Comments on: Pimentel: Disses ethanol, but embraces “bioheat”

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:39:54 +0000

This argument about ‘requiring more energy to produce than what you get out’ is a compressed pellet of a diferent biological source. If there was a system that could produce more energy than it consumed, we’d have a leg up on perpetual motion machines. The net energy of these pellets, or any other fuel source, must take into account processing costs, which is the key factor being discussed assuming we can say that solar energy and Mother Nature provide the production costs of growing grasses. If compressing the pellets takes more energy than what we get back as heat, this is not a good fuel source – but it might be worse to use your own personal energy to haul bales of the stuff from the field in it’s raw, ‘uncompressed’ format because it won’t burn as cleanly. The black magic of oil is that geological processes have taken care of production, so we only need to wory about processing and transportation, whereas solar and wind are highly diffuse. Energy storage (energy density), however, may be more important than energy source (solar in this case) so these pellets may be a wiser method of heat storage than fossil fuels, especially if we got a dandy sol-ar-powered pellet-compressin’ mo-chine up in Guelph. Yee Haw! (no offense, lovely place).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 04:19:28 +0000

Thanks, I raised the study in another post. Appreciate the tip. Cheers.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:51:06 +0000

Adding to the above story, in 2004, Dell-Point, a Qubec pellet stove manufacturer, won an award from Natural Resources Canada for its stove which burns cellulose pellets cleaner than a natural gas stove, due to its extreme efficiency. Search Dell-Point pelletstoves, and see:

http://www.pelletstove.com/PR_2004CanadaEnergyAward.pdf

Cheers Jp

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 01:11:55 +0000

I had a gut feeling I would be called on that one. My apologies.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 23:53:07 +0000

I would take care in lumping everything together as the “ethanol market”, then using the best example, cellulosic ethanol, to support your claims.

A recent UC Berkeley meta study did conclude that grain ethanol was a sustainable fuel, i.e., an overall positive energy contribution of energy, but just so. They also stated an expectation that cellulosic ethanol would be much better, i.e., “The UC Berkeley team calculated a Net Energy Value (Output energy – Input energy) for corn ethanol of 4.5 MJ/Liter. Cellulosic ethanol fares much better, with a calculated Net Energy Value of 22.8 MJ/L.”

Pimetel’s model was one of six studies that they analyzed and with which they took issue. Conversely, they also took issues with some overly optimistic studies, to which you may be referring when you state that Pimetel’s study is “widely disputed.”

Unfortunately, much of this is based upon models rather than real world experience, Canada’s Iogen Corporation being one of the few exceptions.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 23:20:31 +0000

small farming community of Guelph, Ontario

LMAO

Guelph is a small city with a university and a lot of smaller factories and fabrication plants. Linamar, for instance, has a lot of smaller plants there — mostly serving the automotive industry.

While there is plenty of agriculture nearby, the city is far from a farming community. Fergus, St. Jacobs or Arthur would qualify as small farming communities, but not Guelph.