[Gasification] who killed the electric car?

[Greg and April]

Sorry, to get back so late, I had kids school activities to deal with, and 
they come first.

Interspaced between the *********** .


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Samson" <rsamson at reap-canada.com>
To: "'Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification'" 
<gasification at listserv.repp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 12:07
Subject: Re: [Gasification] who killed the electric car?


> Greg
>
> In the movie, most people wanted to buy their cars back in California. In
> florida they already use electric golfcarts for local trip. I think an
> electric vehicle for most could be be a great second vehicle for local 
> trips
> where much of your mileage is done. Most people don't live in severe 
> winter
> climates.
>

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That is highly dependant on what your doing with the vehicle, and if you 
could afford the insurance premium on a second vehicle - especially a new 
one.

Unlicensed golf carts are a enigma - they can run in the bicycle lanes in 
many states - in others they are not allowed on the road with real vehicles 
as they don't meet even the most basic D.O.T. requirements or in bicycle 
lanes because they are motorized.    Another problem is that they tend to 
take up the entire bicycle lane and can be harder to see than folks on 
bicycles - yet the folks driving them tend to treat them like cars, which 
they are not.

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> If you look at the cost per km or mile, a light electric vehicle is pretty
> interesting option as is a biogas fuelled vehicle.


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And when you add in the cost of maitance and purchase price?    That is the 
killer as far as many people are concerned.

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>I think if we never had a
> liquid fossil fuel energy dowry we would be moving mainly on electricity 
> or
> biogas in temperate climates.

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I have to disagree, the original liquid fuel of choice for personal vehicals 
was alcohal, not fossil fuels.    I can't find the web site right now, but 
basicaly it showed how personial transportation was weaned off of ethanol 
because gasoline was ( at the time ) a waste product of refigning kerosene 
from oil.

As such, had we stayed with alcohal, wea would be much further along in 
cellulose to ethanol - but again I disagree that ethanol is the answer - 
butanol is about on par with gasoline as far as BTU's are concerned and it 
can be produced for lower cost from a wider aray of materials than ethanol 
can.

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> If you look at the energy conversion
> efficiency of cellulosic ethanol you are looking at 340 litres per tonne
> (according to the Iogen web site). That's a conversion efficiency of 1 
> tonne
> of biomass into 7.13 GJ of energy or about 40%. Instead you could gasify 
> the
> biomass to produce heat and power at 85% efficiency and avoid spending
> 350-500 million on a cellulosic ethanol plant.

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That is true if one only considers the ethanol as the only end product, and 
again it's also dependant on the particular method used.

As far as Iogen is concerned, did you take into account the eletricicy 
generation ( that increases the efficency ), as well as other side products 
( for paper, textile, and animal feed industry ), that increase efficenies 
in their respective industries?

What about the fact that not everyone knows how to run a gasifier at optimum 
efficency, and that gasifiers on vehicals rarely run at optimum efficency 
due to the effects of things like pot holes?

Don't get me wrong, gasifiers have their place, but as far a vehical power 
is concerned, it's not one of them, just for the simple mater that not 
everyone has the talent to run one.

Do I need to remind you, that one particular group, is basing it's cellulose 
to ethanol production on the use of a gasifier to run the process?

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> To me it's a much better
> option and unlike cellulose ethanol is ready to go. If we are at peak oil 
> as
> many are now discussing (and Shell is paying for advertisements about the
> problem of peak oil), it's the best substitute option we have.
>

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Is it, ready to go?    Not everyone has a gasifier, not everyone knows how 
to build one, not everyone knows how to run one.    Fewer people know about 
gasification, than ethanol - for that matter, if for no other reason than 
the fact that it's still easier to pump a liquid into the fuel tank of a 
vehicle and drive away, gasification for mobile applications will always 
play second fiddle to other technologies - and because of that it will play 
second fiddle to other stationary forms of power as well.

Greg H.