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183 comments on Countdown to $200 oil (3) - no gas tax needed...erm, right...
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Europe has very high taxes.
The U.S. has very Low taxes.
The U.S. is heading pell-mell toward biofuels, and hybrids.
Europe is dithering around and doing Nothing.
Jes Sayin
kdolliso
Europe doesn't have to do a lot, they have been living without cars for centuries, They have rail and walkable urban areas. Since their energy consumption is 1/2 what a North American uses they have a decent head start, German is building renewables hand over fist, this I would not call dithering, most of the "Hybrids" produced in the US are stock models with beefed up starter motors, a purely cynical move. Europe has legal electric vehicles on the roads, and did I mention rail?
Neven
Germany's working on "renewable," yes, but not in the area of private transportation.
The high taxes masked market signals, and now Europe is locked into diesel engines. Looked good last year; still looks okay; but, give it a couple of years, and the fact that you can get much less diesel from a barrel of oil than you can gasoline, and it's going to start to bite.
You see, with our lower taxes that increase in the cost of oil has translated into a huge "percentage" increase in our price of gasoline. This translates out as "time to do something."
With the enormous taxes on European fuel, the increase in the price of oil has translated into a much smaller "percentage" increase. As a result, it was much easier for the oil companies to kill biofuels. I don't have a clue why hybrids aren't taking off there.
Fun Fact kids! did you know if you harvested and processed corn using ethanol, that 7 out of every 9 acres would be used just to harvest and process all 9. Also to offset 20% of US gasoline consumption you would have to plant every inch of arable land in the US with corn and then you would still need 30 million acres. Oh my...
Well, that was certainly "Fun;" but, when do we get to the facts?
After allowing for the distillers grains, it takes about 8 gallons of ethanol to farm an acre of corn (about 675 gallons of ethanol.) That's what? 0.012 gallons (1,300 btus) of farm input per gallon?
As you can see from This Link,
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/objects/documents/1652/2007_analysis_of_the_ef...
the total btus used by the mill can be as little as 17,706 (nat gas plus electricity.)
Add in 6,500 btus for fertilizer, and drying the seed corn, and you get, what? 1,300 + 17,706 + 6,500 = 25,506 btus to produce a gallon of ethanol which can, within one percent, replace a 116,000 btu gallong of gasoline.
Looks more like a 4.5:1 deal to me.
And, no, I Don't have any farming, or ethanol company connections. And, I'm Not an Engineer. I just know how to read, and do simple math.
The math does not work out for me, sorry.
It takes 8 gallons of diesel to farm 1 acre, which is equivalent of 13 gallons of ethanol.
http://www.extension.umn.edu/newsletters/ageconomist/components/ag237-69...
the ethanol yield provided per bushel in your link is around 2.8 gallons per bushel.
Average US corn crop yield per acre is around 130 bushels/acre.
http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story...
so the average acre of corn yields 364 gallons of ethanol. It takes 13/364 = .036 gallons of ethanol to farm a gallons worth.
According to your info the average dry-mill uses 31,070 btu's per gallon, Thats from table 9 of your link..
I'll go ahead and use your fertilizer cost of 6,500 btus.
76000 btu per gallon of ethanol/ ( 31,070+(.036*76000)+6,500) ) == 1.88 EROI, also I'm sure this corn and ethanol is transported to a filling station somehow.
Also the average fuel economy of a midsize car in the united states is around 21 mpg and the average distance to a gas station is somewhere around 1 mile. so 1/21 * 124,000 Btu so 5904 btus are spent on getting to the gas station...
if you include that the ratio would be something like 1.64 and if you included those transportation cost it would be even lower.
How'd you get 4.5 to 1?
How'd you get 4.5 to 1?
Without auditing your calculations or following the links, it looks like:
(a) kdolliso is using best-in-class process energy efficiency, you are using average. This is legitimately arguable - technology only ever gets better, but not so quickly for a mature process with a large installed capital base, like distillation.
(b) He is blandly asserting that one gallon of ethanol exactly replaces one gallon of gasoline, which is Just Plain Wrong and always will be.
(c) Your driving-to-the-gas-station term is questionable - maybe I just drive past it on the way to work or some other value-adding activity. But it's a relatively small term in your calculation.
Cheers,
PUD
Saildog,
Plucky Underdog (below) has it exactly right. If you will notice my link shows at least one refinery (corn plus, in Winnebago, Mn, I believe it is) uses only 17,706 btus of nat gas, and electricity to produce one gallon of ethanol.
The average yield in the U.S. last year was 151 bushels of corn/acre. Remember, corn is cattle feed; and, anywhere from 33% to 40% of that livestock feeding ability is returned in the form of distillers grains. I used 33% to match the corn plus plant.
This gave me 675 gall/acre. I, also, used this number to calculate the amount of seed, and fertilizer that went into the ethanol.
I don't do Anything blandly. The below link is a test the State of Minnesota did using 40 identical pairs of cars. The bottom line was their cars only lost 1.6% mileage using a 20% blend of ethanol. The DOE states that you will, on average, lose 0.5% mileage using a 10% mixture. The New cars will do even better.
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/news/publications/renewable/ethanol/e20drivab...
Yes, cars get more efficient but that has nothing to do the eroi of corn ethanol. Also keep in mind the average life of a car in the US is about 16 years. Isn't that what they refer to as a red herring?
I don't understand your cattle feed calculation.?
the average yield last year of 151 bushels * 2.8 the gallons of ethanol per bushel = 422.8, far short of 675 gallons.. I don't know how you got this? could you elaborate.
New cars will do better with gasoline too, Also we never included the transportation cost of the ethanol from the farm and too the plant and from the plant to the refinery?
All this considered I still don't get 4.5 to 1?
If you could show me this id be glad to listen
Strewth! If you guys can't agree, what hope do we mere mortals have?
Sure, keep in mind: this is a real-world, for all practical purposes type calculation.
First: I used 2.96 gallons/bu. If you noticed in my link some refineries are reaching this level. I'm sure many, many more will be in the future.
Now, to the "Cattle Feed." Remember, almost 90% of all field corn goes to feed livestock, mostly cattle. This is a very important concept to keep in mind.
When you process a bushel of corn you get back 17.5 lbs of distillers grains. This is, for all practical purposes, corn with the starch, and CO2 removed. All of the vitamins, nutrients, and protein is still there. A ration that's 65% corn, and 30% dgs will actually yield 10% More weight on a cow than a ration with 95% corn.
For that reason, I, normally, figure that we've used 60% of the corn to realize our 2.96 gallons of ethanol, and retained 40% - .30 + .33(.30) of our cattle feeding ability.
*in the above calculation I used 33% instead of 40% because I knew that 17,706 btus signified that it was the Corn Plus Plant, and that they gassified some of their "syrup" thus cutting back, slightly, on the "feed" returned.
Anyway, let's take 3 gal/by (it's easier than using 2.96) and multiply by 3/2 (remember, we only used 2/3 of our corn for the ethanol) to get 4.5 gal/bu. Now, we'll multiply that by 150 bu/acre, and come out with 675 gal/acre.
Now, I adjust the tilling, planting, harvesting, and fertilizer production, and seed drying inputs accordingly; but I don't mess with the Refinery inputs since that process would never be undertaken absent the need to make ethanol.
Here's where I, really, take a "Liberty." I've given several links of real, honest to goodness, real-world tests that show that ethanol in ten, twenty, or thirty percent blends are basically mileage-neutral compared to gasoline. So, for a little "shock" value I used the 116,000 btu content of gasoline, not the 76,000 btus of ethanol. It's shady, of course; but, it's also "real-world" accurate, inasmuch as ethanol's 30% Higher Octane compensates where it really matters - at the gas pump.
Hi kdolliso,
PUD: He is blandly asserting that one gallon of ethanol exactly replaces one gallon of gasoline, which is Just Plain Wrong...
k: I don't do Anything blandly.
Calorific values at this link. You need to use the lower calorific value, i.e. with water remaining as vapor, to get the heat available to an internal combustion cycle (you're welcome). Multiply by density to get volumetric energy density. Strictly speaking you should adjust to exhaust temperature, but that's not going to make much difference. I don't know the mixing volume loss for gasoline/ethanol blends - anyone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorific_value#Lower_heating_value_for_som...
Ethanol=28.9, Gasoline=44.4 MJ/kg
I'd be interested in your comments. Hint: "irrelevant" won't cut it. As SwordsOfDamocles says (paraphrasing), there's probably a lot of efficiency improvement to be made in mass-market IC engines, irrespective of fuel type, but those numbers aren't going to change.
Two questions. Is the electricity that is included in the 17.7kBTU energy input that you quote fully-burdened with generation cycle efficiency?
And, just out of curiosity - as a teenager, did you get whacked upside the head with a copy of Atlas Shrugged?
Cheers,
PUD
Hey, PUD
Read it when I was young; don't remember much about it.
I'm just interested in the "Real" World. BTUs don't mean a thang if you can't get the energy out. In the Real World you need Octane. Ethanol has gobs of it. 113 - 116, depending on how you measure.
Throw some compression to it, and you can knock gasoline's socks off. At low to medium blends you don't need too much compression to equal gasoline's performance. Two Links: First one on "Efficiency," Second on on EPA cycle test using midlevel blends.
http://www.methanol.org/pdf/ISAF-XV-EPA.pdf
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/news/publications/renewable/ethanol/e20drivab...
Again, a Hershy Bar has a thousand btus, or so; but you can't burn it in an ICE. BTUs, without considering Octane, is a worthless metric. In the "Real" world you can do as much work with ethanol as with gasoline.
Octane number, and therefore compression ratio, certainly affects thermodynamic efficiency, but if you aren't putting the energy in you aren't going to get it out. So ethanol is starting off at a disadvantage.
(Idle speculation) I bet you could dissolve Hershey Bars in fuel oil and run 'em through a Wartsila-Sulzer RTA-96. Which the manufacturer claims to be the most efficient non-combined-cycle prime mover ever made (almost 50%). Would probably need a total rebuild afterwards though. And it wouldn't fit in a car - 1820 litres per cylinder, up to 14 cylinders.
PUD.
PUD,
To support your argument, I have said elsewhere on this post that the compression ratio/efficiency curve is pretty flat by the time 10:1 is reached. At 10:1 its about 60%, at 14:1 its about 65%. The additional load on the piston rings and the shearing loss in the oil film of the crankshaft bearings, imposed by the the additional load, mean some of this thermal efficiency gain is lost through increased friction. No amount of compression ratio increase will make up for the reduced calorific value of ethanol, period.
If you're going to do ethanol and do it right I think this is how it gets done:
There has to be a practical method to produce ammonia using variable electricity sources. I think enough of Dr. John Holbrook's solid state ammonia synthesis that I filed a $952k grant application to Iowa's Power Fund and that same paperwork is being updated for use with the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. This process takes in whatever water you've got handy and whatever electricity that can be spared and produces anhydrous ammonia, directly usable as a fertilizer or more likely being evolved to UAN for easier handling.
Boil ground corn in ethanol and what do you get? About six gallons of corn oil from the corn that'll go on to produce a hundred gallons of ethanol - they call this "fractionation". The corn oil biodiesel needs methanol ...
Ethanol production produces nearly perfect carbon dioxide - room temperature, room pressure, and no contaminants. There is a way to make methanol from CO2 and variable sources of electricity ... this I know because I can dial the phone of the inventor of the process from memory. Oh, another grant request to be written here now that May has rolled around - I'm trying to do one per month - drip, drip, drip - IPF has to fund something sooner or later :-)
If you can evolve methanol that is a good fuel in and of itself in addition to its use in biodiesel, but with small changes you can directly make ethanol from CO2 using similar methods to the methanol production. Increased yield is a good thing, goes double if you can use a variable source of electricity in the process.
Not addressed in this post are food security concerns (yikes!) the strong probability that cellulostic ethanol could entirely replace grain based systems, the straight up use of ammonia as a liquid fuel, the need for electrified rail to dramatically cut our overall driving, and the use of grain as livestock feed with the capture of waste and evolution of methane for fuel via biological processes, skipping the slow moving and fragile fermentation process.
It may also be possible to recycle some of the nitrogen, as well as potassium and phosphorus, in the cattle wastes.
CAFOS as currently configured may not be ideal for a return to the old manure pile, but perhaps something could be done, thus reducing the electricity or natural gas necessary to produce that N that corn loves so well. In addition, recycling P & K locally saves transportation and processing energy tied up in yearly shipments of those nutrients.
Very interesting point. It seems that states (governments) may be more prone to "get it wrong", and with wider consequences, with their top-down policies (e.g., US govt. subsidizing of ethanol, German govt. pushing solar given their relatively poor insolation), than bottom-up, grassroots efforts with tighter feedback loops on what works or doesn't locally. Europe's much higher gas taxes mean solutions are more in the hands of states; if they get it right, great. If not, wider problems.
Regardless of what Germany is doing with respect to "renewable" fuels, it does not matter a great deal because they have a decent public transportation system to fall back on. So, they are in a much better position than the U.S. to soldier on in the face of declining use of the automobile.
In the U.S., we are basically screwed as we are almost completely dependent upon the automobile.
When I lived in Germany, the car was, in certain circumstances, a convenience, but in no circumstances, a necessity. I spent my last two years there without a car and prospered mobility wise and financially.
Jes - biofuels are route one to self destruction. And in Europe we drive turbo diesels - I don't know what % - which do about 50 mpgs, 0 to 60 in 8 secs, and are already more efficient than hybrids.
And we pay huge tax on fuel - which personally I'd increase even more, but which in all probability will be reduced to combat escalating fuel costs.
I remember seeing somewhere that the majority of new cars are diesels, which probably means somewhere in the 30-50% region for diesels in the EU fleet.
Most seem to be able to do at least 50mpg on the combined cycle. Still waiting to see serial diesel hybrids which are probably the sweet spot in acceptability, if not price.
Is the move to diesel scalable? Isn't the ratio of diesel to gasoline from refining a barrel of crude more or less fixed? We are already getting diesel fuel much more expensive than gasoline. We may find that only a fixed percentage of transportation energy can be supplied by diesel. We have probably already reached that percentage.
Its a good point. I think that with oil production moving to heavier grades it might be possible to tune the crackers to produce more diesel relative to gasoline. Need to check with RR on this point.
Shell are promoting heavily their GTL technology that makes diesel from nat gas. Only problem is they do this in Qatar - and there as so many calls on that wee puff of gas it just won't last.
You could tune your cracker, but you are still pretty limited on the diesel. There are a number of steps you can take to increase diesel yields, but in a small range. The biggest factor in making diesel is in the crudes you choose to run through your refinery; some make a lot of diesel and some make a lot of gasoline.
In theory, you could build a refinery that produced a lot more diesel - at the expense of gasoline. You could run all the ligher molecules throught an FT reactor and build the chains. It wouldn't be very efficient, and it would be expensive, but in theory it's doable.
53% and rising, compared with less than 3% hybrids in the U.S.
Hybrids have benefitted from monumental hype in recent years (and don't get me wrong, I love hybrids and they're important step to PHEVs and EVs) but they have had next to zero impact on reducing oil consumption or reducing CO2 emissions. Diesels on the other hand, have made a huge impact in Europe.
"And we pay huge tax on fuel - which personally I'd increase even more, but which in all probability will be reduced to combat escalating fuel costs."
So Europe will lower taxes in an attempt to avoid destroying demand. Good luck with that.
We drove turbo diesels... Now common rail is doing the trick. Efficiency depends on driving patterns. In general hybrids make more sense with lower speeds & lots of congestion and comfort is better. Emission control for Diesel engines quite complex at Euro 5 / 6 level.
Full hybrids are a very complex and expensive in production. Scalability of production is a siginificant issue. Even Toyota is beginning to switch to mild hybrids (less weight and still reap most of the gains). Diesel-hybrids are not on the road (yet) and their efficiency in real world driving remains to be seen. (Diesel heavier than Otto & better performance at low rpms not necessary with hybrid). The Prius uses a Stirling engine running at optimal efficiency level and the electrical component ensures that the petrol engine is working at that level.
Good to have several options - but unless we bring weight down by at least 50% we will not be making significant headway.
Yerk
I think you are a little confused. Common rail refers to the fuel injection method ie a high pressure (2000 bar) fuel line with electronic injectors. The conventional method was a distributor pump running at about 900 bar for the bosch VP30 pump. Turbo charging can be (and these days usually is) applied to any diesel engine, regardless of the injection system. The advantage of the diesel engine is high part load efficiency due to no throttling losses and very high air fuel ratios. I don't think the stirling engine is used in the Prius. The Stirling engine uses expensive helium as the working fluid and reqires expensive nimonic alloys for its construction.
efficiency of diesel is caused by the higher compression ratio.
To some degree true. The higher compression ratio contributes but the efficiency curve is pretty flat even at 10:1 compression ratio. Spark ignition engines have to operate close to stoichiometric so have to throttle the intake. This causes a significant loss in part load efficiency. At full load, viz wide open throttle, the efficiency of a petrol and diesel are not that far apart.
Indirect injection engines such as the Peugeot XUD series have a compression ratio of 24:1. The Austin Rover Direct injection engine had a compression ratio of 17:1 in the turbo version and was 20% more efficient. The reason, thermal and pumping loss in the Peugeot's indirect injection engine versus the Austin Rover's direct injection. All modern diesels are now direct injection and operate at about 19.5:1 compression ratio. All are more efficient than Indirect injection engines operating at 24:1. The reason is direct injection has less pumping and heat loss. Inceasing the compression ratio also increases friction between the top piston ring and the bore, which is claimed to be about 70% of the mechanical loss within an engine.
Euan, I agree that biofuels - except sugarcane ethanol - have the potential of starving at least hundreds of millions. However, you should not equate using diesel with no biofuels: remember biodiesel. I give the following points certainly not to encourage the move to biodiesel but to show that the incentives to produce it are there.
- Soybean biodiesel has a more robust EROEI than corn ethanol.
- Soybean has lower fertilizer and pesticide requirements than corn, in absolute terms and even more when taking EROEI into account. "Per unit of energy gained, biodiesel requires just 2 percent of the N and 8 percent of the P needed for corn ethanol. Pesticide use per NEB differs similarly." (Quoted from the National Academy of Sciences recent report titled "Water Implications of Biofuel Production in the United States" at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12039 .)
- Anywhere, diesel's availability is more critical than gasoline's. No gasoline means it will be a pain to get to the supermarket, but no diesel means there will be no goods in the supermarket.
- I remember reading that the investment costs for a corn ethanol distillation plant are three times higher than those for a biodiesel plant of similar capacity (no reference at hand).
Europe has higher taxes on gasoline than diesel. As a result the US exports diesel to Europe and Europe's excess gasoline gets exported to the United States. So the US now ends up having much cheaper gasoline than diesel.
China's demand for diesel is also driving up diesel prices in the US.
The problem with a shift of the US toward diesel: Where is the diesel supposed to come from? It is my impression that there are limits on how much of a barrel of oil can go toward creating diesel fuel. The US has to drive gasoline powered cars so Europeans can drive diesels.
If someone can correct me with authoritative information to the contrary I'd like to hear about it.
It doesnt matter what Obama / Clinton /McCain will try to do regarding tax holidays.
The tax is so little that, even if permanently reduced to zero, the raw cost burden will be directly passed on to US drivers to such an extent that the the price at the pump will swamp the tax reduction within months.
There is no way around this fact. The only thing US citizens can do is alter vehicle types , driving patterns and commutes as best they can while they still can afford to. Assuming that some can still afford to.
In certain respects, America is in fact more flexible and can switch quite quickley - look how unfashionable second hand SUVs have become.
In Europe, the tax is significant and so at least in theory, modulated reductions in tax take could be used as a tool to lessen the shock and after pressure from the UKpop on UKGov as seen last week this may happen. - If not outright reductions, then freezing the tax take as it stands.
Our respective societies will try our own different methods in our own different ways.
The question is: Will any attempts at mitigation be timely enough? Two years ago, we were just discussing this as if it were 'some time in the future'.
Now we are upt to our knees in the future...
The UK government and all European governments are utterly dependent on fuel and vehicle tax.
There is no way they can reduce rates, even as a proportion of total price, without going bankrupt or having to make absolutely huge increases elsewhere.
US taxes are different, and a cessation of them would mean that the already very poor condition of the highways would deteriorate further, as that is what pays for maintenance.
In any case, since the taxes are I believe in absolute dollar terms rather than proportional, falling mileage due to rising prices will mean that there is even less money to spend on maintenance.
You can guess how a tax increase to pay for adequate maintenance would go down.
Of the 40 billions raised from UK Motorists, only between 8 and 10 billion go onto road maintenance.
The tax is not hypothecated and just goes into the general coffers.
The problem is as always : wriggle room.
There is not enough because we are pretty good at blowing tax revenues on wasteful things. Mostly public sector types who are a client of this government and other things and people as well.
So, the ability to tweak pump prices is there in theory, but this will impinge on general taxation and the ability to fund the Client payroll of the UKGov.
So. Yes, you a right, but it will be to the UK's overall detriment in the medium term.
Now, if Fuel Duty and Road Fund Licence were to be hypothecated into a national rail and bus infrastucture revival, then life may be different. But pigs will sprout wings first.
But we have blown it all.
And
The addiction to prosperity crosses party lines. Malik, the Common Ground Collective, those rebuilding NOLA from the ground up speak of how it seems to be the biggest obstacle. The want to restore the wetlands - environmental restoration is part of their community rebuilding effort. Very sharp. The typical rank and file Democrat on dKos isn't there - not even anywhere close. I wonder sometimes if they are even on the same planet. 3/4 of them will turn fascist torturer when they can't find gas for their Outback.
Cutting the gas tax interests me because of the social effects. Cutting the tax isn't going to stop the degradation of bridges, roads and transportation infrastructure. In Maine, the funding has been shifted to some bonding and fees - primarily increased license and registration fees - but only on personal vehicles, not on the commercial vehicles where weight limits keep getting increased. Heavier trucks, less people driving them, less goods to move, wrong people paying the price, increase inequality, etc.... Everything makes that damned prosperity addiction worse.
And bonding/borrowing - ooops. Anyone reading Automatic Earth of late? It's like we've spent the capital on our balance sheet and now to maintain our current operations we are going to borrow. How far into negative equity can we go personally, collectively and environmentally? The dKos readership thinks we merely need to shuffle the CEO to get our prosperity back.
cfm in Gray, ME