What are the major problems with butanol?

September 9, 2006 7:41 PM

Butanol [1,2] sounds too good to be true. Is it?

I was just today made aware of butanol. From what I've read in a few Google searches, it sounds like a much better energy source than ethanol. But ethanol is being heavily promoted as an anternative to gasoline while butanol doesn't appear to be generating much discussion at all. Why is this? Is there some major problem with butanol that I haven't found yet?

posted by scottreynen to science & nature (33 comments total)

People don't realize just how much petroleum we suck out of the ground. I think the numbers were something like 100% of corn production worldwide would feed 5% of the cars on the road.

Sugar cane creates more energy (i think 4-6x) per acre but the only thing I've seen that even remotely suggests an ability to scale is algae. Imagine a plant where half of its mass was burnable. It's pretty ridiculous, if it works out.
posted by effugas at 7:55 PM on September 9, 2006

Well, there isn't a GIGANTIC butanol lobby bribing Congress to subsidize butanol like there is for ethanol. Think: corn lobby.
posted by Justinian at 7:55 PM on September 9, 2006

It also seems (I don't know) like this is harder to manufacture than ethanol, which they've been making for years and years. Made through a fermentation process not tried outside a lab? Probably tough. Ethanol has been made for years, it's tested and easy to manufacture. Utilizing all of the available crops isn't a priority of fuel companies, but quick, cheap manufacture is.

On preview, Justinian: according to the wikipedia link, this process can be used to make butanol out of corn. And sugar. The corn and sugar lobbies are two of the biggest food lobbies out there. It surprises me that they don't hit this, as it would certainly be more commercially viable than ethanol. I think the ethanol thing is part of some joint ventures with American automotive companies... I don't know.
posted by koeselitz at 8:02 PM on September 9, 2006

i don't know what the downsides are, but this sounds like a pretty solid project to me ... it certainly doesn't give off that "crackpot" vibe ... they've got patents, documentation and make a rational case

it does seem as though some modification to current fuel delivery systems in automobiles might be necessary
posted by pyramid termite at 8:37 PM on September 9, 2006

While the first link does say that butanol has a higher energy content than ethanol, as well as some other cool benefits, I think some of the issues related to ethanol still apply - specifically, that the production process uses more energy then it puts out.
posted by cabingirl at 8:56 PM on September 9, 2006

The reason for all the fuss about ethanol derived from corn is that Archer Daniels Midland does a lot of lobbying (and, at least in the past, a fair amount of outright bribery). It has nothing whatever to do with ethanol's suitability as a fuel evaluated in engineering terms.

ADM is engaged in rent seeking. (And they've done a damned good job of it, too.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:59 PM on September 9, 2006

Oh, and from ADM's point of view, if butanol produces more effective fuel per ton of corn, then it is worse than ethanol because less corn will be consumed. Don't assume that all companies necessarily benefit from efficiency -- that only happens when there's competition, and ADM has no competitors.

(ADM is also the reason why you can't buy soft drinks sweetened with cane sugar; they lobby hard for import quotas and price supports on sugar to make sure that corn syrup is cheaper for Coke and Pepsi.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:02 PM on September 9, 2006

Oh, and from ADM's point of view, if butanol produces more effective fuel per ton of corn, then it is worse than ethanol because less corn will be consumed. Don't assume that all companies necessarily benefit from efficiency -- that only happens when there's competition, and ADM has no competitors.

Doesn't anyone selling corn for fuel have a huge competitor in the oil industry?
posted by scottreynen at 9:25 PM on September 9, 2006

Yes, if they were competing with oil. No, if they have convinced Congress to mandate that a certain amount of "renewable fuel" be included in gasoline -- which is what ADM has managed to pull off. (See "rent seeking".)

With that legal mandate now in place, ADM makes more money if the "renewable fuel" is ethanol than if it's butanol, since producing the required quantity of ethanol consumes more corn. (If the yield is better for butanol.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:39 PM on September 9, 2006

As cabingirl mentioned, butanol appears to share with ethanol the problem that it takes more energy to produce than you can get back by burning it.

The fact that butanol.com doesn't mention the energy profit/energy return over investment of butanol suggests that they don't understand energy economics very well. Or that they're pretending not to understand it, which is more likely if they're just trying to palm their patents off before everyone realises that accounting for energy in terms of today's currencies is useless for predicting the future.

On the other hand, here's an interesting article which takes a wait-and-see approach and suggests that butanol may have a much better EPR/EROI than ethanol, at least, as well as requiring fewer modifications to engines.

In any case, biofuels are not going to allow us to maintain today's style of private transport very far into the future. At best, biofuels made out of agricultural waste products may one day replace some of the fossil fuel consumed by farming (biofuels made from inedible waste products have much better EPRs, because food is a pretty absolute need and the waste is going to be produced anyway).
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:42 PM on September 9, 2006

Between 1995 and 2002, the US government spent $34 billion on farm subsidies for corn. By comparison, wheat subsidies cost $17 billion, and cotton and soybean subsidies cost $11 billion each.

Guess why corn got so much more than anyone else?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:44 PM on September 9, 2006

Well, there isn't a GIGANTIC butanol lobby bribing Congress to subsidize butanol like there is for ethanol. Think: corn lobby.

Except butanol is made from corn.

Oh, and from ADM's point of view, if butanol produces more effective fuel per ton of corn, then it is worse than ethanol because less corn will be consumed.

That's ridiculous. All of it will be consumed, every drop. Supply restriction only works when you have a monopoly, like DeBeers.

While the first link does say that butanol has a higher energy content than ethanol, as well as some other cool benefits, I think some of the issues related to ethanol still apply - specifically, that the production process uses more energy then it puts out.

That's been proven false, by the way.
posted by delmoi at 10:45 PM on September 9, 2006

Guess why corn got so much more than anyone else?

Because people grow more corn then they do the other stuff? You're not suggesting that other types of farmers don't lobby the government, are you?
posted by delmoi at 10:46 PM on September 9, 2006

That's been proven false, by the way.

Unless you have new information, which you can provide to the rest of us, maybe via a link or something, you're wrong.
posted by bshort at 10:51 PM on September 9, 2006

Ethanol production in brazillian is net positive energy. And it's greatly improved air quality as well (biodeisel actually reduces air quality over gasoline).

here are some more sources on corn ethanol's energy projected energy output.

"ethanol produces less energy then it takes to make" is something a lot of people seem to believe, but isn't true.
posted by delmoi at 10:55 PM on September 9, 2006

Unless you have new information, which you can provide to the rest of us, maybe via a link or something, you're wrong.

What an absurd statement. As you can see I did dig up some links, but whether I had or not it wouldn't have changed the truth value of my initial statement.

---

Anyway, the original question was about butanol rather then ethanol. My guess as to why people are more interested in ethanol then butanol is that the butanol process is just really new. This kind of thing doesn’t happen over night, Brazil has been using Ethanol since the 70s, and the American ethanol infrastructure has been growing for decades as well. All that momentum and investment isn't just going to disappear.

I suspect that even though the new butanol process is efficient, it's still probably more expensive then regular ethanol production. The economic benefits of gasoline compatibility are chipped away by every advance of the ethanol infrastructure.

Since it does work with gasoline, though I'm sure it will be produced, especially if oil prices keep going up. But it probably won't be put into many cars for at least a decade, I would imagine.
posted by delmoi at 11:07 PM on September 9, 2006

By the way, all this "ethanol isn't efficient" stuff all seems to originate with a single guy (David Pimentel at Cornel, although there were obviously other authors) and a single paper, which contradicts decades of research and Brazill's obvious example (which yes, uses sugar cane rather then corn).
posted by delmoi at 11:13 PM on September 9, 2006

My response on an ethanol thread here point to some varied resources on the ethanol net energy question.

The DOE asserts a 35% average net energy gain based on the research conducted by Argonne National Laboratory; this research is around a year and a half old. If you're interested in the topic the PDF I link in that response, although partisan, contains a nuanced assessment. Pimentel has an agenda, in my opinion, and frankly I find it flatly irresponsible that any news source claiming to be in the business of scientific journalism would publish his claims without giving even a nod to concurrent, contradictory research conducted by the US government.
posted by nanojath at 12:23 AM on September 10, 2006

To answer the actual question, butanol may in fact be a superior biofuel, but it is largely untested as yet. That first link is pretty typical of an early stage biofuel company - promising to ramp up the pilot plant phase, 100% optimistic. I saw so many treatments like that when I did research in this arena. Scaling to true industrial production, demonstrating true drop-in replacement for gasoline, there's a lot of uncharted territory for things to go wrong in there. I'm in the camp anyway who believes that biofuels will never make a significant impact on the liquid fuel supply unless effecient mass production from non-food biomass is realized.
posted by nanojath at 12:30 AM on September 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Pimentel has an agenda, in my opinion, and frankly I find it flatly irresponsible that any news source claiming to be in the business of scientific journalism would publish his claims without giving even a nod to concurrent

This is what I don't understand about this. It's like everyone saw that one article or heard someone mention it and everyone totally believes it without looking at anything else. It's so frustrating I think part of it is a desire to feel superior by knowing something that disproves common knowledge or whatever.
posted by delmoi at 12:37 AM on September 10, 2006

I agree, delmoi - on the other hand, Pimentel publishes very aggressively and Cornell has a very efficient press dept., so to an extent that one opinion gets pretty dramatically overrepresented. But I do think people are attracted in a perverse way to the "it's just a big scam" presentation.

I just wish more people would point out that Pimentel also believes that the earth's carrying capacity is 2 billion people and human society won't be sustainable without the net death of 4.5 billion. Just for, you know, perspective on his math.
posted by nanojath at 12:56 AM on September 10, 2006

Regardless of whether Pimentel is right, wrong and/or crazy, a 35% net energy increase is nothing. Especially compared to oil's 2000% or so. Brazil apparently gets 700% for ethanol produced from sugarcane, but that doesn't take into account soil depletion (which to be comprehensive should have its replacement or substitution cost added into the equation) and is specific to Brazil's climate.

Butanol may be great, but until its proponents start talking in terms of energy in vs energy out nobody will be able to tell. Butanol.com gives plenty of energy statistics, but they are in terms of how much gross energy you get out of a certain amount of feedstock and don't mention net anything.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 2:45 AM on September 10, 2006

One of the problems I can see with butanol is that it's solid at 77 degrees Fahrenheit and liquid at 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

How do you move it around the country? Heated tanker truck? In blocks on pallets in a refrigerated semitruck trailer?
posted by ikkyu2 at 5:06 AM on September 10, 2006

One of the problems I can see with butanol is that it's solid at 77 degrees Fahrenheit and liquid at 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

according to the wikipedia page the melting point is - 89.5C and the boiling point is 117.73C
posted by pyramid termite at 5:46 AM on September 10, 2006

butanol doesn't appear to be generating much discussion at all. Why is this?

There is plenty of discussion within the oil industry. It's not very public partly because there are immature, unpatented and secret processes involved.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 6:02 AM on September 10, 2006

ikkyu2: butanols ain't butanols.
posted by flabdablet at 7:03 AM on September 10, 2006

There is speculation in the originally linked Wikipedia article that the high viscosity of butanol could cause problems for it as a gas replacement, so the issue is relevant.
posted by nanojath at 8:30 AM on September 10, 2006

Supply restriction only works when you have a monopoly, like DeBeers.

Yeah, what percentage of the US corn market does ADM control anyway? It seems like it would need to be very high to support Steven C. Den Beste's suggestion that they have no real competition. I found a PDF from Iowa State University's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, which says:

Within the United States, Cargill represents 42 percent of the exports and in Argentina it claims 22 percent. This means that Cargill alone represents approximately one-third of all the world trade in corn. ADM accounts for another nearly 15 percent of the world’s trade.

So doesn't that make Cargill a major competitor to ADM, even with all the subsidies and quotas?
posted by scottreynen at 8:40 AM on September 10, 2006

Regardless of whether Pimentel is right, wrong and/or crazy, a 35% net energy increase is nothing. Especially compared to oil's 2000% or so.

Sure, but as time goes on that 2000% figure will drop and drop, eventually reaching zero.
posted by delmoi at 8:41 AM on September 10, 2006

Sorry to extend this question so much, but I'm only getting more confused about what's going on in the biofuel market.
posted by scottreynen at 8:42 AM on September 10, 2006

So doesn't that make Cargill a major competitor to ADM, even with all the subsidies and quotas

The other thing is, anyone can start a farm. The price per acre of farmland in Iowa is about $3000. Anyone can start their own farm and sell their own corn, and even distill their own ethanol (I would imagine).
posted by delmoi at 8:44 AM on September 10, 2006

What an absurd statement. As you can see I did dig up some links, but whether I had or not it wouldn't have changed the truth value of my initial statement.

But other people, who were making the opposite claim, had good documentation to back up what they were saying.

You didn't.

Just saying that something has been disproven doesn't make it so.
posted by bshort at 1:21 PM on September 10, 2006

n-butanol to give what we're discussing it's proper name is indeed a good gasoline replacement. It's got burning characteristics much closer to gas than ethanol, it isn't as corrosive to plastic parts as ethanol is, and is far less toxic and water soluble than ethanol. Also, since it's already oxygenated, it's going to produce less smog than gasoline. From a fuel engineering and release-to-the-environment point-of-view, n-butanol is a dream fuel compared to either gasoline or ethanol.

The kicker is that no one is capable of producing even a fraction of the required demand at anything like a reasonable cost and won't be able to for years.

The real problem with these methods are that they require glucose and/or starch as an input. This only comes from the high-energy fruiting bodies, corn kernels, soy beans, wheat berries. You throw away the rest of the plant. A very large fraction of all the farmer's fields in the US whould have to be planted in corn for full fuel replacement. Sugar cane is a better choice, but it doesn't grow in Idaho.

This is highly inneficient when compared with celulosic methods that are on track for ethanol. Several major breakthorughs are going to be needed for this to be viable. At least with ethanol there are already well established routes for production from cellulose. Anytine someone talks about producing from only the corn kernels, you can tell that their reall not serious about fuel replacement, but are looking for corn subsidies.

This is as much a joke right now as 100 mile carbourators were in the fifties.
posted by bonehead at 1:23 PM on September 10, 2006