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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."
Why is it a "patch"? It's completely carbon neutral and sustainable.
Oh no... it's the future.
The second part where the fuel comes from peanut or other oils- I fail to see how that can be beneficial. Farm tractors burn diesel to harvest the peanuts, fetiziliers made from and processed with petroleum are throw into the field, and then energy is needed to harvest the oils. If this can all be done with some much greater output than input- then great- but from what I have seen- often times these other factors are not taken into account.
Farm tractors burn diesel to harvest the peanuts
And farmers can cut the process's net carbon contribution by running their tractors on biodiesel. In the future they may be modified to burn straight vegetable oil, using diesel only to start up and shut down the engine.
fetiziliers made from and processed with petroleum are throw into the field
Not all farming methods use petrofertilizers.
Tractors and other farm machinery can run on biodiesel themselves, and fertilisers don't need to be petroleum based. Yes, one needs to be aware of those things in order to ensure that the whole process is indeed carbon neutral, but it's not hard to do, it may add a little to the cost.
The real question is, when you factor in all the costs associated with hydrogen - new infrastructure, new vehicles, renewable energy sources to manufacture the hydrogen (without which it is pointless), is there any way hydrogen can be cheaper than biodiesel?
Oh no... it's the future.
Have you ever seen a biodiesel vehicle in operation? White smoke pumping out.
I have followed my friend who has a biodiesel burning Dodge/Cummins truck from Nashville, Tn to Dayton, Oh. (among other trips that are 100s of miles) I didn't see any "white smoke".
Have you ever smelled a biodiesel vehicle in operation or at rest? Uhg! What a stench.
The slight smell of french fries maybe, but I like french fries. No worse than any other diesel.
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.
He pulls a huge trailer packed with heavy gear all over the southeast when going to hamfests. It has plenty of power.
--fatboy
You put unleaded in with your biodiesel! Does that work? I would have thought you would mix in normal fossil based diesel fuel, NOT unleaded. Surely unleaded would cause damage to your engine.
A couple of years ago, a company called Changing World Technologies was all the news. They had perfected a process for converting garbage to oil. There was an article in Discovery magazine. They built a plant to convert turkey guts and had plans to roll out the technology to several more plants. It really hasn't moved forward a lot. I presume they are having some kind of trouble. www.changingworldtech.com
One of the statistics that Changing World cited was that if you could convert all the agricultural WASTE in the US to oil, that would do away with the need to import oil. If that statistic is true, then what Rothsay has done is really important. If their process is actually economical then they have beaten Changing World to the prize.
The other thing not to be ignored is that the Changing World process, and this one too presumably, destroys the prions that cause mad cow disease. This process may take animal carcasses out of the livestock feed chain by providing an alternate market for slaughterhouse refuse and dead stock.
On the other hand, their business stinks, literally, and I don't expect that to change. Anyway, I hope they succeed.
I recently splurged and bought a VW Jetta TDI simply because the highway mileage is so good (~50 mpg) and it can run at least partially on biodiesel. My old newspaper The Wisconsinite ran a story on biodiesel (b.d.) in 2004, and I've been excited about it ever since. My Jetta seems to run a little more smoothly with it, and it doesn't smell bad in cold weather like dino diesel does.
The problem currently I have with it is trying to find it in great quantities. I fill up at a CENEX agricultural co-op gas station. They have B2, which is 98% dino diesel, 2% bio. It's still mostly dino diesel, of course, which annoys me. But it's better than nothing. What I really want is B20, which is 20% bio, 80% dino. And during the summer, I want to try progressively higher ratios of bio to dino diesel. Volkswagen officially approves using B5. I'm pretty sure then it can take a higher grade biodiesel.
The problem of availability will be overcome in good time. There are b.d. production centers opening up around the country, everywhere from Oklahoma to Nevada, and one coming soon near Madison, Wisconsin (which is near to me). I'm contemplating opening a biodiesel fueling station in Milwaukee. Anyone interested? I regularly post about b.d./alt.energy on my blog; you can easily reach me through there.
-- haaz.
The notion that ethanol production is an energy loss stems from the eroneous conclusions of David Pimenthal, a Corenell university insect scientist. He should have stuck with his bugs.
Making fuel from corn however is not nearly as good an idea as making it from plants such as hemp.
The reason why the storage is problem is hard to solve is the same reason you need to in the first place. People are selfish and they don't give a shit about you or the future generations. Just like you want them to STFU and shove your nuclear easte down their throats they want to tell the future generations to STFU and live with the fact that they chose to drive a two ton vehicle three blocks to get their groceries and the fact that they chose to live 50 miles away from their work with a huge lawn and spend two hours driving their 200lb body back and forth to work in their two ton vehicle.
People are selfish. They don't care about anybody but themselves. It's what makes capitalism work so you can't undo it either.
evil is as evil does
Technologically we've had a way to deal with nuclear waste for years now as well; breeder reactors can tear apart free Uranium into once again fissibles, knock it apart for faster decomp (shorter half-lives), and through further uranium enrichment, you can take those materials and run them right through a nuclear reactor as well.
Also, on top of all of this, we are ignoring the fact that the waste is still radioactive, which means we can still draw power from it, even if it's at a much reduced scale. Combine that with heavy water and you get an almost geothermal-like effect, hot water rising, turns a turbine, releases heat, falls over the side into a collection tank which circulates its way back into the bottom of the tank. Of course, this would be a closed system, and you wouldn't have a "chain" reaction, but it's a good way to continue to draw power from it, while also keeping an eye on it.
Besides, nobody really needs your high five; if they're a small start up, they can get the attention of other small start ups, join forces, grow, acquire, grow.. and what you end up with is the environmentally friendly enron. Of course countries like Brazil would still laugh at you for entering the game so late, but hell, cheap fuel created from what's otherwise waste. Hard to beat. Economies of Scale will definitely help with a lot of the problem Biodiesel is having now, especially as the companies become more aware of each other. And as the infrastructure already exists, you just have to get the farmers, waste oil management companies, resteraunt chains and such onboard (which, to be truthful wouldn't be as hard as it sounds; you're offering to take their waste off their hands for virtually nothing to turn it into fuel which brings more food and thus more customers to them. It's win win).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
"European countries generally have more room to cut taxes than North American countries do."
::shrug::
And they don't. Cut them, I mean. A friend of mine lives in the UK and has told me stories about how you can go to jail for using biodiesel you make yourself because it isn't subject to the same exorbitant taxes their petrofuels are.
What apparently goes right over Parliament's heads is that they have a huge opportunity to lead the way in alternative fuels technology, but I guess they just don't think their constituents are interested. Maybe they aren't.
+++ATH0