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Leroux Creek Foods website

I am responding to Jeremy Madden’s May column in the Aspen Daily News, as well as other news concerning corn-based ethanol fuels.

The accusation that ethanol fuels from corn is causing food shortages and raising food prices is now an issue on the nation’s front burner. Much of the news on this subject is mostly surface talk. This is a very complex issue going much deeper than just blaming the agricultural sector. This was inevitable at this point in time, given the demand for corn and rising gasoline prices.

The public needs to realize that this is the initial phase of the renewable energy development in the United States. This is something that cannot be just shut off and on like a faucet. This development was set in motion a long time ago in the Midwest. Farmers have been waiting years for the corn ethanol fuels development to reach a high level of development.

As the director of the first ethanol fuels commission (Nebraska Gasohol Commission) in the 1970s, we foresaw that corn ethanol fuels would be only a Midwest region development. We did not intend to blanket the nation with this product. Many farmers are actually making real money for the first time in ages. Corn-based ethanol fuels will not go away any time soon. Consider that there are an average of 10-12 large corn ethanol plants in each of the Midwestern states, and they are building more.

I (have) listened to Al Gore being interviewed on the National Public Radio network about many national issues. Now, this is one of the smartest people on earth when it comes to the environment and energy. When asked about the corn ethanol-food issue, he said “you can’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” He went on to imply that corn ethanol fuel needs to be given a chance to work itself out. He made a very strategic point regarding this issue: He pointed out that no one has considered the fact that the commodities market and traders are causing much of this price impact on our food prices — not so much the corn ethanol fuels development.

Let’s also blame the oil companies for adding to the price of all of our delivered goods, especially food. Now we are looking at $4 and $5 gasoline prices. Nothing more should be said. Also, let’s throw in the fact that oil production is now on a steep downward trend. Why do you think that General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford have invested heavily in manufacturing flex fuel (ethanol fuels) vehicles? Now Toyota is planning to introduce ethanol fuel-capable trucks soon. I am very confident that this corn ethanol fuels issue will work itself out in the very near future.

Be ready to hug a farmer everyday when we run out of petroleum oil. Farmers have the capability of producing ethanol fuels on their own farms as well as in group efforts called co-operatives. If we run out of oil, farmers will have their applications into ATF faster than you can spell “corn.”

One solution might be to form renewable energy co-operatives. Consumers could invest in their own co-ops. Members could drive into a renewable energy park where there would be tanks of ethanol and bio-diesel available at huge discounts. At the other end of the park, there would be a bank of solar-powered outlets where hybrid cars could juice up. Renewable energy tax credits or rebates should be made available for these types of businesses.

We need to control our own destinies by investing in this type of American-owned renewable energy. I’m ready! How about you?

Randy Fricke
Basalt

Posted from the Aspen Daily News

Greenfuel website

I am not sure what the deal is with Cramer, what’s up with all the bashing of ethanol from Jim Cramer of CNBC? Jim if we listened to you on this subject we would pull the plug on an industry that is helping to create the future biofuels market in this country. Yet you blame ethanol for the huge run up in food prices and inflation. Come on that is crazy! Hello $120 Oil!! Continued Fed interest cuts!! Jim it would be great to know why you are so bearish on a market that competes directly with oil? Maybe full disclosure is in order Jim?

Recent food shortages bring ethanol subsidies under fire, with Ronald Miller, Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings and CNBC’s Joe Kernen. Click here to watch a recent interview with Cramer sitting in on Squak Box

Hey Ethanol wake up, you are getting your lunch handed to you! If you all don’t get on the ball with some positive pr you are going to have Washington cutting back on this program. Public perception as of this moment is not real high because of all of the negative press. You had better get it together ASAP.

Take a look at the process of making wood pellets

from www.pelletheat.com posted with vodpod

The answer is as varied as the technologies and forms of biomass under consideration. In short, since there are different combinations of biomass feedstocks and biomass conversion technologies, the number of different estimates will equal the number of different feedstock-technology combinations.

Feedstocks

For self-use in the forest products industry, which is the leading owner of biomass generation in Michigan and Maine, biomass is essentially free. Purchasing forestry-produced biomass will cost between $0.50 and $3 per million Btu (mmBtu), with economically successful projects paying less than $1.50/mmBtu.

In the agricultural residue sector, the largest available sources of energy are from corn stover and wheat straw. Corn stover is presumed to sell for $30/ton. Wheat straw is more at $32-$54/ton [1], however the EIA estimates that it only costs $20/bale for farmers to recoup costs associated with lost nutrients and transportation. By 2020, agricultural and forestry residues will be available at $5/mmbtu. [2].

Urban wood waste and mill residues are available at $1/mmBtu. The cost of collecting urban wood waste and mill residues are currently expected to range from $0-$8 per wet ton for mill residues and from $10-14 per wet ton for urban residues [2].

Burnable municipal solid waste (MSW) is usually landfilled for a fee. Thus, it has a negative fuel price. However, plant operators must process MSW to eliminate toxics. They also need to install emissions control equipment.

Dedicated feedstocks, such as woody and herbaceous crops, cost almost 3 times more than residues ($2.50 per Gigajoule [GJ] compared to $0.95/GJ). Energy crops are available for $2.30/ million btu.

By comparison, the cheapest coal costs between $1.50 to $2 per mmBtu. Natural gas costs $3 to $4 per mmBtu. Overall, biomass is competitive when compared with other combustion fuels available.

REEP

Ethanol Map

Now this is what I have been waiting for. What a great tool!

Torrefied wood can be ground to a
particle size similar to that of pulverized
coal with the same or less energy use.
• Torrefied wood is a much better fuel for
co-firing than untreated wood.
• Unteated wood requires many times the
energy use in grinding (by a factor of 7.5
to 15) to achieve a similar particle size.

NewEarth Renewable Energy, Inc. has created ECO Clean Coal, an innovative 100% biomass fuel that burns without emitting smoke, as demonstrated here with a smoke detector, set off by an ordinary wood pellet, but not by the burning ECO Clean Coal pellet.

ECO Clean Coal can be either co-fired with coal or totally replace coal at any coal-fired power plant worldwide, without any retrofitting, loss of productivity, or service to customer. It is a pound per pound replacement for coal. It is the most compatible biomass fuel to burn with coal.

Hydrogen, ethanol and even compressed air all have the shrink-wrapped sheen of the bright, green future. But gasoline? At $1 per gallon?

Researchers at UMass Amherst recently published a new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose, paving the way to turn wood scraps into gasoline, diesel fuel, Tupperware—anything, essentially, that’s normally refined from petroleum. Many scientists have been working on ways to turn everything from corn stalks to tires into ethanol, sidestepping some of the problems inherent to making fuel from corn and other food products. But ethanol has a number of liabilities, regardless of the source. For instance, it requires automotive engines to be modified and contains less energy than gasoline, driving down fuel economy.

Turning cellulose into gasoline is tricky. Unlike raw crude, which is made up mostly of hydrocarbons to begin with, plant material contains a great deal of oxygen woven into its molecular structure. “Crude oil looks more similar to gasoline than biomass does,” says George Huber, lead author of the new study. “So the challenge is how do you efficiently remove the oxygen and make these compounds that look like gasoline or diesel fuel? And how do you do it in the fewest number of steps and in the most economical way?”

Using a catalyst commonly employed in the petroleum industry, Huber and his colleagues heated small amounts of cellulose very quickly for a matter of seconds before cooling it, producing a high-octane liquid similar to gasoline. “The temperature window is very critical,” Huber says. If you heat too slowly, you produce mainly coke—elemental carbon residue. If you heat too fast, you make mainly vapors. The sweet spot, about 1000 degrees per second, transfers roughly half the cellulose’s energy into hydrocarbons. “If we can get 100 percent yield, we estimate the cost to be about a dollar per gallon,” Huber says. “Right now we’re at 50 percent. Can we get 100 percent? I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll bump those numbers up.”

Huber and his colleagues aren’t the first to derive hydrocarbons from renewable sources. Virent Energy Systems, for example, just signed a deal with Shell to produce gasoline from plant sugars and expects to open a pilot facility in the next two years. UOP is working on a project to produce jet fuel for U.S. and NATO fighters from algal and vegetable oils. But Huber’s work stands out as likely the first direct conversion from cellulose, opening up as potential fuel sources virtually anything that grows. Commercialization of the technology may take another five to 10 years, the researchers predict.

Developments in so-called “green hydrocarbons” arrive as ethanol continues to come under attack as expensive, inefficient and a contributor to rising food prices around the world. (More than a billion bushels of corn are diverted to ethanol production each year.) “There’s certainly a lot of historical inertia for ethanol. It’s gotten us off to a great start, but I can’t see the country transitioning to flex-fuel,” says John Regalbuto, director of the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at the National Science Foundation. “I almost think, long term, that we will go to plug-in hybrids. But we’re still going to need diesel and jet fuel—you can’t run trains or fly planes with ethanol or hydrogen.”

“We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels,” Huber says. “We’re using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that’s what we’ll be using in 10 years and in 50 years. And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go.”