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Utilizing Bio-fuel Beyond Experimental Use
grumpyman writes "A C$14 million factory near Montreal started producing biodiesel fuel two weeks ago from the bones, innards and other parts of farm animals. At full capacity plant will produce 35 million liters (9.2 million U.S. gallons) of biodiesel a year, the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing 16,000 light trucks or 22,000 cars from the roads."
For some time I've thought the future of automotive fuel lies in biodiesel rather than hydrogen. Hydrogen is just very hard to work with because of its low energy density and the fact it is normally a gas. Generation, transportation, storage and utilization all face large challenges.
For biodiesel, all the steps except generation are already solved and the infrastructure in place, and the generation problems do not seem large. (Even without the existing infrastructure, I suspect biodiesel wins economically.)
Generation from algae is particularly promising, as it doesn't require arable land, and can use salt water.
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I call bullshit. No idea where you get your information from, but... yup... just about every word of it is utter utter crap.
:) Yeah, feel free to mod me for that.
HTH
The problem with slashdot is that any fuckwit can be a moderator too...
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The "White Smoke" you speak of is - oh my god - Steam! Yep, hot water - other stuff, too, but that's what makes it white.
I'm not sure what Biodiesel vehicles you've been stuck behind in traffic. My only experience with biodiesel vehicles is a local hobbyist who buys (cheaply) used oil from local restaurants and filters/processes it, and it doesn't stink at all when his old Volvo Diesel is buring that fuel. In fact, it smells faintly of french fries. And I've ridden with him many times on the highway; he certainly doesn't have any trouble getting into traffic or passing slower vehicles; I've never seen him drive over 75 mph, but since 70 is the highest speed limit on local hiways, I can't imagine *needing* much more. Most resources one can locate on Google suggest a 10% loss in power. Significant, but not fatal; a 225 HP diesel will be a ~203 hp biodiesel. A matching 10% loss in 'economy' is also measured, so if you got 25 MPG, you're now going to get ~22.5 MPG. Again, not fatal from a pragmatic standpoint.
To the poster earlier that noted that it must still produce CO2, therefore cannot be carbon neutral - your assumptions are wrong. It's carbon neutral because it's adding no NEW CO2 to the atmosphere - ie, it can only release CO2 that was already in the atmosphere, and then bound by plants in the production of leaves, seeds, stems, etc. Thus, using biodiesel adds no NEW CO2 to the atmosphere, and cannot increase the overall CO2 percentage; burning petrochemicals releases CO2 that has been locked under the crust of the planet, increasing the overall CO2 content of the atmosphere.
To anyone who's looking at this thread and interested in Biodiesel, I suggest you get cozy with google and find out for yourself, rather than paying attention to the FUD here.
Thinking outside my Head
I see one everyday. My VW doesn't smoke unless the engine has coldsoaked for a couple of days below freezing. And then the smoke clears up within the first minute.
Have you ever smelled a biodiesel vehicle in operation or at rest? Uhg! What a stench.
Why yes I have. I've even gotten down on all fours and sniffed my tailpipe. It has a distinct smell, but it doesn't smell like fries or eggrolls, and it smells much much better than the sulfur laden petrodiesel we get here in New England.
Have you ever driven a biodiesel vehicle? They are a bit quieter than when running on regular diesel but they also lack power compared to when running on regular diesel.
I drive one everyday. It's certainly not lacking in power and the increased cetane rating makes the engine run much smoother. The BTU content of biodiesel is about 95% of that of petrodiesel. So does it get slightly worse mileage? Sure. But it isn't the anemic dog you make it out to be.
Biodiesel may become more widely used in commercial or off-road applications but, it will never take off for highway vehicles.
My commute is 90 miles by highway and I use biodiesel. I know of two retail biodiesel pumps just off I91 (one in Holyoke and one in Brattleboro). I think you are misinformed.
Finally, I have a question for you Mr. Anonymous Coward. You seem rather put off by your biodiesel exposure. Is that just armchair experience from surfing or have your actually driven a BD powered vehicle. If so, was it a modern german turbodiesel like my '03 Jetta or was it a 20 year old out of tune beater MB hippiemobile. No offense to the old-school MB diesel hippies, but they make the rest of us look bad.
Unless there is a tax or government subsidy for recyclable diesel (diesel in which the CO2 was trapped by plants recently)
Motor vehicle fuels are already taxed. Drastically cutting taxes on biofuels compared to petrofuels can subsidize them without "subsidizing" them, although European countries generally have more room to cut taxes than North American countries do.
few consumers will double or triple their fuel costs to use a sustainable energy source.
Unless worldwide crude oil extraction peaks and the supply curve moves so as to double or triple petrodiesel prices anyway. Then biodiesel will become even more attractive.
The city also runs Natural Gas in it's busses. The air quality in Dallas is better than it used to be, based just on my impression of the way things are.
Bio is the way to go IMO, especially when produced by small time operators. We have so much of the raw materiel that is treated as waste matter (cooking oil), we can kill multiple birds with one or two old water heater processors.
I'm going to assume you're trolling. If not I have to ask how did someone as dumb as you get a four digit /. ID? You're giving the rest of us a bad name.
And, fucking *Insightful* moderation? Jeesus...
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You're not seeing the big picture. Sure, this is not the be all, end all solution to the entire environment problem, but it might turn out to be a large piece of the puzzle. Other pieces might include finding a way to make cheap plastics and rubber-like materials out of something other than oil, somehow changing the suburban lifestyle in the U.S. so that public transport starts to make sense, creating environemnt friendly batteries or some other form of portable energy source, finding a way to control pests without using dangerous pesticides and finding a reliable way to free the mallocs.
Complaining that the potential solution to one of our biggest environmental problems will not make the entire problem go away is short-sighted and unproductive.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Biodiesel really is amazing!
Bzzzt. Back to intro physics for you. To quote MC Hawking:
The earth's not a closed system' it's powered by the sun,
so fsck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!"
Biodiesel is just solar energy, in liquid form.
Unless you knew this, in which case, if you were making a joke, you should have used a smiley.
If you meant drilled oil, perhaps yes, it could peak in 2007. I don't think so, but it could be.
But there are projects to unlock the oil sands in Canada, they'll be online and working soon, and they'll certainly take up the slack for any drop in liquid crude pumping.
I'm not nearly as concerned about "peak oil" as I am about the precipitous rise in use. Yes, we're bad in the US, buying so many SUVs we don't get any better gas mileage than we did in the 70s. But the real issue is so many countries that are increasing their oil use many times for cars and power generation (article said Indonesia became an importer this year for example.
If the rate of oil use continues to rise rapidly, it doesn't matter how much we drill, we can drill it faster and faster, and we'll just bring the true date of peak oil sooner.
The 3rd world is going to increase their industrialization, so energy use will rise. We have to increase our energy efficiency to minimize the problems, and find alternate sources (including nuclear) also.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I know it sounds like a violation of the law of thermodynamics, but it isn't.
If you put in x energy to obtain the biodiesel, and get x * 3 energy from the biodiesel itself, you win. The energy that is being obtained from the biodiesel is actually solar energy, which, while technically a finite resource, isn't going to run out in our lifetimes, or those of our children, etc., etc. Unless humans survive, what, another 5 billion years?
The assumption of all of the above being, of course, that the market is capable of developing such a replacement strategy, even with gentle prodding, based on shifting financial incentives, and that this new equilibrium does not have some rather profound effects, like, say, complete and total change in the economics of transportation and manufacturing processes, great many of which depend on plastics. This is not to say that a positive outcome is impossible. I am merely pointing out what appears to be your unwarranted, blind faith in the infallability of free market and an out-of-hand dismissal of a possibililty of seismic shifts in the way of life of hundreds of millions of people, all of which can have far ranging effects well beyond the scope of pure economics, and with which the free markets are completely unequipped to deal with.
I don't see the problem. Oil will become gradually more expensive, cheaper replacements will be substituted, and the economy will change.
A seismic change would not be a gradual change. You assume that the eventual reductions in oil production will be gradual, leading to gradual increases in oil production. Oil demand is not very elastic, so dramatic changes to supply would cause dramatic changes in price (prices could double or triple very quickly if there was a production shortfall of 20%).
Can you come up with any scenarios that result in abrupt reductions in oil production? What if the OPEC countries are radically overestimating the remaining reserves and a production crisis across the middle east happens that reduces OPEC production by 75%? How about multiple simultaneous pipeline disasters?
I'm not reaching any conclusions either way, but I do think it's naive to plan based on an assumption that oil production will follow a gradual decline. Energy is ultimately a foundation of our economy and if that market is disrupted, our economy won't be able to work around that problem without a lot of pain and suffering. The smartest approach to planning is usually to plan for the worst and hope for the best. However, our leaders are planning for the best. If they're wrong, it's going to be a very scary time indeed.
Regards,
Ross