[silk] Oil from garbage
Anyone have any thoughts on when any of these pie in the sky technologies will actually, y'know, come to market? Previously: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/8305 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/17606 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/21354 Udhay http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/business/24fuel.html?_r=1oref=sloginpagewanted=all The Energy Challenge Gassing Up With Garbage By MATTHEW L. WALD Published: July 24, 2008 After years of false starts, a new industry selling motor fuel made from waste is getting a big push in the United States, with the first commercial sales possible within months. Many companies have announced plans to build plants that would take in material like wood chips, garbage or crop waste and turn out motor fuels. About 28 small plants are in advanced planning, under construction or, in a handful of cases, already up and running in test mode. For decades scientists have known it was possible to convert waste to fuel, but in an era of cheap oil, it made little sense. With oil now trading around $125 a barrel and gasoline above $4 a gallon, the potential economics of a waste-to-fuel industry have shifted radically, setting off a frenzy to be first to market. “I think American innovation is going to come up with the solution,” said Prabhakar Nair, research chief for UOP, a company working on the problem. Success is far from assured, however. Some of the latest announcements come from small companies whose dreams may be bigger than their bank accounts. They are counting on billions in taxpayer subsidies. Big technological hurdles remain, and even if they can be solved, no one is sure what unintended consequences will emerge or what it will really cost to produce this type of fuel. “We desperately need it, and I personally think it’s not there yet,” said Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. “You have to look at starts with a grain of salt, especially starts where they say, ‘It’s around the corner, and by the way, can you pay half the bill?’ ” Still, the incentive to make fuel from something, anything, besides oil and food is greater than ever. Moreover, the federal government is offering grants to help plants get off the ground and subsidies for one type of fuel of $1.01 a gallon, twice the subsidy it historically offered to ethanol made from corn. Potential controls on global warming gases would heighten the appeal of these fuels, since many of them would add little new carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Tellingly, the type of companies placing bets on the field has started to expand. The earliest were small start-ups founded by people with more technological vision than business experience. Now some of the giants of global business, including Honeywell, Dupont, General Motors, Shell and BP, are taking stakes in the nascent industry. The dream of making fuel from plants is almost as old as the internal combustion engine. Henry Ford himself was fascinated by the idea, and it re-emerges in periods of fuel scarcity and high prices. These days, advancing technology has made the notion more plausible. Virtually any material containing hydrogen, carbon and oxygen could potentially be turned into motor fuel. That includes plastics, construction debris, forest and lawn trimmings, wood chips, wheat straw and many other types of agricultural waste. The potential fuels include ethanol, which can be blended with gasoline, or other liquids that could displace gasoline or diesel entirely. Government studies suggest the country could potentially replace half its gasoline supply in this way — even more if cars became more efficient. The government is pushing to get the industry off the ground. Legislation passed last year mandates the use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year by 2022, less than half of it from corn ethanol. Almost all the rest is supposed to come from nonfood sources, though the requirement could be waived if the industry faltered. “One has to say upfront that what Congress has done is remarkable in its bravery,” said David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a group in Minneapolis that advocates biofuels. Much of the new money flowing into the field is coming from Silicon Valley, where the venture capitalists who gave the world the Internet revolution see an opportunity to do something similar with the fuel supply. At Solazyme, a start-up in South San Francisco that hopes to commercialize a process for making fuel from algae, President Harrison F. Dillon said, “When we founded the company in 2003, we couldn’t find a venture capital firm that had heard of the concept of a biofuel.” Now he is backed by two such firms. Venture capital investment in the first half of this year hit $612 million, up from $375 million in all of 2007, according to a survey by
[silk] Everyone ok in Bangalore?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7525033.stm I hope everyone is fine? Cheeni
[silk] a few links
A few links for those interested in sustainable stewardship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527312757/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Re: [silk] Oil from garbage
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:07:11PM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Anyone have any thoughts on when any of these pie in the sky technologies will actually, y'know, come to market? The article describes many disparate technologies. Some are worthwhile, some are not. One of the key aspects of viability is EROI analysis http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3786 Particularly, this graph is relevant: http://www.theoildrum.com/files/ch_balloon_tod.png We can make about anything, but only a few things make sense from energy balance. Also, the question of the fuel form (gas, liquid) and compatibility (infrastructure costs) arises. As such bioethanol is not worthwhile, and cellulosic ethanol most likely not worthwhile too. Synfuels are wortwhile, but Fischer-Tropsch really fouls up the balance. The output can be tuned from methanol to light or heavier hydrocarbons though, which makes it compatible with existing infrastructure. Synfuels are viable started above $40/barrel, long-term (i.e. not volatile). I think it's reasonable to say we passed peak oil sometime 2004, so nonrenewable will go up longterm. I think what has the brightest future right now is electricity (both wired and batteries), hydrogen from water electrolysis and synfuels (biomass, natural gas, coal). The future looks rather bright for artificial photosynthesis, and the currency could be methanol. In regards to garbage, I wonder why everybody keeps forgetting biogas. Pyrolysis to feed bacteria with to make bioethanol is crap. In general, the level of discussion in the mainstream press is appalling. Nobody seems to understand basic chemistry, or even be able to do simple arithmetics. Previously: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/8305 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/17606 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/21354 Udhay http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/business/24fuel.html?_r=1oref=sloginpagewanted=all The Energy Challenge Gassing Up With Garbage -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Re: [silk] Everyone ok in Bangalore?
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 19:06, Srini Ramakrishnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7525033.stm I hope everyone is fine? The situation seems to be ok. For folks calling into Bangalore, BSNL landlines are working. But cellphone networks seem to be down. It's either due to the jamming by the authorities or the towers are just down due to network traffic or chronic power outages afflicting the city. ~ash -- WC Fields - A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
Re: [silk] Everyone ok in Bangalore?
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Srini Ramakrishnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7525033.stm I hope everyone is fine? All fine here. I was blissfully unaware until a flurry of SMSes started coming in. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Everyone ok in Bangalore?
It appears that not just cellphones but anything other than good old POTS lines are being jammed -- sent via gmail mobile On 7/25/08, Ashwin N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 19:06, Srini Ramakrishnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7525033.stm I hope everyone is fine? The situation seems to be ok. For folks calling into Bangalore, BSNL landlines are working. But cellphone networks seem to be down. It's either due to the jamming by the authorities or the towers are just down due to network traffic or chronic power outages afflicting the city. ~ash -- WC Fields - A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money. -- Balaji
Re: [silk] Everyone ok in Bangalore?
I just called someone in Bangalore on their cellphone, so this must be sporadic or just congestion. Cheeni On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 6:14 PM, Balaji Dutt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It appears that not just cellphones but anything other than good old POTS lines are being jammed -- sent via gmail mobile On 7/25/08, Ashwin N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 19:06, Srini Ramakrishnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7525033.stm I hope everyone is fine? The situation seems to be ok. For folks calling into Bangalore, BSNL landlines are working. But cellphone networks seem to be down. It's either due to the jamming by the authorities or the towers are just down due to network traffic or chronic power outages afflicting the city. ~ash -- WC Fields - A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money. -- Balaji -- Cheeni Q: Why is this email 5 sentences or fewer? A: http://five.sentenc.es/
[silk] Rush playing Tom Sawyer on Rock Band before appearing on the Colbert show
Folks, This one's for Udhay, and all the Rush fans out there! http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2008/07/rush-plays-rock.html Enjoy! Sriram
