Is Centrino brand all that strong?

[Robert Redelmeier]

The funny thing about windpower, to me, is that it has
divided the greens.

It _is_ ironic. Many windfarms are nuisances:
eyesores, noisy and lethal to birds.

The corrosion is a minor part of the difficulties of
ethanol - the stuff is very hygroscopic and the mixing
problems with petroleum are a nightmare.

All can be dealt with. Brazil does, and we do in some
mid-West states. The real problem is that very little
of any biomass can be fermented to ethanol--only the starch.
We need more efficient cellulases that can hydrolyze the
B-glucoside linkages in cellulose.

As for hydrogen, I just don't see that it works at all as
a transportation fuel, without some major rule-breaking
technology.

There are already a fair number (~1000) hydrogen powered
vehicles world-wide. Most use high pressure storage. A few use
cryogenic. A bigger problem is moving & generating the stuff.
Normal industrial hydrogen generation (steam methane reforming)
releases _lots_ of CO2 to the atmosphere, and hydrolysis is rather
inefficent and needs a clean source of electricity (nuclear?!?).

-- Robert

 

[Robert Myers]

The funny thing about windpower, to me, is that it has divided the greens.
It's more developed in Europe in general and especially in a few "pockets"
like Denmark and Netherlands; there are several *BIG* projects in the
discussion stages - the usual NIMBY and "nature-greens" are raising a
stink.

There are scientific studies which say that it's just not viable and one
does wonder about the economics of power generation in general - it *could*
be that the fill-in and peak coverage required, usually from gas turbines,
is actually more polluting/wasteful than just running a running as we are.
I know that it wouldn't work here in NJ and surrounding states - we get
maybe 10 days a year with enough wind to do anything useful. The only wind
farm I've actually seen had all its turbines sitting stationary for several
days - so wasteful... and fugly.


The corrosion is a minor part of the difficulties of ethanol - the stuff is
very hygroscopic and the mixing problems with petroleum are a nightmare.
As for hydrogen, I just don't see that it works at all as a transportation
fuel, without some major rule-breaking technology.

I brought up the oil thing as an example of the futility of trying to
figure out the future of technology. I disagree with your assessment
of biofuels, but no one will really know until it is actually done.

Keith's attitude (smooth transitions only) has the advantage that you
don't get making foolish predictions, unless, of course, events make
an abrupt transition for you (all the people who were still in the
whale oil business when it was made obsolete by kerosene).

As to wind power, you can easily find maps of where the good stuff is.
Like I said, North and South Dakota. There's a thing going on here
about a wind farm near (gasp) Cape Cod. Not in front of my mansion!

The whole exercise makes Intel's planning around Itanium look cautious
and wise. The best and the brightest have repeatedly gotten
everything embarrassingly wrong. Meanwhile, the cost of finding new
oil is at a post-1974 low (about $5/bbl, if I recall correctly)--that
means people don't drill many dry holes, not that new oil is all that
easy to find.

RM

 

[Robert Myers]

It _is_ ironic. Many windfarms are nuisances:
eyesores, noisy and lethal to birds.


All can be dealt with. Brazil does, and we do in some
mid-West states. The real problem is that very little
of any biomass can be fermented to ethanol--only the starch.
We need more efficient cellulases that can hydrolyze the
B-glucoside linkages in cellulose.

Brazil has gotten pretty shrewd about managing its sugar harvest.

The best friends that biofuels have are congressmen and senators from
agricultural states--another reason I think biofuels have a plausible
future.

There are already a fair number (~1000) hydrogen powered
vehicles world-wide. Most use high pressure storage. A few use
cryogenic. A bigger problem is moving & generating the stuff.
Normal industrial hydrogen generation (steam methane reforming)
releases _lots_ of CO2 to the atmosphere, and hydrolysis is rather
inefficent and needs a clean source of electricity (nuclear?!?).

The rule-breaking technologies are nuclear-power and a fuel cell
membrane that we're going to have real soon now. The darling of the
national labs. As unkillable as an athlete's foot infection.

RM

 

[George Macdonald]

It _is_ ironic. Many windfarms are nuisances:
eyesores, noisy and lethal to birds.


All can be dealt with. Brazil does, and we do in some
mid-West states. The real problem is that very little
of any biomass can be fermented to ethanol--only the starch.
We need more efficient cellulases that can hydrolyze the
B-glucoside linkages in cellulose.

Yes I know it's being used fairly widely in some small %age currently and
mainly to satisfy oxygenate content regulations - possibly you are not
aware of all the resulting problems: the mix can not go in a pipeline; it
can't be stored for any length of time, mixing generally being done into
the final delivery vehicle and the broken engines *are* real - even small
amounts of water and you lose octane *big* time. As already mentioned the
mid-west FFT boondoggle is just Daschle's pork barrel.

I've already mentioned scale and I hardly think the auto business in Brazil
can be compared with that of the U.S. There are a lot of inconsistent
studies/numbers floating around on the energy balance of fermentation fuels
- hard to know whom to believe but there are some fundamentals which can't
be ignored, like acreage required vs. car-population density, ultimate
efficiency (even an optimistic 50% loss seems on the high side for
viability to me) and what you do when you have a low yield of
corn/bio-mass, for whatever reason. I also don't think there are many
places in Brazil which have the temperature extremes we have in the
northern states, which contributes significantly to the storage problems.

There are already a fair number (~1000) hydrogen powered
vehicles world-wide. Most use high pressure storage. A few use
cryogenic. A bigger problem is moving & generating the stuff.
Normal industrial hydrogen generation (steam methane reforming)
releases _lots_ of CO2 to the atmosphere, and hydrolysis is rather
inefficent and needs a clean source of electricity (nuclear?!?).

Of course they exist; the fact is that they are not economically viable and
unless we get the major breakthroughs already mentioned they never will
be... cryogenic storage in a vehicle (-240°C) is absurd. I've already
harped on about the storage and portability. There is also storage in an
adsorption slurry [magnesium hydride is one] but again not very
practical... the disposal problem as just one example. While the
fundamental research could be valuable, producing vehicles at this stage is
just a waste of the energy which is supposedly so precious - the pollution
balance is even less convincing.

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

- possibly you are not aware of all the resulting problems:

I am _more_ than aware enough. I work in the research/tech
support center of a major oil company.

the mix can not go in a pipeline;

Doh! Why would you want to, since many locations don't need it.
Especially into the big pipelines (Colonial & Plantation), the
rule is fungible only, unadditized.

it can't be stored for any length of time,

Doh! You can't store regular gasoline all that long either.
It _does_ contain up to ~10% olefins.

mixing generally being done into the final delivery vehicle

As are many additives. Perfectly good so long as it's done
ratably, inline. No bucket dosing, please!

and the broken engines *are* real - even small amounts of

Engines break every day. Why not blame the fuel?

water and you lose octane *big* time.

IIRC the BRON of ethanol is ~130. At 2% that's 0.8 number on
91 fuel. Frankly, there are bigger problems. It's very easy
to plug FI filters. Many people in the ethanol-mandate areas
add various gasoline antifreezes, often containing methanol.

As already mentioned the mid-west FFT boondoggle is just
Daschle's pork barrel.

Fully agreed.

I've already mentioned scale and I hardly think the auto
business in Brazil can be compared with that of the U.S.

Of course it can be compared. It's about 1/4 the size,
but has been running 10% ethanol for 30+ years.

in Brazil which have the temperature extremes we have in

No, it's hot & humid all the time.

the northern states, which contributes significantly to
the storage problems.

Underground is remarkably constant temperature. And anyone
seriously storing fuels ought to have a drier on the vent,
if not full gas blanketting. Tank breathing is the big
problem with temperature changes.

Of course they exist; the fact is that they are
not economically viable and unless we get the major
breakthroughs already mentioned they never will be

Economic viability can be reached different ways. Reduced cost
would be nice, but increased alternative cost is far more likely.
What happens when crude oil creeps to $100/bbl or higher?

cryogenic storage in a vehicle (-240'C) is absurd.

Hardly. Dewars and send the boil-off through fuel-cells for
keep-warm, battery charging or back-into-grid. Probably best
suited for large, high-duty-cycle vehicles like busses (of
which there will be many more).

[magnesium hydride is one] but again not very practical... the
disposal problem as just one example.

I _love_ to dispose of magnesium!

While the fundamental research could be valuable, producing
vehicles at this stage is just a waste of the energy which
is supposedly so precious - the pollution balance is even
less convincing.

There are lots of practical problems that can only be discovered
with fleet testing. This _is_ fundamental (engineering) research.

-- Robert

 

[Rob Stow]

- possibly you are not aware of all the resulting problems:

I am _more_ than aware enough. I work in the research/tech
support center of a major oil company.

the mix can not go in a pipeline;

Doh! Why would you want to, since many locations don't need it.
Especially into the big pipelines (Colonial & Plantation), the
rule is fungible only, unadditized.

it can't be stored for any length of time,

Doh! You can't store regular gasoline all that long either.
It _does_ contain up to ~10% olefins.

mixing generally being done into the final delivery vehicle

As are many additives. Perfectly good so long as it's done
ratably, inline. No bucket dosing, please!

and the broken engines *are* real - even small amounts of

Engines break every day. Why not blame the fuel?

water and you lose octane *big* time.

IIRC the BRON of ethanol is ~130. At 2% that's 0.8 number on
91 fuel. Frankly, there are bigger problems. It's very easy
to plug FI filters. Many people in the ethanol-mandate areas
add various gasoline antifreezes, often containing methanol.

As already mentioned the mid-west FFT boondoggle is just
Daschle's pork barrel.

Fully agreed.

I've already mentioned scale and I hardly think the auto
business in Brazil can be compared with that of the U.S.

Of course it can be compared. It's about 1/4 the size,
but has been running 10% ethanol for 30+ years.

in Brazil which have the temperature extremes we have in

No, it's hot & humid all the time.

the northern states, which contributes significantly to
the storage problems.

Underground is remarkably constant temperature. And anyone
seriously storing fuels ought to have a drier on the vent,
if not full gas blanketting. Tank breathing is the big
problem with temperature changes.

Of course they exist; the fact is that they are
not economically viable and unless we get the major
breakthroughs already mentioned they never will be

Economic viability can be reached different ways. Reduced cost
would be nice, but increased alternative cost is far more likely.
What happens when crude oil creeps to $100/bbl or higher?

cryogenic storage in a vehicle (-240'C) is absurd.

Hardly. Dewars and send the boil-off through fuel-cells for
keep-warm, battery charging or back-into-grid. Probably best
suited for large, high-duty-cycle vehicles like busses (of
which there will be many more).

[magnesium hydride is one] but again not very practical... the
disposal problem as just one example.

I _love_ to dispose of magnesium!

While the fundamental research could be valuable, producing
vehicles at this stage is just a waste of the energy which
is supposedly so precious - the pollution balance is even
less convincing.

There are lots of practical problems that can only be discovered
with fleet testing. This _is_ fundamental (engineering) research.

Vehicle production is needed now even if for no other reason to
demonstrate to investors - whether governments, venture
capitalists, or shareholders - that progress is being made. Just
who the heck do you think is paying for that "fundamental
research" ? Merely publishing research results in journals
ain't gonna do the job when you need to stoke investor interest.

Also, having a few demo cars on the road today goes a long ways
towards preparing the public for the possibility that such cars
will be common in the future. If the public has been thinking
and talking about hydrogen powered cars for 20 years before such
cars become readily available there won't be so much skepticism
of a new gee-whiz technology to overcome when/if that day finally
arrives.

 

[George Macdonald]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 17:57:33 GMT, Robert Redelmeier

You know it makes awful difficult to have a normal Usenet discourse when
the other party clips sentences & paras down to bite sized chunks...
conversation equivalent would be talking over someone who's trying to have
a two-way exchange... but maybe that was your intention?;-) Quite honestly
I don't have the time to re-dissect such a mess and won't again.

I am _more_ than aware enough. I work in the research/tech
support center of a major oil company.

Out of the closet huh? Many years ago I worked for the Technical
Research Dept of a major too... fuels & then lubes. In fact at one time I
was involved in an investigation as to why the ethanol was disappearing
from the mix. Short of sending down specialized equipment -- what we have
today was not available -- to the bottom of the depot pump/storage tank...
we couldn't find an answer; normal bottom-sampling showed no water. The
chief chemist proposed various possible scenarios but bottom line: we never
found out... but lab testing showed no sign of alcohol after a few days.

Doh! Why would you want to, since many locations don't need it.
Especially into the big pipelines (Colonial & Plantation), the
rule is fungible only, unadditized.

There are a lot of places which use ethanol mix now -- it's certainly
pretty big in volume -- and a lot of different pipelines. My info is that
ethanol, quite recently, was mixed in in the product tank, at least by some
producers, but the practice was changed -- the pipeline transfer of gasohol
*has* been tried with disastrous results.

Doh! You can't store regular gasoline all that long either.
It _does_ contain up to ~10% olefins.

By your statement above you must know, it's relative: in fact olefin
content is getting near-zero in many places due to regulations and the
enhanced stability is quite obvious. My own observation is that, whereas,
at one time, gasoline would not last in a lawnmower tank more than 3 mnths
max, it now happily lasts 9 months... without any signs of "gum" formation
- I have a chemist's trained nose. The water uptake and eventual
separation -- taking most of the ethanol with it -- can happen in days.

As are many additives. Perfectly good so long as it's done
ratably, inline. No bucket dosing, please!

Ethanol is not really an additive - it's more of a "blending agent" and the
political msg is that ethanol global volume can/should be increased...
implying to me higher %age mixes to come.

Engines break every day. Why not blame the fuel?

The effect is easily explainable... and I did *not* say this was to blame
for every broken engine

IIRC the BRON of ethanol is ~130. At 2% that's 0.8 number on
91 fuel. Frankly, there are bigger problems. It's very easy
to plug FI filters. Many people in the ethanol-mandate areas
add various gasoline antifreezes, often containing methanol.

AFAICT, close: ethanol seems to vary from 120-135 BRON & 95-106 BMON,
depending on what you mix it with but there are err, "variations" in the
data. I'm sure the refiners would be delighted to find a HC blendstock
with a BRON of 130 and might get quite alarmed if its effect was
disappearing en-route; even at your 2% value, and assuming linear response,
Weights & Measures could get quite interested too and at 10% it's getting
extremely serious.

On antifreeze/methanol, your point is?...: methanol is the worst of the
"gas-line" antifreezes - almost totally ineffective in the target
climate/season and has a higher solvent effect on gaskets; isopropanol
(99.9% obviously) is the best but even there the relative solubility in HCs
vs. water is pretty poor - IOW you need to use a lot of it if there's water
in the tank/lines. FWIS I'm afraid most people use it as a corrective
rather than preventative.

Fully agreed.


Of course it can be compared. It's about 1/4 the size,
but has been running 10% ethanol for 30+ years.

I disagree - the car-population density vs. acreage available is no
comparison at all. It's also one of the umm, busted economies.

No, it's hot & humid all the time.

IOW no problem.

Underground is remarkably constant temperature. And anyone
seriously storing fuels ought to have a drier on the vent,
if not full gas blanketting. Tank breathing is the big
problem with temperature changes.

There are lots of floating roof above-ground gasoline storage tanks. With
gasohol and small amounts of water + temp oscillations, there's a (one-way)
pumping effect on separation... and there's always some water present.
Pipelines, storage tanks, bulk plants, but especially many gas station and
car tanks are polluted with small amounts of water. Final products at the
refinery are close to saturated with water at fairly high temps.

This is a *known* problem; I'm surprised you seem to not know about it.

Economic viability can be reached different ways. Reduced cost
would be nice, but increased alternative cost is far more likely.
What happens when crude oil creeps to $100/bbl or higher?

We might get effective and fair rules/economics which encourage reduced
usage by that point... hopefully before. In many other countries they are
effectively already paying ~4 times what we pay in the U.S. at the pump so
that $100. might easily be supported; obviously, ultimately there's a
crisis point but that's not solved by a product which has a negative energy
balance.

Hardly. Dewars and send the boil-off through fuel-cells for
keep-warm, battery charging or back-into-grid. Probably best
suited for large, high-duty-cycle vehicles like busses (of
which there will be many more).

There's always special cases but then you have fragmentation of the fuels
market... i.e. new inefficiencies... which I'm sure will be paid for by
govt., IOW taxes. If you think that hydrogen, high pressure and cryogenics
are viable for personal auto and can fit into something resembling current
inrastructure, I give up - they'll have to show you.

[magnesium hydride is one] but again not very practical... the
disposal problem as just one example.

I _love_ to dispose of magnesium!

While the fundamental research could be valuable, producing
vehicles at this stage is just a waste of the energy which
is supposedly so precious - the pollution balance is even
less convincing.

There are lots of practical problems that can only be discovered
with fleet testing. This _is_ fundamental (engineering) research.

No that's the prototyping/sampling stage - what we are seeing at the moment
is just politically driven - it's much too early to be out of the
experimental lab IMO.

 

[George Macdonald]

Vehicle production is needed now even if for no other reason to
demonstrate to investors - whether governments, venture
capitalists, or shareholders - that progress is being made. Just
who the heck do you think is paying for that "fundamental
research" ? Merely publishing research results in journals
ain't gonna do the job when you need to stoke investor interest.

When the fuel itself cannot be produced with a good positive energy balance
it's just too early - you might as well pursue encapsulating & harvesting
dung heaps. Producing vehicles for sale which actually increase energy
waste is madness; the auto mfrs all have access to excellent facilities for
testing their Frankenstein inventions without "field testing".

Also, having a few demo cars on the road today goes a long ways
towards preparing the public for the possibility that such cars
will be common in the future. If the public has been thinking
and talking about hydrogen powered cars for 20 years before such
cars become readily available there won't be so much skepticism
of a new gee-whiz technology to overcome when/if that day finally
arrives.

You mean prepare/condition them for the day when they can no longer afford
personal transportation! I believe that 20 years is much too short a time
frame for all the current "alternative" fuels.

 

[Robert Myers]

We might get effective and fair rules/economics which encourage reduced
usage by that point... hopefully before. In many other countries they are
effectively already paying ~4 times what we pay in the U.S. at the pump so
that $100. might easily be supported; obviously, ultimately there's a
crisis point but that's not solved by a product which has a negative energy
balance.

Other countries charge more for gasoline through higher taxes. They
don't have the U.S. constitution with two senators per state, no
matter how sparsely populated. People in sparsely-populated states
drive longer distances on average than in densely-populated states and
take a very dim view of European-style taxation of gasoline.

I have a chart that shows as a function of publication date estimates
of the net energy balance of ethanol published over the last thirty
years. Some estimates are negative, but but both the mean and the
slope are positive.

The net energy balance is not, in any case, the crucial figure of
merit, because we don't have an energy crisis. We have a serious
national security concern about depedence on transportation fuel from
politically-unreliable suppliers.

If producing ethanol inevitably resulted in net reduced available
transportation fuel, it would, indeed be silly to pursue it (unless,
as I think you believe is happening, someone is trying to create a
farm subsidy boondoggle). Heat to distill ethanol, one concern you
mentioned, could come from coal or municipal waste. In terms of the
national security concerns we really do have, it matters only if, as a
result of using, say, coal, to distill ethanol, we wind up imorting
more oil.

RM

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

You mean prepare/condition them for the day when they can
no longer afford personal transportation!

This most certainly is coming.

I believe that 20 years is much too short a time frame for
all the current "alternative" fuels.

It may be, we shall see. Most likely, unconventional petroleum
will be explored first.

-- Robert

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

You know it makes awful difficult to have a normal Usenet
discourse when the other party clips sentences & paras down to
bite sized chunks... conversation equivalent would be talking
over someone who's trying to have a two-way exchange... but
maybe that was your intention?;-)

No, my intention was to avoid being long-winded and not quote
more than new content, per RFC 1855.

to the bottom of the depot pump/storage tank... we couldn't find
an answer; normal bottom-sampling showed no water. The chief

Tank floors shift. And those little cup draws don't work
very well. Unless solvent, blanketted or hot, I assume all
tanks have water at the bottom. We often produce "extra dry"
products because we know they pick up some water en-route.

My info is that ethanol, quite recently, was mixed in
in the product tank, at least by some producers, but the
practice was changed -- the pipeline transfer of gasohol
*has* been tried with disastrous results.

Predictably disastrous results.

in fact olefin content is getting near-zero in many places due
to regulations and the enhanced stability is quite obvious.

The regs aren't that tight. But some places, some grades
and some blends have very little olefins.

The water uptake and eventual separation -- taking most of
the ethanol with it -- can happen in days.

When exposed to humid air flow, certainly.

AFAICT, close: ethanol seems to vary from 120-135 BRON &
95-106 BMON, depending on what you mix it with but there are
err, "variations" in the data. I'm sure the refiners would be
delighted to find a HC blendstock with a BRON of 130 and might

Toluene, but it's expensive. And BRON _is_ linear, with, err
"variations" depending on base.

I disagree - the car-population density vs. acreage available
is no comparison at all. It's also one of the umm, busted
economies.

Most of Brazil is undeveloped Amazon. Most of the car usage
is on the coast. And why aren't there interesting lessons?
It's more a more severe test given the lack of development.

There are lots of floating roof above-ground gasoline
storage tanks. With gasohol and small amounts of water +
temp oscillations, there's a (one-way) pumping effect on
separation... and there's always some water present.

Floating roof for gasohol? Madness if there's any rain around.
The seals leak. Large storage tanks don't react quickly
(daily) to temperature change -- too much heat in the oil.
There is a water-solubility "pumping" effect with temperature,
but usually atmospheric breathing from diurnal (&other)
temperature variations is the problem in fixed roof.

Final products at the refinery are close to saturated with
water at fairly high temps.

It depends _entirely_ on the refinery & process. If you
run cheap stream strippers without driers, you deserve
what you get -- wet products.

In many other countries they are effectively already
paying ~4 times what we pay in the U.S. at the pump so
that $100. might easily be supported;

No, I don't think it will be easily supported. Many
people will have to cut back personal transportation.

obviously, ultimately there's a crisis point but that's
not solved by a product which has a negative energy balance.

I'm not sure there's such a discontinuity. And every
fuel (or use of stored energy) has a negative energy
balance. Some are less inefficent than others, and
the location of that inefficiency changes.

There's always special cases but then you have fragmentation
of the fuels market... i.e. new inefficiencies... which I'm
sure will be paid for by govt., IOW taxes.

All costs are carried by the people because there really
is no-one else who can pay. Corps & govt are pass-thru.
The people will pay either through taxes (generally
undesireably) or through higher prices.

-- Robert

 

[chrisv]

I _love_ to dispose of magnesium!

Just be sure to be wearing your welding goggles... 8)

 

[George Macdonald]

The regs aren't that tight. But some places, some grades
and some blends have very little olefins.

I thought that Calif. had banned unsaturates completely and some north
eastern states are/have adopted Calif. regs.

When exposed to humid air flow, certainly.

I believe it's due more to temp oscillations... *with* the concomitant
increased humidity at the higher temp.

Toluene, but it's expensive. And BRON _is_ linear, with, err
"variations" depending on base.

Toluene has a RON power equivalent of ~122 IIRC but in blending it
generally comes out at about 110 or so from what I've read and yes it *is*
expensive. Gasoline blending response is basically non-linear; different
companies have different ways of dealing with the non-linearity in their
models - one company I worked for used approximations called RBNs. BRON is
just one way of dealing with it, though the elimination of Pb helped to
simplify things.

Floating roof for gasohol? Madness if there's any rain around.
The seals leak. Large storage tanks don't react quickly
(daily) to temperature change -- too much heat in the oil.
There is a water-solubility "pumping" effect with temperature,
but usually atmospheric breathing from diurnal (&other)
temperature variations is the problem in fixed roof.

OK so floating roof tanks have to be scrapped!... new storage medium.
But there's so much of the channel which is out of control of the producer.

It depends _entirely_ on the refinery & process. If you
run cheap stream strippers without driers, you deserve
what you get -- wet products.

I think the "tea-kettles" are pretty much all gone now. The fact is that
any HC product is difficult to keep dry - put it through the normal
distribution channels and it gets wet.

No, I don't think it will be easily supported. Many
people will have to cut back personal transportation.

Define "easily". The price (with the taxes) is supported in other places.
Before the more recent excesses, the US was much closer to petroleum
self-sufficiency - a little motivation would go a long way. Those "people"
had better get used to the future reduced availability of personal
transportation.

I'm not sure there's such a discontinuity. And every
fuel (or use of stored energy) has a negative energy
balance. Some are less inefficent than others, and
the location of that inefficiency changes.

Sounds like waffle to me - obviously petroleum is self sustaining in its
implementation of the energy balance. The fact is that hydrogen's energy
balance is just so far out of whack that to me the current folklore being
spread is a fraud.

All costs are carried by the people because there really
is no-one else who can pay. Corps & govt are pass-thru.
The people will pay either through taxes (generally
undesireably) or through higher prices.

But distorting the picture by running hugely inefficient, impractical govt.
financed vehicles to "prove that it works" is a fraudulent deceit.

 

[George Macdonald]

Other countries charge more for gasoline through higher taxes. They
don't have the U.S. constitution with two senators per state, no
matter how sparsely populated. People in sparsely-populated states
drive longer distances on average than in densely-populated states and
take a very dim view of European-style taxation of gasoline.

Yes - of course it's taxes, however: the US-global economic picture is
difficult to even estimate here, but the fact is that at $100./bbl we'd
only have a ~doubling of price at the pump compared to where we are now.
IOW it wouldn't be that big a deal *if* people were to be cajoled through
the price into choosing more efficient conventional IC-engine vehicles.
Would it get them out of their SUVs?... some of them yes.

As for the people who drive long distances, it's not only in sparsely
populated states - this is a direct result of the U.S. suburban
infrastructure. If things are bad enough with petroleum that we need to be
looking at bio-fuels, then that infrastructure becomes totally
impractical... IOW *BIG* changes are in store for us.

I have a chart that shows as a function of publication date estimates
of the net energy balance of ethanol published over the last thirty
years. Some estimates are negative, but but both the mean and the
slope are positive.

Yes but as I've already said, the numbers are all over the place.
Pimentel's "learned" study
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicles/8.23.01/Pimentel-ethanol.html has
been discredited on the (out of date) efficiency numbers but has some other
data which is reasonably accurate in the broad strokes of the practicality
of a corn/ethanol "implementation". I've no idea if, as many on the other
side have suggested, the man has been paid by petro-interests but the fact
is that bio-fuel "experts" are being paid too, by somebody... and they are
not above suspicion.

The net energy balance is not, in any case, the crucial figure of
merit, because we don't have an energy crisis. We have a serious
national security concern about depedence on transportation fuel from
politically-unreliable suppliers.

Look if what's termed EROI (Energy Returned On Investment: energy out :
energy in) is not >1 you're just pissing energy away - you need something
close to 2 to be able to do it and as for the scale... think about it. My
guess based on the "data" is that with ethanol it's 1.5 best case right
now. I *would* like to know how the efficiency enhancements were made
though - a change from ~.5 to ~1.5 is hard to understand. Note again that
ethanol is still made more efficiently presently from ethylene hydration,
by the petro-chemicals industry.

If producing ethanol inevitably resulted in net reduced available
transportation fuel, it would, indeed be silly to pursue it (unless,
as I think you believe is happening, someone is trying to create a
farm subsidy boondoggle). Heat to distill ethanol, one concern you
mentioned, could come from coal or municipal waste. In terms of the
national security concerns we really do have, it matters only if, as a
result of using, say, coal, to distill ethanol, we wind up imorting
more oil.

"Someone" already *has* created a farm subsidy boondoggle - that *is* what
I've been saying. As for coal, S. Africa found it more practical to make
HC fuels from it - it fit the downstream infrastructure. Either way you
*will* get "net reduced available transportation fuel".

Remember that in the early 80s, the US was at <30% dependence on imported
fuel - a much healthier situation. What happened there?<rhet.>

 

[Robert Myers]

Yes - of course it's taxes, however: the US-global economic picture is
difficult to even estimate here, but the fact is that at $100./bbl we'd
only have a ~doubling of price at the pump compared to where we are now.
IOW it wouldn't be that big a deal *if* people were to be cajoled through
the price into choosing more efficient conventional IC-engine vehicles.
Would it get them out of their SUVs?... some of them yes.

As for the people who drive long distances, it's not only in sparsely
populated states - this is a direct result of the U.S. suburban
infrastructure. If things are bad enough with petroleum that we need to be
looking at bio-fuels, then that infrastructure becomes totally
impractical... IOW *BIG* changes are in store for us.

Maybe, but I don't think so. There's really just too much energy out
there and too many ways to make it available.

If there is a surprise, it will be war, terrorism, or political
instability. I really don't believe that we will see tax policy used
to create a smooth transition from reliance on oil, so the transition
will be bumpy, but we'll make the transition one way or another.

Yes but as I've already said, the numbers are all over the place.
Pimentel's "learned" study
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicles/8.23.01/Pimentel-ethanol.html has
been discredited on the (out of date) efficiency numbers but has some other
data which is reasonably accurate in the broad strokes of the practicality
of a corn/ethanol "implementation". I've no idea if, as many on the other
side have suggested, the man has been paid by petro-interests but the fact
is that bio-fuel "experts" are being paid too, by somebody... and they are
not above suspicion.

Pimentel, as you know, has been the long pole in the tent. I don't
think there is anyone in the business without a motive. .

If you want to get fried, take a look at

http://egov.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/Biomass/docs/FORUM/EthanolEnergyBalance.pdf

I _think_ the claim is that the net energy balance of *gasoline* is
negative. It is such a hot topic, that the three-word,
highly-specific google search "ethanol energy balance" gets a thousand
hits.

Look if what's termed EROI (Energy Returned On Investment: energy out :
energy in) is not >1 you're just pissing energy away - you need something
close to 2 to be able to do it and as for the scale... think about it. My
guess based on the "data" is that with ethanol it's 1.5 best case right
now. I *would* like to know how the efficiency enhancements were made
though - a change from ~.5 to ~1.5 is hard to understand. Note again that
ethanol is still made more efficiently presently from ethylene hydration,
by the petro-chemicals industry.

By your argument and the "Ethanol Energy Balance" report, we should
all stop driving immediately. A g-man will drop by tomorrow to pick
up your keys. .

"Someone" already *has* created a farm subsidy boondoggle - that *is* what
I've been saying. As for coal, S. Africa found it more practical to make
HC fuels from it - it fit the downstream infrastructure. Either way you
*will* get "net reduced available transportation fuel".

I really don't see how you get this as a result. The actual
bookkeeping is hard. Markets keep track of dollars, not gallons or
joules, and I don't know how deeply we'll be into this before we know
what's really going on. I don't dispute the motives of the
agricultural lobby, but, just as with Pimentel, the existence of a
motive doesn't make the result wrong.

Remember that in the early 80s, the US was at <30% dependence on imported
fuel - a much healthier situation. What happened there?<rhet.>

Part of what happened is that OPEC--Saudi Arabia, in particular--got
smart. They realized that they had to keep the price of oil low
enough to keep renewables out of the market and to discourage
conservation. They have done admirably well. Why the U.S. sees what
is essentially manipulation as U.S. markets as a favor to the U.S. is
a mystery to me.

The modellers, as I said early on, really screwed up in 1974. So many
predictions turned out to be wrong and so much money was
lost--remember WPPS?--that the free marketeers had little trouble
carrying the argument that it was best to let the invisible hand do
the planning.

The problem with the invisible hand is that the current situation
really presents an unacceptable risk for national security.

RM

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

I thought that Calif. had banned unsaturates completely
and some north eastern states are/have adopted Calif. regs.

Are you kidding? Do you know how much octane that'd cost?
CA is 10%v max olefins, 4% average but negotiable under formulae.

I believe it's due more to temp oscillations... *with*

Fuel has a lot of heat capacity and doesn't swing much
except in small tanks.

the concomitant increased humidity at the higher temp.

If you look at the weather, there's very little change in
absolute humidity (lb water/lb dry air) over a day unless
it rains. The temperature and rel.humidity vary. Nighttime
usually hits dew.

OK so floating roof tanks have to be scrapped!

Certainly not! Just build a small ethanol tank and
injection pump.

I think the "tea-kettles" are pretty much all gone now.

Even the big boys still do wet treating. That will be
reduced with lo-sulfur, but not go away entirely.

Define "easily". The price (with the taxes)
is supported in other places.

You used easily first, my definition is many people will
need to cut back personal transportation. High prices
are supported in Europe & Japan because of denser housing
and developed public transportation infrastructure.
Also at a cost in time & arguably quality of life.

Before the more recent excesses, the US was much closer
to petroleum self-sufficiency - a little motivation
would go a long way.

50% is closer than 10%, but still isn't close enough to
cover without real pain.

Sounds like waffle to me - obviously petroleum is self
sustaining in its implementation of the energy balance.

No. It is selling the farm. Running the battery down.
More is not being made at any appreciable rate. We're living
off borrowed time. Oil won't run out, but will get expensive,
with serious consequences. Our major hope is to use the fossil
fuel legacy to springboard development beyond needing it.

-- Robert

 

[Robert Myers]

Yes I know it's being used fairly widely in some small %age currently and
mainly to satisfy oxygenate content regulations - possibly you are not
aware of all the resulting problems: the mix can not go in a pipeline; it
can't be stored for any length of time, mixing generally being done into
the final delivery vehicle and the broken engines *are* real - even small
amounts of water and you lose octane *big* time. As already mentioned the
mid-west FFT boondoggle is just Daschle's pork barrel.

I've already mentioned scale and I hardly think the auto business in Brazil
can be compared with that of the U.S. There are a lot of inconsistent
studies/numbers floating around on the energy balance of fermentation fuels
- hard to know whom to believe but there are some fundamentals which can't
be ignored, like acreage required vs. car-population density, ultimate
efficiency (even an optimistic 50% loss seems on the high side for
viability to me) and what you do when you have a low yield of
corn/bio-mass, for whatever reason.

From "Facing Some of the Hard Truths about Energy" by Lee R Raymond,
Chairman of Exxon-Mobil, Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, June 7, 2004:

"Currently ethanol from corn is neither an economic nor
energy-efficient choice, as it can require more energy to produce than
it generates in the end, land that would otherwise go to food crops or
forest cover."

"To give you some perspective, if we tried to replace just 10 percent
of the gasoline the US will use in 2020 with corn-based ethanol, we
would need to plant an area equivalent to Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio
[about one-sixth the land currently used in the US to grow crops]
solely to grow the grain needed as feedstock."

Your position is remarkably similar to the position of the Chairman of
Exxon Mobil. .

The oil equivalents of ethanol from cellulosic feedstock can be three
to seven times higher for the same acreage than ethanol from corn.
The land used for crops like switchgrass can be land that is
agriculturally marginal. The US only imports ten percent of its oil
from the Middle East. The net balance in available transportation
fuel, not energy, is the figure of merit that matters, and even the
energy balance claim by the chairman of Exxon-Mobil is disputed.

The same comments are available at

http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=624

The Sierra Club website mentions a problem with hydrogen I had not
heard before, which is that, once liberated from water, a significant
fraction will escape unburned into the atomsphere and thence into
space. We have the same problem with helium, a problem that is mostly
of concern to scientists who work at low temperatures.

RM

 

[George Macdonald]

Maybe, but I don't think so. There's really just too much energy out
there and too many ways to make it available.

Yeah you mean like free electricity from sunlight - dream on! All the easy
ways have been tried and there is no (once again) rule-breaking technology
in sight.

If there is a surprise, it will be war, terrorism, or political
instability. I really don't believe that we will see tax policy used
to create a smooth transition from reliance on oil, so the transition
will be bumpy, but we'll make the transition one way or another.

I was not hinting at tax policy - the price itself will do it... though
there are "figures" to show that we just pay the tax in a different way
from the other countries to support our gasoline habit.

Pimentel, as you know, has been the long pole in the tent. I don't
think there is anyone in the business without a motive. .

Are you saying you *know* that Pimentel has been paid by petro-interests?
He's right about the scale in any case.

If you want to get fried, take a look at

http://egov.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/Biomass/docs/FORUM/EthanolEnergyBalance.pdf

I _think_ the claim is that the net energy balance of *gasoline* is
negative. It is such a hot topic, that the three-word,
highly-specific google search "ethanol energy balance" gets a thousand
hits.

I already came across that URL and knew it was going to make my stomach
hurt - those guys should be strung up. They substitute coal & natural gas
for petroleum and say it's better: ethanol is therefore independent of
petroleum.<ptui> Even bio-bigots freely admit that the EROI with petroleum
is as high as 20 and ~1.5 for ethanol. The bio-mass people have nothing
until they have the required scale *with* self-sustaining energy input - it
ain't gonna happen... without breaking rules.

By your argument and the "Ethanol Energy Balance" report, we should
all stop driving immediately. A g-man will drop by tomorrow to pick
up your keys. .

Could happen... eventually, but I'll be long dead. There's loads of
petroleum available for decades to come; "peak oil" is just an accounting
snafu due to the fact that under PSAs (Production Sharing agreements),
corporate reserve estimates go down as crude prices go up... which was
jumped on by the anti-petro crowd. The real reserves have not changed...
apart from increasing inexorably.

I really don't see how you get this as a result. The actual
bookkeeping is hard. Markets keep track of dollars, not gallons or
joules, and I don't know how deeply we'll be into this before we know
what's really going on. I don't dispute the motives of the
agricultural lobby, but, just as with Pimentel, the existence of a
motive doesn't make the result wrong.

The current system is extremely efficient - therefore costs are low; the
corn-based ethanol is quite impossible as a sole source

Part of what happened is that OPEC--Saudi Arabia, in particular--got
smart. They realized that they had to keep the price of oil low
enough to keep renewables out of the market and to discourage
conservation. They have done admirably well. Why the U.S. sees what
is essentially manipulation as U.S. markets as a favor to the U.S. is
a mystery to me.

There was a helluva lot more to it than that - it's more like we gave up on
the shale & other means of producing our transportation fuel since it was
obviously un-economic. There's also new generations who just don't give a
shit about the "environment".. even those who wring their hands down at the
Sierra Club have SUVs parked in the lot at their meetings. The Arabs also
saw that any necessary goods they had to purchase from the developed
countries would just increase correspondingly in price... "desalination
plant?... oh the price on that has gone up considerably since you bumped
our costs".

The modellers, as I said early on, really screwed up in 1974. So many
predictions turned out to be wrong and so much money was
lost--remember WPPS?--that the free marketeers had little trouble
carrying the argument that it was best to let the invisible hand do
the planning.

WPPS? - doesn't ring a bell. I dunno what modellers you're talking about
-- I worked on technical aspects of Project Independence and was fairly
close to people on other energy modelling efforts for a while -- and I was
never sure what scenario(s) was being modelled with PI. What was important
and *was* required was "a model", which had not existed until that point.
One of the models was widely accepted internationally, was done by very
talented people, initially at BNL... so I figured it had to be good for
something; hell OPEC used it. In modified more developed form, it's still
in use today. It wasn't the modellers who screwed up, it was the
politico-economists who interpreted, err bent(?), the results.

The problem with the invisible hand is that the current situation
really presents an unacceptable risk for national security.

Our present and future situation wrt Islamic terror is only slightly
related to petroleum - it's just one of their clubs to beat our
media/masses with. There are more fundamental socio-religious issues -
here's one to wade through on that:
http://www.wehaitians.com/the philosopher of islamic terror.html
and here's a lighter read on the Euro perspective:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/i...=1085976000&en=404ec182641192df&ei=5087&nl=ep

The Muslim extremists don't hate us for taking their oil; they just hate us
for what we are and the values we have. Take oil out of the equation and
nothing changes - they still hate us... and they *are* among us.

 

[Robert Myers]

I was not hinting at tax policy - the price itself will do it... though
there are "figures" to show that we just pay the tax in a different way
from the other countries to support our gasoline habit.

The problem has been that people are unwilling to invest in renewables
without knowing what the market price for product is going to be.
Letting the price of petroleum float upward on its own means we will
be in serious trouble by the time it is reliably high enough.

Are you saying you *know* that Pimentel has been paid by petro-interests?
He's right about the scale in any case.

No. I am merely observing that he has been the one making the
most-noticed consistently negative assessments.

I already came across that URL and knew it was going to make my stomach
hurt - those guys should be strung up. They substitute coal & natural gas
for petroleum and say it's better: ethanol is therefore independent of
petroleum.<ptui> Even bio-bigots freely admit that the EROI with petroleum
is as high as 20 and ~1.5 for ethanol. The bio-mass people have nothing
until they have the required scale *with* self-sustaining energy input - it
ain't gonna happen... without breaking rules.

You're still living in that phony "energy" crisis. We don't have an
energy crisis, we have a transporation fuel crisis. Greenhouse gases
may be a concern, but they are not the most immediate concern.

Could happen... eventually, but I'll be long dead. There's loads of
petroleum available for decades to come; "peak oil" is just an accounting
snafu due to the fact that under PSAs (Production Sharing agreements),
corporate reserve estimates go down as crude prices go up... which was
jumped on by the anti-petro crowd. The real reserves have not changed...
apart from increasing inexorably.

There's a little more to Peak Oil than that, like the swaggering ghost
of M. King Hubbert. Makes really good copy and sells books.

The current system is extremely efficient - therefore costs are low; the
corn-based ethanol is quite impossible as a sole source

Well, of course. Corn-based ethanol is either a boondoggle (your
view) or a starter program that gets part of the infrastructure in
place (my view, I think). Ethanol from cellulose and lignin is
essential.

WPPS? - doesn't ring a bell.

Washington Public Power System. All those nuclear power plants that
were going to be needed to meet demand that never materialized? And
the bonds that were never paid off.

I dunno what modellers you're talking about
-- I worked on technical aspects of Project Independence and was fairly
close to people on other energy modelling efforts for a while -- and I was
never sure what scenario(s) was being modelled with PI. What was important
and *was* required was "a model", which had not existed until that point.
One of the models was widely accepted internationally, was done by very
talented people, initially at BNL... so I figured it had to be good for
something; hell OPEC used it. In modified more developed form, it's still
in use today. It wasn't the modellers who screwed up, it was the
politico-economists who interpreted, err bent(?), the results.

I don't know about the division of labor between the economists and
the technical people.

http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/Skeptic's_Guide.pdf

is critical of PIES (Project Independence Energy Something-or-Other)
and of its overly optimistic predictions.

A more detailed memoir is

Hogan, William W. "Energy Modeling for Policy Studies." Operations
Research 50, no. 1 (January / February 2002): 89-95.

They spent more than a million dollars for computer time on work that
could, I am sure, now easily be done on a PC. A PDF of the Hogan
paper can be found on line.

Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin, eds. Energy Future New York: Random
House 1979, Sergio Koreisha and Robert Stobaugh Appendix: Limits to
Models list what they refer to as red flags in the models (pp.
237-240) :

1.Exclusion [e.g. leaving out effect on investment needs of the energy
sector on the rest of the economy]
2.Aggregation. [e.g., lumping different sources of energy:
nuclear<->oil]
3.Range [unwarrented extrapolation]
4.Reversibility [price elasticities are the same going up as coming
down]
5.Time Lag [price and demand adjustments are instantaneous]

Most of these are now fixed in PIES, but the model is so complicated
that it is hard to imagine a reasonable person claiming to understand
how it works.

Since I know you've been in the business, :->, I'll suggest that the
"Energy Crisis" should really be called a system modelling crisis,
brought on in no small part by the work of Jay Forrester, who gave a
fairly recent talk entitled, "All computer models are wrong."
Forrester and the Club of Rome predicted the end of resources, the oil
embargo (only one of about a dozen supply interruptions in the last
half century) gave the idea a push, and the government hired its own
system modellers to fight back.

One model, for which I cannot locate the reference, assumed the price
of oil would rise to something like $12/barrel, at which point it
would effectively be capped by energy available at that equivalent
price from some other energy source (presumably nuclear power).

Our present and future situation wrt Islamic terror is only slightly
related to petroleum - it's just one of their clubs to beat our
media/masses with. There are more fundamental socio-religious issues -
here's one to wade through on that:
http://www.wehaitians.com/the philosopher of islamic terror.html
and here's a lighter read on the Euro perspective:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/i...=1085976000&en=404ec182641192df&ei=5087&nl=ep

The Muslim extremists don't hate us for taking their oil; they just hate us
for what we are and the values we have. Take oil out of the equation and
nothing changes - they still hate us... and they *are* among us.

Terrorism is one concern, but not the only concern. Oil supplies have
been disrupted about a dozen times since 1951, only three or four of
the incidents could be characterized as terrorism:

www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/security/distable.html

Even a very aggressive biomass program could only affect the problem
at the margins, but consider how cooperative Saudi Arabia became when
they considered the prospect of a U.S. market that didn't need them
anymore, no matter how distant the actual prospect was. I'd like to
meet the man in the Pentagon that doesn't work directly out of the
Office of the Secretary of Defense and who thinks this problem can be
worked militarily. I don't.

RM

 

[Robert Myers]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:19:32 -0500, George Macdonald

Our present and future situation wrt Islamic terror is only slightly
related to petroleum - it's just one of their clubs to beat our
media/masses with. There are more fundamental socio-religious issues -
here's one to wade through on that:
http://www.wehaitians.com/the philosopher of islamic terror.html
and here's a lighter read on the Euro perspective:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/i...=1085976000&en=404ec182641192df&ei=5087&nl=ep

The Muslim extremists don't hate us for taking their oil; they just hate us
for what we are and the values we have. Take oil out of the equation and
nothing changes - they still hate us... and they *are* among us.

Since we are in the company of technologists and technophiles, it may
not be completely superfluous to spend a few words agreeing
emphatically that, to the extent we are in a confrontation with
another culture, ideas and not resources are at the core of the
matter. Ideas, even very bad ideas, can be incredibly powerful.

RM