Octane numbers measure in scale the ability of a fuel to resist “knock” an ignition event resulting from premature fuel burning in spark-ignited engines.  The early ignition drives the piston back down the cylinder the wrong direction, which can cause engine damage when the “knock” is severe or prolonged.

Higher octane ratings in fuel blends would enable greater thermal efficiency in future engines through higher compression ratios and/or more aggressive turbocharging and downsizing of current engines on the road today through more aggressive spark timing under some driving conditions.

Ethanol's Impact on RON Octane Ratings in Gasoline. Click image for the largest view.

Ethanol and methanol offer higher research octane numbers (RON) and motor octane numbers (MON) when compared to gasoline. The alcohols also have a greater latent heat of vaporization than gasoline, which contributes to their higher RON values and provides additional charge cooling in direct-injection (DI) engines.  That means when the alcohols are sprayed into the engine’s induction air the charge of air is cooled more by the evaporation of the alcohol.

The two alcohols are not equal to gasoline.  Detractors focus on the lower energy density than gasoline, potentially higher or lower vapor pressures, altered distillation properties, and potential for water-induced phase separation.  These are all valid points – easily compensated for by proper engineering.

Today the situation is that ethanol is blended into a gasoline blendstocks formulated with a lower octane rating such that the net octane rating of the resulting final blend for sale is unchanged from historical levels.

Ford is making the case, with a hard scientific, peer reviewed, repeatable study what racing folks, hot rodders, engineers, and smart consumers with high compression engines have known for years.

The high octane rating of ethanol could be used in a mid-level ethanol blend to increase the minimum octane number (Research Octane Number, RON) of regular-grade gasoline.

Ford suggests that the societal benefit comes from automakers having an opportunity to improve their engines to a higher compression ratio.  The compression ratio is a comparison of the volume of the open cylinder to the cylinder volume when the piston has squeezed the cylinder to the smallest volume.  The same amount of fuel and air squeezed into a smaller space sets up a more energetic fuel burn that equals more mechanical energy out and less heat lost.
The Ford team used their already developed a linear molar octane blending model to quantify RON potential from ethanol and blendstock.  From the results the team estimated that an increase of 4-7 points in RON are possible by blending in an additional 10–20% by volume of ethanol above the 10% already present.

Here’s the opportunity Ford sees, keeping the blendstock RON at 88 (which provides E10 with a 92.5 RON), the estimated RON would be increased to 94.3 for E15 to as much as 98.6 for E30. The team further suggests RON increases may be achievable assuming changes to the blendstock RON and/or hydrocarbon composition.  An increase in blendstock RON from 88 to 92 would increase the RON of E10 from 92.5 to 95.6, and would provide higher RON with additional ethanol content (e.g., RON of 97.1 for E15 to 100.6 for E30).  This is high performance territory.

From the scenarios considered in the paper, the team estimated compression ratio increases to be on the order of 1–3 compression ration units for port fuel injection engines as well as for direct injection engines in which the greater evaporative cooling of ethanol can be fully utilized.

Ford is making a case that has been obvious to many for decades.  That has not stopped the detractors and the ill-informed followers from thinking up an assortment of ways to mislead consumers, the media and policy makers.  The facts the detractors have can prove up with low compression engine builds, poor maintenance, and skewing results.  There is also a strong motive.  The oil industry isn’t thrilled to lose 10% of the gasoline market to a competitor.

For everyone else, a higher compression ratio would be a good thing.  More efficiency, less fuel used and for the environmental types, less air would be cycled through engines.

What is, and as Ford points outs could be, the important issue is keeping the gasoline supply for sale with octane ratings high enough and priced so that higher levels of compression can be engineered into production vehicles at mass scale.

The point not being made was a significant point a couple decades ago when unleaded gasoline became the rule – lowering compression ratios.  It’s a waste of engineering, materials and air to mandate low octane ratings when the science and experience have proven otherwise for about one hundred years.

Perhaps Ford will be marking a turning point, getting the fuel market quality high enough to put efficiency with simple economy back into the automobile market.  It’s certainly been a long enough wait so far.

With one hundred and fifty years of buildup the petroleum business has only a few free leaders left.  Most of the world’s petroleum supply is controlled by governments, a fact lost on the media and press, which in turn misleads billions of people.  Oil prices, marginal barrels, and energy invested vs. energy returned are all symptoms of a partially controlled and partially market driven system that has become a way to barely keep enough product available.

So whom will the consumer trust?  Is it a Saudi sheik, a Russian oligarch, a U.S. bureaucrat or a company working in a free economy answering to millions of stockholders, employees and customers?  All these know that press and media types will watch and report something or other, nearly certain to be badly biased, but the news in some fashion will get out. That might be enough to keep the clutching and grasping government ideas at bay for a bit longer.  Oddly, and contrary to sentiment, your interest is the same as the free independent oil company.  That doesn’t mean your future is bound to them though.

For now and the immediate future the smartest folks are watching what is known as “Big Oil”.  Your humble writer knows he needs them and obviously tends to root for those who provide and support the developed world’s lifestyle.  Rah. That said:

ExxonMobil is the largest Big Oil firm.  It also enjoys a reputation of being engineering oriented.  Other firms, such as Chevron have a more personal sense and community base.  These are forms of corporate culture, if you will.  By any measure the competitiveness is very much there – all the Big Oil companies mean to get you to be their customer.

So when a firm like ExxonMobil offers a blog by a vice president it’s worth some notice and the occasional stopping by.  All the while knowing these guys mean to sell petroleum products and keep doing that until another business model overtakes the industry.  They will not fail to use all lawful means to do just that – they owe it to the stockholders, employees and customers after all.

The blog is nearly two years old now, and is honestly, light on content. But there are some gems. It’s also a good start, now if we get them to post some information on the news and press releases from the R&D departments . . . Maybe even some useful information on where such an important part of the economy is looking into the future. Now that would be a blog!

Still, vice president Mr. Ken Cohen is going to be fully careful, run what’s written by the lawyers, and not break any rules.  But here’s a bit of business sense from out in the wild, never ask a lawyer’s approval, to pass on something or give over the gate keys.  Make ‘em earn their pay like everybody else – “approval not required, see that it gets done legally”.

So how after two years did ExxonMobil get a bit of attention?  A headline that sets up an energy density comparison between various energy sources, “How many gallons of gasoline would it take to charge an iPhone?”  Answer, a gallon would charge an iPhone daily for nearly twenty years.  Not bad, but the gem comes a bit farther in with, “A typical car’s gasoline tank contains less than 100 pounds of gasoline but can power a 3,000 pound car for 400 miles at 60 miles per hour.”  An astute observation.

When you look at the gem statement in the context, another attempt to maim ethanol as a fuel, the lawyers were likely consulted, but there is little sign any competent engineers were.  Is it any wonder people are so suspicious of Big Oil?

For now, though the illustration approximates reality, albeit years old, and its so stated if you read closely.  But one day an ethanol fuel cell may use 100 pounds of ethanol and power a lighter vehicle five times further at equivalent speeds.

Come on ExxonMobil and Mr. Cohen.  The firm projects and invests on ten-year plans or longer, there is a corporate culture of engineering and scientific status that leads the world. It was a good blog post until the swing at ethanol popped up.  We expect much more and far better of you and soon.

Basically Mr. Pickens has raided the Fed’s Department of Energy feasibility scenario of 20% wind for electric power generation. That would compare to the approximate 22% of power generation coming from natural gas supplies. To pull it off Pickens will need the wind business to about double its installation rate as the Feds are offering.

What he brings to the game for we regular folks is more raided data from the Feds. The wind power may displace about 7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas annually that the electric power guys are burning. The amount of natural gas is equivalent to over 4 million barrels per day of gasoline. That’s about a third of the 12 million barrels we’re importing every day right now worth something on the order of $1.68 billion per day.

Everybody’s sitting up straight now I’ll bet. These are raw and essentially unassailable numbers. The kind of numbers that make the OPEC types cringe. If anything, Mr. Pickens is illustrating one thing very clearly – the oil producers have to realize that over time inventiveness and self-preservation are going to answer the price shock – and the disappearance of customers will be much harder to face than what the customers faced adapting to the shock.

But the plan has some problems. All those wind turbines will need manufactured installed and hooked up to the grid. To get to the 20% level that would require the wind industry to grow by better than 18 fold in a decade. Beyond that, America has been struggling to just get the grid resilient enough to handle section failures in high utilization periods such as hot summer afternoons. The power industry has installations that are not new but “dated” to “old” to “antique” and worse. Nor is the national grid, which should be fully integrated with our neighbors and friends in Canada optimized at all. A huge upgrade needs to take place at the same time.

That might be an opportunity instead.

On the recoil, in a decade about 44% of the vehicles would need to be rigged to use natural gas. Its not complex, even the Iranians can do that, but it isn’t free. The idea to sell and convert about one hundred ten or twenty million cars and things in ten years is just barely believable.

There are some “Over My Dead Body” fists soon to be shaking in the air. While the oil community might be most adaptable, the refinery guys are not going to like the idea that a third or so of the capital plant would be heavily depreciated. Many U.S refineries are inland and wouldn’t easily shift to answer world markets even if the environmentalists would get out of the way. The greenies will be aghast that this plan might push back the end of an energy-powered lifestyle, which is what they are about at the natural end of their campaign. The CO2 will go down a lot, but not be gone completely.

Up close and personal is the truth that a lot of us have natural gas piped right to the house now. Today a pump/compressor rig runs about $3,500 – but we could expect that to go down. On the other hand, we’re talking about highly flammable gas at high pressures handled by regular folks at home. I have a bad feeling about this – some of my neighbors really shouldn’t be handling anything with these potentials. If it gets away from them, well, it will be tragic to say the least, even if it’s “quick.”

The electrical generating companies are not going to idle their gas-fired plants and just walk from their investments, either. And even more of a concern is lots of them are in California, who has been so pernicious as to rely heavily on gas-fired plants at the loss of resiliency from other sources. There will be a fight.

And there are natural gas fueled turbines that can start up in just minutes to answer peak demands that really provide an important service – something that wind just isn’t suited to do.

Now lastly, the notion of a major vehicle fleet change to natural gas in part of a third or so could have a negative effect on getting far smarter electric power units and lighter weight vehicles on the market. The plan really only buys time and keeps the dependency on poor internal combustion efficiencies, a sad and pointless effort in many ways.

All that said, those knives better be heavy duty, sharp and made of the very best samuri grade steel. All of the objections noted here have existing technological answers. There could be some capital lost, but there will be in any case whichever routes we choose to follow. Some might say this is all about building a foundation under Mr. Pickens’ investment in wind power. On the other hand I am dubious that Boone would have that foremost in his mind. I think he’s looking for a way to keep the country together and believes that this plan offers a way to a better future. It’s what he knows, knows well and by any sensible analysis, must be seriously thought through.

I’m certain that wind power has a bright future, shifting out natural gas or not. He’s not running for president so the timing is excruciatingly sweet, topping both presidential candidates with something that while radical is real and possible with absolute benefits for nearly everyone.

On the other hand. . . . Remember the Jevons Paradox? That’s the observation that as technology improves energy efficiency of a resource the total use tends to increase.

Now with the knives dulled, what would innovation, creativity and thoughtful investment offer in reviewing the plan? That’s another post.

The flip side to food vs. fuel is that the corn crop may come up short enough to drive ethanol in part off the market for gasoline addition. Estimates are putting the price increase at 15% or nearly 60 cents per gallon. At 10% in E-10 mixes that could be high but even at a straight 10% we’re at 40 cents more per gallon. Do we still want to be inventing complains about corn being used for fuel?

It’s possible, but of dubious likelihood, that the feds and states could get their regulatory acts together and issue waivers, but if history is any guide that would come late and shock fuel buyers even more than today. Some minimization of the impact could come with fast action. But, don’t hold your breath.

The impacts are already being felt before this year’s crop is grown. A similarity exists to the Katrina disaster although smaller in scale. Katrina forced refineries going off line that were down for weeks and months. The Iowa floods have shut in some ethanol plants, closed rail lines and wiped out bridges both roads and rail. This slows corn in and ethanol out. Adding rail cars and trucks would bring the in transit inventory up to close the gap over time, but the available railcars and trucks are in full use now. If you thought oil was short – ethanol is only at a 20-day supply.

Those are good reasons to expect that blended E-10 gasoline will be in short supply this summer. Over the next 18 to 20 months, the shortfall might be significantly more costly. The USDA crop report had already called down the corn crop by one billion bushels, a 7.5% reduction from last year before the flooding occurred. This plus the growth in demand and production from 6.8 billion gallons in 2007 to a projection for 2008 of 9 billion gallons will push the corn price higher.

This is not all locked in though. Ethanol is a market unto itself, traded on the Chicago Board of Trade, not the New York Mercantile where crude is traded. Ethanol can be bought from the production facilities on the CBoT and prices can be locked. That market has had ethanol priced low lately making it difficult to earn profits. An outsiders look in for a metric is called the “Crush Spread” or the subtraction of corn prices from ethanol prices. Ethanol until last Friday’s close still looked cheap at $2.80 a gallon, and it was – compared to gasoline.

The variables to predict the effect on gasoline is harder to figure. It might be that ethanol prices will stay high enough to keep production and transport over 8 billion gallons or close to 9 billion. With Friday’s ethanol at about 50 cents a gallon cheaper than raw unleaded gasoline and counting the government credit of 51 cents, gasoline might not have an upward price pressure. But.

Several million acres of corn is under water and lost. The Chicago Board of Trade is starting to reflect this in later 2008 and 2009 pricing. The actual delays in deliveries are yet to be determined as the road, rail and bridge damage isn’t scheduled for repairs and reopening. We probably won’t make it to 2009 without some price impacts.

Ethanol is fully 6% of U.S. gasoline use now and to make up for any shortfall would require more gasoline by more refinery runs to gasoline which means more crude oil used or more imports in competition with the rest of the world driving gasoline prices higher.

The lesson in this is that fuel products are closely interconnected in the world pricing mechanism. With biofuels just beginning to take some market share and a reduction of some share of 6% at risk, we see clearly that the supply and demand spread is way too close for comfort. The important thing to take away is that biofuels can make an enormous positive difference over time, and that just starting out with corn fed ethanol makes clear that the widest possible array of sources and fuel products is in everyone’s best interest. So, the sooner the better.

The refinery is the ConocoPhillips Billings Unit. It runs about 50+ thousand barrels a day, not real small nor is it a behemoth. The most striking thing coming up on it is – it doesn’t smell. If it does, its being overwhelmed by the livestock market not far away that offers much more powerful aromas. You might say that Billings smells of money. In truth though, the yards are full of cattle, so it’s not like hogs, fish or a poultry facility. What struck me, with my experience is more than the lack of aromas, was that the refinery was calm, clean, relaxed and running at full tilt. The staff knows what they’re doing here. It’s more than that though.

The management at ConocoPhillips is a little different than say Chevron or ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil, which while everyone likes to diss them, is the world’s leading engineering oil and gas, refining and petrochemical company. That sort of explains the psychology there. Chevron based in California is more adventurous, out going and involved, looking into everything, may have a little attention deficit – certainly has a little West Coast bend in its thinking and corporate culture. ConocoPhillips is a more Oil Patch company, which means they are more middle American, conscious of the neighbors and engaging in the community. Little differences like that have major effects outside of the companies themselves and our views of them.

Starting in 1990 ConocoPhillips went so far as to setup citizen advisory councils at its refinery complexes. These groups are the organized connection to the neighbors with the refinery complexes. With such a group, regular folks can participate, get access, and meet leaders that affect their lives and affect them back. With such a potential offered by refineries in a community from great paying jobs and investments, over to the reality of a huge volatile and inflammable concentration of fuel products, involvement is an important thing.

The night prior to the tour found we bloggers at a little dinner party with ConocoPhillips managers and members of the Citizens Advisory Council. Middle America with a western tint. These people, with divergent views are very relaxed and comfortable with each other. Its easy to see with such a sense of purposeful camaraderie, that keeping an important facility in top operating order that plays a major regional role running so well that it wins national awards isn’t so hard when the personal influences are so dignified and respectful of one another. Maybe it was the food, but that was a very nice dinner party, and offers that major plant operations can have extraordinary relations with the neighbors.

The tour was mostly in the “learning center” outside of the refinery itself. It was SAFETY SAFETY SAFETY from Reed Marton.

This is what goes on in a refinery from Tim Seidel and is linked right here in a PowerPoint presentation that Jane Van Ryan at the API pried away from ConocoPhillips for you to see, too.

The tour itself was from inside a van type limo as letting a bunch of people out to run about in such a place isn’t a good idea at all. Lots of stuff in a refinery is very hot, from below air ambient to over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and the flammable products are from bituminous high sulfur crude oil (not especially ignitable) all the way up to pure hydrogen gas at over 1300 psi pressure (extremely ignitable). I was happy to be in the van, close enough, as I have a good idea what that product range means and the results if an ignition source meets oxygenated fuel.

The impression I took away was that the plant is in as close to perfect shape as one could want. As noted, the aromas were weak if noticeable at all. The ship shape condition would do a nasty Admiral proud, not but one spot where something gooey had escaped over the edge of a tank ever so slightly to make a stain in the paint. And clean, you couldn’t possibly think this facility is 49 years old. It’s so efficient that it won an EnergyStar award twice. The guy every headhunter wants, that takes care of this bewildering array of fracture units, catalytic cracker, coker, tubing, storage, hydrogen production, and even a steam driven electrical generator from excess steam energy is Gerald Knoyle.

Keeping the whole thing in order is Mike Wirkowski, the plant manager who is soon to be lost to a ConocoPhillips refinery in England. Mike has the ideal personality and character to handle the tensions of a refinery in the middle of town. He will be missed I’m sure, but the people staying will surely support and bring the next manager up to speed in what must be one of the best working environments for a manager imaginable.

The other bloggers are Bruce “McQ” McQuain, a favorite of mine both on the net and even more in person. Here is his take on the trip at www.qando.net/mcq.aspx. Next is Courtney Carlisle, young, smart, confident, and way cute, she writes at greenoptions.com which is a collection of writers that kindly put covers lots of turf.

There was also a team from Stanford’s smartenergyshow.com led by Clay Hamilton and with Luke Leaver, a bright impressionable young man from New Zealand. They were busy getting videos of everything, as Mr. Hamilton is an accomplished producer, until we got inside the refinery only to learn that an unidentified threat to the refinery was in investigation and everything photo and video was restricted until the threat had been closed. It would have been great to get more than the few shots they were allowed with the guide’s commentary. But I kind of think Clay is sharp enough to get something good, and the guide, Andy Holman is a sharp one too, and offered a great deal of information that would be highly educational when the Stanford site gets it up.

It was a very quick trip. Fly, dinner, sleep, Stella’s (OMG! The bakery for morning diet destruction!) training, tour, fly. If it weren’t for the weather and airline operations I would have been gone about 30 hours total. The API again provided the travel, lodging and food without cost to me, so that’s disclosed, but the PowerPoint presentation linked above and when the Stanford team posts video, that money will be well spent getting America’s best example of an oil refinery out to anyone interested in learning what the current best standards are and where other refineries are inexorably headed.

There are three other people who need credited, Jane Van Ryan of the API, her aide from Edelman, Kate Shirley, and ConocoPhillips’ own John McLemore who showed the grace and courtesy of the very refined southern gentleman. To this trio I give a thank you both of my own and for all of you, too.

The intriguing aspects of methanol center around the fact that it is a dense store of hydrogen. As a fuel or a storage of energy for the fuel cell crowd, that aspect at 99 grams of hydrogen per liter compared to liquid hydrogen offering only 71 grams per liter with the reality of methanol at any humanly comfortable temperature is a liquid while hydrogen must be kept at –253 degrees C. Methanol could be distributed through the existing infrastructure of the gasoline and ethanol industry with not terribly expensive alterations and mixes with each or as a combination of the three.

Methanol is easily obtained first chemically, most commonly using the Fischer-Tropsch Method using most any organic material whether current account growth or fossilized hydrocarbons and coal. Secondly, current account biomatter can be used to simply “brew” methanol as it is made by many species of bacteria rather than the “brewer’s yeast” to make ethanol. It can even be made from CO2, which may see methanol as a product from flue gases from burning coal. One day atmospheric CO2 capture could get economically viable and making methanol could have a role in a biospheric recycling method.

Methanol offers increased safety, as it is much harder to ignite than gasoline. Its used as a racing fuel because of this and the very high octane it offers. But when it does burn freely in the atmosphere there are no clear and visible flames like the blast of orange carbon oxidations seen when gasoline goes up.

There are downsides to measure. Methanol is corrosive to common metals like aluminum, zinc and manganese. It will interact with many plastics. It attracts and absorbs water. Evaporated methanol, while already in the atmosphere from natural biological processes would offer volatile organic compounds, the stuff smog is made from. Methanol is toxic, even more so than gasoline, even though easily treated, and if done quickly leaves no side effects, but can blind or kill nevertheless.

In the balance is the danger. Methanol stays close up when spilled where hydrogen gas would rapidly dilute into the air. But it’s much harder to ignite than gasoline, which makes that comparison a safer one. When leaked it dissipates into water quickly and biodegrades when the concentration gets dilute enough. It actually can be used to de-nitrify water as it is a nutrient for those kinds of bacteria.

The trigger has to be using methanol for personal transport fuel. China has already added methanol to the gasoline fuel inventory along with ethanol and are up to 1 billions gallons of annual use with a mandated fuel standard this year.

But no amount of diluting gasoline and adding octane and increasing compression in internal compression engines can compare to what will likely come in the next months or years.

Direct methanol fuel cell research is closing in on the problem of methanol getting past the fuel cell membrane and the tendency of the CO2 to congregate at the anode. That’s why the research announcement from the University of the Basque Country and the onslaught of emails about the MIT effort and that promptly got a press release announcement out last Friday may be pretty exciting.  (The MIT link has a small video about their new material, an animation of the process of layering up the membrane and photos.)

In the raw, and I mean raw numbers, methanol is about half as dense as gasoline and a third lower again from ethanol. Running methanol through a 20% efficient internal combustion engine would suggest that the price or economics would need the fuel cost per mile to be about half or better to compensate.

However, if the methanol is going through a fuel cell that is 50% efficient, and the drive train is 80% efficient, a liter or gallon would be somewhat equivalent to being used in an IC engine. With likely more power from electric drive and very similar personal transportation vehicles, the oil price issue could disappear.

President Bush was quite on point when he cautioned the Middle East’s leadership that they best get on with expanding and diversifying their economies.

Keep in mind, methanol is much easier to make than ethanol. It seems like most anything organic can be reformed into methanol either biologically or chemically. Once the research yields a highly efficient long lasting and economically made fuel cell with an output that can feed a capacitor and or battery bank connected to an electric drive train – the world will change once again. And if the efficiency is high enough and the methanol abundant enough the vehicle to grid idea might actually get traction and very long legs, indeed.

Yup. The coming craze may be (pretty likely) methanol. What a ride it will be!

The U.S. is reported to be going through 389 million gallons of gasoline per day. While useful for entertainment and to run calculations comparing gasoline use to solar sourced electricity isn’t realistic. But that gasoline is energizing seat miles. I admit that Mr. Rapier is trying hard to make a sensible case using verifiable numbers for the base assumptions. All well and good, it plays right into the audience that tracks Mr. Rapier’s commentary, which seems headed into the gloomy and doomed end of civilization.

So lets speculate, and up front, there isn’t any reason to be going to great lengths to use verifiable numbers for the assumptions. Any sensible set, if based in the personal and commercial reality of the day will do.

Assume that those 389 million gallons of gasoline are moving something 20 miles each for 7.78 billion miles. This assumption offers the reality that no one will be changing their lifestyle. The hole in the number is just what is the actual traveled miles per day of the U.S. gasoline powered fleet actually is. Of course, everyone will be above or below this number and the investment in the vehicle will vary hugely, too. So, lets just divide the gallon at say $3.50 by 20 for $0.175 per mile or $52.50 per 300 mile week. But the important number is the assumed and full of holes 7.78 billion daily miles.

One set of numbers for the electrical cost is the Tesla site on the well to wheel page. Tesla offers that the mileage for the Tesla Roadster is 110 Wh/km or 180 Wh/mile or 54,000 watthours in the 300-mile week. That would be 54-kilowatt hours and if the price is say $0.10 the weekly cost is $5.40.

But the Tesla might be highly efficient so let’s use instead of the 180 Wh/mile, let’s say about two fold or 360 Wh/mile, multiplied by the 7.78 billion miles. At 2.77 miles per kilowatt we get 2.81 billion kilowatt hours per day. Mr. Rapier is at 2.7 billion kilowatt hours per day. OK, you caught me, I doubled the Tesla numbers, but the point is that Mr. Rapier is about right, probably in the high side, he just went wildly astray trying to get to the point.

Mr. Rapier is also pretty much on the spot figuring the power generation needed and his conclusion of needing 444 gigawatts of generating capacity is well past what would be conceivably required to fully displace the gasoline fueled fleet. When you consider the assumptions here that double the Tesla Wh/mile the generation numbers are easily within the overnight charging capacity of the U.S. right now.

For us personally the difference between paying as low as $3 to maybe $10 per week to charge up against more than $50 per week in gasoline might free up about $150 per month for new investment. While many worry about the investment being lost from converting to electric drives or other alternatives, keep in mind the money invested in personal vehicles is going to be lost in any case, it’s really a matter of how fast. I spoke with a salesman who is driving a ¾ ton pickup and has been trying to trade it in for something much more fuel efficient only to find the trade in value is humiliating IF they will offer to trade at all.

Mr. Rapier’s conclusions are on point, particularly the part about not having a good way to store electrical potential. While he mentions an odd idea such as splitting water to get hydrogen, there is a better likelihood you could sell me a super capacitor and the necessary kit to have one at home that charges during the day and offloads to the car any time its needed or maybe feeds the grid when excess is available. Even a cheap lead acid battery set would be preferable to investing in the solar panels needed to split water and burn the hydrogen or feed a fuel cell that converts back to electricity.

The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog picked up Mr. Rapier’s post. That’s a good thing. Even though most will miss the important reasons to be looking in the direction of electric drive vehicles as Mr. Rapier did, we’re lucky he and others who watch him get to see a number that while at the high range and loaded to show the amount of solar installation needed to get there does show the viability.

Regular readers will know that the stop mark is the storage issue both in vehicle and at small solar installations. One might think that the smart money, issue maker and policy maker might catch on someday. In any case, the weekly power or fuel cost numbers show those batteries and capacitors are two of the gold mines of the coming new energy and fuel era.

The collaboration seeks to use the research to go further on to a commercial synthetic gasoline. The partners believe it is worthwhile to use the catalyst path to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules like those produced at a petroleum refinery. Historically man has relied on yeasts to ferment to the alcohol hydrocarbon family, but Shell and Virent realize that going on to the higher energy densities of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel offer both reduced costs at the consumer level for the investment in equipment and the producer’s storage and transport expenses to make products available.

The press release from the Shell site offers that the feedstocks would be from a broad base of possible non-food sources listing things like corn stover, switchgrass and straw as well as the corn kernels, wheat grains or sugarcane. How accurate that statement is will take time to determine, as the process that can be reviewed outside of the private proprietary details starts with plant sugars and leads to the hydrogen fuel gas products. The enzymes for corn and wheat to push the starch up to sugar are available, but corn stover, straws, and switchgrass are still in the nebulous stage of being cellulosic, not sugar compounds, for now.

With a year behind the partners already working together the news must have some viability. Shell or Virent, or as partners, have trademarked “BioForming” technology and state that the technology has advanced quickly and exceeded their milestones for yield, product composition and cost. The future effort will focus on improving the technology and scale up for large volume commercial production.

Not to stop there, Shell’s Executive Vice President Future Fuels and CO2 said in part “. . . new fuels on the horizon such as Virent’s, with characteristics similar or even superior to gasoline and diesel are very exciting.” Ah, an understatement, I think. Dr. Randy Cortright, Executive Vice President, Virent’s chief technology officer and co-founder said, “Virent has proven that sugars can be converted into the same hydrocarbon mixtures of today’s gasoline blends. Our products match petroleum gasoline in functionality and performance. Virent’s unique catalytic process uses a variety of biomass-derived feedstocks to generate biogasoline at competitive costs. Our results to date fully justify accelerating commercialization of this technology.”

But the cellulose to sugar matter isn’t resolved. Having another process from plant sugars on to full dose, energy dense, don’t have to replace/modify a billion engines worldwide is great. That cellulose thing that bedevils the ethanol folks is bedeviling here, too? Well, I have calls and emails off to find out.

Virent is the exclusive licensee of the aqueous phase reforming (APR) process – developed by Dr. Cortright and Dr. Jim Dumesic while at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, that converts biomass sugars into carbon neutral fuels or the hydrogen fuel gas path. APR is low cost in that the operating temperatures are in the 180 to 260 degree Centigrade range. The process is thought to be highly efficient in the use of the catalysts. Comparatively low operating pressures are involved. The process operates below the pyrolysis threshold, minimizing decomposition reactions. The feedstock choices come from a wide range of biomass as well as waste products such as glycerin that is building up as it’s removed from biodiesel fuel.

Virent calculates that the BTUs from a crop such as corn could be multiplied out more than 2.4 times from current BTU yield. The APR process itself is adjustable offering a broad range of products from hydrogen on to light liquid petroleum gas such as propane and still on to middle distillates such as diesel and jet fuel.

Is it all real? Very, very likely, as the effort by Shell to publicize and offer as much non-proprietary information as they can in such short order. Moreover, oil companies like Shell have state of the art know how and experience in catalytic reforming and some might have made its way to Virent.

This announcement offers another path from plant sugars, a biological formed source, for using this new chemical process to yield ready to use fuels. While we looked at these other processes here, another that offers lower costs would be welcome. Its also worth noting that the chemical bioconversion using pyrolysis taking biomass to a form of crude oil would bypass the sugar step while still requiring a refining process. The ways from biomass to fuel are getting numerous and soon we’ll be able to assess what paths will cost what investment and be how efficient on a fuel unit per land area unit.

One question is likely to be popular soon. The APR process may quickly displace the ethanol from the corn process as the plants already have facilities that prepare the corn to sugar and have the facilities to use the leftover protein and fiber. Should the APR process be economically adaptable, adoption could be very quick canceling a large share of the ethanol processes fossil fuel use in the distilling segment of production and providing a much easier to transport and use product that has a much higher energy density. Moreover, the APR process may well use the glycerin in the corn oil from the remaining distillers grain yielding even higher value.

This might be a turning point for biomass to fuel. On the other hand that cellulose to sugar issue is still out there. But it looks like each passing day brings technology closer to an economy based more and more on a recycled carbon fuel world, leaving fossil petroleum for the generations to come.

The Medicine Bow facility will convert the coal first to synthetic gas, then on to methanol and finish by converting the methanol to gasoline. The construction plans process capture of the emitted CO2 for sale in enhanced oil recovery projects. Products in addition to the 630,000 gallons per day of gasoline include electricity, steam, off-gas, slag, chemicals, 110,000 gallons of other fuels and energy products.

The technology is the current art of technology first commercialized by Mobil 20 years ago in New Zealand. Mobil began with a pilot project in the US that yielded 4 barrels per day and scaled the pilot to a 100-barrel per day pilot in Germany in partnership with Uhde. In 1979, the government of New Zealand joint ventured at a 75% share with Mobil (at 25%) for a 14,500 bpd at Montunui, NZ. The Montunui plant ran over ten years until conversion to a chemical grade methanol product.

The ExxonMobil design of methanol to gasoline is a virtually complete and essentially stoichiometric process. The reaction is a two-part process using exothermic heat inputs. Part one has the methanol converted to a mixture of methanol, water and dimethyl ether held in equilibrium. During the second part, the mixture is combined with recycle gas and passed over a shape selective catalyst to form the hydrocarbons and water. In the heated conditions, most of the hydrocarbon products boil into the gasoline range. The yield is a low-sulfur, low benzene premium quality gasoline, LPG, and fuel gas.

1,000 tons of methanol yields 387 tons of gasoline, 46 tons of LPG or propane, 7 tons of fuel gas and 560 tons of water. The water is recycled as process water.

Uhde who licensed and participated with ExxonMobil in the German pilot has completed contracts and begun installation of a facility with Shanxi Jincheng Anthracite Coal Mining Co. Ltd. at Jincheng, Shanxi Province, China. This new facility is in the pilot plant stage and includes a fluidized bed hard coal gasification plant. The Chinese plan is to be on line in 2008 with an annual gasoline production of about 36,750,000 gallons (Over 100,000 gallons daily).

The issues about the emissions of CO2 is limited to the yield product’s use in the US and simply unknown in the China installation. The use of coal reformed onto liquid fuels is a matter that offers in the US, a scenario that has emissions from a high quality fuel in consumer use with the CO2 from the processing going to deep oil reservoirs. That makes the matter of coal to liquid fuels a highly attractive means to improve the US liquid fuel supply.

The ExxonMobil technology is in competition with the Fischer-Tropsch technology used in commercial quantities beginning in the 1930s and refined until today. ExxonMobil and Uhde have provided the link to a pdf download that explores their technology and compares it to the two common Fischer-Tropsch processes.

These announcements are useful news in a world where oil has been priced up for a number of reasons not directly related to oil production and consumption. While there might be concern that CO2 emissions will be increased in coal to liquid fuels, the technology exists and is being put to work that can supply the fuels with little or no increase in emissions and the CO2 put to good use.

Mr. White is one of my more admired writers in the mainstream press.  The Wall Street Journal is far from being a mass media outlet and makes reason and forethought a criteria for getting to press.  That’s why I’m posting about Mr. White’s column and taking him a bit to task.

The column takes off looking into the situation, noting that Bill and Al did, well, nothing about fuel efficiency and that Hillary has a campaign plan out to, well double, by government fiat no less, the fuel mileage of cars and trucks.  Mr. White goes on to explain quite quickly and to the point the drivers behind the political view that’s pushing the campaign plan.

Mr. White then shows that historically and technically that the demand Ms Clinton suggests is possible, but.

The column relies on an MIT paper “Factors of Two: Halving the Fuel Consumption of New U.S. Automobiles by 2035.”   Like any paper the authors rely on what they choose to include for their prognostications.  That’s fine, as far as it goes.  It doesn’t get very far.  The limits the research imposed are power trains, vehicle weight, and a reduction in accelerative power.  As the prospects are only turbo-gas, diesel, and hybrid-electric the prospects do, of course, limit you to reducing weight and power.

Now we diverge with a vengeance.  The paper wanders off into financial forecasts that pop out some numbers for auto company investment and increased costs for cars and trucks.  More over the paper uses just one gas price ($1.85, when did we see that last?) to calculate the recovery time to get back the extra price in fuel cost savings.  So here’s the trick. To sell Ms Clinton’s plan she has packaged up $20 billion of low interest bonds to “retool the oldest auto plants,” which bought off the unions, or so they might think.  As Mr. White points out, $20 billion doesn’t get very far.

The most relevant note is “Car makers fret that without higher gas taxes or other government subsidies to drive consumers toward smaller, less powerful, and more expensive cars, they’ll wind up losing money.”

Now I’m spooked.  The politicians are deciding what the auto economy will be like, that means big changes to the whole economy and our expectations and choices won’t be our own.

As regular readers know this blog is about getting through to and adopting the alternatives with our lifestyles intact or better.  I’m not willing to go along with a political solution that destroys quality of life, reduces mobility, and adds expense or limits choices.  The plan should be Dead on Arrival.

Meanwhile the ability to prolong the oil and gas fueled lifestyle is being ignored and may well be impaired by more fiddling with the tax code, we’re signed up for the ITER fusion debacle to the tune of a half billion dollars a year, thousands of improvements, inventions and innovations are in difficult straights with no program to assist these individuals and companies with testing, certification, analysis, and other steps that would serve to get the million ideas down to the few hundreds that industry can adopt to make the changes which would maintain or improve our standard of living.  Where is the invention – innovation tax credit for energy and fuel development?  Might a company that finds or licenses an innovation or invention benefit if the tax code incentivizes change?  We leave the best tools in our complex and embattled public life out of sight and out of reach.

So, Ms. Clinton and others who are running for office, experiments in forecasting deals don’t build credibility for you, they destroy it.  You might instead have a look at what will expand the economy, create new jobs, expand markets and build up pensions and shareholder values.  You may fool the mass media, you may have made a plausible case the Wall Street Journal will poke small holes in, but for the reasoning citizen – the forecasters like the guys at MIT do you no favor, the truth is the mandate idea is just dumb.  Just lay it out, buy a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon or we’re going to hammer you hard with fees, buy one that does better than 50 mpg we might help pay for it with the fee income. The weak ego in search for a status symbol that helps buy other’s cars won’t play – fuel efficiency will come.

Thanks Mr. White, I was looking for a lead into the dopey ideas the politicians come up with.   But every one – leave the price of gas alone or help it get down, we need to get to the time we can buy highly efficient cars and trucks with our lives intact.