biofuels: promise and problems

The October 2007 issue of National Geographic includes an informative article on biofuels. A couple points come to mind. If you compare the fossil fuel energy used to make the fuel with the energy that is released by burning it, corn ethanol is not a very efficient way to go: for each unit of energy required to create the ethanol, you get 1.3 units of energy by burning it. Contrast that with ethanol derived from sugar cane: for each input unit you get 8 output units of energy. (Sugarcane ethanol is widely used in Brazil. For us, the cost would be higher since it would have to be shipped to North America). (Bourne, 2007)

Corn ethanol: 1:1.3
Sugarcane ethanol: 1:8
Biodiesel: 1:2.5 (make from soy or canola)
Cellulose-derived ethanol: 1: (anywhere from 2 to 36)

Another factor to consider is greenhouse gas emissions that result during production and use of various fuels. The article compares several alternative fuels to gasoline:

Corn ethanol: 22% less
Sugarcane ethanol: 56% less
Biodiesel: 68% less
Cellulose-derived ethanol: 91% less (however, this is still in experimental stages)

The downside of biofuels is that they consume either food crops (corn, soy, etc.) or take up the land that could otherwise be used to grow food crops. So, there's a fuel-food nexus that must be carefully managed.

Some researchers are evaluating using the stalks of food crops as a fuel source. The issue here is how to avoid degrading the soil, since the stalks are typically tilled back into the ground providing nutrition for the soil and future crops. How much of the plant material can be removed without harming soil fertility? (Wilhelm, 2004)

Another possible fuel source that is being researched? Algae. If somebody can figure out how to harvest this energy source it has several potential advantages. "Algae not only reduce a plant's global warming gases, but also devour other pollutants. . . . Best of all, algae in the right conditions can double in mass within hours. While each acre of corn produces around 300 gallons of ethanol a year and an acre of soybeans around 60 gallons of diodiesel, each acre of algae theoretically can churn out more than 5,000 gallons of biofuel each year." (Bourne, 2007, p57)

The potential of algae is also exciting from a water reuse point of view. It will grow in wastewater and in the process will also partially clean the water. (Hoffman, J P, 1998)



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Biofuels: Boon or Boondoggle? National Geographic. Bourne, Jr., J K. October, 2007. pp38-59.

Wastewater treatment with suspended and nonsuspended algae. Journal of Phycology [J. Phycol.]. Hoffmann, J P. Vol. 34, no. 5, pp. 757-763. Oct 1998.

Crop and Soil Productivity Response to Corn Residue Removal, A Literature Review. Published in Agron. W. W. Wilhelm, W W, Johnson, J M F, Hatfield, J L, Voorhees, W B and Lindene, D R. J. 96:1-17 (2004).

water footprint

Here's an interesting site. Check it out:

http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home

"People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint of an individual, business or nation is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual, business or nation."

This website is maintained by the University of Twente in collaboration with the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands.

can your drinking water be too clean?

We're all familiar with how vaccines work: you get a small dose of a nasty virus or other pathogen, your body works out how to fight it, and then you're pretty much protected against coming down with the illness that the virus causes.

This semester, as part of the Water Resources Program at UNM, I am studying water reuse with Dr. Bruce Thomson. He assigned us an article by his colleague, Floyd J. Frost. Dr. Frost hypothesized that exposure to small doses of some pathogens in drinking water can actually provide a protective immunity against that particular disease.

Cryptosporidium is a persistent water borne protozoan that can cause serious gastrointestinal illness, even death. There have been a sufficient number of outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis in the U.S. in the last 15 years, that the EPA has published new rules under the Safe Drinking Water Act requiring water utilities to specifically implement treatment methods to remove this organism.

In response to this concern, Floyd developed a study to test whether people who are exposed to small doses of Cryptosporidium oocysts on a regular basis might be less susceptible to the gastrointestinal distress caused by a Cryptosporidium infection.

He studied people who got their drinking water from a good quality surface source. He tracked episodes of gastrointestinal illness among the sample populations and correlated those with levels of two antigens believed to be produced by the human body in response to Cryptosporidium. He found that those exposed to subclinical doses of Crypto as evidenced by moderately high levels of the antigens experienced significantly less outbreaks of gastrointestinal distress episodes.

More research is needed to fully understand what is happening. The study suggests that "a moderately strong serological response to a Cryptosporidium antigen group is related to a lower risk of enteric illness." (pp 812-813) The implication is that "[i]f future improvements in water treatment reduce serological responses for users of surface water, then the risk of cryptosporidiosis will likely increase. Thus, reducing low-dose waterborne exposures may increase rather than reduce the risks of diarrheal and gastrointestinal illnesses." (p813)

Obviously, this raises some difficult questions for those responsible for developing policy on water treatment standards. Can your drinking water be too clean?


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Special thanks to Dr. Bruce Thomson for his review and comments on this post. LRK.


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Floyd J. Frost, Melissa Roberts,Twila R. Kunde, Gunther Craun, Kristine Tollestrup, Lucy Harter, and Tim Muller. How Clean Must Our Drinking Water Be: The Importance of Protective Immunity. The Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2005. 191:809-14.

water as symbol

"Tell me the weight of a snowflake," a coal mouse asked a wild dove.

"Nothing more than nothing," was the answer.

"In that case I must tell you a marvelous story," the coal mouse said. "I sat on a branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow--not heavily, not in a giant blizzard, no, just like in a dream without any violence. Since I didn't have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch--nothing more than nothing, as you say--the branch broke off."

Have said that, the coal mouse went on its way. The dove, since Noah's time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while and finally said to herself: "Perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking for peace to come about in the world."

attributed to Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in Healing the Purpose of Your Life, p59.

purdue process generates hydrogen from aluminum alloy

Water added to aluminum mixed with Gallium can produce hydrogen on demand. As a catalyst, the Gallium is not consumed. The oxidized aluminum can be recycled. The process is close to being cost competitive with petrol.

This is from: pesn.com/2007/05/17/9500471_Hydrogen_via_Aluminum_Gallium

A Purdue University engineer has developed a method that uses an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water for running fuel cells or internal combustion engines. The technique could be used to replace gasoline, though it is not quite cost-competitive yet.

This reaction splits the oxygen and hydrogen contained in water, releasing hydrogen in the process.

Woodall discovered that liquid alloys of aluminum and gallium spontaneously produce hydrogen if mixed with water…

The aluminum could be produced at competitive prices if the recycling process were carried out with electricity generated by a nuclear power plant or windmills. Because the electricity would not need to be distributed on the power grid, it would be less costly than power produced by plants connected to the grid, and the generators could be located in remote locations, which would be particularly important for a nuclear reactor to ease political and social concerns, Woodall said.

Read the details at www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

* * *
Of course, if this were to become widely used, it would have implications for water supply.

Leslie

climate connections

In case you missed it, today NPR began the first in a year-long series on global climate change, called "Climate Connections." It promises to be an effective forum for explaining in layman's terms how climate change is happening and what might be the effects.

To read about the series, http://www.npr.org/about/press/2007/042707.climate.html

To view the video and voice track of today's spot, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9943298.

I can't quite tell from the website how often they will be featuring this. The NPR site calls it a "monthly series" so maybe just once a month. Of course, we'd love it if it were at least weekly . . .

high water

Here's a poem by David Shumate that I really enjoy. It makes one think of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, even though it's not about that particular flood.

It's hard to believe, but at one point the water rose to this level. No one had seen anything like it. People on rooftops. Cows and coffins floating through the streets. Prisoners carrying invalids from their rooms. The barkeeper consoling the preacher. A coon hound who showed up a month later forty miles downstream. And all that mud it left behind. You never forget times like those. They become part of who you are. You describe them to your grandchildren. But they think it's just another tale in which animals talk and people live forever. I know it's not the kind of thing you ought to say . . . But I wouldn't mind seeing another good flood before I die. It's been dry for decades. Next time I think I'll just let go and drift downstream and see where I end up.

energy requires water; water requires energy

So far, I have not directly addressed the relationship between energy and water, which is the subject of this blog. This weekend I was reading Energy Demands on Water Resources, Report to Congress on the Interdependency of Energy and Water (US Department of Energy, December 2006).

"Water is an integral element of energy resource development and utilization. It is used in energy-resource extraction, refining and processing, and transportation. Water is also an integral part of electric-power generation. It is used directly in hydroelectric generation and is also used extensively for cooling and emissions scrubbing in thermoelectric generation. For example, in calendar year 2000, thermoelectric power generation accounted for 39 percent of all freshwater withdrawals in the U.S., roughly equivalent to water withdrawals for irrigated agriculture . . . " (p9)

Later, "A 2003 General Accounting Office study showed that most state water managers expect either local or regioal water shortages within the next 10 years under average climate conditions (GAO, 2003). Under drought conditions, even more severe water shortages are expected." (p10) Meanwhile, "The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects, . . . the U.S. population to grow by about 70 million in the next 25 years and electricity demand to grow by approximately 50 percent (EIA, 2006). . . . Much of this growth is expected to occur in the Southeast, Southwest, and Far West, where water is already in limited supply." (p10)

It is important to note that unlike irrigated agriculture which consumes roughly 50% of the water "withdrawn" for that purpose, thermoelectric power plants often return almost 100% of the "withdrawn" water after it is used. However, the quality of the water and its increased temperature can have negative impacts on the plant and animal life living in the water.

To offset the increased demand on both energy and water resources, managers may be able to take advantage of efficiencies between the two with careful planning. New technologies are being developed that hold promise of at least partially ameliorating the problem.

At present, energy and water resource planning are often done separately. This presents an important systemic problem. If resource managers take into account the interrelated needs for both resources, they will be able to take advantage of efficiencies in developing both. For example, ". . . significant improvements in energy and water conservation can often be realized through implementation of innovative processes or technologies, colocation of energy and water facilities, or improvements to energy and water infrastructures." (p49)

of pumps and pressure

Those aquifers that we are so assiduously mining in the West: why weren't they exhausted long ago? After all, surface waters in New Mexico have been fully appropriated since at least 1848.
The answer lies in well technology. With the development of more powerful pumping technology, the deeper waters became accessible. This has led to a temporary, illusory increase in water supply.

It also explains why the water situation in Roswell, New Mexico in the early part of the 20th century was so noteworthy. The deep aquifer there is a special kind, an artesian aquifer. This means that there is so much pressure on the water in the aquifer, that when you drill a well into it, the pressure sends the water shooting skyward. In Roswell a pump wasn't necessary. Mother Nature would pump the water for you.

Unfortunately for the people living along the Pecos River, excessive mining of the shallow and deeper groundwater led to a lowering of the pressure in the aquifer, a lowering of the water table, and along with it, the Pecos River. This reduced the amount of water available to downstream users in Carlsbad and also Texas and created all sorts of water management problems, including a huge lawsuit between Texas and New Mexico.

blogoworld connections of interest

Here are a couple related blogs that may interest readers of H2OE:

John Fleck of the Albuquerque Journal blogs New Mexico Science: A reporter's notebook about science and technology. http://www.abqjournal.com/abqnews/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2429&&Itemid=31

and

Michael Campana, who is now Director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University blogs WaterWired!
http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/

Enjoy!

salinity: irrigation and steaming brine

I've been reading Water, the Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, by Marq de Villiers (c2000, ISBN0-618-03009-3).

In the chapter on irrigation, de Villiers discusses the growing salinity of the soil and indicates that the American Southwest is an area vulnerable to saline degradation. "It is where irrigation is intensive, the soils naturally poor, and the drainage either inadequate or nonexistent that the most serious problems will occur. The American West . . . is the most notorious example." (p143) In the Imperial Valley in California this is beginning to render the farmland unusable.

Then he mentions the geothermal aquifer beneath the Imperial Valley:

"Water temperatures in the huge underground pool rise as high as 280C. Researchers are developing methods to use the steaming brine to generate electrical power. They believe it is feasible that the clean wastewater produced by a power plant could be used to dilute the salty water in the fields." (p140)

The above is an example of how to take advantage of the energy-water nexus.

Later, he talks about methods for preventing saline buildup in the soil:

"But what can be done? More efficient irrigation would help -- the large-scale application of the methods my grandfather had worked out intuitively. The Israelis, always searching for better techniques, have improved efficiencies sixfold by using laser technology to get fields absolutely level, and by reusing surplus water from one crop on other, more salt-resistant crops. Israeli water engineers have taken "water stress management" of crops to a high art, and water only when necessary." (p144)

Perhaps this is incentive for Southwest American farmers to invest in laser-levelling, even though it may reduce the amount of water they put to beneficial use, it can also preserve their soils so they remain productive over a longer time-frame.

ogallala: she poured out her own

Julene Bair visits her family's now defunct farm and sees the blade of the windmill that used to pump their well lying on the ground. She reflects on her family's use of water from the Ogallala aquifer, its declining water levels, and the economy we have built upon the semi-arid land. She notes that Ogallala means something like "She poured out her own," an apt name for an aquifer that is being mined. She writes,

"Without a spiritual tradition that recognizes the balance of nature and holds it sacred, our relationship to the land and its bounty is like a child's in a candy store with no adult present to restrain us from gorging. We don't identify ourselves as natives of ecosystems bounded by natural limits of land and climate but as citizens of countries, states, and counties, and as owners of farms, places demarcated by lines on maps. We conduct ourselves within an economy that depends on the depletion and degradation of the real things--plants, animals, soils, air, water--that sustain us." (p.90)

From "She Poured Out Her Own," Julene Bair, Home Land, Ranching and a West that Works, Laura Pritchett, Richard L. Knight, and Jeff Lee, eds.

old questions

acequia riddles

In his article "Water--New Mexico's Delicate Balance" (New Mexico Magazine, May 1983), G. Emlen Hall recounts a riddle that is posed annually in some of the aceuqias in northen New Mexico. (Professor Hall will be teaching my Water Law class at UNM this semester, by the way).

"En que es suspendido este mundo?"
"De voluntad de Dios."
"Y en que es suspendido nuestro pueblo?"
"Del rio."

"What does the world hang from?"
"It hangs (by a string) from the will of God."
"And what does our village hang from?"
"The river."

Would that we all took part in this annual ritual. Perhaps we New Mexicans would thereby cultivate a better appreciation of the importance of water to our existence.

el mar lejano

I promised you not just the dry factual details and the broad stroke visions of the water wonks. I promised you also the perspectives of art, literature, religion. Today, a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez.

El mar lejano

La fuente aleja su cantata.
Despiertan todos los caminos . . .
!Mar de la aurora, mar de plata;
que limpio estas entre los pinos!
Viento del Sur, ?vienes sonoro
de soles? Ciegan los caminos . . .
!Mar de la siesta, mar de oro;
que alegre estas sobre los pinos!
Dice el yerdon no se que cosa . . .
Mi alma se va por los caminos . . .
!Mar de la tarde, mar de rosa;
que dulce estas entre los pinos!

I apologize for the lack of proper punctuation, and also for the informality of the following spontaneous translation.

The distant sea

The fountain sings distantly.
All the roads awaken . . .
Dawn sea, silver sea;
how clean you are among the pine trees!
South Wind: do you breathe the sound
of the sun? The roads are blinded . . .
Siesta sea, golden sea;
how joyful you are among the pine trees!
The yerdon bird calls . . .
My soul wanders over the highways . . .
Evening sea, pink sea;
how sweet you are among the pine trees!

water wars

Last weekend I read Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst (2002, ISBN 1-57322-995-4) by Diane Raines Ward. I thought she did a great job of touching on the major water issues in many parts of the world, including India, Australia, the Euphrates (Turkey-Syria-Iraq), Holland, and the American Southwest.

Two things were of particular interest to me. She devoted a lengthy section to Australia's Murray-Darling Commission and its work providing both water and hydro power on the Snowy River basin. This was a situation where the powers-that-be approached the problems from a whole watershed perspective.

The other thing she talked about was the potential for low-head micro-hydro power, i.e. putting smallish hydrelectric generators on smaller stream and dams as an alternative to massive damming projects. She talked about the importance of evaluating the specific conditions on a case by case basis to determine the most effective overall approach--something that makes a whole lot of sense to me.