The next generation Hybrid

Chogan,

The way I've seen it reported is that petrol has an energy balance of 80.5% (according to the EIA, I think). So for every 100BTU invested to produce petrol you end up with 80.5 BTU worth. And yes, there have been a variety of methods employed to reduce the fossil input into ethanol production. Some are process tweaks (or outright new ways of doing things) and others are basically common sense change the fuel source approaches. The latter includes co locating near feed lots and using manure to create steam and another approach I've seen is locating next to an existing coal fired power plant to use it's low grade, waste heat to produce steam (which is used to separate water from the ethanol, I think). I've never seen anyone throw energy balance numbers for these changes but I'd have to think that they're probably significant. I agree that corn ethanol can only be seen as a bridge to something better. It's neither sustainable nor scalable. jhinton is spot on when he says that we need to massively reduce our liquid fuel consumption for biofuels to be viable as a significant part of the transportation sector's energy mix.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Jun 18 2007, 12:03 PM) [snapback]464014[/snapback]</div>

Tripp, I don't think that can be right and/or I'm misinterpreting it. That says that you more-or-less have to burn a barrel of oil to recover a barrel of oil. If oil is $60 a barrel, and if it could all be converted to gasoline 1-to-1, that means it'd take about $120 worth of oil, alone (as raw material and fuel) to produce 42 gallons of gasoline. That's about $3/gallon, which is less than the wholesale price of the product.

Instead, I think that IEA figure must mean that about 20% of the energy value of the crude oil is lost in pumping, refining, and transporting it.

Here's a page from Toyota using 88% as the well-to-tank efficiency for gasoline:
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/tech/environment/fchv/fchv11.html

Here's a British gov't study saying 86%
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/environmen...forp3822?page=5

Here's another one with 88%
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/h2_eco.htm

None of these are scholarly sources but that's about what I recall finding the last time I looked -- that 15% of the energy value of the oil is lost in pumping, processing and distribution. That would square with the IEA data only if it meant a 20% loss.

In hindsight, I should have also been willing to point out is that if you only focus on fossil fuel use, there is a modest advantage to US ethanol right now. A a gallon of gasoline requires 1.2 gallons of fossil fuels, so to speak, but the gallon of ethanol only requires something around a gallon of fossil fuel inputs, maybe less, maybe a lot less if they get more efficient plants built. So in terms of fossil fuel use and net carbon release, even current ethanol has some modest advantage. I just think that the side effects of turning corn to ethanol are not worth that modest savings in fossil fuel at current average production methods.

Also, you have an excellent point regarding the efficiency of the processing plants making a big difference. I looked up the numbers once, and I believe I found that most of the energy input was in the fermentation/distillation process, not growing/transporting the corn and ethanol. So the ethanol plant itself is the big energy user in the process, and more efficient ethanol plants would make a big difference in the overall energy balance.

 

My mistake. I wasn't clear. That 80.5% is from oil in the ground to gasoline at the refinery I believe. I thought I had seen it at an EIA site but I can't find it. Here's a reference to it that also looks familiar, but it doesn't have much substance. (link)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chogan @ Jun 18 2007, 01:48 PM) [snapback]464153[/snapback]</div>

You are interpreting it correctly, gasoline is energy negative or you put in more energy than you get from the final product. Ethanol is energy positive, or you get more energy out than you get in.

Most people forget that here is a huge industrial process on the well side as well. Most oil fields are gas or water injected now in order to keep the reservoir pressure high enough to not have to mechanically pump oil like we do in say Texas. This takes a huge amount of energy. Once the oil comes from the well it goes to several processing steps to remove water (The Saudi's are getting as much as 45% water by volume now) and impurity and corrosive elements like sulfur. Then it is separated into light and heavy crude, etc. Most of this process is fuels by natural gas that is co-produced at the well-head but cannot be economically shipped to market.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jhinton @ Jun 19 2007, 10:06 AM) [snapback]464617[/snapback]</div>

I will respectfully disagree and leave it at that.

Tripp's cite had the right numbers, it was just their choice of languge that was confusing. They made it sound as if you burned 100 fossil fuel calories to get a further 80 calories worth of fuel. But if you read it closely, that's not what they meant. What they meant was that the 100 calories includes the gasoline itself, which is clear if you read the lower in that part of the citation. Accepting their numbers, their final statement had it right. My paraphrase: for a total use of 100 fossil fuel calories (to produce the fuel or as the fuel itself), you can get either 80 calories of gasoline or 130 calories of ethanol.

That's a focus on fossil fuel, say, on net carbon released, and that makes ethanol look good. Any biomass-based fuel that doesnt' actually consume more than (say) 120% of the energy that it releases as fossil-fuel input will look good in that light. Because that focuses only on total fossil fuel.

One could just as reasonably focus on the net free energy, on the total fuel available for a given investment in fuel production. That would be a reasonable view in a fuel-short world -- which process yields the most fuel. So, ask a different question: for every 100 fossil-fuel calories invested in fuel production, you could get either 670 calories of gasoline (1/.15) or 130 calories of ethanol. That makes investment in oil production look much more attractive than investment in ethanol production, from the standpoint of expanding total fuel currently available. (It also points out what ought to be, in an unsubsidized market, the lousy economics of corn-to-ethanol at the current state of production. Oil is hugely profitable but, absent subsidies, corn-to-ethanol is not, and the calculation above pretty much sums up why.)

Alternatively alternatively, you could go back to making ethanol look good by saying this: if we could either burn the fossil fuel directly, or use it to create ethanol, we'd get more total net fuel by using it to create ethanol. That's just a restatement of the first view.

I think all those ways of stating it are valid (assuming that the facts in Tripp's site are correct), it's just a question of whether you focus on the total fossil fuel used to drive vehicles (first view), on the total fuel you could presently produce for a given energy investment (second view), or the ultimate total amount of fuel that could be produced from the current stock of fossil fuel (third view).

I'll post three more cites on well-to-tank efficiency. They all put it around 85%.

Here's a presentation from GM that lists the BTUs out vs BTUs in for a variety of energy sources (slide 7). All the sources on one graph, same methods applied, low bar for gas, high bar for ethanol. This shows gasoline at about 15% and show ethanol as a net negative (> 100%). (Obviously, that depends on the study.) This is GM, the company pushing E85 vehicles.

http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/std/fuelcell/...resentation.ppt

Here's another one from Segway, the electric scooter people, saying 17% losses (83% efficient). They explicitly state it in terms of the total fossil fuel energy from all sources.

http://www.segway.com/downloads/pdfs/energ..._whitepaper.pdf

Tesla motors, ditto, they show 18% or so loss from well to gas station:

http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/tw...tcenturycar.pdf

None of these folks has an interest in minimizing the energy cost of gasoline, all agree on the well-to-tank energy losses.

 

E85 is a red herring. It will make things worse, not better.

It's better to have more fuel-efficient cars than have cars running E85. The only reason E85 is being pushed is because it keeps us hooked on the oil companies. If you were an oil corporation, which would you be pushing -- increased fuel efficiency which will lower the amount of product you can sell, or E85 which will keep people buying from you, and some will buy MORE because it is less efficient than gasoline? For example, a Prius owner who is effectively 'beating' the oil companies by having such great fuel efficiency might think he/she would do even better by filling up with E85. But doing so would render the Prius less fuel-efficient, and hook them into the buying gas more often!

Increasing MPG standards (which it looks like we're finally doing, although every time we have passed such a law in the past, car companies have mostly ignored it) will out-do any benefit from E85, hands down. Both our pocketbooks and the environment will suffer as E85 ramps up, and I can think of no other way to have a second Great Depression than the oil markets tanking after most of our land has been set aside to grow corn for E85, can you?

Unfortunately, it will take the prices of all of our other commodities increasing 30%-200% as E85 ramps up for us to realize it was a bad idea. As corn prices rise, not only will the prices of almost everything we buy rise, but we'll also see forests being cut down and other such things as people decide that growing corn will make them rich.

As Americans, we really need to wake up as to what we are being sold here. E85 is the WORST idea we've had for a long, long time. I'm doing my part by driving a hybrid, and frankly I'm a bit resentful that the prices for everything else I'm going to buy in the store will be going up drastically over the next five years so that the rest of the Americans can continue their bad habits and continue consuming as much fuel as possible.

 

No E85 vehicle should count as a cafe credit unless it can up its compression ratio when running on E85. No current vehicle sold does this. They are all wastefull. If Ethanol was somehow made from waste and we were swimming in it the way its done now would be ok, but each gallon of Ethanol drives up the price of food and still takes other forms of energy to make.

If ethanol was distilled with waste heat of a nuclear reactor or other industrial process that would help its energy balance. If ethanol was made from wood or food waste that would help too. Too bad almost none of it is.

 

This E85 story is still a myth as the US Gov wants no part of it but a front for the big 3.

If they were series about using Ethanol as clean fuel, then they should not have put 100% tariff on Imported Ethanol. Brazil wanted to sell to the US, but US Gov wants to protect Ethanol and Oil companies. As a result, Brazil is sell them to Japan and China.

Good going US. So these E85 capable cars are still a myth as almost no one can use its benefit.

I say E85 is BS for now since I am in CA.

 

I'm glad some of you are seeing that E85 is just a scheme to keep profits rolling in for a few elite people and is not a solution to our energy problems, and that it will make everything WORSE for everyone.

The ONLY solution at this point is to drive fuel-efficient cars.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gippah @ Jun 25 2007, 07:03 AM) [snapback]467563[/snapback]</div>

I thought you were going to say: take public transit, walk, or ride a bike. :lol:

 

Quote 'I thought E85 caused more 'smog' but less greenhouse gasses'

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(john1701a @ Jun 16 2007, 10:45 AM) [snapback]463051[/snapback]</div>

Oh yeah? check out http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=3...&hl=ethanol