Over at Futurepundit, Randall Parker references a pair of studies that cast many doubts on the efficacy of biofuels and comes to this conclusion:
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics
The future development of more energy efficient means for converting biomass materials into liquid hydrocarbons combined with advances in agricultural technologies might eventually make crops net energy producers. But increased demand for crop land, water, and pesticides for energy producing crops will bring environmental costs. We'd be better off advancing technologies for nuclear, solar photovoltaics, and batteries so that we can reduce our use of liquid fuels for transportation.To learn more about nuclear energy and hydrogen, click here.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics
Comments
1. Joe Six-Pack doesn't know how to connect a high-pressure gas line. Gas stations as we know them wouldn't exist.
2. Hydrogen takes up a lot of volume. Roof-mounted cryo tanks (explosions, anyone?) or zero trunk space are the two realistic alternatives and nobody wants either.
3. Fuel cells are extremely expensive and don't necessarily work under the conditions Joe Six-Pack would use them in. Great for NASA, not great for the guy who goes 15,000 miles without an oil change and then puts ATF in his engine.
4. The global fuel infrastructure would have to be overhauled to allow transportation of high-pressure gas.
5. It has a bad public image, which can be worked on, but is still demonized.
6. Burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is extremely difficult. It burns very rapidly at very high temperatures, causing cooling problems, crankshaft vibrations, knocking, oil burning, piston ring problems, head gasket failure, and fuel injection/carburetor problems just to name a few off the top of my head.
7. Producing hydrogen would take an enormous amount of energy and water. The energy could be put to use distilling the water for drinking--something that will soon be necessary--and charging Li-Poly batteries which (I believe) are space efficient enough to work in a car. We could also get energy to run electric cars from nuclear batteries containing high-level waste from power plants--a technique that has been used in spacecraft for 40 years and is certainly energy-dense and space-efficient enough to work in a car.
8. Hydrogen is extremely expensive for the reasons stated above.
9. There will be no demand for hydrogen cars without hydrogen pumps and there will be no hydrogen pumps without hydrogen cars. Thus, no mass conversion.
Unfortunately, ethanol can be burned very easily in conventional engines, transported in our current infrastructure, pumped by anyone, stored easily, and obtained easily (at least until demand skyrockets and we have to dump fertilizers on huge areas, dam rivers for irrigation, and forego feeding the poor so we can make it). If gasoline becomes uneconomical, ethanol is probably what's going to be used.
Of course it's not environmentally friendly. Just because it's available to anyone (libertarians like that), something new, and "renewable" doesn't mean it (a) works or (b) is good for the environment. The Hoover Dam is "renewable."
Ethanol is not going to be it either. There is not enough biological productivity to capture the necessary carbon to replace petroleum with ethanol (or any kind of alcohol, for that matter).
Hydrogen fuel cells are definitely a boondoggle for the near future, but note: hydrogen fuel cells. Zinc-air fuel cells work great and yield zinc hydroxide as their effluent. Zinc hydroxide can be regenerated to metal with electricity, which can be generated by most anything (including nuclear power).
1. LPG is Liquified Petroleum Gas, a byproduct of oil production and refining; as petroleum production goes down, so does LPG.
2. CNG is natural gas, and conventional gas production in North America has already peaked. There is no surplus to feed additional vehicular needs.
We can create temporary surpluses by making other uses more efficient, but that only works for so long. We need to switch to energy supplies that are not going to run out. That list is pretty much nuclear and renewables.
I don't like ethanol. I'm just saying that's what's going to happen (if anything). We should be using nuclear power and electric cars. However, what's actually going to be used are coal and alcohol.
Can you put any numbers on your comment that "alcohol is cheap right now?" In other words, what is the cost per BTU?
If you have the numbers, please share them with us.
Gasogenes are a possible alternative for some people, but trying to integrate a wood-gas or charcoal-gas system into a vehicle with a modern electronic control system is going to be a big hassle.
The best way off the rising-oil-price treadmill is the gas-optional hybrid. Electricity is much cheaper than gasoline even at current prices, and it's already widely available (unlike hydrogen). Replacing the first 20 miles-worth of gasoline each day with electricity would slash petroleum consumption, to zero for many people. All you need is the electricity, and none of our prospects for additional electricity are fueled by petroleum.
$1.23/gallon with about 27% reduction in efficiency.
A performance-equal amount of 85% ethanol in a conventional engine is about $1.69/gallon.
Obviously this is going to go up with the price of gasoline, so this number isn't perfect; however, there would have to be a severe shortage (gasoline at $15/gallon) for it to go up to $2.30.
I don't have per-BTU numbers; these are my best estimates.
What is "available biomass?"
-Total
-Surplus grain
-The difference between output and capacity
-The difference between output and the maximum amount of grain that can be squeezed out of what arable land we have, or more if artificial irrigation is used
-Something else?
Needless to say, this would have enormous environmental impact. However, it would have enough immediate near-term cost savings for there to be a conversion to ethanol since the impact of the lack of supply doesn't show up until its market share expands.
Matthew: A cubic foot of hydrogen has about a third of the energy of a cubic foot of natural gas. Hydrogen requires extremely high storage pressures to get the bulk to a manageable size, and the energy required for compression is significant (as is the expense of such tankage).
I know this is off-topic but I must take exception to statements like that. This is the sort of thinking that we all agree is making the job of selling nuclear energy to the public difficult. The fact is that any passenger that would spend, say fourteen days (the length of an average cruse), at altitude in a commercial jet would be exposed to several times the radiation than they would sailing on a nuclear powered ship.
In this place (at least) we should keep the hyperbole to a minimum.
In a world which is already buying 80 megawatt engines to push cargo ships, a 50-megawatt nuclear engine which needs no oil and has no emissions would appear to be a natural.
Thanks for the information. It looks like the balance between supply and demand in the ethanol market currently favors the buyer.
Here is a quote from the Ohio Corn Growers Association (with a note that the information is current as of April 12, 2005):
- Wholesale ethanol prices dropped nearly 30 percent between January and April 2005, according to the Oil Price Information Service.
- Economists attribute the price drop to an oversupply of ethanol, caused by relatively flat domestic consumption and increased ethanol production.
- Ethanol prices have tumbled from a 2005 high of nearly $1.75 per gallon (rack) in January to $1.23 in early April. Ethanol splash/rack prices were as low as $1.14-$1.19 per gallon in high-volume markets like Des Moines, Iowa City, Sioux City and Omaha last week (week of April 4-8).[OPIS]
On the same site, I learned that the current production capacity of ethanol in the US is about 240,000 barrels per day and it is scheduled to increase to a little under 300,000 barrels per day based on project that are already in progress.
In a nation that consumes something like 20 Million barrels of oil per day, it would not take much of a shift from oil to ethanol to change the supply-demand balance back in favor of suppliers.
I am well aware that the passengers would receive greater radiation exposure on their flight to the ship, and from sunbathing on the pooldeck during the cruise, but that won't stop the first generation of nuclear cruise ship passengers being alarmed if they have to wear dosimeters. Compare it to the introduction of car seat belts. Some still don't wear them despite their proven ability to save lives during a crash.
I have no clue how much agricultural waste is produced in the world every year or how much is available for use.
Matthew66:
Not even nuclear submarine crews are required to wear dosimeters. Only reactor maintenance staff do AFAIK.
Maybe worldwide - they always were sloppy about specifics.
The major hurdles I would perceive would be regulatory and econonomic. I don't know what sort of regulations would be developed for such ships - if it required US registry, that would be a deal killer because of the Jones Act which requires US registered ships to be built in the US and crewed by US citizens/permanent residents. Major cruise lines typically register their ships anywhere but the US. The major cruise ship builders are in Finland, Italy, France, Germany and South Korea. All of these countries have experience building civil reactors, and France has built marine reactors for its naval fleet. The major cruise lines have no experience in operating marine reactors, however, if nuclear propulsion were an economically attractive proposition, they would acquire the technical skills necessary, probably by hiring former naval engineers. Cruise lines typically use international crews.