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.'"

Comments

In other news...

[Kohath]

Green fuel plan 'will destroy rainforests'

Forests paying the price for biofuels

Careful what you wish for.

SVO

[evenprime]

You still have to play with nasty chemicals when you convert veggie oil to biodiesel. If you are dead set on producing huge amounts of particulate emmisions (i.e. running a diesel) it might be better to use one of the conversion kits and run straight veggie oil.

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

MOD PARENT DOWN TO HELL

[imsabbel]

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.

Re:key word is catalyst

[foniksonik]

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....

Bottlenecks

[pavon]

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.

Re:Biodiesel more at the pump?

[Mr. Slippery]

Technically biodiesel is a blend of tradtional diesel and vegitable oil that burns cleaner than diesel by itself and if you have a free or cheap source of vegitable oil, used generally, it can be cheaper.

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.

A few more details, re: homebrewing etc.

[wherley]

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).
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/inexpensiv e_eff.html
Nature abstract:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1628102 6&query_hl=3
Another abstract:
http://www.researchsea.com/html/article.php/aid/34 0/cid/2/research/green_chemistry__efficient_cataly st_for_making__biodiesel_.html>

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.

Re:Finally!

[DrSkwid]

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.

Re:key word is catalyst

[syukton]

I hate to burst your bubble, but most crop plants achieve only 1 to 2 percent efficiency, with sugarcane being an exception at 8%.
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/solar110205 .html

Solar Stirling engines achieve nearly 30% efficiency at an installation at Sandia National Laboratories.
Source: http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/20 04/renew-energy-batt/Stirling.html

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. ;)

Re:Human energy use linked to global warming

[TykeClone]

Not much. Biodiesel is made from soybeans, or rapeseed, both of which have relatively light fertilizer requirements.

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.

Re:key word is catalyst

[brontus3927]

In the 2 stage reaction, which is the only time an acid is used as a catalyst for biodiesel, the ingredients are as follows per liter of vegetable oil:

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.

bad comparison: diesel!=gasoline

[evenprime]

You didn't even respond to the relevant point of my post: I believe SVO is more beneficial to the environment than biodiesel. Worse, you didn't seem to understand what you did respond to. You said

OTOH if you had even Googled "biodiesel carcinogens" you would know that one of the benefits of BD is exhaust that is 90% less carcinogenic than exhaust from petro-diesel.

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.

Gasoline produces 15 percent less Particulate Matter than B100 (Particulate matter from B100 is of a less toxic nature than that from petroleum products)

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.

It is, therefore, believed that emission certification of light duty diesel vehicles in California will be possible only if advanced emission control technologies, such as particulate traps and NOx catalysts, are developed.

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:

Diesel-powered cars will always produce more particulate matter. The particulate matter, now a known carcinogen, will contribute to immediate health problems if breathed in.
[...]
Bad for lungs, better for the ozone layer
Granolas are split: some think the soot from diesels does more damage to people and animals here and now, while others want to minimize reliance on fuel resources and oil drilling, and to slow climatic change.

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:

Diesel engines can be clean, as clean as comparable gasoline engines if the right measures are taken to reduce particulate matter. Advanced engine controls, particulate-matter traps, and new-design catalysts have helped all but eliminate particulate matter.

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

Re:Not Invented Here

[MtViewGuy]

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.