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Tiny Biodiesel Reactors
Lee_in_KC writes "A professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University
developed a small reactor to directly convert vegetable oil to biodiesel.
Goran Jovanovic reports his invention is approximately the size of a credit
card. It pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through parallel channels to
convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly. Current mainstream
methods to produce biodiesel take more than a day and also produces other byproducts which must be neutralized before disposal or use in other manufacturing processes."
Mr. Fusion.
I'm not sure how feasible this is. Also, as per the longer article (above), it does not eliminate the need for NaOH; unless I'm reading it wrong.
Aren't we fat enough without our cars putting on extra pounds as well?!?! Vegetable oil has like 20 grams of fat per serving.. I wonder how many miles-per-gallon my Hummer will get after its intake is clogged with cholesterol..
> Conventional production involves dissolving a catalyst, such as sodium hydroxide, in alcohol, then stirring it into vegetable oil in large vats for about two hours. The mixture then has to sit for 12 to 24 hours while a slow chemical reaction forms biodiesel along with glycerin, a byproduct.
It mentions a byproduct in the conventional method. Am I missing something, or does it not clarify whether or not this new method produces a byproduct?
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
I'd applaude but the sodium methoxide disolved the flesh of my hands.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I'll be interested to see how much the oil companies pay for his patent so they can bury it for the next fifty years.
I find it interesting that the biodiesel reactor is - literally - the size of a credit card.
... Priceless!
Biodiesel car upgrade $50
New fuel lines $80
Energy independence
For a free fuel life, there's GTA
For everything else, there's BiodieselCard.
Will in Seattle
Or to disappear.
I'm sure the oil companies and the Bush family would like to invite him over for a sphagetti dinner.
To bad he won't make it home.
Given that the pipes are smaller than a human hair, it's funny that the article says nothing about how many devices would you need to pump out commercially viable quantities.
From the article:
The device - about the size of a credit card - pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through tiny parallel channels, each smaller than a human hair, to convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly...The device is small, but it can be stacked in banks to increase production levels to the volume required for commercial use.
I mean, my car already runs on a credit-card-sized device. It's called a credit card.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"Essentially, the reactors, which can range in size from less than a square inch to several square inches, use tiny, parallel channels no larger in diameter than a human hair, to bring the alcohol and vegetable oil into contact with each other in the presence of a sodium hydroxide catalyst.
What results is not only a tiny stream of 100 percent biodiesel fuel, but also glycerin, the latter having uses in making soaps and even fossil fuel-free plastics.
The microreactors, each of which produces only a minute amount of biodiesel, are designed to be used with thousands of others of the same size in a single, integrated system."
Sounds like the mechanical equivalent of an organ.
"a unit about the size of a computer printer and costing $1,000 to $5,000 could produce as much as 50,000 to 100,000 gallons of biodiesel a year."
...REPLACE CYAN BIO DIESEL CARTRIDGE...
"Jovanovic compared it to Hewlett-Packard when that company invented the inkjet printer cartridge."
Looks at printer sized bio diesel generator:
This guy must really like printers.
It's more concentrated in terms of caloric value (energy).
Plus, PETA's reaction would be hysterical.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
you can take the tinfoil hat off.
x-ray machines generate the x-rays by using that voltage to accelerate electrons which slam into targets, causing x-rays to be emitted.
sparks don't emit x-rays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray
The main article says: NaOH + glycerin = soap.
Because it isn't like biodiseil would need spark plugs or anything.
Oh, and you're a crazy loon.
correct me if im wrong but...
diesel engines use glowplugs not sparkplugs you ninny
The energy returned on energy invested for biofuel is about 1/10th what it is for petroleum, and the current method of food production is completely dependent on fossil fuels, and INSUSTAINABLE.
http://www.energybulletin.net/5045.html
The ONLY answer is to switch to nuclear power, ASAP.
yup
From TFA:
"If we're successful with this, nobody will ever make biodiesel any other way,"
So, what you are trying to say is that you haven't ever done it, but in *theory* it should be a phenomenal improvement over exiting methods of biodeisel production...
I'll be over here holding my breath.
Does it still smell like fried chicken and french fries when you drive down the road?
Desktop Fusion.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The energy returned on energy invested for biofuel is about 1/10th what it is for petroleum
According to scientific papers searchable in ScienceDirect (if you have university access), the Netherlands is acheiving around 40 percent energy - and since it's derived from solar radiation (sun on plants), this is a lot more efficient than our current 30 percent usage of Canadian Tar Oil Sands, which uses barrels of oil to release more oil from the sands.
So, from that perspective, it's more efficient.
Now, it's true that the energy density is not as high, so long-distance movement of such fuels is not as useful as local power plant usage, or local heating. That's a function of caloric mass content and BTU/m2 - but we're only beginning to develop this source, so one can easily expect higher yields as we manipulate the plant genomes and conversion processes.
Will in Seattle
If thousands of cancers a year are being blamed on ultraviolet, well, there's a lot more ultraviolet streaming down from the Sun then you could theoretically come up with as coming out of your car engine. Now, secondhand smoke is another matter, and I suspect a highly overrated cancer threat, but that's another story. Don't hold your breath for an "amazing blessing".
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Looks at printer sized bio diesel generator: ...REPLACE CYAN BIO DIESEL CARTRIDGE...
This guy must really like printers.
Actually, many scientific labs at state universities use printers and printer heads a lot - for example, a new sealed plastic crystal suspension device created at the University of Washington uses HP inkjets (cheap to get, and colored Husky Purple) to deliver reagants in controlled amounts into plastic tubes which are then sealed by laser.
Every university has a section that recycles computers and printers - so it's easy to divert some of them for use in development of new technologies.
Thus, using printer technology to create a biodiesel converter is not that unusual.
Will in Seattle
...is whether it can run in reverse: pump in biodiesel and veggie oil, and get pure alcohol out the other end. Then we'll really have something! :}
There is a 100 mpg carburetor patent that an oil company is sitting on.
This story has been floating around since the 1950s, far longer than any patent term. Either EvilOilCo has a hundred-year patent to go with their hundren-mile-per-gallon car, or there never was such a device...
0 1 - just my two bits
Japanese researchers announced several months ago that they've eliminated the need for expensive acids in biodiesel reactors.
--
make install -not war
You're wrong, but you're close. Diesels ignite via compression only. Glow plugs only heat up the air when the engine is cold; they exist solely to make starting easier. Some diesels don't even have glow plugs, they use grid heaters instead.
Deuteronomy 13:06-9
Basically the concept is on paper only. Why else would he be stating things like "If it works...", or "...could reduce...", "...might not need a catalyst..." etc.? It is because they havn't gotten a working prototype yet. They basically believe that their design could work, as they have done the chemical reaction analysis as well as a design analysis on how to cause the chemical reaction to occur quickly and efficently. But again, this is all on paper still. We don't even know yet if their results from the chemical reaction simulation are correct yet!
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Or how much the university demands in licensing fees.
Far too much good technology goes unused for years until patents expire because their creators overestimate how much they're worth (or simply get greedy.)
Dolby had it right. He licensed Dolby technology at a price so cheap (a few cents per tape player) that manufacturers were happy to pay it. So- every tape player ended up with Dolby licensed technology, and he made millions.
Please help metamoderate.
For all of your wordiness, your answer is nonsensical. X-ray tubes generate X-rays by "accelerating" electrons using the potential gap between an anode and a cathode. This is exactly , precisely, identically how a spark plug acclerates electrons to jump its gap. The energy of the electrons when they reach their destination is determined by ...the voltage potential between the electrodes. Which is exactly, precisely the same in a spark plug as it is in an X-ray tube.
Your description of orbital shells is, well, mistaken. Flourescent lights may work that way.
Xrays are ionizing radiation. Producing them requires an electron to be knocked free of its atom, and then return, emitting X-ray photons when returning to the orbital shell.
While a few of the electrons in a spark plug may be absorbed by the gas an air mixture that is ignited in turn, most of them pass through to the anode. If they didn't the spark plug wouldn't fire at all because of the resistance (Like what happens when your spark plug is fouled with carbon build-up)
As for the distance squared factor - there is also several feet between you and the Xray tube at the hospital - there has to be in order to allow the X-rays to spread sufficiently so that their angle of incidence with the film produces a reasonable image instead of a fish-eye view.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
I'm sure there are many more way to improve this technology and make it more efficient and cost-effective.
After all, it's not like is has had the kind of push that other technologies have had for much longer..
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
This is all very interesting, but wouldn't the steel firewall block or reflect any theoretical X-rays away from the driver and passengers anyway? Could be a hazard for pedestrians near fiberglass cars, I suppose...
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Well, no.
First, the amount of energy needed will stay the same, whether you run your truck on gasoline, diesel, alcohol, natural gas, wood, coal, electricity, hydrogen or gooseshit.
Second, the result of combustion will always be CO2 (except for Hydrogen and electricity), so forget about cancelling global warming.
Third, where are you going to grow all the plants needed to make all that vegetable oil and alcohol??? Where are you going to take the energy needed to transform all those plants into biodiesel? How many people will starve so the americans can still move their arses in their plush trucks???
There is no miracle solution, except to stop relying on cars en masse.
The article, in typical mass-media fashion, does not name the alcohol, but I assume this is methyl alcohol. That, and the cost of NaOH, makes this a non-cheap process.
Few people on the east coast know we're here.
Sort of the same reason New Mexico license plates have USA on them.
On every forum I've seen it's now the fashion to type "+1" on replys. What the hell does this mean? Where I come from this is AD&D talk. I cannot find any info on this new meme.
I seem to remember the first diesels were designed to run on powdered coal mixed with oil. Didn't work too well, cinders, needed special coal etc...
Actually a "true" diesel likely would run on veg oil or lots of other flameable substances. You need a substance that when blasted onto the cylinder (by an high pressure air blast) that wont burn to quickly. It needs to burn not explode.
Combine these reactors with these http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/1 1/1718256 algae who eat CO2 and can be pressed for a vegetable oil, and your coil burning power plant is now more eco friendly. You can also just grow large amounts of other algae and use them to produce the veggie oil also.
I think there are plenty of non-violent protesters that would not only make these black market, but plaster the fact that they are useing it all over the car.
For those of you who were born stupid, the emission of radiation by spark gaps was first discovered by Heinrich Rudolf Hertz - the same one that the Hertz in megahertz is named after - back in 1887. It was Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen who discovered that this phenomenon could be used to produce X-rays in 1895 Here is a paper on building an Xray tube USING SPARK PLUGS. http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=RSINAK000072000010003983000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
Here are several scientific papers on the production of X-rays by spark gaps in various gaseous media.
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/icfa/fall97/pape r2/paper2.pdf
http://www.webcom.com/sknkwrks/xray.htm
http://www.electrotherapymuseum.com/_PatentLibrary /_FischerXRaySparkGap/index.htm
Morons.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
"There is a 100 mpg carburetor patent that an oil company is sitting on."
"This story has been floating around since the 1950s, far longer than any patent term. Either EvilOilCo has a hundred-year patent to go with their hundren-mile-per-gallon car, or there never was such a device..."
I remember when I was a kid, maybe in my early teens (so late 80's early 90's) Popular Science or Popular Mechanics had a little feature on the 100mpg engine, i think it even made their front cover. I remember thinking how cool that was because I was pretty into the environment. I almost thought it was only a dream for a while, but now that you brought it up I know it was real.
those bastards... the conspiracy is real, everyone just thinks they're going insane
Didn't your Econ 101 prof erase this myth for you long ago? Simply put, if big oil or anyone else has a useful patent, they could make more money by using it than hiding it.
IF Big Oil is greedy, and IF Big Oil owns a useful patent, they Will use it.
It is never profitable to hide a good technology to protect your older inferior technology. Assuming oil companies are greedy, they would USE this patent, not ignore it (assuming it was profitable in the first place).
No, simpleton, diesels do in fact not use spark plugs. They use a much higher compression ratio to cause the compressed fuel and air to reach a temperature where the fuel ignites spontaneously. They are assisted by *glow* plugs - which are wires heated by electrical resistance that use no spark whatsoever.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
It's not about whether it creates CO2 when burned or not. It's about where the coal for it comes. In vegetable oil, it comes from the plants, which get it from air, from - yes, CO2.
And that CO2 would be released after the plant dies anyway, because of all microbic activity etc. So why not to use the released energy tp move a car instead of as food for microbes. So it's kind of recycling the CO2.
But when you burn fossile oils, then you are creating CO2 from coal that would have staid under ground for a looooong time, so in that case you woud release CO2 into air without getting any CO2 away.
So there IS a difference. A very significant one.
can make biodiesel, in the future we'll probably see rich people using these stupid little things, and poor farmers producing biodiesel the "normal" way... it's pretty simple at the moment, i'm not sure if it could get any easier.
And some don't even use grid heaters or glow plugs. My father had a Ford 4000 tractor that didn't have them. It would even start right up when there was snow on the ground. I was suprised at the time, as up until then, I thought all diesels had glow plugs. The Kubota sure did, and it didn't like to start if you didn't use them (you could start it without them, but it took a while and was hard on the starter). The Ford would crank right up. My car sure won't start without them, unless it is still warm.
Some, but not all. Steel is only a fair-to middlin Xray sheild.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
they would immediately jump into the car business and make far more money that way than they could selling oil. Variations of this are demonstrated in every basic economics book. Quit spewing this ludicrious, repeatedly-refuted myth.
For example, let us assume this is the status quo:
1: Big Oil owns a patent for a 100 mpg car that can be produced at the same cost with the same features as a regular car
2: A "regular" car costs $20,000, gets 25 mpg, and is driven 100,000 miles (4000 gallons, lifetime) at $3/gallon
3: Big Oil has a 10% profit margin on gasoline, and Detroit/Japan have a 10% margin on regular cars
Now, here is the first question. How much would YOU, the average consumer, be willing to pay for a new BigOil brand car? Well, the total cost of car + gas of a regular car is $32000. So as long as a BigOil car costs less in total, you would buy it. Since it will have a gasoline cost of $3000, it stands to reason that you will choose a Big Oil car for any price up to $29000.
Now, where does Big Oil make more profits? The status quo or by selling BigOil cars? Well, in the status quo, they sell you $12000 worth of gas and keep $1200 after costs. Not bad! But what if they instead sell you a BigOil car? Well, the cost of producing a BigOil or regular car is $18,000. Yet they can sell it to you for $29000, an $11000 profit. They can then snatch $300 more on profits from the remaining gas they sell you, for a total of $11,300.
Now assuming Big Oil is greedy (a safe assumption), which do you think they would rather have? $1200 or $11300?
Myth refuted. Please move along.
http://www.techno-preneur.net/new-timeis/ScienceTe chMag/june04/india-fuel.htm
"Both plastics and petro-products are hydrocarbons. The only difference is that in plastics the chain of molecules is longer. So, I wondered if it was possible to break the chain into small segments to convert it into value-added fuel.
Zadgaonkar claims almost all plastic products -bags, polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) old raincoats and broken buckets can be converted into fuel through her processing method. There 1S also no problem with residue disposal or emission, as the solid residue is coke and the gaseous emission is pure LPG, she says.
ah, I see. So with unrefined rapeseed oil, we can skip the step of moving to a hydrogen based economy, and move directly to a "rape" based economy. Where "rape" is the fancy new term for "unrefined rapeseed oil". I'm sure that "rape" will make all of our lives much better.
It works fine for tractors, but you need one hell of a starter motor to crank to ignition from cold. That plus the size/weight of the battery to run the thing mean that it's not as feasible for cars.
Nope. In order to generate X-rays you need to accelerate the electrons to >30kev before they hit the target. This requires a vacuum between the cathode and the anode target.
In a gas the electrons will never reach more than a few tens ev. As they accelerate they strike another atom and their energy goes in ionizing the gas.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
... and I'm sure saying this will burn some karma here on Slashdot, but you, Sir, are wrong.
First of all, you supply no evidence for your hokey-pokey, companies-against-the-people attitude. 100 mpg, puhlese. Show me a patent filing and I'll start listening. Even if you did dig up a patent, that really provides no guarantee of the idea working in practice. People have been patenting perpetual motion machines for years (perhaps that is one of the patents you hold), and last I heard the laws of thermo-dynamics still applies.
But whatever, I'm sure you've posted your ideas on Wikipedia so it must be true, of course. To be honest, that's not really what irks me with your post.
What bothers me is your claim that "abolishing the patent system so that a level playing field is attained" would somehow benefit us all. Have you lost your mind?
My brother works in molecular biology. At the moment he's working with RNA silencing in Barley plants to find cures for some of the diseases that affect third world country crop yields. At the end of the year, there's a chance he might work on cracking the Epsteing Barr virus, which causes Infectious Mononucleosis and have been associated with many types of cancer, but especially breast cancer, it seems.
There is no chance in hell that research would even happen could the potential results not be patented. No chance, I say, because investors expect return. In your world, you might say this research should happen pro bono, and I'm sure my brother would like that, but he also likes to eat and pay rent. You know, fundamental stuff for living.
I'd like to hear your suggestion on how money would funnel its way towards research like this without the chance of return. Who would invest in it, expect Bono and Dalai Lama?
There are however reasons why people think it's real. Simply changing the distance the mixed fuel travels before it gets burnt reduces fuel consumption dramaticly - but that's on an engine that is idling on a test bed. Put it under load and that all changes. If you want an engine to do some work you have to burn more fuel than the ideal idling state.
Don't they teach kids ANY organic chemistry nowadays? How are we to produce the next generation of recreational drug designers and home-made explosives producers that made the West what it is today?
Pining for the fjords
However, it's clearly a demonstration of the problems of the patent system that someone as ignorant of basic physics and chemistry as this can get a patent.
Yes, I am in a bad mood today. Totally ignorant postings and moderations on science and technology always have that effect on me.
Pining for the fjords
Goran Jovanovic reports his invention is approximately the size of a credit card.
I'm wow-factor-shocked! Size of a credit card.
Ok now that this has passed, the amount of fuel you can process with one of these a diesel butterfly, for more, you need a pretty large stack of those.
Pretty impressive and futuristic nonetheless, even if the prospect of carrying a portable biodiesel reactor in your wallet is busted.
They wouldn't remain the world's most profitable company for long if they were passing up the chance to make $11000 by trading in $1200 that they make now.
"There is a 100 mpg carburetor patent that an oil company is sitting on."
s p
Prove it.
This story has been around forever and seems to have no merit to it. Snopes addesses it as false:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/carburetor.a
So unless you can show me some proof to the contrary, I'm going to to say it's just so much BS.
There's been con artists that have claimed to have miracle devices. However there's always some common threads:
1) They do something that seems to be impossible.
2) They'll never let anyone mess with and test their devices.
3) There's always some string of "unfortunate problems" that keep it form coming to market.
Also please remember: Patents last only 20 years, and by definition they are public. So if an oil company bought a patent for a super efficent car, they could sit on it for only 20 years, and everyone who wanted to know how it worked would, since the patent is public record. It's not like they could cover it up.
So, please, provide a link to the 100mpg patent if you think it's real.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...
"...a device the size of a small suitcase could produce enough biodiesel to power several farms..."
"...biodiesel could be produced between 10 and 100 times faster..."
"...coating the microchannels with a non-toxic metallic catalyst...would eliminate the need for the chemical catalyst..."
but it is a law of any company that wants to make a profit. Whatever reason Honda chose to ignore this patent, it was not in order to protect some other weaker technology. See my numerical explanation above. It works no matter what numbers, plausible or otherwise, that you throw at it, and frankly, isn't even close.
http://befreetech.com/suppressed_inventions.htm has more listings, including Canadian patents (Charles N. Pogue was Canadian).
Pogue seems to have been bought out by the oil companies, and he did well for himself. Other inventors and tweakers have seen their offices/labs trashed and I have heard of disappearances and foul-play. Of course, you cannot believe everything you read, but considering what is at stake for the major movers-and-shakers, I wouldn't put it past them to do whatever it takes to keep what they have.
Rather, I would say that Econ 101, even at its worst, is simply an approximation based on axiomatic assumptions that only hold to varying degrees in the real world. However, under most circumstances, the Econ 101 answer models reality accurately enough and provides tremendous insight into human behavior and their response to markets and political decisions, especially when considered in large numbers. Much like Einstein's laws replacing those of Newton, it is not a matter that Newton was wrong, per se, but rather that his model failed under unusual circumstances.
However, virtually no human quirk that interupts the idealized Econ 101 model is going to cause any corporation to turn down a 10:1 trade.
Use human fat. Works for Fight Club. It'll work here too.
There are still some unresolved technical concerns with the use of biodiesel at concentration greater than 5%. Some of the concerns are:
_ vehicles/BiodieselTechnology.asp
Requires special care at low temperatures to avoid excessive rise in viscosity and loss of fluidity
Storage is a problem due to higher then normal risk of microbial contamination due to water absorption as well as a higher rate of oxidation stability which creates insoluble gums and sediment deposits
Being hygroscopic, the fuel tends to have increased water content, which increases the risk of corrosion
Biodiesel tends to cause higher engine deposit formations
The methyl esters in biodiesel fuel may attack the seals and composite materials used in vehicle fuel systems
It may attack certain metals such as zinc, copper based alloys, cast iron, tin, lead, cobalt, and manganese
It is an effective solvent, and can act as a paint stripper, whilst it will tend to loosen deposits in the bottom of fuel tanks of vehicles previously run on mineral diesel
https://www.fleet.ford.com/showroom/environmental
It seems a lot of /.ers do. So this beggers the question. Why hasn't someone here come up with a better idea? Could it be that a lot of folks "knowledge" comes from their "Google-Fu"?
as we were going to choke off their oil supply, and Germany was looking like a pretty good bet at the moment. But that is a side point. We are talking about economics, not politics.
As I pointed out, this trade is not even close. It is a 10-fold winner (ultimately, this comes from the fact that I set the margin at a realistic 10%). No bean-counter, let alone a dozen of them, is going to miss this due to one of the many well-documented quirks of human behavior. Especially because I would suspect all of the bean-counters took Econ 101 and unlearned this particular myth anyway. Any new technology discovered by a company is scrutinized repeatedly for any possible way to squeeze a penny out of it. Any company that did not do this would be out of business, not making record-setting profits.
I would love to hear your reasoning for Exxon quashing an innovation that results in a product that replaces one of their current products at a better combination of price and performance. As I showed above, if the new innovation is really better than the status quo, THEY CAN MAKE MORE MONEY FROM IT.
A lot of these problems can be solved using Teflon, Inconel, ceramic, and stainless for the fuel systems. You can also coat the interior passages of new engines to prevent a lot of that corrosion.
High water content in biodiesel will, unfortunately, be a problem for the forseeable future. What it means, though, is that there will probably be the need for some kind of additive - viscosity index improvers, antifungals, and whatnot that are already added to regular diesel.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
I also think that oil companies will most probably just buy this patent (offer him an offer he cant refuse :). Big companies just care about profit.
But look at it the othwer way - what if this invention would be success and not bought by some oil company - imagine how many jobs will be lost by declining profits of oil companies.Thousands of jobs will be cut, entire economies slidding etc. The oil business is such a big machine that if it falls then it will be probalby bigger disaster than them "buying out" the inventor. Sad but true.
Just a quick little point about companies being 'greedy' or 'evil';
A company is legally bound to make as much profit for it's shareholders as possible. That is their legal 'raison d'etre', they exist for no other reason. They are therefore, by definition, amoral, so yes, all companies are mandated to be greedy. The good/evil debate is all about what they do to generate revenue and marketing spin.
Put it this way, if you had a lot of Exxon shares, you'd be singing their praises for a job well done when you got your dividend!
I had one on the moped I owned 20 years ago! ;)
God bless Mikuni!
- Large machines to ensure humidity/temperature is kept and fluids are continually stirred
- Physical materials (beakers, pressurized chambers to avoid a Level 4 threat escaping the labs, pressure suits, ventilators)
- Samples (which may have a great cost to create and ship since few labs worldwide can do them)
- Expensive training (there is no Visual Basic Biology edition, so you need years of training to understand the concepts)
- Space (greenhouses, showers etc.)
- Security clearances (if you work with dangerous materials, which most labs do in some form)
- Waste disposal systems (you don't just pour a level 2 agent down the drain)
- Since many of the above things can only be built cost effectively on a site, a support system (gardeners, cafeterias, toilets, cleaners, vending machines etc.)
Many of those things come a great cost. A PC can be had for €500.... Mr. Jovanovic's reactor requires that a pellet of Ununpentium be fired into gaseous hydrogen contained in a vaccum.
Years ago at the U of Cambridge there was a woman researcher (I'm sorry, I have forgotten her name) who was working on improved strains of rape. She took great delight, when visiting dignitaries asked her what she was working on, in just replyng "Rape".
Pining for the fjords
It's becoming more and more common to set up biodiesel plants next to meat rendering facilities.
The last article I read about the process in Discover stated that the current cost to buy the animal wasted and turn it to biodiesel was about $100 per barrel. With oil hitting $70 per barrel, we're a good way towards making this technology economically viable.
The devices do exist, but often aren't practical for everyday use. Many years ago, my dad built a vapor carburetor (basically an industrial strength fuel preheater) and installed it on his 1979 GMC Suburban, with the plumbing necessary to be able to switch it in and out of the fuel system. When in use and working well, the truck got around 40-45 mpg (I've seen it myself), but it was totally useless for anything except extended highway driving as it didn't deal with varying fuel demand very well and also took a bit of time to heat up enough to work. He eventually removed it as it mostly got in the way whenever he needed to do anything under the hood.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
According to Goran Jovanovic, it seems like production of Bio Diesel in more safe manner than now is just a minor side path of the main area of research. The main area seems to be development of devices that "monitor the environment for potentian human pathogens or toxins."
Or does someone find better articles from the Web written by him or his team mates about building a new safer Biodiesel reactors?
First, biodiesel (diesel in general) is more efficient than current gasoline engines. It would behoove the world to have diesel engines.
Second doesn't need to be repeated as other posts have explained it.
Third, do you realize how many tens of thousands of pounds (maybe hundreds of thousands???) of food the US government buys from farmers and destroys each year to control food prices? The issue of the starving world isn't food. It's getting them the food. And much blood has been spilled trying to do it (remember Somalia?).
Reliance on bio-diesel would possibly be one of the best possible outcomes in the oil war we could have. Almost anyone can produce vegtables. Oil is a fossil fuel that takes millions of years to produce. There are only a few places with fossil fuels. If there were a reliance upon biodiesel, we'd see entire farms just for the purpose of producing biodiesel vegtables. The wealth would be back in the hands of farmers rather than oil tycoons. If for nothing else, no more blood would be spilled over oil.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
People aren't going to pay $29K for a tiny car. What they would do then is scream extortion and monopoly, and other such things until the car left the market or got cheaper. People play the lottery and generate deficits. We don't make wise decisions. Cheap now and expensive later will always extremely outsell expensive now and extremely cheap later.
They would see it as the oil company (who just recently began to sell cars) is doing the same thing in cars that they do in oil: try to extort every penny that they can. And they'd be right.
Further, there are a lot of parts in a car besides an engine. The oil company would have to go through an extremely extensive R&D to develop everything else, and they're already decades behind. They'd most likely end up with something that was technologically inferior in every way except one to current cars. The only way that they could ensure their dominance is if they just sold engines...which wouldn't give them nearly the profit you espouse, and probably wouldn't be enough to be worth it.
Finally, the industry of selling cars is a lot more risky than that of selling oil. You know people are going to need oil. They all believe they have to drive/make plastic/etc. And you know they're going to buy it from you, because you're chummy with all your "competitors" and you've got your territory worked out. You don't know that people are going to need to buy a car from you even if you make the most advanced vehicle ever. They could decide that the flashy new Car X is the one for them because it has a flamingo hood ornament.
So because of risk, risks of development, public perception, and the obvious one I didn't mention - the loss of oil sales - oil companies would never venture into the car industry, and it will continue to be in their best interest for gas-guzzlers to be produced, and for research into lower oil dependance to be supressed.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Economy 101 huh?
Ever heard of a thing called "core business". Or "capital investment". Barriers to market entry? Tacid knowledge within companies? Reluctance to change and closed mindedness of managers and workforce.
J.
There is a magic solution, it's called hemp. Hemp transforms solar energy into biomass more efficiently than just about any other plant, and can be processed into fibre, oil and feedstock. Hemp also grows about anywhere. If the US and Canada planted just the excess farmland and some of the land that can't currently be farmed with hemp, we could solve our energy problems.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
SO call me a paranoid nut, but I am convinved that thousands of cancers per year that are being blamed on second hand smoke or UV exposure are really due to spark plug radiation.
No, no, no. It is from watching tv. The electrons from the cathod ray tube are absorbed in the screen emitting hard gamma. If you spent time sitting in front of a CRT computer screen it is a lot worse, of course, since you get sit a lot closer and you typically spend eight hours a day in front of the screen.
If the car business is so much more profitable than oil, how is it that a majority of the richest people on the planet are oil tycoon? Where are the rich automotive guys?
As someone else pointed out, the biggest profit ever was registered by Exxon. Here are some other profits numbers for 2005 for comparison:
GM: Loss of $10bn
Chevron: $14bn
Ford: $2bn.
To make calculations for these 2 industries like they both make 10% in profits is ridiculous.
My 1993 Toyota Diesel truck is indirect injection, and can get 27mpg (imperial, not colonial) on straight canola oil without modification. Pretty good for a 6000lb un-aerodynamic SUV. If only americans weren't so afraid of diesels....
Aluminum is NOT transparent to X-Rays. In truth, nothing is completely transparent to X-Rays except for a vaccum. X-Ray transparency is largely a function of material density and the thickness of the object itself. The transparency of various materials used in X-Ray equipment is often compared relative to an aluminum standard, but that aluminum standard is a 1mm-thick plate. If you were to take a chest X-Ray with a 1mm aluminum plate in the beam path, it would show up nearly opaque compared to human tissues. In an automobile there is a whole lot more than 1 mm of aluminum between the cylinders and you. Your notion that most engine blocks are made of aluminum these days is also flawed - it is increasingly prevalent, but hasn't replaced steel.
Unless you have more than a vaguely-worded theory, such as hard evidence or calculations based on scientific principals, please keep you paranoia to yourself. Out of curiosity, do you own an automobile?
Finally, since this is a discussion about biodiesel, I'll remind you that, in a diesel engine, there are no sparkplugs. The combustion in a diesel engine happens spontaneously due to the compression in the cylinder.
I keep the windows closed so no one can tell that I fart alot in my car!
For those doubters....Here is a link to a patent for a "Fuel Economy system for an Internal combustion Engine" WHACK!!!! Take THAT!!! http://byronw.www1host.com/files/4177779%20Ogle.pd f
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
Since all Diesel-Cars made by Volkswagen from 1996 to 2003 have been capable of using Biodiesel and even the Motors produced after 2003 are available Biodiesel-ready on request it seems as if there was no really difficult problems in using pure Biodiesel.
k2r
Sure, they can use this to make money. But will it make them more money than the opportunity cost of using it? (lost sales of petrolium-based fuels to biodiesel/more efficient vehicles)
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
The government should mandate that all new credit cards be made on these Biodesiel pumps...
Most people have a "BIG STACK" of them anyway.
Me, well no I use my debit card. I have $0 in credit card debt. Oh and my credit rating is damn good!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
when they have a car that runs on uranium
"And now, Frank N. Furter, your time has come. Say 'goodbye' to all of this, and 'hello'... to oblivion!"
http://blog.myspace.com/ex_misltech
Nothing compares to the output from Algae as far as bio oil goes .
* Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (40 to 50 m/km)
* Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 140 m/km)
* Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130 m/km)
* Jatropha: 175 US gal/acre (160 m/km)
* Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (610 m/km) [2]
* Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre (10,000 to 20,000 m/km)
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
When I used to work in a University chemical store I spilt some sodium methoxide on the back of my hand and it took off the outer layer of my skin. I saved a small vial of this corrosive shit for a rainy day. Next party I had, some twat found it in my room and ( thinking it was some drug ) snorted a big line of it ! I found him in the bathroom with the end of the tap up one nostril.
Very nasty stuff !
Hey! Diesel powered laptop?!
Hmmm...don't know if the person next to me on the plane would appreciate the puffs of black smoke comming from my rig (hey! Punmonster strikes!). Plus there is the greasy film that would get on the LCD.
PSA as a fuel will also increase the odds of coking up your injectors.
The main part as to why PSA is rougher on an engine is that it's got glycerin bound to the oils (part and parcel
of vegetable oils...) and unless your injectors are designed around this, the soot from the glycerin (Since it
doesn't burn anywhere near as well as the other part of the oil...) may gum up your injectors.
If you can convert it at the pump or similar, you'd be better off stripping that glycerin off- that way
you can use it with less problems (All you'd need for B100 to rid yourself of most of the remaining problems
is to use something like Power Service's DieselKleen which lowers the tendency of the fuel to gel at low
temps- something that they do in lower quantities in the first place to the petro diesel anyhow for the
same reasons...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The patent has expired, but we still don't have production level 100mpg cars. Of course, this technique might be used to get 100mpg on mopeds, but who want's to ride a moped on the 405?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
ASTM already has standards for a 20% blend.
Go to Biodiesel.org's Fact sheets and have look for yourself. If you were to use 100% biodiesel, some of your quoted concerns would need to be addressed. Not that big a deal- just need to replace pure rubber for fuel lines, check and replace fuel filters for diesels that have already been in service, and preheat/keep warm any diesel driven vehicles if it gets really cold outside.
What's really spiffy is the possibility that small kits of these could be used right on the farm to make more self-sufficient farming possible for remote areas of the world. A tractor might run for 20 years, but bringing in diesel is a yearly event.
The Internet has no garbage collection
With such tiny channels, and such viscous liquids, it's entirely possible it takes more energy to pump the stuff than can be released from the fuel.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of biodiesel. I guess that makes me a supercharger.
Explosives are merely combustables with their own in-built oxidizer so that they effectively have an unlimited
:->
source of oxidization (which could be any reactants, really, so long as it's a combustion type reaction...).
1) You can make your own liquid oxygen- all you need is to machine the right gear and it doesn't red-flag as the resources to make the liquification machine are needed to make tools, cars, etc.
2) Anything combustable that is LOX saturated will explode if ignited- it effectively has an unlimited amount of oxidizer at it's disposal to combust with.
3) A carcoal briquette, such as out of a Kingsford bag will explode with about the force of a stick of dynamite if thoroughly soaked with LOX and ignited or hit with a primary detonator like a blasting squib. This is the basis of a lot of commercial mining explosives these days. Don't want to do a blast? Let the LOX out and it's no longer explosive.
This is just ONE piece of chemistry that, you too, can play with without much notice. There's raftloads others.
And before you get on to me about "revealing" this to the terrorists- it's common knowlege and they also know how
to make comparable substances that don't need cryo containment to go with it. Contrary to popular belief to the
otherwise, the leaders , while quite nuts themselves, aren't stupid. Many of them are very well
educated- by the US educational system, even.
(By the way, black powder rocketry's fun, but Zinc/Sulphur mix rocketry's even moreso and easier to get
the stuff...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The great part of it is that many countries don't have any oil resources, however they have unused or not profitable lands available for agriculture.
The problem with agriculture eg. in Europe is that technological advancement have improved efficiency so much that the market has to be regulated by production quotas.
"Growing fuel" solves two problems for such countries: it is making them self-reliant on fuel, cutting down on substantial part of current import by using existing local resources, local labour in a profitable way.
It's a win-win situation for any oil importing country with agricultural resources.
It can be done, has been done, but hasn't been sold here in the U.S. due to Diesel fuel regulations. I'm sure if VW were creative enough, they'd at least market a 75mpg version here in the states...
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
The majority of the jobs would not be lost, but rather other jobs would be made available to support a different, expanding industry - these sort of events happen on a regular basis in times of change. Remember the news about the computer putting 1000's and 1,000,000's of people out of work ... because many of us now work in new industries because of those same computers.
It works fine for tractors, but you need one hell of a starter motor to crank to ignition from cold. That plus the size/weight of the battery to run the thing mean that it's not as feasible for cars.
It may not be suitable for conventional cars, but what if you made a diesel hybrid car? They would have the large battery and if it were constructed like the Honda Insight, you could have a 20hp electric motor/generator as the starter.
Biodiesel does have the tendency to make the seals on some engines expand. However on newer cars (except for Fords) this has been fixed.
This is why I'm not going to be using a Powerstroke engine on a project vehicle I have. They are not suited to biodiesel or SVO.
For some reason Chevy's Duramax, Dodge's Cummins, and the Volkwagon TDI engines do not have this problem.
Yes there was! A car with just such a carburator was used to get all those people with rifles off that grassy knoll.
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
Walmart sells blackpowder at great prices, in every store I've been in, its right on the shelf, not locked up like the shotguns. ;-)
In their swimming pool supplies you can find large quantities of sodium hypochlorite (cheap) and hydrochloric acid (usually labeled muriatic acid).
On the cleaning supplies aisle, you can find sodium hydroxide.
In the automotive section, you can find sulphic acid (bottle for the motorcycle batteries), and ether (starter fluid).
Saltpeter can usually be found in the spice section, or in the luchmeat
the list can go on and on.
Walmart is "literally" the terrorist super-center.
I don't understand your comment about these things being so hard to find. It seems they are harder to avoid.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Just think, if a compact car could get 100mpg, then we could use the technology to build a Super Hummer that would get 15 instead of 5mpg.
And of course people would buy it.
The ol, my SUV is bigger than your SUV game would keep on playing out.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Sure, if they continue using Soybeans, yes this is correct. But when Algae kicks in, that won't be true any longer. From Wikipedia:
More recent studies using a species of algae that has oil contents of as high as 50% have concluded that as little as 28,000 km or 0.3 % of the land area of the US could be utilized to produce enough biodiesel to replace all transportation fuel the country currently utilizes. Further encouragement comes from the fact that the land that could be most effective in growing the algae is desert land with high solar irradiation, but lower economic value for other uses and that the algae could utilize farm waste and excess CO2 from factories to help speed the growth of the algae.
Nice karma whoring. That's from your blog eh? I personally collated those statistics and added them to the Wikipedia biodiesel article with this diff. They were subsequently improved with additional unit conversions and I and maybe others added some additional ones later. And your units aren't even right, what's an m/km?. If you're going to take GFDL material, which I do agree you can use freely as long as you follow the license, at least get the fixes too.
here
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Is PSA a fuel? I thought it was the company behind Peugeot and Citroen. Or were you talking about SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil)?
My god, I was hoping you had made some of those errors copying it over, but there they are right on Ford's website. Sounds like Ford is just trying once again to explain why they are not helping to develop cleaner technology, but still want to say they are. ... - Yes that's true biodiesel gels at higher temperatures ... - There's not really any evidence of this as it contradicts the last point of biodiesel being a good solvent/detergent. It cleans engine parts. If there is evidence of this, I haven't seen it, and Ford certainly doesn't present any. ... - People have already pointed out that everyone else just switched to seals and hoses that are more resistant to this type of thing. Marginal cost difference.
*Requires special
*Storage is a problem due to higher then normal risk of microbial contamination due to water absorption as well as a higher rate of oxidation stability which creates insoluble gums and sediment deposits - Did they really just say higher rate of oxidative stability?? Biodiesel is more biodegradable, thus more degradable and doesn't store for as long. There's tradeoffs--less toxic if you spill it means it doesn't store as well.
*Biodiesel tends to cause
*The methyl esters
*It is an effective solvent... - This is true, but the end of it is stupid sticking they're head in the sand. All you do it check your fuel filters more for a little while and once the crud is cleaned out you're better off.
Engine's just need to be designed for biodiesel and this won't happen until the market matures more and there are greater economic incentives to do so.
This is true for the oil companies, they'd be stupid not to profit from superior tech. But what if they're not the only ones with a vested interest in oil? Someone could make sure that oil is more profitable for them for political reasons.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
I was going to ask him, but if you're claiming to be the source, I guess I'll ask you instead:
How are those number for algal biodiesel obtained? As we talking flat ponds or tower structures for exposing more water to sunlight? Is active pumping of CO2 into the system required, or is this taken from the air? Does the system require any fertilizers? How much water does this system require?
(The last question is extremely important in light of possible global water shortages due to climate change in increased industrial and residential demand from cities in the next few decades.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That's right, in the context of this thread, PSA stands for "Peugeot Société Anonyme", or "anonymous company" Peugeot, i.e. the Peugeot Corporation and the PSA group owns the Peugeot and Citroën brands.
...anybody who trusts Wikipedia is asking for trouble. It's often like a vast collection of every urban myth known to man, with a geek slant. However, I still don't understand how the NaOH can be catalytic, at least on the definition I grew up with (something that pushes the reaction equilibrium in a particular direction but is not itself a reaction component). The O and H in the final NaOH are different atoms from the ones you started with (to the limits permitted by quantum mechanics, yada yada), unlike the platinum in catalytic converters, or the amino acids in enzymes. My chemistry teacher used to argue about whether the vanadium pentoxide in the SO2-SO3 process could properly be called a catalyst, and that's closer to that classical definition than the NaOH. Perhaps I'm being overly pedantic, but as industrial chemistry paid for my house and pension fund, perhaps I have a point.
Pining for the fjords
If you read blog entry you see it links your article DIRECTLY.
Sorry I got your panties in a wad, maybe you got mad
before you bothered to read that I direct link your article .
As for those stats you question, they are DIRECTLY CTRL+C, CTRL+V from
the Wikipedia Article, drama not included(tm) .
So if the "m/km" is off its just a carbon copy of your mistake .
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
http://classes.engr.oregonstate.edu/che/spring2005 /che415/PublicTeam3/proposal.html
Wait... there's a NEW Mexico???
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
Assuming it did cost more, we have one of two cases:
1: It costs more, but less than $10100 more.
2: It costs more than $10100 more.
In the first case, the invention is a useful one, BigOil will still make more profit by selling the car than the extra oil, and the consumer will benefit.
In the second case, the new technology costs more than it saves in fuel, in which case it is not a useful invention. BigOil will not make it, people will not want it, and no one should care.
Or are you willfully ignorant of the repeated cycles of oil boom and bust? Oil was much less than $20/barrel not very long ago. Many people have lost their shirts in the oil busts, and in any case, it is a competitive market. If profits get too high for too long, new people enter and lower them. Thank God for the invisible hand.
Since Bill Gates just invested in ethanol does that mean all of slashdot is now for BioDiesel???? The truth be told, the energy return on alternate fuels is not yet as good as it needs to be.
Just a comment about the last point. I think I read several times here that diesel engines compress the air/fuel mix until it spontaneously combusts, and this is assisted by glow plugs. It's not really how they work. There is a wikipedia article which has a more accurate description of how diesel engines work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine
>I take it that the vast majority of Slashdotters are still in school living of student loans, mom and dads money, or both.
An unfounded assumption you wish to be true. Any statistics you know of about the ages & incomes of slashdotters?
>It's called capatilism you stupid idiots.
No, it's called Capitalism. Your puerile arguments will hold slightly more water if you would just learn how to spell. But as an ignorant troll, how could you?
>These yahoo's who bitch and moan about the price of gas as the same idiots who scream "Not in my back yard" when an oil company wants to build a new refinery or drill off shore for oil. Complete and utter tools.
No, everyone bitches about the price of gas except the bicycle riding hippies your kind always bitch about. And no oil company wants to build refineries, they haven't in decades. It's part of their evil plan to keep prices high (by limiting supply, you know the concept?) and to maintain RECORD profits. I say we tax the fuckers into the stone age. It's our money after all, we might as well use it to pay off the national debt. Since half the taxes we pay just goes to pay the interest on the national debt, we'd just be moving our own money around and cutting the interest payments off.
Too bad congress doesn't work for us any more.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
You're a paranoid nut.
February 9th, 2009 8:55pm: Slashdot becomes self-aware.
But as the saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT all out to get you!"
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
I rememebr a joke in the old National Lampoon- What's round and hairy and glows in the dark? Your b@lls when you sit too close to the color TV.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
Ahem - "Finally, since this is a discussion about biodiesel, I'll remind you that, in a diesel engine, there are no sparkplugs. The combustion in a diesel engine happens spontaneously due to the compression in the cylinder." THATS MY WHOLE POINT. I am *advocating* the use of biodiesel. Is everyone who reads this site incapable of following a logical argument??? Risk from spark plugs implies diesel is safer which in turn makes biodiesel more valuable. As for science - one chest Xray uses about 35Kv at 1amp (35KVA) to produce about 2 milirads of Xrays - about one of which penetrates the body, and the absorbtion of the rest forms the dark and light regions of the image. A spark plug fires at 35KV but about 2 miliamps (.002 amps) lets be generous and say that igniting the gas and air absorbs 3/4 the sparks energy. So the effective rediation from each firing of a spark plug would be .0005 x 2 milirads.
That means each thousand firings of a spark plug produce a cummulative dose of about 1 milirad. With four spark plugs and an engine running at 3000 rpm on the highway, a typical engine will generate a raw 12 milirads of X-rays per minute.
Now let us estimate that each mm of aluminum attentuates 90% of a given burst of X-rays. The Spark plug is located in the CYLINDER HEAD - which has walls about .8cm thick. So passing through the cylinder head would attentuate the Xrays to .00000001 of their original strength. SO you're going to get about 1.2 milirads of X-rays out every 10 ^7 minutes.
Or something approximating a chest X-ray every 20 years of total driving time. Give or take a factor of two or three for variables like number of spark plugs.
OK, OK so we're not all going to die. From this anyway. Crap.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
last year Exxon could make just about anything it wants its "core business" as of tomorrow. There are few industries with significant barriers to entry. Neither the automobile or the oil business does, as plenty of companies have gotten in and out over the last few decades.
Typical margins for manufacturing are 5-8%. The lower the number, the stronger the my argument, actually.
Now I am willing to bet if we compare Exxon's margins during the 80s bust vs the same period for GM, we would find the opposite trend as we do now.
True enough. *habitually checks over his shoulder, suspiciously watching the limping granny that just dropped her shopping*
February 9th, 2009 8:55pm: Slashdot becomes self-aware.
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
This sort of thing has more than a hint of obsessive self sufficiency about it. But it does show that you could produce biodiesel without tying up all your agricultural land, which is pretty important. I think in practice you'd probably tune taxes/subsidies a bit to create a market, and allow market mechanisms to build the farms all over the planet, rather than requisitioning $300billion from Congress to basically build ponds in a desert.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
That's kind of my point. You might as well link to where your numbers are coming from instead of your blog. Especially considering you did copy an error verbatim and it has been corrected on Wikipedia for quite some time now. I don't even think it existed for long at all in mistake form, and I wasn't the one the contributed the mistake.
The 10,000 gallons/acre number is based on pumping CO2 into the system. Basically it's the MIT system someone else referenced, which has to sit next to a coal power plant and has relatively high capital costs. That number is absolute crap as far as "renewable" biodiesel is concerned. And in the end you're still releasing the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. You might as well call it coal.
Butanol, people. Burns in a gasoline engine just fine, you can make it from cellulose. Has the same BTU/gln almost as gasoline. Doesn't corrode the lines. We can keep the same cars we have now, and emissions drop significantly when we burn it.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix