Tag Archives: Biofuels

Biofuel, Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources, Zero Waste

Biofuels and Feedstock

One of the main stumbling blocks to making biofuels is the cost of the feedstock. And feedstock frequently involves farmers farming.

For example, it is said that making an industrial-scale biofuel operation work requires feedstock that costs between $45 and $60/ton. Since farmers were making $100/ton for making hay, a $45/ton subsidy was put into place. This makes growing feedstock for cellulosic biofuels competitive with making hay—on the mainland.

But here in Hawai‘i, making hay costs $300 per ton, instead of the $100 per ton on the mainland. Farmers won’t do it for $100 per ton.

Who will pay the difference? If the biofuel is being used to make electricity, it will obviously be the rate payer.

Will oil prices rise so high that eventually the biofuel will be cost competitive? Farming inputs and logistic costs are fossil fuel related and rise as oil prices rise. This effect is called “the receding horizon.”

But when waste products are used as the feedstock, the economics change. A good example is Pacific Biodiesel, which uses waste cooking oil. If they asked farmers to grow extra virgin olive oil to make biofuel, obviously it wouldn’t work.

There is a limit as to what can be produced. That limit is the amount of used oil available.

The same is true of the oils potentially developed from the USDA’s Zero Waste project. Its biofuel production is limited to the waste that can be converted to making oil.

The advantage of using the waste stream is that the cost of the feedstock is very low. And in the case of the Zero Waste project, it supports food security for Hawai‘i.

Biofuel, Food Security, Zero Waste

Drop-In Biofuels; A Model That Could Work For Farmers

Mahalo to Senator Inouye for having the foresight to fund Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center (PBARC). This might be the game changer for food and energy security for Hawai‘i.

Sign

I wrote before that PBARC has been working on a “zero waste” program for the Hamakua Coast.

It’s an impactful and multifaceted program that ultimately ends up supporting both food security and energy security for Hawai‘i. Food security involves farmers farming, and if farmers make money, farmers will farm.

I support this program because utilizing waste products helps farmers make money.

Here I’m writing here about the biofuel (energy) component, which has support from the Department of Defense. One of the fundamentals of making biofuel involves acquiring appropriately priced feedstock. In this model, the feedstock comes from farm waste that is now thrown away. Or it comes from a process such as crop rotation, which enhances primary farming operations.

In the Hamakua Zero Waste Program’s demonstration model, the farm waste will be papaya. Papaya farmers sell 65 percent of what they deliver to the processer, and 35 percent is thrown away. The other product is sweet sorghum, which is used in rotation with a primary crop such as sweet potato.

A very significant part of this program is the use of oil-producing microbes. BioTork LLC specializes in breeding microorganisms that make oil.

Kate1Evolved algae, from BioTork LLC, having just arrived at PBARC in the mail. This is Kate Nishijima, a PBARC researcher.

Eudes de Crecy, the CEO of BioTork, states:

A variety of different microorganisms—such as heterotrophic, fungi and bacteria—are capable of converting sugars and other organic compounds into triglycerides oils suitable for conversion to advanced drop-in fuels like green diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. Since these oil-producing microorganisms are heterotrophic, they can be grown inside large fermentors or bioreactors in any climate 24/7 and do not require significant amounts of water for growth. Moreover, oil-producing heterotrophs can produce significantly more triglycerides than phototrophic microorganisms—up to 70% of the dry weight. To date, few enterprises use oil-producing microorganisms like to produce biofuel because the carbon sources necessary for robust growth are more expensive (e.g., glucose, fructose) than the resulting biofuel.

However, BioTork has used experimental evolution to produce proprietary oil-producing microorganisms that are capable of growing on low cost streams of organic material. Indeed, we have already adapted oil-producing microorganisms to grow on low value by-products and even noxious wastes that are derived from agricultural or industrial processes.

Kate2Transferring algae to growing media

Hawai‘i-grown papaya was sent to BioTork prior to Christmas 2010, and first generation, oil-producing strains that grow on papaya puree and sweet sorghum juice have already been developed and sent for testing in PBARC’s labs. In addition, preliminary results for the development of an oil-producing microbe that can grow on the less accessible carbon sources in sweet sorghum bagasse looks promising.

DennisDennis Gonsalves, PBARC Director, examining a vial of specialized, oil-producing algae

The demonstration project is designed to show whether this will or won’t work within 12 months in a cost effective manner in real world conditions. As a farmer, I believe that if this works cost effectively, it can work on a sustainable basis because it will help farmers make money. And as we all know, if the farmers make money, the farmers will farm.

Rivertop Solutions, LLC, whose CEO is David Rus and whose president and chief media officer is Amy Fernandez, is an important partner of the Hamakua Zero Waste project. Rivertop Solutions works alongside communities and organizations to assist with the planning, systems design, and implementation of economically and socially viable development programs based on maximizing the potential of indigenous resources. The company is moving its headquarters from Reston Virginia to Hilo in the summer of 2011.

Together with PBARC’s other programs that support and enhance farming operations, we can build a resilient food security system for Hawai‘i.

Biofuel

Pyrolysis Oil From Biofuels Has Known Carcinogens As Compounds

The biofuel process they are doing in Ka‘u results in pyrolysis oil. There are safety and other concerns associated with this oil.

It surprises me that HECO was willing to rush this process, after having ignored geothermal for years.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, published a technical report on pyrolysis oil:

Large-Scale Pyrolysis Oil Production: A Technology Assessment and Economic Analysis

M. Ringer, V. Putsche, and J. Scahill

Pyrolysis is one of a number of possible paths for converting biomass to higher value products. As such, this technology can play a role in a biorefinery model to expand the suite of product options available from biomass. The intent of this report is to provide the reader with a broad perspective of pyrolysis technology as it relates to converting biomass substrates to a liquid “bio­oil” product, and a detailed technical and economic assessment of a fast pyrolysis plant producing 16 tonne/day of bio-oil.  Read more

Here is some information from that report. (The bold and underlining is my emphasis.)

3. Properties of Bio-oil 

The properties of bio-oil can encompass a broad range of parameters because of the complex nature of this material. Even if one is able to perfectly reproduce all of the processing conditions necessary to produce bio-oil, the biomass feed, itself, can influence the nature of the final product. Not only are there differences between types of biomass species but also where a particular species is grown can affect things such as the composition of mineral matter present. Given this non-uniformity in the starting material and the high temperature reactive environment to which the prompt biomass vapor fragments are exposed during pyrolysis, it is not unusual to see variations in many of the physio-chemical properties of bio-oil. For some applications, the small variations will be of little consequence, but in situations where it is desirable to use bio-oil in devices that have been designed to operate on hydrocarbon fuels, some of these properties will make operation difficult or simply not feasible.

3.4 Environmental / Health 

Given the large number of compounds in bio-oil, it obviously raises concerns about the human health and environmental effects of this material. As reported earlier in this document, more than 300 specific compounds have been identified in biomass pyrolysis oil and some of those compounds are known carcinogens such as benzene and phenanthrene. In addition there are many compounds in bio-oil that have not been identified and their toxicity or health effects are not known by the research community developing biomass fast pyrolysis technologies.

Click to watch a video with background of the microfuel “biomass to fuel” technology.

Biofuel

The Story Behind Biofuels

The non-performance of cellulosic biofuels has cost us taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The EPA has drastically lowered its estimate of 2011 cellulosic biofuels production from 250 million gallons to just 6.5 million gallons. It’s an enormous difference.

Robert Rapier’s recent blog post is called The Media Served as a Vehicle to Promote Hype. It refers to biofuels.

The Media Served as a Vehicle to Promote Hype

…In fact, not only were the claims not challenged, the media played a big role in helping establish the Range Fuels hype. Khosla was given a platform in many outlets to promote his companies. There were high profile (and uncritical) pieces on Range Fuels in The New York Times and in Forbes. Discover Magazine published a story on Range called Anything Into Ethanol. Given their previous gushing story on Changing World Technologies called Anything Into Oil — followed by CWT’s bankruptcy, perhaps Discover should stop trying to tell readers about the next big renewable fuel breakthrough. They don’t appear to have reporters assigned to these stories who know how to differentiate hype from reality.

Why should the media have sensed earlier that something was amiss? If they had simply applied the “it seems too good to be true” rule, perhaps some challenging questions would have been asked. I believed something was amiss because their claims ran strongly counter to what I knew about gasification and subsequent conversion into liquid fuels. They ran strongly counter to what I knew about the cost and length of time to build a plant. So I started to raise questions — but I also asked “why the mainstream media has completely missed this story.” Read the rest

It’s worth a read.

 

Biofuel, Geothermal, Peak Oil

Stocking Up On Toilet Paper

What will happen when we hit Peak Oil? Probably the same thing that happens every time we hear about a dock strike: People will run out and buy three shopping carts of toilet paper.

I think that when we realize world oil supplies are starting to decline, never to recover, prices will become very volatile. Lloyds of London recently published a white paper that warns of $200 oil by 2013.

Inexpensive geothermal for electricity is something that makes sense.

Biofuels-to-electricity is not a good idea. One would have to pay a steep premium to get farmers to grow biofuels.

Next time you hear or see folks talking up biofuels, count the number of farmers in the room. Farmers know the numbers do not come out. This is not rocket science; just plain old common sense.

From the Post Carbon Institute:

It’s Official: The Economy Is Set To Starve

Posted Nov 24, 2010 by Chris Martenson

Part I: It’s the End of the Oil As We Know It…

Once a year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) releases its World Energy Outlook (WEO), and it’s our tradition here at ChrisMartenson.com to review it.  A lot of articles have already been written on the WEO 2010 report, and I don’t wish to tread an already well-worn path, but the subject is just too important to leave relegate to a single week of attention. 

Because some people will only read the first two paragraphs, let me get a couple of conclusions out right up front.  You need to pay close attention to Peak Oil, and you need to begin adjusting, because it has already happened.  The first conclusion is mine; the second belongs to the IEA. 

Okay, it’s not quite as simple as that; there are a few complexities involved that require us to dig a bit deeper and to be sure our terms and definitions are clear so that we are talking about the same things. Read the rest

Biofuel, Geothermal, Renewable Energy Sources

Why We Need Geothermal

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I just returned from Detroit, where I attended the NH3 conference.

NH3 is ammonia, and it’s “the only realistic energy solution that makes sense,” according to Matt Simmons of the National Petroleum Council, the Council on Foreign Relations and founder of the Ocean Energy Institute.

Guy Toyama, chair of the Hawaii County Energy Commission; Mitch Ewan, of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at UH Manoa; Roald Marth, venture capitalist, and I were the others from Hawai‘i who attended. Guy gave a talk and pretty much convinced them to hold next year’s conference on the Big Island.

What I learned:

• NH3 is more practical than H2, because there are three Hs in its molecule, rather than two. Therefore, it’s a third more energy dense when transporting. And it can be moved around through the propane infrastructure at relatively low temperature and pressure.

I am a farmer and I like things that are practical. NH3 is the practical person’s hydrogen. H2 is very impractical.

• With a little help, NH3 can be used to run internal combustion engines without much modification. The largest company in the world that converts engines for propane use is now working on commercially modifying engines so that they can use NH3. They focus on fleet vehicles, like BlueBird school buses, etc.

I like this company’s approach. They take care of everything so it is simple for the operator.

• Rather than using hydrocarbons to make NH3, as is done now, we can use electricity for hydrolysis to separate out the hydrogen and oxygen from plain water; then take “N” (nitrogen) from the air to make NH3. Cheap electricity from “off peak” geothermal power would make this cost-competitive as oil prices rise. Considering the recent Lloyd’s of London white paper telling its business clients to be prepared for $200/barrel oil by 2013, it is prudent to be self-reliant.

So the ingredients for NH3 are:

  • Geothermal for cheap electricity
  • Water for the hydrogen, and
  • Air for the nitrogen.

We have all that in abundant supply on the Big Island.

NH3 does not burn well by itself, so it can be used to stretch hydrocarbons to hedge our bets. This conference was interesting because folks reported on using oxygen to strengthen the flame. It just so happens that oxygen is produced, along with hydrogen, during the hydrolysis process.

If we do more geothermal, we can get cheap electricity for all us. And as the NH3 technology develops, we put ourselves and future generations in a position to win.

NH3 is simply ammonia and its safety issues are easily overcome. Catalytic converters can take care of greenhouse gases. Folks are working on making the combustion more efficient.

Guy Toyama said he believes we should be burning H2 in the engine and using NH3 as the H2 carrier. That’s why it it’s important to have an ammonia cracker, like Shaun Grannell was demonstrating outside. That engine was running on pure H2. The pipe on the outside stripped the NH3 to H2 + NO, NO2. Hydrogen flame speed is quicker, so you can more easily convert an Internal Combustion Engine to run on H2.

Cracker

This is a small engine with the H2 cracker wrapped in tin foil. It ran on straight ammonia.

It was amazing to see. I felt like I was witnessing a historical event.

As we all know, the folks on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder are the ones who will get their lights turned off first, and too often they will be Hawaiians. Geothermal can help to prevent this from happening.

In the uncertain future ahead, we need to take care of each other. Not, No Can. CAN!

Can you folks help us advocate for geothermal?

Biofuel, Geothermal, Peak Oil

There is a Big Island Solution to Rising Oil Prices

Lloyds of London warns its business clients to be prepared for $200/barrel oil by 2013.

Why? This video explains.

These folks are international oil experts. Watch the video again until you understand what they are saying.

The most important piece of information you need to understand is that the decline rate of aging oil fields is about 4 million barrels per day annually. This is due to aging oil fields. Every two years or so, we need to find the equivalent of a Saudi Arabia just to stay even with the natural decline rate. In order to keep up with demand, we need to make up for that and then also produce extra.

If one looks at a graph of HEI’s stock price over the last several years, one sees that after a slight lag, HEI’s stock price dropped like a rock in July 2008 when the oil price spiked.

The same thing will happen, but worse, when oil prices hit $200. Local HEI stockholders will face a loss of value of their stock while their electricity prices steadily rise. How is that being good to your stockholders?

It was my nightmare – where they send all the white-haired people away to go look for new land. The white-haired folks are the ones that depend on HEI stock for their retirement years.

There is a solution:

  • First, say unequivocally that HECO will not put expensive biofuels into its Big Island generating units. We don’t have the luxury of time to play games.
  • Second, commit to geothermal and get down to business figuring out how we are going to replace HECO’s oil-fired units. Don’t worry about community outreach, because we are taking care of that. And certainly do not send folks from O‘ahu to do what is our kuleana.

The higher the fraction of the base load we place in geothermal, the more we protect ourselves from volatile oil prices. We need to get serious about this. Now! We do not have the luxury of time.

When oil hits $200 per barrel, it will devastate our tourist industry and hurt American Savings Bank if we have not inoculated them from volatile oil prices.

We all know the benefits of geothermal; we don’t have to keep preaching about them.

We on the Big Island know that if we start to implement geothermal and work with the local people in an honest and respectful way, then we can have a discussion about shipping power to O‘ahu. But not before we take care of our business here first. If we do things in the right way, I am confident that we can ship geothermal power to O‘ahu.

HECO should have a Plan B, instead of betting everything on wind and the cable to Lana‘i and Moloka‘i. If we do this right, geothermal can be the stabilizing force that saves our economy. Price volatility prevents business from investing. Businesses need stability, and geothermal gives us that.

If HECO insists on putting expensive electricity-making solutions into its Big Island grid, it will be taking the wrong fork in the road and we don’t want to follow them there. I wrote about all the reasons we should go to geothermal after my second Peak Oil conference.  That was seven long months ago and time is ticking by.

If we move down the road toward geothermal, we will be moving toward stability and cheap energy.

I asked the folks at the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization if it is fair to say that were we to get most of our base power from cheap geothermal, then we would be relatively more competitive to the rest of the world; and that our standard of living would rise, compared to the rest of the world. Carl Bonham, who is currently working on a formal analysis of $200/barrel oil, told me that it’s fair to say that.

Biofuel

HECO: The Most Ingenious Production/Marketing Model I’ve Ever Seen!

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HECO has come up with a rather ingenious model to solicit biofuels for running its electrical generation equipment for the Big Island. It works like this:

If the farmer growing the product for biofuel needs a higher price than the current market price – which is way too low – HECO will raise the return to the farmer by raising the cost of electricity it sells to the farmer.

Also, to create demand-pull in the market place, HECO will promote “green” fuels. The message will be:

“There’s more to life than just money. Support expensive green biofuel – it’s a quality-of-life issue.”

It’s brilliant! By far the most ingenious agricultural production/marketing model I’ve seen yet!

Some farmers are old enough to remember The Great Liliko‘i Glut of the 1950s. Farmers were told to grow liliko‘i and “they” would buy it all. Practically every house had a liliko‘i trellis or two. When the promoters could not buy the liliko‘i, everybody made liliko‘i juice. People who are my age and live around Hilo know a lot about liliko‘i.

In the early 1980s, it was The Great Cacao Rush. A company came into town saying they would buy the entire local production of cacao, which would be used to make extra special chocolate for the ultra-high-end market. All the farmers had to do was buy certain “special” seedlings, which only the company happened to have.

Although the HECO idea for biofuel production is brilliant, I think that farmers would prefer that HECO grew the biofuels crop themselves, and that farmers get the exclusive right to provide the really, really special rare seedlings from a farmers’ co-op (made up of all the farmers in the state) at a pre-determined, kind-of-high price – with an escalator that moves up with the electricity bill. Payments, by bank draft, would go straight into the co-op’s bank account, six months prior to planting.

This way, the farmers would make money. And as we all know: “If the farmer makes money, the farmer going farm.”

Big Island, Biofuel, Geothermal, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

‘Aloha, Aloha, Call When You Find Land!’

I stayed at the Ala Moana Hotel last week while attending the Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit, which had 1400 participants and was huge and exciting.

One evening, as I sat on the lanai of my hotel room looking toward Waikiki and all the lit-up hotel rooms and bright lights and the headlights and tail lights of cars, it came to me: Everything visible was dependent on oil.

The only thing I could see that was good was that the Macy’s sign is cheaper to power than the Liberty House sign it replaced. Shorter sign.

Sitting out there on the lanai, it became clear to me that if we follow HECO’s plan for using biofuels to generate electricity for the Big Island, we will soon have limited food resources and will be making plans to send people out to discover new lands.

Back in 2007, I spoke at the Hawaii Island Food Summit:

I told them I had a nightmare that there would be a big meeting down by the pier one day, where they announce that food supplies were short because the oil supply was short and so we
would have to send thousands of people out to discover new land.

I was afraid that they would send all the people with white hair out on the boats to find new land—all the Grandmas and Grandpas and me, though maybe not June.

Grandmas and Grandpas hobbled onto the boats with their canes and their wheelchairs, clutching all their medicines, and everybody gave all of us flower leis, and everyone was saying,
“Aloha, Aloha, call us when you find land! Aloha!”

If, instead, we on the Big Island follow our own plan of maximizing
our geothermal resource, and start to add others such as wind, solar and ocean resources as they scale up; and if we emphasize lots of small- to medium-sized diversified farms, we will not need to send out the canoes to look for new land.

The Big Island could help solve O‘ahu’s food and fuel issues, too, so it wouldn’t be necessary for them to send their white-haired folks off, either.

The Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit was exciting and I’ve spent all week trying to put all the goings-on into perspective. O‘ahu has a real serious electricity problem. It has no proven-technology base power alternative to fossil fuels. And it has limited opportunity to integrate solar and wind.

I can absolutely see why HECO was anxious to institute Smart Grid. It was an attempt to wring every bit of efficiency out of intermittent sources of power.

I can also see why HECO made the decision that biofuels would have to be a solution for O‘ahu. The biorefinery is located on O‘ahu. I can even understand why they changed their minds and decided to bring on more PV solar. THEY do need everything!

What I just cannot understand is why HECO tried to force the Big Island to go that route.

We on the Big Island need a different strategy – one that focuses on the Big Island’s resources and environment.

Biofuel

Farmers & Biofuels

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This article appeared in Pacific Business News on August 13, 2010:

Biofuels have supporters, but
scale remains an obstacle

Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
– by Sophie Cocke

Three years ago, representatives of Hawaiian Electric Co. met with farmers on the Big Island to discuss growing feedstock that could be converted to biofuel and used in the company’s generators. But discussions grew quiet when local farmers calculated how much they would be earning.

There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, each container of which weighs 286 pounds. So oil, at $80 a barrel, would yield the farmers about 28 cents per pound.

“There’s hardly anything a farmer will grow for 28 cents per pound,” said Richard Ha, one of the local farmers who attended the meeting.

Profits decline even more given that the feedstock must be drained to obtain the oil. Four pounds of a crop can result in only one pound of oil, meaning farmers would be getting paid only 7 cents per pound for their crops.

“The farmers never went back to another meeting,” said Ha.

This story looks at biofuels, and their role in Hawaii’s push for energy independence…. (Read more)

It is no secret that I am very concerned about betting too much of our future on biofuels just because we feel that we need them desperately. The critical chokepoint is feedstock.

We need to take a deep breath and we need to talk to farmers. Read about when I asked HECO not to let us get flattened by the wild bull.