Yes, Murphy, there are plans for coal-fired ethanol plants

[Anonymous]

http://www.grandforks.com/mld/agweek/15003207.htm

Now the whole "let's use ethanol so we can displace foreign sources of oil" argument might actually have merit in this case.  Using good ol' USA coal to heat the plant, distill the mash, and generate the electricity needs of the plant - all to make a product that replaces gasoline made from petroleum.

Finally the ethanol folks are making some sense.  Of course, it still is using more energy to produce the ethanol than the energy derived from the product, but at least it's our wasted energy.

[DSchmitt]

But what will it do for air pollution.  Coal is a dirty fuel  Oil plants are much cleaner, but of course would not do much to reduce oil  consumption.  In the overall picture, using  gasoline in autos is much cleaner than using ethanol produced by burning coal.

[Murphy Siding]

     Well alright!  At least we know someone from N.D. reads these forums enough to spot my idea!  Now, all they need to do is put up some windmills for extra electricity.  Both Dakotas have a lot of buzz going on about wind energy right now.  The main hurdle is always transmission lines, and a power company to work with.  Maybe that wouldn't be an issue, if the lines only had to run next door to the ethanol plant.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Ethanol won't be a viable substitute for gasoline until we come up with a different feedstock than corn.  Brazil is doing quite nicely using sugarcane and sawgrass is being suggested as the ideal raw material in this country.  The use of corn as an ethanol feedstock could drive up the price of corn since it would add to existing demands for corn in food processing.

[nanaimo73]

      Both Dakotas have a lot of buzz going on about wind energy right now.  

Murph,

Does that include bovine methane ?

[Murphy Siding]

.  The use of corn as an ethanol feedstock could drive up the price of corn since it would add to existing demands for corn in food processing.

     Actually, that's the exact reason that every farm state, mine included, is pushing BIG for ethanol.

[Hugh Jampton]

I read on the internet somewhere a couple of days ago, but I forget exactly where, that even if all of the corn grown in the US was converted to ethanol it would only replace 13% of the gasoline used.

[Murphy Siding]

      Both Dakotas have a lot of buzz going on about wind energy right now.  

Murph,

Does that include bovine methane ?

     You're thinking of  Iowa.  That's downwind.

[MichaelSol]

Ethanol is pure politics.

From Lab Notes: Research from the Berkeley College of Engineering
Volume 5, Issue 3, March 2005:

In 2004, approximately 3.57 billion gallons of ethanol were used as a gas additive in the United States, according to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA). During the February State of the Union address, President George Bush urged Congress to pass an energy bill that would pump up the amount to 5 billion gallons by 2012. UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad W. Patzek thinks that's a very bad idea.

For two years, Patzek has analyzed the environmental ramifications of ethanol, a renewable fuel that many believe could significantly reduce our dependence on petroleum-based fossil fuels. According to Patzek though, ethanol may do more harm than good.

"In terms of renewable fuels, ethanol is the worst solution," Patzek says. "It has the highest energy cost with the least benefit."

Ethanol is produced by fermenting renewable crops like corn or sugarcane. It may sound green, Patzek says, but that's because many scientists are not looking at the whole picture. According to his research, more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy contained within it.

Patzek's ethanol critique began during a freshman seminar he taught in which he and his students calculated the energy balance of the biofuel. Taking into account the energy required to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol, they determined that burning the biofuel as a gasoline additive actually results in a net energy loss of 65 percent. Later, Patzek says he realized the loss is much more than that even.

"Limiting yourself to the energy balance, and within that balance, just the fossil fuel used, is just scraping the surface of the problem," he says. "Corn is not 'free energy.'"

Recently, Patzek published a fifty-page study on the subject in the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Science. This time, he factored in the myriad energy inputs required by industrial agriculture, from the amount of fuel used to produce fertilizers and corn seeds to the transportation and wastewater disposal costs. All told, he believes that the cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is six times greater than what the end product provides your car engine in terms of power.

Patzek is also concerned about the sustainability of industrial farming in developing nations where surgarcane and trees are grown as feedstock for ethanol and other biofuels. Using United Nations data, he examined the production cycles of plantations hundreds of billions of tons of raw material.

"One farm for the local village probably makes sense," he says. "But if you have a 100,000 acre plantation exporting biomass on contract to Europe , that's a completely different story. From one square meter of land, you can get roughly one watt of energy. The price you pay is that in Brazil alone you annually damage a jungle the size of Greece ."

[DrummingTrainfan]

Ethanol is pure politics.

From Lab Notes: Research from the Berkeley College of Engineering
Volume 5, Issue 3, March 2005:

In 2004, approximately 3.57 billion gallons of ethanol were used as a gas additive in the United States, according to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA). During the February State of the Union address, President George Bush urged Congress to pass an energy bill that would pump up the amount to 5 billion gallons by 2012. UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad W. Patzek thinks that's a very bad idea.

For two years, Patzek has analyzed the environmental ramifications of ethanol, a renewable fuel that many believe could significantly reduce our dependence on petroleum-based fossil fuels. According to Patzek though, ethanol may do more harm than good.

"In terms of renewable fuels, ethanol is the worst solution," Patzek says. "It has the highest energy cost with the least benefit."

Ethanol is produced by fermenting renewable crops like corn or sugarcane. It may sound green, Patzek says, but that's because many scientists are not looking at the whole picture. According to his research, more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy contained within it.

Patzek's ethanol critique began during a freshman seminar he taught in which he and his students calculated the energy balance of the biofuel. Taking into account the energy required to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol, they determined that burning the biofuel as a gasoline additive actually results in a net energy loss of 65 percent. Later, Patzek says he realized the loss is much more than that even.

"Limiting yourself to the energy balance, and within that balance, just the fossil fuel used, is just scraping the surface of the problem," he says. "Corn is not 'free energy.'"

Recently, Patzek published a fifty-page study on the subject in the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Science. This time, he factored in the myriad energy inputs required by industrial agriculture, from the amount of fuel used to produce fertilizers and corn seeds to the transportation and wastewater disposal costs. All told, he believes that the cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is six times greater than what the end product provides your car engine in terms of power.

Patzek is also concerned about the sustainability of industrial farming in developing nations where surgarcane and trees are grown as feedstock for ethanol and other biofuels. Using United Nations data, he examined the production cycles of plantations hundreds of billions of tons of raw material.

"One farm for the local village probably makes sense," he says. "But if you have a 100,000 acre plantation exporting biomass on contract to Europe , that's a completely different story. From one square meter of land, you can get roughly one watt of energy. The price you pay is that in Brazil alone you annually damage a jungle the size of Greece ."

That's odd, because I've also seen articles saying that there's actually a net gain (if I can manage to find one I'll post it here). What I don't get is why are we trying to stop using one fossil fuel by using another? My personal opinion is that nuclear energy needs to be expanded more. I think it is by far the safest. Yes, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are certainly stains on the record, but how many coal-mine collapses have occured since the first Nuclear plant was built, now how many nuclear accidents have occured? Since I'm a "youngin" I can't remember too far back, but I can remember two coal mine incidents in the past year. And for the environmentalists out there, all that nuclear power plants let out is steam; and one little "pellett" of nuclear "matter" is equal in energy to one ton of coal. (I saw that little tidbit on some news program a couple years ago).

[StillGrande]

Of course, it still is using more energy to produce the ethanol than the energy derived from the product, but at least it's our wasted energy.

Recently there was a show on TLC or Discovery channel about refining oil into all its component parts.  They mentioned that it took more energy to distill the oil into gasoline than the energy derived from gasoline.  I heard this mentioned twice since then in other places.  It never seems to come up when people are discussing ethanol. 

[zugmann]

I'm pretty sure that ethanol plants using coal already exist.

About the corn supply argument: are they counting what can be grown or what is currently grown?  Farmers are only going to grow what they can sell - simple supply and demand.  But these professors can manipulate any info to say what they want it to say.  They live in a world of theory, not of practice and application.

Nuclear: Yes it should be used more, ONLY if we can finally build a decent nuke waste disposal site.  Also from what I've heard, they can re-use most nuclear waste depending what kind of reactors are built.

As far as ethanol - it is no silver bullet.  There is no silver bullet.  We will have to use a variety of sources, including straight electric for local trips perhaps. Or we can try to curb demand.  Am I the only one getting ill from these new Hummer commercials?

 But I'd rather subsidize a farmer rather than a Saudi.

[DSchmitt]

http://www.kgoam810.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

from the article:

"Partly because of these concerns about radioactivity and the cost of containing it, the American public and electric utilities have preferred coal combustion as a power source. Today 52% of the capacity for generating electricity in the United States is fueled by coal, compared with 14.8% for nuclear energy. Although there are economic justifications for this preference, it is surprising for two reasons. First, coal combustion produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are suspected to cause climatic warming, and it is a source of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides, which are harmful to human health and may be largely responsible for acid rain. Second, although not as well known, releases from coal combustion contain naturally occurring radioactive materials--mainly, uranium and thorium."

[Chernobyl]

biofuels aren't going to cut it in the long run, at BEST they're stopgap measures.

more energy research is needed to make advanced energy production possible.  there are better nuclear power plant designs around (4th generation as opposed to the current 2nd generation ie pressurized water reactors that dominate the industry)  And while it may sound like science fiction, I thik the only way were going to get around the current energy crisis will be to develop a viable fusion technology.  any other combustable fuels will run out, at some point.  And lets not forget we have to do this before the polar ice caps melt, the north altantic current stops, and the world gets kicked into a new ice age.  It won't happen overnight in the movies, but its a frighteningly real possibility in the next 50-100 years.

Chern

 

[Leon Silverman]

Using corn for ethanol may cause its price to rise as a food for human consumption.  Has anyone studied the possibility of utilizing tobacco as a biofuel?   Our society is trying to discourage its' consumption by people anyway.  If you remember history, the tobacco industry fought toothe and nail against virtually all of the current smoking restrictions.   I have always wondered what would have happened if all this effort had been directed towards finding an alternate use for tobacco.

[DrummingTrainfan]

Using corn for ethanol may cause its price to rise as a food for human consumption.  Has anyone studied the possibility of utilizing tobacco as a biofuel?   Our society is trying to discourage its' consumption by people anyway.  If you remember history, the tobacco industry fought toothe and nail against virtually all of the current smoking restrictions.   I have always wondered what would have happened if all this effort had been directed towards finding an alternate use for tobacco.

The raise in prices is half the reason many states (such as mine, Nebraska) support it. I read an article in the local paper that while the cost of farm equipment, fertilizer, and seeds have risen; the price of corn is still at '70s prices. However, I do like the idea of tobacco => fuel.

[Anonymous]

http://www.kgoam810.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

from the article:

"Partly because of these concerns about radioactivity and the cost of containing it, the American public and electric utilities have preferred coal combustion as a power source. Today 52% of the capacity for generating electricity in the United States is fueled by coal, compared with 14.8% for nuclear energy. Although there are economic justifications for this preference, it is surprising for two reasons. First, coal combustion produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are suspected to cause climatic warming, and it is a source of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides, which are harmful to human health and may be largely responsible for acid rain. Second, although not as well known, releases from coal combustion contain naturally occurring radioactive materials--mainly, uranium and thorium."

Don't sweat the anthropogenic climate change claims, our nation has more important survival battles to address, energy independence being the most critical economic battle we face.  Anything that reduces the need to import energy from potentially unfriendly nations while at the same time addressing the need for energy is a good thing.  The more coal fired power plants, coal fired biofuels refineries, coal liquification plants, etc. we can get built and running, the better off we'll be.

[DSchmitt]

 

Don't sweat the anthropogenic climate change claims, our nation has more important survival battles to address, energy independence being the most critical economic battle we face.  Anything that reduces the need to import energy from potentially unfriendly nations while at the same time addressing the need for energy is a good thing.  The more coal fired power plants, coal fired biofuels refineries, coal liquification plants, etc. we can get built and running, the better off we'll be.

 

http://www.kgoam810.com/viewentry.asp?ID=347253&PT=PERSONALITIES

"Going Nuclear - A 'Green' Makes the Case

By Patrick Moore
The Washington Post
Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page B01

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that
nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my
compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first
voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing
of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my
views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to
update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy
source that can save our planet from another possible disaster:
catastrophic climate change."

 

Actually I believe  "catastrophic climate change" is a lot of hype and very little science, but nuclear energy is less poluting than other sources, and has proven safer too. Japan and France have been using nuclear energy for years  (using US developed technology for both plant design and "waste" storage/disposal).  The nuclear "waste" problem is hype.  Most of the "waste" is actually a valuable resource and there are safe ways to handle the very little that is left.  The really bad stuff is dangerous for less than 50 years not the 100's of thousands of years that has been claimed.

 I am not a "small is beautiful environmentalist" (most of the stuff espoused by them is nonsence, based on shallow "feel good" thinking, not science), but I do want people to have a better life in a cleaner world and to protect the environment. 

[Anonymous]

 

Don't sweat the anthropogenic climate change claims, our nation has more important survival battles to address, energy independence being the most critical economic battle we face.  Anything that reduces the need to import energy from potentially unfriendly nations while at the same time addressing the need for energy is a good thing.  The more coal fired power plants, coal fired biofuels refineries, coal liquification plants, etc. we can get built and running, the better off we'll be.

 

http://www.kgoam810.com/viewentry.asp?ID=347253&PT=PERSONALITIES

"Going Nuclear - A 'Green' Makes the Case

By Patrick Moore
The Washington Post
Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page B01

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that
nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my
compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first
voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing
of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my
views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to
update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy
source that can save our planet from another possible disaster:
catastrophic climate change."

 

Actually I believe  "catastrophic climate change" is a lot of hype and very little science, but nuclear energy is less poluting than other sources, and has proven safer too. Japan and France have been using nuclear energy for years  (using US developed technology for both plant design and "waste" storage/disposal).  The nuclear "waste" problem is hype.  Most of the "waste" is actually a valuable resource and there are safe ways to handle the very little that is left.  The really bad stuff is dangerous for less than 50 years not the 100's of thousands of years that has been claimed.

 I am not a "small is beautiful environmentalist" (most of the stuff espoused by them is nonsence, based on shallow "feel good" thinking, not science), but I do want people to have a better life in a cleaner world and to protect the environment. 

Hey, don't forget hydropower!  It is the cleanest source of generating large scale volumes of electricity known to man.  Nuclear is a distant second in terms of cleanliness.  But of course for new electric generation much of the hydropower potential has been used up already, which leaves nuclear as the clean choice.

But neither hydropower nor nuclear power can address the need for transportation fuels in the here and now, not to mention the next 50 or so years.  You can string catenary for railways, but not for highways, waterways, or airways.  For the continued use of hydrocarbon liquids as transportation fuels, we will need to utilize coal in great quantities if we want true energy independence.

For that reason, it would be wise for the nation's energy planners to begin to push nuclear for all new electric generation, and save coal for conversion into transportation fuels.  We need to analyze a policy in which we convert current coal fired power plants to nuclear plants, or convert them into coal liquification plants, or even convert them to biofuels plants.

There will always be significant petroleum sources from "friendly" areas for the Western World for centuries to come, but those sources will always be overshadowed by the unfriendly petroleum sources.  Better to rid ourselves of the need for such sources now, rather than having to deal with it later on their terms.

[DSchmitt]

[

Hey, don't forget hydropower!  It is the cleanest source of generating large scale volumes of electricity known to man.  Nuclear is a distant second in terms of cleanliness.  But of course for new electric generation much of the hydropower potential has been used up already, which leaves nuclear as the clean choice.

But neither hydropower nor nuclear power can address the need for transportation fuels in the here and now, not to mention the next 50 or so years.  You can string catenary for railways, but not for highways, waterways, or airways.  For the continued use of hydrocarbon liquids as transportation fuels, we will need to utilize coal in great quantities if we want true energy independence.

For that reason, it would be wise for the nation's energy planners to begin to push nuclear for all new electric generation, and save coal for conversion into transportation fuels.  We need to analyze a policy in which we convert current coal fired power plants to nuclear plants, or convert them into coal liquification plants, or even convert them to biofuels plants.

There will always be significant petroleum sources from "friendly" areas for the Western World for centuries to come, but those sources will always be overshadowed by the unfriendly petroleum sources.  Better to rid ourselves of the need for such sources now, rather than having to deal with it later on their terms.

I agree. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

You started the thread started with an article about burning coal as the energy source to convert crops to ethanal.  This is wasteful and polluting.  Nuclear produced electricity may be a better energy source.

I just had another thought (maybe crackpot).  Maybe ethanal plants could be built in conjunction with nuclear plants and use "waste" heat from them.

[Anonymous]

[

Hey, don't forget hydropower!  It is the cleanest source of generating large scale volumes of electricity known to man.  Nuclear is a distant second in terms of cleanliness.  But of course for new electric generation much of the hydropower potential has been used up already, which leaves nuclear as the clean choice.

But neither hydropower nor nuclear power can address the need for transportation fuels in the here and now, not to mention the next 50 or so years.  You can string catenary for railways, but not for highways, waterways, or airways.  For the continued use of hydrocarbon liquids as transportation fuels, we will need to utilize coal in great quantities if we want true energy independence.

For that reason, it would be wise for the nation's energy planners to begin to push nuclear for all new electric generation, and save coal for conversion into transportation fuels.  We need to analyze a policy in which we convert current coal fired power plants to nuclear plants, or convert them into coal liquification plants, or even convert them to biofuels plants.

There will always be significant petroleum sources from "friendly" areas for the Western World for centuries to come, but those sources will always be overshadowed by the unfriendly petroleum sources.  Better to rid ourselves of the need for such sources now, rather than having to deal with it later on their terms.

I agree. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

You started the thread started with an article about burning coal as the energy source to convert crops to ethanal.  This is wasteful and polluting.  Nuclear produced electricity may be a better energy source.

I just had another thought (maybe crackpot).  Maybe ethanal plants could be built in conjunction with nuclear plants and use "waste" heat from them.

Well, here's one reason why I think using coal in conjunction with biofuels may be preferable to using nuclear - both nuclear and coal can provide waste heat to aid processing, and of course electric needs of a biofuels plant.  But only coal can provide an energy content "boost" to biofuels via coal gasification.  One of the proposed biofuels from cellulose ideas (the MixAlco process) involves using natural gas to hydrogenate ketones into alcohols.  If indeed the concept proves out, then converting cellulose to a ketone, then hydrogenating it into an alcohol, will make more sense than trying to directly ferment or acidify cellulose into alcohol.  And right now, synthetic natural gas made from coal is actually cheaper (not to mention safer) than getting natural gas from LNG terminals.  Thus, gasifying coal into synthetic methane (if not just using the basic coal gas stream of hydrogen and CO), then using that syngas to enhance the energy value of biofuels is an advantage of coal that nuclear cannot do.

[Chernobyl]

actually thats not a bad idea.  the steam cycle used in most electrical generation today is only about 20-35% eficient, most of the energy is lost condensing steam back into water to get pumped back into the steam generator/boilers.  that waste heat goes int a river, ocean, or the atmosphere via a cooling tower.  having a secondary use for the waste heat would be great.