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Bio-diesel Made from Sewage
tito writes "A New Zealand company has successfully turned sewage into modern-day gold. New Zealand Herald is reporting that a Marlborough-based Aquaflow Bionomic yesterday announced it had produced its first sample of bio-diesel fuel from algae in sewage ponds.
It is believed to be the world's first commercial production of bio-diesel from 'wild' algae outside the laboratory - and the company expects to be producing at the rate of at least one million litres of the fuel each year from Blenheim by April."
You can produce bio-diesel from a vast diversity of lifeforms as long as they contain lipids. The real question is to know if a source can be economically viable.
1 Million litres may be a decent start, but it sure isn't much. There's a corn-fuled ethanol producing plant in Kansas that produces 26 million gal of ethanol a year, and that hardly makes a dent (src: popular mechanics). (and yeah I know bio-diesel has a higher BTU then corn-based ethanol, but it still wouldn't reach even close to the output of another alt fuel plant).
If we were smart we would pull a brazil and start producing more corn to use as ethanol. They will be oil-independent by next year. Sugar-based ethanol is something like 8 times more efficient then corn-based. Shows what we know right?
As Australia consumes 50 billion litres of oil yearly, and this plant produces 1 million litres of oil yearly, I'd say you're going to need a lot of waterways clogged with algae!
On a side note - I believe the Australian waterways are clogged with blue-green algaes? (The same neon-blue blooms you see in many US waterways). It's a big problem - but I'm not sure blue green algaes are suitable for this method of biodiesel production.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Humans contain lipids.
In particular the ones living in countries that massively use low MPG trucks to commute, it can't be a coincidence.
The following national geographic article describes a company that started this type of thing years ago. They built a plant next to a turkey farm to convert byproducts to oil. My understand is it worked, but was not as efficient as they hoped.
1 25_031125_turkeyoil.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1
What some people on slashdot should be interesting to know is Bush proposed some tax credits for this company in 2004 to help with R&D. It got shot down by the Democrates who literally made fun of Bush and called them "Turkey Credits".
Algae farming actually has the potential of replacing all diesel and gasoline usage in the US using only a tiny fraction of the land area available. There are several cost/benefit analyses of this on the 'net, such as this one. Estimates of algae-biodiesel yield range from 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre/year. Soy-diesel has a lower yield, but has some other economically beneficial by-products. Biodiesel is the most promising energy technology I have seen to date. Compare biodiesel to ethanol -- the producers of ethanol find it more economical to burn fossil fuels in ethanol production than the ethanol -- DOH! With the current price of dinofuel around $3/gal, biodiesel is also suddenly cost-competitive, and for about $3000, you can buy a home biodiesel production facility that can manufacture 40 gallons/week at a cost of about 50 cents per gallon plus whatever you have to pay for the oil, and about 2 hours/week in ongoing labor.
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I believe once the percentage of Biofuel in normal fuel goes above ~10% this is when modifications are needed to the vehicle.
The modifications are minimal. Some seals and fuel lines may need to be replaced, and a larger fuel fiter is often required. Any diesel engine can be converted to run 100% unrefinned cooking oil by simply adding a cooking oil fuel tank. The problem with most bio-diesel is that the fuel becomes too thick at lower temperatures. In the artic 2% bio-diesel may be too much. In California you may be able to run 100% all year long. Engines that run on unrefinned cooking oil typically start on dino-diesel and heat the cooking oil with waste heat from the engine.
Biofuels are about converting solar energy to useful power sources so in that sense there is fast enough replenishment.
As for net energy from energy crops, LCA can be used to calculate the total energy required to produce a litre of transport fuel (petrol or diesel).
This UK study from 2003 found net energy gains from the production of biodiesel.
From that study:
Significant reduction in net CO2 emissions from biodieselIndependence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. G.B Shaw
Can't beleive this got accepted when my submission yesterday got rejected. here it is Note: 3.5/gal/day of Diesel from 1 Pig!
Once it is rejected you can't recall it, that is not good. But here is the link: UI researcher makes crude oil from pig manure
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Rising oil prices means the feedstocks used to produce fertilizers get more expensive. (Which feedstocks comes from petroleum.)
Rising oil prices means the feedstocks used to produce clothes get more expensive. (Which feedstocks comes from petroleum.)
Rising oil prices means the feedstocks used to produce medicines get more expensive. (Which feedstocks comes from petroleum.)
Etc... Etc...
Much attention is given to preserving out automobiles - but damm little to the many other underpinnings of civilization which depend on petroleum.
On the local level, can you image how much better the American economy could be if all the money that went into buying foreign fuels and a whole bunch of the money for the military was kept right here in the USA? Heck, imagine if only 10% of the money we spend now to secure "American interests" abroad were spent instead on paying down federal debt, a basic level of universal healthcare, educational grants, science research, and heck, maybe even helping out less-fortunate countries that really need it, as opposed to ones that we have to make nice with?
Whoops, gotta go. My alarm clock is waking me up.