The Two Paths of Automotive Research Cellulosic Ethanol and Lithium-Ion Batteries

September 10, 2006 – Vol.11 No.25

THE TWO PATHS OF AUTOMOTIVE RESEARCH:CELLULOSIC ETHANOL AND LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES.WHICH WILL PREVAIL?

Right now there appear to be two directions green vehicle research is headed. One is toward the development of cellulosic ethanol - ethanol made from everything from wood chips to grass clippings - as replacement for gasoline in conventional cars. The other path is toward better battery technology specifically with lithium-ion batteries to be used in hybrid, plug-in hybrid or electric vehicles.

Will one technology beat the other in the race for cleaner vehicles for tomorrow? Or will the technologies simply converge and complement each other?

Since cellulosic ethanol could be derived from nearly free plant waste or cheaply grown fuel crops (such as switch grass) it seems likely that it will be less expensive to produce than today’s ethanol made from corn or sugar cane.

Further conventional gasoline engines need only minor and inexpensive conversions to allow them to run on ethanol. Those two attributes alone should should give cellulosic an edge.

But ethanol will always have less energy content than gasoline. More needs to be burned for the same number of miles driven. Further, to substantially switch from gasoline to the carbon-neutral fuel, significant investment would be needed to produce the quantities required. Because of that lower energy content the quantity of ethanol produced would eventually be greater than gasoline, including the growth in consumption. Still then would there be enough bio - feedstock available for production?

Further, ethanol fueled cars still have tailpipe emissions, thus cause air pollution, though less than gasoline fueled cars.

For now, lithium-ion batteries, to be considered for the next generation of electric, hybrid vehicles and the eventually the first generation of plug-in hybrids, are expensive. (The Volvo 3CC concept electric car required 3000 AA-size lithium-ion cells. The street price today is about $2 per cell. Do the math.)

Yet hybrid vehicles use the existing fueling infrastructure. Plug-in hybrids use the existing plus an occasional grid connection. And pure electrics use only the grid or a distributed energy source. The industrial world is already wired, so the additional investment needed to connect the wired world to cars is minimal. Further electric and plug-in hybrid cars can use energy from a variety of sources: coal, nuclear, natural gas, or oil-fired power plants as well as solar, wind, geothermal, landfill gas, even powerplants fueled by the same carbon neutral feedstocks used to make cellulosic ethanol. They can also utilize power generated overnight but not sold.

Of course lithium-ion electric vehicles are emission free. The related emissions, if any, are from the source of electricity to charge them.

On both fronts there have been major announcements.

The Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE) and Honda have jointly developed a new technology to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass including inedible leaves and stalks of plants, such as rice straw.

Apparently one of the problems in the development of cellulosic ethanol is the formation of fermentation inhibitors formed primarily during the process of separating cellulose from biomass. Those inhibitors interfere with the function of microorganisms that convert sugar into alcohol thus reduce ethanol production.

RITE, which is world renowned for its development of a bio-process for chemical commodities production utilizing microorganisms, has developed with Honda a process utilizing a RITE strain of microorganism that substantially reduces the harmful influence of fermentation inhibitors and, in turn, yields more ethanol. The process can also be used to make other products such as automotive materials made from biomass.

The partnership will now research methods for mass production that will include energy conservation and energy recovery processes to further reduce the carbon footprint associated with production.

On the lithium-ion front Altair Nanotechnologies has announced it will soon ship its first NanoSafe (TM) battery and has been delivering a barrage of information about its new lithium-ion battery design.

The company says NanoSafe can be recharged to an 80 percent level in about a minute. It too can be recharged up to 9000 times retaining 85 percent charge capacity. (With daily recharging in an electric vehicle the battery pack would last up to 25 years.)

The company also says that its battery is power-packed for its weight and size. Altairnano laboratory measurements indicate power density as high as 4000 watts per kilogram and over 5000 watts per liter, up from about 1000 watts per kilogram for conventional designs.

The company also says NanoSafe is, well, safe. It won’t explode like other designs since the company replaces graphite, which can lead to explosion, with nano-titanate material as the negative electrode. The possibility of explosion has been a major concern of lithium-ion batteries.

Altairnano is delivering its first NanoSafe battery in September to Phoenix Motorcars for incorporation into a freeway-capable electric sedan. The company will also be working with Alcoa's AFL Automotive division to develop a battery pack for medium-duty hybrid trucks.

NanoSafe battery technology will be demonstrated at the California Air Resources Board Zero Emission Vehicles meeting in Sacramento, September 25 -27, 2006.

Instead of running along two different paths the two technologies - cellulosic ethanol and lithium-ion batteries - could meet in ethanol fuel burning plug-in hybrids that have zero vehicle emissions some of the time but are able to use a carbon neutral fuel for ultra long trips or where there is no grid connection.

Visit Altair Nanotechnologies at http://www.altairnano.com/ and Honda World News at http://world.honda.com/worldnews/