Biofuel Hell

- by Richard Adri­an Reese, Feb­ru­ary 17, 2013, Wild Ances­tors

I keep hav­ing night­mares about one pos­si­ble future: bio­fu­el hell.  Clear­ly, they are visions sent by ances­tral spir­its, and they are meant to be shared.  Per­haps they will inspire writ­ers, movie mak­ers, and oth­er cre­ative peo­ple to pro­duce heal­ing, mind-alter­ing work.  Per­haps they will inspire con­tem­pla­tion and sin­cere con­ver­sa­tions.  At this point, I’m just going to dump a bag of jig­saw puz­zle pieces on the table.  See what you can do with them.

Dur­ing World War II, when gaso­line was rationed, or unavail­able to civil­ians, hun­dreds of thou­sands of vehi­cles in dozens of nations were con­vert­ed to run on wood gas.  Car own­ers installed equip­ment that weighed 400 to 500 pounds (180 to 225 kg), plus anoth­er 50 to 100 pounds (22 to 45 kg) of fuel — wood chips or charcoal. 

In the fire­box, fuel was ignit­ed to release the gasses, pri­mar­i­ly nitro­gen and car­bon monox­ide.  Car­bon monox­ide was the flam­ma­ble and explo­sive ener­gy source.  It was also extreme­ly poi­so­nous, much to the delight of mor­ti­cians.  Many folks drove with their win­dows rolled down.  The gas con­tained twice as much non-flam­ma­ble nitro­gen as car­bon monox­ide, which meant that it was not a high-pow­ered fuel. 

In wartime Ger­many, 500,000 wood gas vehi­cles were in use, includ­ing cars, bus­es, trac­tors, motor­cy­cles, ships, and trains.  These vehi­cles were also used in Den­mark, Swe­den, France, Fin­land, Switzer­land, Rus­sia, Japan, Korea, and Australia.

Char­coal-pow­ered cars were devel­oped in Chi­na in 1931, and they remained pop­u­lar into the 1950s.  Before World War II, the French were con­sum­ing 50,000 tons of wood for vehi­cle fuel.  This increased to 500,000 tons by 1943. 

Read­ers who want to get a bet­ter feel for what life was like in an era of wood-fuelled trans­port should read Pro­duc­er Gas & the Aus­tralian Motorist by Don Bartlett.  It’s a 26 page dis­cus­sion of what Aus­tralian dri­vers expe­ri­enced dur­ing World War II, when lit­tle gaso­line was available. 

Today, ris­ing gaso­line prices are renew­ing inter­est in wood-pow­er.  Mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy allows wood-pow­ered cars to cruise at 68 mph (110 km/h), with a dri­ving range of 62 miles (100 km), con­sum­ing 66 pounds (30 kg) of wood.  There’s just one lit­tle draw­back with bio­fu­els.  “If we were to con­vert every vehi­cle, or even just a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber, to wood gas, all the trees in the world would be gone and we would die of hunger because all agri­cul­tur­al land would be sac­ri­ficed for ener­gy crops.  Indeed, the wood­mo­bile caused severe defor­esta­tion in France dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.”  France was not alone.  Remem­ber that there were far, far few­er cars in the world 70 years ago.

Amer­i­cans are fierce­ly defen­sive about their sacred guns, but this pas­sion is triv­ial in com­par­i­son to our God-giv­en right to dri­ve ener­gy-guz­zling motor­ized wheel­chairs.  Most of us would rather be stoned to death by an angry crowd of Tal­iban than switch to bikes or bus­es.  Have no doubt that when gas ris­es above $20 or $30 a gal­lon, or when fill­ing sta­tions are out of gas for days or weeks at a time, count­less huck­sters will fall out of the sky, sell­ing wood gas con­ver­sion units — and every one of them will be bought.

Air trav­el is a dinosaur indus­try, and will like­ly be replaced by rail.  The Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta is work­ing with the Coali­tion for Sus­tain­able Rail (CSR) and the Sus­tain­able Rail Inter­na­tion­al (SRI) to cre­ate pow­er­ful, fast, clean, and mod­ern steam loco­mo­tives.  “If the demon­stra­tion project is suc­cess­ful, how­ev­er, trains could be mere­ly a start­ing point for bio­coal-fueled steam power.”

The Nat­ur­al Resources Research Insti­tute at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta has invent­ed bio­coal.  They feed “cel­lu­losic bio­ma­te­r­i­al” (like dead trees) into a tor­refac­tion process and turn it into black pel­lets.  The raw mate­r­i­al is exposed to high tem­per­a­tures, pul­ver­ized, and then formed into fuel pel­lets.  Unlike wood pel­lets, tor­refied bio­mass pel­lets will not absorb water, so they can be stored out­doors.  The pel­lets have the same ener­gy con­tent as coal, with no sul­fur or heavy metals.

Tests in the US, Europe, and Japan have shown that tor­refied bio­mass can suc­cess­ful­ly be used in coal-fired pow­er plants with few mod­i­fi­ca­tions.  Sev­er­al plants for man­u­fac­tur­ing tor­refied bio­mass should be in oper­a­tion by 2013.  This fuel has a high­er ener­gy den­si­ty than wood pel­lets or wood chips. 

Here’s a gem: “Bio­mass gasi­fi­ca­tion is being con­sid­ered as a pos­si­ble tech­nol­o­gy for con­vert­ing at least 10 mil­lion acres of Texas brush into bio­fu­el, accord­ing to Dr. Jim Ans­ley, Texas AgriL­ife Research range­land ecol­o­gist in Ver­non.”  Vast areas of mesquite and juniper wood are just going to waste, and need to be put to pro­duc­tive use.

This win­ter, many Greeks are heat­ing with wood, since the tax on heat­ing oil rose 450 per­cent.  Slime­balls are busy ille­gal­ly cut­ting trees in nation­al forests.  At night, peo­ple are going into Athens parks and cut­ting limbs and felling trees.  High lev­els of smoke are send­ing pol­lu­tion read­ings far beyond dan­ger lev­els.  What’s odd is that this hasn’t been a cold win­ter.  In Athens, night­time tem­per­a­tures typ­i­cal­ly dip into the low 40s (F).  That’s warmer than where I live. 

I’ve run my heater maybe four hours all win­ter.  I’m a writer, and writ­ers have no choice but to live on noth­ing.  Every morn­ing I get out of bed and put on a tee-shirt, heavy sweat­shirt, fleece jack­et, thick hood­ed sweat­shirt, insu­lat­ed cap, blue jeans, socks and shoes, and I’m ready for a long day of work.  Writ­ers know that our sense of cold­ness is cul­tur­al­ly pro­grammed — it’s all in your head — and has lit­tle to do with our ani­mal bod­ies.  Once we under­stand this vital secret, we can live with far greater com­fort, at far low­er tem­per­a­tures, at far less expense. 

So any­way, as we move beyond the bub­ble of cheap ener­gy, we will cer­tain­ly burn more bio­mass.  Will we use bio­mass ener­gy to fuel our wood stove, cars, trac­tors, trucks, rail­roads, and pow­er grid?  No doubt we’ll give it a good try.  It’s clear­ly an insane idea, but it’s hard for us to imag­ine a life with­out our addictions.

Any­one who has read John Perlin’s essen­tial book, A For­est Jour­ney, clear­ly under­stands the fol­ly of run­ning an indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion on wood.  It’s been tried many times, and always failed, because it wiped out a resource that the civ­i­liza­tion depend­ed on for its sur­vival — just like we’re doing today with fos­sil fuels. 

Jared Dia­mond is a geog­ra­phy pro­fes­sor at UCLA.  He has giv­en many lec­tures on the East­er Island sto­ry.  His stu­dents always have a dif­fi­cult time grasp­ing the image of natives cut­ting down the last tree on the island.  “That’s sim­ply not pos­si­ble — peo­ple aren’t that stu­pid!”  Well, unfor­tu­nate­ly, yes we are, is Dia­mond’s con­clu­sion in his book, Col­lapse. 

Today, we’re mov­ing in the direc­tion toward a tree­less plan­et — East­er Island II.  Ten years from now, some­where in Nebras­ka, there may be a mor­bid­ly obese accoun­tant who dri­ves his wood-pow­ered F350 4X4 mon­ster truck two miles to work every day.  His fuel box is emp­ty.  In his back yard is the last liv­ing tree on Earth.

OK, so those are the puz­zle pieces.