Can We Replace All Crude Oil within 20 Years with Cellulosic Liquid Hydrocarbons?

Aggregation Aviation Fuel/Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)BioChemicals/Renewable Chemicals BioRefineries/Renewable Fuel Production Biorefinery/Fuel Production Infrastructure Business News/Analysis Carbon Capture/Storage/Use Carbon Capture/Storage/Use Co-Products Feedstock Feedstocks Field/Orchard/Plantation Crops/Residues Forestry/Wood/Residues/Waste hydrogen Infrastructure Logistics Marine/Boat Bio and Renewable Fuel/MGO/MDO/SMF Marketing/Market Forces and Sales Massachusetts Michigan Opinions Policy Precursors/Biointermediates Pretreatment Process R & D Focus Sustainability Terminals Transport Pipelines

May 30, 2023

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Charles Forsberg and Bruce Dale (Biofuels Digest) In the United States, crude oil products provide 48% of the total energy to the final customer: residential, commercial, industrial and transportation. Replacement of crude oil products (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, chemical feed stocks, etc.) made from non-fossil-fuel carbon sources, principally products made from cellulosic biomass, would decarbonize about half the U.S. economy.

Within this context, we asked four questions to determine the technical and economic viability of this option [1-4]. First, what is the long-term demand for liquid hydrocarbons? Second, can we replace all crude oil with liquid bio-fuels derived from cellulosic materials? Cellulosic biomass is the primary form of biomass on earth and is not a food for humans. Plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow; thus, converting plant matter into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and then burning these products does not increase atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Third, what are the hydrogen and heat requirements to convert cellulosic biomass into liquid hydrocarbons? Finally, how fast can we transition away from crude oil in an affordable manner?

There is sufficient cellulosic biomass, to replace crude oil without large impacts on food and fiber prices. However, massive quantities of hydrogen and heat must be supplied to large integrated bio-refineries to convert the biomass. This strategy would result in a quarter to half of U.S. natural gas consumption being used to produce hydrogen with co-produced carbon dioxide sequestered underground to avoid increasing the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. In the near-term, using natural gas is the lowest cost hydrogen production option and the only option that can deployed at the scale required.

In the longer-term, low-cost hydrogen may be available from nuclear and agricultural biomass sources.

...

The U.S. currently consumes 18 million barrels of crude oil per day. The demand for liquid hydrocarbons could potentially go as low as 10 million barrels per day before the costs of replacing liquid hydrocarbons with other technologies would dramatically increase, thereby causing serious reductions in the U.S. standard of living.

This 10 million barrels per day target is fixed by the set of current markets where economic replacements for hydrocarbons are (probably) prohibitively expensive. In many cases, there are currently no viable replacement technologies for liquid hydrocarbons. New industrial technologies typically take decades to develop and deploy because of the time to build pilot plants, pre-commercial plants and finally commercial plants.

Our estimates for future liquid hydrocarbon demand include chemical feed stocks, jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline. Gasoline demand is significantly reduced using hybrid vehicles (gasoline-fueled vehicles with a small battery to improve engine efficiency) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (vehicles fueled with grid electricity and gasoline).

In our analysis, we do not include large-scale deployment of battery all-electric vehicles (BEV) that have large batteries. A single BEV requires about 9 times as much battery materials as a single hybrid or plug-in hybrid vehicle. We believe this battery material constraint will likewise severely constrain BEV vehicle deployment.

...

All of these consequences of BEVs are tied to the remarkable chemical properties of liquid hydrocarbon fuels which enable low cost energy transport and storage systems. We need a low-carbon way to produce liquid hydrocarbons, not replace liquid hydrocarbons.

...

We developed a pathway [2-4] to replace all crude oil with cellulosic hydrocarbon drop-in fuels that (1) could produce 25 million barrels of hydrocarbon liquids per day without significant impacts on food and fiber prices and (2) provide large-scale sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Cellulosic biomass is the most common form of biomass on earth and includes a very wide variety of plant materials including crop residues, energy crops, woody biomass and even kelp. Plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If we use plants to make liquid fuels, burning the fuel returns that carbon dioxide originally derived from the atmosphere back to the atmosphere with no net increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

However, our strategy does not rely on the sugars, vegetable oils or carbohydrates that are currently used for most biofuels production. These feed stocks are insufficient to replace crude oil and potentially compete with human food needs.

Gasoline, diesel and jet fuel are made of carbon and hydrogen. Most current biofuels strategies use biomass as (1) a carbon source incorporated into the hydrocarbon product and (2) an energy and chemical source for the chemical conversion process. The traditional conversion of biomass into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel involves using some of the biomass carbon for (1) removal of the oxygen in biomass (oxygen is 40% of the total weight of biomass) as carbon dioxide, (2) production of hydrogen that is incorporated into the hydrocarbon product and (3) the energy to operate the process. Therefore only a fraction of the biomass carbon ends up in the final product.

In contrast, our strategy uses massive quantities of external heat and hydrogen to convert cellulosic biomass into hydrocarbon liquids. Cellulosic biomass is the carbon source in the product hydrocarbons, it is not also the energy and hydrogen source for the conversion process. The oxygen in biomass is removed by adding external hydrogen to produce water, rather than removing oxygen as carbon dioxide.

...

The low density of biomass makes it uneconomic to ship long distances. However, we must have large scale biorefineries if we hope to compete with very large scale oil refineries (~250,000 barrels per day). To overcome this challenge, cellulosic biomass is shipped short distances to local depots where it is converted into intermediate products that can be shipped long distances to large integrated bio-refineries. There are four major depot options for which the choice partly depends upon biomass characteristics.

The bio-refineries convert the intermediate products provided by depots into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other products. Most of these bio-refineries will be existing integrated oil refineries with additional front-end processing of the feed stocks. In this way, the refineries can incrementally convert over time from processing crude oil to processing biomass-derived feed stocks.

...

The proposed system enables recycle of stabilized carbon, soil nutrients and carbon char to the soil—primarily from the depots located near the farms.

...

Example feed stocks [3] include corn stover (the inedible part of the corn plant) and a variety of double crops.

...

The conversion of cellulosic biomass to liquid hydrocarbons requires massive quantities of hydrogen—about 20 kilograms of hydrogen per barrel of liquid hydrocarbon biofuels. In the U.S. hydrogen is currently made from natural gas with the byproduct carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. There is currently a rush to build large plants to produce hydrogen from natural gas with underground sequestration of the byproduct carbon dioxide.

...

Most refineries in Texas and Louisiana have been connected for many decades by hydrogen pipelines where refineries buy and sell hydrogen to each other depending upon their daily demand for hydrogen. Hydrogen production and storage facilities are part of these pipelines. The hydrogen is used in refineries to remove sulfur and convert crude oil into products such as gasoline. This large-scale industrial experience is one of the key enabling technologies for fast societal conversion from liquid fossil hydrocarbon fuels to liquid hydrocarbon biofuels.

It is an entirely separate question and a much more difficult task to convert completely to a “hydrogen economy” where the customers are measured in millions of individuals (versus a couple of hundred oil refineries). These millions of individual customers do not have the decades of large-scale experience with a highly-skilled workforce nor the many small hydrogen distribution pipelines that would be required to implement the “hydrogen economy”. Therefore this broader hydrogen economy is not a realistic near term option (next few decades) to decarbonize the economy,

...

Dow Chemical recently announced plans to buy four high-temperature nuclear reactors to provide heat for its Seadrift Texas chemical plant—the first such announcement intended to decarbonize the chemical industry.

...

The largest barrier to rapid adoption is the variable price of crude oil that has, on an inflation adjusted basis, varied from $20 to $180/barrel during the last 50 years. Oil prices are currently about $80/barrel, near the estimated cost for such large-scale cellulosic biofuels systems assuming hydrogen prices at $2/kg.

The cost of hydrogen is the principal cost driver in our proposed system. The primary business and financial risk to replacing crude oil with liquid hydrocarbon biofuels is the risk that the price of crude oil will collapse about the time refineries convert to liquid hydrocarbon biofuels production [10]. That economic risk can be eliminated by (1) a carbon tax on fossil carbon dioxide emissions and/or (2) a government guarantee of a minimum price per barrel of cellulosic hydrocarbon biofuels. The government would provide payments for hydrocarbon biofuels only if crude oil prices went below some agreed upon price per barrel.

This strategy requires changes in agriculture and modifications to the big oil refineries but it does not require changing the entire U.S. economy.

...

Some biofuels plants are producing bio-crudes that are shipped to large refineries where they are blended with crude oils to be refined. If risk were mitigated by appropriate legislation, the existing transition would speed up dramatically.

...

References

W. Forsberg, “What is the Long-Term Demand for Liquid Hydrocarbon Fuels and Feedstocks?” Applied Energy, 341, 121104 (1 July 2023) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121104
W. Forsberg and B. Dale, “Can large integrated refineries replace all crude oil with cellulosic feedstocks for drop-in hydrocarbon biofuels?”, Hydrocarbon Processing, January 2023. Can large integrated refineries replace all crude oil with cellulosic feedstocks for drop-in hydrocarbon biofuels? (hydrocarbonprocessing.com)
W. Forsberg and B. Dale, Can a Nuclear-Assisted Biofuels System Enable Liquid Biofuels as the Economic Low-carbon Replacement for All Liquid Fossil Fuels and Hydrocarbon Feedstocks and Enable Negative Carbon Emissions?, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT-NES-TR-023. April 2022. https://canes.mit.edu/download-a-report
C. W. Forsberg, C. W, B. E. Dale, D. S. Jones, T. Hossain, A.R.C. Morais and L. M. Wendt, “Replacing Liquid Fossil Fuels and Hydrocarbon Chemical Feedstocks with Liquid Biofuels from Large-Scale Nuclear Biorefineries”, Applied Energy, 298, 117525, 15 September 2021. Replacing liquid fossil fuels and hydrocarbon chemical feedstocks with liquid biofuels from large-scale nuclear biorefineries – ScienceDirect
C. Forsberg, “Addressing the Low-Carbon Million Gigawatt-Hour Energy Storage Challenge“, The Electricity Journal,December 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tej.2021.107042
R. C. Charette, “The EV Transition Explained”, IEEE Spectrum.https://spectrum.ieee.org/files/52329/The%20EV%20Transition.final.pdf
J. Winters, “By the Numbers: Electric Vehicles Require Imported Numbers”, Mechanical Engineering (March 2023)Infographic: Electric Vehicles Need Imported Minerals – ASME
International Energy Agency, The Role of Critical Materials in Clean Energy Transitions, March 2022
X. Chen et. al., Decoding China’s Energy Transition, Peking University Institute of Energy, March 2023
D. Reihter, J. Brown and D. Fedor, 2017. Derisking Decarbonization: Making Green Energy Investments Blue Chip, Stanford University. 2017. https://www-cdn.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/stanfordcleanenergyfinanceframingdoc10-31_final.pdf

Electric vehicles have an efficiency problem (Axios)

Excerpt from Axios: EVs are extraordinarily heavy, and the larger their batteries, the heavier they become. That makes them more dangerous, increases pollution, minimizes decarbonization, and locks in a geopolitically fraught reliance on China.

The big picture: Hybrid vehicles that are electric most of the time but can fall back to an internal-combustion engine when needed are a much more efficient use of battery resources.

By the numbers: Toyota has what it calls the 1:6:90 rule. Its scientists have calculated that the amount of raw material needed to make a long-range EV could instead be used to make six plug-in electric hybrid vehicles or 90 hybrid vehicles.
"The overall carbon reduction of those 90 hybrids over their lifetimes is 37 times as much as as single battery EV," they write.

Between the lines: Heavy EVs might not have tailpipe emissions, but they still cause pollution, from eroding tires, road dust and brakes.

They're also significantly more lethal when they collide with pedestrians or cyclists.

The bottom line: "Government policy should match a limited battery supply to where it can have the maximum impact for consumers and the environment," writes auto journalist Edward Niedermeyer. That means a lot more hybrids and e-bikes — and a lot fewer EVs with 500-mile ranges. READ MORE

Tags

market forces Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) Electric Car/Electric Vehicle (EV) Plug-in Flex Fuel Hybrid Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) ethanol hybrid hybrids electricity price copper lithium nickel manganese cobalt zinc rare earth metal/critical minerals graphite distributed/centralized depots co-products nuclear cellulose cellulosic biofuel Cellulosic biomass cellulosic diesel Cellulosic ethanol cellulosic feedstock pellets pyrolysis hydrogenation oil refineries repurpose oil prices carbon tax carbon cost BioRefineries/Renewable Fuel Production BioChemicals/Renewable Chemicals precursors/biointermediates Pretreatment pipelines hydrogen pipeline energy policy environmental policy Transportation Fuels Policy Sustainability

Comments are closed.