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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!
See also Algae (cow crap), and thermal depolymerization (just about any kind of garbage) as biodiesel sources.
- Converting corn to ethanol leaves some feedstock that is used to feed livestock - the entire bushel of corn isn't converted into fuel, there is some leftover for other uses.
- Hybrid and GMO varieties of corn and soybeans are increasing yields every year.
- As noted earlier, algae can be converted into biodiesel - there are places where it would not make sense to grow crops, but it would make sense to set up algea growing stations (in the southwestern desert perhaps)
- Thermal depolymerization - make oil out of garbage. It's my understanding that you can take any organic waste and run it through this process to make oil. Right now, many communities have people separate out their paper and plastics for recycling - have a separate deal for table scraps too and send them right to one of these plants.
- Methane - capture methane from sanitary sewers, livestock feed lots, and landfills. Not sure what you'd need to do to make it usable, but there is a lot of that being produced and just plain vented into the atmosphere now.
- Right now, the US has something called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) - where the government pays farmer to idle erodable land. Allow them to grow stuff like switchgrass (or hemp) - anything fast growing, harvestable with conventional mowing or baling equipment, and that will regrow without needing a replant (it'd be nice to get 2 or 3 crops per summer out of that).
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.