Story about Biodiesel in Wired

[DrSmile]

A fitting epitaph. It's called "The Lion, The Polygamist, and the Biodiesel Scam"

The Lion, the Polygamist, and the Biofuel Scam

How a member of a breakaway Mormon sect teamed up with a Lambo-driving, hard-partying tycoon to bilk the government for hundreds of millions of dollars.

www.wired.com

It's a pretty gruesome gutting of the industry.

 

[Hinzipwo]

A fitting epitaph. It's called "The Lion, The Polygamist, and the Biodiesel Scam"

The Lion, the Polygamist, and the Biofuel Scam

How a member of a breakaway Mormon sect teamed up with a Lambo-driving, hard-partying tycoon to bilk the government for hundreds of millions of dollars.

www.wired.com

It's a pretty gruesome gutting of the industry.

really interesting read, wasted lots of time at work thanks!

 

[mannytranny]

Thats a helluva read...

 

[JDSwan87]

Thanks! That was a good read!

 

[[486]]

sounds more like a story on tax fraud than biodiesel

 

[Nevada_TDI]

Wired said I need to subscribe to read the article. Will someone please cut and paste it for me?

 

[nwdiver]

Wired said I need to subscribe to read the article. Will someone please cut and paste it for me?

Bloomberg did a great piece and put it on YouTube. Search 'How a Polygamist Used Biofuel to Steal $500 Million'

The whole biofuel scheme is a scam that needs to die.

 

[Nevada_TDI]

I did find the video, thanks. I am not quite sure why "The whole bio fuel thing is a scam that needs to die", though.

 

[nwdiver]

I am not quite sure why "The whole bio fuel thing is a scam that needs to die", though.

Because it accomplishes nothing except payments to corn farmers and it's distorting the markets. The objective is to reduce our dependence on oil with an alternative source of energy. When you add up all the external costs it requires more fossil fuels to farm and process biomass into biofuel than if they had just used oil. The EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) is < 1. For Electric Vehicle it's ~3-4. For Solar and Wind it's ~7.

It's insane. Producing a gallon of biofuel requires ~20% more energy than the energy content of a gallon of biofuel. Real Engineering did a great short video on this. Search 'Why biofuels are terrible'. The money we're wasting subsidizing biofuel would be far better invested in more EVs, Solar and Wind.

 

[nicklockard]

It's behind a paywall. What does it say?

 

[nicklockard]

Because it accomplishes nothing except payments to corn farmers and it's distorting the markets. The objective is to reduce our dependence on oil with an alternative source of energy. When you add up all the external costs it requires more fossil fuels to farm and process biomass into biofuel than if they had just used oil. The EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) is < 1. For Electric Vehicle it's ~3-4. For Solar and Wind it's ~7.

It's insane. Producing a gallon of biofuel requires ~20% more energy than the energy content of a gallon of biofuel. Real Engineering did a great short video on this. Search 'Why biofuels are terrible'. The money we're wasting subsidizing biofuel would be far better invested in more EVs, Solar and Wind.

Ummm, no that's not remotely true. Corn ethanol from grain that would otherwise go to waste (because taxpayers pay farmers to farm too much to keep food prices artificially low---to prevent uprisings (yes, really) is barely energy negative.

OTOH, biodiesel fuels, depending on oil source, run much better EROI's--not far off from electric vehicles. Running on waste oil solely, for those that can manage it, beats the pants of of pretty much everything.

We get that you are a really wealthy proponent of electric vehicles. But you seem to have a massive blind spot to how your EV-evangelism comes across.

I strongly believe EV's are a huge component of the future. But at this time, and most likely for 5 more years or so, EV's are EXCLUSIVELY a rich man's game. Congratulations for being super rich; now please stop spreading FUD and propaganda. We are smart enough to read, process, and understand things without being preached down to.

 

[nwdiver]

Ummm, no that's not remotely true. Corn ethanol from grain that would otherwise go to waste (because taxpayers pay farmers to farm too much to keep food prices artificially low---to prevent uprisings (yes, really) is barely energy negative.

We're not diverting 'surplus' grain into ethanol production. ~40% of the corn we grow is now diverted into ethanol. That corn is grown for the specific purpose of being used as a biofuel. In no way is it 'surplus'. It's insane.

I couldn't care less about EVs. I drove a TDI for years. I'm just advocating for the most efficient transportation available. If I could've driven my TDI ~180 miles/day with the energy harvested off my roof I would have. Not spreading FUD or propaganda... just facts.

Before the used market went crazy you could buy a used Bolt for the same price I paid for my TDI 10 years ago. How is that only for the 'rich'? Why not divert all this money we're wasting on biofuel into making EVs even more affordable?

It's almost funny.... people say solar and wind take up too much land. We're using ~36M acres farming corn for ethanol to reduce our oil consumption by ~10%. An area ~half that size covered in solar PV could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by ~100%, all of it. Coal, gas and oil. Facts

 

[Tdijarhead]

. We are smart enough to read, process, and understand things without being preached down to.

Amen! I even have that guy on my ignore list, he's the only one, so I can't see what he said but I assume it's more of the same drivel I read before I blocked him.

 

[nwdiver]

Amen! I even have that guy on my ignore list, he's the only one, so I can't see what he said but I assume it's more of the same drivel I read before I blocked him.

Facts are Facts. The US grows ~90M acres of corn. 40% of which is grown for producing biofuel. Sure... other biofuels have a better EROEI than corn but they require ~5x more land.

So 36M acres of corn to produce ~17B gallons of ethanol. (17B)(22kWh/gal) = 374GWh of energy. Depending on the source the net energy yield is somewhere between less than 0 and ~50GWh.

VS

36M acres of solar PV. 1 acre of solar PV yields ~360MWh/yr. (350MWh/yr)(36M) = 12,600GWh/yr. The annualized energy cost of manufacturing and installing 36M acres of PV is ~1680GWh for a net yield of 10,920GWh/yr.

~10920GWh/yr vs 50... and if you're comparing electric vs ICE it's ~30,000 vs 50 since ICE uses ~3x more energy per mile. So with biofuels you're using >600x more land to accomplish the same task. >600x. An area covering the entire state Iowa vs Palm Springs, CA....

None of that is 'FUD'... just hard numbers. Can you handle the truth?

 

[jmodge]

In Michigan we put windmills in cornfields and drive around carefree

 

[wxman]

According to the latest version of the GREET model (GREET_2020), a diesel vehicle on 100% renewable diesel fuel uses less WTW fossil fuel energy than an equivalent BEV in the current grid (based on https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html ):

Renewable diesel from soy is a little higher (~700 BTU/mile), but still less than BEV.

 

[nwdiver]

According to the latest version of the GREET model (GREET_2020), a diesel vehicle on 100% renewable diesel fuel uses less WTW fossil fuel energy than an equivalent BEV in the current grid (based on https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html ):

Renewable diesel from soy is a little higher (~700 BTU/mile), but still less than BEV.

But >600x more land required to produce that feed stock than if you sourced the energy from solar or wind. Not to mention water for irrigation. Would be a great idea if the US was 2.5 times the size of the Earth. Maybe space farming?

Do you really think reducing our dependence on oil by ~3% is worth replacing >30M acres of habitat with monoculture?

 

[wxman]

There's enough waste biomass to produce enough jet and diesel fuel to replace most of the fossil jet/diesel currently used in the U.S. at current yields See DOE's "Billion Ton Study."

Logging residues and other removals, unused primary mill residues, secondary mill residues, urban wood waste, storm-damaged trees and vegetation, corn stover, wheat straw, oat straw, organic fraction of MSW, and used cooking oil will be produced whether they're used for biofuels or not.

 

[turbobrick240]

There's no reason we can't utilize both. Use the renewable diesel/jet fuel for aviation, and use the renewable electricity generation for ground transport. Best of both worlds.

 

[wxman]

I fully agree that we should utilize both.

The U.S. uses about 26B gallons of jet fuel for aviation/year (during a normal year; 2020 was an anomaly obviously). There's enough waste biomass for ~70B gallons @100 gallons of renewable diesel/dry ton of biomass. On-road distillate fuel use is ~42B gallons/year according to EIA ( https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_821dst_dcu_nus_a.htm ), so some ground transportation could utilize renewable diesel (in addition to off-road diesel fuel use).

See, e.g., https://www.redrockbio.com/feedstock/

 

[jmodge]

Not to mention the jet fuel the Air Force dumps into the atmosphere at high altitude before the new fiscal year.....another government waste rant

 

[[486]]

Logging residues and other removals, unused primary mill residues, secondary mill residues, urban wood waste, storm-damaged trees and vegetation, corn stover, wheat straw, oat straw,

sadly biomass just isn't economically viable
it's mind boggling that chipping and hauling the leftovers from logging is more expensive than just burning natural gas
the mills will use their own waste for firing drying kilns, but that's a small fraction of the waste that comes off a tree

all the various straw leftovers are pretty much already baled and used as bedding, farmers don't leave any money laying around

 

[[486]]

Not to mention the jet fuel the Air Force dumps into the atmosphere at high altitude before the new fiscal year.....another government waste rant

isn't fuel dumping something that really only happens in emergency, like when a jet has to land early and is still above landing weight?
fuel is like the number one cost of flying so...

 

[atc98002]

In my career as an Air Traffic Controller, I can't ever recall military aircraft ever dumping fuel without cause. The majority of civilian aircraft are not capable of dumping fuel, so they need to just hold and burn enough to land so they aren't overweight on landing.

 

[wxman]

sadly biomass just isn't economically viable
it's mind boggling that chipping and hauling the leftovers from logging is more expensive than just burning natural gas
the mills will use their own waste for firing drying kilns, but that's a small fraction of the waste that comes off a tree

all the various straw leftovers are pretty much already baled and used as bedding, farmers don't leave any money laying around

Well Red Rock Biofuels apparently think they can make a go of it with waste forest products converted to renewable jet and diesel fuels. The construction of the facility is almost complete.

Another facility in Natches, Mississippi is being build to produce renewable jet and diesel, but will have carbon capture and storage, which will result in negative WTW GHG emissions (-165,000 g CO2e/million BTU of product per GREET).

There was a peer-reviewed paper published in 2012 which calculated that given sufficiently large scale, renewable diesel could be produced at $2.04/gallon without road tax. Counting for inflation, the price of the fuel would currently be about $3/gallon including road tax, which is competitive with current ULSD prices.

 

[jmodge]

isn't fuel dumping something that really only happens in emergency, like when a jet has to land early and is still above landing weight?
fuel is like the number one cost of flying so...

Not according to a mechanic I used to work with that was also in the reserves after his hitch. All the years I was connected to government institutions, waste was the toughest challenge to deal with.

 

[Nevada_TDI]

Because it accomplishes nothing except payments to corn farmers and it's distorting the markets. The objective is to reduce our dependence on oil with an alternative source of energy. When you add up all the external costs it requires more fossil fuels to farm and process biomass into biofuel than if they had just used oil. The EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) is < 1. For Electric Vehicle it's ~3-4. For Solar and Wind it's ~7.

It's insane. Producing a gallon of biofuel requires ~20% more energy than the energy content of a gallon of biofuel. Real Engineering did a great short video on this. Search 'Why biofuels are terrible'. The money we're wasting subsidizing biofuel would be far better invested in more EVs, Solar and Wind.

I was not thinking of processing of corn into ETOH, my thinking was making Biodiesel out of waste oils and fats. A few years back a company was using grease trap contents to make a kind of bio jet fuel, granted it was a long process but at -40 it was no more viscous than standard Jet-A. The contents of grease trap are nasty, compared to what comes out of a deep fryer. Processing grease traps into Bio Jet fuel takes a lot of energy, but once they got on line with the process, the fuel they produced would be used to make steam for a steam turbine that produces electricity.
I probably should have researched this before I discussed it, so if I missed something, my apologies. Apparently trap grease is now called brown grease as that is usually the color compared to deep fryer oil.
Thirty years ago I worked at a Wastewater Treatment Plant as a technician and learned a lot of things while I was there. The left over solids (which now do not stink) go into a warm digester and the anaerobic process that breaks down those solids produces Methane Gas. At my old plant we burned it off at the top of a stack as we did not have the equipment to produce either heat or electricity from it. The San Francisco East Bay Municipal plant, all those years ago, were on the leading edge of technology. A Diesel engine can run off processed Methane to generate electricity, and boilers fired on Methane kept the digesters warm so they would produce Methane. Using the Methane made the Wastewater Plant self-sufficient; power outages which usually wreak havoc with most Wastewater Plants were no longer an issue for this plant.
What they do now, I have not checked, I was just explaining what it was doing all those years ago.

 

[nwdiver]

I was not thinking of processing of corn into ETOH, my thinking was making Biodiesel out of waste oils and fats.

Turning waste oil into biodiesel is more a free way to get rid of waste than it is a source of fuel. I think it's great. It's just a rounding error compared to what we need. The US produces >17B gallons of ethanol per year and even that is <10% of the fuel we need. ~170M gallons of diesel is produced per year from recycled waste oils and fats.

 

[Rob Mayercik]

Turning waste oil into biodiesel is more a free way to get rid of waste than it is a source of fuel. I think it's great. It's just a rounding error compared to what we need. The US produces >17B gallons of ethanol per year and even that is <10% of the fuel we need. ~170M gallons of diesel is produced per year from recycled waste oils and fats.

I saw something in the news a month or so back about someone stealing waste oil from behind some restaurant. I can't remember any more whether one of the people they interviewed said the restaurant had a contract with someone to take the stuff for making biodiesel, or that they thought the thieves were going to do that, but making the stuff into fuel did get mentioned.

In any event, it may be a rounding error, but it's very unlikely any single solution can replace all our petroleum fuel needs in a single shot - getting off oil is more like the old joke of "how do you eat an elephant?" - the answer being, of course, "one bite at a time".

Making fuel from waste products (biomass, used cooking oil, coal, etc.) is just another "bite" in the process, and every bite is one more toward the goal.

 

[nwdiver]

Making fuel from waste products (biomass, used cooking oil, coal, etc.) is just another "bite" in the process, and every bite is one more toward the goal.

Agreed. Just as long as we don't settle in after that first bite and keep progressing with full electrification powered by solar and wind. And accept that the limited sources of hydrocarbons we have really need to be used in areas that aren't nearly as easily electrified as ground transport like aviation.