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Breakthrough in Biodiesel Production
MGR writes "National Geographic is reporting that Japanese scientists have discovered a way to convert vegetable oil into biodiesel with a much less expensive catalyst (between 10 and 50 times cheaper) than what is currently used. From the article: 'Any vegetable oil can become fuel, but not until its fatty acids are converted to chemical compounds known as esters. Currently the acids used to convert the fatty acids are prohibitively expensive. Michikazu Hara, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Yokohama, Japan, and his colleagues have used common, inexpensive sugars to form a recyclable solid acid that does the job on the cheap.'"
Green fuel plan 'will destroy rainforests'
Forests paying the price for biofuels
Careful what you wish for.
Don't mod me into oblivion for pointing out a negative to biodiesel. I know about the benefits: http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/Green_Ma chines/Diesels_Clean_Green_Illegal.S196.A3569.html
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
This isnt about ethanol. This is about biodiesel.
Minimally modified vegetable oil.
PLEASE STICK your old propaganda shit (which you already had prepared, because it would have taken you longer to write that article than the story is online) and shove it up your ass.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Dude, that's from 2001. It's been 4 years and improvements have been made. Plus he's talking about corn, not rape seed (Canola) or mustard seed or soybeans or cotton seed where the yields are much better for biodiesel than for ethanol (which isn't what this is talking about anyways).
Repeat after me: "Ethanol is not biodiesel" "Ethanol is not biodiesel" "Ethanol is not biodiesel"
This post is pure FUD and the guys study was probably financed by entrenched petroleum industry advocates anyways....
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
In many places biodiesel has been more expensive than regular deisel, until the recent jump in oil prices. In addition, there have been a couple of recent subsidies that have brought the price of biodiesel down at the pump. It wasn't too long ago when biodiesel was 2x the price per gallon, and not everyone has caught up to the fact that this has changed. Regardless any decrease in cost is still a great thing.
For biodiesel created with conventional crops the bottleneck is like you said, that there isn't enough enough aritable land on the planet to create as much biodiesel as we currently use in gasoline and diesel. Algae based biodiesel solves this problem but is significantly more expensive to produce than convientional biodiesel last time I checked. Honestly though, I haven't heard about any new research in that field since the DOE Algae program was put to an end back on Clinton's watch.
In reality there is no one solution to the problem. The solution will be a combination of an increase in biofuels, more efficient cars, more public transportation that runs off the grid, and even then transportation will likely be more expensive than we have become occustomed to transportation.
I don't understand what the big fuss about biodiesel is... almost all diesel vehicles can be cheaply and quickly converted to use straight vegetable oil as fuel.
Since when was $800~ (without labor) cheap? SVO is a great idea if it flies. But there are more issues with SVO than bio-diesel, one of them being the additional parts required.
Granted, you have to start and end on diesel/biodiesel to warm up the vegetable oil.
This is part of the problem. Burning dino-diesel isn't that big of a deal to me, since it's very minimal, and clean diesel CAN be made. (Get rid of the sulfur additives!!) However, from a user perspective, it requires two different tanks, re-fueling two different fuels, and, oops, I just dumped SVO into the dino tank... (Something that will likely happen if you need to fuel up on two different fuels at the same time.)
Used vegetable oil can be found for free at most restaurants and the process of filtering it to be used as fuel is relatively painless. Instead of converting masses of perfectly useable vegetable oil to another form, why not just use it as is?
Bio-diesel can be made using used veggie oil too, and that's the way it should be. Not all fuel can be supplied that way, but why not use what we've got? Once that's done, no additional parts will be needed for diesel engines. They'll work as is.
Oh... yeah, that's right... if people pushed the use of straight vegetable oil then they probably couldn't justify selling biodiesel for $4-$6 a gallon.
The cost of bio-diesel shouldn't be $4-$6/gallon. It should be closer to $1-$2/gallon, but the economics don't add up right now mostly because of a lack of demand and support. That said, if you think $1-$2/gallon is too expensive, maybe you've been a bit spoiled... I live in Japan and pay $5/gallon for gassoline right now. Diesel is about $4/gallon right now, but in Tokyo it's been pretty much all but banned.
Anyhow, power to you if you can get your car running on SVO. (Do it right though, or you'll kill your engine!) The more people are willing to pay the $800+ to convert to SVO the better, and the more cheap (pre-filtered) used SVO available on the market the better. It's not viable just yet though, so until it is, I'll be following the bio diesel movement... which, for the most part, seems to be a battle with politicians rather than a battle with technology...
Er, no. Biodiesel is a fuel produced from vegetable oil, it is not vegetable oil. The article is about a cataylst to improve the process of vegetable oil to biodiesel.
Some people have done conversion work to run diesel engines on vegetable oil. That's way cool. But that's not biodiesel.
Blends of biodiesel and tradtional petroleum diesel fuel are popular. That doesn't mean biodiesel is a blend.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The acid catalyst they are talking about replacing is liquid Sulphuric Acid. Most homebrewers of biodiesel, like those using an "open source" Appleseed type reactor, are not using both an acid and base catalyst, only the base being Potassium Hydroxide or Sodium Hydroxide (along with Methanol or Ethanol).v e_eff.html= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1628102 6&query_hl=34 0/cid/2/research/green_chemistry__efficient_cataly st_for_making__biodiesel_.html>
With higher Free Fatty Acid feedstock, such as really used grease, the acid cataylst helps convert those FFAs. You can read a little more on the chemistry of
the news item here:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/inexpensi
Nature abstract:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
Another abstract:
http://www.researchsea.com/html/article.php/aid/3
Seems this process is five times more reactive than other solid catalysts, but still 50% that of the liquid acid - however sepearation afterward would be much
easier.
and using the desert as one big hydroponics setup would help global warming.
Don't only a huge carbon sink but also all that nasty water vapour from the ice caps melting and the sea levels rising would be a huge water sink also.
Australia could join in too.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
We are, generally speaking, horribly bad at that sort of thing. Building up any sort of relatively big molecule is a matter of trial and error and error. And even when we do figure it out, it's usually less efficient than letting some plants or bacteria do it for us.
I hate to burst your bubble, but most crop plants achieve only 1 to 2 percent efficiency, with sugarcane being an exception at 8%.
5 .html
0 04/renew-energy-batt/Stirling.html
;)
Source: http://www.life.uiuc.edu/govindjee/whatisit.htm
Scientific-grade solar cells are about 15% to 20% efficient with some going as high as 24%
Source: http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2006/nov/solar11020
Solar Stirling engines achieve nearly 30% efficiency at an installation at Sandia National Laboratories.
Source: http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2
So I'm sorry to say that plants SUCK at converting sunlight into energy we can use. As the first link states, the initial reaction in photosynthesis is nearly 100% efficient, but as biological processes consume that energy, the total efficiency for the system drops significantly. Work is being done to attempt to make "biological solar cells" which use the initial reaction in photosynthesis as their method of light harvesting, but to date nothing has been produced.
Electricity storage for vehicles is a bit of a problem, unfortunately. I haven't got any links declaring that one solved.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Not sure about rapeseed, but soybeans require fairly heavy herbicide treatments to get good crops. And with Asian rust coming to the states, fungicide as well!
I think that corn is a less energy intensive crop to produce per bushel than soybeans. 1 acre on a good year (like this year!) will yield about 55 bushels of beans. That same acre on a good year (like this year!) will yield about 250 bushels of corn.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Lye (sodium hydroxide) is made commercially through the electrolysis of brine, as a byproduct of chlorine production (the "chloralkali process"). The process consumes massive amounts of electricity (primarily produced by burning coal), and the chlorine compounds themselves include many nasty environmental pollutants.
Methanol is produced from methane, AKA natural gas.
So the 2 chemicals needed to produce biodiesel (and reduce fossil fuel use) both depend on fossil fuels for their production.
The biodiesel production process generates as a byproduct a substantial amount of glycerin contaminated with lye and unreacted sodium methoxide. What is to be done with this stuff, and how much energy is needed to dispose of it or purify it for commercial use?
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Oil!
Hydrogen is a *vehicle* for energy. The energy has to come from *somewhere*...
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
200 ml methanol. I'm currently paying $2.50/gallon for methanol. Which puts my cost per gallon of biodiesel at about $.50
1 ml Sulfuric Acid. I'm currently getting this for a little over $1/oz Technically that's expensive, but so little is needed that it works out to only $.15/gallon biodD.
31-37g Sodium Hydroxide (depending on pH of oil) Lye is what's expensive. Hopefully, this is the catalyst the Nature article is replacing. Every so often a good price on lye will show up, but it is usually between $.20-$1/gallon biodiesel. If this article talks about replacing the lye, I'll definately try it.
Free MacMini
Problem is, even if we could produce all the BioD we wanted to for nothing, we will STILL rely on foreign oil. Here's why:
Perochemical products like plastics and lubricants still have not been figured out with alternative sources. Things like plastics (the keyboard you are typing on) can not be made without dino oil.
Where do the lube oil basestocks come from that we use in cars and trucks? Natural gas and dino oil. Even synthetic oils start out as some form of foriegn energy source.
What about the chemicals required to make the tires that all these diesels will drive on? Petro based.
High dino diesel prices are not due to foreign oil, its due to limited production due to modernazation (0 ppm sulfer mandated for 2006) and due to hurricanes. It used to cost 1/2 of unleaded. NOw it's street price rivals premium.
The sick sad truth is that the highest yield oil source for BioD is not cash crops like soy and canola, but ALGAE, read = POND SCUM! 98% water, almost 1% extractable oil, 1% other stuff. Easy to produce and extract. Thing is you need 100,000 acre ponds to make the stuff to make it economically viable.
The advances announced will make it safer and cheaper to produce BioD. I have seen picures of BioD processor accidents with methanol and it looks worse than a crystal meth lab gone kerblewy due to poor methanol handling.
This is not the holy grail, but one small step towards a better environment and easier production.
As far as benefits towards the US farmer: its meaningless. Do you know an individual farmer can not sell to anyone other than the domestic grain elevators? Not even to cross the border to Mexico or Canada. He has a product that he can only sell to a limited number of buyers. As a producer, he CAN NOT sell to foreign countries. Think about what each one of you 'makes,' codes, products and think about the export controls you face. They are insignificant compared to you can ONLY sell to ADM/Cargill/Mosanto/Frito Lay!
On th otherhand, cohnsider that Venezuala, or maybe Columbia just shipped over the first tanker full of BioD derived from Palm oil to Miami. That tanker got bought and the BioD went into the pipeline. No import controls whatsoever. BioD is a product like any other comodoty. The national Soy council was PI$$ED because the Bush administration did not listen to its recomendations to protect BioD years ago. Now we are cought with our pants around our ankles.
So, yeay, it sounds like it's a great advance, but we are not totally there yet.
To the most of you who are shaking fists or pom-poms, what do you drive?
Would YOU drive a diesel? How about a diesel-electric hybrid?
Of course a lot of older diesel engines can run perfectly well on straight veg oil - I've had best results from PSA engines (found in Peugeot, Renault, Volvo and Citroën, among others) that use Bosch fuel pumps - with drastically reduced emissions, quieter running and smoother performance. And no, it doesn't smell like fried food when it's running, unless the oil is incredibly dirty.
Mobutu Sese Seko - Former President of Zaire
Robert Mugabe - the head of government in Zimbabwe
King Mswati - the king of Swaziland
Idi Amin - Former President of Uganda
Omar al'Bashir - president of the Sudan
Sani Abacha - former military dictator of Nigeria
Gaddafi - the leader of Libya
These all look like real people to me.
45%? No thank you, i'll drive my oil like an american.
Thus, while oil continues to account for more than 95 percent of all the energy used for transportation in the United States, oil accounts for less than 20 percent of the energy consumed for other, stationary uses, down from 30 percent in 1973.
I'm already aware of the benefits of bio-fuels over petroleum diesel. I'm even aware of the CO2 benefits of bio-fueled diesel engines over gasoline engines. It would be difficult to read slashdot without being aware of the benefits, but that's not what I was commenting on. I was pointing out a negative that is seldom mentioned on slashdot; diesel engines, even when they run on biofuels, have more soot particles in their exhaust than gasoline engines. If you google "biodiesel particulate emissions" you will see that even biodiesel advocates admit this.
Those soot particles are the main reason why the EPA gives the 2006 Jetta diesel a horrible air pollution score even though it gets over 40 mpg. The difference in particulate (soot) emissions for diesel and gasoline engines is so great that it is very difficult - perhaps impossible - to get light duty diesel vehicles (i.e. cars) Tier II certified in California.
Right now, every gasoline burning car that is replaced by a biodiesel or SVO burning car causes us to have higher levels of soot in the air. From my original link:
That was the problem I was commenting on, and you responded with something totally off topic (a comparison of biodiesel and petroleum diesel.) Now, it is actually possible to clean up the exhaust on diesels quite a bit. That same article goes on to mention a way to solve the sooty particulate emmissions:
Unfortunately, the article does NOT explain the drawbacks of this process; the extra emmissions control equipment costs a LOT, and it reduces the power and fuel efficiency of the diesel engine. That's a problem, since fuel efficiency is one of the main reasons we are considering diesels in the first place, which is probably why most of these methods are still not used on new diesel vehicles. Besides using oxidizing-type particulate filters to get rid of soot can even increase the levels of carbon monoxide:
http://www.fleetguard.com/fl
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Ethanol has more energy per gallon than does gasoline
Nope. The energy density of ethanol is about 2/3 of that of gasoline.
Actually, the EPA mandate for low-sulfur (15 parts per million or lower) diesel fuel starts in Summer 2006, along with the same mandate for gasoline.
This is actually a good idea because removing the sulfur compounds from diesel fuel allows for the use for high-precision pressurized common-rail direct fuel injection into the combustion chamber and the use of a new generation of catalytic converters that double as diesel particulate traps. I've read that BMW has actually gotten their 2.0-liter I-4 and 3.0-liter I-6 turbodiesel engines to meet the 2007 California Air Resources Board diesel emission standard for automobiles using low-sulfur diesel fuel, a truly remarkable achievement considering the difficulties in reducing diesel emissions. This could pave the way for BMW to offer their highly-regarded 3.0-liter turbodiesel engine on the 3-Series and 5-Series vehicles along with the X3 and X5 "crossover" SUV's in all 50 states starting in the 2007 model year.
Coating the injectors? No.
First: Earlier engines (mostly those produced before 1992) used rubber for seals, and would need to have said seals replaced with non-rubber ones as biodiesel is very corrosive when it comes to rubber products. This is really the only modification that needs to be done, aside from possibly adding a fuel-line heater for cold climates.
Second: Diesel engines aren't significantly less efficient than gas engines, and that small difference is more a fault of the technology not having the focus that gasoline engines have had than a problem with the concept itself. Diesel engines don't use spark plugs (In fact, they can be made with no electrical components at all), thus reducing the draw on the electrical system - a system which, I should point out, is not exactly the most efficient system in the vehicle. Counterbalancing all of this is the fact that diesel fuel has a far greater energy density than gasoline, which results in a net gain in miles-per-gallon over gasoline technology.
Third: Regenerative breaking is great, but the only part that really needs the power is the fuel injection system, and even then not so much. UNLESS you're building a hybrid, which is a vastly different animal.
For a primer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine