George Stephanopoulos says that I am the key to a Democratic victory in next week's mid-term elections. Okay, that's not exactly what he says. He says that independent voters, whose turn out is traditionally low on mid-term election years are key. Therefore as a "registered independent" I claim the right to feel self-important, for a minute or two at least. You see, I have already voted. I took my own advice and voted early. As I mentioned recently I supported some Democratic Party candidates in state elections, so just in case it might be any help at all, I will mention again that they were Debra Boelhke and Sue Dolphin. Although Sue does not appear to have a web presence of her own, Debra's recommendation was enough to convince me. Well, okay, I grant that there were other factors.

Before I forget, however, I owe you all an apology. A prior column of mine was fraught with technical problems as I tried to post it, which distracted me from the fact that in spite of the title being "Cellulosic Biomass Ethanol Versus Thermal Depolymerization Biodiesel", (American Chronicle, Oct. 16, 2006) I repeatedly called it "cellulosic methanol" within the body of the column. Since Ron Berg of Platts was kind enough to write to me to illuminate my oversight, the least I can do is mention that his company, an information publisher which is a division of McGraw Hill, is hosting the Platts Cellulosic Ethanol Conference to be held October 31-November 1 , 2006, at the W Chicago City Center in Chicago, IL. That's short notice, I realize, but better late than never, presumably. If I had my choice this is not the way I would have liked to come to the attention of the company that publishes, "BusinessWeek".

As I pointed out to Ron, in my reply email, though, I am more careful in checking the labels on my bottles when making martinis. Which reminds me that my interest in ethanol goes back to high school where, while taking Grade 13 Chemistry, my teacher allowed my graduation project to be to distill some rum. (Yes, I said, "Grade 13" and that's no typo. I attended most of my high school in the Canadian province of Ontario which has 13 school grades.) I thought I was being rather clever, as well as a bit risqué. My classmate, who was "head boy" of the school at the time, outdid me. He convinced our teacher to allow him to order a gallon of industrial grade pure ethanol, which he used in his experiment to attempt to show that … okay, frankly I wasn't all that interested in the purpose of his experiment, I just remember that it was mighty mild tasting for the kick it packed. That was the closest I ever came to drinking moonshine, as far as I know.

Speaking of "moonshine" reminds me that federal regulations looming have energy producers a little nervous. Large electric power companies are living in fear of federal limits on carbon emissions. Unfortunately this is pushing them into the arms of nuclear energy choices. As I pointed out last week, I don't know exactly how "carbon friendly" the overall production of enriched nuclear fuels is, but I am certainly not pleased with the "let's bury it and worry about it in a few centuries" approach to spent fuel rod handling. Where they should be turning is probably toward hydrogen. What? Is he crazy? Yes, absolutely. The problem is, that if you want zero carbon emissions, the quick route is to burn hydrogen, so that your only outputs are water and water vapor. There's only one snag in the idea of producing electricity from hydrogen. You can't exceed the law of 100% efficiency. You can't produce hydrogen by electrolysis, separating the hydrogen from the oxygen in water, then "burning" the constituent gases to produce more energy than it took to separate them in the first place.

You can, however generate hydrogen from natural gas. In this way, unfortunately, though, the carbon being released by this process is again being released from geological lockup (in effect, since it is part of the "petroleum" spectrum of energy sources). The encouraging news is that the same company that is the leader in this field, Hyradix, is now exploring using ethanol as source material. Particularly with the promise of cheap and abundant "on-site" feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol makes this an exciting development. France's Institut Francais de Petrole is partnering in this research. References to this process, pioneered several years ago, appear in Science magazine in their February, 2004 edition (as footnoted in the greencarcongress.com article linked above). The basic device used was an automobile fuel injector, and the process is referred to as ATR (Autothermal Reforming) because some of the gas produced is used to fuel the heat needed to run the process which uses, "by catalytic partial oxidation, with a residence time on rhodium-ceria catalysts of <10 milliseconds," according to Science magazine.

Interestingly, the "another" form of catalyzed conversion for this process is typically steam driven, Steam Methane Reforming, (aka., SMR) where steam provides both heat and pressure. The use of high pressure, high temperature steam (800 degrees Fahrenheit) is also a key step in Changing World Technologies "anything" (hydrocarbon-based) to bio-diesel process, now commonly known as Thermal depolymerization.

The convergence continues.

Love

Stafford "Doc" Williamson