Think Green, Go Yellow...

[FasstChevys]

The GM add campaign with that slogan..........where can I find t-shirts/hats, etc etc? Does anyone know? Thanks in advance for any help!

[pecha]

little off topic, I was arguing with a guy about buying alternative fuel car making no sense and I searched for a nearest gas station offering E85 ethanol. There is NO gas station with that fuel in 150 miles radius

[FasstChevys]

little off topic, I was arguing with a guy about buying alternative fuel car making no sense and I searched for a nearest gas station offering E85 ethanol. There is NO gas station with that fuel in 150 miles radius

I guess if the fuel isn't readily available (yet), then it wouldn't make much sense to buy a flex fuel vehicle. It is a relatively new fuel and has only been offered for a few years now. I do know that there are a number of different vehicles that are coming out now that have flex fuel as a standard option. The new F-150 is just one example.

www.e85fuel.com

[TMF]

I work for a mechanical contractor as a Project Engineer, and we're in the process of building (2) of these plants right now . The Co. we're building these for plans on (86) across the country.

[Bandit02]

GM is working with i beleive Shell and somebody else to better broaden the supply. This fuel in the long run will do wonders for our economy and environment.

[FasstChevys]

I work for a mechanical contractor as a Project Engineer, and we're in the process of building (2) of these plants right now . The Co. we're building these for plans on (86) across the country.

Very cool. I'm the Plant Manager of an ethanol plant here in Minnesota. My plant produces 35 million gallons per year, with an expansion in progess as we speak.

[TMF]

Very cool. I'm the Plant Manager of an ethanol plant here in Minnesota. My plant produces 35 million gallons per year, with an expansion in progess as we speak.

That's great, I'm glad to hear these things are happening, the sooner we get to developing these fuels, the sooner we can tell these arabs to fuk off. What's the feedstock at your plant, corn ?

[FasstChevys]

That's great, I'm glad to hear these things are happening, the sooner we get to developing these fuels, the sooner we can tell these arabs to fuk off. What's the feedstock at your plant, corn ?

Corn is the ticket. It has about the highest starch percent content of the usual feed stocks.

[Black_Z28]

Very cool. I'm the Plant Manager of an ethanol plant here in Minnesota. My plant produces 35 million gallons per year, with an expansion in progess as we speak.

Which plant in MN? The newest plant built in MN this past year was built right by the town I grew up in. I think that one does 43 Million gallons/year.

[FasstChevys]

Which plant in MN? The newest plant built in MN this past year was built right by the town I grew up in. I think that one does 43 Million gallons/year.

Newest plant huh? Would that be Lake Crystal? Or Granite Falls? Mine is over by Rochester

[Black_Z28]

Newest plant huh? Would that be Lake Crystal? Or Granite Falls? Mine is over by Rochester

Actually Atwater, which is near Willmar.

[00-T/A-DropTop]

E85 is much easier to get a hold of in the midwest. As for the best plant for biofule (biodiese and e85) it is algae. Corn = 5 gallons of oil per acre, algae = 10,000 gallons of oil per acre. Think of algae as a very efficient solar collector, which doesn't take up our farm land to grow (can be grown in the desert) and doesn't require large ammounts of fresh water.

[FasstChevys]

E85 is much easier to get a hold of in the midwest. As for the best plant for biofule (biodiese and e85) it is algae. Corn = 5 gallons of oil per acre, algae = 10,000 gallons of oil per acre. Think of algae as a very efficient solar collector, which doesn't take up our farm land to grow (can be grown in the desert) and doesn't require large ammounts of fresh water.

That makes perfect sense, especially since 'most' of the ethanol produced in the United States is in the Midwest. The main reason being, is that is where the most of the corn is grown.

My experience in this area in Minnesota, is that the farmers typically yield 180 bushels of corn per acre. The efficiency of ethanol production from corn (at my plant) is approximately 2.73 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn, which equals 491.4 gallons of ethanol per acre. I'm not certain where you came up with your numbers (corn = 5 gallons of oil per acre), but my numbers are just from what I've seen here, year in and year out.

Algae most likely could be used as a feed stock someday through cellulosic methods of conversion/production. The problem is that it isn't cost effective....yet. When that technology is developed further, you'll see many different types of feedstocks used to produce ethanol.

[00-T/A-DropTop]

That makes perfect sense, especially since 'most' of the ethanol produced in the United States is in the Midwest. The main reason being, is that is where the most of the corn is grown.

My experience in this area in Minnesota, is that the farmers typically yield 180 bushels of corn per acre. The efficiency of ethanol production from corn (at my plant) is approximately 2.73 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn, which equals 491.4 gallons of ethanol per acre. I'm not certain where you came up with your numbers (corn = 5 gallons of oil per acre), but my numbers are just from what I've seen here, year in and year out.

Algae most likely could be used as a feed stock someday through cellulosic methods of conversion/production. The problem is that it isn't cost effective....yet. When that technology is developed further, you'll see many different types of feedstocks used to produce ethanol.

I should have state 50 gallons of oil (not ethanol) per acre from corn, and that is from a report that was trying to justify alage so take it with a grain of salt. Thank you for posting as I am very interested in actual output from a ethanol plant.

In order to get ethanol >30% energy gain we need to build them next to power plants and utilize the waste heat (in my opinion). Do you know of any reason why they are not doing this right now?

Also, Agae can first be processed to extract the oil for biodiesel. It then can be further processed along with the cellulosic leftovers to produce ethanol. The cool part about it is that power plants (think coal) can send their exhaust gasses through vats of alage, the hot exhaust gasses not only keep it warm, but it will also remove 60-70% of the CO2 and something like 30% of the NOx. It doesn't get rid of the CO2 and NOx forever we just get ot use the fuel again in our cars/trucks before it is released.

It gets even cooler, because if you used the waste heat from the power plant and built the ethaol plant right next door, the transportation cost would virtually be elimiated. Think not only from the "Farm" to the plant but also for distribution. Yields will be different based on geography, but there are power plans everywhere, so there doesn't need to be a pipeline to transport the fuel because it can be made locally.

(Please excuse my english as I do not have time to perfect it.)

[FasstChevys]

[/QUOTE]In order to get ethanol >30% energy gain we need to build them next to power plants and utilize the waste heat (in my opinion). Do you know of any reason why they are not doing this right now?[/QUOTE]

Right now today, ethanol production is in fact a "net energy winner". Which means the energy output equals more than the energy input (example: natural gas, electricity, etc). The latest numbers I've seen reported was for every 1 btu of energy put into the plant, it yields about 1.6 btu's going out. This even includes all of the diesel fuel used by the farmer to plant and harvest the corn used in the production. Which, honestly, doesn't make any sense to me. Why include that into the equation? No matter if the corn is used for hog feed, exported, or for ethanol production, it still needs to be harvested either way.

As far as building ethanol plants next to power plants, I think that's a great idea. I do believe there are proposals in the works to do just that. But, the problem I see with that is a few things. If the power plant does not run all the time, (I've seen a proposal to run the power plant 60% of the time) it can really screw up how everthing all works together. One other problem is just simply getting people to agree on a plan/proposal. That can be a lot harder than one thinks.



[/QUOTE]Also, Agae can first be processed to extract the oil for biodiesel. It then can be further processed along with the cellulosic leftovers to produce ethanol. The cool part about it is that power plants (think coal) can send their exhaust gasses through vats of alage, the hot exhaust gasses not only keep it warm, but it will also remove 60-70% of the CO2 and something like 30% of the NOx. It doesn't get rid of the CO2 and NOx forever we just get ot use the fuel again in our cars/trucks before it is released.[/QUOTE]

I'm curious about the algae concept. Where are you getting your info? I'd like to read up on this. I understand all about using hot gases through a heat exchanger to heat up a given material, but I am confused as to how that would remove CO2 and NOx emissions. Are you sure they aren't running the CO2 and NOx through some type of oxidizer first?



[/QUOTE]It gets even cooler, because if you used the waste heat from the power plant and built the ethaol plant right next door, the transportation cost would virtually be elimiated. Think not only from the "Farm" to the plant but also for distribution. Yields will be different based on geography, but there are power plans everywhere, so there doesn't need to be a pipeline to transport the fuel because it can be made locally.

(Please excuse my english as I do not have time to perfect it.)[/QUOTE]

I'm curious, what transportation are you speaking of? I highly doubt that you'd build an ethanol plant for the purpose of actually using ethanol to power the power plant. There are many reasons why that wouldn't work. Anyway, I have to get going, I'll try to answer what I can later to the best of my ability. Take it easy.

[00-T/A-DropTop]

I think the leading comapay with the emissions reduction algae is Green Fuel (use google it won't let my post a url). The alage is a plant which uses CO2 to make 02, plants also like nitrogen. The results have been varied based on geography and algae type, some types of algae contain up to 50% oil by mass.

An oil company that has billions of dollars invested in infrastructure is not going to willingly provide access to a competor such as biodiesel or ethanol. The beautiful part about bio fuel is it can be produced locally and doesn't need the infrastructure that oil does. It doesn't come from a well in the middle east, piped to the coast, loaded on a tanker, brought to the US, un loaded from the tanker, refined, piped, and trucked to the gas station. We take the algae from one side of the power plant where it is grown, bring it to the other, make biodiesel/ethanol, and truck it to the gas stations. If there is one thing biodiesel has going for them it's the transportaiton costs.

As for space by power plants, most people don't like to live by one so there is generally enough land to make this profitable (growing algae).

[00-T/A-DropTop]

Pertaining to the power plants not running all the time, at the very least ethanol plants should be using cogeneration for their power consumption.

And the 30% energy gain that I stated was from a non-manufacture produced report (UC Berkley). But again it is interesting to see your numbers of 1.6/1.0, it take it that is for corn?

[FasstChevys]

Pertaining to the power plants not running all the time, at the very least ethanol plants should be using cogeneration for their power consumption.

And the 30% energy gain that I stated was from a non-manufacture produced report (UC Berkley). But again it is interesting to see your numbers of 1.6/1.0, it take it that is for corn?

I like cogeneration, but if your only power source is from the cogeneration side, it doesn't make sense. I believe these facilites need to operate 24/7, and 350 days per year to be effective.

And yes, 1 btu of natural gas input is yielding about 1.6 btu's coming out of the back end of the plant. Our feedstock is corn.

[00-T/A-DropTop]

I like cogeneration, but if your only power source is from the cogeneration side, it doesn't make sense. I believe these facilites need to operate 24/7, and 350 days per year to be effective.

And yes, 1 btu of natural gas input is yielding about 1.6 btu's coming out of the back end of the plant. Our feedstock is corn.

I appreciate you answering all of my questions, I am however slightly confused over your remark on cogeneration. Generally plants running cogeneration are connected to the grid and the microturbine(s) (such as Capstone) can be used kind of like water heaters that produce electricity that is either consumed by the plant, or sold back to the grid. They make 30kW-60kW of electricty and output 180 F water which can be used for Heating or Cooling using an absorption chiller. Any plant that is consuming large ammounts of natural gas that is used for heating up to 180 F can benefit from cogeneration. Generally what large facilities do is buy 10 of the 30kW models, that way if one breaks down (even through they are very reliable) they still get their thermal requirment. Keep in mind that if you required heating above 180F you could first send it to a heat exchanger for the turbines(preheating), and then to a boiler for further heating. Or if you were really worried about the reliability of 10 microturbines you could have the boiler setup as a backup, heating the water if it doesn't meet your requirement. There have been cases where these microturbines have a payback period of less than 3 years.

Another note about microturbines is that they don't have to run on natural gas, they have models that will run on LP, Diesel, Land Fill Gas, Methane, etc... While ethanol isn't the cheapest fuel (wouldn't work out economically), it would be neat if a plant used it's own ethanol to produce it's power and heating.

[FasstChevys]

Oh, and by the way, does anyone know where I can find the "Think Green, Go Yellow" t-shirts, hats, etc, etc??