Cellulosic Ethanol Plant?

[Jogeephus]

I'd love nothing better than for this to work. Pulp wood is plentiful and cheap and exceedingly easy to replace here. Another competitive buyer for pulpwood would only help the woodland owners of Georgia and other states as well- this in addition to the pressure it would take off the corn into ethanol industry. Maybe the technology can be developed that will enable this to work- I can only hope.

I would have loved it to work too. GP, what I think we need in this country are more people willing to invest their time and money into technology or theories that are sound rather than looking to make a million overnight. These get rich quick schemes are hurting our country and when the government listens to witch doctors and snake oil peddlers rather than the facts it makes things doubly worse. I think we could take a lesson from the germans. Unlike americans who spend years paving one mile of interstate the germans do it in a day and at standards unheard of in this country. They have shown their ingenuity and efficency again with the new mill they built in Waycross. This mill will be taking puplwood. I should say is because it was completed and running ahead of schedule. Its and extruder operation making wood pellets for heaters in europe. Apparantly they are having to pay a hefty carbon tax on fossil fuels under the Kyoto agreement and this is green energy and is saving them lots of money by not paying the fuel surcharge that we too will be paying shortly. I was also told that several wealthy americans wanted to invest in this operation and the germans basically told them to go AI themselves. They were in it for the long haul and not to get rich overnight like americans think. One more good thing. Deeds were signed the other week for another german mill to come in between you and me. They don't want american investors either so I suspect they'll be up an running shortly as well. All for export.

 

[larryshoat]

Oil guys are not complaining about ethanol. It has no effect on them. You have to remember that its not oil vs ethanol.... its domestic vs foreign.

Yep and not a lot different from my friend "Banned" not caring how high corn goes cause he makes money. well I make a little of mine with oil and gas so I kinda like it when it get's a bit higher. But what's good for me also hurts the hel out of a lot of good folks. I'd gladly settle for pricing which is much more stable and affordable for everyone affected.

That's my recollection of things is that we wanted a domestic fuel supply that was renewable, which ethanol is, but now we have those pesky unintended consequences.

Amen to that, I don't think the situation we have now is good for anybody in the long run.

Larry

 

[Jogeephus]

I may have made mention of this a couple or three years ago but when this thing got started I was asked by a senator to help interpret and give my opinion on a few things pertaining to the biomass portion of the bill. One thing that stuck out was that some lobby group had influenced a certain party to redefine the definition of biomass and anything not meeting "their" definition could not be used in any gov't funded ethanol plant. In light of this redefinition, anything that could have a higher or better use would be excluded". This excluded trees but did not exclude topwood. To remedy this, money was given to develop a bailer that would simultaneously cut and bale the brush under our pine stands. This was developed and you can buy one for a mere $40,000. Problem is some of our pine stands have rows that are miles long so just think about the logistics of getting a roll of bushes out of the woods with a row of trees on either side of you. To remedy this they spent money developing a machine to do this but still the distance made the whole concept utterly ridiculus. They tried this equipment out just down the road from my house and I think they got one 12 ton load out of the woods in one day. Thankfully the guilty party was encouraged to change the wording back to include trees but only after lots of money had been wasted on an obiviously flawed concept in an attempt to please a certain lobby group.

This is what gets me about how wasteful they are with the money. There is no need to spend millions building huge plants when all they have to do is build small scale models to test the technology. Like someone previously mentioned, we should explore the technology and find out IF it can be done. We've got to try something and I think it could be possible. But building multi-million dollar lemons at the taxpayers expense with hope of technoolgical breakthroughs is a fool's erand. JMO

 

[ga.prime]

Good posts, Jo. Thanks for the brush baler info- hadn't heard of that boondoggle.

Yep, the Germans have got it seriously going on with their wood pellet plants.

 

[Jogeephus]

I got some literature around the office if you'd be interesting in buying one. Its deductable and you might even get a credit for buying one if that's not reason enough to jump out and get one

 

[auctionboy]

http://www.southeastgeorgiatoday.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5696&Itemid=117

Gotta send some of them "good ol' boys" from Tennessee down to bring the recipe and run it?? Ga. will have a shortage of Mason jars in a week. :lol:

In all seriousness...this is the kind of plant they need...make ethanol from something that is not FOOD.

I'll bet every university in the country with a biology dept has grant money to research "cellulosic ethanol". It seems very daunting. There just isn't much net energy in switchgrass or wood chips or corn cobs. The polical largesse is flowing to this notion that we can have a modern life with magical systems which create energy from crystals focused on distant stars...or something like that. The whole ethanol from corn project is a bad idea, but if you are bound and determined to make ethanol, corn can't be beat for yield.

The magical system is nuclear! If someone told Einstein 50 years ago that we would be focusing on wind, solar, and ethanol he would laugh or think the Apocalypse happened. Wind, solar, and ethanol are all a political joke! Drill the ocean and develop nuclear!

 

[Jogeephus]

Nuclear is good but I think we should diversify and explore every source of energy possible. We should perform research and gain knowledge and once the knowledge is sound and proven then we should begin building the infrastructure to capitalize on it. We also should demand that congress bases its decisions on sound science rather than pressure from lobby groups. Anything other than this should be considered treason.

 

[john250]

Nuclear is good but I think we should diversify and explore every source of energy possible. We should perform research and gain knowledge and once the knowledge is sound and proven then we should begin building the infrastructure to capitalize on it. We also should demand that congress bases its decisions on sound science rather than pressure from lobby groups. Anything other than this should be considered treason.

Everyone wants a "Manhattan Project" for their particular interest. The "sustainable" guru from Virginia wants a MP for compost. Compost. OK.
If a particular type of energy shows real world potential and a business plan the capital will flow so fast they'll have to hire extra accountants. The government did real well with the MP but what have they done since then?

 

[AL-beef]

I'm not really educated on this. The question in my mind is why not convert to bio diesel ? It will run in current diesel engines, is readily available from grains and animal fat, among other sources. It seems more can be produced with the same product. It also has more stored energy and is more efficient. I mean it is produced already in highly refined food grade for a few bucks a gallon.

 

[Brute 23]

Its good to look at some of these other options but currently natural gas is the way to go with these power plants and automobiles. Its abundand, the technology is there, and despite what your second grade teacher said we are not running out of it any time soon.

 

[Jogeephus]

I'm not really educated on this. The question in my mind is why not convert to bio diesel ? It will run in current diesel engines, is readily available from grains and animal fat, among other sources. It seems more can be produced with the same product. It also has more stored energy and is more efficient. I mean it is produced already in highly refined food grade for a few bucks a gallon.

Nothing wrong with biodiesel but like organic gardening you aren't going to feed the world with it. We need to diversify and not put all our eggs in one basket. Explore alternatives but do so wisely and scientificly and leave the politics out of it and hopefully one day we will figure out how to efficiently extract hydrogen from water. Politics create phenomina like Gorrism where a politician spends his summers screaming that the sky is falling and his winters laughing his way to the bank.