Last month, motorcycle racing Team Alstare Suzuki started talking about biofuels and small engines. In collaboration with Spanish company Globasol Energías Renovables, Alstare's Belgian development center's first stab at biofuel powered vehicles resulted in an ATV which was able to run on ethanol blends. At that time, the team suggested that it was at work on a few more projects, notably an E60-powered motorcycle and small biodiesel engines. Apparently, they were serious, as their latest project, a Suzuki GSX-R1000 powered by ethanol, was just introduced. Fuel injection and computer experts Magneti Marelli helped out on the project as well. The company next plans to make an agricultural ATV powered by biodiesel.
These events could mark the introduction of biofuels into motorcycle racing. We've already seen ethanol replace racing fuel for some automotive events, so the idea of introducing the renewable fuel to bikes seems almost inevitable.
Photo by merfam. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Sure, you might be able to describe the difference between cellulosic ethanol made by Coskata and that made by Mascoma. Or, perhaps your biofuel knowledge is just right to explain how cellulosic ethanol and corn ethanol are different, and what each might mean to the environment. But trust me, the general public has a long way to go to understand what all these new fuel types are. Remember the posts about filling up with the wrong fuel?
Anyway, I'd just like to point out this letter to the editor that appeared in today's Washington Post. In a May 3 editorial called "The Greening of Montgomery," the WaPo mangled the difference between biodiesel and ethanol, suggesting that while switching Montgomery County's fleet of diesel cars to biofuels would be a good move, because of the problems with ethanol, care should be taken. A reader, Lynne Tucker of Bethesda, wrote in to clarify just which biofuel can go into what type of engine. What we can learn from this is that, as we educate ourselves the latest and greatest green car news, there's a lot we need to do to educate others.
When is cellulosic ethanol not cellulosic ethanol? When it's grown on public land. Let us explain.
Apparently, when cellulosic ethanol is made from biomass grown on public lands (or on private lands but is not intentionally grown and managed as ethanol feedstock), U.S. law does not count that ethanol towards the Renewable Fuels Standard. A U.S. Rep, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD), is trying to get Congress to change this little quirk, according to a story in Domestic Fuel. She testified on the issues and explained how a South Dakota plant that's making ethanol from wood waste, run by KL Process Design Group, is affected by the law. The Argus Leader notes that this is a bi-partisan effort, as Sen. John Thune (R-SD) is also supporting the change.
These are just some of the recent ethanol (E85) promotions that companies like GM and groups like the American Lung Association have offered. Tomorrow there's another event, this time at a Kum & Go station in Norwalk, Iowa. For four hours (between 10 am and 2 pm) E85 is on offer for $1.60 a gallon. Full details after the jump.
Say what you will about corn ethanol (and we do, don't worry), the food for fuel debate, and the high cost of gas for most of the country, for at least a few people, filling up the flexfuel car won't hurt quite as much tomorrow as it usually does. Take it for what it's worth.
While the United States and the eastern half of our friendly neighbors up north are using corn as the primary feedstock for ethanol and Brazil has been concentrating on sugar cane, the left-half of Canada is considering wheat. The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association hopes that the creation of fuel from wheat will help Canada's wheat farming community make a bit more profit, as corn-based ethanol has done (for good or for bad) for other farmers. Many farmers in Canada only plan to use low-protein wheat or damaged crops which are not suitable as food for the fuel feedstock. Still, the food-or-fuel debate looms large, as some farmers are choosing to plant specific crops tailored to the production of ethanol. Husky Energy Inc. already operates a few ethanol plants in Canada and has plans for more. There are a few issues with using wheat, but nothing that is insurmountable.
You probably remember that back in January of this year, General Motors announced that it was partnering up with Coskata to make cheap cellulosic ethanol using a process developed by Coskata which includes the use of microorganisms developed by Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma University. Coskata has apparently broken ground on a new plant that is being built in Pennsylvania. While Coskata appears to be moving along at a fine pace, Auto Observer is reporting that Coskata is not the only cellulosic ethanol provider that the General is interested in being attached to. GM said back in January that Coskata would not be the company's only biofuel partner. So far, everything sounds very "hush-hush" about this new partnership, but GM president Fritz Henderson is expected to make an announcement tomorrow in Washington D.C. We don't have any information on who America's largest automakers is partnering with, but we know that there are plenty of other companies currently working on cheap cellulosic ethanol. You'll know more when we do, so stay tuned.
According to an article in The New Economic Times, Fiat is planning to launch a new ethanol-powered engine for the Brazilian market. Ethanol is widely used for fuel in Brazil and half of the country's sugar cane crops are currently used for its production. Fiat intends the motor to be run on fuel that the ethanol producers create themselves, saving on taxes. What is most interesting about this story, though, is that it seems the new engine will be based on a current diesel block. In fact, a small amount of diesel fuel is required to run the engine.
"Use of additives (in ethanol) makes running (an engine) dangerous, subject to explosions," according to Fiat Powertrain Technologies product development engineer Joao Irineu Medeiros. "The diesel will be just enough for ignition and the ethanol will complete the combustion," he adds. It sounds like the new Fiat design will be a compression ignition engine running on e-diesel. Instead of being mixed at the pump, though, Fiat is planning to keep the fuels separate until injected into the engine. Proper tuning would be essential, which would explain why Fiat needs until 2010 to bring this engine to market.
Every now and again, we hear a report about some dangerous explosion or accident at a biofuel refinery. While there are a variety of causes for these events, one way to prevent at least some of them is to identify when dangerous concentrations of fuel build up and disperse those gases. A new detector by Sensor Electronics of Minneapolis can identify that situation, and Domestic Fuel writes that the device "is thought to be ideal for protecting biofuel refineries." The small sensor can be used anywhere where ethanol will be pumped, processed or stored, and can "sniff" out ethanol and send a warning if the concentration gets too high. The sensor is only eight inches high and 2.5 inches in diameter and quite weatherproof, so it should be able to work in a lot of environments.
British Petroleum is acquiring a 50 percent stake in Tropical BioEnergia SA, a Brazilian company that's currently building a new ethanol plant in Edéia, Goias State, Brazil and planning a second plant. The new plant will have a capacity of 115 million gallons of ethanol a year from sugarcane. The combined investment in the two plants will be approximately $1 billion. Tropical BioEnergia SA is already a joint venture between Santelisa Vale and Maeda Group and the two original partners will each maintain a 25 percent stake in the company. BP is paying $60 million for its share.
The first refinery should start operations in the second half of this year and should hit full capacity in 2010. Supplies from the plants will be targeted at the domestic Brazilian market and could eventually be exported. The plants will both feature cogeneration capabilities using leftover materials after the sugar cane is crushed. The two plants are each expected to have 30MW of surplus electricity that they can sell in addition to the ethanol.
Indiana may soon get a whole bunch of new E85 outlets, or not. At least station owners inclined to sell E85 will be able to get a helping hand from the state government thanks to newly-passed legislation. The state has set aside $1 million that will be available to filling stations of the retail and government variety in $20,000 increments. That money will help offset the cost of installing E85 capable pumps to fill up some of those flex-fuel vehicles. Unlike most such programs, private operators aren't the only ones eligible. So-called "local units" can also apply for the grants. These are municipal fleets that include police and fire departments many of which now have flex-fuel vehicles. Indiana also offers other incentives such as an 18-cent-a-gallon sales tax break on ethanol fuel. Over the past year, Indiana has opened four new biodiesel and eleven ethanol plants in addition to one existing plant that previously existed.
Recent comments by John Powell, the deputy director of the UN World Food Program, have drawn return fire from GM CEO Rick Wagoner at the Beijing Motor Show. Powell blamed biofuels in part for the recent run up in food prices around the world that has resulted in more poor people not being able to afford food. Speaking at the Beijing Motor Show Wagoner called critics "shockingly misinformed" saying that high fuel prices are a much bigger factor in food costs than the diversion of food stocks to fuel production. Wagoner acknowledged that a dramatic increase in corn ethanol production and use could ultimately increase food prices further. Currently ethanol availability in the US is limited anyway with only about 1,200-1,300 E85 stations nationwide. GM's focus is on helping to develop cellulosic E85 production through investments such as their stake in Coskata. To some extent, Wagoner is probably correct in blaming increasing fuel prices. However, part of the reason oil has gotten so expensive is huge increases in demand from China and sustained high demand from the U.S. Shifting energy consumption from petroleum to biofuels will not do anything to address this fundamental problem. Until we dramatically cut back our energy consumption prices will likely stay high for both food and fuel. One upside is that this might help address the over consumption of food in the U.S.
Biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel are already available, so why would they show up on our list of future technologies? A one-word answer: cellulose.
Currently, mass-produced ethanol is created by the fermentation of sugar and in the U.S. granulated corn is distilled to make alcohol and combined with gasoline to make E85. Unfortunately, corn is a poor choice when it comes to the creation of ethanol. Alternatives are on the horizon, though, which could potentially make biofuels a much better choice. Cellulosic ethanol could be considered ethanol version 2.0, with large-scale plants currently being set-up which might be able to offer the fuel at very low prices. When the fact that American roadways are already littered with E85-capable vehicles is added into the mix, cellulosic ethanol stands to make a large dent in our petroleum usage.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association. Not a group we hear from a lot on a site dedicated to cleaner vehicle technology. Today, though, in preparation for Earth Day, we saw a message from the GMA titled "This Earth Day, an Unlikely Foe: Biofuels" and wanted to see what they had to say. As the headline suggests, the GMA is taking a stance against biofuels made from food sources and all of the problems that can occur thanks to "the rush to find a 'homegrown' solution to global warming." The GMA invited three people - Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group, and Jonathan Lewis of the Clean Air Task Force - to Washington, D.C. this week to speak out against using food sources to make biofuels. The short list of what's wrong with growing crops to make fuel are:
increased environmental damage in the form of pollution from coal-fired ethanol refineries
runoff from fertilizer
rapid deforestation in the developing world
an inflationary effect on food prices
potential to prove a major setback to organic farming
We've heard a lot of criticisms of corn-based ethanol in the past, but that the drive to grow more corn for ethanol could hurt the organic farming movement in the U.S. is a new one. Makes sense to me, though. More details in the press release after the jump.
Production of ethanol in the United States is continuing to accelerate with production in the first quarter of 2008 up 37 percent over 2007 levels. The U.S. now has almost 150 ethanol plants, nearly double the number from five years ago, and they produced 1.9 billion gallons of alcohol in the first three months of this year for an annual pace of 7.6 billion gallons. Ethanol producers still have a long way to go to reach the 36 billion threshold required by the December 2007 Energy bill. They do of course have until 2022 to achieve that level by which time hopefully most of it should be coming from cellulosic sources instead of corn. In the meantime for those driving flex-fuel vehicles it's still tough to find E85 in most of the country. There are an estimated 1,200 E85 filling stations in the U.S. right now with the heaviest concentrations in the Midwest region. For now, most of the ethanol being produced is blended into gasoline at low concentrations to produce E10 which can be used in all cars and trucks (at least the ones that don't run on diesel)
A new study by J.D. Power and associates is projecting that the combined market share of diesel and hybrid power-trains will hit seventeen percent in the U.S. by the middle of the next decade. The analysis also projects that smaller displacement four cylinder and flex-fuel engines will take a much larger share than they do today as demand wanes for more powerful engines. Between the diesels and hybrids, the former are expected to take a significantly larger share due to lower cost. The cost premium for hybrids is expected to remain higher going forward. This extra cost will drive more adoption of technologies like direct fuel injection and turbocharging of smaller displacement gas engines going forward since the cost is a lot lower.
Power is projecting that the cost premium for automakers to achieve the 35mpg standard will be $4,000-5,000 even though cars in Europe already meet that threshold. The study apparently presumes that American car buyers won't be willing to shift to the smaller, lower powered cars that dominate the European market. If U.S. car buyers insist on continuing to drive larger cars and trunks while trying to achieve those higher mileage numbers, it will be costly to make the upgrades. If on the other hand they are willing to change their buying habits, the premium could be a lot smaller. Pure battery electrics and fuel cells will probably both remain a negligible part of the market primarily due to high cost.
You probably remember that back in January of this year, General Motors announced that it was 
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