| October 13, 2006 Bioenergy Potential, From Brazil to Alaska by Brian Yanity, insurgent49 
Bioenergy comes from the burning of organic materials such
as wood, peat, plant waste, or animal wastes such as manure. Bioenergy
can take solid (biomass), liquid (biofuels) or gaseous (biogas) forms,
although the term biomass is often used to mean biofuels in general,
since all bioenergy is ultimately derived from its solid form.
Bioenergy can be burned to directly for heating buildings, or to heat
steam for hot water or to generate electricity. In Alaska, large amounts of peat and timber exist, and sawdust and wood chips can be easily provided from the state’s several sawmill operations. The processing of fish waste from canneries is another resource, as fish oil can be made into a useful form of biodiesel oil. And of course, wood-fired heating and cooking is still common in rural areas in Alaska. However, bioenergy is unlikely to become a major player in Alaska’s energy supply, for the same reasons why the state’s agricultural potential is low. Technically, any burning of wood is considered biomass energy, and non-commercial wood burning is still the dominant source of energy in many rural areas of the world. Solid biomass fuels such as wood, charcoal, corn, straw, and sugarcane can be directly burned or converted to gas or liquid forms. Biofuels in liquid and gas forms can power internal combustion engines. Biodiesel, for example, can be burned in conventional diesel engines. Liquid biofuels are blended with conventional petroleum fuels on a large scale in Brazil, and just recently ended that nation’s dependence on petroleum imports. Liquid biofuels already account for 3 percent of total U.S. automotive fuel consumption. This may seem like an insignificant amount, but the use of these fuels is growing fast. In the future, hybrid-electric vehicles are expected to replace gasoline with biofuels. Biogas is produced via the biological process of anaerobic digestion. Animal waste digesters can produce large amounts of bio-methane, which is similar to natural gas. Although biogas is commonly processed from solid biomass, it can also be harvested directly from landfills. Like hydrocarbons (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) biomass is a form of stored solar energy. After all, fossil fuels are nothing more than biomass energy that has been concentrated by geologic forces over millions of years. The energy of the sun is stored on Earth through the process of photosynthesis in growing plants. In general, the plants with the highest energy (sugar) content are found in sunny tropical areas. Like fossil fuel methods used to generate energy, the combustion of biomass generates pollution as a by-product. Though compared to hydrocarbon fuels, both bioenergy’s amount of released pollution and energy intensity are much less. Most “petrochemicals”, including plastics, can be made from plants as well, due to the variety of organic chemical compounds found in each. As their names imply, hydrocarbons are chemically very similar to carbohydrates, though much more concentrated. Bioenergy usually makes the most sense in places with large amounts of agricultural production. The high cost of harvesting, transporting and processing raw organic materials in the state is likely to make most of Alaska’s potential bioenergy off-limits. The processing of biomass materials is expensive, and the capital costs for biomass-burning plants are higher than conventional fossil fuel power plants. However, bioenergy systems have already proven very economical in other parts of the U.S. The European Union has recently issued a directive calling for bioenergy to meet 5.75% of its transportation fuel needs by 2010, while Germany and France expect to meet the target well before the deadline. Ethanol When served in a beverage, ethanol is better known as alcohol. But to power a vehicle, a “beverage” needs an alcohol content of over 190 proof. Ethanol is the world’s most widely used liquid biofuel, and with the help of federal subsidies, dozens of profitable corn-to-ethanol plants are sprouting up across the Midwestern U.S. Current nationwide production of fuel ethanol is slightly less than 5 billion gallons a year, but is expected to rise to 8 billion a year by 2008 with the help of a $2 billion federal subsidy. On a per gallon basis, pure ethanol gets only about 70% of the fuel economy of gasoline. In other words, gasoline is naturally a denser energy carrier. Different assumptions of corn ethanol’s net energy balance range from slightly negative to slightly positive, many credible scientists say that the energy ratio of ethanol comes out positive if byproducts are made along with the ethanol. According to the ever-optimistic Corn Refiner’s Association (www.corn.org), there is a 10:1 energy ratio for the wet corn milling process if the corn is fully utilized by making starches, corn syrup, and livestock feed in addition to ethanol. Despite being abundant in North America, corn is not a very energy efficient source of ethanol fuels. Corn-based ethanol, if it replaces gasoline, replaces carbon emissions by only 18%, according to a recent study by the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Today’s large scale, industrialized process of growing corn uses nitrogen fertilizers, which are made from natural gas or other hydrocarbons. The farm vehicles and machinery involved in the process usually run on fossil fuels as well. At current gasoline prices, the present level of federal subsidies (51 cents a gallon) for ethanol refiners is still needed for U.S. ethanol to be profitable. The corn-to-ethanol plants in the U.S. Midwest have emissions of NOx, SOx, VOC, COx, depending on what fuels are used by the local electric utility, but at much lower levels than a comparable oil refinery. Ethanol made from plants with more cellulose, which is the carbohydrate that makes up the walls of plant cells, will produce more ethanol per acre than corn. These plants include switch grass, wheat straw, and sugarcane. Substituting cellulostic ethanol for gasoline can reduce carbon emissions by more than 90%.  Switch grass Brazil is the world’s biggest producer of both sugarcane and ethanol, and ethanol fuel made from sugarcane is a Brazilian success story lasting 30 years. In total, alcohol now accounts for about 40% of the fuel consumed by passenger vehicles in Brazil. At least 20% ethanol is added to all gasoline now sold in Brazil, and pure ethanol is available at about 34,000 service stations. Annual ethanol production is around four billion gallons, of which 690 million gallons is exported. At Brazilian service stations, sugar-based ethanol sells for slightly over $2/gallon, while gasoline at the same station sells for more than $4/gallon. The sugar cane waste remaining from the ethanol distilling process, bagasse, is used as a biomass fuel to fire low pressure steam boilers for power generation. In fact, most of Brazil’s sugarcane refineries use bagasse to power their operations, usually with spare electricity which is sold to the grid. High pressure bagasse steam boilers, which have the potential to produce three times more electricity than the current low-pressure designs, are in the research stages.  Brazillian sugercane Since its start in 1975, the Progama Nacional do Álcool has replaced about 800 million barrels of oil, or the equivalent of about two years of Brazilian petroleum production. It is also estimated that the country’s ethanol industry employs one million people, with half of that amount in farming and the other half in ethanol processing. Overall, the energy ratio for Brazilian sugar ethanol sold today is estimated to be 8:1. By comparison, gasoline made from petroleum has a total energy output/input ratio of almost 17:1. So-called “flex-fuel” vehicles can be fueled by an ethanol/gasoline mixture, or by pure ethanol, and today account for about 80% of all new cars sold in Brazil. At present there are 2,800 MW of sugarcane biomass ‘cogen’ combined electricity/heat generation capacity in the country. Researchers in Brazil are now expanding into biodiesel and hydrogen produced from sugar cane, and working on ways to more than double the amount of ethanol extracted from each sugar stock.  Ethanol powered car The world has a lot to gain by working with Brazil on biofuel development and learning from its example, and there is great potential for sugarcane-based ethanol in other tropical areas in Asia, Africa and Latin America. To this end, the Brazilian government has already started bioethanol programs in other equatorial countries. Biodiesel Biodiesel can be made from soy, palm, coconut, sunflower, nut oils, rapeseed, canola oil, used cooking oils, animal fat, tallow or other animal-derived oils. Waste vegetable oil (WVO) refers to oil that has been discarded by a restaurant, and a typical American restaurant can create 50 gallons per week of WVO. Straight vegetable oil (SVO), processed directly from plants, is too thick to run in normal diesel engines, so it must be ‘thinned out’ chemically or by heat. Heating modifications can be made to existing diesel engines to burn SVO. The chemically-treated vegetable oil creates biodiesel but produces a glycerin byproduct, which in turn can be made into products such as heating fuel, soaps, and shampoos. As with all diesel fuel in Alaska, biodiesel faces cold temperature problems since diesel ‘gels’ easily below freezing temperature. Blends must be changed from winter to summer, with winter blends mixed with a much greater percentage of petroleum diesel or kerosene. The Arctic Energy Technology Development Laboratory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is testing biodiesel blends with its Detroit Series 50 engine-generator. In 2005, the U.S. production of biodiesel was at 75 million gallons, and is expected to reach 200 million gallons in 2006 and one billion gallons per year by 2012. In a recent presentation at Anchorage City Hall, Todd Ellis of Seattle Biodiesel / Imperium Renewables described how his company is building a biodiesel plant capable of producing 100 million gallons per year near Aberdeen, Washington. It is estimated that the plant, due to open middle of 2007, will create 50 to 60 direct jobs in a region that has been hit hard by downturns in the timber and fishing industries. Over a dozen biofuel stations have started in both Washington and Oregon. The city government of Portland has enacted a renewable fuels standard, to start next year, requiring 5% of all diesel fuel sold within the city limits to be biodiesel. Despite the abundance of WVO, most vegetable oil and biodiesel is made from soybeans. In July 2006, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study done by researchers in Minnesota stating that ethanol provides, on average, 25% more energy a gallon than is required for its production (energy ratio: 1.25:1), while soybean biodiesel yields 93% more energy (energy ratio of 1.93:1). The researchers also found that ethanol, in both its production and consumption, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 12% compared with a gallon of fossil fuel, while biodiesel reduces such emissions 41%. This study also said that ethanol has “greater environmental and human health impacts because of increased release of five air pollutants and nitrate, nitrite and pesticides.” Up to 420 gallons of ethanol are produced per acre of corn versus only 60 gallons of biodiesel per acre of soybeans. However, biodiesel cost about 20% more than ethanol to produce on a per-gallon basis, although biodiesel has better fuel economy. Commercial production of biodiesel is already a major industry in the ‘soy belt’ of the Midwestern U.S. In the contiguous 48 U.S. states, the present price of B99 (99% biodiesel, 1% gasoline) is above $3 per gallon, or only slightly higher than standard gasoline. Fish oil could prove to be a stable source of biodiesel for Alaska, as fish waste from canneries offers local bioenergy potential for many Alaskan communities. In Unalaska, fish oil biodiesel was blended with conventional diesel fuel to generate electricity at the UniSea seafood processing plant during a 2004-2005 test run. This experimental project used two million gallons of a 50-50 fish-oil/diesel mix, processed by the company Pacific Biodiesel (www.biodiesel.com) in Hawaii, to power a 2.2 MW diesel generator engine between July 2002 and June 2004. The National Park Service tested some of the Unisea biodiesel at Denali National Park in 2005. Biodiesel made from ocean algae is still in experimental stages but has a huge potential, with estimates of per unit area annual yield of biodiesel ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 gallons per acre of cultivated algae. Biogas The most common form of gaseous bioenergy is landfill gas (LFG) found at garbage dumps, which is naturally released from composting food and yard waste, as well as from sewage treatment plants. Biogas can also be gasified from solid biomass. Bio-methane gas has a fuel (heating) value roughly half of that of hydrocarbon natural gas, though such biogas needs to be “cleaned up” sufficiently so that it can be used the same way as fossil natural gas for heating or power generation. There are more than 350 existing LFG production facilities at landfills across the USA. According to a 2005 study, for the next decade the Anchorage landfill will produce methane with an energy equivalent of approximately 1.9 million gallons per year. Over the next 30 years, LFG output of the municipality’s main landfill is expected to triple. On the drawing board is a 2.5 megawatt (MW) biogas plant proposal, or enough generation capacity to power more than 2000 average Anchorage homes. One benefit of such a project is the reduction of methane emissions, since methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Solid Biomass Biomass energy is often a fancy name for the burning of wood. Wood heat has been used in Alaska for as long as there have been people, and was the main source of energy for heating, transportation and industrial processes in the U.S. until about 1880. It is estimated that over 100,000 cords (one cord = 128 cubic feet) of wood are used annually for residential space heating in Alaska. Wood-fired boilers for district heating and private home heating exist in the town of Craig on Prince of Wales Island, in order to reduce heating costs at growing number of the town’s buildings. In the interior, a sawmill in Delta Junction employs a biomass boiler system using wood chips. Dry vegetable matter or agricultural wastes can also be directly burned as a source of heat energy, or used for compost fertilizers. Burning of municipal wastes is another option, which has an average energy content is about 32% that of coal. Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks uses crushed waste paper at the base’s coal power plant. Started in 1997, this program provides between 1 and 2% of the base’s total heat and power load. Agricultural Land: Food or Biofuel Production? As indicated above, bioenergy can easily be a net energy loser if too much fossil fuel is burned during production and transport of agricultural or forest products. The energy intensity of bio-energy is low, so large amount of land are needed to produce it. Powering all of the world’s vehicles with biofuels would mean doubling the amount of land devoted to farming, very easily displacing important food crops. According to a 2003 study by Jeff Dukes of the University of Utah, at present levels, the human race would require 22% of all the plant matter growing on Earth to meet present per-capita primary energy demand, or about double the amount of all plants grown for agriculture. A more recent study by the National Academy of Sciences study mentioned above conclude that if all U.S. corn and soybean production were dedicated to making biofuels, it would replace only 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. There is only so much vegetable oil in the world, and cellulostic ethanol can be grown on agriculturally marginal land or made from waste plant material. To meet all of the USA’s heating and transportation energy needs with switch grass, two thirds of the surface area of the entire country would have to be planted with the crop. In another example, the amount of grain required to fill up an ethanol-powered SUV, every two weeks for a year, would feed an entire hungry African village for that same year. Understandably, many agronomists are concerned that biofuel production could strain food supplies. Large-scale bioenergy production also faces land clearance and biodiversity issues, such as the destruction of tropical rainforest. Tropical biomass is up to five times more productive than temperate biomass. In Brazil, the total area devoted to sugarcane production is expected to grow by 50% in the next five years. This growth is driven largely by international and domestic demand for both sugar and ethanol fuels. In Southeast Asia, oil palm plantations have been accused of destroying pristine rainforest habitat of orangutans and other endangered species. In general, bio-fuels made from agricultural wastes from already-cultivated land have the fewest environmental impacts. Bioenergy Initiatives in Alaska In Southeast Alaska, local businesses and nonprofit organizations are studying the possibility of fuel-grade wood-to-ethanol production. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich has started a “mayor’s cooking oil working group,” and an informal biodiesel network has formed (www.alaskabiodiesel.org). Will Taygan’s small business Alaska VegOil Services (www.alaskavegoil.org) does conversions of conventional diesel vehicles to enable them to run on straight vegetable oil. SVO Enterprises is a small business started by Kienan Corbus in Chickaloon, who uses his biodiesel-powered Ford truck to plow snow and haul loads. In Anchorage alone, an estimated 15,000 gallons of fryer WVO is produced every month. With the help of the municipal government, used cooking oil is collected from restaurants around the city, and then filtered and sold by Alaska Mill and Feed for around 75 cents per gallon. The Anchorage-based Emerald Consulting Group LLC is also using some of this waste vegetable oil to make asphalt. Imports shipped from Seattle could build up Alaska demand for biodiesel fuel, perhaps enough to open the state’s first biodiesel service station. Enough bioenergy production could result in a commercial-scale biodiesel processing plant being built Anchorage, and could perhaps even revitalize Alaska agriculture. Bio-energy links: www.aboutbioenergy.info www.ieabioenergy.com bioenergy.ornl.gov www.nal.usda.gov/ttic/biofuels.htm www.pacificbiomass.org www.biodieselcommunity.org Brian Yanity is a graduate student at UAA, activist and freelance writer. He resides in an undisclosed location in Southcentral Alaska, and can be reached at byanity@insurgent49.com. |
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