New biofuels process promises to meet all US transportation needs

[IChing]

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University chemical engineers have proposed a new environmentally friendly process for producing liquid fuels from plant matter - or biomass - potentially available from agricultural and forest waste, providing all of the fuel needed for "the entire U.S. transportation sector."

The new approach modifies conventional methods for producing liquid fuels from biomass by adding hydrogen from a "carbon-free" energy source, such as solar or nuclear power, during a step called gasification. Adding hydrogen during this step suppresses the formation of carbon dioxide and increases the efficiency of the process, making it possible to produce three times the volume of biofuels from the same quantity of biomass, said Rakesh Agrawal, Purdue's Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering.

The researchers are calling their approach a "hybrid hydrogen-carbon process," or H2CAR.

"Further research is needed to make this a large-scale reality," Agrawal said. "We could use H2CAR to provide a sustainable fuel supply to meet the needs of the entire U.S. transportation sector - all cars, trucks, trains and airplanes."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/pu-nbp031407.php

[IDemo]

1. Well that's it, then. Anybody wanna buy a bicycle? n/t

[IChing]

3. Our auto/oil industries will fight the retooling that is needed

like they have done for the last 50 years.

http://www.turbinecar.com/images/54-brochure/54brochure.htm
http://www.turbinecar.com/history.htm

[phantom power]

2. In other words,

if you inject an enormous amount of energy into the cycle, you get lots more useable fuel. In this case, that enormous amount of energy comes into the system via H2. Which is produced by...

Hmm. What?

Note that if you assume the H2 is produced by nuclear power, you have essentially what NNadir repeatedly proposes here in E/E. Synthetic fuels generated by hydrogenation of carbon, with the H2 from nuclear plants.

[GliderGuider]

4. A couple of comments

They are really saying "biofuel suitable for any need" rather than "enough biofuel to fill all demand" which is how the headline reads. I will be charitable and say the headline was poorly worded.

Second, there's the explicit assumption that electrolysis driven by solar, wind or nuclear will be able to provide enough hydrogen to realize the required production volumes of fuel, and to do it in the time frame required. I have my doubts, since most of these sources are probably going to be busy providing consumer electricity for the foreseeable future.

The gasification, syngas, Fischer-Tropsch process is well-known, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it. They've added a wrinkle in that the hydrogen is provided by electrolysis rather than steam reforming of natural gas, but I don't see how this is any kind of brerakthrough. It sounds more like a simple thought experiment.

[GliderGuider]

6. One other comment

The more I think about using nuclear power to make biofuels, the more the shit-disturber in me LOVES the idea. The cognitive dissonance is enough to give you mental whiplash! :+

[NNadir]

7. There is a lot wrong with Fischer-Tropsch in my view.

Fischer-Tropsch from biomass is OK, but Fischer-Tropsch is mostly practiced industrially from <em>coal</em>.

In fact, coal is the default substitution for petroleum, and it's neither pretty nor sustainable.

In the nuclear case, electrolysis is not necessarily the best approach for producing hydrogen. Thermochemical hydrogen, the sulfur iodine cycle being one example, has very much higher thermal efficiency than electrolysis systems could ever have.

Thermochemical cycles are possible for certain kinds of thermal solar stations as well as for nuclear plants.

[kestrel91316]

5. If we burn up all our calories driving, what will we eat?