Category: Energy Matters

Methane hydrate isn’t a familiar term to most, but it is gaining popularity in the energy sector. In the realm of energy R&D, methane hydrates are being evaluated as a potential fuel for the future. Some believe there is enough methane in the form of hydrates-methane locked in ice-to supply energy for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.
The fuel of the future may be ice that burns

Methane hydrates, a promising natural gas resource, are believed to reside throughout the globe in sea-floor sediments and permafrost.
Lorie Langley, who is leading ORNL’s Gas Hydrate program for the Fossil Energy Program, believes ORNL can contribute significantly to DOE’s and Congress’s research agenda. Last month President Clinton signed the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act, which authorizes approximately $50 million over five years to develop an understanding of the nature, behavior and abundance of this clean-burning energy resource.

Explains Langley, “Gas hydrates are clathrate compounds. A clathrate is simply a structure in which water molecules under certain conditions bond to form an ice-like cage that encapsulates a gas molecule, known as a guest molecule. When that guest is a methane molecule, you have methane hydrate.”

Methane hydrates, which form at low temperature and high pressure, are found in sea-floor sediments and the arctic permafrost. They can be scattered through several-hundred-meter depths and at various concentrations. The gas hydrates being evaluated by ORNL researchers are methane hydrates and carbon dioxide hydrates.

Although some research has been carried out in the past, little is known about the location, formation, decomposition, or actual quantities of methane hydrates. However, national and international research and exploration over the last 20 years by various governmental and industrial entities have resulted in general agreement that methane hydrates should be evaluated as a potential primary energy source for the future.

The growing demand for natural gas points to a need for this resource, Langley says. “The United States consumes about 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year. We import three percent of that. Demand is expected to grow to 32 trillion cubic feet by 2020.”

The natural gas infrastructure is growing also. Much of industry has already converted to natural gas. Public utilities are headed that way as well.

DOE’s research agenda is structured around four major R&D elements: resource characterization, production, global carbon cycle, and safety and sea-floor stability.

Estimates on how much energy is stored in methane hydrates range from 350 years’ supply to 3500 years’.
Resource characterization: This is essentially the baseline research toward understanding how methane hydrates behave, where and how they occur and what energy potential they actually represent. This work will require extensive data management, computer modeling and laboratory and field studies.

Production: Methods of harvesting methane hydrates will have to be developed. Langley emphasized that production methods for methane hydrates will be evaluated and will probably be similar to those of the oil and gas industry: depressurization, thermal stimulation or possibly solvent injection.

Global carbon cycle: Since methane is a greenhouse gas, understanding methane as a primary gas or a trace gas will be important in today’s climate change initiatives. Hydrates are being evaluated as a potential storage mechanism for CO2 sequestration and for storing methane for use as a transporation fuel. Langley points out that although methane when burned is a clean fuel, more information is needed on the emissions from various methane sources to fully understand its atmospheric implications.

Safety and sea-floor stability: The oil and gas industry continues to explore deeper beneath the ocean floor. Industry has concerns about drilling through hydrate zones, which can destabilize supporting foundations for platforms and production wells. The disruption to the ocean floor also could result in surface slumping or faulting, which could endanger work crews and the environment.

Hydates, the small specks, have been formed in ESD’s Sea-floor Process Simulator.
Langley and ORNL Fossil Energy Program Manager Rod Judkins recently wrapped up a call for proposals for methane hydrate research. Research is already in progress: ORNL researchers currently are developing and producing hydrates in the Sea-floor Process Simulator in the Environmental Sciences Division and have completed support for the installation of a research well in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Data fusion and resource assessment activities are under way in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division to develop a model that will better estimate the resource. Proposed projects in crystallography by the Metals and Ceramics Division will provide hydrate structural data through neutron diffraction.

“Estimates on how much energy is stored in methane hydrates range from 350 years’ supply to 3500 years’ supply based on current energy consumption. That reflects both the potential as a resource and how little we really know about the resource,” Langley says.

“ORNL is and will continue to contribute to all four of the research areas. Methane hydrates have the potential to offer a clean source of energy, but we need to know much more about this ice.”-B.C.

The average African household uses 55 or so liters of kerosene per year, at an approximate cost of £80 [US $158]. This contributes to health problems as the burning of kerosene inside houses is a major cause of respiratory illness, fires, burns, accidental poisonings, eyesight problems and death in the developing world. Kerosene is far more expensive and far less efficient than electric lighting: the cost of useful light energy ($/lumen hour of light) for kerosene is 325 times higher than the inefficient incandescent bulb and 1,625 times higher than compact fluorescent light bulbs.

In rural areas, the high cost of kerosene can consume much of a family’s income. One lamp consumes 0.07 liters per hour with daily usage of around two hours burn time, amounting to around 4 liters per month. In the developing world, a family’s lighting costs, because of kerosene fuel costs, are equal to those of a family in the developed world. Even with government subsidies, kerosene requires 10% to 25% of a villager’s annual income.

While I deplore the use of foodstuffs for the production of biofuels, I feel that I should reiterate yet again that other choices are possible without resorting to that or destroying the environment. Many people are starting to become aware (at last) that woody biomass is a viable source of liquid fuels, but they usually think in terms of inefficient old processes like acid or enzymic hydrolysis followed by fermentation. In fact, there are other processes to convert such biomass to transport fuels, such as biogas, thermal pyrolysis, gasification followed by catalytic conversion to methanol, dimethyl ether or even hydrocarbon fuels.

I recently came across an NREL paper describing a process using gasification followed by catalytic conversion to mixed alcohols, mainly ethanol. It is called Thermochemical Ethanol via Indirect Gasification and Mixed Alcohol Synthesis of Lignocellulosic Biomass and it can be downloaded from http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41168.pdf .

Combined, all process, market, and financial targets in the design represent what must be achieved to obtain the reported $1.01 per gallon, showing that ethanol from a thermochemical conversion process has the possibility of being produced in a manner that is ‘cost competitive with corn-ethanol’ by 2012.

This still raises the question of whether we should be producing relatively expensive fuels from biomass while the fuel efficiency of most cars is still very poor and the planning of our cities still condemns most people to commuting long distances by car and delivering our goods by road freight. It also raises the question of whether there are more efficient fuel/vehicle combinations than ethanol/petrol blends in conventional ICE vehicles, and what we will do as the supply of petrol declines.

We are now on the cusp of Peak Oil, and even with marginal sources of oil such as polar oil, deepwater oil, tar sands, heavy oil, gas condensate and coal liquids, we are very close to the point where total supplies must start to decline. Once that decline starts, annual supplies will fall at 3-4% a year, so we will need to adjust our demand to the available supply. That suggests that with the current concept of 10% ethanol in petrol, we will need to get production up well beyond the Biofuels Target of 350 ML (which is only 1% of demand) as quickly as possible to reach 3,500 ML. But what then? Most conventional cars cannot take more than 10% ethanol, so we would have to start using flexible fuel vehicles, such as the ones that Holden is exporting to Brazil, which can run on a variety of blends up to 85% ethanol.

As the percentage of ethanol increases, the fuel will get more expensive, and other alternatives will need to be considered. While considering other fuel/vehicle combinations to reduce the overall cost of motoring, we should also be looking at radical alternatives that could make a real difference. Hybrid and fuel cell cars come to mind, but the latter will not run on petrol. It is often suggested that they will have to run on hydrogen, but that is not true either because they can run on any hydrogen carrier that can be catalysed to hydrogen at a low temperature (which excludes petrol) using an onboard catalyst unit or reformer, such as natural gas (CNG) and alcohol fuels.

Whatever we do, we will need to use transport fuels more efficiently and stop using petroleum based fuels. That transition needs to start now. Coal liquids are not a genuine alternative because they involve the production of large amounts of greenhouse gases and lock us into the continued use of petroleum fuels. Biofuels may play a part in that transition, but we should avoid the mistakes of other countries and ensure that the net energy production made out of biomass is positive. This will mean a very different approach to the Biofuels Taskforce, and the realisation that low-level ethanol/petrol blends do not represent a long-term solution. While we are developing the biomass conversion processes and building up supplies of biomass (such as mixed species long-rotation plantations on salt-affected land that is unsuitable for agriculture), we could be producing transitional supplies of the hydrogen carriers mentioned above using our abundant supplies of natural gas that we just cannot wait to export overseas as LNG. At the same time, we could be converting our chemical, plastic and fertilizer industries to gas feedstocks as well so that we are less dependent on oil. Eventually, they too could run on biomass.

The need to develop viable alternatives to petroleum fuels is now urgent, but we should be aware of all the traps.
Chris Mardon. 

From FarmProgress in USA 

It seems that ethanol has a target on its back. The rising cost of food has gained a lot of media attention, with many laying the blame at ethanol’s feet, despite numerous reports and studies showing that other factors such as the high price of oil are the real culprits.

The increased coverage of the issue has brought politicians into the fray.

Texas Governor, Rick Perry, requested a waiver of the Renewable Fuel Standard from the Environmental Protection Agency, asking that blending requirements be rolled back to 50pc of mandated levels.

Now Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, says she will submit a bill that would freeze the national biofuel mandate.

It’s unclear whether Senator Hutchinson will be able to find support in the Senate, since the mandate that was passed in the Energy Bill had wide bi-partisan support. However the winds of politics can change rapidly, especially in an election year.

On Tuesday, President Bush defended ethanol in a speech given in the Rose Garden.

He said food price increases are minimally impacted by biofuels and the recent rise in food prices can chiefly be blamed on weather, increased demand and higher energy prices.

The truth of the matter is it’s in our national interests that our farmers grow energy” Bush said. “As opposed to purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us.”

New England Wood Pellet’s Jaffrey, New Hampshire plant produces approximately 75,000 tons of wood pellet fuel per year. Most is bagged and shipped to a network of more than 100 retailers throughout the Northeast. From there it helps heat homes, businesses and schools. Steve Walker, the company’s president and CEO, took the time to show RenewableEnergyWorld.com around the facility to give us a look at how wood pellets are made.

The process starts with trucks dumping different types of waste wood, including sawdust, green wood and dried kilned wood at New England Wood Pellet’s wood storage yard. From there the wood goes through blending, drying and homogenizing processes and then finally pellet formation before it goes out to customers in bagged or bulk form.

The plant employs about 25 people in production and transportation. The company purchases close to 175,000 dry and green tons of wood residues for the plant each year, from sources throughout the Northeast, providing a market for wood waste and low grade timber resources. According to Walker, the pellet industry has seen an average of 10% growth per year over the last decade and as fossil fuel prices rise that growth should continue into the future.

To take a virtual tour of New England Wood Pellet’s Jaffrey, New Hampshire facility, play the video online.

Related story: Wood pellet market set to boom 

Within recent months biofuels have gone from making headline news as being the world’s salvation for when the oil runs out to becoming a “crime against humanity.” Almost every day the world’s media run a story on the topic, often blaming biofuels for all the world’s pending disasters. Even a recent spike in the price of rice was blamed on producing more biofuels whereas, in fact, rice is not used as a feedstock at all!

There are legitimate concerns about the sustainability of some biofuel sources and they have taken a lot of criticism. But it is important to put this in perspective, since, as is often the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in between the extreme viewpoints. If only the oil market was scrutinized to the same degree!

There is no doubt there are “bad” biofuels that result in the world being worse off as a result of their production. But there are also “good” biofuels that can be produced in a sustainable manner, support local development without exploitation, and result in a reduction of overall environmental impacts including greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Concerns at the amount of misinformation appearing in the media being picked up by policy-makers, coupled with a vision that biofuels produced in developing countries (the South) could in fact provide considerable local benefits relating to sustainable development, as well possibly providing export potential to developed countries (the North), led Professor John Mathews of Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia to take action.

He solicited 17 people with key interests in biofuels from a wide range of international, national, industrial and academic organizations to meet together to discuss the topic in depth and to agree, by consensus, on a brief document. This document could then be used internationally by policy makers, environmental groups, project developers, energy companies and investors to obtain a balanced view of the issues, the relevant problems and the potential benefits from using both first and second generation biofuels.

He persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to support the activity by sponsoring the meeting, which was then held over a 5-day period in their Conference Centre in Bellagio, Italy.

His next step was somewhat less impressive in that, on the way to Bellagio, he very unfortunately became indisposed and was unable to attend the meeting at all. But thankfully he has now bounced back to full health and is actively pursuing the cause once again – backed up by the Sustainable Biofuels Consensus document completed in his absence.

The Issues

It is true that the increased production of biofuels has distorted some commodity prices and therefore contributed to recent price increases in grains and vegetable oils. However other factors, such as recent droughts, low food stocks and surging demand for meat and milk products in Asia, have probably played a far greater role. The higher world energy prices have also pushed up the costs of food-crop production (including fertilizers), processing and distribution. But in the media, biofuels tend to take the full brunt of the criticism for all of these woes.

Biofuels presently account for less than 2% of liquid transport fuels and take up well below 1% of world agricultural land. This may seem like a small share, but at over 1 million barrels of oil per day equivalent, they have contributed to meet around 30% of the growth in global demand in liquid transport fuels over the past three years and thus made a significant contribution to the balance of the oil market.

It is easy for politicians to over-promote biofuels, given that their constituencies like the concept of simply substituting petroleum products with another type of liquid fuel without having to buy a smaller car or change their driving habits. However the high national costs of various agricultural subsidies necessary to support biofuels in the North, have largely been ignored in the debate. Also for some biofuels, greenhouse gas emission reduction is not always as good as was commonly thought, when demonstrated using complete life cycle analyses. Land use change and deforestation, additional water use, genetic modification, increased fertiliser and chemical inputs, all raise questions as to the longer term sustainability of energy crop production. Interestingly, the same arguments are rarely equally used for increased food production, as exemplified by only around 10% of palm oil being used for biodiesel and the rest for cooking oil.

Potential Solutions

In some tropical/sub-tropical regions of the South where arable land for sugarcane production is available (from improved land management rather than from deforestation), local development opportunities should not be discounted. If biofuels can be produced in a sustainable way, and be certified as such according to an agreed international standard currently being debated, then they can offer valuable economic opportunities, particularly to developing countries. Trade, equity, sustainable development and energy security are all related issues.

In the longer term second generation biofuels from ligno-cellulosic, non-food feedstocks (straw, woody biomass residues, vegetative grasses) hold promise and should address most of the current concerns but they remain relatively costly options, even after 35+ years of RD&D. Several demonstration projects are under way and major deployment of commercially viable second generation biofuels may be just a few years off.

The aim should be to progressively phase out subsidy systems for the less sustainable biofuels and focus on incentives to bring forward second generation production of both ethanol and synthetic diesel as well perhaps a “third generation” from algae and using advanced bio-technoloiges. Recent increases in public and private research investment, including by the biotechnology industry may help to reduce the production costs.

Development of flex-fuel vehicle engines that run on low- or high-level blends of ethanol or gasoline, has been a major step forward to support the increased uptake of biofuels. With over 6 million such vehicles already running on the roads of Brazil, the U.S., Sweden and elsewhere, and more auto manufacturers showing interest, demand is likely to continue. Plug-in hybrid, flex-fuel engine vehicles may be the way of the future.

However one key point to note is that energy-efficiency measures to reduce road transport demand must still be encouraged.

Summary

Overall the Sustainable Biofuels Consensus highlights the opportunities that sustainably produced biofuels could bring if managed carefully. South to South collaborations (as for example Brazil recently announcing a major investment in sugarcane production and ethanol processing in Ghana) can provide positive benefits to all parties. Coupled with the current push to provide improved crop species, better knowledge of fertiliser use and water management for food crop production, it could be that well managed and sustainably produced biofuels, although certainly not a panacea for rising oil demand, could make some contribution towards sustainable development, energy security, equity and greenhouse gas abatement.

Click here to download the 8-page Sustainable Biofuels Consensus.

Ralph Sims is Professor of Sustainable Energy at Massey University, New Zealand where he began his research career producing biodiesel from animal fats in the early 1970s. He is currently based at the Renewable Energy Unit of the International Energy Agency, Paris. He was the Coordinating Lead Author of the “Energy Supply” chapter of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report and is a Companion of the Royal Society. His many publications on energy and climate change mitigation include the book “The Brilliance of Bioenergy – in Business and in Practice.”