On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 07:04:24AM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > At least a week's worth of reading and reflection in here.
I don't know, his dogma too frequently runs over his science. > >People in the USA know nothing of Brazilian ethanol. Luckily, there are not just USians on this planet. > >The Brazilians been running on rum for years. So > >there's the proof-of-concept. > >http://ethablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-wall-street-thinks-about.html Bioethanol is a dumb idea. It has an energy balance around break-even, and an ecological balance that's even worse. It does work in Brazil because it's a low-tech way of producing liquid fuel from sugar, and yield and energy balance be damned, and ecology can go to hell. Perhaps not the best role model for an industrialized place. > >Brazil doesn't merely have ethanol, itâs got a > >different breed of car. Not a hybrid, but a "trybrid." > >The Obvio runs on ethanol, gasoline or electrical > >wall-power. > >http://www.obvio.ind.br/obviona/news%20004.htm Most modern engines would work fine on a 10% methanol or ethanol blend (E10 or M10) -- if the car makers would be required by law to make cars to tolerate this fuel mix. Of course only synmethanol (M10) makes sense, because of the energy balance. Allright, exhaust is slightly cleaner, but modern cars are already clean enough. > >The Brazilian Obvio is not as fast or sexy as > >this Tesla all-electric sports car, but its > >fuel-tank is full of pure booze. You get some mint > >and crushed ice, it's a rolling caipirinha. > >http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?js_enabled=1 Why not run it on cask-strenght Lagavulin or Laphroaig, 15 years old? Makes about as much sense. > >It comes down to this. Since it's lethal > >to dig up and burn the planet's reserves of fossil > >carbon, why not burn the living biomass that's on > >the planet's surface today? Because most of it > >is cellulose, that's why. Cellulose is hard and > >dry and resists decay and fermentation. It is straw. > >It's wood. It's solid and recalcitrant. It burns Bullcrap. It's not just cellulose, but a lignin/cellulose composite. And it burns just fine (and clean) in modern pellet burners. Of course, it would also make reasonably clean syngas for a Fischer-Tropsch plant (something Brazil can't afford). > >badly! Still, if you could somehow turn that hard > >straw into a liquid fuel, in the way that yeasts > >brew starch and sugar into booze.... > >http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2006040401030 Is the guy too drunk to realize that destillation takes giant energy input? And that cellulose hydrolysis is not exactly environmentally benign? > >Did I mention it was 122 degrees Fahrenheit in > >Palm Springs, California this week? > >http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37388/story.htm It would be so nice to blame it all on Global Warming. For what I know it could be due to Global Warming, but anecdotes don't count. > >It was so hot in California that MySpace blew out. > >MySpace collapsed from the Greenhouse Effect. > >In today's grim climate, is it even possible to be > >a dotcom guy without also being a green fuels guy? > >Do you think blackouts are good for your business? > >http://news.com.com/MySpace+feels+the+heat/2100-1038_3-6097798.html Actually, big installations have their own power plants. > >Rather than fight with Vinod Khosla and his Silicon Is this the guy pushing bioethanol? He needs his brain examined, then. > >Valley pals in California energy-politics, DuPont > >and Shell are busily brewing a rival to ethanol, > >bio-butanol. Do you think Shell and DuPont are trying > >to 'greenwash' each other here? Or do you think maybe > >they can do math? > >http://www2.dupont.com/Biofuels/en_US/FAQ.html > > > >Russians, being Russians, can make alcohol out of > >sawdust. They've been doing that for decades. Of > >course, with crude Soviet microbes and tons of "crude Soviet microbes", oh my. > >sulphuric acid, that's a messy, polluting process. > >You'd have to really want that alcohol. Which they > >do. > >http://www.distill.com/woodhydrolysis/woodprocess.html > > > >(((You wanna seriously chew up and then burn > >cellulosic biomass, you've got to deal with the world > >experts: fungi and yeasts. If it weren't for fungi Yeah, have fun feeding your bioreactor with wood pulp. We will see how your kapitalistski microbes will be better than commie bugs. > >and yeasts, this planet would be stacked miles high > >in undecaying timber. The problem is that > >microbes have their own agenda, and it doesn't > >include powering our cars.))) Well, duh. > >Link: > >http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=biztech&sc=&id=17052&pg=1 > >"Converting cellulose to ethanol involves two > >fundamental steps: breaking the long chains of > >cellulose molecules into glucose and other sugars, > >and fermenting those sugars into ethanol. In nature, > >these processes are performed by different organisms: > >fungi and bacteria that use enzymes (cellulases) to > >'free' the sugar in cellulose, and other microbes, > >primarily yeasts, that ferment sugars into alcohol. To start with, with wood you have to get rid of lignin first. > >"The ideal organism would do it all == break down > >cellulose like a bacterium, ferment sugar like a > >yeast, tolerate high concentrations of ethanol, and How high would be high enough? Wine yest tops out at some 18%, or so, Chinese molds for rice wine can do some better, but still only moderately over 20%. > >devote most of its metabolic resources to producing > >just ethanol. (((And this boozy 'ideal organism' would Does he realize what the genetic pressure in the bioreactor is? It sure enough doesn't favor the bugs with a giant load on their metabolism. > >make more money than OPEC and the coal lobby put > >together.))) There are two strategies for creating > >such an all-purpose bug. One is to modify an existing > >microbe by adding desired genetic pathways from > >other organisms and 'knocking out' undesirable ones; > >the other is to start with the clean slate of a > >stripped-down synthetic cell and build a custom > >genome almost from scratch." (((A pretty bold I would actually stop confabulating things which we wish would work but don't, and do things which work very well -- chemistry. And modern processes might give you hexane out of glucose at <200 C. > >declaration of intent, eh? Do you think the 21st > >century can do this? An all-purpose bug would be a > >biotech hack big enough to transform the planet. > >Military, economically, financially, industrially, > >the works.))) And would love to see what a bug that can chew up trees unassisted would do to the tropic forests he favors. > >(((Nobody has ever bred or engineered a native American > >prairie plant such as switchgrass so as to turn > >it into an ultra-flammable fuel-heavy crackable > >super-grass. Attempts are under way, though.)) > >http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/reports/vogel/index.html > >http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1999/v4-282.html Miscanthus would do fine for pellet burner material and cellulose source, and synfuel plant fodder. > >(((Switchgrass is also aptly known as "Panic Grass," > >a pretty good coinage for an attempt to run a > >superpower on hay.))) > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchgrass > > > >(((If switchgrass looks vaguely familiar, that's > >because it already grows all over the place. > >Switchgrass grows much faster than windmills or > >nuclear power plants. It's a native American weed.))) > >http://www.earthlygoods.com/grasses/switchgrass.html > > > >(((The kicker? Switchgrass adds carbon to the soil > >through its dense prairie roots. So it's a car fuel You don't want to grow anything in the prairie. The last time they tried that gave them the Dust Bowl. > >that actually *subtracts* carbon dioxide from the > >atmosphere. Especially if you zap the grass with > >RuBisCo genes, not too much of a step if you're also > >cracking straw with genetically altered microbes.))) > >http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004137.html He's got a major carbon dioxide fixation. That's not quite the right tree to bark upon. > >(((So what we have here is a weird, historically > >unprecedented, gene-altered biofuels scheme that > >tackles the planet's most pressing environmental, > >economic and military problems, and also looks > >like a business plan. Sort of. I know that > >"grasping at straw" is the desperate act of a drowning > >man, so letâs deal with a few of the obvious deal > >breakers first. Is there any substance here?))) > > > >(A.) Most cars don't burn fuels that are rich in > >ethanol. > > > >That's true. You'd need a new flexfuel fleet and > >"trybrids" would be even better. On the plus side, > >it's a positive advantage if these new cars are > >huge SUVs. The automobile majors are already selling > >flexfuel cars in Brazil. They know how to do it, > >unlike with fuel-cell cars. They can make money. If you have a source of short-carbon alcohols, you'd have to be an idiot to *not* use a direct alcohol fuel cells. The Brazilians might not be able to do it, but North Americans and Europeans sure can. > >(B.) What about the many energy needs that aren't > >transportation fuel? > > > >You can burn the grass directly as boiler fuel, or Precisely. Pellet burners are not hightech, and they work. > >even make electricity with microbes eating grass. > >http://www.carbonfree.co.uk/cf/news/wk30-0001.htm > >http://www.whatsnextnetwork.com/technology/index.php/2006/07/19/microbial_fuel_cell_can_convert_corn_was Or you could run a 40% efficient gas turbine, and achieve 60% overall efficiency if also utilizing the steam. > >(C.) Ethanol raises the cost of corn and starves > >poor people in order to fill rich guy's gas tanks. > > > >That's only true of the *starch* ethanol that comes > >from edible grains. Cellulosic ethanol comes from > >grass, cornstalks and leftover sugarcane bagasse. > >Poor people don't eat those. Film at 11: yeast doesn't, either. You have to hydrolyze the crap out of it. If you think Russians are pigs, yes, they are, but some processes are dirtier than others. So you will have to build another plant to clear the wastewater from the hydrolysis plant, which feeds the bioreactors, which feed the still plant, which produces bioethanol, which powers the entire agro-industrial hydrolyzed cellulose industrial landscape. Uh, are you absolutely, positively sure you do want to go there? > >(D.) Ethanol takes more energy to make than it > >contributes to our society. > > > >This is a largely academic distinction. Furthermore, That's pure thermodynamics, idiot. > >it isn't true even of old-school corn ethanol, while > >cellulosic ethanol is a new, unheard-of process, > >that, if it really worked, would be hugely efficient > >at turning solar radiation right into booze. If it really worked. But you might have heard of a rather old, hugely efficient process which is hugely efficient by turning solar radiation right into energy. It's called photovoltaics. I recommend you crunch the numbers. You might get a surprise. > >(E.) If this cellulosic microbe cracking worked, > >somebody would be selling me booze made of their > >lawn clippings now. So where are the big cellulosic > >refineries? They don't even exist. Show me. Yep. > >We'll have to take that pressing issue up with > >Novozyme, Danisco, Diversa, Abengoa, and Acciona > >EnergÃa. These new cellulosic startups may all pop > >just like dotbombs. On the other hand, if we don't > >somehow rapidly solve soaring oil costs and the > >climate crisis, there won't be any conventional > >economy left either. There are a lot of methods of > >going after the knotty problem of cracking cellulose, > >and we're getting better at most of them. This scheme > >is not yet prime-time, but it's not cold-fusion, > >either. The man has a pet process. Nothing wrong with that, but if the science is against you, you should use your rhetoric upon gullible fools. > >(F.) When you burn ethanol, carbon dioxide goes into > >our sky. That's bad, isn't it? > > > >(G). Fuel-cell hydrogen is a much cooler idea than > >this hick-centric hay-bale nonsense. Yep. > >So are heatwaves, warfare and genocide. We're getting > >way past the point of being picky here. If you really > >want to see renewable, sustainable solutions to > >vast, planetary-scale crises, there has to be some > >time and place where you are willing to take "yes" > >for an answer. The best is the enemy of the good, > >while the status quo will kill us. This is a very > >innovative game plan which could expand with > >great speed and which, at its basis, is all > >about grass. Are you really afraid of grass? No, just of bad science with an agenda, backed by agribusiness lobby. They would take your money, all of it, and ruin your country, so you can continue driving gas-guzzling SUVs through an ecological holocaust. I hope the ecologists scalp this guy before it's too late. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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