From the “yes, but does it clog your carburetor?” department comes this claim, which might work in theory, but may or may not be practical on a large scale.
Researchers at KU Leuven’s Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis have successfully converted sawdust into building blocks for gasoline. Using a new chemical process, they were able to convert the cellulose in sawdust into hydrocarbon chains. These hydrocarbons can be used as an additive in gasoline, or as a component in plastics. The researchers reported their findings in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Cellulose is the main substance in plant matter and is present in all non-edible plant parts of wood, straw, grass, cotton and old paper. “At the molecular level, cellulose contains strong carbon chains. We sought to conserve these chains, but drop the oxygen bonded to them, which is undesirable in high-grade gasoline. Our researcher Beau Op de Beeck developed a new method to derive these hydrocarbon chains from cellulose,” explains Professor Bert Sels.
“This is a new type of bio-refining, and we currently have a patent pending for it. We have also built a chemical reactor in our lab: we feed sawdust collected from a sawmill into the reactor and add a catalyst – a substance that sets off and speeds the chemical reaction. With the right temperature and pressure, it takes about half a day to convert the cellulose in the wood shavings into saturated hydrocarbon chains, or alkanes,” says Dr. Bert Lagrain.
“Essentially, the method allows us to make a ‘petrochemical’ product using biomass – thus bridging the worlds of bio-economics and petro chemistry,” he adds.
The result is an intermediary product that requires one last simple step to become fully-distilled gasoline, explains Sels. “Our product offers an intermediate solution for as long as our automobiles run on liquid gasoline. It can be used as a green additive – a replacement for a portion of traditionally-refined gasoline.”
But the possible applications go beyond gasoline: “The green hydrocarbon can also be used in the production of ethylene, propylene and benzene – the building blocks for plastic, rubber, insulation foam, nylon, coatings and so forth.”
“From an economic standpoint, cellulose has much potential,” says Sels. “Cellulose is available everywhere; it is essentially plant waste, meaning it does not compete with food crops in the way that first generation energy crops – crops grown for bioethanol, for example – do. It also produces chains of 5 to 6 hydrocarbon atoms – ‘light nafta’ in the technical jargon. We are currently facing shortages in this because it is becoming quite difficult and more expensive to distil these specific hydrocarbon chains from crude oil or shale gas. In time, hydrocarbon derived from cellulose may provide an alternative,” says Sels.
“Our method could be especially useful in Europe, where we have little crude oil and cannot easily produce shale gas,” concluded Sels.
There simply are too many challenges for commercially viable biomass-to-fuels technologies using woody biomass. Most biomass costs $60-80/ton to produce/collect, and it cannot be transported more than 25-50 miles before it is uneconomical to use. Thus BTL plants are limited to about 2000 bbl/day, or 1/100th of a real refinery. And the cost of building these BTL plants is in the $200,000/bbl/day range or $400MM for a 2000 bbl/day plant. Thus financial costs are a real challenge to getting this technology deployed. The only really viable feedstock seems to be Municipal Solid Waste. Rentech was using Municipal Green Waste (lawn clippings, etc), but even that was not available enough to support a large scale plant, and the RTK Rialto project was not economically viable even with heavy government subsidies and loan guarantees. So it was never built. The same goes for essentially all Cellulosic Ethanol (CE) and other biofuels projects. Without government funding and RINs, they are not cost competitive with crude derived fuels. And with the drop in crude value recently, they will not compete on price in any way.
There is a lot of creative thought going into developing novel ways to make alternative fuels, but until the cost of crude increases substantially, they will not be commercialized.
Ah, looks like Rentech sold their tech to the Chinese:
http://www.rentechinc.com/reference-docs/Kaidi%20Closing%20Press%20Release%20FINAL.pdf#zoom=80
Basic problem remains the relative costs of cheap plentiful oil and natural gas vs synthetics costs. With WTI at $73.83 / bbl right now (per http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/ ) the synthetics are in the hole by about $50 / bbl. I’ve been watching this particular market since Reagan announced our Synthetic Fuels Program and was interested in it when my Dad told me about WWII German Synfuels. (In High School ran my car on various odd mixes of gasoline, alcohols, and ‘other stuff’ to gather data. Ran a Honda Trail 90 motorcycle on propane too…) Well, in about 40 years of watching, it has not changed one whit. ( Is the fundamental unit of whittling a whit? 😉
It’s not going to change either, until there is a significant REAL shortage of fossil fuel feedstocks. That’s a few hundred years…. There is a small posibility of some kind of nuclear process heat being used to make fuel cheaply, but that will be stymied by irrational fears (otherwise we could have synthetic gasoline for about $3 / gallon right now).
Don’t get me wrong: I am a strong advocate of synthetic fuels. Were I “God” of USA fuel policy, I’d be building out all sorts of production facilites. Why? Spanks OPEC and keeps them pumping excess… moves them off of the monopoly pricing optimum point. Forget ethanol from corn. Turn coal and garbage into gasoline and Diesel… at whatever price. No fleet change. No garbage gasoline. Spanks OPEC. IMHO, a nice package.
(Sidebar: My old carbureted 1979 Mercedes does not like 10% Ethanol gas. However, it runs very well on the ethanol-free gasoline sold here in Florida for boats. Costs me about 50 ¢ / gallon more than Premium, but worth it. I also get a bit more MPG, so at the end of the day, it’s about a 5% to 10% uplift for the gas price / mile. Yes, I’m still playing with “funny fuels”… and my own octane booster.)
As Dr. Bob points out, economics for wood to fuel aren’t favorable in most cases. In fact, KIOR that did something similar to the research above, only on a larger demonstration plant scale, just declared bankruptcy. Their stock is now trading at $0.03 down from about $20 in 2011. It seems only the U.S. government and military want to use fuels costing $20-50/gallon. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?uhb=uh3_finance_vert&fr=&type=2button&s=kior
With regard to making straight chain hydrocarbons in the C6 range, these molecules have poor octane and not good for gasoline. It might be better to dimer and trimerize them for use in jet and diesel. But still not economical.
We will see a serious oil shortage within 20 years or so. Thus will be reflected in oil price increases to the $130 to $170 per barrel. This in turn will bring on more oil supply….but we are getting to the end of oil. It’s a given unless the world population and gdp start shrinking.
If so, this still has to be cheaper than coal to oil.
It depends. Nations without coal reserves may lean towards biofuels. Also, coal will also be getting more expensive. I think this type of research is bound to be useful in the future. We just consume too much fossil fuel of all types, the consumption rates are increasing, and the whole system just isn’t viable for the long term. This of course depends on population growth, and whether we take up socialism. The final outcome of socialism is poverty, which means lower consumption. Thus the politics has a lot to do with the way things go.
The $.50 more than premium is a recent scam I’ve noticed where I live too. 10% Ethanol gas cost slightly more than regular to produce. However, when you factor in the cost of EPA RINS, I can see why they might charge more.
Since the EPA sets it’s ethanol blending targets over 1 year late, the oil companies are probably factoring that uncertainty as well.
Type the following words into a search box and use the images tab:
wood shavings bedding horses
Competing with the horse, dog, and cat aficionados will be costly.
I haven’t seen a pile of “waste” sawdust since about 1958.
Other sources of cellulose are also problematic and have been debunked in comments above or elsewhere.
Though the authors talk about cellulose waste products being converted, large scale applications will probably evolve into another excuse for mass deforestation, just as bio-ethanol has. Just incorporate the technology into some U.N. Carbon Credit scam and the good green intentions will follow the pattern of every other renewable before it, of the cure being worse than the made up disease!
Yup
“Hot ashes for trees”
Costs aside, I don’t think there is enough sawdust to replace mineral oil production. Trees only grow at certain rate and even if we were turning them to sawdust and processing to gasoline as they grow, I can’t imagine there would be enough gasoline produced to cover all needs.
If we extend that to all biomass then maybe but we’ll need to be very careful not to cause ecological disaster. Cellulose is not really a byproduct – it is highly energetic compound and there’s plenty of bacteria and fughi ready to crack it into sugars and use it for their metabolism and to keep the whole food cycle running. If we remove too much cellulose from the cycle, it will start starving. So again there’s the question how much we can afford to take and how big is the area we need to use for such purpose to produce enough gasoline for a country. If the area is bigger than that country, then we have a problem.
I think this will lead to the development of very fast growing bushes and trees.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/hybrid-poplars-zmaz80jazraw.aspx#axzz3K8ebr6QJ
I live in Northern Michigan, where it’s not too uncommon for a home to have a wood-pellet burner. The pellets are fairly cheap to make anyplace where there’s a large amount of waste wood, (sawmills, paper plants, which are common up here). A pellet stove is efficient, safe, and easy to use, and the emissions are about as clean as natural gas. I don’t know why anyone would waste their time trying to figure out alternative uses for waste wood when the technologies already exist to heat homes in a cost effective and energy efficient manner, (oh I forgot about the subsidies, that explains it)
Get your stove while can, EPA aims to outlaw many.http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/ordinances.html
We can build them from scratch, all you need are some very basic arc welding skills, the baffles and ports to make them efficient aren’t that complicated
R. Shearer,
Thanks for the link but it clearly says that certified pellet stoves are OK.
It’s called cullulosic biomass and the first commercial operations are opening
http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/11068/abengoa-celebrates-grand-opening-of-cellulosic-ethanol-plant
The point is not so much to use sawdust as stuff like cornstalks.
This article from 2006 by Car and Driver columnist Patrick Bedard offers some background and perspective:
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/ethanol-promises
It’s not clear to me whether this new cellulose technology will actually replace or reduce the current diversion of corn into fuel.
It better. If nothing else there is more cornstalks than corn, and corn is useful for other stuff. With cellulosic ethanol or similar there is little point to biofuels other maybe than oils.
Heavily subsidized corn based biofuels are an enviromental crime. The industry we see in the USA is an excellent example of FAR (fire-aim-ready) syndrome, which we see so often in watermelon party members,who forget to get in touch with their inner peasant, and can’t figure out that cash registers need cash.
Well where do you get all of this sawdust from ?
I know a very greenie couple (very nice folks actually) who live on a farm, and run their diesel tractor on …….DONUT WASTE FAT…….which they get from their local donut shop.
Man, can’t you see all the 5AM fights with people camping outside their obesity emporium, waiting to get their donut fat waste.
I have a picture of a round the world diesel race boat that supposable ran on liposuction fat. Hey get all the donut fat , and then liposuct the victims as well.
Now green or not, running your diesel on donut fat is not practical for primary energy. People don’t always want to eat donuts, when you need to take a shower.
But the question I would ask, is how much water does it take to get a gallon of sawdust gasoline ??
We don’t have water in California any more.
PS The liposuckermobile got entangled with a Greenpeace harassment of a Japanese whaler, that was trying to save the whales, by collecting the whole set, and it got run over and sunk by the whaler. Luckily nobody went bye bye as a result.
It was a heck of a looking machine though. It was tied up in the Viaduct Harbor in Auckland NZ when I saw it.
There is nothing new or ground breaking about fuel from cellulose. None the less, this statement caught my eye:
I’d hazard a guess that they also don’t have enough cellulose based natural product to do much either … translating to, “our method is not much good in Europe.”
After reading through a number of WUWT posts over the years, one thing is for sure about so many claims of new processes, ideas, inventions, climate theories and etc that so frequently appear here on WUWT.
If any of those claims and propositions survive the collective wisdom and huge reservoir of knowledge as well as the cynical and frequently well justified sarcastic appraisal of the collective of WUWT denizens and commenters whenever some suspect, spurious or dubious claim is made and published here on WUWT, if that claim still survives the attentions of the denizens and commenters intact, then it very likely has a damn good chance of being a viable and worthy proposition or development in whatever field of human enterprise it is related to.
If it doesn’t pass the WUWT panel of commenter’s appraisalsalmost completely intact then it’s back to the drawing board for the promoters of that proposition or claim.
In most cases of failure to pass the WUWT commenter’s judgement, that judgement is usually such that the funding should be mandatorily returned as a penalty for the promoters delivering such seriously bad and corrupted science or just a tired old repeat based on their profound ignorance of the subject of some process or idea that has been around for decades.
An example of which we see in this claim above.
And a point for which numerous previous examples of the well developed industrial processing of cellulose to achieve a similar outcome has been provided by the commenters here.
I cant see a lot of new ideas in this process as described either. Possibly this is an improvement but you can make bio fuel (ethanol) from just about anything with cellulose.
However if it actually works – ie is economic, be sure the establishment will jump on it. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/20/corn-biofuels-gasoline-global-warming
Get the feeling that the real aim of AGW is to break the economy?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
This reminds me to a south polar sea ice faring master called Chris(mas) Tur(k)ney (do you remember?) who has developed a method to capture CO2 by using a monster micro wave stove to turn sawdust into charcoal (…do you remember?).This can be buried forever in the ground or used by coming generations…
But here is my idea too: Just collect all the waste paper, old books, bureaucratic outpourings, etc, and bury it deep into the ground. Generations later this be can used as coal…
If anyone likes to use this idea – just use it – i have no patents….
(Hmm… just thinking if I should mark this with a sarc. tag… better not… possibly it could be recycled to something more valuable….)
Oh, what a dilemma! You have to cut down TREES to get the sawdust!! How, oh how, will the greenies react?
Here in UK we use wood pellets (from USA) to fuel our (previously coal fired) largest power station…The Greens don’t seem to mind …its the futile gesture at a non problem that matters afterall….
Commercial scale cellulosic biomass plants are starting to come online, after being delayed by the recession.
Additionally, corn ethanol plants continue to improve efficiency and yields as we learn how to maximize all of the feedstock and waste. Energy yields have increased to the 2.2 units of energy produced for each 1 unit of energy expended in production range as plants have incorporated up to 50% of the waste products into the production process.
A recent study showed that, as these plants further refine the process – and use the remaining 50% of the waste stream in the process, we will see net energy balance increase to as high as 20 units of energy produced for each 1 unit expended in production.
Since we have proven using corn for fuel does NOT affect the food supply, and that corn used for fuel does not affect food prices, and that ethanol encourages lower gasoline prices, maybe one day the mindless opposition will subside … and we can focus on this clean, renewable fuel.
A Scott:
Why is it that I don’t believe you, I wonder.
Mpainter,
Because the claims are total BS, but they are useful to fool the incompetent folks that work in the DOE
A Scott says:
Since we have proven using corn for fuel does NOT affect the food supply, and that corn used for fuel does not affect food prices…
I’m hoping that A Scott was being sarcastic.
If not, may I remind him of the food riots in Egypt, Mexico, the Middle East, and other places, when the corn supply was diverted into making ethanol? Prices of corn-based foods skyrocketed, and the people rioted.
I question Scott’s assertion that there are 2.2 units of energy produced for each unit required for production, and his 20 – 1 number seems preposterous. Citations, please. Saying “a recent study showed” is not enough. Let’s see it.
db, please do not believe everything you read or see on TV. The food riots, especially in Egypt, were over wheat, not corn. Wheat supplies very little to making ethanol. Not-PC commenting may help set your mind.
The situation on this front was and is dire. About half of Egypt’s 85 million people are dependent of handouts of subsidized wheat. With its past domestic production, the country has only been able to sustain about half its needs. This has long made Egypt the world’s largest wheat importer.
That is why the terrific drought that struck that entire region in 2010 had global ramifications. It was especially disastrous for Egypt. The drought caused Russia and other exporters to end wheat exports.
Egypt tends to mix its domestic variety in with foreign wheat to extend supplies. The higher the contribution of the local wheat, the more bread — but of a lesser quality.
On Thursday, July 11th, the Rome based UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that Egypt’s dwindling cash reserves and its expanding population, combined with the ongoing civil unrest, raised “serious food security concerns.”
The FAO said even if Egypt has a bumper harvest this year, its demand for foreign wheat next year would remain the same.
http://www.theglobalist.com/egypt-wheat-and-revolutions/
and from the USDA-
The lower production levels contributed to the sharp increase in global wheat prices in 2007 and early 2008. Macroeconomic factors, such as the declining dollar and a shift of funds from equities and real estate into commodities also contributed to rising global commodity prices.
As to ethonal energy – The use of alternative fuel sources like the methane gas, the practice of marketing wet distillers grain, and the reduction of grid electricity use all add up to significant new efficiencies in U.S. ethanol production. The Argonne report finds that total energy use in the ethanol production process – both fossil fuel and electricity – is down from 2001 by 7.2 percent in wet mill ethanol plants and down by 21.8 percent in dry mills.
In energy input terms, ethanol production in 2001 required on average 39,719 BTUs per gallon, but by 2007, the BTU requirements had dropped to 31,070 per gallon. Experts note that the energy required to produce ethanol will continue to decline as process design continues to advance and as existing producers implement cutting-edge energy saving technologies.
About the water use? – The 2001 study by USDA marked the amount of water used to produce each gallon of ethanol at 4.7 gallons. In the 2007 Argonne report, water use was down to 3.45 gallons per gallon of ethanol. This 26.6 percent reduction of water consumption is a significant achievement in just a few years’ time.
Ethanol’s water consumption is often pointed to in media discussions, but the 3.45 gallons of water used per gallon of ethanol is small when put into context with the production of other common items. A typical Sunday newspaper, for example, requires 150 gallons of water during its production. One pound of chicken takes 11 gallons of water. And the refining of one barrel of oil requires 1,851 gallons of water, or 44 gallons of water per gallon of oil.
Ethanol producer POET notes that within the last year, its network of 26 plants has achieved an average of 3 gallons of water used to produce a gallon of ethanol. POET’s Bingham Lake, Minnesota in particular has begun using a new technology to bring its water consumption even below the 3 gallon level.
General Manager Randy Dittmann says since February the plant has discharged zero wastewater thanks to a new process that reclaims and reuses water. The Bingham Lake plant initiated a capital project for the new system that reclaims wastewater throughout the plant, filters the water to clean it, then reroutes it back to a storage tank for reuse.
“We’re officially now a zero-discharge facility,” Dittmann said.
Previously, a small amount of water had passed through the process and was discharged into the wastewater system at the back end of the plant. Now the only water to leave the ethanol plant is in the form of steam or in the moisture content of the distillers grain.
The zero-liquid discharge technology has helped the ethanol plant achieve a 26 percent reduction in water usage, down to 2.7 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol.
A lot of the management teams are from old farmer families. They are always improving.
DD More,
No, no, you must not come to this skeptics blog and feed us industry propaganda. Food prices have gone up because of the demands for corn-based ethanol. Do you dispute that?
Corn prices have been dropping the past two years
http://ycharts.com/indicators/corn_price
mpainter
No, no, you must not come to this skeptics blog and feed us industry propaganda. Food prices have gone up because of the demands for corn-based ethanol. Do you dispute that?
If you are really serious – let’s review raw material prices with finished goods pricing.
Let’s take a box of cereal such as corn flakes, and a loaf of whole wheat bread. What is the value of the corn in corn flakes, and the wheat in a loaf of bread? If the box of cereal is 18 ounces, and the entire 18 ounces was corn, the value of corn in that 18-ounce box at the farm level went from seven cents ($3.50 a bushel) at 2010 prices to 13 cents ($6.50 a bushel) in 2011. (The corn in a 56-pound bushel will be enough for 50 18-ounce boxes of corn flakes). What about that loaf of bread? If it is 16 ounces, and the entire loaf is made of wheat, the value of that wheat went from 7½ cents ($4.50 a bushel) at 2010 prices to 14 cents ($8.50 a bushel) at 2011 prices. (The wheat in a 60-pound bushel will be enough to make 60 loaves of bread).
Yes, the price of the unprocessed farm ingredients in many grocery store products has doubled. But, as you can see, the raw farm ingredients are a very small portion of the price reflected at the retail level. At today’s prices, a $3 box of Corn Flakes would have 13 cents worth of corn, and a $3 loaf of bread would have 14 cents worth of wheat.
http://www.peoriamagazines.com/ibi/2011/mar/supply-and-demand-pricing
DD More
I note that you reply acknowledging that food prices have increased because of ethanol production.
I also note that you passed through raw costs incorrectly. The increase to the consumer is more than the raw costs to the manufacturer.
I also note that you presented no more industry propaganda. That was wise.
I once turned mountains of wood-waste into kilowatts with direct burning in four specially designed power plants in Northern California. Even got an environmental award from the National Heart & Lung Association. Once I’d sucked up every scrap of wood-waste within a 300 mile radius, I became so desperate for fuel I went into the forest thinning ‘bidness where California worker’s comp. rates for “woods work” just ate me alive. When the price of fuel reached $40 a bone-dry-ton, I knew I’d made a really horrible mistake. About that time, I discovered just how abrasive wood waste can be. Ate up my boiler tubes; ate up my conveyor belts; ate the belly-pan off a couple of D-8 Cats; made boiler clinkers the size of Volkswagen Beatles. Wood waste sucks!
Sawdust into gasoline.
OK . . . . free association time . . . .
Lead into gold.
Temperature Hockey Sticks into Kool-Aid.
John
Let it make it in the market place without subsidies and putting artificial impediments on oil and gas.
Mother nature has been experimenting for 350 million years on efficient ways to break-down Cellulose.
She has not found a good way to do it in all these eons and in all those experiments and there are only a few methods/organisms which can do it over long, long time-frames (and only a slightly more efficient manner than those of 350 million years ago).
The first time I was subjected to a direct proposition to invest in a cellulose to gas/ethanol process (using the latest patented new revolutionary enzymes) was 23 years ago. To this day, the company still can’t make it work although they have extracted hundreds of $millions from governments/investors since then.
How many manufacturing plants have been built that promised to do exactly this in the last 25 years? At least two dozen and none of them have produced anything of merit to date (and 95% have simply been shut-down).
This is a scam. Some people believe in the newest, greatest new process but they all fail in the end and dollars are wasted.
I started with the example of mama nature to explain how big of a problem this is. 350 million years of evolving micobes have not been able to crack the problem yet which means it is impossible. Cellulose degrades over many years. It is not a rapid refinery-type process.
Hi Bill.
The end of coal formation era, the Carboniferous period appears to be linked with the evolution of a White Rot fungus enzyme that had the ability to break down lignin.
From The NSF site;
Study on Fungi Evolution Answers Questions About Ancient Coal Formation;
[ I’ll pass on the second part of this headline ]
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=124570
[ Selectively quoted;]
A new study–which includes the first large-scale comparison of fungi that cause rot decay–suggests that the evolution of a type of fungi known as white rot may have brought an end to a 60-million-year-long period of coal deposition known as the Carboniferous period. Coal deposits that accumulated during the Carboniferous, which ended about 300 million years ago, have historically fueled about 50 percent of U.S. electric power generation.
&
The end of a geologic era;
Coal is composed of the fossilized remains of plants–mostly lignin, which is a complex polymer that is an important component of the cell walls of plants and helps give wood its strength and rigidity. The study indicates that white rot fungi, which are the only types of microorganisms that can break down lignin, evolved at the end of the Carboniferous green period, and that the synchrony between the rise of white rot fungi and the close of the Carboniferous was no coincidence.
According to the study, once white rot, which breaks down lignin via enzymatic activity, became an ecological force, it destroyed huge accumulations of woody debris that would have otherwise escaped decay to ultimately be fossilized as coal.
So if not for the advent of white rot, large coal deposits may have continued to form long after the end of the Carboniferous period. This study supports a paper published in 1990 by Jennifer M. Robinson that pegged the evolution of white rot as a potential contributing factor to the end of the Carboniferous period.
&
Results of molecular clock analyses suggest that the oldest ancestor of the Agaricomcyetes was a white rot species that possessed multiple lignin-degrading enzymes and lived roughly 300 million years ago. Many surviving lineages of Agaricomycetes-including fungi species known as wood-decaying polypores and bracket fungi-produce lignin-degrading enzymes. “Our results suggest that the ability of fungi to break down lignin evolved only once,” said Hibbett.
ROM,
Except, the most prolific coal deposits are in Eocene strata of Wyoming. The “white rot” hypothesis does not hold up.
By that reasoning there’d be no peat bogs
Good stuff there ROM,
I was exactly thinking about the Carboniferous by noting the timeline of 350 million years ago. There was a change in the Carboniferous at a certain point, but it might also be the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. They were so high back then until the end of the period that forest fires had to be something to behold. A fire could burn right across a Continent at the time and most of the forests simply burnt completely to the ground every few years. A process that might lead directly to coal if those burnt remnants were then repeatedly buried by sea level changes caused by the melting and regrowth of the huge glaciers at the south pole where Gondwana was which also appears to have happened. Huge new Tree-fern Forests, massive forest fires, rapid sea level change burying the coal/burnt seams under sediments. Coal 300 million years later.
The burnt remains are actually a coal maceral called inertinite
Isn’t the conversion of biomass to petroleum by heat and pressure what Nature has been doing for hundreds of millions of years? What’s next? Shall we crush and heat sea shells to make limestone blocks?
“What’s next?
With enough heat and pressure we could sequester carbon as diamonds. It’s as good a scheme as any of the other ways to get rid of “carbon pollution.” In the future, if we’re running low on fuel, we can just have everyone turn in their jewelry and convert it back.
It’s easy to be green when you don’t give a hang about cost.
The chemistry of converting organic matter into low molecular weight hydrocarbons has been well understood and practiced on an industrial scale for a very long time. This is how the Germans powered the wehrmact. Of course, they lost the war in no small part because we were able to destroy so much of their fuel manufacturing capability. Meanwhile, South Africa (Sasol) continues to use the same basic technology today to convert coal to gas and liquids and other products. There is one industrial scale coal gasification in the U.S. It is in North Dakota, and has been operational since the 1980’s. It’s primary product is methane, but the process to convert the gasifier output to liquids instead of gas is straight forward. Using biomass instead of coal is entirely feasible. It’s not done now only because of the economics. It’s not the pie in the sky technology that people keep thinking is going to make the carbon stay in the ground, but it’s always going to be there if we really need it.
Using biomass instead of coal is entirely feasible. It’s not done now only because of the economics.
===============
makes sense. coal is almost pure carbon. cellulose needs to be processed to extract the carbon. so, given the low cost of coal versus wood, it should be cheaper to add hydrogen to coal than to sawdust.
sawdust is only a waste product in small quantities. In large quantities it has value as a feedstock. eg: particle board, heat generation. So gasoline from sawdust would need to compete on price with the alternative uses.
A ton of thermal coal is about $50 and has about the same energy as 2 barrels of oil. It should be possible to combine 7 parts coal and 9 parts natural gas to create gasoline. Natural gas is also cheap, so with the right catalyst this would make more sense than sawdust conversion, so long as oil prices stay high..
9CH4 + 7C yields 2C8H18
similarly convert coal and natural gas to diesel:
6CH4 + 6C yields C12H24
Ahhh….. Old news!
I worked on a similar project in the 1970’s. The client had mountains of sawdust to get rid of.
Turned out that in attempting to convert the biomass there was a huge energy deficit. Cost a fortune to run the process.
Then there was all the toxic waste to get rid of.
The original project was abandoned, but the client ended up converting his steam boilers to burn sawdust. Thus increasing his carbon footprint, and causing Global Warming. And the end of the earth. And all that other stuff.
The idea of wood resources (which we now use for houses and furniture) being used for plastic and gas? It must be something the Boomers were smoking…obviously an exceedingly dangerous substance, with side effects that worsen catastrophically with age.
Well that stuff the boomers were smoking cures cancer (look it up). So it isn’t all bad.
As others have indicated, manufacturing liquid fuels from wood or other cellulosic feedstocks is not a new concept in the Lab. The hurdle time and time again is developing a commercial scale plant that economically produces much more than a few gallons of fuel.
One of the many fundamental problems is that wood, like coal, contains a lot of nasties like sulfur and other tramp elements that are very corrosive and expensive to separate and dispose. The residuals are not useful..
I don’t think the “inventors” have a clue as to the quality control and specifications associated with gasoline that has sufficient octane, burns clean, starts in zero weather, and emits minimal pollution. They claim minimal processing is required for the product.
I consulted on one $10 million demonstration plant that only produced jars of liquid that looked ugly, more like molasses. Another even more expensive plant was supposed to produce ethanol, but only made methanol because the catalyst was too expensive.
I chuckle at a batch process that needs to cook for 1/2 day, realizing that another hurdle is to turn the process into a continuous process that produces at least 10,000 barrel of fuel /day to be economic
What about bananas?