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Dennis Buffington's Energy Value Innovation
Dr. Dennis Buffington, Professor, Pennsylvania State University, was formative in shaping
my views while I was working on the BioTown, USA project in 2006. Like all innovators on the
frontier, Dennis has continued to expand his work. The site he most recently directed
me to of his work is http://energy.cas.psu.edu/.
My energy values are based on the rated energy content of the feedstock in million
BTUs (MMBTU). This is an important distinction, and becomes even more important when it
gets taken to the level of Dennis Buffington’s energy values. His energy values include
a heat conversion efficiency. The table below is pulled directly from his
Energy Cost Calculator spreadsheet at the above URL.
For the purposes of comparing heat utilization, Dennis Buffington’s energy values are
more representative than the input-based energy values that I am using. In my work,
I am not sure if feedstocks like shelled corn, or even sawdust will be used for liquid
fuel production rather than for heat. Shelled corn, for instance, can be used for heat
in corn stoves like fuel pellets or it can be used to make ethanol and distillers grains.
These efficiencies change with time. As the conversion efficiency of corn-to-ethanol
increases, so will the coefficients relative to energy conversion. Eventually I hope
to be able to incorporate efficiency coefficients for multiple fuel applications.
Efficiency is a challenging topic, because the universe of output per unit of input must
be the same for any two materials to be compared. This is a topic for a much more
extensive discussion in the future.
Dr. Dennis Buffington’s work goes beyond the projects he has listed on his website. He
has produced an Energy Selector Slide Rule, which is a cardboard version of his Energy
Selector web application. His slide rules are very cool, because they allow comparison
of eight energy products at once for any single product price. Also he has just released
an extension guide sheet on Biomass Energy that he co-authored with Thomas O. Wilson and
can be found at
http://www.abe.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/h/H82.pdf.
Dennis Buffington, Professor
208 Agricultural Engineering Building
Penn State University
University Park, PA 16802
Email: dbuffington@psu.edu
http://energy.cas.psu.edu
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