convert that percentage of the fuel supply for a realistic miles per gallon (using ethanol optimized engine) you would multiply 1/3 by 1.53 to get 0.51. That means, using ethanol optimized engines the actual percentage of the gasoline demand that could be met by ethanol/methanol from forestry/agricultural waste would be 51%.

... NOTE: the forestry and agricultural waste material could be used to make methanol more easily and more cheaply than making cellulosic ethanol. So, even though cellulosic ethanol is taking much longer to make a commercial reality than it was originally thought it would, since the biomass can be used to make methanol the answer remains the same.... 51% of the light transportation fuel supply could be met with biofuel from biomass feedstocks from forestry and agricultural waste materials.

ON EDit: Actually, if you add the current 10% of the fuel supply met by ethanol from corn that would be more like 61% of the light transportation fuels needs of the country met by biofuels made from biomass.