The possible impact of the Icelandic volcanoes on Energy Production

While it is early in the morning in Europe the following picture shows the impact of the volcano in Iceland on European air traffic if you compare Northern (none) and Southern (60) European flights. The blue crosses are airports. The volcano has already had a stunning impact on Europe, although articles about it are already dropping below the lead headlines. There is a thought that the plume may last another five days, and even though the cloud is largely invisible to those who are being impacted by it, the damage by neglecting these precautions could be severe. And given that the British election is on May 6th the impact of a sustained eruption on the debates in the UK, and the result may go beyond just limiting the travel of those who would campaign, to become more dominant with the length of the flight curtailments and the responses to help resolve what are likely to be growing transportation problems.

Status of flights over Europe (flight radar 24).

UPDATE The presence of sulphur dioxide is already obvious to local residents, though there don't appear to be any concerns over its toxicity. And parts of Britain may get some planes back in the air by this evening or tomorrow. I will repeat information on toxicity

WITH ACUTE EXPOSURE, 5 PPM CAUSES DRYNESS OF NOSE & THROAT AND A MEASUREABLE INCR IN RESISTANCE TO BRONCHIAL AIR FLOW; 6 TO 8 PPM CAUSES A DECR IN TIDAL RESP VOLUME. SNEEZING, COUGH & EYE IRRITATION OCCUR AT 10 PPM; 20 PPM CAUSED BRONCHOSPASM; 50 PPM CAUSES EXTREME DISCOMFORT BUT NO INJURY IN LESS THAN A 30-MIN EXPOSURE ... 1000 PPM CAUSES DEATH IN FROM 10 MIN TO SEVERAL HR BY RESP DEPRESSION.

The larger eruptions of Katla, have ejected up to 1.5 x 10^9 cu m of material with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of up to 5. For comparison Mt Pinatubo in 1991 ejected 1.1 x 10^10 cu.m. with a VEI of 6.

The Times has an interesting graphic that shows some of the concerns and I am going to use a bit of it to show that the problem may be a little bigger than even the article suggests.

To begin with recognize that Iceland is at the intersection of different plates that together form the shell of the planet. Whereas in some parts of the world these plates are pushing together and riding over each other, in this part of the world they are tending more to separate, so that the magma, on which the plates ride, can make its way up along the joint planes and erupt at the surface.

Map of Iceland showing major volcanoes (The Times of London)


Now what the picture is concerned about is that generally when Eyjaflallajokull erupts so does Kalta, which is right next door. But Katla is a larger system and the eruption is generally much more severe.

Unfortunately what has also to be considered is that there are a whole line of craters, not shown on this map, between Katla and Vatnajokull, which are also a worry. Laki, an even greater threat than Katla, lies along this line.

Iceland's Laki volcano erupted in 1783, freeing gases that turned into smog. The smog floated across the Jet Stream, changing weather patterns. Many died from gas poisoning in the British Isles. Crop production fell in western Europe. Famine spread. . . . . . .

The winter of 1784 was also one of the longest and coldest on record in North America. New England reported a record stretch of below-zero temperatures and New Jersey reported record snow accumulation. The Mississippi River also reportedly froze in New Orleans.

It is at the orange flag in this picture.

(Google Earth)
There is a line of eruption calderas from Katla up to Laki, which is up around Skaftareldar.

Remember that the 3.5 earthquake I wrote about yesterday lies beyond Laki on the line from Eyjaflallajokull, and was centered further north in the Vatnajokull. Some have blamed the weather created by the eight-month eruption of Laki as a possible contributory cause to the French Revolution.

An eruption of that length, ejecting as much material as it may into the atmosphere, would have consequences that go beyond just the ability to survive the noxious gaseous clouds.

The impact of the dust is shown in this picture from the British Met Office, which shows that plume reaching down past Scotland:

Dust cloud passing Scotland (Met Office)

And the consequent distribution at different levels of the atmosphere.

High and low level ash distribution (Met Office via the Guardian)
The agriculture of Europe would be damaged by a prolonged eruption with this distribution, and with it the possible production of biodiesel. Consider that the growth of rapeseed (canola) around the world has been steadily rising over the past few years.


With European countries sitting just behind the leaders.


Somewhere over 4 million metric tons of the crop currently goes to producing biodiesel, mainly in Europe. (Heading up towards 100,000 bd). Losing a year of that crop (and large scale volcanic activity can have an impact for over four years on the climate and the ground chemistry), particularly given the current possible approach of the peaking of conventional oil production, could have an unanticipated impact on overall liquid fuel availability and price.

Unfortunately rapeseed is only one of the crops that will be effected and the significant drop in crop yields does not appear to be getting much attention yet.

Beyond that, there should be a little concern for the wind turbines that are now dotted over the horizon. The concern is with the speed at which the tips travel through the air. The air, that looks clean, will contain small particles of very sharp glass and other volcanic ejecta, that are the primary cause for the grounding of aircraft across Europe. While the aircraft can see very sudden loss in engine power, because of the high speeds with which they encounter the clouds, and the volumes of debris sucked into engines that then fail. (There are also video explanations)

Wind wing tip speeds have been projected to be in the range from 264 ft/sec to 326 ft/sec. At impact speeds over 120 ft/sec the particles from the eruption will start to erode the blades of the turbine. If the eruption continues for weeks, and the turbines rotate in that atmosphere (which looks clear to normal vision) then they will lose surface quality, and perhaps the particles will enter into the generators (as they do on aircraft) doing significant damage.

Thus, beyond the initial inconvenience of the loss of a way to fly (bearing in mind I am supposed to fly to Europe myself soon), there are the longer concerns over both the crops this summer and for the next four, and for the longer term health of the turbines. All in all it is a reminder that there is never a time that Nature, with a little nudge, cannot remind us of the risks of complacency. . (And I suspect that it will not be long before the usual climate change advocates will be dominating the papers with a new set of headlines to get them back on the bandwagon)

While DoE is complacent, DoD worries about Peak Oil

Last Sunday the Guardian carried a review of a recent report by the United States Joint Forces Command in which, hidden on page 29, lies the statement:

By 2012, surplus oil production could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 mbd.

The report bases this conclusion, in part, on the poor discovery rate that has been achieved in finding new oilfields to replace those that are beginning to run out of oil. Looking at the alternative sources of energy, it is not convinced that they provide a viable short-term alternative, given the rising levels of capital cost required for their installation at considerable scale, and thus notes and concludes that:

A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. . . . . .Fossil fuels will very likely remain the predominant energy source going forward.

It also notes that if the energy problems drive the world into another Depression, that this might lead, as it has in the past, to the rise of totalitarian regimes that sought prosperity by “ruthless conquest.”

The caveat that I have between these two statements is that, grim as they are, they don’t really recognize the totality of the problem. Simplistically energy has two major uses, one is the creation of electric power, and the other is to provide the motive fuels for transportation. The two uses are disparate, and while oil can be used to generate power, in large measure this has been left to coal and natural gas, while oil has been transformed into the various liquids that power cars, trains and aircraft. At the moment there is not a significant volume of world transport that uses coal and natural gas to drive their vehicles. Nor realistically, apart from the campaign by Boone Pickens, is there much move to change the situation.


As some influential parties in Britain perhaps begin to understand that world oil supplies are finite, and beginning to run short, this does not yet appear to affect the Departments either in the UK or the US whose job it is to be concerned and to find ways of answering the problem.

Gail Tverberg’s review of Secretary Chu’s remarks at the Energy Conference in Washington last week, identified that there is no concern in the Department of Energy over coming shortages, and thus the Department can:
a) rely on the market to solve any problems
b) continue to be more concerned about addressing the climate change issue and
c) invest in longer term research which might provide answers in a decade or so.

The Department of Defense does not live in such a world. And it has heard rumblings of concern from earlier reports by the JASON group about rising costs, given that the Department can purchase up to 101 million barrels of fuel a year, and 145 million barrels of total petroleum products as noted by a recent Congressional Research Service Report. When the price of fuel rises, then the officers in charge have to re-adjust their budgets to cope, sometimes at the cost of the overall objectives. New technologies take years, even decades, to implement, and thus answers cannot be left to “blue sky” thinking alone. And older technologies may not be able to muster enough of an answer to meet the demand. I have seen nothing that yet convinces me that the world will be able to produce more than 90 mbd of crude oil and associated fossil liquids. Thus the projection that the world will need over 118 mbd by 2030 reinforces the implication that we’d better start looking for serious answers with a lot more intensity than we have to date.

There is at least some signs that people are beginning to pay attention, recognizing that there is a risk that there may not be enough jet fuel, the Air Force has begun to check out new fuel sources. Next week is Earth Week, and the Green Hornet, an F/A-18 Super Hornet, will be flown with a mixture of 50% regular fuel and 50% biofuel from camelina. The Navy is intent on moving the program forward.

The 'Green Hornet' initiative supports Mabus' energy reform targets, which will increase warfighting capability by reducing reliance on fossil fuels from unstable locations and reducing volatility associated with long fuel supply transport lines. The secretary's energy reform targets include:

- By 2016, the Navy will sail a "Great Green Fleet" composed of nuclear ships, surface combatants with hybrid electric power systems using biofuel and aircraft flying on only biofuels.

- By 2020, at least half of the DoN's shore-based energy requirements will come from alternative sources and half of total DoN energy consumption will come from alternative sources.

"[The flight] will demonstrate that our systems can work on biofuel," Mabus said in his remarks at a recent energy forum at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md. "After it is successful, and we are absolutely confident that it will be; we will move to expand biofuel testing to our marine gas turbine engines and to the engines of our tactical vehicles."

The problem may be in ensuring an adequate supply. As I noted in the earlier review of camelina, it is not getting rave reviews from the farmers that will have to grow it, nor from the State Agricultural Departments that must approve farmers growing either it or canola.

Oregon officials in 2005 restricted canola-for-oil production in the valley to protect the valley's high-value vegetable seed crops. Officials recently announced they are going to renew the prohibitions.
"I would like to grow canola, but the state interferes with that, too," Van Leeuwen said.

Fears are canola will attract insect pests common to canola and brassica crops and that canola will cross pollinate with cauliflower and broccoli, lowering seed purity and eventually driving vegetable seed contractors out of the valley.

There has, however, been a recent MOU between the UDSA and Navy and the Commercial Airlines Alternate Fuels Initiative to examine the potential of camelina as a crop, though there are already some concerns

Preliminary results from Sidney, Mont., suggest that current camelina varieties use about as much water as spring wheat, so growers would still need to leave land fallow in alternate years to build up water or accept possible yield losses for wheat grown in rotation. However, with appropriate breeding and selection for uniform, desirable agronomic and oil quality characteristics, camelina has potential to be a good oil seed crop for planting during fallow years.

In the face of potential problems for any solution, it would appear wiser for those who should be looking to solve this problem to take their collective heads out of the sand and start to be a bit more constructive in their thinking.

Camelina - a relatively new US biodiesel source

So what the heck is Camelina? Until I read that it was used as the greater source of the biofuel component for the test flight of the Japanese Airlines plane in February I must confess I had never heard of it. So since it has obviously got some legs (there was a greater percentage of it than of the algae derived fuel) herewith some thoughts picked up as I wandered through some Web pages, seeking more information.

Camelina in a Montana test plot

Apparently it came to the United States out of Europe, though it started out in Central Asia and the Mediterranean. In Europe much of the early cultivation of the crop has been replaced with canola fields, and it appears to compete with it as a crop. It arrived in Montana in about 2004 where it appealed both to farmers – as a source of omega-3 fatty acids, and to researchers who were looking for a source of biodiesel. The early work suggested that it could be sold more cheaply ($2 a gallon in 2005) than soy-generated biodiesel ($3 a gallon), but a cheaper price is hardly guaranteed to induce farmers to grow it. The oil has historically been used for cooking, with the meal fed to animals.

Recent interest in the plant was spurred by the omega-3 content

there is renewed interest in Camelina for its oil which is rich in the omega-3, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).Ironically, this quality had contributed to its decline, due to difficulties with hydrogenating the highly unsaturated oil for margarine. Linseed (60% ALA) and Camelina (45% ALA) oils are by far the richest plant sources of omega-3.Rapeseed has lower levels of ALA (10%) and sunflower almost none. Camelina oil is more stable than linseed, due to its natural antioxidants, which also have health benefits in their own right.

It is a branch of the mustard family, and has the benefit over canola in that it is resistant to flea beetles, which are a problem for canola in Montana. Like canola it prefers cooler climates;for greatest yields being planted before the 15th – 20th March in Montana with harvesting in Late June to late July. (Similar dates hold for planting and harvesting in Wales.) Thus in 2006 there were somewhere between 7,000 and 20,000 acres planted in Montana, in 2007 this grew to 24,000 acres. It also has the benefit, over canola, of being able to survive drought and spring freezing. Further there is a winter variety that can be grown in areas with mild winters. The report from Montana State describes the oil content as:

Camelina oil has unique properties. The oil contains about 64 percent polyunsaturated, 30 percent monounsaturated, and 6 percent saturated fatty acids. Importantly, camelina oil is very high in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), an omega-3 fatty acid which is essential in human and animal diets and has important implications for human health. The oil also contains high levels of gamma-tocopherol (vitamin E) which confers a reasonable shelf life without the need for special storage conditions.

In comparison to canola (rapeseed) which produces some 127 gal/acre camelina is reported to produce in the 62 to 100 gal/acre range.

Field trials of production showed a wide range of results from 330 to 1700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil content varying between 29 and 40%. There are however a significant number of varieties of the plant and thus tests have been carried out to determine which might yield the better crop given the Montana growing conditions. Optimal seeding rates seem to be in the 6-8 lb/ acre range, because the small size of the seed (400,000 seeds per lb.) apparently make it more difficult to ensure germination and achieve an optimal plant density of around 9 plants/sq. ft. It does apparently grow better when the ground nutrients are supplemented with nitrogen up to levels of 80 lb/acre.

The Montana report ends with the following

At this point there are many more questions than answers when it comes to camelina production and use. Early experience in Montana has shown that with good management, and timely planting, good crop yields can be attained. As a broadleaf cool season crop, camelina could become a good complementary crop to wheat, providing a needed break from cereals in wheat production. Crop rotation is a great way to reduce disease and insect pressure for any crop, and there are few good economic crop rotation options for wheat in Montana. Weed control is a major limitation to camelina production. Currently there are no herbicides registered for use with this crop, which means rescuing a field that becomes infested with weeds is difficult.

However varieties of the plant produces its own herbicide.

Data on crop production is still somewhat limited since the USDA did not start data collection until 2007, and the 2008 report was issued this April. Production in Montana in 2008 was significantly down (at 12,200 acres) over that of 2007. The average yield was 569 lb/acre, down 4.8% over 2007, though the range from 400 to 1000 lb/acre makes it unlikely that any conclusion can be drawn from those numbers.

The Welsh report comments on the current extraction process

Camelina typically contains approximately 35% oil. Cold pressing is not 100% efficient, the proportion of oil extracted being dependant on the type of seed and how well the press is set up.

As an example, a tonne (1000 kg) of Camelina will contain 350 kg of oil, of which the press will extract 250 kg. Cold pressing (400C) is required, because high temperatures will damage the antioxidants. Drought, lack of sunshine during seed formation, herbicide desiccation applied too early, and downy mildew infection may all lower the oil content of the seed.

In Wales they can get up to 1 t/acre.

Oregon is considering growing the crop after looking at trials in nearby states

Under dryland conditons in Montana, camelina is expected to yield 1,800 to 2,000 pounds of seed per acre in areas with 16 to 18 in hes of rainfall and 900 to 1,700 lb/acre with 13 to 15 inches of rainfall. Under irrigation, seed yields of 2,400 lb/acre have been reported. Three years of yield trials at Moscow, Idaho show a 2,100 to 2,400 lb/acre seed yield potential with 25 inches of rainfall.

. At present there are restrictions on the growing of canola in Oregon

Oregon officials in 2005 restricted canola-for-oil production in the valley to protect the valley's high-value vegetable seed crops. Officials recently announced they are going to renew the prohibitions.

"I would like to grow canola, but the state interferes with that, too," Van Leeuwen said.

Fears are canola will attract insect pests common to canola and brassica crops and that canola will cross pollinate with cauliflower and broccoli, lowering seed purity and eventually driving vegetable seed contractors out of the valley.

Camelina may overcome some of those concerns.

So my quick look suggests that it about on a par with canola (rapeseed) with some survival benefits over that plant as a crop, that it is only just being introduced into the United States as a crop and that, while it has potential, and there are some productive strains identified, it is still a little early in the game to know if it will pan out quite as well as the Biofuels Digest suggests.