This is good news, if it scales like they say it will.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: =Jock [jock.gill () gmail com]
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 10:28 AM
To: David Farber
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks; Grass Energy
Subject: Re: [IP] This is good news, if it scales like they say it will.

Dave,

While I applaud this development, it is important to consider how the ethanol will be used --  if we want to understand 
the end-to-end efficiency of the total system.  We must do this to fully understand the "energy economics" of all of 
our systems as we go forward.

So, in the case of ethanol, it is burned in an internal combustion engine with only 30% efficiency.  Thus the NET NET 
energy is more like 7.7 X .3 = 2.3.  We must insist at looking at the whole picture, not just a single step in the 
process.

By way of comparison, a properly farmed herbaceous energy crop will have a net energy of 21:1 at the point of harvest, 
about 14:1 after it has been processed into pellet fuel, will be burned in a unit with 80% efficiency [in the USA], for 
an end-to-end net net on the order of 11:1.  In Europe they are achieving better than 90% efficiency in wood pellet 
fired boilers -- see products from KWB of Austria.

I note that the US government refuses to fund research into the combustion of solid fuels used for stationary energy 
generation.  Today USG blindly limits its funding  support to liquid fuels used for transportation.  Grants must use 
the words 'ethanol', 'liquid', and 'transportation' many times per sentence to get approved.  One mention of 
"combustion" and your grant will be denied.  Try it and your grant will go unfunded too.

The really important change will come when we have widely distributed micr-CHP, quite possibly pellet fueled.  Again, 
see the work of KWB.

http://www.kwb.at/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=105&Itemid=133

Eliminating energy waste at large central generating plants as well as the energy waste in the grid distribution system 
will be essential to our strategy for dealing with Global climate Disruption.  We clearly need to rethink our energy 
economics.

The day will come when most American never use liquid fuels for the majority of their personal transport.  They will 
charge their electric cars with electricity made by their personal micro-CHP system.

We all need to reflect that since we act on what we see, and can only see what we believe, that real change requires 
liberation, transformation and reconciliation of our diverse beliefs.  There can be no change without this. I can tell 
you from direct personal experience in the biomass energy field, that this applies just as surely to politics and the 
environment as it does to alternative energy in general and solid biofuels in particular.

Those who want to be change agents in ANY domain must have the strength to address liberation, transformation and 
reconciliation.  Not run from it and refuse to talk about it, as most of the press and politicians are currently doing. 
 Change is hard and not for the faint of heart.

Thanks for considering this for IP.

Regards,

Jock



On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 9:06 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net<mailto:dave () farber net>> wrote:

________________________________________
From: Randall Webmail [rvh40 () insightbb com<mailto:rvh40 () insightbb com>]
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 10:30 PM
To: dewayne () warpspeed com<mailto:dewayne () warpspeed com>; David Farber; johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups 
com<mailto:johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Subject: This is good news, if it scales like they say it will.

GM Ethanol Partner Announces Pilot Plant
April 25, 2008

By Bill VisnicCoskata

PITTSBURGH – Coskata Inc., developer of a unique process that uses specialized bacteria to produce cellulosic ethanol – 
and with whom General Motors Corp. formed a partnership last January – announced Friday it will begin construction near 
here for the first production facility to demonstrate the process.

The demonstration plant, Coskata says, will start early next year and run 24 hours a day to produce about 40,000 
gallons of cellulosic ethanol derived from almost any organic waste material, including agricultural waste and 
municipal garbage that might normally be placed in landfill.

Coskata's facility will be located at the site of the Westinghouse Plasma Center, a research facility focused on 
exploring new-energy uses for plasma beyond its current industrial applications. The high-energy plasma gasifies the 
organic material into synthetic gas – largely carbon dioxide and hydrogen – which Coskata's patented bioorganisms 
literally feed on, making ethanol as a byproduct.

Coskata president and CEO William Roe told AutoObserver the ethanol produced in its process is vastly more positive in 
a net-energy equation than is ethanol derived from corn, the source for practically all the transportation-fuel ethanol 
currently produced in the U.S.

Roe said Coskata's process can generate enough ethanol to be produce as much as 7.7Coskata_process_384_2  times more 
energy than the process requires. The company estimates ethanol produced from corn delivers a maximum of about 1.3 
times the energy required to produce it. Coskata says its unique process can generate about 100 gallons of ethanol from 
a single dry ton of waste material, compared with about 67 gallons of ethanol that can be squeezed from a ton of corn.


--
Pellet Futures
Peacham, VT
(802) 613-1444

..Cooperative gain from collective behaviors at the edges..

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