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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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Just because no one the submitter knows uses biodiesel doesn't make biodiesel an "experimental" fuel.
There's a shuttle service of ca. 6-8 tractors towing two trams circling the entire grouds and they've been running biodiesel from local farmers for years.
I think there are plans for an "all natural" city in the northern part of the state, which will be limited to -E, biodisel, fuel cells, etc. due to switch over within the next year or two.
Not unless you are a farmyard animal, apparently.
As every car freak knows, its all about horse power!
My DeLorean has a Mr. Fusion powerplant installed. I called the manufacturer and they said that bio-diesel can be used in it. Hooray!
Biodiesel is PEOPLE!!! It's PEOPLE!!!!
Lousy facepalm.
Premptively, let me make this very clear so we don't need to have the same discussion everytime biodiesel comes up.
First, biodiesel has a positive energy balance, to the tune of about 3.2 units out for every unit you put in. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24089.pdf
Second, biodiesel is 78% carbon neutral with regard to greenhouse gas emissions (see previous pdf). That is because the majority of the carbon emitted when you burn a gallon of biodiesel was captured from the atmosphere when you grew the plant to make the vegetable oil. However, the methanol used to make the biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester) is made from natural gas, at least in the US. You could make 100% renewable ethyl ester biodiesel from ethanol, or make methanol from landfill recovery biogas, but we don't currently.
Third, soy and corn oil are crummy crops to make biodiesel from. But that's where the lobbying money is right now. Other plants have much higher yields.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html
Forth, no, it isn't a question of "food or fuel"? We can do both! Whenever you hear that argument ask yourself whether the person is well meaning but misinformed, or as been happening recently, is part of astroturf campaign to preserve the status quo of the petroleum economy.
Want to try making some biodiesel yourself?
http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/howitsmade/
Already making biodiesel and want to show it off?
http://www.cafepress.com/RenewableWear
This is simply a function of the efficiency of the vehicle in question. It's not a problem of any single fuel. Biodiesel burns quite clean in an efficient engine at operating temperature.
Have you ever smelled a biodiesel vehicle in operation or at rest? Uhg! What a stench.
I have yet to smell one that was offensive to me. The worst I've smelled was a bit remimniscent of carmelization. Diesel smells much worse.
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.
No. I've driven an SVO for a year. It had more power on the vegetable oil than the diesel. The fuel system ran smoother and the engine knocked less.
Biodiesel may become more widely used in commercial or off-road applications but, it will never take off for highway vehicles.
What do you mean take off? A certain percentage of auto-diesels are operating on it right now. Maybe you should say "everyone that uses biodiesel is a hoser, and can take off", or just grumble to your friends at the refinery.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
I have seen them. I don't see what you describe.
I live in Denton, TX. The City has it's own Biodiesil Plant, one of the first. All the city vehicles run on B20; all the city trucks, heavy equipment, garbage trucks, etc...
Even though, its not 100% biodiesil (B20 is 80% diesel 20% biodesieal) they use a remarkable amount of it. There are a few more public biodiesel pumps in DFW area, and I think one other city around here uses it for thier equipment.
Ours plant is out by the land fill, and basicly all the vegetable oils, from restaruants and farms etc.., get processed. Pretty cool, and not experimental at all.
Now I've seen Everything
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.
My first bio-fuel powered car was a Brazilian 1983 Chevette with a 1.6 liter motor burning 96% pure ethanol. For over 25 years there have been ethanol pumps in every Brazilian gas station.
Besides the cars that burn strraight ethanol, the gasoline distilled from petroleum in Brazil gets a mix from 20% to 25% ethanol, depending on the season. Today, most new Brazilian cars are equipped with "flex" motors that can burn any proportion, from 0% to 100% ethanol.
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.
9,200,000/42/365 = 600 BOPD.
The USA uses about 20,000,000 BOPD. Canada and the USA use over 22 million BOPD. This is a drop in the bucket.
If they scaled this up by a factor of 1000 (a $14 BILLION plant) then this would still be small potatoes compared to what we need. Even the Alberta tar sands expansions which will take us to about 3.3 million BOPD with investments in the 10's of billions and maybe 100's of billions by 2015 are small potatoes compared to what we need.
Yes - every bit helps but...
Lets look at the 4 top oil fields:
Ghawar (Saudit Arabia) 5 million BOPD Likely near decline
Canaterall (Mexico) 2.2 million BOPD In decline, 14% per year
Bergan (Kuwait) 1.6 million BOPD In decline, rate unknown
DaQing (China) 1 million BOPD In decline, 7% per year
These 4 feilds produce about 10 million BOPD, or about 12.5% of the world's 82 million BOPD production.
A decline rate of 10% in these 4 feilds translates to a loss of over 1 million BOPD. If we multiply that biodiesel plant by 1000 we still do not make up for the lost production of the top 4 oil fields.
The North sea went into decline in 1999 at a rate of about 14%. The UK became an oil importer this year.
Indonesia became an oil importer this year.
Australia use to be supplied by Indoneasia and since Indonesia can no longer supply Oz, Oz also has lined up at the Straits of Hormuz, hat in hand, asking for middle east oil.
This plant is just a drop in the bucket! If we build a plant like this every day for the next 10 years it won't be enough. That is how big the world oil peak problem is. We do not have a workable energy policy in place.
Has anyone even heard any of the damn pollies even dicusssing it seriously?
The most believable estimate I have is that world oil production will peak in 2007 and this is an optimistic estimate taking into consideration every oil production project on the planet.
Although small, this processing plant in Canada is at least a good step, we need more setups like this.
In the UK, there is a 20p/litre tax relief for biodiesel, but this isn't enough. Even with current oil prices biodiesel is still more expensive. What we need is to completely drop the tax on biodiesel, that way oil companies and others will see a reason to invest. The tax break would also need to be guaranteed for a decent length of time, say 20 years so that investments would pay off.
There are problems with biodiesel. It would require vast tracts of land, and would probably end up using land in the 3rd and developing worlds to meet our needs for fuel. This land may have been better used for local food production. IMHO, this is not a huge problem, as it would provide much needed investment into developing and 3rd world nations, and of course many ppl would be employed to harvest the crops.
Some interesting biodiesel sites:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html
http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/
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.
Exept we really haven't.
Say we have a Thermal Depolymerization Plant (which is what the article seems to talk about). Into the plant I dump animal wastes (offal, bones, skin, etc.) I add a little energy to run the process. Out the other side I get a hydrocarbon soup which is essentially light crude oil (technically not BioDiesel) as well as some other goodies like methane gas, nearly pure carbon (as a solid) and clean water.
Lo and behold, the energy I can get from burning the oil product is greater than the energy I put into the perocess! We can litterally take a portion of our output (usually the methane) and feed it back into the plant to keep it running. How can this be?!
Answer: There is energy in the animal wastes that you are not taking into consideration. Energy that otherwise would be completely wasted. Energy in the animal wastes + energy added to process < energy available as fuel product. This satisfies the laws of thermo just fine. But your USEFUL energy has increased. Looking only at the useful energy, your efficiency is up around 560% (see wiki article). If you consider the energy in the waste as part of the balance, the real efficiency is closer to 85%
Also, since pure carbon solids is a byproduct, you are actually removing carbon from the atmosphere. All of that carbon was once CO2, absorbed by plants and then eaten by animals which you then processed into fuel. Even if you burn all that carbon again there is a net zero change in CO2 levels. Thus, carbon-neutral.
What I find most interesting is how the process could possibly be tweaked to work on nearly anything carbon-based, like plastics. Imagine digging up old landfills and recycling the contents as fuel (organics and plastics) and materials (metals, glass, etc.)
=Smidge=