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

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope we can finally dump our dependence on foreign oil. If this sort of thing really comes through, the Saudis are going to be PISSED.

Re:Finally!

[Obyron]

Everyone's always for helping the poor African citizens on principle, but they forget the African political climate. What money is netted from this is going to go to the Mobutu Sese-Seko, Charles Taylor, Robert Mugabe, King Mswati, Idi Amin, Omar al'Bashir, Sani Abacha, and Gaddafis of the world. Prosperity in Africa won't come about simply by giving them a new commodity they can use to make their dictators rich.

Re:Finally!

[llefler]

The way I understand it, nuclear power and electric cars are the solution.

Nuclear power and electric cars are a solution, probably not the solution.

It actually seems quite close, aside from the infrastructure.

Infrustructure is a HUGE problem. How do you get electricity or hydrogen to where you need it? For the US anyway, you're talking about reworking the entire electrical grid. And we still don't have an acceptable way to dispose of the nuclear waste. I'm a proponent of both nuclear and hydrogen power. But we need to be realistic.

With biofuels you can use current infrastructure. And current vehicles can use it with little or no modifications. Probably the reason there is so much interest in biodiesel is that with a cost effective solution there, you could convert every train and semi in America. Go for the least disruptive method that targets a very large market. From there you can look at either diesel cars or ethanol as the next step.

That's not to say you can't use more than one solution, but I don't see electric/hydrogen cars being popular outside of larger cities any time soon.

key word is catalyst

[ChrisGilliard]

with a much less expensive catalyst (between 10 and 50 times cheaper) than what is currently used.

Note: the catalyst is 10 - 50 times cheaper, not biodisel fuel itself, while the breakthrough is meaningful, the headline is misleading. I'd be curious to know what percentage of the total cost of producing biodisel is related to the cost of this catalyst.

Re:key word is catalyst

[bogaboga]

Still, this is an important development. If it is true and workable, most 3rd world countries will be able to "grow" a very essential component of fuel. Right now, there is no way these countries can avoid paying their hard earned dollars to the oil companies of the world, most of which are from the west.

Re:key word is catalyst

[TheGavster]

It should also give the third world a new market for their agricultural products; while we may make it a pain for people to sell us food, it's easy as pie to sell fuel over the border.

Re:key word is catalyst

[j-cloth]

Not just the 3rd world -- farmers in general. I ran screaming from the prairies because there are no jobs and no money there. More markets for farmers are a Good Thing.

Re:key word is catalyst

[Tracy Reed]

Biodiesal *IS* solar power. Where do you think the energy present in the plant matter comes from? Not only that but it is probably more efficient on a $/watt basis. I'm all for photovoltaics and stuff but electricity storage for vehicles is still a tricky problem whereas chemical storage of energy has worked great for many decades now.

Re:key word is catalyst

[chronicon]

Oil companies will resist biodiesel the way MS resists the GPL. Just watch. :)

Interestingly enough, there is some indication that the oil companies actually share our concerns over energy needs more than we think. It may not entirely be about money to them, they want to stay in business don't they? For instance from Chervon:

Energy will be one of the defining issues of this century. One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over. What we do next will determine how well we meet the energy needs of the entire world in this century and beyond...

The cynic would probably think that this is just a scam or excuse to raise oil prices and increase profitability. I think that is shortsighted. The ramifications are too great to ignore, even the greediest among us would not like to face the economic and societal ramifications that would follow sustained oil shortages. What good is money if you can't spend it?

On second thought, maybe I should hope that is exactly what they are trying to pull! It beats the bleak outlook sustained shortages would lead to any day...

Lye = expensive?

[drkfce]

Even though it is a good idea to reduce costs whenever possible, but from what I have seen, even when using lye (which is basic, not acidic), it is about 70 cents cheaper than regular fuel. Biodiesel = Used vegtable oil + lye + methanol + mixture motor, containers and filters.

Vegetable fuel

[Kelson]

This reminds me of an article I read a few months ago about using corn to produce ethanol on a large scale as a renewable resource. Follow-up articles pointed out that corn (maize, specifically) isn't a particularly efficient crop, which meant that the environmental impact of drilling for oil and depleting oil reserves was just being shifted to depleting topsoil. Very much a "no free lunch" reaction.

If this biodiesel process can be applied to enough different types of plants, then it should be possible to pick and choose crops based on what does well in a given area -- after all, we don't have to worry about market pressures and what people want to eat, it's just going to be converted into fuel -- which should minimize the effects of choosing hihg-impact crops.

Re:Vegetable fuel

[Fnkmaster]

Nobody except corn farmers has ever proposed using corn ethanol as a fuel on a meaningful scale. That is just a farming subsidy scam and a straw man used by confused or malevolent opponents of ecologically sound fuels, or those with political agendas in line with the fossil fuel industry.

Bioethanol is ethanol made from cellulose feedstocks. These should, in practice, be much lower in terms of energy input required than corn or similar crops used for human consumption. The economics of bioethanol produced by SSF (simultaneous sacharination and fermentation) bears almost nothing in common with corn ethanol.

Furthermore, if you get rid of farm subsidies from the equations, then the market should take care of making sure energy costs are fully reflected in all prices. Carbon impact is another story, but shouldn't be too hard to measure (and probably is closely correlated with the portion of costs attributable to energy use).

As for biodiesel - I am under the impression that the major costs are associated with the feedstock itself, not with the acid used in processing. From memory, I think that the feedstock cost is responsible for at least 60-70% of the final cost of biodiesel, so I wouldn't expect a 10x reduction in acid costs to save more than a few percent in total cost. Genetically engineered bacteria seem to provide the most reasonable way to make an oil feedstock for bioethanol production efficiently. The reason that some people think biodiesel is cheaper than diesel is that in Europe they get huge tax breaks on biodiesel, so they are comparing apples to oranges.

Bioethanol is by far the most promising alternative fuel available today, with attractive envrionmental impact and economic characteristics, and only modest incremental cost to make Flexible Fuel Vehicle engines that can burn either ethanol or gasoline. It's too bad there is zero governmental support for this here in the US. We could greatly reduce our foreign oil dependence within 5-10 years with just a bit of political willpower.

not a catalyst

[fuck_this_shit]

catalysts? acids? expensive? the definition of a catalyst is that they do not get transformed in an reaction but simply speed it up. In this case it rather sounds as if the acids are a simple consumed reactant.

Re:not a catalyst

[wfberg]

catalysts? acids? expensive? the definition of a catalyst is that they do not get transformed in an reaction but simply speed it up. In this case it rather sounds as if the acids are a simple consumed reactant.

A catalyst not being used up is all good and well, but it doesn't do you very much good in the cheap department if you can't easily get that catalyst to stay where the reaction is taking place; i.e. if there's no way to get the catalyst out of the resultant biodiesel and into a fresh batch of vegetable oil, it's not getting consumed, but it's getting siphoned off (via the endproduct) none the less.

Everone wins!

[ThatGeek]

If I were from one of those square-type states with lots of farms, I would be on this in a second. It would be the holy grail for farmers: a way to link national security with farm supports.

If the government could help farmers grow soybeans and in return reduce dependence on foreign oil, both left and right wingers would be happy. Imagine that! Good for security, good for American jobs, good for the environment, and even good for business (cars would need some retooling).

Where do I sign up? Oh, it's one of those "This technology will be really cool when it becomes available in 10-15 years" stories, huh?

Re:Human energy use linked to global warming

[sam_handelman]

Evidently you skipped class when they covered photosynthesis.

All that reduced carbon in the plant-oils COMES FROM CARBON DIOXIDE IN THE ATMOSPHERE.

Thus, biodiesel is sustainable.

The *real question* is, how much energy from fertilizer does it take to make this biodiesel? I'd understood that to be the big expense (along with the water,) and not the processing, but I could be mistaken.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN TO HELL

[(negative video)]

All biofuels are plagued by the same production inefficiencies, since photosynthesis itself is less than 1% efficient (Solar irradiance at a generous max of 1000W/M^2 would leave you needing a few dozen acres per tiny car).

I thought photosynthesis was actually ~5% efficient. Anyway, assume 1.25% efficiency because much energy goes to tissues other than oil, 6 hours/day of sunlight, and a 180 day growing season. That's ~50 MJ/m^2/year of captured energy. A that car requires 37 kW (50 horsepower) for one hour a day needs ~50 GJ/year. Obviously you'd need 1000 m^2/car/year = 0.25 acres/car/year. Use a factor of four to account for various losses and that's 1 acre/car/year. Hardly dozens of acres per tiny car.

Can that be right? One acre is barely enough for a horse. Either I slipped a decimal point or horses are really inefficient.

The real problem with biofuels is not efficiency. It is chemical conversion. Getting the molecules into the proper shape at low cost will take a lot of clever chemistry that hasn't been done yet. The "breakthrough" under discussion is one piece of the puzzle.

Re:necessity of exporting? maybe not...

[maomoondog]

Burning is the crudest possible use of petroleum. Petroleum based materials exploit the complex molecules left in hydrocarbons by life processes in a much more important way: as structural features. It costs orders of magnitude more energy to synthetically create that kind of structure than we can generate by burning it to release that bond-energy. However, today's energy is considered more valuable than tomorrow's plastic, so we just blow the stuff up.

I agree that petroleum will be exhausted, regardless of alternatives. But hopefully finding new energy sources will let us use it in much more far-sighted ways. This should be right up there in the benefits list, alongside environmental advantages and the opening of foreign policy options.