Bio Products Opportunity

For the past twenty years, the World Solar Challenge has demonstrated the ability to run a car purely from the power of the sun. With climate change and resource scarcity registering as a significant public issue, however, the organisers last year added a new class to the competition that promotes environmentally friendly vehicles that don’t necessarily need to run on solar power. Here’s some of the entrants for this year:

• Team Ethanol, from Queensland, is using a production Saab BioPower vehicle to aim for its second consecutive Greenfleet Technology Class title. The team will be running on E85 fuel produced in Sarina, in Queensland’s north.
• The University of Adelaide has entered using its BioBike, a modified motorcycle that runs on pure biodiesel.
• Bios Fuel Corp will be running a diesel-powered vehicle on a controversial 60/40 combination of waste oil and water. The New Zealand-based team says that their ˒W+ fuel is more advanced than ethanol or biodiesel.
• The Japanese H2Solar vehicle won’t be competing for a title, but the JonaSun team is using the race to demonstrate their technology. The experimental vehicle runs on both solar power and a hydrogen fuel cell.

The race is currently underway, with the first teams expected to make it to Adelaide by the weekend.

 Engineers at the University of Tasmania have developed what is believed to be Australia’s first hybrid scooter, which is capable of running on both electric power and ethanol fuel.

The scooter, built by the university’s School of Engineering, is able to reach a top speed of 80 km/h and uses just 1.7 L/100km when operating in hybrid mode. The vehicle also uses regenerative braking to charge the batteries in operation, according to Steven Ambrose, a scholar at the School.

Chief investigator Dr Vishy Karri extolled the virtues of Australia developing its own expertise in alternative fuels. “The pilot program has reinforced our capability in building yet another solution to alternative fuels,” he said.

“We need several, parallel efforts to build alternative energy sources. Hydrogen technologies, biodiesel as an alternative fuel and now the plug-in hybrids are our efforts to reduce our dependency on petrol in the future. I am extremely proud of our technical team, their capabilities and their enthusiasm for new challenges.”

(S0urces: University of Tasmania, ABC News)

Well, props to Holden for keeping this quiet…maybe I’ll keep my mouth shut next time.

Holden has showcased a special variant of their VE Commodore station wagon at the Australian International Motor Show this year, with a new engine management system designed to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. The Sportswagon concept, which may enter production next year, is based strongly on the current VE Commodore model, with the Show concept housing two interesting developments.

The first is a cylinder deactivation system, which can turn off four of the cylinders in the Sportswagon’s V8 engine under low power conditions such as cruising or idling, essentially reducing the vehicle’s fuel consumption at those times to that of a four-cylinder car. The technology is not especially new, with Holden’s parent&nbspcompany General Motors having worked on the technology for over twenty-five years, but it is rarely seen in Australian cars.

The second is a little more interesting, and takes its lead from sister company Saab: a fuel system that is optimised for use with ethanol-enhanced fuel, particularly ᭉ. Unfortunately ᭉ is nearly impossible to find in Australia currently due to a lack of government support for it, but the vehicle can also run on ᫾ and pure unleaded petrol, albeit at a slight loss of performance.

The introduction of an Australian-made vehicle that is optimised for use with E85 fuel will hopefully put some pressure on governments and suppliers to provide E85 for public use. The age of the “thirsty Commodore” isn’t quite over yet, especially when it’s still using a thumping great ͤ engine, but it’s a start. Who knows, one day Holden might even produce that foot-powered Commodore some stone-age journalists seem to think we’re after…

(Sources: carsguide.com.au, Daily Telegraph)

Queensland independent MP Bob Katter, who could hold the balance of power in November’s federal election, has said that his support will go to whichever party promises to mandate the use of 10 per cent ethanol in Australian petrol.

“I am not interested in ruling Australia. I am interested in what is happening to the people that I represent,” he said.

“And I tell you what, ethanol will be very high in my thinking on this.”

Alongside water infrastructure, Mr Katter lists ethanol as an important factor for the people in his electorate of Kennedy, located in central Queensland. Currently only the NSW state government mandates a minimum percentage of ethanol, with the federal government capping the maximum allowable amount at 10 per cent.

(Source: Courier Mail)

Following up from the New South Wales Premier’s previous announcement that it would mandate that all unleaded fuel in NSW would contain 2 per cent ethanol, the mandate comes into force today. This mandate will increase to 10 per cent by 2011, which is suitable for almost all vehicles built after 1986 (specifically, vehicles with fuel injection).  NSW remains the first state to mandate a specific concentration of ethanol.

(Source: ABC News)

Today the New York times has an article on the collapse in Ethanol prices. The article is a well written overview of the industry and the current impact and reasons for a collapse in the prices. I’m not going to go through all the points the article makes, go read it here — its really worth it. I’m going to talk about what I think is the most important challenge facing the ethanol industry, the federal government and the farmers who are growing the corn and producing the ethanol.

First off most people don’t understand how fragmented the industry is. Most ethanol producing plants, or at least a good majority of them, are owned and operated by farmer cooperatives. This means that the industry has a lot of room to consolidate which will lead to larger margins and less volatility. In the past 2 years, ethanol plants have sprouted (pun) up in hundreds of places throughout the midwest — these plants are relatively inexpensive to build and the technology is well tested. The real issue however is one of transportation. As you can see production is not a problem — there is lots of corn out there for ethanol and there are lots of people turning it into ethanol, but there are not a lot of people getting it from point a to point b. Ethanol, unlike oil and Natural Gas, is difficult to transport — its an organic good and has a sort of sell by date by which it has to be blended into oil if that is the final destination.

Interestingly this transport issue is a common one in the Energy industry. The electrical grid is suffering from the same lack of underinvestment. Why does this dilemna exist? Well most transport networks — for ethanol (pipelines), for electricity (transmission lines), require massive amounts of capital expenditure, with a lot of sunk costs. I’m not sure about this, but as we saw with the bridge collapse this summer in Minnesota, the federal government has stepped back on its responsibility to build and maintain our networks (roads, grids…).

The article makes an interesting point about the likelihood of the federal government having to expand its subsidies to ethanol farmers to protect them during this glut in the market — maybe instead of funding the expansion of an industry already in an overproduction stage, maybe they could pour that money into getting rid of the transport bottleneck. This will allow ethanol to reach end users for its traditional uses of being blended into oil or as a substitute for MBTE, and potentially allow for continued expansion of our inclusion of ethanol into other energy systems.

Ah but what about the effects of increased ethanol production of food prices? on the environment? I’ve already written about my dislike of ethanol as the ’solution’. I don’t think its a solution, i think its a delay mechanisms, but I also see that if we can leverage ethanol through an improved transportation network then people can be allowed to be more creative with the uses and applications of ethanol. Its a complicated situation for sure, but the federal government will continue to be involved and I just hope its in a more constructive way then just giving farmers a check because the market for their product isn’t strong.

Australia looks set to have at least two new ethanol production plants opening over the next couple of years from different companies, both producing their fuel from south-east Queensland’s sweet sorghum crops.

The first, the $120 million Dalby Bio Refinery in Queensland, is expected to open in August 2008 and will be capable of producing over 90 million litres of ethanol each year. (For comparison’s sake, this refinery alone will be capable of producing 25% of the fuel required to meet Australia’s goal of 350 ML of biofuels annually by 2010.) The company has secured a contract with Caltex for “a significant portion” of its annual production, according to reports out of the Australian Ethanol and Biodiesel conference in Brisbane this week. The plant will produce ethanol from grain supplied by Graincorp.

Biofuels company AgriFuels is also planning a new ethanol production facility for south-east Queensland, this time near the town of Childers. The company is currently conducting trials of the sweet sorghum crop, and if successful, plans to rotate it with sugar cane. AgriFuels managing director Greg Lee says that sorghum can provide up to 30 per cent more ethanol than the equivalent amount of sugar cane, providing farmers with an extra source of income.

“Basically once we’ve proved this crop up and it looks okay we’ll then sit down and talk to farmers, work out how it can rotate with the sugarcane people, utilise … some of the land that’s not being used and start to develop hopefully an ethanol plant,” he said.

The plant has the support of local councils and is considered likely to go ahead.

(Sources: North Queensland Register, ABC News)