david's Comments

As noted, Shell has a large vested interest in producing gasoline or something nearly identical.

""Drop-in biofuels produced by this process have the same properties as conventional fuels," said Shell in a media release. " This eliminates the need for additional blending and storage infrastructure as well as engine modifications."

The fact that engines run on other fuels [methanol] may be superior is not an issue in petro land, nobody wants them.

Okay, I want them, I can find you some race car builders who want higher octane fuels, some engineers building systems on small scale for small markets.

The average consumers never study the issue, and the ones spending the big money on media coverage are against alternatives. Even methanol.

While it is generally accepted centralization and large scale make for efficiency, if Shell fuel feedstock [crude oil, beets, grass, etc.] has to be shipped, then refined, then pipelined, then trucked to filling stations, is it really as efficient as ethanol/methanol/methane produced in smaller plants, closer to feedstocks and distribution points? The smaller, regionalized plants eliminate the trans-oceanic shipping and pipelines.

Can cellulosic ethanol make it? Will the beta acetal bond be broken? Look at the time line of carburetion to central injection to port injection to direct injection. Look at the development of diode lights and diode lasers. How close are the next POX reformer fuel cells? The super-capacitor batteries? Friendly capitalists are waiting for the breakthroughs. They are up against a large market-dominating force in the petro industry.

Shell has spent to cover all their bases, a little plant here, another there, but it is in their best interest to have something they can still brand and market as 'gasoline', despite the fact that several fuels are much better.

Water in ethyl/methyl alcohol no big deal. Oxygenated gasoline demands corrosion [oxidation]-resistant fuel systems.

The energy content you mentioned [BTUs] make ethyl or methyl fire less destructive than gasoline. Alcohol fires harder to ignite, burn slower [less explosive] produce less heat, can be put out with water.

"BTU or kWh or Joule or whatever" No. BTU=British Thermal Unit. HP, ft/lb, kW, Joule, N/m all Work, not thermal.

Practical application: Porsche engines with higher efficiency than Skoda need premium fuel. 'Premium' means higher octane, not BTU. Octane = anti-detonation needed for higher compression, which relates to efficiency.

Alcohols produce less thermal energy per volume because of their oxygen content. Both that oxygen content and alcohol's cooling effect [latent heat of vaporization] allow higher compression, ergo higher efficiency.

Who wants methanol? Last time I looked at M1 methanol fuel, about a week ago, it was $3 a gallon, and no lines of people to buy it. Unlike CNG, LPG, biodiesel, no one wants it except for vehicles illegal for street use.

While US Govt was working to end oil embargo, family business had 8 propane vehicles, one diesel. Uncle Sam did it for oil producers, not me or other consumers. Embargo would have continued to spur alt fuels until alt fuels put petrol/benzin off market.

Drop-in renewables were 'hillbilly' just a few years ago. Shell has spent on ethyl/methyl/butyl and others.


"friendly capitalists" invested heavily due to "federal policy" and high oil.
That was the bubble, and the speculation. Oil went low, ROI on ethyl v petro dropped, bubble burst.

Fuel v food controversy. People who cannot buy grow food must buy it or go hungry. US agriculture is capable of producing excess food. If US govt/UN buy the excess, does it feed the hungry or go to N korea? Until 2004, much went to China. High oil = starvation, as more $ go to shipping fuel.

FINALLY

[Thrown on the mercy of the court]


Many in the alternative fuels industry would love to see what fuel would come to the top if there were ever a real free market. If the guy who sells reconstituted fryer oil, SVO or FAME, and the guy making ethyl/methyl/acetal/whatever "Century fuel" in his tractor shed/distillery had the chance to put their own pumps at their own convenience stores, they think that maybe, just maybe, they could do better than break even.

If the engine builders and mechanics could build direct injected, high compression, dedicated alternative fuel engines without a $10,000 special permit [per engine, per model year] from the government, and prove their stuff could be as safe and clean, then maybe….

Maybe it wouldn't be big in their lifetime, but maybe--given the time 'gasoline' had to go from a general store stain remover to something stored in metric tons under every other street corner—just maybe those other people willing to take a chance could have their own piece of the free market.

Then there are the people who just want Ford to market their EBS motors, or GM to offer their similar Ricardo engines, and the opportunity to have a Denatured Azeotropic ethanol supply as close as the nearest farm market.

Just maybe….

Maybe it wouldn't work, but at the very least, it would improve the petroleum business, because that's what competition does, right?

Doesn't that sound more like what America should be?

PART SIX
['Is this a sign of the Apocalypse, or is that just my vain hope for an end to it?']

"corrosion due to the moisture, and, once it has absorbed enough moisture, phase separation"

Which is the gasoline and ethanol separating. A large part of the cost of ethanol to fuel blenders is the cost of removing all the water to make it miscible with gasoline. Water in an alcohol fuel system does not cause the problems condensation in a gasoline system does. In fact, for years, people who built high-performance engines used water injection to delay detonation and pre-ignition in gasoline engines. The first such application I have personally seen was in 1962 Turbocharged Oldsmobiles.

"But, hey, if you're so convinced that you have a better way to earn an ROI on $400 million than Shell, what's holding you back?"

Uh, the lack of the $400 million. Earned over a hundred years, supplemented by 'strategic reserves', tax dollars, the blood of troops on foreign soil, etc.

"Maybe you and your hillbilly friends can put Shell out of business."
When Shell was in danger of such a thing, they bought a lot of alcohol fuel technology from small 'hillbilly' operations to hedge their bets. Isn't that what the story was about?

['The kid scored on relevance there, Jim, but I'm afraid he's down by six on 'concise' and wavering badly on 'mannerly'.']

['You're right, Bob, his only hope now is that someone has a sense of humor or sees his opponent as a API troll.']

“Now is a great time for construction: you can build your plant for close to half of what you would have paid at the height of the bubble.”

There was a bubble because there was speculation, just like there is in petroleum or any market. Big whoop. I think I mentioned the oil boom in the Western US somewhere above, and the subsequent bust because of the end of the embargo? Some people made out big time on that, others lost their shirts. That’s the game.

[just...one...more...sentence]

PART SIX

["Now the little raver has finally gone off the end."]

"Mixing ethanol with gasoline (which is done for safety reasons as ethanol burns with an invisible flame)"

Ethanol is mixed with gasoline because:

1] Low-compression indirect injection engines without proper pre-heating [OEM gasoline engines] will not start in the cold on ethanol. That is because the "vapor pressure" you referred to does not exist in when ethanol is cold. Gasoline, on the other hand, is formulated to vaporize in cold engines, by addition of carcinogenic VOCs.

2] The only way to get ethanol to a filling station is to sell it to a gasoline blender, who only wants it for-- [a] the tax credit [b] the octane rating –and would not have it at their pump without gasoline in it.

3] To make the fuel poisonous, because ethanol is so safe, you can drink it. Chances are, unless you grew up in 'dry' religions, you have consumed it, and most college students can attest to having consumed small lakes of it. Gasoline makes it undrinkable because Gasoline is poison.

4] Ethanol burns with a clear flame, whereas gasoline is far more likely to go BOOM.

"Mixing ethanol with gasoline…leads to unintended consequences: higher vapor pressure (i.e. more evaporative losses and emissions)"
Those rubber cuffs on gas pumps, vapor return systems, the charcoal canisters in cars, pressurized gas caps, are all to deal with vapor pressure. Invalid argument.

"corrosion due to the moisture" When you get moisture in your gasoline tank due to condensation, you add some form of alcohol to cure it.

[to be continued...maybe?]

PART FIVE
[Subtitled "Concise? Ooops."]

RE: STATUS QUO
The petroleum industry's long-standing tax rules are matched by lax environmental regulations. While the BP spill had consequences for the oil industry, and MBTE has been banned in certain areas, these are but the tips of the iceberg. Like lead in gasoline, wide-scale health issues from petroleum go ignored or passed off to the least important sources.

Examples? SUVs in America are 'bad', but we don't talk about the tons of bunker fuel burned in shipping consumer goods from China. Like taxes at the pump, Consumers take the whipping, not the industry.

Another example: while fracking and MBTE cause groundwater pollution that is difficult to mitigate or treat, both are given a wide berth. On the other hand, there are many concerns about the amount of water used in producing ethanol, from the field to the pump. This is despite the fact that the pollution from crops that produce most ethanol is largely ignored when the same crops are grown for US food aid. Meanwhile, the water used in ethanol processing leaves the plant in better shape than when it went in.

"Bottom line: ethanol….fermentation is a terrible way to produce ethanol." Oddly enough, there are few complaints about similar processes long used to produce butanol and acetone from straw. They don't rock as many political boats [votes?].

You re-affirmed your opinion of ethanol later: "ethanol is a terrible fuel: it is hygroscopic, so it absorbs water, until it causes corrosion issues."
This is only a problem in vehicles designed for gasoline. If you remember, there were many changes that had to be made to automobiles to allow them to run on Unleaded gasoline when TEL was finally, after fifty years, phased out. Methanol is a far more corrosive fuel. Changes to the fuel systems for ethanol are, in comparison, simple.

PART FOUR

"Sure, the liquid fuel market could be freer, but right now it is freer than most, and a lot freer than agriculture."

The two markets have another comparison that needs to be noted.

While "everyone knows" we 'need' a market system to handle the food between grower and consumer because of 'public health', some of us have had good experience with food direct from the grower as opposed to the marketing sytem's 'food recall of the week' on the nightly news.

Likewise, "everyone knows" that it takes a petroleum company that owns most of its own distribution network to ensure motor fuel gets to the consumer, and that the automakers 'have to' provide engines to run on only those fuels made available. Some of us, however, have had good experiences with vehicles that produced more power from their alternative fuel engines than the 'status quo' of low-compression gasoline engines.

What a horror freedom of thought and action is to a market system.

Incidentally, flex-fuel is an invalid argument. A flex-fuel engine is a gasoline engine that may run on another fuel. Very few automakers tried building engines for LPG, CNG, ethanol or methanol, because it requires a different design. Why re-tool for something that limited in scope? RIP, Saab.

Ooops. I forgot. If you are willing to take a loss long enough, like the Japanese auto industry [and banks, and govt] did with hybrids, you can break the market. All you need is a government and its subsidized banking system and....

[to be continued....]

PART THREE

"I would also submit that unlike Big Auto, Big Banks and the Giant Corn Lobby, Big Oil does not run to Uncle Sam for subsidies when business is tough and they get bullied by the free market."
Read your history books. Big Oil got its subsidies and tax breaks a hundred years ago, when gasoline couldn't support an engine with a compression ratio higher than 7:1, but it was the petroleum industry that got breaks. They used politics to keep leaded fuel legal, although it was known from 1924 on that it was a public health hazard.

Then, in the late 70s and early 80s, when it looked like ethanol could make it against the recently unleaded gasoline, Big Oil ran to Uncle Sam to end the oil embargo for them, and killed the market for alcohol. There were also some tighter regulations on making and using ethanol that popped up suspiciously. The best way for the businessman to make a return on his R&D dollar was to sell, to Phillips, Texaco, Conoco….

"Sure, the liquid fuel market could be freer, but right now it is freer than most, and a lot freer than agriculture."

Let's see. The North Dakota farmers I worked for until I was 22 were not free because they could not directly market their products in the store. But they did, and occasionally do still. I can still buy beef, eggs, hay, feed corn, sunflower seeds direct from the grower.

What they cannot do is directly market the oil under their land. The year I left eastern Montana/western North Dakota, I reported on the thousands of working oil wells that were being capped because the embargo ended. Millions of dollars in domestic revenue were lost as the oil boom went bust. The farmers sitting on top of that oil had no free market for it, just as you are not allowed to grow all the tobacco you want and sell it out your front door. [Unless you are on an Indian Reservation. Fort Berthold, Standing Rock, you listening?]

[to be continued....]

PART TWO

"I would submit that the Giant Corn Lobby is real"
Of course its real. My argument is that it has managed to win some small foothold in politics that is continually and loudly bandied about while the preferential treatment of the petroleum industry is over a hundred years old.

"and is doing real damage to US hopes for energy independence."
It is not doing the farming community any favors, but it does make it easier for the culture built around agriculture [politics, machinery, chemicals, bioengineering] to have all the attention focused on corn and soybeans. If we were serious about ethanol, we would grow milo, or one of the sudex/cane hybrids, but they don't have a lobby.

"Not sure what you are referring to with "a crack at the status quo". Corn ethanol is MANDATED by Uncle Sam (the alcoholic) and it STILL can't compete? How much help does it need."
Well, back to the history books. Gasoline made large strides as a motor fuel in the early days of the automobile due to the fact that ethanol was ILLEGAL. We called it prohibition. During that time, TEL was put in gasoline, finally beating out ethanol, although the machinations to keep leaded gas from being labeled as 'unhealthy' were truly astonishing. Prior to Prohibition, alcohol was heavily taxed, to pay off Civil War debts and suchlike, while petroleum was still 'making friends' in Washington.

I don't actually want mandated ethanol/gasoline mixtures. The fuels that showed the most promise were not e-85 or some other 'blend' with gasoline, they were combinations of ethanol, methanol, water, and pentane, or ethanol, butanol, water and acetone, or some other biosynthesized fuel blends. Ethanol has t be 'dehydrated' at significant cost to make it mix with gasoline.

[to be continued....]

I am so glad most arguments follow the 1933 Ethyl Corp playbook, it makes it easier when all I have to do is dig up the old stock answers.


"David,
Interesting that you should mention methanol. Some believe that cheap methanol is already here. Using the old "wood alcohol" technology, we already know how to do "cellulosic" methanol."

Methanol is dangerous stuff. It does offer more oxygenation than ethanol, higher octane, better latent heat of vaporization, but its dangerous. Nobody really wants it, but it makes a good foil.

"This is a big, well-established business that does not receive heavy subsidies and government support as ethanol does."

A great deal of that ethanol money goes to petroleum companies. It is the incentive that gets them to put it in their gas stations.

"On a per BTU basis, unsubsidized methanol costs $17.61 per million BTUs. You can buy ethanol today – ethanol that has received billions in taxpayer subsidies – for $1.60 per gallon. On a per BTU basis, heavily subsidized and mandated ethanol sells for $21.03 per million BTUs."

Okay, first of all, are we talking about motor fuel? In car engines, 2/3 of the BTU content of motor fuels is wasted, 1/3 leaving via the exhaust system, another 1/3 having to be carried away by the cooling system to prevent destruction of the engine by overheating. Only steam engines rely on BTUs.

As an interesting fact, if we wanted to use the BTU argument, we would have to carry it to its logical end. Then we would discontinue the use of petroleum for everything but the manufacture of plastics and lubricants, and switch to all electric transportation, with the electricity generated by coal, to get the most BTU bang for our dollar.

Incidentally, the greatest promise ethanol and methanol show is in fuel cells replacing internal combustion engines, where the practicality of either alcohol over on-board hydrogen storage is apparent.

[to be continued....]

Mostly in agreement with coenraad. Much as I would prefer to see ethanol-based fuel in engines designed for it, it is not moving fast enough. Some exciting engines and fuel cells sit on shelves waiting for cheap ethanol or methanol.

That petrochemicals would own biofuels is no surprise; they have successfully fought off all comers for a century. Buy it or bury it is the way business runs.

I disagree with the assumption that petroleum operates in a free market. The US market is rated 35th as a free market, and the current market place is even less free.

The true market forces know that money buys TV time, TV time buys elections. The "Giant Corn Lobby" is nothing compared to a century old international alliance of refining companies and a somewhat younger alliance of producing nations.

Even though people like Obama need to keep whispering 'ethanol' to keep the Illinois corn growers voting for anything that wears a [D] badge, it has become apparent over the last 30 years that govt handouts [it's not their money, what do they care?] are a much cheaper route than actually allowing a crack in the status quo.

It has been pointed out that RE has some corrupt people.
It has been pointed out that the military-industrial complex has some corrupt people.
It has been pointed out that politics has some corrupt people.

I have seen a lot of crooked people, but who hasn't? From kids shoplifting to people clocking into work who didn't work.

Why? We have built a culture of winking, snickering, looking away, ignoring, excusing, or throwing blame. "I can cheat on my taxes, because GE does." "I can accept bribes because Congress does." "We can take money for no work because [insert name] does."

Where does this end? "I can kill anyone who disagrees with me, because China does, and China is the greatest nation in the world."

Quit throwing blame, start encouraging a new system. Let's call it SHAME. Shame on them. I'm ashamed of them. You should be too. They should be ashamed of themselves. It is a shame to do that, it is a shame to allow it.

OKAY...now that we have all recovered from the shocking news that some of us will break rules for a buck, let us focus on other people. There are people in the military who know that part of the job is stopping those who would do US civilians harm. They are earning a damn sight less money in the military than they would outside.

YAY!

There are people in command of the military who want to save your tax dollars, make your defense energy independent, and encourage productive research into RE.

YAY!

There are hard workers who have left jobs grinding out methyl butyl deathatate to start their own company making energy from sunshine and leaves and grass and wind and waves.

YAY!

That is why this is Renewable Energy World and not Look At The Corrupt Bastards World.

The current perception about renewables is the same as other periods when fossil fuels once again became cheap. After WW2 and in the 1980s -- Perhaps if we were not subsidizing fossil fuels and stacking the legislative deck against Renewables, they would have a better chance of competing.

The US Military strategy is invested in self-sufficiency. If we get cut off from petroleum supplies, all our military vehicles stop working. If our base's power lines are down, by whatever means, or we lose coal to generate electricity, command centers go dark.

I recall the Energy Crisis starting a few years before Carter, with gas lines during the Nixon Administration. The Nixon years also gave us the EPA and the 55mph speed limit.

jefferyjohnson -- 'the real power in the US' is whoever buys the politicians. Our two-party system runs on money from big spenders -- the 'One Percent'.

The GOP and the Democrats don't sell a product, they sell a service; favorable legislation. Remember 'GE paid no taxes in 2010'? Maybe because Charlie Rangel, Democrat, NY, helped them get tax breaks.

thomas -- 'the end to wars for power, literally and figuratively.' Not gonna happen with Homo Sapiens. Sorry.
There are people who want you dead because you are using food, water, air, energy resources and land they would rather have.

Furthermore, the military of the US is run by the politicians. See 'two-party system' mentioned above.

One of the goals of providing energy independence for the military is to ensure a force that can defend you without needing to kill others to procure energy. The military expenditure on RE is also more goal-oriented than political expenditure, which only needs to produce votes and campaign $$.

Also, money 'spent on the masses for energy independence' does not give the masses energy independence, it makes the masses dependent on the body spending the money.

I know more about squeezing more power from small engines than I do about ethanol production.

Water in your fuel is not the problem, gasoline is. High performance engines have often used water injection to limit detonation. Since at least WW2, alcohol and water injection were used to increase the power of aircraft.

What do you put in your gas tank when water condenses into it? Alcohol.

Alcohols, even hydrated, allow higher compression, which in turn increases expansion, which is the force that drives the pistons.

Although BTU content is often cited as a reason for the inferiority of alcohol fuels, this is largely a fallacy in IC engines, where heat is anathema to efficiency. Heat causes detonation, which is why 2/3 of the BTU content is eliminated through the cooling system and tailpipe.

Gasoline is a 19th-century grocery store stain remover doped up to try to match ethanol and methanol engine performance.

Either diesel, electric, ethanol, methanol, or natural gas engines are better than gasoline engines.

Flex fuel vehicles run poorly on E85 because they run poorly on gasoline. A cheap low-compression engine does not improve because you use premium fuel. High performance engines need premium fuel, extreme performance engines need alcohol.

Return to the subject, the article about subsidies. It would only seem an honest approach to eliminate subsidies from both alcohol and petroleum production.

Without tax breaks, incentives, strategic petroleum favoritism, and military defense of petroleum interests, gasoline refiners would likely turn to alcohol production. Gasoline, after all is not a rigidly defined compound but a generic name based on a defunct brand. Whatever they make it out of, they can still call it gasoline.

If Uncle Sam wasn't living on oil company graft, hadn't already 'picked' oil as the winner, we would have turned to other fuels before most of us were old enough to drive.

Talk about bitter clingers! The concept that biofuels = starvation is a myth, and an old one, at that!

"Let's burn the corn in powerplants!" Brilliant solution.

Does anyone do homework, or do you just let others string together disparate facts and lead you by the nose to a conclusion? "Cars emit CO2, and the West has more cars than China, so China is not causing global warming." Brilliant!

Absolote falsehood, but everyone buys it. Want to cut carbon emissions? Don't focus on auto fuel, focus on Oceanic Shipping fuel, electric power plants, and the factories that make the cars and batteries.

Any idea what the lifetime environmental load of a PHEV is?

Anyone looked at studies involving the retrofit of existing automobiles with high-compression, direct injected, cylinder deactivating motors, coupled with larger tires? [larger tire=more distance travelled per revolution] You need to replace tires regularly anyway....

Never heard of it? You know why? Because no automaker, oil company, or coal company has paid for the dissemination of the information.

Want to talk boondoggle? Did you read the article? To whom did most ethanol subsidies go? Oil companies. Valero already said they'll probably use ethanol without subsidies.

What ends with subsidies is the con games disguised as business. If only we could end the oil subsidies....