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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?"
What is "rapeseed"? Is that what happens to soy beans in prison?
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.
If you want to change the world's energy cycles you're going to need something with at least 20 times the productivity of standard farm crops, like the UNH biodiesel-from-algae thing.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
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
Hemp and Marijuana aren't the same thing.
:)
http://www.artistictreasure.com/flier4.html
So smoke all the Hemp you want.
250 years from now, after everyone is growing and using biofuel, someone's going to accidentally strike oil and realize "we can this shit from the ground, practically for free!"
Yes. Remove the heavy engine and transmission, and refit the vehicle with a mast and sails.
Plan your trips based on the forecasted wind-direction.
>;k
I have to wonder why this is modded as a troll. Despite the humor aspect of it, and the fact that hemp isn't smokable, hemp will grow where many other plants won't. My only thinking is that hemp has got such a bad reputation because it is basically marijuana without the THC that people just dismiss it. It is really quite the versatile plant.
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.
Don't be so fast, cowboy! The carbon comes out of the air when the plant grows, and is put back into the air when you burn your fuel. Its a novel idea.
The key to the energy production is using the incident solar radiation (of about 1 KW/m^2 on the surface of the Earth) to effectively take carbon out of the air and turn it into fuel. There is alot of energy required to do this which be impossible for us to do today economically (except perhaps with a nuclear plant). This is why it is impractical to have underground corn fields, for example. This is also why food production on distant planets, in the future, may require nuclear power to shine light on plants for extended periods of time.
What I am particularly interested in biodiesel is if it can be successfully adapted to be used in fuel cells for higher effeciency (is there a technology where the impurities won't poison the cell).
Additionally, an adaptation of this idea could help reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere. Consider burying 10% of the oil produced over time. If the oil is mass produced, that is a lot of CO2 that has left the atmosphere.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
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.
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?
So, two people marked me as a troll. This is not a troll, it's a valid question.
Let me put it another way: what makes more oil? Hemp, or rapeseed?
Stupid moderators.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
- In principle, why is it impractical to constrain the energy-production habitat to the desired species by e.g. harvesting everything in an area and re-seeding with a population grown from your best producers? This is how zymurgists keep their beer from getting contaminated too badly, it's not rocket science.
- If that's too much of a difficulty, why can't you use species with a different product (e.g. hydrogen instead of oil) and hold them under conditions which kill their competition (sulfur-deficient and in the dark)? Anything which adopts the same metabolic pathway to survive the stress periods would have the same product.
- What, exactly, is the problem with 10% efficiency when it's really, really cheap? 10% efficiency at 50 cents a square meter yields something like 1/10 cent per peak watt!
If you can point me to parts of the report which address these issues, I'd appreciate the savings of my time. ADVthanksANCE.Sustainability and energy independence essay
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