The future of fuel will arrive next year

[SCCA1995]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

The technology is promising but it has to be far far more productive, by at least a factor of 10 or 20 or 50.

You fail to see one fundamental piece of information. Change has to start somewhere. Remember the first ICEs? Single cylinder, maybe 5hp at best? Over 100 years has gone into making the ICE more powerful, more fuel efficient, & more liveable. Give all of these eco-friendly technologies 100 years & see where we are. Oh wait...we won't be able to see.

[Wolfman01]

Originally Posted by logansowner

They are talking about a 1B gallon/yr plant, not their test plant. When I figure American gas usage at 21 million bpd that brings me to a need for 322 of these plants to replace all gasoline usage, which isn't the goal anyway.

But by all means, since this technology wont replace 100% of our fuel usage, we should ignore it.

Not quite. Since we're using 195 billion gallons of gasoline used per year, as a 100% replacement we'd have to augment the 195 by 20% to adjust for the reduction in mileage. This comes to 234B gallons of ethanol. Since this emerging technology plant is already going to be at 1B gallons per year capacity by 2012, the concept should be able to be easily doubled in capacity in a few years, making it good for 2B per year. Now you only need 117 plants. Now, if for once, the energy industry and society as a whole are to actually engage in some thought process, and diversify the production facilities nationwide, we would have just over 2 plants built per state. One would of course designate "extra" capacity built in states with higher populations. Something like this should be easily be planned to be implimented in full within 15 to 20 years, also allowing for the auto industry to convert the sales fleets to 100%FFV and eventually ethanol only powered. Doing the latter would allow the industry to tune specifically for the one fuel, and regain some of the lost efficiency of the fuel.

[Hunid Racks]

Originally Posted by SCCA1995

You fail to see one fundamental piece of information. Change has to start somewhere. Remember the first ICEs? Single cylinder, maybe 5hp at best? Over 100 years has gone into making the ICE more powerful, more fuel efficient, & more liveable. Give all of these eco-friendly technologies 100 years & see where we are. Oh wait...we won't be able to see.

PhissPhoo don't care.

If Toyota was heavy into E85 and GM was heavy on hybrids he'd be all for the ethanol.

[GMINmoderator]

I've got a stack of 20 year old Popular Mechanics that all say, "the future will arrive next year." Too bad it never does. Fact is, and this hurts, ethanol is a bust. This will be a bust too. It might come on line sure, but it will NEVER return us to the days of $1.50 a gallon and that my friends puts it in the "bust" catagory. Too many greenies, too many liberals, and too many politicians stand in the way. Open your eyes. Come out with a cheap, clean alternative to oil now and you collapse major economies from Russia to China. Russia for example is investing heavily in drilling. I suppose all those anti "drill-here-drill-now-people" think there a bunch of idiots. Yeah, idiots who are going to have trillions of dollars. To be a superpower you need to control 4 critical things, one of which is energy. The U.S. no longer does that and its how if someone wants to there going to destroy us. Good job libs, you have put us all at risk because some stupid polar bear, who would KILL YOU if he could, doesn't have enough ice to stand on. You put all your faith in junk global warming science. Congrats.

This goes beyond your gas tank, the powers that be don't care about you or your gas tank. They want whats in your back pocket. If you have noticed going green costs more, its the new way of getting more of your money by giving you less product and making you feel warm and fuzzy at the same time. Its called, "the reach around."

[HoosierRon]

Originally Posted by GMINmoderator

I've got a stack of 20 year old Popular Mechanics that all say, "the future will arrive next year." Too bad it never does. Fact is, and this hurts, ethanol is a bust. This will be a bust too. It might come on line sure, but it will NEVER return us to the days of $1.50 a gallon and that my friends puts it in the "bust" catagory. Too many greenies, too many liberals, and too many politicians stand in the way. Open your eyes. Come out with a cheap, clean alternative to oil now and you collapse major economies from Russia to China. Russia for example is investing heavily in drilling. I suppose all those anti "drill-here-drill-now-people" think there a bunch of idiots. Yeah, idiots who are going to have trillions of dollars. To be a superpower you need to control 4 critical things, one of which is energy. The U.S. no longer does that and its how if someone wants to there going to destroy us. Good job libs, you have put us all at risk because some stupid polar bear, who would KILL YOU if he could, doesn't have enough ice to stand on. You put all your faith in junk global warming science. Congrats.

This goes beyond your gas tank, the powers that be don't care about you or your gas tank. They want whats in your back pocket. If you have noticed going green costs more, its the new way of getting more of your money by giving you less product and making you feel warm and fuzzy at the same time. Its called, "the reach around."

Ethanol is a bust? The U.S. will make 9 billion gallons of ethanol this year. Let us say that we have no more than 20 of these algae-ethanol plants. That alone is 29 billion gallons -- 20% of the gasoline we use.

That does not include any of the more than one dozen cellulosic ethanol plants that are already on line or under construction. It does not include the fact that gasoline consumption in the U.S. is on the decline. It does not include the fact that America's CAFE is increasing. It does not include the fact that corn ethanol production will increase to 12 billion gallons within 4 years.

Regardless of how much Russians spend on drilling, it is inevitable that market forces will lead the U.S. to easily replace 25% of its gasoline consumption with ethanol within 10 years. That's hardly a "bust".

[SCCA1995]

Originally Posted by GMINmoderator

Open your eyes. Come out with a cheap, clean alternative to oil now and you collapse major economies from Russia to China.

Just because we slowly stop suckling at the tip of an oil rig, doesn't mean these countries economies will fall in the blink of an eye. Not every driver will be able to afford or get access to a hybrid. Plus, who's going to buy all of the current gasoline/diesel vehicles that stop being driven? They will still be on the street at some point in time. But, being driven less often will save people some money & lessen the impact of their being driven.

[BlueMontreal]

Originally Posted by nadepalma

Thanks for the information zeozinger.

I was always told that Ethanol could not be transported via pipeline because it attracts - and absorbs - water. And that since those pipelines need to be flushed out and maintained periodically it would contaminate the ethanol and make it less effective. It was for this reason that most ethanol is trucked rather than shipped out in pipelines etc.

Was I mislead? Are there any plans to create a dedicated ethanol pipeline anywhere in the US?

Thanks for the info!

Pipelines we already have cannot transport ethanol for many reasons, among them water and corrosion. But we can easily adapt those pipelines to transport ethanol blend like E10 or E22 without excessive cost.

We can also built special ethanol pipelines, but this is expensive and will take some time.

[63GrandSport001]

considering that there are 144 oil refineries in America and we dont refine 100% of the oil that we use more like about 85% of the oil we use is refined in America. There are a good number of them that produce about 400,000 gallons of gas per day compared to this test plant that will make 1,000,000,000 gallons a year or 2,740,000 gallons per day. Its not as much as our biggest which produces 11,340,000 gallons of gasoline per day is a good start considering that this is very new technology and considering that in 1920 they got only 11 gallons of gas from a barrel and now they are doing 20 gallons shows that gasoline has improved.

We need to be able to produce 351,880,000 gallons of ethanol per day in order to replace the amount of gasoline that is refined in the US. However if we are using E85 then we only need to replace 85% of the gasoline that we use in the US per day which is 300,000,000 gallons per day. If they built as many of these plants in America as we have oil refineries then they would have to make an average of 2,100,000 gallons per day in order to hit that number and this plant is already planned to exceed that number considering that this technology is new thats impressive.

Lets not forget that we need a multi directional plan to solving our energy needs and not just one plan like with gasoline because when that is threatened it nearly kills us. We need to reduce our use with new technology and improved fuel economy and we need to take some things off of fossil fuel when possible. This will reduce what we need to make and make things that much easier not to mention its going to be a US workforce and hopefully a well paid one if trends turn around in the US as far as pay goes.

also note that one of our biggest oil refineries sits on a 2,400 acre lot of land and consider that by 2012 this technology which would be what 5 years old by then would have almost accomplished the same thing that took oil about 100 years to do...... just think what another 5 years will do?

[PhishPhood]

Originally Posted by logansowner

It was a minute last time.

That was two different answers to two different questions.What is sure is that 6 Million or even 1 Billion gallons saved is a tiny drop in the bucket.* Here is another 'order of magnitude' comparo.We use 195 Billion gallons of gasoline and diesel to fuel our vehicles every year.1 Billion gallons saved is about 0.5% saved... about 1/2 of a 1%.If we say that the auto industry has a current fleet average of 25 mpg and it were to increase that average to to just 26 mpg......that would save 8 BILLION gallons of fuel

[PhishPhood]

Originally Posted by SCCA1995

You fail to see one fundamental piece of information. Change has to start somewhere. Remember the first ICEs? Single cylinder, maybe 5hp at best? Over 100 years has gone into making the ICE more powerful, more fuel efficient, & more liveable. Give all of these eco-friendly technologies 100 years & see where we are. Oh wait...we won't be able to see.

I am all for it. It's just that at it's present scale as stated in the release of 6000 gal / acre / yr.... the savings are very very very tiny. Inconsequential.

If that is the actual rate of production then to save 1 Billion gallons, a very small drop in the bucket, it would take 167,000 acres of man-made lagoon to grow the algae. That's a lagoon 10 miles wide and 25 miles long. 250 sq mi.

That rate of production has to increase dramatically for this to be somewhat feasible.

Another way of looking at it is that our oil usage is so stupendously high that it almost dwarfs all individual solutions. Again saving 1 BILLION gallons is nothing in the overall picture. We need to save 40-50 Billion gallons annually.

[PhishPhood]

Originally Posted by Hunid Racks

PhissPhoo don't care.

If Toyota was heavy into E85 and GM was heavy on hybrids he'd be all for the ethanol.

Funny, watch the news soon... the two companies are going to reverse positions. GM is coming out with a slew of new hybrids and Toyota is coming out with new FFV's.

My personal preference is for Biodiesel made from algae for all heavy vehicles simply because it's denser in BTU's than Bioethanol from algae.

[Kennyboy]

The oil companies are shaking in their boots. The most likely scenerio is that the oil companies buy them out and throw out the patents, just like Chevron did with the EV-1.

[CaptainDan]

Originally Posted by GMINmoderator

I've got a stack of 20 year old Popular Mechanics that all say, "the future will arrive next year." Too bad it never does. Fact is, and this hurts, ethanol is a bust. This will be a bust too. It might come on line sure, but it will NEVER return us to the days of $1.50 a gallon and that my friends puts it in the "bust" catagory. Too many greenies, too many liberals, and too many politicians stand in the way. Open your eyes. Come out with a cheap, clean alternative to oil now and you collapse major economies from Russia to China. Russia for example is investing heavily in drilling. I suppose all those anti "drill-here-drill-now-people" think there a bunch of idiots. Yeah, idiots who are going to have trillions of dollars. To be a superpower you need to control 4 critical things, one of which is energy. The U.S. no longer does that and its how if someone wants to there going to destroy us. Good job libs, you have put us all at risk because some stupid polar bear, who would KILL YOU if he could, doesn't have enough ice to stand on. You put all your faith in junk global warming science. Congrats.

This goes beyond your gas tank, the powers that be don't care about you or your gas tank. They want whats in your back pocket. If you have noticed going green costs more, its the new way of getting more of your money by giving you less product and making you feel warm and fuzzy at the same time. Its called, "the reach around."

Guess what. Gasoline will never return us to the days of $1.50 a gallon, so (by your definition) gasoline is a "bust". And, of course, none of this will happen overnight, and oil has MANY non-fuel uses too, so it's not going to collapse Russia's and China's economy. And even if it did, I think I prefer OUR economic health over theirs (sorry, how selfish of me).

And China is a big, and growing, oil CONSUMER, they would LOVE this.
Although it might be detrimental to the economies of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and such (Oh no!)

The fact is, ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen, whatever, doesn't NEED to fully replace gasoline, or bring the gas price down to some arbitrary price number. Every drop of alternative fuel made is just that much less oil that is needed. That will continue to bring down the price of gasoline, and reduce reliance on it. That's just a win, any way you look at it.

[CaptainDan]

Originally Posted by Kennyboy

The oil companies are shaking in their boots. The most likely scenerio is that the oil companies buy them out and throw out the patents, just like Chevron did with the EV-1.

No, no. That was Elvis, on the grassy knoll, behind his space ship.

[Bigbee60]

Originally Posted by GMINmoderator

To be a superpower you need to control 4 critical things, one of which is energy. The U.S. no longer does that and its how if someone wants to there going to destroy us.

The military establishment has known that an oil shortage is a defense issue for some time now. Search "coal to jet fuel", "DARPA alternative fuel projects". etc. and you will find that a test plant has been in production to provide jet fuel from coal for quite awhile. It's the scale of the plant that needs to be upgraded to meet all our defense (i.e. protect the home turf) needs. DARPA has lots of black box projects on alternative energy. M1 Abrams tanks have hybrid drive systems in the works - imagine a Volt type powertrain allowing a tank to be in the field for a week without refueling.