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Startup Claims to Make $1/Gallon Ethanol
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:19 PM
from the get-ready-to-fight-the-lobbies dept.
from the get-ready-to-fight-the-lobbies dept.
gnick writes to mention Wired is reporting that an Illinois startup is claiming they can make ethanol from most any organic material for around $1/gallon. Coskata, backed by General Motors and several other investors, uses a process that is bacteria based instead of some of the other available methods. The bacteria processes organic material that is fed into the reactor and secretes ethanol as a waste product.
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Hardware: Switchgrass Makes Better Ethanol Than Corn 560 comments
statemachine writes to mention that the USDA and farmers took part in a 5-year study of switchgrass, a grass native to North America. The study found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver around 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can only yield around 24 percent. "But even a native prairie grass needs a helping hand from scientists and farmers to deliver the yields necessary to help ethanol become a viable alternative to petroleum-derived gasoline, Vogel argues. 'To really maximize their yield potential, you need to provide nitrogen fertilization,' he says, as well as improved breeding techniques and genetic strains. 'Low input systems are just not going to be able to get the energy per acre needed to provide feed, fuel and fiber.'"
[+]
Hardware: $1/Gallon "Green Gasoline" In Sight 740 comments
mattnyc99 writes "We've gotten excited here about the startup that claims it can make $1/gallon ethanol out of anything from trash to tires. But we've also seen how cellulosic ethanol is a better option, and how ethanol demand in general is only adding to the worldwide food crisis. So what about $1/gallon gasoline? NSF-funded researchers at UMass Amherst just completed the first direct conversion from cellulose using a new method of hydrocarbon refining, which they claim can be commercialized within 5-10 years and essentially make fuel out of anything that grows. Quoting: 'We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels. We're using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that's what we'll be using in 10 years and in 50 years,' Huber says. 'And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go.'" The process is running at about 50% efficiency now; the $1/gallon figure is based on getting to 100%.
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Hardware: Consumer Ethanol Appliance Promised By Year's End 365 comments
Newscloud brings us news of a startup called E-Fuel promising to ship a home-brew ethanol plant, the size of a washer-dryer, for under $10,000 by the end of this year. We've had plenty of discussions about $1/gal. fuel — these guys want to let you make it at home. The company says it plans to develop a NAFTA-enabled distribution network for inedible sugar from Mexico at 1/8th the cost of trade-protected sugar, to use as raw material for making ethanol. A renewable energy expert from UC Berkeley is quoted: "There's a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It's entirely possible that they've done it, but skepticism is a virtue."
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the memories (Score:5, Funny)
aaah...reminds me of college.
Re:the memories (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Better idea (Score:4, Funny)
With the rising cost of funerals and cremation services, maybe the burial method of choice in the future will be in the gas tank of your grandchildren.
Parent
Re:Better idea (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Better idea (Score:5, Funny)
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Mr Fusion? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Whoo hoo! (Score:3, Funny)
Only one problem (Score:5, Funny)
Great, but (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great, but (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great, but (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I figure it's not about all these bullshit reasons you guys spout off. It's all about control. You and your do what you do to control people, for nothing more than the satisfaction, because you have to live by the same restrictions you put on the rest of us. Your lust for power makes that all worth it, I guess.
I support rising fuel costs, with taxes if necessary. You know why? Because I want control. Not of you
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What! GM backing cheap fuel! (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know the merits of this particular deal, but it never made sense to me that "car makers" really cared one way or the other about the fuel costs (and the SUV craze has borne that out...)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now unlike the John Edwards types who look at profits as always being "evil" they are instead incredibly useful. GM would not be putting a dim
Re:What! GM backing cheap fuel! (Score:5, Informative)
Now look what happens: I sell my car for 10000€, and buy a new fuel efficient one for 23000€. I now have 13000€ spend, that I have to justify with future gas savings. That's the equivalent of 13000/60 = 217 fill ups! The equivalent of 217*50 = 10850 litres, which means I can drive 108500km with my old car, or 217000km with my new car. That's the equivalent of a bit more than 7 years for the old car and 14 years for the new car. Now look at those figures! In 7 years, my car will be 15 years old and have no value (10 years later it will be a vintage car though) That's a very long time to recoup costs.
Anyone saying the buy a new car "because it has better mileage" should first do this small calculation. If the cost is not recouped in a short time (which means you drive a lot), then it simply is not worth it. Sure, you might have other reasons, but "saving money" is not a valid one.
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wrong metric? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many joules per dollar does that work out to compared to gas?
Or, even better, how many miles per dollar does that work out to in today's ethanol-powered cars?
Ethanol 89 MJ/gallon, Gasoline 132 MJ/gallon (Score:4, Informative)
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Need to make Butanol, not Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
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More on Butanol... (Score:4, Informative)
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Startup hits "paydirt" (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey, since they beat us to the smartphone, the only thing we could do in response was test the outer limits of stupidity," said Joey, the CIO.
Time could be running out for ambitious entremanures wanting to cash in on the USPTO, however, Joey continued:
"The USPTO asked us a question, which was 'What time is it?' They hadn't ever asked any questions previously. We fear that this question could herald an unprecedented era of consciousness at the USPTO."
OPEC Screwing Themselves (Score:3, Interesting)
for a while yet, but now everyone is gunning for them. They drove the oil prices
up too high creating the incentives to start driving innovation to help eliminate
them from our lives.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Drop the dumb tags already (Score:5, Insightful)
"inthishouseweobeythelawsofthermodynamics" is cute when someone's bragging about their perpetual motion machine. It makes you look ignorant when the story is about someone converting one form of energy to another in an incrementally more efficient way than before. News flash: it's obvious that current production methods can be improved upon. What part of that smacks of breaking the laws of physics?
Re:Drop the dumb tags already (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Good ol' boys in Appalachia do this all the time (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good ol' boys in Appalachia do this all the tim (Score:3, Funny)
Lookin' for a moon-shine still.
Strangers ain't come down from Rocky Top,
Reckon they never will.
Corn won't grow at all on Rocky Top,
Dirt's too rocky by far.
That's why all the folks on Rocky Top
Get their corn from a jar.
The stupidity of consumers (Score:3, Insightful)
"Even if you produce it county by county, you still need an infrastructure," he said. "People aren't going to go to some remote location for fuel."
This has not been my experience. I have met countless stupid people who will drive 20 miles to save 2 cents per gallon on gas. People would probably drive 50 miles to save 5 cents per gallon of gas.
If this stuff was sufficiently cheap, I'll bet there are people who would drive for hours just to fill up and save themselves $20 at the pump.
No way will it cost $1 per gallon (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the reasons for the high taxes in the UK for fuel is that they want to keep traffic numbers down. Pushing the price up should discourage people from driving so much in theory. Of course, the government just becomes dependent on the taxes and so will want a big cut of any other fuel source. Certainly, in the UK if you drive a diesel fueled by used cooking oil, a waste product which would normally be dumped, the government expect you to pay tax on it. The justification is that the tax is used to maintain the roads although that is supposed to be what the road tax is for. Anyway, it is currently cheaper to use vegetable oil and pay the tax than to use fossil diesel but if it gets more popular to use such biofuels the price differential will go away. Sure, they will be largely carbon neutral but the government will still want the same amount of income from fuel sales, they're addicted. I think the US drivers will have to get used to similar things. Accept it, whether the fuel is from fossil or modern sources, the price is going to remain high. You'll never see $1 per gallon again.
What about the $1 solar panels from last week? (Score:3, Insightful)
Has anything really changed? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
The efficiency argument as it pertains to ethanol is related to the so-called "energy positive" problem. The concern is that if it takes more energy to create the ethanol than it does to farm it and convert it to fuel, then what exactly is powering all that farm equipment? It can't be the ethanol, or we'd eventually run out of energy.
On the other hand, grid power consolidates the power infrastructure and therefore is wonderfully inexpensive. If this machine did nothing more than take grid power and convert it straight into ethanol, it would be a miracle machine. It's almost as good as if you had a machine that converted uranium or plutonium directly into millions of barrels of ethanol. If you get a slight boost from the energy already stored in the corn, so much the better!
The key thing (economically) is to get off of oil. Oil is starting to weigh down our economy and gives far too much power to current and potential enemies. Making transportation cheap again would rebound the economy, bring food prices back in line, and generally improve things for the U.S. (and really, the rest of the world) all around.
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Re:logic (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:logic (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, Pimentel still disagrees that ethanol is energy positive. He's really just being a jerk, pushing data that's nearly 30 years old. Not a single study that's independent of his numbers has shown the same results. The only problem is that there are enough gullible people who listen to him.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The nice thing about ethanol is that continued research is almost guaranteed to drive down the price-per-energy cost by orders of magnitudes from what it is today, whereas oil will continue to rise simply by virtue of the fact that it is a limited supply.
So while ethanol is still too expensive to be worthwhile, it's only a matter of time (IMHO a short one!) before ethanol will be as cheap as gas was in the late 90! I still remember 25c per liter (here in Canada, about $0.95/gallon). Maybe then I can affor
Re:logic (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true of most technologies. e.g. If we were to embrace hydrogen, I can guarantee that the price of hydrogen fuels would drop like a rock over time.
The real beauty of ethanol is that it is similar enough to gasoline to make it a viable alternative for powering existing engine designs. Which means that the massive investments made in the modern, overdesigned, otto-cycle piston engine can continue to be leveraged while new engine technologies are developed.
In short: Hydrogen would require an entirely new infrastructure. Ethanol would not. Which is a huge win for ethanol.
Parent
Re:logic (Score:4, Informative)
Hydrogen requires more significant changes to the engine. That's what drives up the price. Ethanol only requires shifts in the timing and better fuel lines to handle the corrosive effects of the Ethanol, thus making it a fairly inexpensive conversion. Flex vehicles are able to detect information about the fuel and adjust the timing of the engine.
That's a fair point, but I think you overestimate the amount of new infrastructure needed by ethanol vs. that needed by hydrogen. We have methods of building pipelines [usatoday.com] that can handle ethanol. What we DON'T have is a consensus on how to produce, store, transport, or even fuel hydrogen vehicles. Which leaves a rather massive infrastructure gap between ethanol and hydrogen. Ethanol requires some behind-the-scenes changes. No real biggie. Hydrogen requires brand new vehicles, brand new storage systems, brand new transportation methods*, and brand new production methods. We simply aren't ready to build this infrastructure, no matter how much I wish we were.
It's not a stupid idea. Up until 2006, the US allowed really crappy quality diesel to be sold on the fuel market. This reduced the pump cost of the fuel, but meant that it was extremely dirty and bad for the environment. There was no way that car makers could create cars that burned these fuels clean enough to meet emission standards. Thus the disappearance of diesel in small vehicles. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
That's been true for decades. As a former resident of Wisconsin, I can tell you that nearly all fuel sold in that state used Ethanol as an octane booster, with many pumping stations advertising as much as "10% Ethanol". What's changed is that ethanol is now being blended in at higher quantities while car makers rush to support these "new" fuels. For the first time in my life, I'm actually seeing E85 fuels pop up at your average, everyday gas station. So no, ethanol is not being driven by its use as an octane booster. Your information is out of date.
(* Hydrogen leaks out of nearly any container. That's one of the reasons why it's so hard to transport and store.)
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Re:logic (Score:4, Interesting)
Such as? Every recent government study I've seen says the exact opposite.
e.g. The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update [anl.gov]:
What you're probably thinking of is sensationalist headlines like this: Study says ethanol not worth the energy [usatoday.com]
Oh lookie. David Pimentel. What a shocker.
I think you'll find that energy-negative studies not conducted by Pimentel himself invariably contain a "Special Thanks to David Pimentel for providing data." Nice, eh?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:logic (Score:5, Informative)
That depends on the feedstock. We can never do it with corn, as the math just doesn't bear out. Consider the following, based on the recently-published Crop Production 2007 Summary:
Planted area: 93.6 million acres
Average yield: 151.1 bushels per acre
Total production: 14.1 billion bushels
Ethanol production from corn usually nets about 9.5 liters of ethanol per bushel. A conversion of all of the corn to ethanol would net about 134 billion liters of ethanol. Ethanol has an energy density of 24 MJ/L, and gasoline's is 34.6 MJ/L, so E85 would come in at about 25.6 MJ/L. Daily average gasoline consumption in the US is about 1.47 billion liters per day, or about 50.9 billion MJ. To match that with E85 would require 1.99 billion liters of E85, which would require 1.69 billion liters of ethanol. Unfortunately, converting all of the corn production to ethanol would allow only 79 days of consumption of E85 at current energy use rates.
It's an extreme, unrealistic calculation, as we could never do a complete conversion, and it doesn't factor in energy used for the planting, care, or harvest. But it does help to drive home the point that it's infeasible to use standard plants for ethanol production. Even switching to sugarcane or sugarbeets isn't going to help because of the massive acreage required. The only mechanisms that will be able to reliably replace our reliance on fossil fuels are those that are able to take advantage of volume of organic materials, including excretion methods such as algae and bacteria, and possibly methods such as cellulosic conversion and thermal depolymerization (if they work out profitably).
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You might want to read the article. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hint: the process does not use corn.
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Re:stop the lies (Score:5, Interesting)
Potatoes cost $2017 per acre to produce.
Corn on the other hand $502 per acre to produce.
That is a rather large difference, corn production also requires next to no man power where
as the production of potatoes (root bound crops) is considerably higher.
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Re:stop the lies (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:stop the lies (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)