Surviving the Biodiesel Downturn

The title to this podcast is a bit controversial. Why should biodiesel made from food survive? American soy farmers reaped an extra 2.5 billion dollars thanks to biodiesel in the past few years. At a dollar a gallon blending subsidy, that cost us all 2.5 billion dollars and all we got for it was higher food prices, increased global warming and ecosystem destruction.

Food prices are going down.

Biodiesel does not cause global warming---petroleum does.

What ecosystem destruction? Growing soybeans, rape seed and sunflowers does not destroy the ecosystem.

What do you have against Amerircan farmers? You'd rather pay Middle East despots and terrorists for oil?

You'd rather give banks, mortgage and Insurance companies over $2 Trillion to keep them from failing as a result of their own folly----and then the top executives use the money to pay themselves huge bonuses?

You support giving almost $50 Billion in bail out to an automaker to avoid bankruptcy----so that as soon as cash is in hand, they declare bankruptcy anyway in order to cut pay and benefits to employees and retirees----and take away any backing from previous customer's warranties?
Then they reneg on their obligations to creditors---and close or dispose of any money losing divisions, when the whole premise presented to the American people in asking for bail out money was that we can't let GM fail because too many jobs would be lost. It seems to me that they took the money---and we got screwed.

I'd say that makes $2.5 Billion over a period of years pretty paltry. At least we got the oil for it.

Russ----if subsidies worry you that much, maybe you should take a look at oil depletion allowance. That amounts to about $250 Billion a year in lost tax revenues.

Oh, hi there Fred. I see you're still using the logical debate fallacy called ad nauseam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam

…where you repeat over and over again points that have been repeatedly debunked hoping new readers won't know that.

Fred said:

"...Biodiesel does not cause global warming---petroleum does...."

They both do. Pictures (and graphs) are worth a thousand words:

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/desiremore/biofuelmyths1.htm#bookmark2

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0022-fires_indonesia.html

As you know, grassland and forest destruction accounts for a third of global warming.

A study by Nobel Prize laureate Paul Crutzen says that biodiesel made from Canola is up to 50% worse than petro diesel due to nitrous oxide alone (never mind soot, CO2, and land displacement). NASA backed him up in a study just released in Science:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1176985v2.pdf?ijkey=gkBXN.9.4TA2E&keytype=ref&siteid=sci

In addition to the CO2 and N2O, you have to think about soot, which accounts for about 18% of GHG emissions:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/soot-reduction-could-help-to-stop-global-warming-1224481.html

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0405-hance_blackcarbon.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/science/earth/16degrees.html

"…What do you have against Amerircan farmers? You'd rather pay Middle East despots and terrorists for oil?…"

Farmers are businessmen. They don't deserve welfare anymore than shoe salesmen do. They simply have a much bigger lobby. Do you know the definition of xenophobe? Who bankrolled the first Gulf war? Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Religionist fanatics did. They require very little money and not buying oil from the middle east would change nothing because they would sell their oil to someone else to fund these figments of your imagination. But you have been told all this before, many times.

I never said I supported all of those other government handouts. That's a strawman argument, easily countered by simply pointing it out as such.

Define paltry for us then give us a link to the depletion allowance and then one showing how much tax the oil companies pay every year.

BP Oil Deal Was "A Very Big Part" Of Lockerbie Bomber Release (BP)

http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-official-bp-oil-deal-was-a-very-big-part-of-the-reason-the-lockerbie-bomber-was-released-2009-9

A critique of biofuels is not a defense of oil. It is the British government's job to reign in the bad behavior of companies (big oil, big ag, big biofuels, big whatever). Failure to do so is a failure of government. Big biofuel would behave the same way given the chance. Cello was just convicted of fraud.

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2009/07/cello-lesson-in-due-diligence.html

The Oklahoma City bomber was a white American. We still buy American oil.

We have to move away from current transport technology. The dominance of the internal combustion engine, which wastes about 80% of the fuel in a given tank, has to end. Using government funding to replace that fuel with food is just the kind of solution you would expect from a coalition of politicians and big ag lobbyists.

-----------"Using government funding to replace that fuel with food is just the kind of solution you would expect from a coalition of politicians and big ag lobbyists."-----------------
How much dead tree limbs and pond scum do you eat in a day?

Would you like a nice glass of vintage sewage to wash down your meal?

We can make biofuels out of all those things.



---------"The dominance of the internal combustion engine, which wastes about 80% of the fuel in a given tank, has to end."---------

Diesel egines run around 40% efficiency. Starting Oct. 1---the only diesel fuel you can buy in the US is ULSD(ultra low sulphur diesel). The petroleum industry is calling it S15(>15 ppm sulphur)---however, when sulphur is refined out of petroleum, it loses the lubrication needed to keep fuel pumps, injectors and piston rings lubricated. It would quickly destroy the engine. Biodiesel must be added to maintain enough lubrication(biodiesel contains 0 sulphur). The petroleum industry is calling ULSD S15----what you will actually be getting is B5 biodiesel. I suspect that they are calling it S15 because they are afraid that if they call it B5---the public will go, "Well, if B5 is good, B50 would be better and B100 is best."

Russ---I agree with you about reigning in monopolist business cartels. I think that biofuels are one way to do that. The very fact that there are many ways and feedstocks that can be used to produce them, make them by nature anti-monopolistic. There is no way to control the market by gaining control over the raw materials used to make them. We both want to accomplish the same things----I think biofuels are the best way we have to do that.

Russ----how about a compromise?

VW is now making factory installed gasoline/natural gas bi-fuel engines. They come with methane tanks already installed(which avoids the problem of where to put the tanks with "add on" installations)

They run on liquid fuel---but can be switched to methane(compressed natural gas). This avoids the problem of the immediate need for huge investment in CNG distribution at service stations---fill it from home, and where you can find CNG----if you can't CNG, you can still always use gasoline. I've used this system in Europe, and it works very well.

VW is introducing diesel/CNG bi-fuel models later this year. Diesels are already high compression engines that get very good thermal efficiency in the 40% range and are rugged, very powerful for size and well known and proven. There will be no problems with manufacturing, servicing or anything else with diesels---we've used them successfully for years. Diesels can use biodiesel fuel with no modification. There is a problem--both petroleum and biodiesel tend to gel and become hard to start when it gets cold. A diesel/CNG bi-fuel would easily bypass this problem. Simply start and run the engine on methane till it is warm----then switch to liquid fuel if you need to. CNG has an octane of ~120 so it is a perfect match for a diesel fueled engine-------and methane is so clean, it is already used where exhaust emissions would be a problem---forklifts indoors in warehouses, service vehicles in mines and tunnels for instance. And fossil fuel natural gas and biomethane are exactly the same chemically. You can mix biomethane with fossil fuel methane in any proportion you need to with no loss of performance. As more biomethane becomes available---we can make a higher biomethane mixture without changing anything else.

I think a diesel/natural gas bi-fuel vehicle is the best overall solution to what we want to do.

"… We can make biofuels out of all those things [waste]…."

Got nothing against biofuel made from waste. I'm critiquing biodiesel made from food oils here in the US, which accounts for about 90% of our biodiesel, which, by the way, was being shipped overseas until the EU stopped that practice with tariffs. Your concerns about the importance of energy independence to protect us against people different from us makes little sense when you are talking about biodiesel. The irony is that the biodiesel refiners continued to parrot the energy independence malarkey while they were shipping it overseas.

"… Diesel egines run around 40% efficiency …"

No doubt diesel engines get better mileage than gasoline engines. The EPA Clean Vehicle guide shows the 2009 Jetta diesel getting 27% better mileage than the gasoline equivalent.

http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/Index.do

So, assuming that gasoline engine is 20% efficient, the diesel would be 27% efficient, not 40%. There are some giant diesel ship engines that are over 50% efficient but you can't put one in a Jetta. Makes you wonder why 80% of government renewable energy subsidies go to corn ethanol, a fuel that gets about 30% worse mileage than gasoline and less than half the mileage of biodiesel.

"…Biodiesel must be added to maintain enough lubrication …"

No. There are literally dozens of lubricity additives:

http://www.infineum.com/products/fuel/refinery/lubricity.html

Biodiesel is just one way to add lubrication. The choice to use it depends on profit. If the government pays an oil company a dollar for every gallon of biodiesel it blends, one can see how an oil company may choose to use biodiesel for lubrication, not to mention its use is mandated by law!

"….The petroleum industry is calling ULSD S15----what you will actually be getting is B5 biodiesel…"

ULSD S15 is not secret code for a 5% blend of biodiesel. My local gas station has signs all over it telling customers that the diesel contains 5% biodiesel.

"…I agree with you about reigning in monopolist business cartels…"

You are not agreeing with me, Fred. I never said anything about monopolist business cartels. There are many oil companies competing with each other in a very fungible world market for oil. We would pay a great deal more for oil if that were not so. There is no monopolistic business cartel for oil anymore than there is one for corn ethanol or soy biodiesel.

"…There is no way to control the market by gaining control over the raw materials used to make them…."

Almost all of our biofuel comes form corn and soybeans. Cargill, AGM, and a handful of other agriculture companies are some of the largest companies in the world. They already dominate the grain industry and have garnered huge profits over the last few years.

The problem isn't biofuel per se. It's what you make them out of. You can make biodiesel out of palm oil, helping drive the orangutan to extinction or soy oil, sending a price signal to Brazilian farmers who create new farmland out of carbons sinks. You can also make it out of waste products.

Your VW bi-fuel engine is a nice example of the market competing to provide consumers with the best ideas. The problem is that it has to compete against the government's pick, corn ethanol flex fuel SUVs and biodiesel made out of food.

It's like the government has picked a winner for us by sewing a competing soccer team's net shut.

I like the diesel/CNG bi-fuel concept. The diesel engine needs no modification to run bio----and we can make bio in any proportions we need to depending on availability. CNG has a relative octane rating of ~120 so it can make full use of diesel's high compression and thermal efficiency. CNG is methane---both fossil fuel methane and biomethane are the same thing chemically. We can mix them in any proportion with no loss of performance. Methane absorbs heat 17X better than CO2. If we mix as little as 6% biomethane with fossil methane---the resulting emisision gas will have the effect of nullifying out compared to if we had done nothing and simply let the methane escape into the atmosphere. Mixing biomethane, is in effect exchanging high greenhouse effect CH4 for low greenhouse effect CO2. Anything over a 6% mixture, means a lower total greenhouse effect.

I agree that cellulosic ethanol is a better idea. How about wood? We can make both ethanol and biodiesel from wood and other plant waste. It has been done on a commercial scale before.

This article discusses gasification of biomass to liquids and flash pyrolysis. Both methods can make any kind of fuel. If we were smart, we would ditch the gasoline engine burning ethanol for diesel engines:

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2009/09/biofuel-contenders.html

And I agree that we need to be capturing methane and putting it to use as well.

----------"This article discusses gasification of biomass to liquids and flash pyrolysis. Both methods can make any kind of fuel."-----------

Yes. Fischer-Tropsch process. Range Fuels is just finishing construction of a plant in Soperton GA using this process.

http://www.rangefuels.com/conversion-process.html


--------"And I agree that we need to be capturing methane and putting it to use as well."-----------

Yes-------we can convert human and animal waste into methane----we need to treat sewage anyway-----and the final product is compost, a valuable resource in itself. Done right, we can derive power we need from the process and still recycle atmospheric CO2 at the same time.

-----------"If we were smart, we would ditch the gasoline engine burning ethanol for diesel engines:"-----------------

With enough ethanol available, that is what will happen. Flex Fuel engines are only necessary until ethanol becomes widely available enough that we could pull into any service station and fill up with ethanol. The limiting factor with gasoline engines is the compression ratio----it has to be kept to about 9:1 because of preigintion problems with petroleum, not ethanol. With high enough ethanol blends, compression ratios are free to increase---and compression ratio is what determines thermal efficiency in an internal combustion engine. We'd start building engines with high compression ratios, it would cost nothing extra and make large gains in efficiency. The high compression ratio used in diesel engines now(about 16:1 is what makes them more efficient than gasoline engines). We may use the same spark ignition rather than compression ignition-----but both engines could use the high compression. Essentially, you are right, we'd abandon low compression gasoline and go to high compression(what distinguishes the diesel), regardless of the ignition mode.

As for your arguement that we should not be putting food into our fuel tanks------I agree completely.

However, farmers must be able to make a profit to survive and keep farming. What I envision happening is that farmers will have more than one income stream coming in from the crops they are growing right now. For instance, corn farmers, they grow the crop for the corn to feed animals. The corn is used to make ethanol, and the end product is DDG high protein animal feed, and the cobs and stover are also sold to make ethanol. The farmers make more money growing exactly the same thing they always have-----we are just making more complete use of the entire crop. The same thing for wheat farmers----they sell the wheat for food---and the straw is sold at $20/ton and is used to make ethanol-----already being done in Canada right now. The grain goes into bread---and the straw goes into fuel tanks. And there are a great number of other agricultural waste products going to waste now that can be used in a similar way. Cotton bush, citrus rind, cull timber from managed timber lots, forest floor duff that needs to be cleared out to lessen forest fire damage, plant material dredged from canals, invasive species that need to be cut out, yard and garden waste.

And the end product depending on the methods used to produce the biofuels will end up as either compost or char/ash. Both valuable as soil amendments that are the same things nature has used to enrich the soil for billions of years.

I think what you are actually saying Russ is----"We have to make SURE it is done right and no short cuts just for the sake of quick profits."--------

Now THAT I agree with 100%.

"…With enough ethanol available, that is what will happen. Flex Fuel engines are only necessary until ethanol becomes widely available enough that we could pull into any service station and fill up with ethanol…."

We certainly have to reengineer our cars, Fred but there are two main reasons you would not want to use ethanol.

1) Ethanol gets much worse mileage than other fuel options because you can't fight the laws of physics. Ethanol has much less energy density.

A company called Scania has already designed an engine to burn pure ethanol. It gets roughly the same thermal efficiency as a diesel (43%) but because of the lower energy content of ethanol, burns about 70% more ethanol than diesel.

http://gas2.org/2008/04/15/scanias-ethanol-diesel-engine-runs-on-biodiesel-too/

Saab designed a concept car to run on E100 and it got 20% worse mileage than the gasoline version, making it about half of what a diesel version would get.

http://www.cars.com/go/features/autoshows/vehicle.jsp?vehicletype=concept&autoshowyear=2007&vehicle=concept_saab_biopower100&make=Saab&model=BioPower+100

2) Cellulosic ethanol does not exist in economically viable format and probably never will. That leaves two sources for it. Sugarcane from the tropics or corn from here.

Cellulosic ethanol may never become economically viable. It isn't even a new idea. The Germans were producing commercial cellulosic ethanol in 1898 and Standard Alcohol had a plant producing 7,000 gallons a day from wood waste in 1945. It never caught on because, like today, it is just too expensive..

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2009/09/first-commercial-cellulosic-ethanol.html

You sound like a corn farmer trying to rationalize using corn for fuel to maximize your income. Sometimes your arguments contradict themselves, Here you say:

"...we should not be putting food into our fuel tanks..."

and then you say

"... grow the crop for the corn to feed animals. The corn is used to make ethanol..."

Which is nonsensical.

It takes 56 pounds of corn kernels to produce 2.8 gallons of ethanol, 11.4 pounds of distiller's grain, 3 pounds of Glutan meal, and 1.6 pounds of corn oil. So, 56 - 11.4 -3 -1.6 = 40 pounds of corn lost that cannot feed people (or the cows that people eat). In other words, about 70 percent of a bushel of corn is lost to the food chain when you use it to make ethanol.

Turning corn stover into cellulosic ethanol will just force farmers to put more fossil fuel derived fertilizer in their soil, and try to keep in mind that cellulosic ethanol does not exist in an economically viable format.

---------------"........and try to keep in mind that cellulosic ethanol does not exist in an economically viable format."------------

We've been able to do it for over a century. Making ethanol from wood in commercial quantities was done in both the US and Germany as far back as the 1890's. This was using the Scholler process. The US produced ethanol from wood logging and mill work waste at a plant in Wisconsin as a feedstock to produce butadiene---artificial rubber.
Germany used the Fischer-Tropsch process in WW2 to produce synthetic fuels from coal and wood.

We can make ethanol from any type of plant material at all.

"Economically viable format" means the price of petroleum. The price of petroleum changes. If the price of petroleum goes up---people have no choice but to pay higher prices. If all cars are Flex Fuel, no one has to use ethanol----but they can if the price of petroleum goes up. If people have diesel cars, no one has to use biodiesel, but they can if the price of petroleum goes up. And biofuels can be used in any proportion needed---up to 85% ethanol, or 100% biodiesel. Not only that, make the engines bi-fuel, and drivers have the choice of using either liquid biofuels, or natural gas, and natural gas is methane, exactly the same as biomethane. Fossil natural gas and biomethane can be mixed in any proportion at all with no loss of performance.

What is wrong with people having a choice of what kind of fuel they want to put in their vehicle?

Mileage----Saab BioPower 100 (the article you cite)

http://www.cars.com/go/features/autoshows/vehicle.jsp?vehicletype=concept&autoshowyear=2007&vehicle=concept_saab_biopower100&make=Saab&model=BioPower+100

It also has twice as much horsepower as the gasoline version. Try putting in a gasoline engine large enough to match the horsepower and you will get a lot more mileage than the engine it is being compared to.

Mileage is a fuction of how much work you get out of the engine, divided by the BTUs of the fuel you put in. Mileage per BTU of an ethanol engine can be twice that of a gasoline engine because higher compression ratio means higher thermal efficiency in an internal combustion engine. Around 2X the mileage per BTU than gasoline engines.

Flex Fuel engines can not make use of the superior octane rating of ethanol because the compression ratio must be kept low in order to be able to use gasoline. Without the need to use gasoline----the increase in thermal efficiency using ethanol with high compression ratios means that you can more than offset the mileage difference because you make better use of the fuel. You can go as much as 40% further on a gallon of ethanol than you can on a gallon of gasoline--------even with the difference of the BTU content of the two fuels. And you get twice as much horsepower from and equal size engine. You can easily power the largest SUV with a 4 cynlinder engine commonly used in small economy cars with no loss in power.

Diesel engines are already high compression engines----diesel has similar octane ratings to ethanol. You can use ethanol in diesel engines(Scania is already operating diesel engine buses in Sweden and UK)----but you can't use gasoline in diesel engines.

No, Fred. Cellulosic is not presently economically viable simply because consumers would not buy it at the price producers would have to ask to maintain a profit, nothing more, nothing less. For this reason alone, it does not exist in the open market.

"If" the price of oil goes up high enough that "might" change but I don't waste my time debating ifs and mights. The here and now is that cellulosic ethanol is not economically competitive.

The price of corn ethanol is closely linked to the price of oil, i.e., it does not get cheaper as oil prices climb. Biofuel prices will always be linked to oil prices because their price will climb just like oil when demand starts to exceed supply of liquid fuels, because they are interchangeable liquid transport fuels.

Your argument that we should use biofuels because they will be cheaper than oil has no basis in reality.

And as both of my links to engines already designed to burn pure ethanol demonstrate, you are wrong about ethanol getting better mileage than gasoline and diesel engines--it gets worse mileage as both links to real engines that really burn ethanol attest.

And you can't simply burn ethanol in a diesel engine. Go ahead and try it.

Consumer choice is a function of consumer demand. Brazilians have such a choice because ethanol is competitive in price with gasoline there. Sugarcane produces about five times more ethanol per unit energy input and about three times more ethanol per acre than corn ethanol, the only ethanol available here. We live in a temperate climate. We can't grow sugarcane.

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img9.gif

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img10.gif

---------"Your argument that we should use biofuels because they will be cheaper than oil has no basis in reality."--------------

Reality is, petroleum is running out. Tar sands in Canada are proof of that. Just 15 years ago, it was too expensive and environmentally damaging to exploit the tar sands. Today there is a headlong rush to get as much oil as possible from them. Oil companies are valued according to how much reserves they have under lease---nobody can look down through 2-5 miles of solid rock and tell exactly how much oil is there. It's a WAG(wild a$$ guess). They always choose the most optimistic WAG. It sends stocks higher, and makes them more money. Oil will run out.

--------" We live in a temperate climate. We can't grow sugarcane."---------

That may come as a surprise to cane growers in Louisianna, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Hawaii, and California. I see by your chart that sugar beets produce more ethanol per acre than sugar cane. Sugar beets can be grown anywhere in the US with sufficient rainfall, including Alaska. The last I heard, Puerto Rico is still part of the US---Puerto Rico has a tropical climate---and rainforests, I did Air Force survival training there, I can tell you that it is indeed hot and humid in Puerto Rico. I see by your chart that switchgrass has almost twice the ethanol production that sugarcane does----switchgrass grows anwhere you have a praire, upland savannah or dry to semi arid climate. That is about 1/2 of the US. Switchgrass is a native praire species, and the USDA recommends it for pasture and wildlife cover.

I don't see algae on your biodiesel chart. Maybe because it would be off the chart-----about 8 times the palm oil production.

I don't see switchgrass on the chart either---or wood. We can make either ethanol or biodiesel from both using Fischer-Tropsch.

Here's your problem, Fred. Although I would like to find a replacement for fossil fuels as much as you do, I accept the fact that some of the replacements we are using are worse than what they replace in the aggregate, corn ethanol, soy biodiesel to name two.

You on the other hand don't seem to care if a replacement for oil is worse than oil. Knowing that corn, palm, soy etc are worse than what they replace, I strive to put in place transport vehicles that use the minimum of fossil fuels while the search for something better continues.

You want to put in place something worse than oil. It's disingenuous, to say the least.

I am also perfectly aware of our limited ability to grow cane in some of our states (and Puerto Rico isn't a state). My point stands, your point, if you had one, is lost on me. If cane ethanol here in the states is profitable, why all the corn ethanol? If beet ethanol is profitable, why all the corn ethanol? There is no law against using either to make ethanol. So, where is it?

And as I have pointed out dozens of times, just because we can make biofuels with many different methods using everything from beets, to algae, to switchgrass does not mean that it is economically or environmentally feasible to do so.

I would welcome a biofuel technology that is better than fossil fuels in the aggregate. We simply don't have one at this time and pretending we do is allowing the entrenchment of destructive fuel infrastructure like corn ethanol.

--------"If cane ethanol here in the states is profitable, why all the corn ethanol?"---------

Because the market driving product is DDG, the ethanol is just a by product. Ethanol for fuel can be made from many different sources.

------"(and Puerto Rico isn't a state). "--------

Puerto Rico is a US Territory---Puerto Ricans are US citizens.

-------" If beet ethanol is profitable, why all the corn ethanol? There is no law against using either to make ethanol. So, where is it?"----------

US sugar production is severely limited by law due to the NAFTA treaty. We need to change the NAFTA treaty and USDA regulations to increase the production of sugar. It has to do with laws made by treaty to favor Carribean, Central and South American Sugar producers----not with what we are able to do. Oil interests lobbied to get sugar production in the US deceased to gain access to oil exploration and discovery rights in Central and South America.

-------"I would welcome a biofuel technology that is better than fossil fuels in the aggregate. We simply don't have one at this time and pretending we do is allowing the entrenchment of destructive fuel infrastructure like corn ethanol."-----------

Using Fischer-Tropsch or Scholler processes, we can make alcohol or diesel fuels from any type of plant cellulose. It has been possible for over 80 years, done before on a large scale, and is being done right now.

Not only that, with bi-fuel(two fuel) engines, we can use natural gas. We do not need anywhere near the amount of petroleum we use. We can mix fossil and biomethane in any proportion. Methane is produced naturally and when allowed to escape into the atmosphere, has 17X the heat capture ability of CO2. If we use a biomethane mixture at a rate of anything over 6% with fossil methane----we reduce the greenhouse effect of the resulting emissions. And natural gas is cheaper per BTU.

Gotten a bit off topic. Bottom line, there is no need to save the soy biodiesel industry here in the States.

Biodiesel does not depend on soybeans.

Take a guess at the percentage of biodiesel burned in the U.S. that is made from soy oil. DDG is not driving the ethanol market. DDG is a by product of making ethanol, not the other way around.

You forgot natural gas. If we use bi-fuel engines, we can still do everything we do now, we need far less liquid fuels, and we need no new technology that is not already in use now.

What is your suggestion? Santa already has a monopoly on flying raindeer so they are out.