Oil Returning to Gas Wells

There is no reason that the condensate, which by the way is an extremely volatile solvent that some people use instead of gasoline to great detriment of their engines, should be returned to the well head except for the fact that there is no other place to store it. The liquid can only be reintroduced if the gas flow is interrupted since the gas velocity will prevent it from going down while it is flowing. This could be automated using a level sensor in the storage tank to trigger a drain back cycle.

And that is what is wrong with todays automobiles. The old model T could run on that stuff for many, many miles. Common oil field practice in the Bradford Oil Field years ago.

I worked on a seismic crew that surveyed an existing oil field. When I asked my boss why we were resurveying the field he replied that we were looking for places to store oil. My understanding is that it is cheaper to put oil back into the ground than to store it above the ground. Sounds craze but that is what I was told. Now we surveyed most of the southern western part of Southern Ontario from Lake Claire to Point Peele. There were times when we just had to look across the road to see the oil pumps extracting the oil. I hope this might answer you question but I am not sure why they would put condensate back under.

And you wonder why gasoline is headed for $5.00/gallon? Cost of exploration to find it in the first place + cost to drill the well at several hundred dollars per foot + cost to pump it up + cost of exploration to find storage site + cost of drilling the storage well at several hundred dollars per foot + cost of transporting to storage site + cost to pump into storage well + cost to pump back up and ship to refinery. "consumer pays the freight".

Compare with cellulosic ethanol: 1: no exploration cost, can put a "well" wherever plants will grow, even in the ocean. 2. No 3 mile deep hole at several hundred dollars per foot. 3: no "dry holes". 4: never depletes. 5: no pressure on price of feedstock from food chain. 6: Waste and nuisance vegetation earn disposal fees. 7: product is rapidly biodegradable, very low toxicity, and fires can be extinguished with water. 8: when used as straight denatured fuel at 130 proof it does not absorb very much additional water during short term storage, nor does the water separate. 9: several potential biomass crops (cf: Penisetum violaceum) will yield 3500 - 5000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year (200 proof basis), plus additional products for sale. 10: when the fuel burns, there is very little pollution from VOC (essentially zero), CO, or NOx (cooler burn temp), making the catalytic converter redundant. 11: and it smells better.

Of course the downside is always that ther eis limited arable land to grow large quantities of fuel crops and food crops, thus one has to give way to the other if we are to transition to a greater proportion of fuel derived from fuel crops. Thus instead of fuel prices for automobiles increasing, we see direct competition for food against fuel such that some arable lands become devoted to the more valuable of those crops (fuel for the wealthy is more profitable than food for the poor). Also, demand increases for agricultural related resources such as crop quality water which is in short supply in most high production cropping areas. Thus increased water law and regulation would become neceesary in regions that grow such crops, to guarnatee rights and priveldges.

So the cost of an ethanol plant is Free?

The price of corn and corn related products is much higher because why?

There is no storage requirement for ethanol because it floats freely in the atmosphere until needed?

My fuel lines and any rubber in the fuel system is totally unaffected by the amount of ethanol in the fuel?

The cost to actually produce a gallon of ethanol without government subsidy would be competitive with gasoline how?

The amount of energy to produce a gallon of ethanol is how much less than received from that gallon of ethanol? Do the farmers burn some of that ethanol in their farm equipment to plant, cultivate and harvest the corn.

The cost of gasoline at $5/gallon has more to do with speculation in the commodities markets than with with the cost of producing crude/gasoline. It costs probably about $60 or less on average to pull a barrel of crude out of the well head(probably about $10 in Saudi Arabia). It is more of an auction in the futures markets not to mention manipulation of the price by hedge funds and traders.

Only allow people who will actually take delivery of the crude and utilize it in their operation and the cost would drop to less than $70/barrel. Only allow one trade per futures contract (no bundling of multiples into a new contract either) and your price would drop well under $100/barrel. Speculation and hedge funds are the twin evils when it comes to commodities.

The Commodity Market was developed so the users of commodities would be assured of a stable supply. It is now used by speculators to screw the public.

So the cost of an ethanol plant is Free?

Current bids are running in the neighborhood of $3.00 per gallon of annual capacity. Minimum self sustaining size, 4MGY = $12 M, Max commercial size (limited by cost to haul biomass) 20 MGY = $60 M. Amortizing over 30 year life = 10 cents/gallon add 2 cents for maintenance budget.

The price of corn and corn related products is much higher because why?

reduced carry over (lowest in 15 years), hedging and speculation, reduced plantings due to weather, competition with non food markets. Todays CBOT for July corn, $7.295 = $2.80 per gallon for ethanol feedstock cost alone.

There is no storage requirement for ethanol because it floats freely in the atmosphere until needed?

45 day storage included in plant bid for market buffer. No need for large volume to be aged for 4 years or more as in the beverage industry. We make our own fuel and sell on contract direct to the consumer. There is an incentive for blending the fuel and puttiing in the pumps.

My fuel lines and any rubber in the fuel system is totally unaffected by the amount of ethanol in the fuel?

Since 2003. Earlier years had a few selected models as flexfuel was introduced. My 1991 Dodge Caravan was one of 3 units that the local dealer had that he assured me were compatible with ethanol at any ratio up to 85%. Unfortunately I live in South Texas and the only fueling sites were in Kansas. But Chrysler still got their "green" card punched for the sale.

The cost to actually produce a gallon of ethanol without government subsidy would be competitive with gasoline how?

Our cost of production for our last two demonstration batches was 82 cents per gallon, allowing a payment of 40 cents per gallon for acquiring feedstock. That corresponds to $34.44/barrel with only blending cost needing to be added. We were paid to remove the hydrilla we used for part of the demo related to using nuisance vegetation, so we added the 40 cent figure to our out-of-pocket, allowing us to pay a farmer around $1400 per acre for growing a 3500 gallon crop. None of our financials show subsidies, just a footnote that we expect to earn additional revenue from incentive subsidies until they are eliminated.

The amount of energy to produce a gallon of ethanol is how much less than received from that gallon of ethanol? Do the farmers burn some of that ethanol in their farm equipment to plant, cultivate and harvest the corn.

You missed the word CELLULOSIC in my post. The only time we use corn is when it is contaminated with aflatoxin or some other problem that makes the DDG worthless. We will pay $1.04 per bushel (40 cents/gallon) to either the farmer who is growing our biomass, or crop insurance company that paid the claim, to dispose of it. Anyone else will pay us $20/ton below the current landfill price for disposal. The plant nutrients remain in the stillage from our plant, and are returned to the soil, so the only thing actually removed is the water and CO2 fixed during photosynthesis. The farmers may wind up using 130 proof in their farming operations, there are compaies introducing that type of vehicle. And the energy to run our plant comes from burning the unreacted lignins and other compounds in the feedstock.

Your commentary on the traders and hedge funds are right on target. The same thing is going on in all the commodities, including corn. Let a little word of weather interfering with planting a crop, or hail, freezes and tornadoes causing crop damage and there goes the market due to the greedy trying to profit on the misfortune of others.

Another aspect of using cellulosic biomass is that it is much more friendly to wldlife. The crops generally provide very good cover and there is much less intensity in their cultivation. Planting is still required, along with perhaps an initial cultivation, but please don't use herbicides, the weeds that grow up to compete will just add to the volume we harvest. We can manage very well around the nesting cycles of our native birds. And most of the crops do not have major insect pests, nor are any insecticides labelled for use on them.

Actually, most farming interests will tell u you there is substantial competition with native species for land, crops are perceived and more destructive and there is the issue of take for native species. Crops provide generally poor cover because of the regular recurrent human ionteractions with the fields and the harvesting, the machinery is extremely disruptive to many native endangered species. I would not put money on providing habitat as a good argument, I suspect a some point USF&W would shoot you down, as far as being a better replacement to oil wells where nearly no one ever comes around.

Who are your "Most farming interests"? As a former USDA and Texas A&M researcher as well as time spent as a seed salesman for Ferry-Morse Seed Company, I have been around the country and seen my share of crops. What do you grow? It has been my experience that crops like corn, cotton, soybeans, grain sorghum, wheat, peanuts, vegetables and such fit the competition you describe. other crops, such as pecan and citrus orchards (at least here in South Texas) and sugarcane both here and in Florida, to my knowledge, and commercial Haying operations are very gentle on wildlife. The only problem with sugarcane is the practice of burning it, necessary when harvesting it for sugar, but criminal when harvestng it for cellulosic ethanol. when the sugarcane crop is burned, 40% by weight of the total biomass grown goes up in smoke. And that fraction that is burned is 40% by weight polysaccharide, primarily cellulose (beta-linked polyglucose).

Our cellulosic ethanol biomass crops look more like overgrown pasture on steroids. As for field operations, just plant, 1 cultivation (if needed) and let it grow to harvest. It is fairly drouth tolerant, and there are no labelled pesticides for use with it, so no real benefit to constantly going to the field. The only authorized treatment for insect or disease outbreaks (should they occur) is to harvest and then go to the next step in the food/fuel/fallow cropping cycle. As you can tell, it is not farming as usual.

As for USF&W, the local game warden has been impressed. From your comments, I doubt that you are a farmer, but have a fair investment portfolio in petroleum stocks.

Actually my family has grown mostly artichoke, but some other crops from time to time. Plus I have one of my degrees in soil science, and all of muy roommates in colege work relatively locally as ag managers PCA, and such for companies like Dole, soil serv, etc.

Gentle on wild life is dependent upon the endagered wildlife you are discussing, and if you were familiar with NEPA and the USF&W practices you would realize how a project can be influenced by endangered species. Obviously tactors and heavy equipment, human activities, etc. are worse in agricultural areas than in wilderness. Now if you are converting land from one ag practice to another that would not be a significant issue, however, the conversion from food production to fuel production crops could be an issue, especially if the crops are deemed of high importance. The conversion of land is always a problem, if it can fall under a State environmental (or worse Federal) review process. A farmer in the sothern end of the San Joaquin Valley got into a whole lot of trouble a few years back for something like harvesting at the wrong time, as his property lies in the kit fox habitat range. As you have indicated commercial intersts that do not provide food have much stricter regulation, and have a different priority under NEPA for importance when conducting an benefits to cost analysis for a environmental review. Farming for food (human or animal) has many exemption built into law, farming for fuel production doesn't necessarily benefit from those exemptions the same. It is far greater benefit to use farm waste such as those found on grapes vinyards after the vines are trimmed, or orchards after the trimmings.

Farming for food (human or animal) has many exemption built into law, farming for fuel production doesn't necessarily benefit from those exemptions the same.

Most of the crops we use are (or have been) used as food or feed in many areas around the world. Our favorite, Penisetum violaceum, was originally developed by a Jesuit priest as a hay crop for cattle. It grows 4 meters in 90 days in its native area and produces 200 tons of dry hay per acre per year. Forage analyses show 14% soluble carbohydrate (fermentables) and 18% crude protein. Cellulose + hemicellulose averages around 42%, indicating an ethanol value of 100 gallons/ton, a little less than sweet sorghum. We do not expect to see 20,000 gallons/acre/year here, but we should be able to get half of that.

Syngenta has a tropical adapted sugarbeet that has been used throughout the tropics. Just because we can use cellulose does not mean we have to give up using starches and soluble sugars when they are also present in the crop. We do need to maintain that average production above 3500 gallons, though.

Now tell me, what would CA (Communist America?) say if I wanted to grow tropical sugarbeet in the desert east of San Diego, using a water supply that I recovered from the atmosphere at the top of that big mountain on I-8 that generated electricity as it came down the hill? Or if I supplemented that water with the output of a cheap desalination plant on the Salton Sea? How about if it was a hay crop?

Hmm, well i am not sure about the communist, but under CEQA, which is a standard model, you can do almost anything as long as you can justify it and get around the comments. Under NEPA, which is the federal standard, you must conduct a comprehensive initial study that is much more exhaustive, and would have more agencies more fully staffed with highly educated or more environmentally reactionary reviewing your reports. If the crop is a food crop then you are competing with the impoverished for food or fodder for their food, thus it is the same effect as you say with corn specualtion a few years back when energy market speculators started manipulating corn prices and they had riots around the world over corn prices. If it is not a food source, the poor would not be adversely impacted, but the exemptions in the Laws may not be applicable, as they are on food stuff, so you may have to do a more extensive review of the project. I had a project to expand a bridge that crossed a federal right of way as part of a larger project. The larger project met and complied with CEQA, but when permitting this minor widening of the concrete bridge deck by about 2 feet, USF&W stepped up and forced the Federal permitting agencies to conduct a NEPA review of the project arguing that insufficient diligence was undertaken to study and mitigate for endangered species. All major dams are limited by federal laws and review processes. So it doesn't matter where you place them you still get to deal with NOAA National Marine Fisheries or USF&W. Obviously, if you mitigate all your significant impacts the project will pass, but you have to actually review all the impacts, and be ready for someone else to step in during the comments period and make comments that shut you down until you can mitigate or justify not mitigating for a respondents identified impact. Also you need to plan ahead as to which agencies would be mandated to respond, and try to avoid some more sensitive federal agencies areas. BTW the desert east of San Diego is nearly prime farm land for human crops with the imported water supplies, which are from some federal controlled sources which could bring in a federal review, and the Salton Sea is a "recreation" area that some conrgessman in southern california is trying to get rehabilitated (it is drying up) with federal funding back to the state it was in during the 1950s, trying to take water from that would be a big problem for your project. If you really want to get a fight from activists, tell them you may have some imapct on their recreation areas, like the Colorado River or any surfing beach.

USF&W stepped up and forced the Federal permitting agencies to conduct a NEPA review of the project arguing that insufficient diligence was undertaken to study and mitigate for endangered species.

Thanks for a comprehensive answer. Maybe that political reference on my part was a little out of line, though. And thanks for exposing a potential link that may indicate a fundamental conflict of interest. I will check with my local contacts to see if USF&W receives any financial return from the "Due Diligence" requirement, giving them an incentive for needlessly inflating the requirements on a project. I remember a number of things that were done when I was in research involved with projects related to pesticide approvals.

Even if a crop is initially intended for food use, things often happen that make it unsuitable for that market at harvest. Our agricultural base is going to have to be expanded, or we will not be able to survive. Here in South Texas there has been a large loss of prime irrigated agricultural land to housing and industrial development, and there is only a limited amount of water coming down the Rio Grande. We are going to need to develop our dryland acreage with new water supplies, since we have very few well supplies. I know the conditions in California from personal travel throughout the state driving an 18-wheeler pulling a reefer after I retired from research. You don't know panic until you start snaking a 53 ft trailer up through the redwoods delivering turkeys to the prison at Crescent City.

Why do I get the impression that you are basically making more of a sales pitch here as opposed to just defending an engineering thought or position. "45 day storage included in plant bid"?? "we make our own fuel and sell on contract"?? "Our cost of production"??? "We will pay..."??"....from our plant"?? Yep, definitely sounds like you're selling the actual making and selling of ethanol as opposed to just defending the principal of producing ethanol.

If you're utilizing otherwise waste products or items not fit for human consumption or growing crops like switch-grass to make ethanol then I'm all for it but I just ask that NO government subsidy be used to make it "price competitive" with some other fuel.

I personally would like to see more use of coal gasification plants tied into electric power production via syn gas burning turbines, fuel cells and steam turbines running via waste heat recovery with the CO2 and warm water produced going to algae farms producing a bio-mass for bio-fuels such as diesel or ethanol. It should be easier to use the coal in the coal producing regions to make electricity and send that via power lines then to send mile long trains pulling coal cars so it can be burned to produce electricity elsewhere with CO2 as a by-product. The algae needs CO2 and our atmosphere doesn't. Perhaps they could even dry out the algae and ship it down to your plant for feedstock. Should fit within the parameters of delivery costs and the old coal cars could be utilized for that use since we wouldn't need them for transporting coal anymore.

Brazil and Cuba do quite well making ethanol from sugar cane waste but the good old US of A prevents it from what I have heard. Wonder why.

Ouch coal no matter hat is dirtier than most everything imaginable fopr energy production, it is just easier since the tecnology is so old and well established. Even if you use coal gasification it is definitely going to be a very dirty process to deal with all components, including waste. Coal is just nasty stuff, and it takes a lot of it to be consumed to gain relatively little energy (unlike something like nuclear which take a very small quantity for the energy gained). Plus with coal you are always net positive for CO2 to the atmosphere (not counting other minor constituents that may or may not be removed depending on cost expenditures for quality control). At least ethanol is kind of carbon neutral, and if they were really smart they would use solar and wind power at the production facilities as much as possible to have fully carbon neutral production. The downside is really the competition it poses against agricultural resources for sustainable food production (arable land, water). Obviously coal for so many reason is just a very bad idea, much like oil is (except a little dirtier and more dangerous when the whole process of energy recovery is looked at from cradle to grave). Definitely algae for biodeisel might be a promising resource, of course growth areas might be a issue if it is to become a major source of fuel, but no matter the case coal represents a sequestered carbon fuel source, it would always be a net positive in CO2.

Future concepts that incorporate a fuel cell or a fuel cell-gas turbine hybrid could achieve efficiencies nearly twice today's typical coal combustion plants. If any of the remaining heat can be channeled into process steam or heat, perhaps for nearby factories or district heating plants, the overall fuel use efficiency of future gasification plants could reach 70 to 80 percent.

By nearby energy plants that could mean algae farms or bio-energy plants that can use the waste heat and CO2. Burning even natural gas or oil to produce electricity releases CO2 and that is very hard to capture and sequester so it goes right up the stack even after any waste heat is recovered.

Most power plants don't achieve that kind of efficiencies. Here's some interesting reading http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/index.html

That sounds far superior than using plan old coal plants to produce electricity. Wind and solar are far too dependent on the elements and face the unpredictable reliability of total output due to changes, i.e. wind farms in the oceans are susceptible to tsunamis, hurricanes, typhoons, underwater earthquakes and on land on the west coast just plan old earthquakes not to mention El Nino and La Nina. How about the reduction of solar power based on just one or two small volcanic eruptions?

Even if you achieve higher efficiencies, coal is carbon rich even for a fossil fuel even relative to petroleum (also a many of other nasty constituents). Carbon in means carbon out. Right now the carbon is sequestered. Improvements to the efficiencies just improve the coversion of the energy wasted into useable energy. It does not increase the total energy per unit of carbon, and exothermic bond energy from carbon oxidation is not particularly great when compared to something like nuclear energy (particularly fusion energy). In essence you are trying to make the bearings more efficient on a horse-drawn carriage in a attempt to overcome the advantages in transportation of the automobile. Coal is by no means a good substitute even for petroleum, it is just cheap and more readily available in some areas where the labor force is severely depressed and willing to do anything no matter the risk for a quick buck. Also coal is as susceptible to earthquakes, hurricanes, and any other natural disaster as these are location dependent not so much structure dependent (mines are obviously less secure and subject to greater risk of major critical loss during a earthquake then a solar farm), and far more susceptible to things like coal fires, flooding, cave ins, and numerous accidents per unit of energy gained in cost minus the cost of environmental impacts. It is just a simple source that many people can understand without a great deal of specialized training, and thus minimal technological changes occur in the entire process, from recovery through energy production. Trying to sell "clean" Coal make far less sense than the guy trying to sell ethanol, though obviously there are some people in that industry stuck in their ways and highly financially invested in the continued utilization of Coal. That industry of all energy resource industries needs a serious substantive paradigm shift. Though I guess if i looked back in history there may have been a similar issue regarding the transitioning away from Lead based paints, at least for the paint manufacturers.

I am not sure what you mean by La Nina/El Nino, those weather paterns only slightly impact the available solar energy by a few days in the winter (when solar flux on the at the surface of the northern hemisphere is low anyways).

Solar is relatively good due to the passive nature of energy recovery, though it does require some land, luckily the best places for Solar aren't the best places to live or grow crops. Wind, well it is all about where you site them, but they don't need to be in an area where people live or farm, just somewhere there is consistent wind. Hydroelectric, well is very problematic for siting, many environmental factors to consider and sites are limited to areas where sufficent water flows occur.

The real deciding issue is capital cost to develop new infrastructure to support a rapid evolution of energy systems, versus O&M/replacement cost (including environmental impacts and mitigations) for existing infrastructure. As mentioned earlier coal's and petroleum's capital cost is minimal as a cradle to grave energy resources, and the O&M/replacement are constantly deferred for later and then subsidized by the government when an "accident occurs". (As is nuclear energy also, obviously.) A better balance is needed with some progression into developing other resources that are more passive, while in the interim employing the best technologies and providing adequate O&M costs to offset the use of existing resources for which we have developed infrastructural supports already.

Please also consider that no solar cell, wind turbine, or solar turbine has been built that can pay for itself never mind making a profit. (Generally the maintenance costs are higher than the value of the energy that they generate.) Again we do not get back the energy we put into building them. The other consideration is that in the USA solar powered generators are far from population centers and factories , so waste heat can not be used. There was a "green vecome station on both sides of Rt 95 on the Florida border that had sun following solar cells to generate all of its electrical needs. In 5 years it was no longer working. This cost millions and gave back a few thousan dollars worth of solar energy.

I'm sorry if that sounded like a sales pitch, it was not intended as such. You asked specific valid questions, and I answered them with what I have, a business venture, not an experimental research platform. I can understand that this can be a bit confusing, but it comes back to basics. The quest for knowledge drives research, the quest for profit drives business.

We do use waste products to subsidize the price we pay farmers and keep cost controlled, and to also keep our production high enough that we do not need to divert too much acreage. And we have implemented a food/fuel/fallow cropping cycle to maintain food prduction and give the land the crop balance it needs to maintain productivity. I still have the ideals that led me when I was with USDA in research.

You are right on target with government subsidies. I hope this does not sound like another sales pitch, but the one thing that most impressed our investor was that there were no incentives shown in the financials, just a footnote that there would be additional variable revenue from government incentives as long as they remained in effect.

I am not a fan of coal for now, but prefer it to Nuclear, unelss the reactor is in a submarine suspended in its own coolant below the wave interaction depth and safe from earthquake or tsunami. The electricity, distilled water and salt brine need to be brougnt ashore where Phosphate Fertilzers and other inorganic industrial chemicals can be refined from the brine.

It is interesting that you should mention algae. The researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute attempted to sequester CO2 by triggering the bloom of phytoplankton by applying low levels of fertilizer. There was significant reduction in CO2 initially, but then the grazers moved in and ate the phytoplankton, releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere. I would like to re-run the experiment, and harvest the phytoplankton for ethanol production on a ship like the whaling fleet the Japanese use. An Island nation should be able to make its own fuel supply without having to use precious land resources.

Sugarcane ethanol is still made primarily from the cane juice or molasses. If they were using a cellulose process they would not be burnng up 16% (40% of the crop is burned, containing 40% cellulose) of the cellulose that they grow. Given that they burn up that much, the rest of the bagasse is needed to burn in the boilers to make electricity and provide process heat. There is nothing in the US that prevents them from making ethanol, just get licensed as either a commercial fuel or beverage producer.

Not sure how phytoplankton would be beneficial in cellulosic ethanol production as they have nearly no cellulose for cellulosic ethanol production. I can see the application to biodeisel production well enough. Plus that is not carbon sequestration, just releases when the fuel is burned relatively rapidly after production. If you wanted to capture and sequester carbon, you would collect the phytoplankton, dry it, and bury it somewhere deep underground, possibly in old mines where coal or oil had been removed. I a few million years you might get some kind of oil back out of it.

I am not so confident in processing phosphate fertilizers from Brine, particularly since theconcentrations of phosphates are so low in relation to the other constituents of brine all of which have to be removed and energy devoted to their removal. As you should be aware phosphates are the limiting nutrient in natural waters, and in ocean water they are limiting along with iron. Seems to me that it is more cost effective to continue mining phosphates from rocks than from the ocean.

Making cellulosic ethanol from waste is a good idea, as long as it doesn't move into independent agricultural production in the field for the purpose of ethanol production. Use of waste is passive, competing with food production for resources is not. There are tons of material wastes out there that could be used from things like orchards, grape vineyards, cotton, all of which remove huge quantities of cellulosic waste annually, and typically burn them in some secret back corner away from air boards and EPA accidental direct observation (air boards try not to notice to closely unless it is right at the roadway that many people travel by). However, removing 100,000s of acres of land from food production, or using the water 10,000s of acre feet of agricultural water for fuel production just impacts the food markets. Anyone working for the USDA in research would already know this balance of agricultural competitions, as NRCS is part of the USDA. There is also a risk of demands exceeding capacity of the growth medium and water supply to support. If there is a market demand, and money, farmer will try to stretch their land productivity a little more, this elads to dust bowl effects like you see in places like China, or the midwest in the 1930s, especially if markets rise and collapse rapidly like they did in Wheat futures in the 1930s.

We got off the subject a little. I worked on a coal gasification pilot plant during the Carter era. Guess what the design was based on, German plants that are still being used in South Africa. The inefficiency of coal gasification made the building of the full sized plant impossible. The coal gasification is only useful where there is no natural gas available. The energy costs otherwise are much too high. Coal gas was common in much of Europe during the last world war. It was phased out along with coal diesel as soon as the real thing became available. Burning of algae and other green plants is not energy efficient unless the material is dried and compressed (very energy intensive). Transporting uncompressed plant waste is inefficient because the very low density of the material. The same is true of the heating value Btu/cubic foot. In Cuba and Brazil the ethanol is derived from the sugarcane juice, and the plant which is already dry, baggage, is burnt to distill the finished product from the wort. That is why their ethanol is much cheaper than ours. But again the burning instead of composting the plant increases the need for fertilizers or depleting the soil of nutrients. So even using sugarcane has some drawbacks. The other thing is that they usually deforest areas to grow the stuff (the slash and burn is detrimental to the environment). We need to examine environmental impacts and sustainability of this type of energy source before we use them.

Do not forget that we, by using ethanol are causing food riots, starvation, deforestation, we are polluting the rivers with insecticides and fertilizer, wasting our precious water, to do what? I have seen the proof that the energy that goes into producing ethanol, from diesel fuel used by the tractors and harvesters, by the plant that ferments the worth, by the distillation process, by the energy required to make the pesticides and fertilizer is more than the energy that we can get from ethanol. The only reason that it is used in the US is because of government subsidies for the farmers and the ethanol plants. Please investigate in detail before singing the praises of one of the most idiotic things that we are perpetrating on humanity. How many died today so we can drive a few thousand miles with 15% ethanol in our cars?

I have two questions here. 1) What is the byproduct of using ethanol as a fuel? 2) What happened to hydrogen as a fuel? I remember that the only byproduct of using hydrogen was pure water. Drawback was storage like propane. I saw a tank filled with hydrogen that was shot with a rifle and produced no explosion. Big hype a few years ago and since then nothing. What went wrong? Cost production or just production itself?

1) What is the byproduct of using ethanol as a fuel?

CO2, water vapor, a trace of NOx, a trace of VOC (from the film of lubricating oil coating the inside of the cylinder. Adding gasoline increases the combustion temperature, VOC and NOx. The CO2 is absorbed by plants near the roadway along with the water vapor, and converted back to carbohydrate in photosynthesis, thus storing solar energy in solid form without appreciably raising the temperature, and initiating the food chain all over again as animals feed on the plants. Some of the NOx reacts with water to form nitrates and nitrites (depending on the specific oxide formed) used as fertilizer by the plants.

2) What happened to hydrogen as a fuel?

primarily the weight of the fuel tank to store it and the expense of the materials to adsorb it to reduce the pressure and thus the weight of the tank. There is currently research in progress to develop a direct ethanol fuel cell that will split off the 5 H atoms bound to carbon at a lower energy than the H bound to Oxygen. That will probably be the next major fuel development with the current designs coming out for electric hybrids running on electricity generated by turbines burning 130 proof ethanol making a solid transition vehicle ready to use the DEFC with little modification.

Hydrogen is made from natural gas. You might as well save the production cost and the cost of the Hydronen electric generator and burn the natural gas in your engine as many airport busses in the US and taxies and busses in Japan and Korea do.

Do not forget that we, by using ethanol are causing food riots, starvation, deforestation, we are polluting the rivers with insecticides and fertilizer, wasting our precious water, to do what? I have seen the proof that the energy that goes into producing ethanol, from diesel fuel used by the tractors and harvesters, by the plant that ferments the worth, by the distillation process, by the energy required to make the pesticides and fertilizer is more than the energy that we can get from ethanol.

Excuse me, what part of CELLULOSIC do you not understand? NOT GUILTY on all points. Did you not read that the Secretary General of the UN specifically declared that the use of CORN to make fuel ethanol was a crime against humanity? We do not cause food riots or reduce the production of food, do not cause starvation, in fact, just the opposite, since our price is below the price of gasoline, our customers have more money for food. And what is this poppycock about pesticides? Have you seen any cellulose feedstocks growing? Most of them do not have any pesticides labelled for use on them in the US. And Please do not use herbicides on my cellulose crop, I can use anything that grows, so we have nothing that qualifies as a weed. Go back to the basic definition of a weed: any plant growing where it is not wanted. Roses and Gardenias are weeds when growing in a wheat field. Anything growing in my biomass crop is just more biomass. You seem to be hung up on that professor who blew the whistle on corn.

The last time I worked on a dairy farm we used fertalizer even for the hay. To use your dafinition, as soon as you want it a weed becomes a crop.