Open Access Article Originally Published: January 15, 2007
Besides the impact that oil -- both domestic and imported -- has on a nation's economy and its national security, the use of gasoline and diesel fuel have a significant affect on climate, argued James T. Bartis in his 25-minute presentation to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil USA during the 2006 conference in Boston last Fall. Dr. Bartis is a senior policy analyst for The Rand Corporation.
His comments about conventional oil were meant to frame the discussion on the role of "unconventional oils" in replacing what is becoming an increasingly expensive -- irrespective of the current drop in crude oil prices -- and scarce resource in many parts of the world. It is high prices and tight supplies that are providing the needed economic incentives to nurture the development of the bitumen sands (also called tar or oil sands) in Canada's Province of Alberta, as well as experiments in producing synthetic fuels from the oil shales of the Green River Basin in the corner of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. He also briefly addressed coal-to-liquid technology, which is based on German-developed processes that once fueled the Nazi war machine.
Focusing his talk on American "unconventional oils", Bartis quickly dismissed U.S. tar sands as being totally unlike Canada's vast resources in both quality and quantity, noting that The Rand Corporation has found no serious, professional analysis of these sands that considers them at all economically exploitable.
That leaves the oil shale deposits of the Intermountain West and coal as the only viable unconventional oil options available within the United States, and neither of these turn out to be all that promising at the end of the day.
He first discusses three bio-based fuels: bio-alcohols that include ethanol and bio-butanol, biodiesel and biofuels derived through gasification.
The chief problems with the bio-alchohol fuels is that they are produced from food crops. More importantly from his perspective is the question of oil-displacement. The Rand Corporation calculates that currently every one barrel of ethanol or biodiesel produced in America displaces just half a barrel of imported oil into the country. He also sees serious impacts on agriculture itself and the fact that we simply haven't enough available acreage to produce sufficient biofuels to satisfy our current rate of petroleum consumption
In short, the contribution of biofuels is in his words and under present conditions "insignificant". Because of that, he believes much more research needs to be devoted to addressing this shortcoming.
Biomass gasification is another possible means of producing renewable fuels through the process that creates carbon and hydrogen gas from the incomplete combustion of biomass like crop residue and forestry waste. The resulting gases can then be run through the Fischer-Tropsch process to create very clean synthetic motor fuels. Combined with carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, the process could be a net extractor of CO2 from the atmosphere.
However, the entire process is very energy intensive and "doesn't make sense at the small plant size", which then poses a Catch 22 dilemma. Because of the bulk of the biomass, it can't be cost-effectively moved long distances, which then dictates that the plant must be either regionally or community-based and therefore uneconomically small. The only possible way out is dual-feed plants that utilize both coal and biomass, but Bartis cautioned that the necessary technology doesn't currently exist to make that happen.
GO TO NEXT PAGE >>
|
| Times Article Viewed: 8883 |
|
|
|
Reader Comments
A valid email address and confirmation is required before your comment can be posted. Comments not confirmed within
24 hours are automatically deleted.
2 comments so far...
18-Jan-2007
45406
| |
All synthetic fuels from fossil sources rich in carbon will emit a lot of carbon in the processing before they are sold at the refinery gate. For coal it is as much as three carbon molecules as CO2 for each molecule of -HCH- (liquid fuel), and one extra molecule for tar sands. If this is not secuestered, it will wind up in the atmosphere.
A more sensible approach would be to power electric cars with electricity made from the potential energy in the troposphere captured by the atmospheric vortex engine (AVE), which is an essentially carbon free method to produce electricity. For further information, see www.vortexengine.ca
Jerry Toman
Posted by: Jerry Toman
|
|
16-Jan-2007
45148
| |
Hemp biomass grown for fuel would reverse global warming by converting CO2 into oxygen during the growing cycle. Hemp is one of the richest biomass sources known to man. Each acre of hemp yields 10 tons of biomass (1,000 gallons of methanol) in 4 months.
Hemp boidiesel could be the answer to our cry for cheaper fuel. We have spent the last century polluting our beautiful country with our petroleum based fuels that could have easily been replaced with fuels derived from hemp.
Farmers in the U.S. have been trying for years to get federal permission to grow industrial hemp, but the Drug Enforcement Administration has refused all requests because hemp is related to marijuana.
Farmers in Manitoba grow several thousand acres of hemp each year. It is a legal crop in most countries, and North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson says it's time to force a change.
"Virtually every other industrialized country in the world allows the growing of industrial hemp," says Johnson. "We're kind of an island with this almost caveman mentality on the federal level toward the growing of industrial hemp."
Johnson sees irony in the fact that in the 1940s, the federal government strongly encouraged farmers to grow hemp. The government even provided free seed. Hemp was considered vital for fabric and rope production during WWII. The USDA even produced a film called "Hemp for Victory", which promoted hemp production as a patriotic duty.
In the 1940s hemp was regulated as an agricultural crop. Now hemp is controlled by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
In the late 1800s, the fledgling petroleum industry aggressively competed with the established biomass-based energy industry in an effort to gain control of world energy production and distribution. Fossil fuel producers succeeded in their campaign to dominate energy production by making fuels and chemical feedstocks at lower prices than could be produced from biomass conversion. Now the pendulum is swinging against them.
Hemp 4 Fuel ->
Posted by: EV Rider
|
|
