Will mass use of biodiesel and ethanol fuel kill more people?

The auto mfgs are caught in a trap and Toyota is no exception. They're a conservative lot and they're in a catch 22 situation. If they do nothing, they risk being caught by smaller companies. However, the capitalization costs for this industry are truly massive and it will be difficult for start-ups to really get in on the action in a meaningful way. If the big players were to jump on the EV wagon they're going to sacrifice they're service departments, which are a mammoth cash cow for them. They also run the risk of selling few parts and royalties on knockoff parts (not sure if this is true, just speculation the royalties, that is). So there are massive short/mid term reasons not to go "there". Also, the first one in bears a lot of risk and no one wants to be that guy.

 

"Farmers can barely survive without the tax subsidies that we provide(not by choice either). I won't hold my breath and expect them to solve the fossil fuel dependence crisis.

Farmers have been facing low crop prices for decades due to the US policy of using subsidies to encourage more food production than we need. This is a good thing to have... much better than high prices and food shortages (for the country, not the farmer). But as we go forward, crops will become more valuable due to many aspects of peak oil, including bio-fuels. There will be money to be made, but only for the farmers who adapt to new low energy input farming techniques. Again, this is a NEW goal that farmers have NEVER had to contemplate before.

My point is that we need to start bringing farm efficiency up as a topic at a national level before it becomes crises time, not adapt after the fact. Maybe farm subsidies should be doled out based on steps taken to improve this. Either way, the biofuel/ethanol EROI calculations are completely useless, since they are based on 20 year old farming techniques. The calculations were brought up as an argument against biofuels, not as a forward looking feasability study.

 

I agree with this part, except Brazil also uses a fair bit of oil (including in their cars), its just that they can produce enough ethanol and enough of their cars use it that they don't need to import oil, and with their recent discoveries could become important oil exporters.

The sentiment is correct, but I disagree with a few of the details here. First, farmers were faced in shortages (along with most of the country) during the Depression/WWII. Just not in recent memory. Secondly we need to remember the most productive methods of ethanol production don't involve corn (cellulosic or algae-based production is vastly more efficient), so raising corn for that purpose is a relatively short-lived prospect - a decade or two at most. Also, petroleum prices has always been a concern for farmers, not so much for running the tractors, but because it's used in herbicides and fertilizers, which is a significant expense, especially for corn. (Still, you don't want to run the tractors over the land too often, because it can crush the crops and it takes time to go over the whole field.) Now that the cost of operating a tractor is more expensive, you can be sure they will be analyzing the best use of tractor time and tractor selection more carefully. But you're right, something more radical is needed here, what if the conventional diesel tractor is too expensive?

I have no idea what you're talking about with conveyor belts and circular tracks. Electric tractors would be the most efficient replacement, and they can be recharged with solar or wind, which farmers would be happy to install if they're cost effective and they're readily available. Farmers are used to windmills, after all. Conveyor belts would only get stuff from the field to the road or vice versa. If necessary, horses could easily do that job with existing wagons. What's harder to replace are the specialized equipment for plowing, seeding, spraying, harvesting (combines, corn choppers, etc. cost tens of thousands of dollars or more, and can't easily be converted or replaced). Also keep in mind that this is equipment is built strong, doesn't see salty roads and is used somewhat infrequently. So the small farmers often use tractors built in the 60's-80's, and big farmers use more of the equipment built over the last twenty years, but also older stuff. Changes would percolate slowly. That's why I think swapping ICEs in existing tractors/machinery with electric motors or using biofuels are the only reasonable options here.

GPS is used for more efficient application of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, but that is a relatively new field (so to speak) and not widely used yet. I think the pressure will be on to use that, along with aerial photographs and topography maps, to eliminate waste/excessive use, which can only be a good thing. But it's certainly not a universal practice yet.

Keep in mind, most subsidies and ag payments end up going to the big corporate farmers, and they're in pretty good shape. Smaller farmers are the ones just scraping by. This last farm bill was supposed to rectify it, but the corporate lobbying dollars were apparently enough to sabotage that.

I think farmers will adapt. Remember, they are the ones that are out standing in their field(s).

 

"I have no idea what you're talking about with conveyor belts and circular tracks. "

Just an idea I've had as a new way to farm.

What I am envisioning is the farm fields broken up into circles. The farming equipment could be unmanned and work a slow spiral in and/or out as it goes around and around, sort of like a tetherball, but with a wheel on the outside of the circle as the motive force. This would eliminate the need for a HUGE tractor, since you would just swap out the various smaller tools on the track and then walk away as it went to work. It could all be run on a modest amount of electricity, possibly panels in the middle of the circle, or in the corners of the fields where the circles don't hit. Or the center could be a silo for collecting the harvest using a conveyor as the harvesting equipment goes around and around.

I don't think electric tractors make sense. Can you imagine the cost, size, and weight of the batteries needed to make a combine work? I think we will see a move towards farms adapting small unmanned electric farming methods, ending a century old trend towards bigger is better. Today's combines cost a million dollars, and they will be obsolete real quick at 10 bucks a gallon.

 

To become educated about farming, spend some time on a farm. You will learn the following:
1) Farmers can adapt faster than just about any other occupation as needed by changes. Look how fast it took many to convert to corn production. I would not spend a second worrying about how to power the tractors and combines. As soon as a small system exists for converting agriculture waste into bio-diesel, the tractor power problem is solved. Look at how many local ethanol plant sprung up on farms throughout the country.

2) The statement about most agriculture subsidy money going to "industrial" farms instead of small or family farms is very true. Remember that point.

3) The small farmer's biggest competition is other local farmers first, overseas imports second. When good growing seasons occur in the US, every farmers yield goes up and the cost per bushel goes down....accross the US. If the US growing season is poor and South America's is good....bad news for the us farmer.

 

I second that. Serious farmers are mechanics by trade, plus their knowledge in whatever it is they're growing. I would bet 90% of farms have a welder in at least one of their garages, and they know how to use them. They aren't averse to changing engines or making their own fuel if it makes sense, although it would take a few years to catch on. But in a decade everything could be different.

I toured some mining museums from the iron range in northern MN, and some of the biggest, heaviest equipment they had were all electric, this was from the 50's. So it can be made to work. And I used old tractors like the Oliver 60 with 13.6 HP for raking hay and hauling firewood and stuff around - it's surprising what you can do with a small engine when you gear it down enough (of course, it maxed out at about 20 mph). Nowadays people 'need' more HP than that for a regular lawn tractor, but still a pretty big new farm tractor has less HP than an average SUV (200HP will get you a 4WD tractor with dualies front and back).

But I agree a move to smaller methods will probably occur. These new 350 HP combines at $300K each just aren't going to be cost-effective forever, but they are what provides us today with cheap food. In 1970, Americans spent 14% of their expenses on food (excluding restaurants), today it is about 8%. In many countries using a lot of manual labor, such as China, this is closer to 30%, and I have a feeling we'll be heading in that direction.

But it won't be to unmanned operations - you still need somebody or something to monitor the equipment for breakdowns or traveling outside of the expected area, AI isn't there yet at all, GPS + sensors is getting close, but a failure on an unmanned system could be catastrophic to the equipment or surroundings. I know this from experience - even just driving the tractor when pulling equipment isn't good enough - you need to keep looking back at the equipment, making sure it's tracking properly and ready to turn off that PTO as soon as there's a wrong sound. Scattered silos and super-long automated conveyor belts are an interesting idea, but I don't think they will be more practical than a centrally located silo, barn and solar/wind power system at the farmyard and cheap labor. Transporting the crop short distances isn't as difficult as harvesting & cleaning it.

Before WWII, they used to have thresher teams that travelled from farm to farm, slowly heading north, and harvested the grains. At least that way the price of the equipment could be spread out over more farms, although the price of operating it isn't. Perhaps people who do the early electric conversions can do the same thing. Biodiesel production will probably be the first answer however, but that returns us to using cropland for that and not food. I'm still hoping cellulosic or algae-produced ethanol can be made cost-effective quickly.

 

I disagree, using waste products will be how it's done. Small scale pyrolysis could also be an answer, but then you'd have to refine the oil into diesel. That could be done like ethanol coops. I doubt the electrification of ag is really necessary. Pyrolysis can be carbon negative too. One of it's by products can be used as a fertilizer.

 

"I toured some mining museums from the iron range in northern MN, and some of the biggest, heaviest equipment they had were all electric"

However, I would bet they were able to plug into the grid and not rely on huge batteries, since they went up and down a specified track. This isn't practical on a 1000 acre farm with no tracks and a need to cover the entire area.

My thought is the farmers might elect to set up power to smaller "blocks" within the large acreage. Then they could use smaller electric machinery within the different blocks, tethered in such a way that they wind themselves up (or out) and then shut off. This would allow the "rows" to be one continous circle all the way in and make the equipment run a precise route, increasing efficiency.

So instead of one giant machine to service the whole farm, you have multiple smaller, electric ones in each block working simultaneously.

BTW, I'm really enjoying this discussion. It gets to the heart of the problems oil dependency poses to us. Food production and its transport to the people who eat it are the MOST important functions of all societies.

 

Indeed. You could have rails arranged in concentric circles that guide the machinery. That could solve the guidance/supervision issues, but the cost would be high. The easiest way is to just produce biofuels in coops. The goal then would be to identify the lowest impact/highest efficiency methods of doing that. I like the pyrolysis approach because it creates a product (oil) that has many uses, not just fuel feedstock.

 

I'm not real familiar with pyrolysis, just briefly googled it (basically it's breaking down matter, such as waste materials, into other components by heating it in the absence of oxygen, if I got it right). Cellulosic ethanol can be made from many waste products as well, but with enzyme reactions, not heat. Wouldn't the heating process take a lot of energy? But given the number of diesel tractors out there, a method of making biodiesel is needed, not just ethanol, and I don't think our standard crops currently used for biodiesel will be able to handle the load. Then there's butanol which can be made from waste wood products and could also hold a role in our future.
I'm willing to bet that in my lifetime we'll be mining our landfills for energy and raw materials.

 

Presumably, but ethanol production also requires a lot of heat in the drying and distillation processes. I'm not sure what the energy balance is, but the nice thing is that you end up with oil, which is a pretty generic end product that has lots of applications as we all know.

Are there any engineers out there that have a rough idea of the energy balance of pyrolysis applications? I googled a little bit, but didn't find anything that seemed to answer that question.

 

Is this what Changing World Technologies uses? They call it a thermal conversion process, with depolymerization and other tech-sounding steps involved. They use agricultural waste (turkey factory leftovers for instance) and make oil out of it, along with a few other things: Changing World Technologies, Inc. - What solutions does CWT offer? - What is Thermal Conversion Process (TCP)?

 

Don't think so. pyrolysis creates syngas (CO + H2) and this process seems very different and involves water along the way (very hot water it seems). Do I think it's a very different process to pyrolysis, but the outcomes look similar. Perhaps it works, perhaps it doesn't. It's still great to see waste to fuel ideas getting some kinda backing.