http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/t.....187-wm.htm

I was not fully clear. Hydrogen or acid embrittment of turbine blades in air compressors is cause by the interaction of air and carbon dioxide. So You can bet the anybody suggesting putting an acid stream through a turbine is going to give me pause. I will try and read the documents at the weekend and see if I can be more comprehensive.

In any case, here is the link for Biochemical section of Ensyn for your ready ref.:-

Cheers,
Dharmesh

To be fair, upon checking the French retail electricity prices are 13.8 Eurocents/kWh, the 20+ stuff is in Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy…

Yes, they can promote electricity usage, and to use more of their own at nightime and export peak electricity is good business for France, but this car sure is an expensive way to do that and save oil, even in France.  To be effective it has to be a good economic decision for the buyer, ...

Actually, that's close to the daytime rate. The night-time rate in France, after various taxes, is just 7.84 eurocents per kWh.

“To be effective it has to be a good
economic decision for the buyer, and even with their high fuel
prices, I still can;t see it, unless there are some other subsidies
involved.”

I certainly agree but you have to
start someplace. A word of warning, do not try to understand the the
French. It could hurt your brain.

To be fair, upon checking the French retail electricity prices are 13.8 Eurocents/kWh, the 20+ stuff is in Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy...

Yes, they can promote electricity usage, and to use more of their own at nightime and export peak electricity is good business for France, but this car sure is an expensive way to do that and save oil, even in France.  To be effective it has to be a good economic decision for the buyer, and even with their high fuel prices, I still can;t see it, unless there are some other subsidies involved.

“With Euro electricity prices at
$0.25c/kWh, you are looking at 10c/mile.”

What part of 'in France' confused you
Paul?

Since almost all generation in France
is nuke or hydroelectric, generating costs are very low. Efficiency
is not important because it is not coming from fossil fuels. EDF and
AREVA are primarily owned by the government. Creating more demand
for electricity and reducing imported oil is good policy for France.

Whenever nukes are load following,
battery charging increases demand for nukes; the marginal fuel cost
is 5 cents to make a million dollars worth of electricity.

So while BEV might be a very expensive
choice for an American driver, promoting it by the government of
France might not be.

You missed the key fact - the charging loss of 55%

My point was that you needed, according to them, 50kW x 0.5 hrs = 25kWh, to get 11.2 kWh into your battery (70% charge,from 10 to 80%).  You pay for the 25kWh, so 25x25=$6.25, for 70% of 93 miles, = 65 miles.

Overall cost = 9.6 cents/mile.

While Honeywell/UOP have a foot on one side of the fence, with Envergent and pyrolysis oil, they are also doing stuff on Fischer-Tropsch gasification.

This press release from 1 Sep, claims they are partnered with Rentech Inc to build a biomass to fuel plant.

They will be upgrading the wax by hydrocracking it. That is a strong area of expertise for them.

RR

This press release from 1 Sep, claims they are partnered with Rentech Inc to build a biomass to fuel plant.

http://www.uop.com/pr/releases.....0FINAL.pdf

The proposed plant will produce 640 barrels/day of fuel and 35MW of electricity.

The are doing engineering now, and plan to start construction next year, and be operational in 2012.

There are a lot of "will" and "plan to" in that release, and a very tight time frame, though Rentech has had a pilot plant operating in Colorado.

Neither company gives details on the feedstock required (tons/day) to operate this plant, but I can make an educated guess;

640 barrels/day (9.8mgpy) of liquid fuel is an energy flow of 42MW.  Assuming the electrical generation gets about 30% efficiency, there is 116MW of energy going to the electrical plant.  That means the final product yield is about 26% energy conversion from biomass to liquid fuel, assuming no external energy inputs.

That would be about 36 gallons of fuel, and 1160kWh per ton of biomass

Assuming $2/gal selling price, and 10c/kWh for the electricity, then a ton of wood will create $72 for fuel, and $116 for electricity, total of $188 per dry ton of wood.

If the electrical generation is only 20% efficient, then they get about $136/ton.

If they just did electricity only at 30%, they would have $156/ton, ($208 at 40%) a lot of extra effort for the oil, at current prices.

As with any of these things, the cost of getting the biomass is key.  If it is given to you for free, then great.  Otherwise, if you are paying to collect and transport it, the most profitable operation for this plant might well be to just buy PRB coal by the trainload and go from there.

If you can turn wood into oil, you can do the same for coal, and probably cheaper, and no one is doing coal at the moment.

With Euro electricity prices at $0.25c/kWh, you are looking at 10c/mile.

$0.25/kWh * 16 kWh = $4.00
$4.00 / 93 miles = 4.3 cents/mile

Not defending the iOn/iMiev, just trying to keep the conversation factual.

Peugeot is targeting the iOn mainly at local government, local authorities and public services and companies active in the transport and energy sectors,

In other words, organisations that can waste taxpayer/company money on publicity stunts.

Looking at their specs, the "fast charge needs 50kW, and will recharge the 16kWh battery to 80% (from 10%) in 30 minutes.  That is 25kWpower in, to get 11.2kWh on board, a charging efficiency of just 45%.  It is no wonder people are asking governments (of course) to provide such fast charging stations, so they don;t have to pay for the electricity.

With Euro electricity prices at $0.25c/kWh, you are looking at 10c/mile.   A similar sized euro car, with a diesel engine, gets 60mpg, and at $7/gal costs 12c/mile, so where is the advantage for the owner.  Add in the outrageous lease cost (allow  $300 premuim for this vehicle)  at 100miles/day, adds another 10c/mile, so the owners are backwards.

Can;t see this ever being a big seller unless the buyer is using someone else's money.

Also,  a few of these fast charging stations at 50kW apiece and you are starting to look at some serious electrical upgrades for small commercial buildings, and out of the question for houses.  Even the slow charger needs 5kW continuous.  

The real winner out of this would seem to be Japan, who gets to sell these expensive batteries.

It is estimated that if the natural gas used to 

generate hydrogen was replaced by biomass or bio-oil, approximately one third of the biomass feedstock 

would be needed for hydrogen generation. 

The process yield, of gasoline per dry ton of feedstock, is 100gal/ton if hydrogen comes from outside sources, and 65gal/ton if it comes from the feedstock itself.

For an energy yield, that is 65*115,000btu/gal, for 7.5mmbtu, and the original feedstock had 8500btu/lb, so a (metric) ton has 18.7mmbtu.  So the overall energy yield is 40% if self supplied hydrogen and 60% with outside supplied.

The economics, of course, all depend on the price of oil, and when this is viable, so are likely to be CTL, GTL and possibly oil shale (who knows about lignocellulosic ethanol?)

The economics of "co locating with a refinery" are good, but there are no many refineries in forest country, and even if you make the py oil in the forest, you are trucking it a long way to the refinery.

For comparison, a highly optimised wood to electricity plant could get 40% conversion, and turn the ton of feedstock into 2000kWh, with no outside inputs.  If the sell price is 10c/kWh (current available price in British Columbia), then that 65 gal of gasoline needs to sell for $3/gal to break even, but the capital and operating costs are likely to be much higher.

A major advantage of electricity is that you only have to get to the nearest suitably sized power line to set up your plant, and the smaller your scale, the closer those lines are.  With onsite py oil, you have a lot of trucks/trains  doing long round trips to the nearest refinery.

One other possibility for py oil that was not considered in that report, would be processing at a pulp mill.   They are not set up for oil processing, but have most of the other pre-requisites - have a biomass supply chain already, handling facilities, natural gas supply, transmission power connection, high temp boilers etc etc.  Many of them have water access, and shipping py oil from there to a refinery might work.