In Saturday’s Honolulu Advertiser, there was an article about a $25 million Department of Energy grant to UOP, LLC. That’s a Honeywell company that will test biomass feedstock at Tesoro’s refinery in Kapolei.

In Denver this past October, prior to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference, I asked my friend Gail Tverberg if she would introduce me to Robert Rapier. He is a well-respected chemical engineer and a frequent contributor to The Oil Drum blog. I wanted to ask him about next-generation biofuel projects.

Gail forwarded my email to Robert, and he wrote back that he was sitting in an office in Waimea, and that he had moved to Hawai‘i to work on just these kinds of projects.  It’s very fortunate for us, as he can explain these complex processes in a very clear way.

From his September 2009 post at The Oil Drum. There is a reference to UOP.

There are a number of companies involved in pyrolysis research. Dynamotive Energy Systems has been working on this for a while (I first wrote about them in 2007). UOP – a company that specializes in product upgrading for refineries – has teamed with Ensyn to form a joint venture called Envergent Technologies. The company intends to make pyrolysis oils from biomass for power generation, heat, and transport fuel (this is where UOP’s skills will come into play).

When I asked him about this specific project, Robert responded that: “…Pyrolysis is not too difficult unless you are trying to upgrade to transportation fuels. Then it gets expensive. But for stationary power generation, it is a pretty promising option in my view.”

And in this post he talks about pretenders, those technologies that are not working:

To summarize, the biofuel pretenders fall into several broad categories. The big ones are:

• Hydrogen
• Most would-be cellulosic ethanol producers
• Most would-be algal biofuel producers
• Most first generation biodiesel producers

This isn’t to say that none of these will work in any circumstances. I will get into that when I talk about niches. But I will say that I am confident that none of these are scalable solutions to our fossil fuel dependence. Frankly, I wish the algae story was true. I love the idea of getting renewable fuel from brackish waterways. But I try not to let a hope get confused with what I believe is realistic.

I agree with Robert that first generation biofuels, farmer grown, will not scale without major subsidies. If we were to give 20 cents/pound subsidies to grow biofuels, I would rather give the farmers a 20-cents/pound subsidy to grow food!

“Base power” is proven technology that is dependable 24/7 and makes up 85 to 90 percent of a utility’s power. There are only few options for base power. The first option is fossil fuels. The second is biofuels. And the third is geothermal.

Other options, like wind and solar, are nice to talk about. But they are only a tiny part of the mix. Biofuel, grown by farmers, doesn’t break even until approximately $320 per barrel; oil is in the high $70s today and we all know it will keep on climbing.

Geothermal breaks even at less than $60 per barrel oil. And it will stay that way for centuries!

On the Big Island, unless someone can show that the electricity cost to regular folks will be cheaper with biofuels than with geothermal, then we should go with geothermal.