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A Viable Biofuel?
natural rah writes "A laboratory in India has developed a process for making diesel fuel from an inedible plant which grows in barren wastelands. Although biofuels are mass produced and used in USA and EU, they have been traditionally derived from edible oils like soy bean and rapeseed. Using edible oils to make fuels is evidently not an option in a country like India. This fuel is "carbon neutral" (at least theoretically), has potential to make good use of barren wastelands, is clean and sustainable. Read more here -- could you have a SUV and not put excess carbon into the air?"
Rapeseed is a plant that made an oil that was too bitter to eat. Rapeseed oil was commonly used to lubricate steam engines until the 1940's. Recently, Canadian farmers have bred the bitterness out of the oil to make an edible product called Canola. (Canadian Oil).
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Here's more info:
c a_ rapeseed_nex.html
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/nexus/Brassi
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
See also Algae (cow crap), and thermal depolymerization (just about any kind of garbage) as biodiesel sources.
general:t ropha_curcas.html h tm
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Ja
potential environmental ("alien invader") hazard evaluation:
http://www.hear.org/pier/species/jatropha_curcas.
Source for seeds:
http://www.tropilab.com/jatropha-cur.html
Someone thought of using Jojoba seeds for biofuel. However, after giving the Jojoba plant enough water to grow fast, the resulting product was too expensive and too slow-growing.
So, I was skeptical about this plant until I read more. This plant is different. It's a tropical plant, where presumably there is enough water.
See the Jatropha curcas description and cost and photo. The Jatropha System explains the advantages.
--
U.S. Gov.: Borrowing money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 Billion.
The fundamental problem with biofuels is that they are simply too inefficient to produce. In the U.S., at least, our cars use much more energy than we do. So even accounting for the meat part of our diet, we probably would need to cultivate about as much or more land to grow plants for fuel as we already do for human food. That's an immense amount of extra farmland, especially considering that much of the most productive land is already taken, and the drain on our freshwater supplies from farming is quite high.
Really, you want something more efficient. One scheme that I think has a fair amount of potential is pluggable hybrids, with bigger batteries than current hybrids, so you could use mostly or purely electric power for short trips. The gas tank would remain available for longer journeys, so there isn't the limitation of pure electric cars.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Right here. I drive a VW TDI, and I'm already happily running on biodiesel. Bring on the algae-diesel, synthetic diesel, whatever.
/plus/ spirited torqued driving fun with my Golf TDI.
Oh yeah, and the majority of new cars in Europe are diesels. Try taking a peek outside the American border once in a while! Anyway, once ULSD finally hits the States, perhaps America will get some decent diesel numbers as the improved engines from Europe (built for ULSD) can be imported.
The Jeep Liberty is coming to the US with a Mercedes diesel engine. Volkswagen makes the Jetta and Golf in diesel already for the American market, and the Tuareg (SUV) and Passat (sedan) are set to be brought to the US in their diesel versions.
Oh yeah. And I get 50 mpg
MORTAR COMBAT!
Please disregard my previous message, for I clicked the 'submit' button by mistake. My apologies.
Those who wish to further hydrogen as a major fuel fail to point out its lack of energy density. According to the UNH article on algal biodiesel (linked by Engineer-Poet), gaseous hydrogen (at 250 atm [3626 psi]) has an energy density of 68 kBtu ft^-3, while petroleum diesel and biodiesel have energy densities of 1058 kBtu ft^-3 and 950 kBtu ft^-3, respectively.
Biodiesel, while requiring slightly more fuel than petroleum diesel at a given distance, requires significantly less fuel than pressurized hydrogen (UNH article). Obviously, the ubiquity of vehicles running on petrol engines presents major disadvantages; it would be impossible if not ridiculous to replace current petrol vehicles with diesel engines. Though pure biodiesel can run in diesel engines, wouldn't it still produce carbon dioxide?
It would produce CO2, yes. But the CO2 would come from the air initially, so the overall CO2 added to the air by burning a tank of fuel is zero. This is what makes it a very exciting technology as far as CO2 emmissions are concerned.
I bought one. It's not as economical as a Prius, but you can't get a Prius without waiting 10 months.
Sustainability and energy independence essay