General > General Technical Chat

Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...

<< < (25/93) > >>

tom66:

--- Quote from: nctnico on August 04, 2022, 02:03:27 pm ---I guess you are missing the fact that bio-fuels have existed for a long time already and are being used more and more! And BEVs don't make coal and gas fueled power plants go away!

--- End quote ---

Are there any biofuels in commercial production that:
* don't have land-use issues (bioethanol from crop is at issue here, specifically - there's absolutely no point in chopping down trees to free land for emissions-neutral fuel)
* are produced from sustainable, volume-scalable waste products (i.e. we can't just take the McDonalds chip-fat example and expect to run the whole country off that stuff) OR;
* are produced in a carbon-neutral synthetic process?

I think the answer is 'no', but you seem keen promote this as a viable alternative to BEVs so perhaps you know better?

On BEVs still requiring fossil fuel.  Yes, they do.  But they are increasingly requiring less of this as the grid goes towards zero emissions technology.  Even today, a VW e-Golf at 250gCO2e/kWh (average for the UK) produces just 60g CO2 per km whereas the equivalent ICE Golf (1.5 TSI) is 129g CO2 per km - excluding emissions produced during refinement, extraction, transportation etc. of the fuel (which can contribute upwards of 40% more emissions depending on the company)

The BEV is the only technology CURRENTLY available where it is viable that they could be powered from emissions neutral energy.  There is no other technology.  Not hydrogen, not biofuels, not synfuels...  It just does not exist.

nctnico:

--- Quote from: tom66 on August 04, 2022, 05:23:09 pm ---
--- Quote from: nctnico on August 04, 2022, 02:03:27 pm ---I guess you are missing the fact that bio-fuels have existed for a long time already and are being used more and more! And BEVs don't make coal and gas fueled power plants go away!

--- End quote ---

Are there any biofuels in commercial production that:
* don't have land-use issues (bioethanol from crop is at issue here, specifically - there's absolutely no point in chopping down trees to free land for emissions-neutral fuel)
* are produced from sustainable, volume-scalable waste products (i.e. we can't just take the McDonalds chip-fat example and expect to run the whole country off that stuff) OR;
* are produced in a carbon-neutral synthetic process?

I think the answer is 'no', but you seem keen promote this as a viable alternative to BEVs so perhaps you know better?

--- End quote ---
The answer is yes and no and becomes more yes every day. For sure a lot of development needs to be done but there are already industrial scale factories running that convert agricultural waste into bio-fuels. See the link I posted earlier (ethanolproducer). It is absolutely wrong to keep clinging to the picture that bio fuels are not energy efficient (they wouldn't be affordable / competitive if they where) or take land away from food production.

For example: France is one of the largest ethanol producers of Europe but they don't use a significant amount of farm land. The majority of the production comes from using agricultural waste. AFAIK France was the first country in Europe to mix ethanol with fuel.

NiHaoMike:

--- Quote from: tom66 on August 04, 2022, 05:23:09 pm ---Are there any biofuels in commercial production that:
* don't have land-use issues (bioethanol from crop is at issue here, specifically - there's absolutely no point in chopping down trees to free land for emissions-neutral fuel)

--- End quote ---
The solution is biofuels from ocean algae. Specifically, if they could figure out how to make biofuel from the kind of algae that forms algae blooms, the act of making biofuel would help solve another problem!

tom66:
I'm quite sceptical you can produce enough road fuel (let's just assume this is for passenger cars for now) from just agricultural waste.

In the UK, petrol cars consumed 12 million tonnes of petrol and diesel a similar amount.  Petrol is currently E10, 10% ethanol, with that ethanol being primarily imported from Brazil [1], a country that runs many of its vehicles on E85 or E100.  I won't make a density calculation but this is say roughly 1.2 million tonnes for petrol with bioethanol alone coming in on boats.  Brazil is producing this ethanol using sugar cane - they produced over 26 billion tonnes of the stuff, most of it for road fuel, with a huge domestic market for the stuff.

This doesn't mean that it's impossible to produce it from waste, but it does make me skeptical that it's practical given the shear tonnages required.  (Besides, France is not making most of its ethanol from waste, it's making it from sugar and maize too.)

Realistically, I can't see how there is going to be enough waste when waste is undesirable.  And if you make it desirable, for use in production, then you give a dilemma to the farmer.  Retain existing processes that give waste as a benefit for fuel, or improve the processes to improve yield and increase food production.  I'm sure there's unavoidable waste, but how much is there really in the end?

[1] https://www.greencarguide.co.uk/features/the-uk-gets-its-first-bioethanol-plant

Someone:

--- Quote from: tom66 on August 04, 2022, 10:19:35 pm ---I'm quite sceptical you can produce enough road fuel (let's just assume this is for passenger cars for now) from just agricultural waste.
--- End quote ---
One quality reference to suggest that bio-fuel is a non-starter for mass replacement of fossil fuels:
https://www.withouthotair.com/cD/page_283.shtml

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod