Excellent Cellulosic Ethanol Overview

Wired just published a nice overview of cellulosic ethanol. It takes you through the history, the challenges, some of the major players, etc. It is one of the most comprehensive and balanced articles on the subject that you will ever run across. So, if you always wanted to understand both sides of cellulosic ethanol, check it out:

One Molecule Could Cure Our Addiction to Oil

Just a couple of excerpts of interest:

On a blackboard, it looks so simple: Take a plant and extract the cellulose. Add some enzymes and convert the cellulose molecules into sugars. Ferment the sugar into alcohol. Then distill the alcohol into fuel. One, two, three, four — and we’re powering our cars with lawn cuttings, wood chips, and prairie grasses instead of Middle East oil.

Unfortunately, passing chemistry class doesn’t mean acing economics. Scientists have long known how to turn trees into ethanol, but doing it profitably is another matter. We can run our cars on lawn cuttings today; we just can’t do it at a price people are willing to pay.

And here is the part that many do not realize:

The oil crisis of the ’70s spurred a wave of federally funded research on cellulosic ethanol. Then, in the mid-’80s, when President Reagan declared the fuel crisis over, the DOE money vanished with few results. Many academics fled to other fields where funding was easier to get.

Cellulosic ethanol is not a recent invention. It has in fact been around since well before the 70’s. People like Vinod Khosla who draw these Moore’s Law type growth curves for cellulosic ethanol should ask themselves where computer technology was in the 70’s, and where it is today. The point is that while cellulosic ethanol has made some progress since the 70’s, the learning curve has been flat when compared to Moore’s Law. It has never before been on a Moore’s Law trajectory, but we are being confidently told that’s what the future holds.

What I would argue is that we certainly should continue to fund cellulosic ethanol, but we also need to have realistic expectations. We can’t simply legislate technological breakthroughs as many of our political leaders seem to believe.

13 thoughts on “Excellent Cellulosic Ethanol Overview”

  1. “Realistic expectations”. Oh yes. An example of not-so realistic expectations over at NRO. The authors backgrounds are in national security, not chemistry, physics, or economics.

    An example of one of their errors: By moving toward utilizing the batteries that have been developed for modern electronics we can rather soon have “plug-in hybrids” that travel 20-40 miles on an inexpensive charge of night-time off-peak electricity at a small fraction of gasoline’s cost. (After driving that distance plug-ins keep going as ordinary hybrids.) Dozens of ordinary hybrids converted to plug-ins now on the road are getting in the range of 100 mpg of gasoline.

    First of all, those vehicles aren’t getting 100 mpg, they’re getting 100 miles per (one gallon of gas + undisclosed kilowatt hours of charge).

    Let’s ballpark some figures. 20 miles at 0.17kWh/mile = 3.4 kWh.

    Multiply by 1/10 of the number of passenger cars in the U.S (2005) (13,656,808) = 46,433,417 kWh.

    Total contagious US generating capacity for 2005 was 882,125 mW.

    About 5 and a quarter percent of our total generation capacity. Sounds doable, until you remember that figure is for 1/10 of the passenger car fleet, at the most efficient end of the range for electric cars, for the minimal distance quoted.

    Try scaling that up to the entire fleet and it’s now consuming over half of our electrical generation capacity, and that just to charge plug-in hybrids overnight for a 20 mile charge. Increase the distance to 30 miles (the middle of their quoted range) and that now takes three quarters of the total generating capacity of the contagious US.

  2. “quotidian” is a good word.

    But I’m afraid they go weak in the knees in the conclusion, when they declare the “the proliferation of research” … “stacks the deck in favor of cellulosic ethanol.”

    An “unknown outcome” is just that, no matter how much we wish the fates were stacking the deck.

  3. BTW King,
    Did you see this chart from the WSJ? Sales Jan – Aug 2007:
    Toyota Tundra: 124,909
    Toyota Prius: 124,620

    Impressive, since we both know which one makes the Texas-sized profits…

  4. About 5 and a quarter percent of our total generation capacity. Sounds doable, until you remember that figure is for 1/10 of the passenger car fleet, at the most efficient end of the range for electric cars, for the minimal distance quoted.
    OOPS! I guess you failed the math test, larryd! You failed to notice the difference between kWh and MW (capital M). Note that power is measured in units of W, kW and MW. Energy or work is measured in units of Wh, kWh and MWh (and others, such as J, kJ). (For some reason this distinction confuses the pants off many Americans.)

    In doing the calculation you erroneously assumed that the cars needed to be charged within one hour. Luckily for us, the off-peak overnight hours are more than that.

    So, if the average car took six hours to charge, the average power requirement would be 46,433,417/6 = 7,238,903 kW, or 0.82% of the available generating capacity. Scale up to the full fleet and you are still at only ~8%.

    Very doable, won’t you say?

  5. robert,
    thanks for the article and the WIRED site reference.
    keep it up and i hope you are achieving objective with time, job,family,writing.

    fran

  6. BTW King,
    Did you see this chart from the WSJ? Sales Jan – Aug 2007:
    Toyota Tundra: 124,909
    Toyota Prius: 124,620

    Hadn’t seen that yet. Only you could turn a story about GM’s woes into a promotion for the Prius!

  7. Yeah, the grid can handle PHEVs, even as we move to geothermal, wind and solar (if you are really old, you will remember the band “Earth, Wind & Fire.” The band title is the solution, going forward, unless you add in nukes).
    I really see no reason we cannot have a fleet of PHEV cars, which use domestic biofuels mostly, and some fossil. We would use about 25 percent of the fossil crude we use today, maybe less.
    And have cleaner air, and quieter cities.
    Instead of crisis, I see wonderful prosperity – providing we have just a little good government.
    This is doable, RR has done the rough math on the grid, and so have others. The cars largely recharge at night. Solar helps the grid handle peak load, which happens when the sun is up, so that is a nice fit.
    You know, there is very little out there on the oil yield of Chinse Tallow, but it exceeds that of jatropha. It appears we could get biooil from that, especially if we move to a diesel-hybrid PHEV.

  8. To be fair, the reason computer technology scaled up so fast was because there was a lot of money in it. That wasn’t true for cellulosic ethanol. Once it becomes true, I don’t see any fundamental reasons why it couldn’t also see Moores-Law type scaling effects.

Comments are closed.