Anything into Ethanol - technologies to get ethanol from trash moving forward -

[JohnWxy]

Current issue of Discover magazine (again) has an article about the progress being made in making ethanol from solid waste. Two strong companies in this technology are Range Field and Coskata. Both of these companies are expecting to have commercial operations going in two years. Coskata says they will produce ethanol for a 1.00 a gallon. Coskata's investors include Vinod Khosla's venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures, and ... General Motors. They plan to have a million gallon/yr plant up and operating in 2010.

For more on Coskata see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=166345

[kansasblue]

1. excellent... I love ethanol... but I hate burning food to make it.

[texastoast]

2. How much fossil fuel has to be burned to make a gallon of it this way?

Ethanol does not perform as well as gasoline and it takes a lot of fossil fuel to get it to market, whatever the source. Ethanol has been a real boon to the oil business.

I wonder if this garbage source will be better than corn. I read that the algae farming is the most productive per acre and uses less fossil fuel to produce and market it.

[eleny]

3. Read the article - the answers are there

[excess_3]

12. we have plenty of solid fuel

liquid fuel is the supply issue

[NoFederales]

4. Damn, now I'm gonna have to go get a copy of Discover.

I'm working on a distilling process to produce ethanol. I agree that corn is a dreadful choice for ethanol, but not because it is a "food" crop--the food crop argument is largely bogus.

Recommend Dave Blume's "Alcohol Can Be a Gas" to anyone really interested in ethanol issues.

NoFederales

[poopfuel]

7. latest Dave Blume supporters videos-check them out!

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/421.html

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/422.html

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/423.html

[NoFederales]

10. Yep, "vintage" Blume, and "When it really matters, information in the US is censored"

There is much disinformation and lies regarding alcohol fuel, and what isn't censored is falsely derided.

As an old science and technology, contemporary glam attempts to win out once again. It will take many small, medium, and large producers to make a difference, but the benefits are there. the evidence is undeniable, and the proof is renewable and sustainable.

NoFederales

[JohnWxy]

8. Blume is loaded with info. YOur right, of course, that the 'food issue' with re corn is bogus

Ethanol is made from the starch content and virtually all the protein is recovered and is made into Dried Distiller's Grains and Solubles (DDGS) meaning there is barely any loss to the food supply (just the starch content of the corn).

Plus, the DDGS is better than the field corn it replaces in the cattle's diet. It reduces the likelihood of absesses forming in the cattle's gut. (see: USDA Study on Economic Feasibility of making ethanol from sugar (now dated of course and if we can get Mexican sugar, this may change the whole equation) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x163758#163761).

Ask a cattle farmer how quickly vet bill's can cut into your profit. A couple vet bills is worth a ton of grain. OF course, if the vet bill is too big you just kill the cow and sell it to a meat processor who doesn't mind slaughtering a sick animal (oops!).

For consideration of making ethanol from sugar, check out: http://www.geocities.com/jwalkerxy/ethanol-sugar.htm

also: we could start making ethanol from Mexican sugar(NAFTA provision allows almost unlimited importation of sugar from Mexico without a tariff), but 12,000 sugar cane and sugar beet farmers have some opinions on cheaper sugar from MExico.

[NNadir]

5. Well, if you get your science from Discover magazine, I guess you can believe anything.

This chemistry is older than John McCain and it ranks right up there with the Changing World (and Iogen) crap.

[JohnWxy]

9. You're confusing science with the commercialization of a technology. The question is can it be done

cost effectively on a commercial scale? Presumably the technical feasibility has been demonstrated and Khosla Ventures and General Motors think it will work on a commercial scale as they have both put up cash to fund a 100 million gal plant (not a small under-taking).

[NickB79]

6. 1,000,000 gallons per year isn't very much at all, actually

The US motor fleet burns through 390 MILLION gallons per day, per the EIA: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

A 1,000,000 gallon per year facility like this one would be yielding just 2740 gallons per day. For reference, an Olympic-size swimming pool holds 660,000 gallons of fluid.

If I didn't biff the math, that means that 10,000 of these plants would create enough ethanol to offset 7% of US gasoline consumption.

They better start building a whole lot faster.

[JohnWxy]

11. That's my fault. Actually, it will be 100 million gallons. GEnerally speaking when

a technology is new as cellulosic ethanol is, the first attempts at commercialization usually do not meet the entire demands of society with the first effort. For example, when the Wright brothers thought of trying to build a flying machine they didn't start out trying to build a Boeing 707. Most people at the time were rather impressed they were able to get in the air at all. I suppose there were people around then who thought: "Well sheeeit! Only a couple of hundred feet. This flying machine idea isn't worth bothering with. I have to be able to go several miles to get to town! Hell, my horse is quicker too and i don't need all those helpers to get her going either."

Actually, considering that nobody has been able to produce cellulosic ethanol as a commercially viable enterprise yet, this outfit is pretty confident going from a 40,000 gal pilot plant to a 100 million gallon plant in about one year.

But you raise a very important point, which I have tried to make people more aware of and that is it takes a good amount of time to build up volumes of production to make a dent in our demand for gasoline. that's why we will need a starch based supply of ethanol for a number of years till cellulosic can be built up (assuming of course someone succeeds in making cellulosic cheaply enough to be profitable - I think this will be accomplished.). But be advised they won't turn out half (or even 1 percent of) the nations demand for fuel with their first plant. It will take a little longer than that.

Even when plug-in hybrids start becoming available and even with significant improvements in mpg it will be years (and billions of dollars) before plug-ins will save just 4% of the total fuel demand (the amount of gas ethanol replaces now). THese things do take time after they have been shown to work and even once they are shown to be commercially viable it still takes years before much of a dent can be made in our total demand for gasoline/oil.