Comments on: Navy’s Green Strike Group is All That and Energy Efficient, Too

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 13:37:00 +0000

Here’s the problem, Cl1, you don’t know when to use EROI and when it doesn’t apply.

Clearly there are applications in which the form of energy is more important than the input costs.

(I doubt you’ll understand that, so we’ll hear more drivel from you.)

By: Cl1ffClav3n

Cl1ffClav3n — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 12:52:00 +0000

@Bob Wallace and anybody else that doesn’t understand: Life, does in fact, absolutely depend upon EROI, and it must be many times higher than 1:1, not fractionally higher, to sustain life. The same is true scaled up from individual organism to civilization. Modern civilization has been empirically measured to need a minimum primary energy EROI of 6:1 or it dips into recession. To get an understanding of how thermodynamics and biology intersect, I would recommend
Kooijman, S. A. L. M. Dynamic Energy and Mass Budgets in Biological Systems. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

By: Yay! USDA and DOE Announce $41M Biofuel Subsidies

Yay! USDA and DOE Announce $41M Biofuel Subsidies — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:00:36 +0000

[…] they got worked up over the DOD’s massive, highly intelligent, US economy stimulating, and national securifying biofuel purchase earlier this month. In addition to the DOD/Navy, however, the USDA and the US Dept. of Energy have […]

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:25:00 +0000

Gosh, yes, Cliff.

Do you understand economics? Life is not based on EROI.

Can you grasp the fact that liquid fuel might have a high enough value to cause it to be useful even if the energy invested exceeded the energy it provided?

It might make great sense to input 5x as much cheap wind/solar energy as an airplane could extract from the resulting liquid fuel if there was no cheaper alternative.

By: Cl1ffClav3n

Cl1ffClav3n — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Is there anyone on CleanTechnica that understands the laws of thermodynamics? If a process has a net negative energy balance, then scaling it up just digs a bigger hole. We can’t confuse economies of scale bringing prices down with getting a free lunch from the universe. Burning straight dried biomass can yield a little positive net energy–but not good transportation fuel. The most energy-productive of biomass feedstocks to liquid fuels yield bioethanol and biodiesel alcohols and esters at barely break even EROIs, and require massive amounts of fossil fuel hydrogen and carbon from natural gas and petroleum to be input as fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, distillation heat, etc.) Further transforming these products into true hydrocarbon drop-in fuels such as jet fuel and true diesel requires direct injection of pure hydrogen from natural gas and drives the EROIs well below 1:1. Liquid biofuels are parasites of fossil fuels. Their price tracks with oil and will always be higher than oil. Filling up today on E85 will cost you 30 cents more per gallon than premium corrected for MPG. Stop waiving your hands and parroting the PC Press and the Malibu Institute of Technology and do some research and thinking for yourself.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:58:00 +0000

Cliff, can you grasp the concept of lower prices as technology develops? That’s critical to the discussion.

Are lower prices guaranteed? Of course not.

Does it make sense to make predictions based on prices not dropping. Also, of course not.

Now, do you understand that fuel for airplanes might have a lot more value than fuel for ground-based transportation once ground-based has moved to cheap and plentiful electricity?

And can you make the next step to a possible time at which we can make liquid fuel for air travel out of non-petroleum inputs?

Even if that liquid fuel was much more expensive than petroleum-based fuel we might make the decision to go that route. Climate change could drive the decision. Or falling/restricted petroleum supplies could drive the decision.

Your arguments fall within the “man will never fly” and “the car will never replace the horse” universe.

By: Cliff Claven

Cliff Claven — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:26:00 +0000

[System won’t let me reply to you, so I’ll reply to my comment. . .]

Bob, keep reading past the first line. The thing that keeps all those fantasies from working is EROI. If you want to snack on algae as food, you can get a modest return.. If you want to make it into biodiesel, or even worse, true hydrocarbon drop-in diesel, then you must pour in tons of external energy and you will get out less than you put in–by a large margin. This is why algae fuel is $60 dollars a gallon and cellulosic ethanol is always 5 years away. (Before you pounce, only a small undisclosed fraction of the recent $26.75 a gallon Navy biofuel purchase was Solazyme algae oil. Most of it was Tyson chicken fat. The lowest price for pure Algae biostock fuel was $61.33 in 2009.)

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 17:29:00 +0000

Your post breaks down with the first sentence…

“Biofuels is trying to make fuel from fuel.”
There is nothing to indicate that biofuels cannot be produced from non-food crops grown with no petroleum inputs.

Consider algae-based biofuel which could be grown in ponds on land unsuitable for crops and harvested/processed using renewble electricity as the energy input.

Or a perennial plants such as switchgrass grown on marginal lands, harvested and processed with an electricity input.

By: Cl1ffClav3n

Cl1ffClav3n — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 12:53:00 +0000

Biofuels is trying to make fuel from fuel. It is an attempt at perpetual motion. You don’t need a crystal ball, just a decent STEM education. If your question is sincere, than here is how to confirm this for yourself. All we need to do is follow the hydrogen. Hydrogen is the
principle energy carrier in all our liquid fuels. All the hydrogen in
conventional fuels comes from the ground in the source crude oil or natural
gas. Some of it is consumed along the way to pay the costs of production, but
for every liter or BTU consumed, between 8 and 24 make it into the fuel tank.
The energy return on investment (EROI) for gasoline and diesel have oscillated
between 8:1 and 24:1 since 1920. EROI is a key metric that essentially
describes how much our primary energy sources can contribute to the health and
wealth of our nation. Biofuels, on the other hand, require hydrogen to be added
at multiple steps: fertilizer (pure anhydrous ammonia (NH3) is the fertilizer
of choice for corn), petroleum-derived herbicides and pesticides, and hydrotreating,
which is essentially injecting pure hydrogen to up-convert alcohols and esters
(bioethanol and biodiesel) into true hydrocarbon drop-in fuels. Where does all
this hydrogen come from? Petroleum! In addition, biofuels have very steep
processing costs that fossil fuels don’t, including cultivation, irrigation
water, huge algae pond water circulation and centrifuging, kraft process
cellulose separation from lignin, truckloads of genetically engineered enzymes,
distillation of 96% water content, etc. These energy costs can either be paid
by the product fuel or by additional injects of petroleum, but either way, the
EROI is further reduced. Ethanol EROI is a pitiful 1.25:1. Cellulosic ethanol
EROI is 3-5 times worse–well below unity, which means it takes more fuel to
make than it yields–which is why it is always ‘5 years away.’ There is
probably not a single politician or government agency head, including Dr. Chu,
who is truly informed about hydrogen mass and energy balance in biofuels, and
that is why billions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered on this fiasco in
a vain attempt to get drop-in biofuels below outrageous prices like $26.75 a
gallon. Amyris and Gevo have finally
figured this out and abandoned biofuels for industrial chemicals and animal
feed. Here’s an abbreviated body count
of some who failed to learn this lesson: Verasun, Cello, Range Fuels, Choren, Pacific
Ethanol, Cascade Grain, Renew Energy, Bionol, Clean Burn Fuels, etc., ad
nauseum, with Sapphire, Iogen, and more teetering on the edge.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 04:52:00 +0000

Where did you get your crystal ball Cliff?

The one that tells us that biofuels will never work and that we must be dependent on petroleum?

Are you aware that solar panels used to cost over $100/watt and they are now below $1/watt?

Have any clue what hard drives cost per gig about three decades ago? Try a quarter million per gig. Now they are something like a dime per gig.

Biofuels are expensive now. That does not mean that they will stay expensive.

Crop based biofuels are likely a bad idea. Algae or crop/timber residue biofuels are a different story.

The military is doing what it often does, paying a lot for relatively small quantities in order to drive markets and encourage development.

By: Cl1ffClav3n

Cl1ffClav3n — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 19:42:00 +0000

I detected sarcasm in your reply. The long view is no better than the short view. The U.S. military has purchased 1.3 million gallons of biofuel since 2007 at an average price of $48 per gal while the price it pays for of petroleum fuels has never risen above $2.50 (today’s military cost for JP-8 jet fuel is $2.32 per gallon). These liquid biofuels require huge amounts of energy and hydrogen and carbon from fossil fuels to create (fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, farm machinery fuel, fermentation, distillation, hydrotreatment). The total energy input is greater than the energy output in the liquid fuel product. Because of this negative energy balance, making biofuels actually accelerates our use of fossil fuels and increases our dependence upon foreign oil. Because crop-based biofuels are parasites of fossil fuels, their price has always been and always will be higher than the price of oil. And because they also compete with food crops for land and water and fertilizer and equipment and labor, they are also subject to the volatility of international agricultural markets, as well as the vagaries of the weather (stand by for the price spike from this year’s record drought and the loss of 20M bushels of corn so far). The CO2 from burning down forests to make crop land, and all the farming
agri-chemical byproducts like nitrates and nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas 298 times worse than CO2) increase environmental damage and global warming emissions more than the amount avoided by subsequent use of the renewable fuel. The politicians and pundits falling for the green and clean myth of Biofuels are leading us down the path of economic self-destruction, water depletion, food competition, deforestation, and increased lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. There are multiple recent studies from RAND and the National Academy of Sciences and many universities that are painting a much darker picture of biofuels than the Malibu Institute of Technology or the Encyclopedia Mainstream Media.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:44:00 +0000

Right Cliff. The Navy is stupid. (Or someone else is?)

Get biofuels up and going and their costs drop as the price of fossil fuels rise. The Navy saves money and removes the problem of having our oil supply routes cut during conflict. Plus removes the need to defend those supply lines because we would have alternative supplies.

Wonder who’s thinking the long game here?

By: Cl1ffClav3n

Cl1ffClav3n — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:28:00 +0000

Navy energy conservation initiatives are great. Navy advocacy of biofuels is lunacy. Don’t confuse political appointees running the military (e.g., the Secretaries of Defense and the Navy) with the uniformed military. Also don’t confuse retired military officers working as paid lobbyists for ACORE or the Truman Project Operation Free or SAFE, or those with huge financial stakes in Growth Energy or Solazyme or Gevo with true representatives of the active duty rank and file military. The admiral at sea wants fuel he can get at any port with the energy density to get him across oceans on a single fill-up, at a price that leaves him money for sailors and gunpowder. Biofuels don’t fill that bill today, and for a host of reasons previously discussed on this blog, won’t fill that bill tomorrow or ever. The military members with science degrees are figuring this out. It would be nice if the political appointees and Congress did as well.