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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.'"
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.
No Sigs!
Err, this seems backwards to me. Everytime I've seen bio available, it's been below standard diesel prices. Perhaps it's just a regional thing where I'm at, but I've been under the impression that the real problem with biodiesel was A) older fuel lines may be degraded more quickly by biodiesel, and B) producing enough to fuel the world's fuel needs was a big issue.
Of course, I'm no biodiesel guru, but it is of some interest to me -- I drive an older diesel (which I plan on converting to run on SVO, as soon as I get the facilities to make this feasible.)
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
The next problem will be a shortage of arable land due to land used to produce the vegetables that are then going to become diesel. This could solve one problem and lead straight into another
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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.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
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.
The development of other fuels will not negate the usefullness or use of traditional petroleum. Nations that are oil rich will continue to use the fuel,especially if it is their primary natural resource, even if their export market diminishes. And especially then, with no imported cash from exported oil, they would be literally forced to directly use the oil themselves to the best of their ability. And it is quite possible that as the islamic world (if we want to limit the discussion to there) matures (most are under the age of 30 right now), they will want their own manufacturing and other islamo-centrist based business, rather than purchasing products from other areas. Necessity *and* desire at that point. You have to remember, petroleum is not only a transporation medium, it is also critical -today at least- for manufacturing.
With that said, I heartily welcome more R and D and deployment of biofuels. But older fuels are still used, I am using "stored solar"-wood-as my primary residential heating source, same as humans have been doing for millenia. We have a "domestic supply" and it is quite significant enough for our needs, hence no need to "export cash" to purchase someone elses developed energy product, nor do we need to "export the raw materials" for anyone else to use. That's a micro scale, macro between nations is just "larger".
Humans will use up the available petroleum, biofuels becoming massively more available or not. The use will only drop when it gets closer to a stasis point, when it takes one "barrel of energy" to produce an identical barrel of energy. Then it will stop.