Slashdot Mirror

Biodiesel is relatively easy to make, evey thing you would need to know can be found here. The stuff is actually a handy non-toxic cleaner-degreaser. I'm surprised that somebody just dumped the glycerin, it's valuable in it's own right, it makes a very desirable soap, and can be used in foods and cosmetic, or even as a fuel.

They will not be using the raw oil, but converting it to biodiesel through a process known as transesterification. Biodiesel burns much cleaner than Petrodiesel.

They will not be using the raw oil, but converting it to biodiesel through a process known as transesterification. Biodiesel burns much cleaner than Petrodiesel.

Not always, the The two-stage biodiesel process completely avoids soap.

most grease needs to be filtered before it can be used (or it'll clog your pipes, and then you won't be happy). IIRC there are instructions on what you need to do to turn used vegetable oil into biofuel for your car.

You could definitely dump your grease in there until it gets full, what you'd do with it after that is another question to ask though :)

http://www.journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/meCh7.html#7-6

Organic food is almost all grown the exact same was as regular food: on large, industrial farms, in large volumes, for a profit. The only difference is that the expense of Organic food comes from the limited supply (due to demand as well as a higher rate of spoilage), while the expense of normal food comes from making it better, cheaper, and safer.

Are you trolling, or just ignorant? Most people don't know what organic food is, but if you're going to make an argument about it, why not educate yourself on the subject first rather than just spout your own prejudices for everyone on the internet to read?

Food quality has been on a steady decline. Poisons and hormone-mimickers in food are steadily going up while nutrients like minerals and vitamins are going down. Read the studies about it and wonder why this is so, all while buying cheaper food in larger quantities. The long list doesn't end there however, the earth itself is being drained of nutrients due to unhealthy mono-culture and non-stop farming each and every year. For many farmers, this is more important, so there is a big shift today to organic farming, just because of the higher sustainable development factor. If we destroy the earth, famine is not too far away. If we destroy nature or cut outself out from it too much, we may have to turn to genetic engineering to be able to sustain healthy bodies, always fighting new unknown diseases, not a very pleasant prospect except for the medical industry.

Organic farming can be many different ways, with the more extreme end being biodynamic farming. It is true that you can have large farms producing roughly the same yield as "modern farms", at least if you compare nutrients. Many people have the opinion that you can eat less of organic foods, and still feel satiated. So less yield does not necessarily mean less food.

This clockwork-universe mentality that everything to food and life is about proteins, minerals, vitamins, and this obsession of getting rid of dirt and bugs, is well, an hypothesis without basis in nature. Many people believe that there is more to food than what we can measure in its quantities. Life is certainly about more than its parts. If you lack this understanding, you've been living in the city for too long. It's clouding your judgement, so time to take a break off media and city, find some new fresh perspectives in nature.

Why Organic? (Quite interesting introduction)
http://journeytoforever.org/garden_organic.html

Top 10 Reasons for Organic Farming (Showing that the soil and environment is given more importance)
http://www.organic.org/articles/showarticle/article-206

Btw, IANAF (I Am Not A Farmer), however, I know there is alot to organic farming and sustainable development, than our prejudices. Currently living outside major cities, and it does bring a different perspective to life than endless visits to cafes and caffe lattes.

Before you condemn something, at least give it a fair shot first, hmm?

One interesting characteristic of Diesel engines, especially older ones, is that they aren't very picky as to what fuel they run on. Almost all of them will happily run on biodiesel, and many will run on straight vegetable oil after modification (for which kits are available, ranging in price from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars). Both of these have short CO_2 cycles (you emit the CO_2 that was recently absorbed by the plants used to make the fuel) and reduced emissions of many pollutants, except for NO_x.

Some Diesel engines, as you mentioned, can run on peanut oil, coal dust, and a variety of other things you wouldn't necessarily think to put in your engine. However, recent Diesel engines are generally a lot more picky and may suffer serious damage when the wrong fuel is put in (which may include, for example, the Diesel fuel we had before we got low-sulphur Diesel). My understanding is that this is particularly due to the injection system and the particulate filter.

Do the math. Soybeans have a yield of 48 gallons/acre per year.

The US uses 378 million gallons of gasoline per day.

378000000*365/48=2874375000

This means you need 2874.375 million acres if you used soybeans to grow the same amount of fuel. Which is 4.491 million square miles. Well the US has a land area of 3.794 million square miles. So even if you razed the entire US and turned it into a giant soybean field you would not be able to manufacture enough oil.

This is just something I wrote on the back of a napkin. I did not include the higher volumetric energy density of biodiesel as a factor in the calculations. But I did not include the fertilizer manufacturing costs either. Nor did I add the other uses of petroleum to these calculations.

You can use other things than soybean oil. Like peanuts, rapeseed, or jatropha. But you will still need to devote more land area to fuel production than the total land area used for farming in the US to produce this amount of fuel. Crop fuels can only supply a fraction of the total demand.

If you use crop fuels you will need to reduce fuel consumption, reduce the number of cars and miles driven, or use some other measure of rationing the supply. Since we live in a market economy this simply means the price of fuel will rise a lot. The middle class would likely stop being able to own cars.

The end result is that what you will see in the market, if we run out of conventional petroleum, will be oil made from tar sands, natural gas to liquids, coal to liquids, or some other cheap fuel. Not vegetable oil.

Oh and ethanol is even worse.

The saturated fat debate should have a been a non-starter, and probably would have been if people had the internet in the 50s, 60s and 70s when the science was done.

About a century ago, humans dramatically started changing their diet, notably with the introduction of refined sugar and vegetable oil (often processed into hydrogenated or trans fats). Ancel Keys, and the saturated fat researchers came up with the "lipid hypothesis", that fat sticks to the arteries and "clogs them up". They didn't even consider the new foods introduced when human health declined, but decided that it was something that we've always eaten which must be the problem. The reason people started suspecting cholesterol was because we'd just come up with ways of measuring it in the blood - so they took the data and went looking for "problems". It really didn't make any sense.

To quote Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, "Statistics have been published by the Department of Public Health in New York City which show the increase in the incidence of heart disease to have progressed steadily during the years from 1907 to 1936. The figures provided in their report reveal an increase from 203.7 deaths per 100,000 in 1907 to 327.2 per 100,000 in 1936. This constitutes an increase of 60 per cent. Cancer increased 90 per cent from 1907 to 1936." This is where things really started going south for humans, and cancer, arthritis, alzhiemer's, heart disease and diabetes really started to come into the picture. We have managed a continued increase in degenerative disease over the last 70 odd years since then. Today 1 in 2 persons who live to old age will die of cancer. Humans used to be able to live to that same age and have a 1 in 1000 chance of dieing of cancer.

Saturated fat is present in ever increasing quantities the closer you approach the equator. It's better suited to plants in warmer climates, as you move to the poles, polyunsaturated fat becomes more present since it has a lower melting point. Humans evolved in temperate regions, where saturated fat is more present. There are a number of studies done on natives eating high-saturated fat diet who were disease free (The Masai for example).

Today we have hypotheses (based on information we've learned since the "lipid hypothesis" about how fats work in the body) that PUFAs might be deterimental, since we know they go rancid easily. Over consumption of PUFAs in conjunction with an anti-oxidant poor diet and a diet low in saturated fat (combing saturated fat with PUFAs makes PUFAs dramatically more stable from rancidity), means that these fats can go rancid in the blood stream - when these happens these fats can no longer be used as fuel, and the immune system needs to clean them out. Many PUFAs (corn oil is the worst) are also higher in omega-3 and low in omega-6, humans have eaten extremely varied diets, but one constant is the ratio between omega-3 and omega-6, because of this constant, these fats are used as inter-cellular messengers for ramping up inflammation or turning inflammation off. Eat a diet of only omega-6 and no omega-3, and silent inflammation turns up in the body and becomes a constant drain on the system.

Still, I don't think that we will find any one fat sub-type as a true "enemy" (sat/mono/pufa - not counting fats destroyed by processing and unusable by humans for energy like hydrogenated and trans fats). All kinds of organisms use a mix of different fats, it doesn't make sense that animals would convert one type of fat to another in the liver, if that fat was harmful to them.

The most straightforward approach, I think, would be to set traps - of the $.50 each, drug store variety. Set up a map with the "problem areas" plotted out. Chances are you will see a pattern: the areas are not that far from sources of food. Rats, like deer and most other animals, will take the shortest route between two locations. Use this information when planting your traps.

A very successful trap is a 'bucket trap'. Here is an example of one such bucket trap.. Basically, you have a basin with water in it, and a lip on the basin high and steep enough to prevent the rodents from climbing out. You then place an object - a board or wire - leading out to the center, where you have placed a pole sticking vertically out of the water which contains the bait. The perpendicular bait pole needs to be narrow and slippery (ie something a rodent can't easily climb).

The object which is parallel to the floor needs to be at least several inches from the vertical rod in order to

You can also make a good bucket trap with a piece of 1x2 lumber from the hardware store and a common door hinge. Balance the 1x2 on the lip of the bucket, with the hinge on the inside (and a small flat wood spacer to allow the hinge to not bind on the side of the bucket), with the tip of the 1x2 in the middle of the bucket's opening. This works well if the other side sits on something where the rodent can/does travel (ie interpret their path of travel nad put the bucket nearby). (Make sure your 1/x is balanced with the weight of the bait included.) Rat or mouse comes by, walks onto the 1x2, and falls in - automatically resetting the trap.

This trap works with pretty much any scavenger, by the way. It'd probably work with deer, if you could make a large enough trap. I've seen stock water feeders used for racoons and halved 30-gallon drums used for rats. Basically, if you can get them in the water, they will drown to death after getting too tired to swim any more. (Obviously, the water has to be deep enough that they can not stand in it and breath). This trap type is a real boon as it's automatically resetting, ecologically safe (ie no neurotoxin poisons in an inhabited area like an office, house, barn, etc.), mostly silent, and easy to maintain.

A couple pointers... rats and mice prefer to nest in stale, warm areas. They will shit in or near their nests, and they should have a fairly poignant odor: if you can't smell it, find someone who can (some people have a very, very strong sense of smell/taste - ask around the office, you're sure to find someone). If you can identify the source of the nests, it'll aide in strategically placing baited traps and ease/speed the extermination. Finally, it only requires trace amounts of food - crumbs - to attract rodents, as that's still something they can eat. (You don't eat in your office/server room, do you?) Any food source used as the bait should be moist and preferably oily with a strong odor, as they locate the food by scent. Rancid organic peanut butter works really, really well (they seem to prefer it over non-rancid non-organic stuff by a long shot).

If you have the inclination and are able, climb up into the ceiling around the problem areas and see if you can see any other signs of rodent infestation: small asymmetrical holes in sheet rock, small piles of dust where there shouldn't be - even foot trails, which should be visible if present (especially in an older building).

A couple caveats and potential problems you'd run into involving dead animals: dead bodies stink - bad. If you poison them (especially with the kind of poison which they don't bring back to their den), you are likely to have a lot of dead rats and mice all over your building: they will, in many cases, be impossible to retrieve, and people will be very angry about the odor. You might also run into this problem if you use drug store type traps, as they might not be completely killed and run off and die with the trap still attached, making retriev

While I grant that libertarians tend to oppose government control of drugs, you are the first one I have heard of who does not think corporations should be able to drug test their employees. So you favor government regulation to accomplish this? Or by what means do you propose?

First, it's because of government that employers started testing for drugs, the government required some employers to test for drug use with the fake War on Drugs. In "The Libertarian Alternative - Questions about Drug Testing" [it's 28 minutes] a speaker (emergency room doctor) in this Google video says Libertarians believe the government mandate for employers to test for drugs is a violation of the 4th amendment, unreasonable search. As for me, I oppose drug testing but I would let the free market decide whether to test for drugs. An employer can choose to test or not test. If a potential employee didn't like being tested then they don't have to apply for employment at a company that requires it.

And what's wrong with that? [regarding the sale of human organs]

Because it forces people who are in desperate financial straights into a decision of their organs or foodstuffs.

I'll start by saying I believe that in a true free market most of those people who would be in any "desperate financial straights" are those who either won't work or who spend too much as compared to how much they make, ie they live beyond their means such as buying that brand new Jaguar every 2 years. In a free market people would be able to make enough money to live a comfortable life, have a roof over their head, have enough food to eat, and could afford health insurance. I do leave out, agree to, the possibility of requiring insurance providers to pay into an insurance pool that would allow those who either can't afford or have been turned down for health insurance to get coverage from the pool. I know about being denied health insurance, more than 10 years ago I survived an accident that left me with a permanent disability and have been denied insurance because of that.

Also I love gardening and believe in city farms or gardens. Besides private gardens, if say you have a 5 blocks X 5 blocks section of a city maybe you could have a lot on the center block that's a garden. People living in the area could have an allotment where they could grow their own food. With big enough of a garden, or more than one, people could hire garden tenders to take care of them.

We'd abolish the limited-liability shield laws to make corporate officers and stockholders fully responsible for a corporation's actions

That voids the concept of a corporation, which is that, due to my limited liability, I can invest only my money, but not my credit/honor/personal future in your idea, and limits access to capital. That combined with yourdesire to return to the gold stndard would destroy the economy.

I'm partially, but not compeatly with you on that. Businesses were originally granted a corporate charter, to limit liability, if the business served the common or public good. The first corporation to be granted a charter and issue stocks was the Dutch East India Company in 1602. The second was the Honourable East India Company in 1604. Both companies were shipping and trading businesses, they shipped goods between the Indian subcontinent and Europe. However shipping was a risky business. Ships could run into bad weather and sink or be attacked by pirates. The owners of the ship were responsible for lost cargo and crew, if a

soem references. And that's not including new genetically enhanced corn varieties or other crop/waste sources that will come along once the industry is established.

For one thing, most diesel engines can't run on biodiesel unmodified.

That is wrong. In a new diesel, it will run pure biodiesel with no modifications.
...
One reference for running only straight vegetable engine in a car. There it did need modifications like different injectors and glow plugs, mostly to compensate for the increased viscosity.

Your mixup and the 'ferment' comment in the GP post are very telling. People (geeks included, alas) are confusing SVO, biodiesel ester, grain ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, methanol, etc; and THIS IS NOT GOOD.

Factor of six sounds high. I admit these figures are old, but...

Yield of 99.5% ethanol per acre from:
Sorghum cane: 500 gallons
Corn: 214 gallons
Grain sorghum: 125 gallons

...turning on its head the argument that ethanol production consumes more energy than it produces.

Only David Pimental believes that, and he's in the pay of the oil companies.

For one thing, most diesel engines can't run on biodiesel unmodified.

And, you can't use "fresh" vegetable oil, either. It has to sit in barrels and ferment in the sun.

personally i prefer using several kiddie pools as algae farms it's pretty cheap and easy, although to get bumper crops you may need to use low cost additives to promote the growth of algae, harvesting is pretty easy, a pool skim works fine, pressing is easy too, you have your choice or methods, a foot press is the lowest cost, but you might get tired of that quickly, so an automatic press might be preferred. you have to press algae to separate the vegetable oil from the the vegetable waste. the oil can either be used in s SVO(straight vegetable oil) converted diesel engine or converted to biodiesel with lye an any form of alcohol. the vegetable remains can be burned, or converted to ethanol, or used as feedstock for cows etc.

of course, the first real commercial production of algae started this month down in texas, by a long time oil and gas company... they're planning quite a bit of expansion in the growth and use of algae as a viable alternative to our shrinking oil reserves. Algae was first considered as an alternative in the 70s, but sadly there was no determination to switch to an unproven technology where all new farming and processing technology was needed, rather than export all our money over seas to foreign oil production...

if it is viable i think it wont take long for enough algae to be produced to make our dependence on foreign oil a part of history, if it isn't profitable enough, then we can still try to use algae to make coal electricity kyoto convention 'clean' in terms of CO emissions and legislate it at the cost of driving electricity prices higher.

but I feel that it will be viable, and at some point there will be a debate over if diesel engines should be replaced with SVO engines, because it does cost money to buy the lye and alcohol needed to convert plant oil to biodiesel, and SVO engines would save this cost... there are already kits available to convert a diesel engine to a SVO engine, as detailed at this website http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html

it seems that an engine kitted for SVO can still burn diesel, so the transition should be easy to legislate, eg: require SVO optimized engines for a decade before require SVO to replace BD/diesel.
although in practice a SVO kitted engine might have lower fuel economy when running Biodiesel or regular diesel, still, if the idea is to switch from petrol diesel to bio-fuels, the Logical choice is SVO for it's cost savings over Biodiesel.

Exactly if you don't fix the power plant emissions, fixing the trucks is just everybody feeling good and singing Kumbaya, just like the soccer mom's saying everybody should be driving Hybrids then buckling Junior into the back seat of their Escalade. Still if the truckers are able to pull a "greener than thou" routine on the soccer mom's thing could get entertaining. Making Biodeisel to ASTM standards is just a matter of following the directions and testing, this method is pretty foolproof.

I don't know very much specifically about hemp either but anything being grown and harvested in monoculture depletes the soil. In order for the plant to grow it needs to synthesize food using light and in order to synthesize light it needs various elements that are absorbed from the soil through the roots. Basically in order to grow the plant needs to take something out of the soil. So unless you simply let the plant die and decay in the spot where it lived (which is definetly not the case with industrial hemp) something is being taken out of the ground, eventually depleting the nutrient stores. For a good introduction to soil quality and preservation I suggest An Agricultural Testament by Sir Albert Howard. It's an old book but still contains alot of relevant information.

Now that I'm home and can get to my bookmarks, check out the journey to forever if you want to know how to actually do it yourself.

I spend several weeks in India last summer studying Jatropha.
  My wife's father S.W. Mensinkai founded University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad, near Hubli in Karnataka India (8 hrs by train north of Bangalore). He is considers the father of plant genetics in India. They are doing genetic engineering of Jatropha there.

See photo's
http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/images6/index.html

One of the programs they are pushing is for farmer to plant Jatropha on the borders of other crops in the fields, turns out the bulls that wonder freely in India will not go near the stuff, so a row of these trees keeps them out of the farmers crops.

Very interesting work.

I brought back a hand full of seeds with me, and planted them, but they didn't take, maybe the Airport X-ray scanners killed them.

Anyhow;
  Jatropha is related to the Castor bean plan that is responsible that the neurotoxin ricin is derived from.
  It also have a toxin called curcin that is similar to ricin.

  I don't know if burning Jatropha oil release this curcin toxin into the air?

  But apparently when it's pressed to get the Oil out, the curcin remains in the "Cake" this is the solids left behind after the seeds have all the oils squeezed out.

From: http://www.intox.org/databank/documents/plant/jatropha/jhast.htm
-------------
      2.5 Poisonous parts
                        All parts are considered toxic but in particular the seeds.
      2.6 Main toxins
                        Contains a purgative oil and a phytotoxin or toxalbumin
                        (curcin) similar to ricin in Ricinis.
------------

  Apparently Canola oil (Short for Canadian Oil)is a genetically modified Rape seed (in the mustard family) with the toxins removed.

  So if Jatropha had it's toxins removed through genetic modification it could also be a valuable food product.

Later in 2006 I moved to Santa Barbara and it turns out the first company in the US to start producing Jatropha Oils and Bio-Diesel was here in Santa Barbara. http://www.biodieselindustries.com/ They were even doing a project with the local High School to grow Jatropha.

Also Jatropha Oil is being use on the Indian Railways for some time too. I guess the plan is to plant Jatropha trees along the tracks, it keep the animals off the tracks and also since labor is very cheap, they would use the same trains to harvest the tree's for oil to power the trains.

One of the projects I was thinking of was to develop an engine optimized to run on Jatropha Oil.
More importantly these three wheeled auto-rickshaws (called Tuck Tucks in Thailand) all use the exact same engines, so the idea is to make a direct drop in engine for rickshaws. The rickshaws there are Two-stroke gas engines and are a major source of pollution there spewing clouds of choking soot behind them. Maybe some day.

More good links:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/20/stories/2005102002021100.htm
http://www.biodieseltechnologiesindia.com/
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/04/tnt_starts_biod.html

Avocados, eh? According to this, from a recent /. discussion, avocados have some of the highest oil-per-area ratios amongst plants, plus they taste good with shrimps and mayo. :)~

Solar power to avocado-preferred light frequencies, and the whole system could be somewhat efficient...

And I still don't like optic fibers. Nyah. :p

I think the drug prohibition is an absolutely unjustifiable assault on civil liberties that has done nothing but promote violence both domestically and in South America. But this constant mindless promotion of hemp is just silly.

Hemp is not a great biodiesel crop. It is better than corn, but that is just because nearly every conceivable crop is better than corn. Here is a decent approximation of vegetable oil crop yields for various plants.

In reality biomass fuel from any traditional crop is not a sustainable substitute for petroleum - we use too much of it. There isn't enough arable land, and there are already concerns about top soil depletion just with food crops. That isn't to say it isn't a good supplement (especially if the oil is a byproduct that would go to waste otherwise), but we need to figure out something else, like algae or hydroponic crops with sustainable fertilizers, if were are to produce enough biomass to have a significant impact on petroleum use.

Energy payback of biomass ethanol [cornell.edu] is negative meaning more energy from fossil fuels are consumed in the production of biomass ethanol than energy provided by the ethanol.

Slow, tiny, crippled cars aren't much use. I don't want one because I'd be sacrificing performance and agility for no gain. Being a sitting target in a glorified go-kart? Hell no.

If I want high fuel mileage, I'll ride my motorcycle instead.
It sits high, so I can see well.
It's narrow and agile, so I can use countersteering to turn quickly. If need be I can go offroad.
I can do grocery shopping since it has saddle bags and a rack.
If I want more cargo space, I can bolt on a sidecar.

I like my BMW R90/6, but if things get really an M1030M1 would be the ticket. 120mpg and hauls arse:

http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_bikes.html (scroll down)

www.m1030.com/

They do have cars that run on restaurant oil waste.

In theory. Does any US car maker sanction the use of this stuff in their cars? Or does it void the warranty?

cheaper

Not in the US. Ethanol is cheaper, even accounting for it's lower energy density.

you can get vastly more biodiesel per acre of land than you can ethanol

Ugh. It's distressing to see these factoids and half-truths casually tossed about. It depends on the crop. Ethanol yield, in gallons/acre:

• Corn: 214
• Sugar beet: 412
• Cane sorghum: 500
• Sugarcane in Louisiana: 555
• Sugarcane in Hawaii: 889

• Soybeans: 48
• Linseed (flax): 51
• Rape (and probably canola too): 127

you don't need a specially built environment-engine to run [diesel]

Straight vegetable oil (SVO) is too thick to put in a cold diesel engine. You need a separate tank for it or a heater. Supposedly, the ester form of biodiesel can go straight into the tank, but transesterified vegetable oil is not "easier, cheaper and energy efficient (compared to ethanol)"...because it's MADE FROM ethanol.

In theory. Does any US car maker sanction the use of this stuff in their cars? Or does it void the warranty?

cheaper

Not in the US. Ethanol is cheaper, even accounting for it's lower energy density.

you can get vastly more biodiesel per acre of land than you can ethanol

Ugh. It's distressing to see these factoids and half-truths casually tossed about. It depends on the crop. Ethanol yield, in gallons/acre:

• Corn: 214
• Sugar beet: 412
• Cane sorghum: 500
• Sugarcane in Louisiana: 555
• Sugarcane in Hawaii: 889

• Soybeans: 48
• Linseed (flax): 51
• Rape (and probably canola too): 127

you don't need a specially built environment-engine to run [diesel]

Straight vegetable oil (SVO) is too thick to put in a cold diesel engine. You need a separate tank for it or a heater. Supposedly, the ester form of biodiesel can go straight into the tank, but transesterified vegetable oil is not "easier, cheaper and energy efficient (compared to ethanol)"...because it's MADE FROM ethanol.

Not only are small-scale digesters common throughout the world but you can trivially build your own.

You must be new here. Here's the most recent stuff:

Argonne Study
Story explainaing the results

This link provides dozens of sources on either side of the issue. The "sides" are David Pimentel on one side vs. Everyone Else on the other side.

Trading code for payment in kind or even the joy of having the code being used is about as laissez-faire as you can get! Biofuels: Jouney to forever has good basic understandable howtos and BioDieselNow has forums for colaboration with other enthusiates, people are actually establishing their own manufacturing co-ops that are also selling commercialy to the public in biodiesel. those plus the usual sites like wikipedia and google should be more than enough to get you started.

I agree to a point... but I believe the world eats a hell of a lot of fried food and since Biodesiel can be made out of reused cooking oil from deep-fat fryers and other "healthy" eats I think that Biodesiel can supplement a large portion of our imported oil. You may be right in saying that we can't become completely independent of OPEC, but I feel we can dramatically drop our emissions and reliance on Petrol. Here is a website that further elaborates on what Biodesiel can be made from: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html/

Right now we can't even get breakeven with just harvesting the biofuel.

Bull. Look at http://www.ethanol.org/documents/NetEnergyBalancei ssuebrief_000.pdf#search=%22ethanol%20production%2 0efficiency%22 or http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/main/energy.htm or http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html. Sure, there are folks who say the net energy balance is negative, but the reputable ones say positive. My guess (which I don't have the resources to prove or disprove, could anyone help?) is that the ones who say the net balance is negative have a political axe to grind.

Of course, the net energy balance of ethanol production is negative, but only when you include the sunlight input, since the amount of sunlight over a field for the whole growing season is enormous. Thermodynamics says that no process will be more than 100% efficient, after all.

I think these figures are kind of old, but it looks like ethanol yield per acre for sugarcane is four times that of corn.

Of course, sugar cane doesn't grow in Iowa or North Dakota...

(Oh yeah, US sugar is also subsidized and protected by tariffs. That's why it's $0.50 per pound at the grocery store.)

My TDI VW will run on home-brew bio-diesel... as soon as I have the $$$ to buy a TDI VW...

http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html

No one alternative will completely replace Petroleum based fuels.. But Ethanol from corn and non-corn based sources, as well as mass manufactured bio-diesel and home-brew bio-diesel, along with hybrid electric will more than likely make up the fuel for the majority of vehicles 10 years from now.

Just my $0.02US

Algae farming actually has the potential of replacing all diesel and gasoline usage in the US using only a tiny fraction of the land area available. There are several cost/benefit analyses of this on the 'net, such as this one. Estimates of algae-biodiesel yield range from 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre/year. Soy-diesel has a lower yield, but has some other economically beneficial by-products. Biodiesel is the most promising energy technology I have seen to date. Compare biodiesel to ethanol -- the producers of ethanol find it more economical to burn fossil fuels in ethanol production than the ethanol -- DOH! With the current price of dinofuel around $3/gal, biodiesel is also suddenly cost-competitive, and for about $3000, you can buy a home biodiesel production facility that can manufacture 40 gallons/week at a cost of about 50 cents per gallon plus whatever you have to pay for the oil, and about 2 hours/week in ongoing labor.

Have you actually researched this at all? Go to Journey to Forever and look around a bit, it seems to address most of your points.

For tutorials try journey to forever to get started. They are geared toward helping indiginous people produce fuels and energy so it not high-tech to an unreachable point for real human beings and do-able in your garage to suppliment your fuel for lawn mowers and string trimmers, and yes gas engines in them can run on 10% biodiesel gasoline mixtures. I'm looking into making a b10-e10 mixture!
This site has forums, biodieselnow with lots of interesting questions and answers about biodeisel; everything for garage setups to large scale commercial production.

I generally agree, and welcome with open arms, with your point, but have just one thing to point out:

Screw corn. There are crops that are much better suited for oil production. My personal bias is for Hemp. These are not for the NORML reasons people think of. Here is a chart that illustrates the gal./acre of various crops http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.ht ml. From that chart, Hemp produces over twice as much oil in a single growing as does corn. Coupled with that and the fact that Hemp in most parts of the continental US, multiple plantings per year can be achieved. The South can get at least 3, maybe 4 plantings. Hell, it's a weed, not like it has the genetic capacity to survive.

Of course, there is that minor technicality of the Porky Pigs of the DEA being unenlightened; but with the price of Oil at ~$73 a barrel and climbing, the chances for change increase with the continued upward movement.

We can only hope.

There are many articles on this concept (see below):

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html

With modern diesel cars and trucks it is actually possible to mix 50/50 petroleum diesel and vegetable oil. With the right equipment you can even run a diesel off used frying oil (alright you need to clean it) but it is basically free.

The only issue you may have is when the Government insists on you paying the diesel tax:

http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/eco/biofuel .html

In fact just do a Google search on "diesel cars" (refine if you wish) since there is a huge amount of reading on the subject of diesel and bio-diesel. In fact diesel cars are starting to become very popular in many countries, although the US and Australia are lagging behind but even there, slow and steady shifts are being made towards diesel cars. What slows down the purchase of diesel cars it the false perception that they are dirty, underpowered and more expensive. this is not true anymore, although before you rush out and get rid of your petrol driven car you should do a bit of homework.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1951524,00.as p
http://www.kirotv.com/consumer/8834497/detail.html

I have a feeling that things are going to get very interesting, when petroleum companies start to wake up to the potential loss of revenue if too many people purchase machines that can use cheap bio-fuel.

There would be dozens of current production diesels that far exceed 46mpg, just not many of them are available in N.America. On British tv they drove an audi A8 4.2 TDi from London to Edinburgh and back on a single tank of diesel, thats over 800 miles in a two ton car that does 0-62mph in 5.9 sec at just under 40 mpg. It's a a lot easier to make a smaller car surplas 50 and 60 mpg. The Alfa 147 jtd is one of the nicest looking sporty diesel and gets just under 50 mpg. VW's heavy Golf TDis both get over 50mpg; their lupo does 78 mpg and over 100 mpg has been achieved on the round-britian economy record.
Just seen this link http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_future.html whilst looking for a couple of figure and it also has some nice and fast diesel cars. If I have to drive some of these cars on thermally depolymerized land fill and agricultural waste i'll be quite happy until we have something that will get me flying supersonic completely cleanly.

Obtaining alcohol from corn/cane sugar (never understood why Americans love getting their sugar from corn, blech!) costs far more in energy to run the harvesting/transport/refining equipment than you get out of the alcohol in the end.

Are you certain about corn?

And cane sugar? Are you saying that Brazil is secretly importing magical free oil or something?

Not for me, give me a Diesel/Hybrid and watch it go Bio-Diesel. Diesel/Hybrids(the clean kind of Diesel that's supposed to his US markets in the next few years) get about 70-80mpg already, then switch it to Bio-Diesel(which normally gives another 5 to 10mpg depending on the type, or none at all). Suddendly you're paying 10c/gallon for 70+ mpg.

Even at 60mpg @ 10c(est cost of making it at home) you're doing pretty damn good.

Dio Diesel/Hybrids and Retail Fueling Sites are good places to look too, but it's probably better to make it yourself.

I'm disgusted that this has been modded up to 5 (despite at least one "overrated" mod), when the very next comment provided links to info and far more insightful and factual commentary.

I'm sorry, but why are you linking to him? He didn't provide any facts. He provided a few "go search for yourself" links, and was refuted by respondants. There's quite a bit of discussion regarding the viability of Ethanol as a fuel. Simply linking to some random poster and saying, "This guy is right!" does not resolve the issue. (Especially when he doesn't even refute anything I've said.)

Total from the whole corn crop (g'bye, Tony the Tiger and Corn Chex) and all that biomass would be 118 billion gallons/year. We burned 139 billion gallons of gasoline in 2004 (9,063,000 barrels/day), plus another 4 million bbl/day of distillate (diesel) and 1.6 million bbl/day of jet fuel. Ethanol isn't going to do the job no matter what, and hyping it as The Solution just because it isn't hydrogen is a huge mistake.

You've taken our total production and then proclaimed that Ethanol can't do the job. Question? Have you considered that we can increase our crop production? Amercian farmers produce far less crops than they could simply because there is an insufficient market. The government actually pays farmers to leave large swaths of fields bare. Now I've been operating under the understanding that we'd have to double our crop yeilds to produce enough Ethanol to meet the needs of fuel consumption, but let's go with your figures for a moment. Your figures show a 21 billion barrel deficit in the necessary number of barrels. Thus we need a 17.7% increase in the amount of Ethanol produced in order to meet the demand. Why do you see that as a problem?

The problem with ethanol is, ironically, that it is compatible with the existing vehicle fleet. That fleet has an average tank-to-wheels efficiency of 14.9%. Lead-acid batteries are about 70% efficient, Li-ion is closer to 95%. We are far better off going plug-in hybrid than wasting our money on ethanol.

Efficiency isn't the entire formula here. If it was just about efficieny, we'd all be driving electric cars. In fact, it's about range and fuel economy. It's about keeping the transportation system we have. Replacing our fuel infrastructure and our cars would be one of the most expensive replacements in history. No one wants to do it. No one wants to be forced to purchase a new vehicle, fuel station owners don't want to be forced to invest hundreds of thousands each in new pumps, and fuel producers don't want to invest billions (trillions?) in new hydrogen production technology. That's why Hydrogen isn't appealing. Ethanol can reuse most of that infrastructure with only fractional losses in energy density.

I agree with you that I'd like to see Hydrogen as the final solution, but a sudden shift just isn't going to happen.

BTW, there's fairly complete selection of papers on the Ethanol problem here. It's even helpfully divided into the papers showing figures against (amounts to mostly just Pimentel) and for (everyone else).

Moderators: when the parent is back down to 2, it's about where it ought to be.

Oh yeah? Mods! Mod parent up for providing links to interesting fuel consumption figures. :-P

This is a discussion, not a war. Everyone has their position and their points to be made. The point is to mod up posts that are salient to the topic at hand.

Depends on who you ask:

Against: CU scientist terms corn-based ethanol "subsidized food burning"

For: Industry Argues That Ethanol Delivers

Third, soy and corn oil are crummy crops to make biodiesel from. But that's where the lobbying money is right now. Other plants have much higher yields.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html

The only thing that chart doesn't have is the time for growth. It should be [volume fuel]/(area * month).

If something grew faster, it could produce less fuel per area, but if you could grow three crops a year, it might well produce more fuel per area per year.

PETA doesn't support factory farming. That said, these excess parts are merely a by-product of the industry and would vanish if animals weren't being raised en masse for food.

Quite apart from rights issues, farm animals are an incredibly INefficient way to make fuel. The general rule of thumb in ecology is every time you take a step up the food chain, it takes an order of magnitude more energy. That is, 100 pounds of plants to make 10 pounds of herbivore to make 1 pound of carnivore.

If you want to make biodiesel, it is therefore roughly 10 times more efficient NOT to run your plants through animal digestion first. This makes intuitive sense -- think how much you ate from age 0-18 vs. how much you weighed. Mammals in particular burn most of their calories just to maintain body temperature (warm-bloodedness).

On top of that, the main crops fed to cows and pigs are corn and soybeans. (While cows can graze, all the larger operations use feedlots because grazing cattle need much more land.) As another poster noted, http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html these are among the lowest-yield crops on the chart in terms of biodiesel production. Therefore animal biodiesel is another order of magnitude less efficient than directly using the highest-yield plants. And if you end up only using the waste products, it's probably another two orders of magnitude less productive (if we assume 10% waste, then it's another 10-to-1 input to biodiesel output, and then perhaps another 10-to-1 trying to extract biodiesel from parts like bones and organs, as the high-yield fat/lard is already used for other purposes). This means animal biodiesel waste yield is probably roughly about 1/10,000th that of the best plants.

I doubt protests at fuel pumps because animal biodiesel will most likely remain a novelty due to its inefficiency -- most excess parts already go to other industries (like make-up), so the amount of biodiesel produced will probably be negligible compared to plants.

As a fun fact, animal inefficiency is why historically only the rich could afford to eat meat. You need either to waste most of your food cycling it through animals (eating a pound of corn kernels and potatoes vs. 1.6 ounces of meat) or use a lot of land to graze them (around 9 acres per cow). Gout was seen as a disease of the wealthy; it's caused by excess uric acid, largely from meat. Many of our biggest killers, like heart disease, have a dietary basis -- we aren't made to process meat every meal of every day, we aren't carnivores.

As another fun fact, pretty much all the scenarios for supporting a crowded planet involve everyone becoming a vegetarian, also due to agricultural yields for animals being too low. Of course the very rich might still eat them...

Although small, this processing plant in Canada is at least a good step, we need more setups like this.

In the UK, there is a 20p/litre tax relief for biodiesel, but this isn't enough. Even with current oil prices biodiesel is still more expensive. What we need is to completely drop the tax on biodiesel, that way oil companies and others will see a reason to invest. The tax break would also need to be guaranteed for a decent length of time, say 20 years so that investments would pay off.

There are problems with biodiesel. It would require vast tracts of land, and would probably end up using land in the 3rd and developing worlds to meet our needs for fuel. This land may have been better used for local food production. IMHO, this is not a huge problem, as it would provide much needed investment into developing and 3rd world nations, and of course many ppl would be employed to harvest the crops.

Some interesting biodiesel sites:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html
http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/

Farm tractors burn diesel to harvest the peanuts

And farmers can cut the process's net carbon contribution by running their tractors on biodiesel. In the future they may be modified to burn straight vegetable oil, using diesel only to start up and shut down the engine.

fetiziliers made from and processed with petroleum are throw into the field

Not all farming methods use petrofertilizers.

Premptively, let me make this very clear so we don't need to have the same discussion everytime biodiesel comes up.

First, biodiesel has a positive energy balance, to the tune of about 3.2 units out for every unit you put in. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24089.pdf

Second, biodiesel is 78% carbon neutral with regard to greenhouse gas emissions (see previous pdf). That is because the majority of the carbon emitted when you burn a gallon of biodiesel was captured from the atmosphere when you grew the plant to make the vegetable oil. However, the methanol used to make the biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester) is made from natural gas, at least in the US. You could make 100% renewable ethyl ester biodiesel from ethanol, or make methanol from landfill recovery biogas, but we don't currently.

Third, soy and corn oil are crummy crops to make biodiesel from. But that's where the lobbying money is right now. Other plants have much higher yields.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html

Forth, no, it isn't a question of "food or fuel"? We can do both! Whenever you hear that argument ask yourself whether the person is well meaning but misinformed, or as been happening recently, is part of astroturf campaign to preserve the status quo of the petroleum economy.

Want to try making some biodiesel yourself?
http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/howitsmade/

Already making biodiesel and want to show it off?
http://www.cafepress.com/RenewableWear