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."

Comments

better article

[Quixote]

You can find a much better article here.

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.

Re:better article

[NitsujTPU]

This is discussed in the article.

NaOH is the catalyst used in the reaction.

The microreactor under development by the university and the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute eliminates the mixing, the standing time and maybe even the need for a catalyst.

Re:better article

[Hal_Porter]

You can run diesel engines on unrefined rapeseed oil if you tweak them a bit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_vegetable_oi l
In the UK drivers using SVO have been prosecuted for failure to pay duty to Customs and Excise.

Biodiesel just means that you can run an umodified engine -

from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel
Sometimes even unrefined vegetable oil is incorrectly called "biodiesel". Unlike unrefined vegetable oil, biodiesel does not require fuel pre-heating and filtration due to issues with coagulation, and also require no or minimal modification to the fuel system.

Re:better article

[Gordonjcp]

I've run a few cars on straight waste veg oil. You *do* have to pay fuel duty on it, but at a much lower rate than mineral diesel. You can run straight veg oil in pretty much all the PSA diesels (Peugeot / Renault / Citroën / some Volvo) if they have a Bosch fuel pump - the Lucas ones are more efficient but have tighter running clearances and the increased viscosity will damage them. I've had best results with the 2.5 turbodiesel as fitted to the Citroën CX and various trucks. The XUD-series engines work fairly well too.

In general running pure veg oil is a pain in the arse because it's very hard to get the engine started. If you weren't going to switch off for more than a few minutes it would be just fine (which might be practical for generators).

Re:better article

[feyhunde]

Goran runs his truck on SVO, but biodiesel is more viable as it can use any long chain hydrocarbon to make a fuel. I'm an ex-student of his, and work on several projects with him and the group. Actually a good deal of ground work was done by some students of him last year for their senior engineering project.

One of the most common things for biodiesel is A. It produces a large amount of Glycerol that might be economically used (I help test that concept last year) and B. it can be mixed with existing diesel to increase overall engine efficiency and reduce smog.

Since biodiesel is taking pretty much nothing but long chain HCs and using NaOH as a catalyst to reduce em down, and then cleaned (NaOH mostly goes to glycerol if i remember) once the sodium is cleaned out there is nothing but fuel. As a result it's sulfur content is nada. Adding it to regular diesel lets it run hotter and cleaner. The only issue is that biodiesel lacks normal fuel additives used to promote all climate use. Many places have a 20 or 50% mix if they offer it commercially. If you are interested in your self switching I'd suggest looking around for a locale fuel coop. I know the one in C-town has 1.50 a gallon for SVO, and 2.00 or so for Biodiesel.

The only changes you really need to make for SVO is a few hoses changed around. Not recommended always for colder climates with out adding an engine block heater.

Re:Did I miss something, or..?

[Doytch]

Glycerin is not a problem in and of itself, it's the catalyst properties that are mixed in from the NaOH that end up creating useless glycerin that must be purified to be of use. Since this may eliminate the need for the catalyst, the glycerin can be used immediately without purification.

What room temp IQ modded this troll?

[Flying pig]

This is a joke, and somebody who doesn't know organic chemistry from his ass thought it was a troll. Dear idiot, the sodium hydroxide combines with the added alcohol to form sodium methoxide, which then reacts with the oil. The NaOH is not in fact a catalyst, it is an intermediate reaction component. And yes, it is corrosive.

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?

Dear consparicy guy

[Sycraft-fu]

"There is a 100 mpg carburetor patent that an oil company is sitting on."

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.as p

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.

Re:I'm waiting.

[Sycraft-fu]

Umm ok except that works for 20 years tops. That's how long a patent lasts, they aren't perpetual. Also you can't hide a patent, they are public record.

Basically, in the US you have two ways of protecting an innovative process: a patent or a trade secret.

A trade secret is just what it sounds like, a secret. You develop something and don't tell anyone. So let's say I invent a way to turn lead in to gold at my company. I decide to keep it a secret. I release the plans to nobody and make all my employees sign an NDA. Thus I'm the only one who can do it. Fair enough, but there's no special legal protection. If a rival happens to discover how I do it, they are free to use it, it's not a secret anymore.

So the other route I can take is a patent. Here I publish my method for lead to gold for the world to see in the form of a patent. However, in doing so, I recieve a legal gaurentee that it's mine. You can read all about it, but you can't use it without my permission. I'm free to set the terms on that. But I only have 20 years to do that in. After 20 years, it's assumed I should have made my money, and it's now free for the world.

Now, while I can decide to patent a trade secret, I can't take something I've patented and make it a secret. Trade secrets are things you have to enforce actively. They don't have any special legal standing, they are just a defacto sort of thing. The government recognises your right to keep a secret if you want, but offers it no special protection. One it's no longer a secret, too bad for you, should have gotten a patent before hand.

So if the oil companies bought a patent to sit on it, they are just buying themselves 20 years. Ok maybe that's the point, but you can't keep claiming that they are "sitting on a patent" that they allegedly got 50 years ago, because it's been public domain for 30 years already.

unresolved technical concerns (FORD on biodiesel)

[kmavro]

There are still some unresolved technical concerns with the use of biodiesel at concentration greater than 5%. Some of the concerns are:
        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_ vehicles/BiodieselTechnology.asp

Re:NaOH is a reactant not a catalyst

[0xC2]

You are half correct. The intended process is transesterification, which is direct (stepwise) substitution of the glycerol in fat with three molecules of alcohol (say for example ethanol). So one large triglyceride (a molecule of fat) is broken down to 3 fatty acid ethyl esters and one molecule of glycerin. This process is catalytic, and can be catalyzed by acid or base.

(BTW, oil = liquid fat).

The problematic side reaction is hydrolysis of the oil to fatty acids (i.e. saponification to soap), due to the presence of water in the crude oil. This side reaction is compounded by the difficulty of mixing the fat and alcohol during reaction (fat and alcohol not completely miscible), which reduces the efficiency of the catalytic transesterification, thereby increasing the extent of the unwanted side reaction (saponification to soap). Also crude oils contain fatty acids which could quickly neutralize a catalytic amount of sodium hydroxide (stopping the process).

Therefore the conventional (batchwise) process is to treat the fat with excess sodium hydroxide in a non-catalytic initial step; whatever water is present is consumed in a conventional, non-catalytic saponification to sodium salts of fatty acids, glycerin, and excess sodium hydroxide. Any fatty acid is converted to its sodium salt. All of which are easily removed from the fat (oil). The resulting purified fat is suitable for the catalytic transesterification process to biodiesel.

I'm a chemist, but haven't worked with these microreactors, so the following is guessing:

A microprocessor can increase the efficiency of the desired transesterification by allowing intimate mixing of the alcohol and the fat, which is half the battle in this case. Also, a continuous processor can have advantages over batch processing in that the reaction conditions (pH, temp, etc.) can be dynamically controlled.

My guess is that the fat (oil) would still require pre-treatment to remove water, fatty acids, and fine particles before entering the fuel cell.

Bio diesel from Algae has this beat by a long ways

[Ex-MislTech]

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