Subject: The end of corn-ethanol Resent-Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:54:14 -0700
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:54:10 -0700 (PDT) Source: Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [email protected] Hi All, This is great news. With compressed natural gas freed up by wind power electricity to run U. S. trucks, (See the Pickens Plan) there is no reason that the U. S. could not be an exporter of oil in five years. Follow the example of the Iranians. They sell all their oil and run their cars and trucks on compressed natural gas. So there are no refineries to blow up. The process described below is great for making liquid fuel, to be stored, transported, and sold by existing facilities, to be used in plug-in hybrids. Jack Smith ----------------- Jones wrote on 9-23-08 ``Great News for the Heartland - in fact it comes from the corn-belt, but will certainly cause the collapse of high corn prices eventually, possibly as early as next year if subsidies for ethanol are removed. The end of food-grain derived ethanol now appears to be firmly on the horizon! Yesterday, an alternative fuel developed by U of Wisconsin prof. James Dumesic was announced which looks a lot like the gasoline and diesel fuel used in vehicles today. That's because the new fuel is identical at the molecular level to petroleum-based fuel. The only difference is where it comes from. The process creates transportation fuels from unedible plant material, even waste and especially sawdust. Dumesic's paper is published in 'Science' (copyrighted) but the feedstock is said to be any kind of lignocellulose. Lignocellulose refers to nonedible sources of biomass instead of corn, and includes ag waste, corn stovers (leaves and stalks), switchgrass and forest and yard residue. The process begins by converting lignocellulose into raw sugars to which a solid catalyst in an aqueous solution is added, leading to the an organic oil-like solution floating on top of the water. The oil layer, which is easily separated, contains molecules of ketones and cyclics which are "functional intermediates." These molecules are the precursors to fuel. No distillation will be required since these, like gasoline are not water soluble. No distillation means a *Big difference* in the net energy balance, so that even if the yield per ton is lower, the end-result is far better. Corn is now selling at the equivalent of 18 cents per pound - an all-time high and triple its historic range. Most ag waste is unused and costs around 2 cents per pound, or is free - if you will remove it. Therefore even a 50% lower yield means the relative cost of feedstock goes up to 4 cents versus 18 cents. Due to changes in supply and demand, this gap will close - but there are other great reason NOT to use corn. Plant sugars contain equal numbers of carbon and oxygen atoms, making it difficult to create high-octane or cetane fuels. The solution was to catalytically remove the oxygen. The reactive molecules then can then be "upgraded" into different forms of fuel, and that is why the yield is lower. Dumesic's team demonstrated three different upgrading processes- meaning that this is fairly robust and could be in pre-commerical prototype stage soon. This is fantastic news! Here is the good professor's homepage: http://jamesadumesic.che.wisc.edu/home.htm BTW - there have been at least two announcements by others of something similar but less advanced - so this is not the only possible way to end the used of food grain for fuel.'' Jones --------------- http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1159210?ijkey=cDSwxrRJ6esFQ&keytype=ref&siteid=sci Abstract Published Online September 18, 2008 Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1159210 Reports Submitted on April 16, 2008 Accepted on September 5, 2008 ``Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Monofunctional Hydrocarbons and Targeted Liquid-Fuel Classes Edward L. Kunkes 1, Dante A. Simonetti 1, Ryan M. West 1, Juan Carlos Serrano-Ruiz 1, Christian A. Gärtner 1, James A. Dumesic 1* 1 Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. James A. Dumesic , E-mail: dumesic{at}engr.wisc.edu It is imperative to develop more efficient processes for conversion of biomass to liquid fuels, such that the cost of these fuels would be competitive with the cost of fuels derived from petroleum. We report a catalytic approach for the conversion of carbohydrates to specific classes of hydrocarbons for use as liquid transportation fuels, based on the integration of several flow reactors operated in a cascade mode, where the effluent from the one reactor is simply fed to the next reactor. This approach can be tuned for production of branched hydrocarbons and aromatic compounds in gasoline, or longer chain, less highly branched hydrocarbons in diesel and jet fuels. The liquid organic effluent from the first flow reactor contains mono-functional compounds, such as alcohols, ketones, carboxylic acids, and heterocycles, that can also be used to provide reactive intermediates for fine chemicals and polymers markets.'' ---------------- Jed wrote on 9-23-08: ``As I have pointed out before, several times, it does not matter where it comes from. If you converted the entire plant growth of North America -- every stick, every leaf, acorn and grain of corn grown in the continent -- into fuel you would not have half enough fuel ... Things like algae grown in tanks, and so on, are different. Beene refers to "ag waste." As I have pointed out numerous times, most of the energy in agricultural plants is in the seeds, and we eat them ...'' --------------- Jones wrote: ``... The part about biomass from cellulose "lacking energy", compared to seeds is clearly in error, and you seem to be confusing protein with energy. --------------- leaking pen wrote on 9-23-08: ``... Tree waste certainly has a lot more energy than [its] seeds ...''
