When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?

[ahbushnell]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

How many liters/m^2 of bio fuel do they produce in a year?

[boffin]

...  At first you were talking about usain sugar cane and now you are talking about the bio-mass leftovers.  You do realize there is an enormous energy difference between the two.  Then by using the bio-mass leftovers you are not creating new soil and disrupting the ecological balance of the microorganisms in the soil.  Something that’s really bad.
...
As Calrl Segan once said, extrodanary claims need require extrodanary evidense.  I’m not saying I don’t beleive you, it’s just you have not provided the extrodanary evidence.

Ahh yes, the Dutch sugar cane fields, I remember it well.  Where is it that they stand in global sugar cane production?  Just behind Brasil ?

[TheNewLab]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

Duck Duck, Brasil and bio fuel , or sugar.
There are some YTs that show how Brasil converts their huge sugar crop to bio fuel.
The US tried this with corn. only the corn growers go so into it, that it pushed food prices up. non growing corn farmers began to also grow corn as a bio fuel and it pushed price up more..then it all crashed.

I don't think the US will do bio fuels, so much as electric and hydrogen, if the later catches on.
Despite what our fearless stupid leader is doing, relaxing EPA rules. California and other major US cities have gone directly to leaders of other nations and reported that despite the US government, their states are still fully committed to renewable energy. Again, California has just passed laws to require all public transit buses to either run on LNG or electricity. All state, city and county vehicles will soon have to, also.
A major concern is electric charging stations. however these are springing up all over, and so with Oregon.

The Hurriyet, a liberal daily paper in Turkey has announced successful talks with several California state senators where their nation and CA will be sharing technology and compliment each other in new and existing renewable technology.  A you good-we good benefits that will help both parties GDP wise. Turkey also is working on partnering up with the EU and China, with the guidance of CA connections.

A big issue of wind and solar energy, is not being consistent output. undependable. The challenge is storing it..however, a number of inventors, (one a chemical engineer), have developed huge batteries that will last 40 years keeping full capacity. To build a great battery when you are thinking of sizes of buildings or small ones like shipping containers..It is not so difficult...
Scotland has had a tide electrical generator for years. Apparently the tide under the Golden Gate Bridge is the most powerful tide in the world (please catch me if I am incorrect), however it is, it is strong, and the City of San Francisco has finally taken over some of the power generation from PG&E the regional energy provider
I admit, i am kind of schizophrenic about this. One day I think, "hey! it is happening!" other days i think "the ruling elite in the US, are going to destroy our beautiful planet"  It is a battle for me everyday.

But hey! writing about this on this thread encourages me to focus again on the real progress...!!!

[TheNewLab]

...  At first you were talking about using sugar cane and now you are talking about the bio-mass leftovers.  You do realize there is an enormous energy difference between the two.  Then by using the bio-mass leftovers you are not creating new soil and disrupting the ecological balance of the microorganisms in the soil.  Something that’s really bad.
...
As Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims need require extraordinary evidence.  I’m not saying I don’t believe you, it’s just you have not provided the extraordinary evidence.

Ahh yes, the Dutch sugar cane fields, I remember it well.  Where is it that they stand in global sugar cane production?  Just behind Brazil ?

I don't know about the Dutch sugar output, however, Brazil has required dual energy vehicles for over a decade.  And I just learned an old classmate of mine. really into expensive stuff bought a new  Mercedes sedan couple of years ago, and she converted it to run on vegetable oil

This is sooo not like her. in HS, she sported out her car and set it up with a nitrous injection. could beat out a stop light a block away. From a stop as her light turned green and the next light turned yellow
I learned about that last fall...and I have been teasing her about it everyday since.... It IS really cool, though

[apis]

Duck Duck, Brasil and bio fuel , or sugar.

That's the traditional way of doing it I believe: sugar and yeast. Nctnico was talking about some new way of converting plant waste (i.e. mostly cellulose) into alcohol. There have been several proposed processes for how to do that, but there wasn't any successful operational factories that I knew of. The question is how efficient that poet-dsm process is, if it can produce enough fuel to replace gas and at what price.

[DougSpindler]

Duck Duck, Brasil and bio fuel , or sugar.

That's the traditional way of doing it I believe: sugar and yeast. Nctnico was talking about some new way of converting plant waste (i.e. mostly cellulose) into alcohol. There have been several proposed processes for how to do that, but there wasn't any successful operational factories that I knew of. The question is how efficient that poet-dsm process is, if it can produce enough fuel to replace gas and at what price.

The guy posted he did the calculations for the poet-dam process.  He’s been asked to post his calculations as all of the calculations U have seen from others show for the number of cars in Europe and US there’s not enough land to make this work.

One of the technical problems is the fuel is oxyngenated.  To Ben used as a fuel that oxygen needs to be removed.  The way the oxygen is removed is by adding Hydrogen.  Where does the Hydrogen come from?  Fossil fuels, specifically crude oil.

Not sure what the definition of 3rd generation bio-fuels, but I thought it included the use of microorganisms to be genetically modified in order to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuel.  I know the oil companies were working on it as well as private industry.  They were successful in the lab on a small scale, but once they tried to scale it up the microorganisms no longer wanted to cooperate.  Not sure if this is the process the Dutch company is using.  But if it is they can do ion a small scale, but that’s it.  They haven’t figured our how to scale it up.

[nctnico]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

How many liters/m^2 of bio fuel do they produce in a year?

From this link: https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty 20 to 25 million gallons. And I assume this is the goal for 2018 so we'll probably know how much they produced soon.

[nctnico]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

.
Friend we have loooked and yes they are doing it, but they are not saying how successful our profitable it is from them.  Yes other companies are doing the same thing, but they are struggling with it and having issues. 

You also appear to be mixing-up what the Dutch are doing and somehow implying it’s the same thing as what they are doing in Brazil.  At first you were talking about usain sugar cane and now you are talking about the bio-mass leftovers.  You do realize there is an enormous energy difference between the two.  Then by using the bio-mass leftovers you are not creating new soil and disrupting the ecological balance of the microorganisms in the soil.  Something that’s really bad.

No, you didn't look into it. Or it didn't sink in. Your comment is allover the place. It is like I told you to go straight ahead and you went left-right-left-left-right-right.

All the information and data is right here on these websites.
poet-dsm.com
https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty
Read first (that is your homework) and then comment in a sensible way.

[coppice]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

.

Friend we have loooked and yes they are doing it, but they are not saying how successful our profitable it is from them.  Yes other companies are doing the same thing, but they are struggling with it and having issues. 

You also appear to be mixing-up what the Dutch are doing and somehow implying it’s the same thing as what they are doing in Brazil.  At first you were talking about usain sugar cane and now you are talking about the bio-mass leftovers.  You do realize there is an enormous energy difference between the two.  Then by using the bio-mass leftovers you are not creating new soil and disrupting the ecological balance of the microorganisms in the soil.  Something that’s really bad.

Sorry just not seeing the same optimistic results you or any of the companies you are talking about are seeing.  You say you have done the calculations, let’s see your calculations.  I have seen the calculcations others have made and they are no where near as optimistic as yours are.

As Calrl Segan once said, extrodanary claims need require extrodanary evidense.  I’m not saying I don’t beleive you, it’s just you have not provided the extrodanary evidence.

Their entire site is marketing fluff, mostly marketing how wonderful they will be for the local economy. They don't even give optimistic results, just a few vague statements about having "solved" various issues since the plant started in 2014. They are specific about the amount of plant waste feedstock they will consume, and the number of litres of fuel it will produce, but what is important is what else (e.g. energy) goes into the process. They say nothing about this.

[nctnico]

Sure there is a lot of marketing fluff but there are also reports on the website on what research they did (the amount which can be harvested to keep enough nutrients on the field for example) and with which companies they partnered to make this a success. It takes some sifting but there is a lot of factual information to be found. For example: for power they use biomass (using the parts which are useless to turn into fuel) to power the plant. Either way this is a 300 million dollar project of which 2 thirds where invested by POET and DSM. This is not a few people with a few pressure cookers in a garage living some kind of pipe dream funded by a government hand-out and/or money from kickstarter.

[ahbushnell]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

How many liters/m^2 of bio fuel do they produce in a year?

From this link: https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty 20 to 25 million gallons. And I assume this is the goal for 2018 so we'll probably know how much they produced soon.

That doesn't answer the question. 

[coppice]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

How many liters/m^2 of bio fuel do they produce in a year?

From this link: https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty 20 to 25 million gallons. And I assume this is the goal for 2018 so we'll probably know how much they produced soon.

They provide very little hard information, but they do clearly say that 20 to 25 million gallons per year is NOT what they are producing now. 20 million appears to be the design goal, and 25 million is a figure they hope to stretch this to.

[DougSpindler]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

.
Friend we have loooked and yes they are doing it, but they are not saying how successful our profitable it is from them.  Yes other companies are doing the same thing, but they are struggling with it and having issues. 

You also appear to be mixing-up what the Dutch are doing and somehow implying it’s the same thing as what they are doing in Brazil.  At first you were talking about usain sugar cane and now you are talking about the bio-mass leftovers.  You do realize there is an enormous energy difference between the two.  Then by using the bio-mass leftovers you are not creating new soil and disrupting the ecological balance of the microorganisms in the soil.  Something that’s really bad.

No, you didn't look into it. Or it didn't sink in. Your comment is allover the place. It is like I told you to go straight ahead and you went left-right-left-left-right-right.

All the information and data is right here on these websites.
poet-dsm.com
https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty
Read first (that is your homework) and then comment in a sensible way.

My friend I am listening to you and you are telling me to go straight to you conclusion woithout reading the documents or looking at you calculations.  Did you neven READ the text in the link you provided?

The Dutch company isn’t the one converting corn stover to Ethabol, it’s the Americans.  It’s the Americans who have 27 Ethanol facilities.

Dude, do I feel you have mislead us.  This is NOTHING like what they are doing in Brazil.  In Brazil they use sugar cane, this is corn stover.  You do know the difference between cane sugar plants and corn, don’t you?
This is s Dutch company, but the work they are doing is in Iowa which is still part of the United States.  But maybe you think Iowa is oart of the Netherlands?

And why are you calling this third generation?  It’s not.  They clearly state a pilot, and they are even calling it Project Liberty.  This is just a scale-up feasabilkitly phase.  How can you call this 3rd generation.

But read the document.  Maybe English is not your first language.  But the way I read this is the Dutch company IS NOT the one converting the corn stover to Ethanol, that’s the Americans.  What the Dutch are doing is creating an EZ Bale system.

“POET-DSM developed its innovative EZ Bale system.”

“To make it easier for farmers in the surrounding area to collect EZ Bales, POET-DSM has worked with more than a dozen manufacturers of harvest equipment...”
“Local farmers are now under contract to deliver the EZ Bales, which also help them manage their crop residue and decrease tillage.”

By any chance are you a politician?  If not, you should be.  You have a wonderful way of telling people something that’s far from the truth and expect them to beleive it.  On the other hand maybe you are a priest?

[nctnico]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

How many liters/m^2 of bio fuel do they produce in a year?

From this link: https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty 20 to 25 million gallons. And I assume this is the goal for 2018 so we'll probably know how much they produced soon.

That doesn't answer the question.

Oh, I didn't see you wanted to know per surface area. This images says it all:

[DougSpindler]

nctnico in the United States we had a “salesmen” who came up with he following line for customers looking at his product...  “There’s a sucker born every minute.” 

You are reading this marketing crud and not realizing The document is filled with marketing words, and not engineering/scientific terms.  When a document uses phrases such as, “can provide” or “may produce” they all sound positive. But at the same time the words “might not” could be substituted.

This is like Elon Musk saying his EV semi-trucks can travel a distance of up to 800 miles before needing to be recharged.  Someone looked you would look at that and say that’s wonderful.  Let’s replace all of the semi-trucks with Elon’s BEV trucks it will save the world.  An engineer would look at Elon’s statement and realize how stupid it is.  Using the laws of physics (which do not ply when religion and marketing is involved) one quickly realizes the truck could travel that far but only if all of the cargo space is filled with batteries.  I don’t know of many trucking companies who would purchase one of Elon’s truck and ave a driver drive 800 miles to deliver a cargo of discharged batteres.

[DougSpindler]

Anyone else reading nctnico’s documents and realize the Dutch company is NOT the one converting cane sugar or corn into ethanol?  All they are doing is working on an EZ bale system for sorting and collecting collecting corn stover.

In the document nctnico provided it’s clearly stated what the Dutch company is doing to maximizing bio-refinery production with EZ Bales. 

Does anyone see anything that says the Dutch compouny is even in the business for converting bio-mass into bio-fuel?  If so, I can’t find it.   

[nctnico]

nctnico in the United States we had a “salesmen” who came up with he following line for customers looking at his product...  “There’s a sucker born every minute.” 

You are reading this marketing crud and not realizing The document is filled with marketing words, and not engineering/scientific terms.  When a document uses phrases such as, “can provide” or “may produce” they all sound positive. But at the same time the words “might not” could be substituted.

That may be but POET's and DSM's shareholders will be utterly dissapointed if they don't pull it off after investing 200 million dollars. The losses should have been cut sooner. All in all it looks to me like the process is working. We'll just have to wait until there is some news about how much they managed to produce in 2018 and where they are going in 2019.

My Google-fu is excellent. Just Google DSM and biofuels.
https://www.dsm.com/corporate/about/business-entities/dsm-biobased-productsandservices.html

[DougSpindler]

nctnico in the United States we had a “salesmen” who came up with he following line for customers looking at his product...  “There’s a sucker born every minute.” 

You are reading this marketing crud and not realizing The document is filled with marketing words, and not engineering/scientific terms.  When a document uses phrases such as, “can provide” or “may produce” they all sound positive. But at the same time the words “might not” could be substituted.

That may be but POET's and DSM's shareholders will be utterly dissapointed if they don't pull it off after investing 200 million dollars. The losses should have been cut sooner. All in all it looks to me like the process is working. We'll just have to wait until there is some news about how much they managed to produce in 2018 and where they are going in 2019.

My Google-fu is excellent. Just Google DSM and biofuels.
https://www.dsm.com/corporate/about/business-entities/dsm-biobased-productsandservices.html

My friend I have Googled and found what you are telling us in your posts does not match what experts are saying.  For some reason you are fixated on the marketing hype.

You do realize this is an unproven technology,  Just read what’s being said in the document you posted.
This is clearly an experiment and they are looking for “partnes” to try it out on.

“DSM Bio-based Products & Services pioneers advances in biomass conversion and seeks to demonstrate the commercial viability of sustainable, renewable technologies in collaboration with strategic partners “

And if you continue reading in the document what they clearly say is they want to LICENSE the technology.

And again correct me if I’m wrong, but the Dutch company is NOT in the business of converting bio-mass to bio-fuels.  What they are “selling” is there EX Bale system for collecting and sorting core stover.

This is NOT what you have been telling us.   Very disappointing.

[apis]

We'll just have to wait until there is some news about how much they managed to produce in 2018 and where they are going in 2019.

The same could be said about several storage solutions, there is a lot of hype about flow batteries for example.

[nctnico]

People, I can't help it you can't read but POET-DSM has a factory up & running. Where is the misunderstanding?

We'll just have to wait until there is some news about how much they managed to produce in 2018 and where they are going in 2019.

The same could be said about several storage solutions, there is a lot of hype about flow batteries for example.

Now you make it sound as if they are not producing anything. The factory is running but no news yet on how much they produced exactly in 2018. 2019 is just one day old so give them some time to put a press release together.

[apis]

There are also commercially available flow batteries being tried now, we'll just have to wait until there is some news about their performance.

[nctnico]

There are also commercially available flow batteries being tried now, we'll just have to wait until there is some news about their performance.

POET-DSM seems to be near the target performance almost two years ago:
https://www.dsm.com/corporate/media/informationcenter-news/2017/02/2017-02-16-poet-dsm-plans-on-site-enzyme-manufacturing-facility-at-project-liberty.html

[fsr]

Anyone else reading nctnico’s documents and realize the Dutch company is NOT the one converting cane sugar or corn into ethanol?  All they are doing is working on an EZ bale system for sorting and collecting collecting corn stover.

In the document nctnico provided it’s clearly stated what the Dutch company is doing to maximizing bio-refinery production with EZ Bales. 

Does anyone see anything that says the Dutch compouny is even in the business for converting bio-mass into bio-fuel?  If so, I can’t find it.

This paragraph seems to indicate that they use distillation to produce ethanol from corn stover, but english isn't my main language either:

Once the collected corn stover arrives at Project LIBERTY, it is weighed, documented, and stored in the stack yard or brought directly to the Biomass Building for immediate processing. The corn stover begins processing by undergoing a series of physical and passive pretreatment processes that start to break down its rigid cell walls so that the basic sugar components can be extracted and fermented. The resulting product is then distilled into 200-proof ethanol, denatured, and shipped to refiners for blending with gasoline. The portion of the corn stover (primarily lignin) that cannot be converted to biofuel is used to generate the thermal power needed by Project LIBERTY—and much of that power required by the adjacent corn ethanol plant.

Project LIBERTY was strategically situated right next to POET’s existing first-generation corn ethanol plant in Emmetsburg to share energy, land, rail spurs/roadways, storage, feedstock supply network, and personnel. Once this novel production technology is fine-tuned, POET intends to adopt it in at the other 27 corn ethanol plants it operates in North America. The integrated technology package is also being licensed for use around the globe.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

But yes, basically seems to be a prototype facility on US soil.

[DougSpindler]

There are also commercially available flow batteries being tried now, we'll just have to wait until there is some news about their performance.

POET-DSM seems to be near the target performance almost two years ago:
https://www.dsm.com/corporate/media/informationcenter-news/2017/02/2017-02-16-poet-dsm-plans-on-site-enzyme-manufacturing-facility-at-project-liberty.html

Yes but all they did was create something they call EZ Bale to increase production.  The are NOT the ones converting corn stover into bio-fuels.  You are citing production values of the American companies who are using the Dutch EZ Bale.

[DougSpindler]

Anyone else reading nctnico’s documents and realize the Dutch company is NOT the one converting cane sugar or corn into ethanol?  All they are doing is working on an EZ bale system for sorting and collecting collecting corn stover.

In the document nctnico provided it’s clearly stated what the Dutch company is doing to maximizing bio-refinery production with EZ Bales. 

Does anyone see anything that says the Dutch compouny is even in the business for converting bio-mass into bio-fuel?  If so, I can’t find it.

This paragraph seems to indicate that they use distillation to produce ethanol from corn stover, but english isn't my main language either:

Once the collected corn stover arrives at Project LIBERTY, it is weighed, documented, and stored in the stack yard or brought directly to the Biomass Building for immediate processing. The corn stover begins processing by undergoing a series of physical and passive pretreatment processes that start to break down its rigid cell walls so that the basic sugar components can be extracted and fermented. The resulting product is then distilled into 200-proof ethanol, denatured, and shipped to refiners for blending with gasoline. The portion of the corn stover (primarily lignin) that cannot be converted to biofuel is used to generate the thermal power needed by Project LIBERTY—and much of that power required by the adjacent corn ethanol plant.

Project LIBERTY was strategically situated right next to POET’s existing first-generation corn ethanol plant in Emmetsburg to share energy, land, rail spurs/roadways, storage, feedstock supply network, and personnel. Once this novel production technology is fine-tuned, POET intends to adopt it in at the other 27 corn ethanol plants it operates in North America. The integrated technology package is also being licensed for use around the globe.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

Isn’t POET American, not Dutch?  Read the part about EZ Bale and the licensing of EZ Bale.  That’s wer the Dutch company is involved.

There’s a huge problem in what POET-DSM is doing whcih has not been discussed.  The corn stover which the original poster said could be covertned to bio-fule did say it already has a use, feeding cows.  What he convienetnly left out if his argument is in the stover is converted to bio-fuels what are the cows going to be fed?  What he called waste, is actually very economical cow and other livestock food.

So with this fantastic technology we CN save the planet with bio-fuels while we starve ourselves to death.