Sauer-Danfoss: A rant
I've been suffering with the products of a company called Sauer-Danfoss. This company makes industrial controllers and displays, programmed with a proprietary graphical system resembling ladder logic. Here is my litany of complaints (addressed as an open letter, because I would like the world to know what a pain this stuff is; maybe S-D will take bad press as a good incentive to improve their product, rather than mealy-mouthing explanations for why The Product Is Perfectly Designed For Its Intended Users).
Dear Sauer-Danfoss,
I have some serious complaints with your Plus+1 Guide software. The poor packaging and lack of proper documentation (plus counter-intuitive behavior of the system versus the description in the help) have caused me to waste a large fraction of a week thus far. Your "tutorials" lack the most basic amenities for the aspiring learner. Several of the extended sequences can neither be paused nor backed up to repeat sections. Even YouTube does better than that, and their stuff is free.
The graphical system is painfully cumbersome. Take, for example, a common calculation:
degrees_F = (degrees_C * 18 + 5)/10 + 32
This takes about ten seconds to type in C code. It takes no fewer than four calculation blocks, four typed constant blocks and drawing a number of dataflow "wires" to do it in Plus+1 Guide, and the product is inherently obfuscated by the complexity and harder to document. The fact that the graphical mess is translated into roughly the above C code before being compiled adds insult to injury.
Packaging needs to be radically improved. If you download the Plus+1 Guide software, you have neither the device templates nor the function libraries. The rest of the world has figured out how to create interactive installers, why haven't you? These things should either be included and installed by default, or prompted during the install process. If the user should fail to install them, they are left with blank tabs in Plus+1 Guide. Nothing mentions a missing element, no pop-up tells the user what else is required. How useless is that?
Or take the "context-sensitive" help... please! It claims that you can click on something and press F1 to get help on that block. I opened an existing application (trying to hit the ground running), clicked on a block with a triangular symbol in it (looked like an op-amp) and pressed F1, hoping that I could get some help to tell me what this unknown block was. I got the standard help screen. Try again, same result. Apparently, telling me what this function block was didn't rate in Sauer-Danfoss's priorities. I found this not the least bit endearing.
The "component" menu was no help either. It's full of little icons for various categories, but the icons bear no resemblance to the symbols actually used in the program itself. You have to click through list after list after list until you find the item which bears a similar symbol to the unknown. THEN, once you have gone through the laborious search, you can click on the item in the component MENU and use F1 to get the details. You cannot use this to get details on a component already in a design and save time and effort.
This is the sort of design detail which leads me to suspect that the product has been made deliberately obscure, to sell expensive training classes.
The "service tool", which downloads compiled programs to the units, is equally ill-designed (if not worse). It appears to require an ECU list before it will do anything (even with hardware connected), but the navigator entry for the ECU list won't open when clicked (perhaps because the company firewall blocked a download - but there is no diagnostic for this!) and there is no help entry for ECU lists. How do I get an ECU list? Do I need to download something? The "help", doesn't.
In conclusion, you have the sorriest, lousiest, most cumbersome, most time-wasting excuse for a programming interface that I have seen in more than 20 years of work on embedded systems. I have accomplished more useful work in less time with assembly code. I am forced to use them in my job, but I will be making a personal recommendation that design engineers avoid your products at all costs.
¶ 5/06/2008 12:24:00 AM 0 comments links to this post
Quote without comment
Biology is under attack in the US right now — there are a great many people who are utterly ignorant of the subject who have decided that no, sir, they don't like it, they don't want to be a descendant of no monkey, and Jesus tells 'em everything they need to know. It's gotten so bad that one of our major political parties, while not making it a central issue of their campaigns, has made rejection of one of the central tenets of modern biology a signifier of ideological purity. There is a deep well of ignorance here, a strain of outright stupidity strongly held and ardently defended, and what teacher wouldn't savor that challenge?-- PZ Myers ¶ 1/26/2008 08:55:00 AM 3 comments links to this post
Losing context
I've been so consumed with a very few blogs and activities of late, and realized that there were at least a dozen that I'd been neglecting (easy to do, because they're bookmarked on a computer not currently connected to the Internet and with a screwed-up USB automounter). I thought about making quick visits to a few, and....
realized that I couldn't remember their URLs, or even more than a couple of names.
There really is a limit to how much you can keep track of. I can sympathize with major policy-makers who can't keep up with all the arcana, and I'm beginning to think that even their best advisors may have a valid excuse for missing important facts and trends. It really does move too fast to keep up.
¶ 1/05/2008 02:35:00 AM 2 comments links to this post
An irritation of trolls
Once upon a time, the English played a game of creating collective nouns. It is from this that we get "a gaggle of geese", "a murder of crows", and so forth.
The Internet creates a need for terms to describe new things and phenomena. I nominate "an irritation of trolls" for a 21st-century collective noun. There are a number of them plaguing blogs such as Green Car Congress and The Energy Blog, posting and re-posting the same absolute nonsense over and over. This behavior is eerily Rove-ian (though its origins go back much further), and makes me suspect that these are paid denialists, trying to put their talking points everywhere. (Well, some of them. At least one of them is either a travesty generator or so batshit insane that he will contradict himself outright within the space of 3 paragraphs. But I digress.)
This post started as a response in the Sandia thread at Green Car Congress, but the spam filter won't allow it to be posted. I'm not going to let it go to waste, so it appears here.
I was 60% of the way through ripping Arthur a new one last night, when Windoze crashed and lost all my work. But it's dinner time and I've got some time to write, so here it goes again.
I ... saw the "Ice Age" (news media) hysteria in the 70's. There was just as much "scientific consensus" then as now.No there wasn't, and you wouldn't have known it. What's happened in the mean time can be summed up in two words: The Internet. The "new ice age" articles of the 70's had no significant climate modeling behind them; how could they, when computers were so slow and whole categories of scientific data from ice cores to satellite measurements of temperature and ice cover and borehole reconstructions of recent temperature history did not yet exist? And almost nobody reading the magazines would have known that the whole thing was essentially a media craze, because all the data was in journals in research libraries to which few people had access. Today, it's the Internet which allows anyone to look at the scientific literature and see that it's AGW denial which exists only in the media; there is no science to it.
The "new ice age" came essentially from one thing: reconstructions of glacial history associated with Milankovitch cycles. By the cycles, we are indeed about due for renewed glaciation (which observations did not support then, or now). This led straight to the question of why we don't see glaciation despite Earth's orbital state predisposing the climate in that direction. The research into this is what grew into today's IPCC reports.
Arthur gets up to the level of one major falsehood per claim:
Any theory must explain known facts, be testable, and be predictive. CO2-caused-climate-change falls on its face on all three conditions.That's what the propagandists say for the press, and the press quotes them for the sake of "balance". But there's no truth to it.
It doesn't explain the ice core data that shows that CO2 levels follow temperature trends.Yes it does. CO2 in natural systems has large feedback effects; heating reduces the CO2 capacity of seawater and causes droughts, both of which lead to more CO2 going into the air rather than the oceans or biomass. A heating trend can be started by other influences but sustain itself through CO2 feedback. Of course, the same thing could be started by emitting CO2.
It goes counter to the natural temperature cycles that caused cooling from the 30's to the 70's while anthropogenic CO2 emissions were increasing.Emissions of sulfates and other reflective particulates were also increasing until the passage of the Clean Air Act. In China, they're still going up. These particulates reflect sunlight and cause cooling ("global dimming").
The particulates have an atmospheric lifespan of days to weeks; CO2, from decades to centuries. As soon as pollution controls or depletion of coal cuts the particulates, the signal from CO2-induced warming will be unopposed.
And the troposphere does not show the warming that was predicted to prove the theory.That's a flat-out lie. The signal from ground-based thermometry showed it clearly, but there was contradictory data from radiosondes and satellite measurements. Something was clearly being measured wrong. It turned out that some of the data did indeed have systematic errors:
- The radiosonde design had changed over the years in ways not well documented; the temperature sensor in some was exposed to solar heating and was shielded in others. This caused an error in daytime measurements only; older daytime measurements were higher than actual temperature, causing the warming signal to be obscured.
- Satellite measurements were not adjusted correctly for orbital changes. The corrected data shows warming.
Since it isn't explanatory, testable, or predictive, it must be political.That is the exact status of AGW-denialism: explains nothing, fails all the tests, and fails to predict the droughts, ice loss and warming. It has traction only because it has committed financial and ideological supporters, just like the evolution denialists. Projection is their common trait. ¶ 12/13/2007 10:50:00 PM 8 comments links to this post
Presentations on thermal conversion
Robert Rapier received 3 PDF files on Changing World Tech's thermal conversion process (TCP, formerly thermal depolymerization) from a correspondent. Since they have become hard to find on the web, I have put them up at The Ergosphere's formerly-undisclosed location, ergosphere.wordpress.com.
¶ 4/14/2007 11:11:00 AM 4 comments
links to this post
This thing is still on?
(Title references this, BTW.)
I logged in to post comments elsewhere, and got a surprise: the dashboard page, which I never thought I'd see again. At least per superficial appearances, no action on my part was required to keep going past... what, exactly? Was the blog converted? Is this now a Google account? I have not the foggiest idea.
If I can still post, and if Google recovers some respect for free speech, I may just stay here. But I'll probably convert all the timestamps to an easily-converted format just in case.
In the interim, I posted two stories to The Oil Drum: That cubic mile and H2CAR: Another blind alley. I hope this is not news to you, but if it is... enjoy!
¶ 3/31/2007 12:34:00 AM 3 comments links to this post
Two easy pieces
The difficult parts of the emerging renewable energy economy are the high-efficiency biomass converters and new energy storage. (The biomass-to-electricity converter is a sine qua non for the Sustainability scheme.) These are essential; without high efficiency the energy yield of biomass is too low to support a high standard of living, and without storage the use of intermittent supplies (such as wind and solar) becomes problematic.
At least, they looked difficult. Turns out one might be on the way as a solution for other problems, and a big chunk of the other is already available for free.
Storage first. Nature magazine reports an experiment in the Netherlands which will use cold-storage warehouses as massive demand-managed systems to balance the variability of wind power and the daily demand curve. (More commentary here, and a short project description here). During periods of power surplus, the warehouses' refrigeration systems will be run full-bore to chill them by up to 1°C; when power production lags demand, the warehouses will shut off their chillers and coast on their stored heat-absorption capabity. The possibilities are claimed to be huge:
The net effect would be that the warehouses would act as as batteries — potentially storing 50,000 megawatt-hours of energy — and the food wouldn't melt.
Electricity is expensive to store, but many of the things we make from electricity are not. I've been touting the possibilities of ice-storage systems for A/C for some time. Here's an example of DSM which is already available for free — and even has the control systems built in to handle shorter (6 minute) interruptions for the sake of peak-demand management.
This example is a clue-by-four to use on denialists. They've been saying it can't be done, so now we can point to this and say "Holland is doing it, you ignoramus." (As far as I'm concerned, anyone denying a confirmable fact gets one free pass along with a hotlink to the information which proves them wrong. After that, they're fair game for any epithet you like.) Once the warehouse systems are out there, we can extend the concept as necessary to leverage the variable energy resources. The population of the Netherlands is about 16.5 million. The US has about 18 times as many people, and likely about 18 times as much refrigerated warehouse capacity. If Holland has 50 GWH of energy-banking capability available, the US might already have on the order of 900 GWH. That's about 2 hours of average US electric consumption. We'd have to build out one huge amount of wind and solar power capacity to strain that.
Being able to store renewable energy is no good if you can't make it. So I was very happy to receive a note from a reader telling me about the Gas Institute's solid-oxide fuel cell powered by gasified chicken litter. The power density of the SOFC was reduced to about 40% of normal due to the low-BTU fuel gas, but it did not accumulate any damaging deposits such as carbon. The SOFC's going to DOE for testing recently were priced in the $250-$300/kW range; if the same cells were used for converting gasified biomass and nothing can be done to raise the power level again (such as pressurizing the system), the SOFC portion's cost would increase to $625-$750/kW. This figure seems quite reasonable. After adding fuel preparation and a microturbine to provide forced-air feed and bottoming-cycle energy recovery (and assuming no increase in power density from pressurization), I guesstimate that the system might cost in the neighborhood of $1000/kW This is about the per-kW cost of a Capstone microturbine.
Dr. Lau and company appear to have used chicken litter because it is a disposal problem in some areas. What other energy-rich materials are a disposal problem? Excess rice straw? Check. Excess corn stover? If you don't have livestock to feed, check. Forestry waste? Check. Municipal green waste? Check. Plastic waste, waste cooking grease, etc? The list goes on and on.
Nobody's sent me a note about a crop waste-powered SOFC being used to generate the CO2 for an algae growth system to make liquid bio-fuels, but at the rate my speculations have been popping up in the news, it wouldn't surprise me if it happens any day now. It really does move too fast to keep up.
We look to be on-track for a Viridian green future, too late for comfort but sooner than anyone expects.
¶ 2/11/2007 12:50:00 AM 16 comments links to this post
Goodbye to Blogger?
On my sign-in just now, I got a notice that I can go straight to my Blogger dashboard without converting to the new Blogger and making a Google account — but I can only do this once. After this I must have a Google account if I want to post to The Ergosphere.
I don't want a Google account. I want nothing to do with their data-retention policies, their data-mining, or anything else. I want to keep my blog strictly separated from everything else I do.
Apparently, if I want to do this I can no longer use Blogger.
I will have to think long and hard about this, but "Two Easy Pieces" may be the final post you ever see on The Ergosphere.
Update 1:13 AM: And with Google deleting videos critical of Islam, I have exactly zero reasons to support Google by directing my reader's eyeballs to them. So much for "don't be evil", eh?
Note to Google: Fuck yourself with a rusty saw blade.
¶ 2/11/2007 12:05:00 AM 13 comments links to this post
The art of propaganda
Being sick and somewhat out of sorts, I only half-listened to the SOTU speech (text) on Tuesday. But what I heard did nothing to change my opinion of our lame duck President.
I heard plenty of weasel-phrases, and the anemic goals reminded me of "the soft bigotry of low expectations". Twenty percent over ten years? This is just over three times the rate of last year's 0.6% OECD reduction. The USA's consumption of petroleum products is roughly 45% gasoline; if the US had eked out the same 0.6% cut from gasoline alone, it would come to a 1.33% cut in gasoline consumption - already 2/3 of Bush's stated goal. Given gasoline prices in the $3.00 range again, this appears likely to happen all by itself.
We need to aim closer to 50% over 10 years, and 100% over 20. We can do it, with PHEV's, movement of freight to rail and niche biofuels. But Bush's map goes straight into the swamp.
The other weasel phrase is "cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East." Let's examine this phrase in detail:
- "cutting our total imports". The US imports about 4 million bbl/day from the Middle East (assuming that all non-Venezuela OPEC oil is ME oil), but Bush's 20% reduction in gasoline consumption would only yield about 1.8 mmbbl/day in savings. Disconnect.
- "by the equivalent of..." Not literally? The equivalents are not stated.
- "three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East." See above. Also:
- ME oil imports (~4 mmbbl/day) amount to less than 1/3 of total US imports of 13.5 mmbbl/day.
- Venezuelan production is declining with Chavez' control of the oil sector, so our total imports must go down or else our ME imports will have to rise to compensate.
- Oil is fungible. So long as we import oil, we strengthen our ideological enemies in the Middle East.
- Bush compares to current Middle East imports, with no hint that worldwide non-OPEC exports are declining. Even if the goal is met, we could be more dependent on ME oil than ever.
- Falling domestic oil production would also leave us to import more from the ME. ANWR won't help; it will take 10 years to come on line, and will cut our imports less than the Priuses that Toyota has already sold in the USA.
All in all, this was one for the Hall of Shame. I would have been even more disappointed than after last year's "addicted to oil" speech... if I'd had any expectations. He did nothing substantive about the problem before, and I expect nothing better from him unless he has no other options. (Cynicism has its benefits; you can be pleasantly surprised, but rarely crushed.)
Now it falls to the barely-Democratic Congress to craft the policies we need, the policies we should have had on the "URGENT" list since 9/11/2001. Will they be able to get around an administration joined at the hips to the oil industry, willing to use executive power to obstruct and even destroy (EPA libraries, NASA earth-observation programs) anything unfriendly to its power base? Only time will tell.
¶ 1/26/2007 01:16:00 AM 12 comments links to this post
The pols sit still for the message
Maybe there's hope after all.
Via Yahoo news (h/t: The Oil Drum) comes word that Peter Barnes, founder of Working Assets Long Distance, made a presentation on greenhouse-gas abatement to the Vermont legislature.
That the legislature received the presentation is itself progress, but the specifics are noteworthy:
- A statewide carbon cap, implemented via a systm of tradeable permits.
- The permits would not be given to emitters, but sold at auction.
- The proceeds from the auction would be returned to taxpayers or used to finance conservation and efficiency programs.
Regular readers will note a strong similarity to the measures I've been advocating. The only real difference is that the permits would be sold at auction, so the economic benefit of savings fluctuates with the market. This could lead to slumps in the efficiency industry during economic contractions, with a consequent reduction or halt in improvements. On the flip side, the permit auction eliminates the protected status of entrenched industry and the net effect on consumers would be small and even positive for low emitters. It amounts to a tax on "bads", not "goods"; on the whole, it's an excellent idea.
The legislators are not convinced. State Rep. Albert J. Perry is quoted as saying "I don't see any immediate opportunity in Vermont. I'd need to see how it's set up, get a more concrete presentation of how it would work." This was seconded by the executive VP of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association: "The concept of trading carbon credits is probably something that's in our future. The $64,000 question is `What's it going to look like?' Some of the best ideas get lost in translation, between concept and implementation."
Two things are for certain:
- Such a program needs to extend beyond Vermont. No state (or nation) can retain industry if its neighbors do not share the same expenses.
- The merit could easily be lost in translation. For instance, giving free permits to existing emitters (to avoid shifting advantage to a neighboring polity) would eviscerate the incentives. So would any system of exemptions for certain fuels, or for "the poor".
It's a proposal from a visionary, not a bill submitted by an elected statesman. But the ideas are a long way from what seems like their natural home in California, which makes it a hopeful beginning.
¶ 1/18/2007 01:24:00 AM 5 comments links to this post
Exhausting the non-options
Men will behave reasonably when all other options have been exhausted.
Nowhere does this appear to be more true than in interest-group politics. Agricultural interests, trying to prop up their commodity prices, may finally create the condition of crop scarcity that they've always sought to secure their profits. Per the NYTimes, they may also have created a scarcity of the materials for ethanol plants. Ethanol production may actually turn Iowa into a net importer of corn! Profits are soaring, for the moment.
It's doubtful that many of these farmers are thinking beyond the next year. Suppose they succeed? Suppose that crop prices do rise steeply, and make every year a profitable year no matter what size the harvest? Would that be nirvana?
More likely, the consequences would lead to all the high-flyers being dragged right back to earth.
As others have noted, one can take a given amount of corn and either feed one person for a year or make one tank of E85 for an SUV. As fuel ethanol production cuts grain inventories and raises crop prices, food prices (particularly meat) will start to increase with them.
This is almost certainly not politically acceptable. The last time it happened, crop prices were supported by a system of production set-asides (derided as "paying farmers not to grow things"; without the set-asides, production overwhelmed demand and farmers went broke). This worked relatively well, until one lean year cut production enough to contract grain supplies to the point that supermarket prices surged. Consumer outcry led to the end of the set-aside program, farmers planted every acre they had, and the search for ways to solve the problem of surpluses was on once more.
Ethanol for cars was one of those solutions. But now it's come full circle, and the body politic is about to see it as a problem in its own right. Given a choice between fueling a 3-ton monster and food, a firm majority is bound to choose food. The ethanol plants will see their feedstock reserved for an energy chain which ends at tables instead of pumps; a great many may be either cancelled or stand idle unless something inedible can be found to go into their maws.
It's about time this happened. Ethanol from grain cannot displace petroleum to any great extent; its return on energy invested (EROEI) is perhaps 1.3 by the USDA's numbers, and a pathetic 1.09 by Robert Rapier's correction of their math. Maybe it can be improved, but nothing will make it good enough to really make a difference. Getting up to 2:1 would still require half the gross production recycled as feedstock; even if we could make do with 100 billion gallons of ethanol motor fuel, there's no way we'd be able to produce the 200 billion gallons to make the system self-sustaining.
It's time to call grain ethanol what it is. Failure. Distraction. Maybe now, the public will believe it. Let it die.
That will take one non-option off the table. The birth defects of cellulosic ethanol may or may not kill it also; let it sink or swim on its own. Hydrogen still has scarce infrastructure and no reasonable way of producing it from any fuel not already spoken for. Can the Freedom Car program be long for this world either?
This is starting to look like the blonde joke which ends "... the others don't exist."
The non-options have just been joined by a real one, and from a rather surprising source. Perhaps the most reactionary auto manufacturer in the industrialized nations has just announced a plug-in series hybrid. If it gets to production, the Chevy Volt will be the first-ever no-compromises petroleum-optional car. Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive would require some tweaking to do the same job; Honda's Integrated Motor Assist probably could not do it at all. GM really deserves kudos for this one.
Those kudos are earned whether the Volt gets to showrooms or not. It represents an endorsement of the concept, a move that will put the idea into the public consciousness. No more is freedom from imported oil joined at the hip with agricultural subsidies or held hostage to some future non-fossil source of hydrogen. With the Volt, GM has promised a return to cheap, carefree motoring at 75¢/gallon equivalent, and to let anyone with a windmill or solar panel produce their own motive power. No matter who actually makes good on this promise first, it's now been made.
Reason is about to win this one. Time to move on.
¶ 1/08/2007 02:06:00 AM 19 comments links to this post
2006 post summary
Subject index
Administrivia
| 2006-01-06 | Pleasing the crowd | |
| 2006-01-06 | And speaking of tip jars.... | |
| 2006-02-17 | Ergosphere subject index, 2005 | |
| 2006-02-27 | Test | |
| 2006-03-21 | On hiatus | |
| 2006-04-13 | I have returned | |
| 2006-04-25 | Coming soon | |
| 2006-05-02 | Spam attack | |
| 2006-06-17 | We apologize for the inconvenience | |
| 2006-11-22 | Worth the wait |
Allies
| 2006-01-07 | Thomas Friedman gets on board |
Chitchat
| 2006-01-29 | It's a compulsion | |
| 2006-02-12 | Did you get the message today? | |
| 2006-02-14 | Better than chocolate | |
| 2006-02-26 | Just FYI | |
| 2006-03-07 | Satire snippets | |
| 2006-03-14 | Happy Pi Day | |
| 2006-04-14 | I must be coming back as a cockroach | |
| 2006-05-14 | Who you are | |
| 2006-08-14 | Due Diligence | |
| 2006-08-19 | Search me | |
| 2006-08-21 | The new me | |
| 2006-08-21 | Another "holy crap!" moment | |
| 2006-10-17 | Micro-AE experiment | |
| 2006-12-16 | Very important read | |
| 2006-12-19 | Why unit analysis matters |
Conservation and energy management
| 2006-02-17 | Payback time | |
| 2006-03-02 | Sustainability, efficiency and Jevons' "Paradox" | |
| 2006-05-14 | I'd rather switch than pay | |
| 2006-07-18 | Nothing will be enough if you keep wasting it | |
| 2006-11-25 | Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy |
Energy supply
| 2006-01-09 | Treating irregularity | |
| 2006-01-10 | If it doesn't work, then what? | |
| 2006-01-27 | We could have replaced Iraq | |
| 2006-03-02 | Sustainability, efficiency and Jevons' "Paradox" | |
| 2006-03-11 | Blowin' in the wind | |
| 2006-04-15 | Conservation is not the whole of security | |
| 2006-05-14 | I'd rather switch than pay | |
| 2006-08-21 | Signposts | |
| 2006-11-25 | Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy | |
| 2006-12-16 | Very important read |
Environment and climate
| 2006-02-10 | Quote without comment | |
| 2006-04-26 | Braking before the environment crash | |
| 2006-08-21 | Signposts | |
| 2006-11-25 | Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy |
Government policy and actions
| 2006-01-26 | EIA putting history down the memory hole | |
| 2006-02-05 | Hoping it will go away | |
| 2006-02-10 | Energy tax incentives | |
| 2006-05-11 | Now if I only had his head for money | |
| 2006-08-21 | Signposts | |
| 2006-11-25 | Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy |
Hydrogen and other scams
| 2006-08-07 | Europe passes death sentence on hype-drogen | |
| 2006-09-06 | Scamwatch: Steorn |
Miscellany
| 2006-01-01 | Okay, you got my attention | |
| 2006-01-04 | Surreality | |
| 2006-01-06 | Traffic in links | |
| 2006-01-08 | What kind of humanist are you? | |
| 2006-02-02 | Never another Sony | |
| 2006-02-13 | Friendly fire | |
| 2006-02-17 | The Ergosphere turns 2, and open thread | |
| 2006-02-18 | Tasteless. Offensive. Funny as all get out. | |
| 2006-04-26 | They said what's on my mind | |
| 2006-04-28 | Contribute to the Myths File | |
| 2006-12-03 | Renewable energy and the auto industry |
Politics
| 2006-05-07 | Open letter to US voters (energy policy) | |
| 2006-06-18 | If it's a conspiracy, why wasn't I notified? | |
| 2006-06-26 | But consider the source... | |
| 2006-07-30 | Open letter to Vinod Khosla | |
| 2006-08-21 | Signposts | |
| 2006-09-06 | The real scandal | |
| 2006-10-15 | Open letter about the ethanol lobby | |
| 2006-11-25 | Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy | |
| 2006-12-07 | Open letter to the USA: Be careful what you ask for |
Technology
| 2006-01-30 | It only takes one | |
| 2006-02-17 | Out of town on rails | |
| 2006-06-29 | Why doesn't Detroit do better? | |
| 2006-08-07 | Europe passes death sentence on hype-drogen | |
| 2006-10-14 | Great strides | |
| 2006-11-25 | Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy | |
| 2006-12-01 | It comes almost too fast to keep up | |
| 2006-12-04 | More progress I just learned about |
Chronological index
January
| 2006-01-01 | Okay, you got my attention | |
| 2006-01-04 | Surreality | |
| 2006-01-06 | Pleasing the crowd | |
| 2006-01-06 | And speaking of tip jars.... | |
| 2006-01-06 | Traffic in links | |
| 2006-01-07 | Thomas Friedman gets on board | |
| 2006-01-08 | What kind of humanist are you? | |
| 2006-01-09 | Treating irregularity | |
| 2006-01-10 | If it doesn't work, then what? | |
| 2006-01-26 | EIA putting history down the memory hole | |
| 2006-01-27 | We could have replaced Iraq | |
| 2006-01-29 | It's a compulsion | |
| 2006-01-30 | It only takes one |
February
| 2006-02-02 | Never another Sony | |
| 2006-02-05 | Hoping it will go away | |
| 2006-02-10 | Quote without comment | |
| 2006-02-10 | Energy tax incentives | |
| 2006-02-12 | Did you get the message today? | |
| 2006-02-13 | Friendly fire | |
| 2006-02-14 | Better than chocolate | |
| 2006-02-17 | The Ergosphere turns 2, and open thread | |
| 2006-02-17 | Ergosphere subject index, 2005 | |
| 2006-02-17 | Payback time | |
| 2006-02-17 | Out of town on rails | |
| 2006-02-18 | Tasteless. Offensive. Funny as all get out. | |
| 2006-02-26 | Just FYI | |
| 2006-02-27 | Test |
March
| 2006-03-02 | Sustainability, efficiency and Jevons' "Paradox" | |
| 2006-03-07 | Satire snippets | |
| 2006-03-11 | Blowin' in the wind | |
| 2006-03-14 | Happy Pi Day | |
| 2006-03-21 | On hiatus |
April
| 2006-04-13 | I have returned | |
| 2006-04-14 | I must be coming back as a cockroach | |
| 2006-04-15 | Conservation is not the whole of security | |
| 2006-04-25 | Coming soon | |
| 2006-04-26 | Braking before the environment crash | |
| 2006-04-26 | They said what's on my mind | |
| 2006-04-28 | Contribute to the Myths File |
May
| 2006-05-02 | Spam attack | |
| 2006-05-07 | Open letter to US voters | |
| 2006-05-11 | Now if I only had his head for money | |
| 2006-05-14 | I'd rather switch than pay | |
| 2006-05-14 | Who you are |
June
| 2006-06-17 | We apologize for the inconvenience | |
| 2006-06-18 | If it's a conspiracy, why wasn't I notified? | |
| 2006-06-26 | But consider the source... | |
| 2006-06-29 | Why doesn't Detroit do better? |
July
| 2006-07-18 | Nothing will be enough if you keep wasting it | |
| 2006-07-30 | Open letter to Vinod Khosla |
August
| 2006-08-07 | Europe passes death sentence on hype-drogen | |
| 2006-08-14 | Due Diligence | |
| 2006-08-19 | Search me | |
| 2006-08-21 | The new me | |
| 2006-08-21 | Signposts |
September
| 2006-09-06 | Scamwatch: Steorn |
October
| 2006-10-05 | The real scandal | |
| 2006-10-11 | Another "holy crap!" moment | |
| 2006-10-14 | Great strides | |
| 2006-10-15 | Open letter about the ethanol lobby | |
| 2006-10-17 | Micro-AE experiment |
November
| 2006-11-22 | Worth the wait | |
| 2006-11-25 | Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy |
December
| 2006-12-01 | It comes almost too fast to keep up | |
| 2006-12-03 | Renewable energy and the auto industry | |
| 2006-12-04 | More progress I just learned about | |
| 2006-12-07 | Open letter to the USA: Be careful what you ask for | |
| 2006-12-16 | Very important read | |
| 2006-12-19 | Why unit analysis matters |
Why unit analysis matters
"The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." Every time I start to forget this, something comes along to remind me. Sometimes forcefully.
I forget what prompted me to write Unit Analysis. This time, it was a clown who can neither calculate the area of Earth's disc without getting off by a factor of a million (you'd think the ridiculous number would tip him off), nor can he grasp the meaning of "kilowatt-hour". Indeed, he insists that "kilowatts per month" is what people pay for on their electric bill. After receiving a free physics tutorial including definitions of basic units, he topped this off with an insult: "... it would seem you would have problems reading your own electricity meter."
Innumeracy is probably a guarantee of incompetence in basic science, but it takes a special combination of arrogance and ignorance to say "It was written for people to understand how many watts are required in unit time to power things in terms which they understand."
He's too wrapped up in himself to realize that the public doesn't understand these things any better than he does, and one of the biggest reasons they don't is that they don't speak the language. They could learn it by osmosis, except for one thing: all the clowns out there mangling the language of physics, producing such a cacophony that the voices of knowledge cannot be distinguished. In short, Mr. Clown is part of the problem.
Well, why does it matter?
It matters because John Q. Public needs to know that a space heater which consumes 1.2 kilowatts is not going to cost 15 cents a month to run because the electric rate is "12.5 cents per kilowatt". Anyone who does not understand the way time figures into the calculation — and why the electric bill speaks of kilowatt-hours — is almost certain to get it wrong. The buyer who estimates the usage time as 6 hours per day, then multiplies 180 hours per month times 1.2 kW to get 216 kWh and calculates $27, will get it right.
To get it right, all you need is to know that a kilowatt-hour is a kilowatt times an hour. If you keep calling it "kilowatts per hour", you're never going to understand that.
Scientists and engineers use precise language and correct units because that's the only way to get the RIGHT answer. People who use WRONG language or WRONG units can do things like getting an electric bill of fifty dollars when they thought it was going to be fifty cents.
This is not a matter of opinion; there are a few ways of accurately describing how the world works, and innumerable ways of getting it wrong. You can use English or MKS or CGS units, but any correct calculation is going to come up with the same answer after conversions.
This is one place where what you don't know really can hurt you.
Unit analysis matters. Treat it that way.
¶ 12/19/2006 12:41:00 AM 10 comments links to this post
Very important read
I have just finished a very thoughtful article at Energy Pulse, Playing with Fire – The 10 Tcf/year Supply Gap -- Part I. I highly recommend that everyone read this article to see what kind of trouble we're looking at.¶ 12/16/2006 11:17:00 PM 3 comments links to this post
Open letter to the USA: Be careful what you ask for
Because even if you get it, you may not like paying the bill.
The US energy situation is suffering — actually suffering — not from too little oil, but arguably too much. The costs of getting what we have are far greater than the pump price, and going upwards.
But that's not the biggest problem. The main problem the USA has isn't an immediate lack of oil or natural gas. It's a lack of imagination.
Imagination? Yes. What other other name is there for a situation where people refuse to reconsider what they desire in light of what it costs, and what they actually need? When people head closer to bankruptcy every time they fill the tank on the 3-ton vehicle they bought, and demand cheaper goods from others instead of changing their own habits?
This is not just a psychological problem. It leads to escalation of failure, which can be disastrous.
All of this could be fixed relatively easily if people would use their imagination to figure out what they really want, and how best to get it. Consider:
- Most people don't really want gasoline. Gasoline is the means. Their goal is to get around in relative comfort. This can be done mostly with electricity or by other means, using far less or even no gasoline.
- Most people don't really want natural gas. What people want is to cook food and supply warm air and hot water. These desires can be met with far less gas, or even none.
- Most people don't want coal. Most people would call the police if you put a ton of coal at their door. They don't even particularly want the electricity made from the coal; what they want is the lights, the TV, and the computer run by the electricity. That's the only use they have for coal: twice removed in causes, and a long way in distance.
So let's exercise that flabby imagination and consider what we'd ask for to get just what we want, without all those pesky consequences.
When I'm at home, I don't give a rat's ass about electricity per se. It's a means to an end. One thing I want is for my house to remain comfortable in the summer. I can do this with an electric air conditioner, or I could pump cold water out of the ground and use it to cool the air in my house. I could use solar heat to dry a dessicant and use that to remove the clammy humidity. My electric needs would decrease to what's needed to run some fans and a water pump. Good architecture (roof overhangs on sun-facing walls, awnings or other exterior shades, windows which can replace hot stagnant air with cool outside air) can make the house far more comfortable without any energy use at all. Demanding lots of electricity would cost me a bundle; a little imagination would make me comfortable for a lot less money.
Same thing about natural gas. If my hot water tank and house stay toasty without burning gas, do I care whether it comes to my house or not? If I don't need any, why would I care what it costs? With good insulation and the right architecture, I could be comfy without natural gas and pay a lot less money. I'm sure spermaceti candles cost a king's ransom these days, but I don't care; I have more and better light without burning a thing in my house. Neither do I need "rock oil" except perhaps to establish a mood.
Gasoline? Technically I don't use it any more, but my diesel car still burns petroleum. I'd have the same utility and a lot less expense and inconvenience if most of my driving was powered by electricity. Plugging in every night or two would be less hassle than going to a filling station once a month to pump smelly liquid into the car's tank, and it would be quite a bit cheaper.
The pursuit of petroleum and natural gas is costing us a huge amount of money, and building up debts which will be with us for generations. A little imagination could give us the same or equivalent goods and cost us a lot less (in several different ways). Isn't it time to get our minds out of their ruts and ask for something a little different?
¶ 12/07/2006 11:58:00 PM 4 comments links to this post
More progress I just learned about
It looks like my spec for 50% efficiency in the gas-to-electricity step in Sustainability may have been pessimistic; Fuel Cell Today had an article last year which claimed the possibility of 80% efficiency (see page 4). (I claim overwork as an excuse. Yeah, that's it.)
Further, this is not from a SOFC, it's with a turbine-compounded MCFC. With this sort of efficiency, it would be feasible to dispense with SOFC's entirely. This is the sort of backup technology which practically guarantees that the concept is viable. The one element I cannot pin down is cost.
In other news, LiFePO4 cells are heading toward commodity status.
¶ 12/04/2006 11:16:00 PM 3 comments links to this post
Renewable energy and the auto industry
Of all the surprises I've had this year, the biggest was probably these words from the head of GM:
First, electricity offers outstanding benefits... beginning with the opportunity to diversify fuel sources upstream of the vehicle. In other words, the electricity that is used to drive the vehicle can be made from the best local fuel sources—natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, and so on. So, before you even start your vehicle, you're working toward energy diversity.
I could have sworn I'd heard similar sentiments before:
if you can make your own "motor fuel" with a solar panel or wind turbine, you will be largely insulated from oil depletion.
Mr. Wagoner continued:
Third, electrically driven vehicles offer great performance...with extraordinary acceleration, instant torque, improved driving dynamics, and so on.
This also sounded familiar:
A car that's quieter, runs its A/C at full speed even when the engine is at idle (or even with the engine off), has superior power steering, can run many kilowatts of electrical loads... is a better car no matter how you cut it.
If the auto isn't going to decline along with the production of oil, it's going to have to shift from petroleum to renewable energy. Maybe the industry (and the nation) won't drop the ball this time.
¶ 12/03/2006 12:27:00 AM 3 comments links to this post
It comes almost too fast to keep up
Evidence accumulates that the biofuel recycling step in Sustainability is not only feasible, but here today: Greenfuel just announced production of commercial-quality biofuels from CO2 scavenged from an Arizona powerplant (h/t: Cervus @ GCC).
Further, they mentioned that the CO2 capture efficiency is as high as 80% during daylight hours. This is astounding, and it strongly suggests that a closed-loop system is feasible:
- Burn biomass in fuel cells, gas turbines... doesn't matter.
- Pump combustion exhaust into greenhouses growing algae and replacing CO2 with oxygen.
- Remove algae and process into biofuels.
- Take re-oxygenated atmosphere and feed back to combustion step.
- Add makeup water to replace hydrogen removed with liquid biofuels.
So long as the volume of the greenhouses is large enough to store CO2 and supply oxygen overnight, this requires no exhaust to the atmosphere; it can turn all biomass input into electricity PLUS liquid biofuels. It could even burn its own biofuels to make carbon-free electricity, cycling the carbon in a closed loop. We don't need fuel cells right away; we can start with small gas turbines and work up from there.
What are we waiting for?
¶ 12/01/2006 12:30:00 AM 7 comments links to this post
Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy
What, me worry?
One of the biggest threats the USA faces today is a serious shortage of energy. Vulnerabilities in our system have been made glaringly obvious several times; since the 1970's the USA has had social and economic upheaval due to the actions of foreign oil producers, and two hurricanes in 2005 showed just how fragile our remaining domestic supplies of oil and natural gas are. The fact that the nation has a Strategic Petroleum Reserve shows that this is a matter of national security.
For such a serious matter, it's being treated in a very casual fashion. There is no national program to manage oil demand in the event of a supply crisis, or employ market forces to help. Neither is there a long-term initiative to reduce oil dependence and the size of the threat. While the US looks to become dependent upon imported natural gas in addition to oil, there's nothing in the works for a Strategic Natural Gas Reserve. And as for a national building code or even minimum standards for building codes, there's nothing worth mentioning.
Other, less-serious problems have been dealt with far more competently. The USA had a plan for achieving the goal of saving the peregrine falcon and bald eagle from DDT, and another for saving the world's ozone layer from halocarbon emissions. Both of these were carried forward both domestically and internationally, with considerable success on both programs. Given the last ten years of concern about global warming and three decades of concern over energy supplies, you would expect something similar would be in the works for those also. Something broad-based and serious:
- A self-sustaining system which replaces petroleum-based fuels in the short term, and all fossil fuels eventually.
- Productivity high enough to eliminate the displaced fuels without major land-use or other changes.
- A shift toward a neutral carbon and GHG balance, or even a negative net balance.
You can look through our initiatives from last year's energy bill through the previous three administrations, and you wouldn't find anything like this. Nothing in our current energy "policy" even aims squarely at these goals, let alone has a prospect of meeting them (though Carter and Clinton/Gore do deserve credit for thinking about it).
It looks like we could do a lot, with the right engineering backed by supportive policies. What would you say if I told you that we could use biomass to:
- Replace all the petroleum used by the ground-transport sector (55% or more)?
- Replace all the natural gas used by the electric-generation sector (about 1/3 of US natural gas consumption)?
- Replace every pound of coal burned for electricity (about 90% of all US coal consumption)?
- Eliminate over 1.2 billion tons of carbon emissions (4.4 billion tons of CO2) from oil and coal.
All that, and have some left over. I believe we could, and I'll illustrate how (with numbers!) below. But to understand where we need to go, we should first see where we are and how we got here.
From interest-group politics to policy
There are many frustrating things about our current energy non-policy. One of the worst is that we're paying people to do ineffective or even counterproductive things in the name of "sustainability", "energy independence" and even supporting family farming. For instance, our current production of ethanol depends on natural gas or even coal to distill the product. ("Live green, go yellow"? If something depends on burning coal, how green can it be?)
But what if we fixed that?
It won't be easy to change. There are huge interest groups which reap benefits from the status quo. This gives the non-policy a great deal of support, whether it is productive or not. The example of corn ethanol illustrates this nicely. A bunch of people are doing well by it, including:
- Corn-belt farmers, who have a market too big to saturate.
- Agribusinesses like ADM, which reap billions in taxpayer subsidies in the name of (illusory) energy independence.
- Manufacturers and sellers of seed, fertilizer and pesticides.
- The politicians whose taxpayer-financed largesse created this bonanza, and who are in turn supported by its beneficiaries (the benefits aren't for the taxpayer).
Contrary to mouthpieces of those interests, corn ethanol doesn't do well at anything else; it takes nearly a gallon-equivalent of various fuels (including natural gas and diesel) to make a gallon of ethanol. By the USDA's over-optimistic accounting, the increase is roughly 1.27:1, which is not nearly enough to make a sustainable system. Here's a graph of the typical energy balance:
The displaced gasoline comes mostly from some other fossil fuel, the greenhouse benefit is minuscule, and the public pays more overall for the ethanol than they would for imported oil to fill their tanks. In the long run, this is bound to collapse. But in the short run, the program thrives and grows because of the interlocking political support.
Perverse incentives can do that. But what if we paid people to do the right thing, instead of the wrong thing?
Incremental improvements
There are small things we could do. To name one, we could use these resources in ways which really do save fossil fuel. For example, the Ford/MIT ethanol-injection engine uses ethanol and turbo-boosting to roughly double the power output of an engine. This allows downsizing of the engine, which in turn reduces friction and throttling losses; the result is about a 30% improvement in fuel economy. (It also creates a true flex-fuel vehicle which starts on gasoline in cold weather but can run on any mixture of petroleum and ethanol, even ethanol-water mixtures, afterward. This may be important in the future, as I'll describe below.) This is a far better use of ethanol than just blending it into the gasoline supply. If it was substituted across the US vehicle fleet overnight, it could cut our annual gasoline consumption from 140 billion gallons to about 108 billion gallons (efficiency figures are estimates; some appraisals of vehicle drivetrain efficiency are as low as 14.9%):
There are further benefits. Distillation is a very energy-intensive step in the production of ethanol for gasohol or E85; blending with gasoline requires anhydrous ethanol, which requires considerable processing beyond making moonshine. But if you don't blend the ethanol with petroleum, the ethanol does not have to be anhydrous; this saves energy in distillation and improves the energy balance of ethanol production. On top of this, a little water in the mix improves the octane-boosting effect.
Penny wise, pound foolish
Unfortunately, 30% improvement (plus production savings) is nowhere near enough. To stop the increase of atmospheric CO2, we need to cut emissions on the order of 80% (while we still have oil); eventually we're going to have to replace all oil-derived fuels with renewables. Worse, cellulosic ethanol can't do the job by itself. The processes for producing it are too inefficient. Iogen's process is about 50% efficient, compared to 83% well-to-tank efficiency for producing gasoline1; this means we'd need a lot more biomass input energy compared to crude oil to get the same output. The consequence is that we'd have to turn most of our croplands and forests into fuel plantations. Here's what we'd need just to replace gasoline:
The EERE report Billion-Ton Vision adds various sources of unused biomass and comes up with a possibility of 1.3 billion tons per year. At 15.8 million BTU/ton, this is about 20.5 quads of energy. But just replacing gasoline with cellulosic ethanol requires 26.2 quads of biomass energy; that would take almost 1.7 billion tons! But that's not the end of the story. Gasoline only accounts for about 44% of petroleum products delivered in the USA. Diesel accounts for about 2.8 million barrels/day (at considerably greater energy per gallon), so a full replacement of motor fuel with bio-fuels would take about 2.5 billion tons. That's a lot, but it doesn't look extremely difficult. However, it doesn't include jet fuel, industrial fuel and so forth. I won't calculate biomass-equivalents for these.
But that's not the end of the story. Full renewability requires replacing more than just oil. Replacing the fossil energy we get from coal (22.8 quads) would require another 1.4 billion tons plus conversion losses, and natural gas (22.6 quads) would take about the same; those are going to need replacement sooner (global warming) or later (resource exhaustion) too. This all adds up to roughly 5.3 billion tons per year, year in and year out.
At a reasonable figure of ten tons per acre for dedicated biofuel crops, this would take about four hundred million acres over and above what's producing the 1.3 billion tons of waste. In 2003, only about 380 million acres were planted to crops in the entire USA! It's pretty clear that this isn't going to happen.
Even if we did it, the supply would be stretched to the limit from day one. Energy security demands more than this. We need a supply of energy which averages considerably more than what we consume, so that temporary downturns don't create crises. (Remember how gasoline got very expensive or even ran out post-Katrina, when the Gulf wells and refineries were shut down? Remember how expensive natural gas was that fall? That's what happens when supply is too close to demand. Now imagine an all-biofuel future in a prolonged drought, and add some fires.) Oil supplies are stretched way too tight; replacing one scarce fuel with another is great for producers (like the ethanol lobby) but it just makes the consumer slave to a different master.
The old-school methods aren't going to work this time. Pols say what they want, but Nature can't be spun; when the laws of physics say otherwise no vote or PR campaign can trump them. We're going to have to find that energy somewhere else, which means getting creative.
Knowing where to look
Take another look at those graphs above. One thing should strike everyone: a whale of a lot of energy is lost in conversions. The average refinery makes gasoline with 83% efficiency, but engines are so inefficient that more energy goes to refining losses than pushing the vehicle. An ethanol engine is potentially more efficient than the gasoline equivalent, but the conversion from biomass to ethanol loses so much that it takes more biomass energy than crude oil to do the same job! Biomass gasification may be more efficient than Iogen's hydrolization and fermentation, but even a 70%-efficient process yields barely 18% end-to-end efficiency at best. Still, the available energy from biomass looks to be several times the energy we actually use from crude oil. The conclusions are inescapable:
- There is sufficient biomass energy to replace motor fuel and then some... if the energy is not wasted.
- Using bio-ethanol in piston engines means taking between 4/5 and 9/10 of the captured energy and throwing it away.
- Even burning biomass as a replacement for e.g. coal in conventional powerplants means 60% losses or more.
- It looks impossible to grow enough biomass to take that path.
- The old paradigm won't work any more. A new systems approach is required.
- The essence of a successful system will be fewer conversions and minimizing losses.
The potential is enormous. If we can manage to get our hands on 20-odd quads worth of biomass each year, we could replace huge amounts of other demand. Here's a short list of what actually makes it to useful form:
- 17 quads of gasoline into 3-odd quads of useful work.
- 6 quads of diesel fuel into perhaps 2.4 quads of useful work.
- 6.7 quads of natural gas into 2.57 quads of electricity.
- 21 quads of coal into 6.88 quads of electricity.
The useful work we get out of all of these things comes to roughly 15 quads, far less than the 20-odd quads of biofuels we could get; the problem is getting enough of it in useful form. The key to a renewable economy is efficiency, and efficiency is one thing we aren't pushing hard enough. We could certainly do better. But none of this will change as long as people benefit more from the status quo.
What gets rewarded, gets done
Before digging too much into what we should do, let's look at what we're doing now, and why.
The incentive structure around our "biofuels" is designed to profit interest groups, rather than to reduce fossil-fuel use or fix global warming. The farmers of the USA grew more corn than we could use, so the price collapsed. Washington's solution: pay to turn corn into motor fuel, no matter how inefficient it is. We can't afford that inefficiency any more, so it's obviously got to change. But unless a sea change in the body politic overwhelms the current system, this requires breaking the current interests apart: some fraction of the people (or at least the voters) who are benefitting now need to see more advantage for themselves in upsetting the apple cart. The big agribusiness and ethanol interests (e.g. ADM) aren't in this group and will have to be dragged along or forced out. Fortunately, some segments don't need to make great changes. The farmers are doing at least part of what needs doing: pulling carbon out of the air and fixing it in a form which contains energy. Is it possible to get them to buy into "more of the same, only different"? And what would that look like?
A modest proposal
Every Ergosphere reader knows I've got a thing for turning waste into gold. Using corn stover to feed a fertilizer plant (and make all the nitrogen the corn needs, plus more) is the sort of solution I like. Farm income income depends a lot on subsidies, but we're paying for things that don't do us much (if any) good. It's time to stop wasting that money and get something useful for it. So what can farmers make that they ought to get paid for?
Rather, what problems can they solve, above and beyond keeping folks fed? The obvious issues are:
- Too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and
- A dearth of storable, renewable energy.
#1 is the big global-warming issue. Farmers can help solve it, but they didn't make it; the problem was created by others. Since CO2 reduction is a public good, it looks like the ideal farm price-support program for the next half-century: we can tax greenhouse-gas creators to pay farmers to offset the damage, and pay farmers some extra to return the atmosphere to a stable state. Just pulling the atmospheric CO2 level from today's 379 ppm down to 350 ppm (a level which would probably stabilize Greenland and Antarctica) requires the net capture of about 230 billion tons2 of carbon dioxide. If we can get 1.72 billion dry tons of biomass per year (720 million tons of waste and another billion dry tons of biomass crops), about 770 million tons would be carbon3; even if we took it all, released nothing back to the atmosphere, and added twice again as much effort from the rest of the world, we'd still be at the job for around a century. Paying farmers to take carbon out of the air and put it in the ground, out of reach (e.g. as charcoal mixed with earth) could be the ultimate price backstop for anything they grew. The risk of price collapses due to bumper harvests would be a thing of the past; sequestration would be the ultimate backup "market" able to absorb anything beyond marketable quantities.
#2 favors products which can be stockpiled. Light gases such as methane can be stored in underground formations, but liquids can be stored in tanks most anywhere and many solids can just be heaped. And to solve the greenhouse problem, the fuels must be able to deliver sufficient energy to the user to replace what we'd otherwise require from fossil fuels. Ideally, much of the carbon leaving the system should be produced in a form which can be stored indefinitely. Charcoal certainly meets that requirement (it is used to carbon-date campfires up to 10,000 years old, and perhaps older).
Every system has its limits, which must be respected scrupulously; failure to take them into account means the system will fail to meet its expectations, sometimes in spectacular fashion. The limiting factor in most biofuel systems is carbon capture by plants. Once the carbon is captured there are ways to recycle it (some of them with very impressive possibilities), but most of them (like Greenfuel) won't just run on air; they require a concentrated stream of CO2. If the system is to be run on renewable inputs, something else has to do the gruntwork of pulling the carbon out of the atmosphere.
Isn't that a healthy part of what farming does? And it could be quite profitable. If carbon removal is compensated at $85/ton social cost, farmers would do very well by it.
What we've got to work with
The EERE report which came up with the 1.3 billion ton figure measures potential waste biomass in the USA. Current production is much smaller. A great deal of that 1.3 billion tons assumes greater production of non-crop biomass from grain and bean crops, which may not happen. Accordingly, I'm only going to assume about 348 million tons of crop byproducts.
The other major waste biomass stream comes from forestry, which might produce 368 million tons per year. We could add to that with biomass crops such as Miscanthus Giganticus, switchgrass or fast-growing trees such as coppiced willow or poplar. The productivity varies, but if Miscanthus can average 10 short tons/acre, an additional billion tons of biomass would require only 100 million acres. To compare, roughly 80 million acres are planted to corn (maize) for grain alone each year (not including silage), and considerable marginal or erodible land is currently in agricultural set-asides. Waste plus dedicated biomass would make 1.72 billion tons a year. Here's a complete listing of my assumptions:
| Crop byproduct | Product, tons/acre |
Acres | Total tons |
| Wheat straw | 1 | 48,800,000 | 48,800,000 |
| Rice straw | 4 | 3,300,000 | 13,200,000 |
| Corn stover | 2.5 | 80,700,000 | 202,000,000 |
| Process residue | 84,000,000 | ||
| Forest products | 368,000,000 | ||
| Biomass crops | 10 | 100,000,000 | 1,000,000,000 |
| TOTAL | 1,720,000,000 | ||
Okay, what do you do with it?
Suppose for a minute that we've got that 1.7 billion tons every year. We've got MSW authorities pulling out all their "green waste", unrecyclable paper and everything else, foresters capturing chips, bark and sawdust, and farmers baling all their extra crop wastes and growing switchgrass or Miscanthus on their marginal land and buffer strips. Where do you go from there?
First thing, you turn the biomass into charcoal. This doesn't take sophisticated equipment; it can be made simple, rugged and cheap (though it can always be improved). The process takes biomass and compressed air (or heated gas of some kind). Its products are:
- Hot medium-BTU fuel gas (the content of heavy molecules such as tars depends on the operating conditions; hotter operation breaks down heavier molecules).
- Charcoal, amounting to as much as 30% of the dry weight of the input biomass.
A 30% (ashless) yield of carbon would contain about 50% of the energy of the original biomass. The remaining 50% would come off as heat and chemical energy in the gas. The simplest processes for making charcoal do it by burning some of the input fuel, but this can be improved. If the carbonization process was driven partly by external or recycled heat, less energy would be expended in combustion; the net energy yield in the gas would shift away from heat toward chemical energy (and total energy yield of charcoal+gas could exceed 100% of the heat of combustion of the biomass). Medium-BTU gas isn't easily transported, but it can be used at the site of production to good effect.
There are several uses for fuel gas, but one of the best is making electricity. Hot combustible gas is more or less what an SOFC runs on. GE and Delphi have been developing small SOFC's for automotive applications, and both recently beat the $300/kW price barrier. Efficiency is 49% and headed upward. If we assume that:
- 1.72 billion tons per year of biomass is carbonized.
- This biomass has 15.8 million BTU/dry ton of energy (27.1 quads total energy).
- 53.5% of the energy is yielded as charcoal (30% by weight).
- 88% of the remainder is yielded as chemical energy in hot gas (11.1 quads gas + 1.51 quads reaction heat + recycled heat).
- The gas can be converted to electricity at 50% efficiency.
The electric yield from the processing of the gas would be 5.55 quads, or 1620 billion kilowatt-hours. This is more than twice the US electric generation from natural gas (~750 billion kWh), and more than 1/2 of the total US electric generation from all fossil fuels. In short, all non-renewable natural gas generation could be replaced by energy from the carbonization stage, and a large chunk of the coal-fired generation as well.
But that's not the end of it! The process also produces charcoal; at 30% yield, 1.72 billion tons of input would leave about 515 million tons of output. Charcoal can be used for fuel, as a soil amendment or as a feedstock for further processing. Gasified charcoal would produce fewer pollutants than gasified coal and could be used for power generation or production of nitrogen fertilizer. But the most efficient option appears to be use in direct-carbon fuel cells (DCFC's). Up to 80% of the chemical energy of the charcoal can be turned into electricity in DCFC's (and the byproduct heat is still useful).
Charcoal is like coal, only more stable. Charcoal is the product of a high-temperature process, and is missing most of the hydrogen and volatile chemicals of coal. It can be heaped and stored for weeks to thousands of years; charcoal from ancient forest and camp fires allows prehistoric events to be dated. It is a valuable addition to soil, creating the fertile "terra preta"4 of the notoriously nutrient-poor Amazon rainforest. It's perhaps the ultimate answer to irregular supplies of renewable energy. An annual supply of 515 million short tons of charcoal fed to DCFC's would produce roughly 3400 billion kilowatt-hours of energy. This is more than the total US generation from fossil fuels, and about 84% of the total electric energy consumed in the USA in 2005; together with the generation from the gas, it could conceivably replace every kilowatt-hour we now use, from the trivial amounts made by solar to the entire contribution of coal, with about 25% extra to play with.
It wouldn't be wise to replace everything with biomass energy, of course; throwing away diversity of supply means reducing security. But it shows just how much potential we've got, if we only start using it.
So how does this relate to oil again?
I've spent the last several hundred words talking about the production of electricity, not petroleum or other liquid fuels. At the moment, electricity has almost nothing to do with petroleum; only about 3% of electricity is generated from oil (and that's including petroleum coke, a coal-like byproduct of oil refining). Our transportation system is the opposite: it currently runs on liquid petroleum fuels almost exclusively, and most vehicles can't accept anything else. These two parts of the energy economy are almost completely disconnected from each other.
Any scheme which replaces oil is either going to have to produce