Domestic Fuel

Ethanol industry organizations say a University of Minnesota study critical of corn ethanol is flawed.

The study, which claims corn ethanol is worse for health and the environment than gasoline, was analyzed in detail by the Renewable Fuels Association. RFA warns “because there is no consensus within the academic community on the best methods for analyzing highly uncertain potential land use changes, the results of this study must be viewed with extreme caution.”

According to RFA, the conclusion that corn ethanol “can be as harmful to the environment as gasoline, and that the combined costs to climate-change and health exceed that of gas” is predicated on “the baseless assumption that additional corn demand for increased ethanol production will cause conversion of large amounts of grassland enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).”

RFA points out that if the authors’ assumed land use change emissions are removed from the analysis, the paper suggests average corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gases by 30% compared to gasoline and advanced corn ethanol reduces GHGs by 46%. The paper states, “Whether corn ethanol has lower life-cycle GHG emissions than gasoline depends on biorefinery heat source, assumptions about technology, and land-use change.”

Growth Energy released a statement on the report that said in part, “Despite initial negative interpretations by the press and some flawed assumptions by its authors, Growth Energy sees some positive potential from the University of Minnesota’s latest study on ethanol’s potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We were glad to see the authors agree that ethanol is part of the solution to the global climate crisis, recognizing that ‘corn-ethanol emissions will continue to improve’ with technological and agricultural advancements ‘including increased yields on the farm and improved conversion.’”

“Despite the positive aspects, the study does fail to take into account that corn farmers have dramatically increased per-acre yields, and ethanol producers continue to utilize new technologies to reduce the industry’s environmental impact. That trend is certain to continue in the years ahead.”

Another industry reaction to the report came from Dr. Martha Schlicher, vice president of Illinois River Energy and former head of the National Corn to Ethanol Research Center, who wrote that the study “over promises on the potential of cellulosics and under promises on what is yet possible with corn. Technology used to produce corn based ethanol today will not be the technology of tomorrow and, if given the opportunity, will be dramatically advanced from the modest advancements the Minnesota study cites.”

Schlicher notes several areas in which the study specifically falls short, such as assuming no increase over current corn-based ethanol production yields despite all of the well documented enzyme and corn composition advancements while simultaneously claiming a 10% increase in cellulosic ethanol yield over what today has been demonstrated only in the laboratory.

A Michigan-based engineering firm has reportedly developed technology to optimize engines for ethanol.

According to a press release from Ricardo, Inc., the technology “optimizes ethanol-fueled engines to a level of performance that exceeds gasoline engine efficiency and approaches levels previously reached only by diesel engines.”

The technology, called Ethanol Boosted Direct Injection or EBDI, takes full advantage of ethanol’s best properties – higher octane and higher heat of vaporization – to create a truly renewable fuel scenario that is independent of the cost of oil.

EBDI solves many of the challenges faced by flex-fuel engines because it is optimized for both alternative fuels and gasoline. Current flex-fuel engines pay a fuel economy penalty of about 30 percent compared to gasoline when operated on ethanol blends such as E85. The EBDI engine substantially improves ethanol’s efficiency, and performs at a level comparable to a diesel engine.

Researchers have developed a new catalyst that could make ethanol-powered fuel cells feasible.

The research was done by a team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Delaware and Yeshiva University, and was published online in the January 25 edition of Nature Materials.

According to the researchers, the highly efficient catalyst performs two crucial, and previously unreachable steps needed to oxidize ethanol and produce clean energy in fuel cell reactions. Made of platinum and rhodium atoms on carbon-supported tin dioxide nanoparticles, the research team’s electrocatalyst is capable of breaking carbon bonds at room temperature and efficiently oxidizing ethanol into carbon dioxide as the main reaction product.

“Ethanol is one of the most ideal reactants for fuel cells,” said Brookhaven chemist Radoslav Adzic. “It’s easy to produce, renewable, nontoxic, relatively easy to transport, and it has a high energy density. In addition, with some alterations, we could reuse the infrastructure that’s currently in place to store and distribute gasoline.”

“The ability to split the carbon-carbon bond and generate CO2 at room temperature is a completely new feature of catalysis,” Adzic said. “There are no other catalysts that can achieve this at practical potentials.”

Bankrupt ethanol producer VeraSun has announced an agreement to sell a significant portion of its assets to Valero Energy Corporation for $280 million.

The deal would involve VeraSun production facilities in Aurora, South Dakota; Charles City, Fort Dodge, and Hartley, Iowa; and Welcome, Minnesota; and a development site in Reynolds, Indiana. Having entered into the Valero agreement, the Company is now required to hold an auction to determine if other bidders will offer more favorable terms than Valero’s bid, referred to as a “stalking horse” bid.

“Given current difficult industry conditions and continued constrained credit markets, we believe that commencing a sale process is in the best interest of Company stakeholders,” said Don Endres, VeraSun’s Chief Executive Officer.

This would be Valero’s first foray into the ethanol business. The day before VeraSun announced the deal, Valero CEO Bill Klesse said in a conference call that they were “very interested” in making acquisitions in distillates, which include diesel fuel, jet fuel and heating oil, at the same time they are trying to sell a gasoline refinery in Aruba.

An oil distributor that is part of a recently-announced joint venture with POET and ICM to deliver new generation fuels caused some panic this week when it failed to deliver old generation fuel to gas stations across the Midwest.

Officials with Crescent Oil Company, a fuel supplier for seven Midwest states, had no comment Friday about claims that this week’s fuel deliveries never arrived. Several retail operators in Kansas and Missouri say that regular deliveries from Crescent did not arrive as scheduled on Wednesday, prompting rumors of fuel shortages, driving up gas prices and ultimately forcing them to find other suppliers. Crescent Oil is a wholesale supplier for several major oil companies and distributes fuel to more than 340 locations in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and Louisiana.

Just last week, Crescent took part in the grand opening of a NewGen “Renewable Fuel” retail station in Topeka, Kansas, together with partners POET and ICM.

According to a press release on the opening, “NewGen Fuel™ will provide owners of flex fuel vehicles (FFVs) the freedom to choose domestically produced midrange ethanol blends, through Crescent Oil Company’s efficient fuel distributorship and POET’s robust supply of ethanol.”

“We’re extremely excited to celebrate the grand opening of the first “Renewable Fuel” retail station in our state capital,” said NewGen Fuel president Alan Goodnight. “And we’re equally grateful for the extraordinary collaboration to form a joint venture with industry leaders, Crescent Oil Company and POET.”

Local news reports indicate that Crescent Oil is experiencing financial difficulties but had not filed bankruptcy.

The City of Kokomo, Indiana has opened a city-run biodiesel plant… the state’s first municipally-run biodiesel refinery.

This press release from the city says the sustainable program will use waste cooking oil to make what they are calling K-Fuel:

“I knew that if we could find a way of making our own fuel, the City would save money and reduce our use of foreign oil,” Mayor [Greg] Goodnight explained at today’s press conference. “What we created was a bio-fuel program that will immediately begin to reduce our energy and maintenance costs, and shrink the City’s carbon footprint.”

Paul Munoz, Kokomo’s Bio-Fuels Manager, detailed how waste cooking oil is processed into bio-diesel. “The City will collect used cooking oil from participating restaurants, businesses, and a residential collection program. At this time, we are collecting about 1500 gallons of used cooking oil from 12 participating businesses each month; and anticipate the collection of about 300 gallons from our residents in the first couple of months of operation. These amounts will increase over time, as businesses partner with the City, and as our production and collection methods improve.”

City officials say the program will also help keep sewer-clogging grease out of Kokomo’s waste water system.

On the heels of hosting the National Biodiesel Conference & Expo, San Francisco will be home to Algae Biofuels World Summit, March 23-25, 2009 at the Marines’ Memorial Club & Hotel.

Summit officials bill the meeting as the first major algae biofuels industry-building event and a unique forum where leading carbon generators, algae developers, biorefiners, financiers, investors, transportation companies and other key players in the algae biofuels value chain will connect and share…

The Algae Biofuels World Summit will be the first major event where all the communities in the algae biofuels value chain come together to discuss how to build a new algae biofuels industry. Unlike scientific research-oriented events, the goal of the Summit is to provide a forum where the algae community can discuss and learn how to build the links within the value chain that are necessary to make the algae biofuels industry a reality.

Power plant operators, industrial carbon generators, algae technology developers, algae equipment suppliers, algae project developers, biofuels refiners, financiers, carbon market players, oil companies, airlines, aircraft and engine manufacturers will be on hand to share their perspectives on what is needed to build a truly viable algae biofuels industry.

For more information and to register, go to the conference Web site.

A California-based energy company has designed a mobile biodiesel production plant, able to make 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of the green fuel a week while fitting in the back of a 8 foot by 45 foot by 9.5 foot trailer.

This company press release says AM Oil Resources & Technology Inc. says the biodiesel refinery is just in the design stage right now, but it will soon become reality:

According to Anthony K. Miller, CEO, “The mobile biodiesel plant is to be self sufficient, adaptable to different grades of waste vegetable oil (WVO), environmentally friendly, and economical. Our initial goal is to produce fuel that can be used to operate our patent steam generators, oil field equipment and/or our vehicles. Biodiesel is typically blended with diesel for usage and any surplus we produce can be sold for a profit. We can sell the glycerin as a profit center as well.” Miller added, “Management and our consultants have extensive experience in this field, with involvement in one of the first stationary plants built in California. We are extremely excited by the promise this can hold for our Company.”

I couldn’t find a picture of the mobile biodiesel plant, but I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about it soon.

According to the Springfield News Leader, Missouri’s law of standardizing a ten percent ethanol fuel blend into gasoline recently re-emerged in a Senate agriculture committee hearing.

Sen. Matt Bartle from Lees Summit said, “We’re coming along and saying ‘government knows better,’” Bartle said in a nearly 20-minute monologue that delved deeply into conservative economic philosophy. “We are picking ethanol over other alternative (energy) technologies … that might produce less dependence on foreign oil.”

Missouri’s alternative energy standard went into effect Jan. 1, 2008 and until gasoline prices plummeted, most unleaded gasoline contained E10.
“I didn’t need government to tell me that I had to buy one fuel or another,” Bartle said.

Despite Bartle’s pleas for the committee to renew their faith in capitalism and vote out a repeal of the mandate, he wasn’t getting much sympathy.

The Renewable Fuels Association has released a new television ad focusing on the important role ethanol is playing in our nation’s economic, energy and environmental future by creating jobs, developing new technologies, and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

In just 30 seconds, the ad entitled “Right Here, Right Now” stresses that our energy future starts at home with 180 ethanol plants nationwide, fueling the economy with over 300,000 green jobs.

Watch the ad here:

Retired General Wesley Clark today embraced his new role as a leader in the growth of renewable energy.

Clark was named co-chairman of Growth Energy during a Thursday morning press conference in Washington DC. “Every gallon of ethanol that we put in our fuel system today is a gallon of imported gasoline that we avoid,” Clark said. “This country is importing 15 billion gallons of gasoline, refined product, a year. We don’t need to do that.”

Clark talked about some of the challenges facing the ethanol industry, such as the indirect land use issue. He said that the land use issue is being based on the GREET (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation) model, which he says is based on outdated assumptions about the ethanol industry and agriculture. “I think if you look at the fundamental issues you can see that our best environmentalists are the American farmers and what they have done is pretty remarkable in terms of strengthening the environment, protecting the land and being able to bring in crops more efficiently.” He thinks that when the model is updated it will show a much more favorable picture relating to land use.

Listen to some of General Clark’s comments from this morning’s press conference here:

wesley-clark.MP3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.1MB)

Growth Energy today announced four-star retired General Wesley Clark as the organization’s co-chairman.

“It’s a new time for ethanol,” said General Clark during a press conference this morning. “I am very impressed with this industry. What we are doing for national security is profound.”

In his new role at Growth Energy, Clark will steer the organization towards meeting its goals of boosting our economy through the creation of green-collar jobs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, expanding ethanol use in gasoline, and decreasing our dependence on foreign oil. “Across the board, this is a win, win, win, win for America,” Clark said.

He outlined what he sees as a strategic plan for the ethanol industry during the press conference, which includes using corn-based ethanol to move into cellulosic ethanol to meet the needs of the nation.

Several more awards were presented on the last day of the National Biodiesel Conference this week in San Francisco.

As the Inspiration award winners, Bryan Peterson (right) and Pete Bethune shared their inspiring stories at the final general session. Fourteen years ago, Peterson made his way around the world in a small boat powered by biodiesel. He completed the 35,000 mile, two year trip in a boat called Sunrider. Peterson’s successful adventure generated some of the earliest news on biodiesel, and it paved the way for a world record last year. More recently, New Zealander Pete Bethune made headlines for breaking the world speed record for circumnavigating the globe in his Earthrace expedition in 60 days. Both men’s biodiesel message circumnavigated the globe with them.

Listen to an interview with Bryan and Pete here: nbb-09-pete-bryan.mp3

National Biodiesel Board CEO Joe Jobe (right) presented the Pioneer Award – a special honor to an individual or group who has served the industry – to Kenlon Johannes, the first Executive Director of the National SoyDiesel Development Board, which later would become the NBB.

Johannes, a soybean farmer when he represented the board, continues to promote biodiesel through the Kansas Soybean Commission.

Listen to an interview with Kenlon here: nbb-09-kenlon.mp3

Last but not least, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was presented with the NBB Inspiration award for his work in helping to make his city by the bay the largest known city in the world to use B20 fleet-wide. In 2006, Newsom issued an Executive Directive designed to increase the pace of municipal use of biodiesel. Today, virtually all of the City’s 1,500 diesel vehicles run on B20.

2009 National Biodiesel Conference Photo Album

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.5MB)

A leader in small-to-medium scale biodiesel production equipment has announced the development and release of technology that eliminates cold-flow issues to help biodiesel pass the new mandatory ASTM cold soak test and always performs in cold weather.

Greenline Industries’ “Greenline Tea FASTRACK” was debuted at the recent National Biodiesel Conference and Expo and, according to a company press release, combines a proprietary blend of materials with new equipment and process:

“We are excited to be able to provide all biodiesel producers, regardless of equipment brand, a much needed cold-flow solution that is ready now, when the industry needs it,” said Donn Tice, CEO of Greenline Industries. “The Greenline Tea FASTRACK system is simple, modular, ‘plug-and-play’ and extremely cost-effective, with a terrific return on investment. It will enable the world-wide biodiesel industry to once and for all solve one of the major production problems, which has been an obstacle to consistently perfect year-round biodiesel performance and broad-scale adoption.”

“We want to remove any technical barriers to biodiesel adoption; our vision is to make biodiesel accessible anywhere in the world. All of our technologies and processes have been developed to that end,” said Jacques Sinoncelli, Co-Founder of Greenline Industries. “With Greenline Tea FASTRACK, we help eliminate concerns that biodiesel content greater than 20 percent could create cold-flow problems.”

Company officials say this will give biodiesel producers the ability to crank out biodiesel year-round… especially important for those in northern areas… without cranking up their production costs.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, already home to the world’s largest fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles, is doubling the number of gas/electric hybrids in its inventory by adding 5,000 of the green vehicles.

This company press release says Enterprise is also designating nearly 80 rental locations across the country as “hybrid branches” that will have a high concentration of the new hybrids available for customers to rent online or over the phone:

The new hybrids will be available at nearly 80 locations in 24 major markets across the country, including the 10 busiest airports for business travelers in the United States. Markets include California (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and Fresno); Colorado (Denver); Florida (Orlando, Tampa); New York (Albany, Ithaca, New York City, Rochester); Oregon (Eugene, Portland); Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston); Atlanta; Boston; Detroit; Minneapolis; Philadelphia; St. Louis; Seattle; and Washington, D.C.

“Whether they’re traveling for business or pleasure, our customers continue to seek out environmentally friendly vehicle options,” said Jeff Morrell, Vice President of Business Development for Enterprise Rent-A-Car. “Doubling our fleet of hybrid vehicles nationally is in direct response to that demand and furthers our commitment to help grow the market for new engine technologies and alternative fuels.”

Enterprise also has designated eight of its branches as “E85/FlexFuel” branches where as much as 30 percent of the local fleets
are FlexFuel vehicles capable of using E85. The company also fills those vehicles at nearby E85 stations.