Michael Wirth from Chevron brings to the table an interesting perspective on the biofuels issue that I hadn't heard before -- namely that from a business point of view you want to refine oil in a small number of giant facilities that reap economies of scale. The costs of transporting the biomass that you would turn into fuel, by contrast, are such that you would want to have lots and lots of much smaller facilities. That, in turn, would require changes both in business practices but also probably policy shifts about where you're allowed to build things since the opening of a new refinery is the kind of thing likely to prompt a lot of NIMBY objections.
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Biofuel Logistics
02 Jul 2008 01:14 pm
Comments (20)
Actually, bio-fuel refineries fit right in with a lot of other agricultural facilities with some adverse environmental effects which are, however, subject to mediation and control.
Actually, bio-fuel refineries fit right in with a lot of other agricultural facilities with some adverse environmental effects which are, however, subject to mediation and control.
Claudius,
In some cases you're right about NIMBYism and BANANAism. In some cases, can you blame the NIMBYs (you ever smell an oil refinery?)?
In other cases, though, it boils down to "who is this 'we' of which you speak?" Who is gonna build all these energy producing facilities. It ain't in the best interests of those who own refineries currently to have a bunch o' new ones sprouting up all about. And it ain't as if the rest of us outside of the energy biz (and hence with a vested interest in the status quo) have the money to just jump right in.
"...the opening of a new refinery is the kind of thing likely to prompt a lot of NIMBY objections."
Don't you mean "...the opening of a new refinery is the kind of thing likely to prompt a lot of NIMBY objections"?
The BP refinery in Indiana wants to expand the facility. The expansion will only take place if BP gets permission to increase the amount of mercury they can put in Lake Michigan. I don't live in Indiana but I drink the water that comes out of Lake Michigan. Big Oil does not have to be in your hood to make you sick. Also, what was Chevron doing in Nigeria to piss of the unions, insurgents, rebels, or what bush has now labeled AQ in Nigeria? Note Chevron got one of those no bid contracts to pump crude in Iraq.
MY-
tou're being spun like a top by the clever use of "refine." The refining of agricultural oils is nithing like the refinig of petroleum, with its cracking and fluid catalytic beds an requisite high temperatures. Compare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinery
with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil
The energy requirements and environmental impacts are orders of magnitude different!
MY-
tou're being spun like a top by the clever use of "refine." The refining of agricultural oils is nithing like the refinig of petroleum, with its cracking and fluid catalytic beds an requisite high temperatures. Compare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinery
with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil
The energy requirements and environmental impacts are orders of magnitude different!
We all get the point about conservation, but the oil exec's point is a valid one: for a given level of oil consumption, there's a trade-off between the carbon cost of transporting fuel (a long-term issue), and the health cost of basically having a micro-refinery every 50 miles or so (public costs more short-term, and obviously his characterization of the latter cost as NIMBYism is way off base, as there are real health costs, not just aesthetic objections, to having a refinery in your backyard).
Did he tickle your balls with a feather as he said it?
Leaving aside the economic/ecological cases for and against biofuels, it seems likely that if closer refiners = cheaper local prices for fuel, this will end up winning over would-be NIMBY-ists.
There is no reason at all that this discussion needs to be hypothetical.
As we type, ethanol production facilities are popping up all over the corn belt and, I expect, biodiesel plants as well.
Personally, I think the ethanol thing is something of a boondoggle, but the question of whether such plants can be built is now an empirical one, not a hypothetical one, and the answer seems to be pretty clear: Yes
How come Craig Venter wasn't invited to tell the assembled guests how he's going to solve both the energy and global warming problems by developing algae/bacteria to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into oil? According to commentor James Robertson, this is the answer to all our problems as it would make Middle East Oil superfluous.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13641_3-9972800-44.html
"from a business point of view you want to refine oil in a small number of giant facilities that reap economies of scale"...
rather, "from a big business point of view".
It always angers me how big corporations try, and succeed, to rig the game - even the global warming one - in their favor, when small and medium-sized businesses are more efficient and better positioned.
These two sentences seem to contradict one another:
Michael Wirth from Chevron brings to the table an interesting perspective on the biofuels issue that I hadn't heard before -- namely that from a business point of view you want to refine oil in a small number of giant facilities that reap economies of scale. The costs of transporting the biomass that you would turn into fuel, by contrast, are such that you would want to have lots and lots of much smaller facilities.
Which is it? Is it that the costs of transporting the stuff make huge factories centrally located cost-prohibitive? Or is it that the cost of producing a bunch of locally-located factories so that there isn't a lot of transportation cost involved in getting the stuff to gas stations is too expensive?
Is this biofuel thing really going to happen, or is it just a bunch of razzle-dazzle?
Anyway, I read that the air-car is actually less efficient to charge than electric cars, so air cars aren't necessarily saving us from our fossil fuels shortage, either.
I'm still thinking about the possibility we may need to put up a bunch of new nuclear generators. At the very least, a lot of people and institutions in our country should be getting new solar cells and windmills put up. The new solar collection technology that is coming sounds promising, but given the limited nature of fossil fuels and the present uncertainty about how much alternative energies are going to be able to replace them, I think it's for the best to start getting away from fossil fuel use as much as possible and as quick as possible.
Note that the SwiftFuel stuff I posted about in the previous thread can be stored and shipped just like gasoline - in the same tanks and pipelines. Shipping biomass might still be an issue. I don't know how the SwiftFuel plants will operate in terms of local issues - probably similar to ethanol plants since it's based on but does not use ethanol in the final product.
That should help.
Add on to that change in fuels the Nanotech Energy Initiative and there's a viable solution to the energy and climate problems.
vorkosigan1 is absolutely right. Anybody can build a still (if you go the alcohol route). Absolutely the last thing you want to do is transport raw biomass.
Transporting raw biomass is a crappy proposition, certainly. That said, one of the current areas of R&D is in pyrolysis of biomass into biocrude, a liquid that can be transported like oil, and refined to hydrocarbon-chain fuels in a number of ways, including potentially in existing petrochemicals facilities.
gordon: "Absolutely the last thing you want to do is transport raw biomass."
Well, I'd have to see the spreadsheet on that. It seems quite possible that transportation costs/fuel use as a percentage of fuel value are trivial.
This especially if there are no further conversion costs--if the biomass is simply burned to create steam for electrical generators.
That's not necessarily true; it's simply the way the biodiesel industry is now, and that's partly because there's so much venture capital and so many operators and inexperienced engineers wanting to turn a quick buck that they'll put out any old standard or slightly non-standard plant. Most of these facilities receive their feedstocks by rail, anyhow, so the small plant vs. large plant dynamic isn't due primarily to feedstock distribution. If in the far future, you're talking about using stuff like MSW or dried biomass and trying to run our energy industry off of it, you could easily slurry the feed and pipeline it, like they do with oil now.
Chevron really said that? They must not do a whole lot of biorefining.
Comments closed July 16, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
"...the opening of a new refinery is the kind of thing likely to prompt a lot of NIMBY objections."
Not just from NIMBYs. There would be a lot of environmentalist BANANAism--Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Truth is, Americans of all stripes, and their politicians, are rank hypocrites when it comes to energy. If we were really serious about reducing dependence on foreign oil and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we would build more oil and gas refineries, build more dams for hydropower, more solar and wind farms, and more nuclear power plants. We'd dramatically increase fuel economy standards, limit sprawl and require higher densities, and boost funding for mass transit. NIMBYs and BANANAs are standing in the way of all of these, for different reasons, but the outcome is the same--we're stuck in the status quo.
Posted by Claudius | July 2, 2008 1:37 PM