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Leanan
News Editor
Joined: May 20, 2004
Posts: 4533
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 Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:21 am Post subject: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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Fill 'er up with caramel
| Quote: | Leftover halloween candy might not seem like fuel for anything but dental cavities, but Xethanol, a firm based in New York City, may change that perception.
Since 2003, Xethanol has operated two Iowa plants that can cheaply distill a gasoline additive called ethanol from bizarre sources such as stale butterscotch candy. When technicians mix the sweets with a special form of yeast, fermentation results, producing ethanol. (Typically producers of ethanol derive the clean-burning, high-octane fuel from corn.) Big oil companies then combine it with unleaded gasoline to reduce the cost of gas and the air pollution it causes.
Xethanol isn't just relying on candy for its fuel supply. This year it plans to introduce a process that will make it possible to turn all kinds of things--including cornstalks, grass clippings, and old newspapers--into ethanol. If all goes as planned, 59-year-old CEO and founder Christopher d'Arnaud-Taylor projects revenues of $15 million this year, up from $2.5 million in 2005--and the first-ever profit for Xethanol (www.xethanol.com), which he started in 2000 and took public last February. "Where there's muck, there's money," he quips.
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emersonbiggins
Moderator
Joined: Jul 10, 2005
Posts: 5086
Location: Dallas
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:27 am Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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As Kunstler well-noted, it's as if we're turning towards eating our own excrement to gain the last bit of nutrition to run our car-based world for a few years longer. Sad, indeed. 
"Honey, what's for dinner?"
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"It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin |
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Leanan
News Editor
Joined: May 20, 2004
Posts: 4533
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:34 am Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| I have a feeling future generations are going to look back and be amazed that we burned food to power our vehicles. |
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me
Coal
Joined: Jan 28, 2006
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:40 am Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| To my knowledge Kunstler hasn't even commented on the potential of cellulosic ethanol. None of the PO Apocalyptic-types have. It is the BIG biofuel story.....But alas its too late, buy a gun, ger ready for soylent green.... |
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Dreamtwister
Fission
Joined: Feb 06, 2006
Posts: 2220
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:43 am Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| me wrote: | | To my knowledge Kunstler hasn't even commented on the potential of cellulosic ethanol. None of the PO Apocalyptic-types have. It is the BIG biofuel story.....But alas its too late, buy a gun, ger ready for soylent green.... |
Ok...Where are you going to grow the feedstock? There's something like 700 million cars on the road worldwide. That's an aweful lot of switchgrass. |
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me
Coal
Joined: Jan 28, 2006
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:45 am Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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That just it....Cellulosic doesn't take land out of agricultural production AND the enrgy input-output ratio is higher than for corn.... Do a search....we're talking agricultural waste-products including grasses, woodchips, etc....
Read up on it @ Renewableenergyaccess..... |
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emersonbiggins
Moderator
Joined: Jul 10, 2005
Posts: 5086
Location: Dallas
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:50 am Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| me wrote: | | To my knowledge Kunstler hasn't even commented on the potential of cellulosic ethanol. None of the PO Apocalyptic-types have. It is the BIG biofuel story.....But alas its too late, buy a gun, ger ready for soylent green.... |
Your browser apparently doesn't have a 'search' function. Cellulosic ethanol has been discussed in two or three threads on this forum this week alone. Kunstler's comment, in The Long Emergency, was about a perceived gradual shift towards a thermal depolymerization panacea cure for PO. Running the motoring utopia off of grass clippings & old newspapers is a pretty close match, I'd say.
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"It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin |
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me
Coal
Joined: Jan 28, 2006
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:54 am Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| Cellulosic conversion is not the same technology as thermal depolymerization....it involves one of two processes, either enzymatic hydrolysis or acis hydrolysis... Do your own search, wiseass |
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emersonbiggins
Moderator
Joined: Jul 10, 2005
Posts: 5086
Location: Dallas
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 12:01 pm Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| me wrote: | | Cellulosic conversion is not the same technology as thermal depolymerization....it involves one of two processes, either enzymatic hydrolysis or acis hydrolysis... Do your own search, wiseass |
I know the difference. There is no difference in the projected input, though. As if stacks of grass clippings and newspapers are just out there for the taking...
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"It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin |
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Eli
Fusion
Joined: Jun 18, 2005
Posts: 3909
Location: In a van down by the river
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:25 pm Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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What disturbs me the most with all this talk about alternatives is the complete lack of discusion about rethinking our transport system and no real talk about conservation.
We are addicted to oil but we are not talking seriously about cutting back on our habit, it is all about other stuff that will get us high too. |
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Chicken_Little
Heavy Crude
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Joined: Mar 10, 2005
Posts: 283
Location: Airstrip 1
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 6:13 pm Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| me wrote: | That just it....Cellulosic doesn't take land out of agricultural production AND the enrgy input-output ratio is higher than for corn.... Do a search....we're talking agricultural waste-products including grasses, woodchips, etc....
Read up on it @ Renewableenergyaccess..... |
what agricultural process produces grasses as a waste product? |
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Revi
Fusion
Joined: Apr 25, 2005
Posts: 3260
Location: Maine
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 6:24 pm Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| There's no excess anything. If you use all the grass to make gasoline you are impoverishing the soil. There's and old saying, the grain is for the farmer and the straw is for the soil. There's no way we can turn our forests and farmlands into car fuel and not pay a price in progressively lower harvests some time in the future. We need to eat more than we need to drive around. |
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MonteQuest
Elite
Joined: Sep 06, 2004
Posts: 13460
Location: Sedona, Arizona
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 9:22 pm Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| Eli wrote: | What disturbs me the most with all this talk about alternatives is the complete lack of discusion about rethinking our transport system and no real talk about conservation.
We are addicted to oil but we are not talking seriously about cutting back on our habit, it is all about other stuff that will get us high too. |
Therein lies the rub: We cannot continue to do what we do, but just less so. Conservation can be a bridge to a steady state economy, but studies I have read point to a 25% conservation effort being eclipsed by population growth alone in 13 years. Conservation under our current model only postpones, then accelerates and excaerbates the pain of correction back to an equillibrium.
Conservation is also a self-induced recession as somebody has to absorb the loss in economic activity.
Yes, we should have a big discussion on a shift from long-haul trucking to rail and mass transit to ease the need for private autos. But next time you go out in rush hour traffic, think about the scale of that change.
Most solutions are focused short-term; how can I get my mine while the getting is stll somewhat good?
Cutting back on the habit does little if you don't plan on kicking it in the end. 
And Revi is right; in nature there is no such thing as waste. Burning soil nutrients for engine fuel just makes us more dependent upon inorganic fertilizers.
Roscoe Bartlett on C-Span yesterday:
| Quote: | The other caution is, how much biomass can we take from our land and still have topsoil? With all of our good techniques today, no till farming and so forth, every bushel of corn we grow in Iowa is accompanied by three bushels of topsoil that go down the Mississippi River.
Now, topsoil is topsoil, rather than subsoil simply because it has organic matter in it. And that organic matter, the humus comes from decaying organic material. And if you are taking all that organic material off to burn or to ferment or whatever you are going to do with it, I am not certain how long we can maintain the quality of our topsoil so that we can continue to produce the food and fiber that we need and that the world needs. |
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Last edited by MonteQuest on Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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aflatoxin
Heavy Crude
Joined: Jul 31, 2005
Posts: 258
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 9:31 pm Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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When it comes to combustion, if you follow the energy trail. it's ALL solar energy
Does not matter is it's coal, oil, tar sands, ethanol, firewood, or whatever. A storage device is a battery, log, a bushel of corn, a gallon of diesel, or whatever. Photosynthesis turns CO2 into carbohydrates=>hydrocarbons, eventually these become our fuels. The only important difference is how many calories of sunlight we can turn into calories of fuel. Then the next step involves efficiency of use. That is a bigger problem IMHO.
Too many people with too many cars. |
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Novus
Light Sweet Crude
Joined: Jun 21, 2005
Posts: 1702
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject: Re: Making gasoline out of sugar |
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| I read somewhere that we burn up several hundred years worth of stored sunlight every DAY. |
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