Slashdot Mirror
"Vetrolium" From Agricultural Waste
junctionvin writes "The company Sustainable Power Corp. claims to have created a form of bio-crude oil from agricultural refuse. They use agro-waste from cracked soy beans, rice and cotton seed hulls, grain sorghum, milo, and jatropha and turn it into bio-crude oil. This crude can then be further refined into everything from gasoline to jet fuel and just about every petrochemical in between. The CEO is quoted: 'Our biggest problem is that we are too good to be true. We can literally replace every gallon of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in the United States using just 12 percent of the waste byproducts in the country.' They also claim that their fuel burns to near 100 percent efficiency." The article doesn't mention what price the "vetrolium" would command in today's market or going forward, except to report the CEO's promise "to one day sell his gasoline for $1 less than the pump price for regular fuel, no matter what the cost. 'Even if it's $2 per gallon, I'll sell mine for $1,"' he said."
Here is their home page
http://www.sustainablepower.com/
I can't decide which is harder to believe
Their Science or the fact that they are a penny stock! - Wow who would have guessed that?
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
I wonder just how much "bio-waste" is available anyway, to supply this venture. Would the specific ingredients they require ever amount to enough so as to provide a significant percentage of a states fuel needs.
The engine temperature observation from the story may just imply that the vetroleum has a very low flash point, or combustion temperature. My friends and I used to set our hands on fire with alcohol from alcohol burners, The alcohol burns at a fairly low temperature, and thus doesn't heat your hand much.
Lower temperature burns would probably generate less side products, producing a cleaner smoke. That's nothing surprising nor revolutionary. It's actually a bad thing too, since the amount of power produced is also less (less heat -> less thermal expansion = less power)
..........FULL STOP.
No, normal engines work by using the expanding gasses that are a product of combustion to exert pressure to move the cylinders.
...just like keep trying to do with the plant in my neck of the woods.
http://www.res-energy.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
Scroll to the bottom, under 'Current status' and 'Smell complaints'.
Too bad there's not a section for 'pressure from big oil'. If it isn't the case today, it certainly will be tomorrow.
This outfit in Carthage is already producing 500 barrels a day from guts and fat, at a profit of $4 per barrel. In January 05, their price was $80/barrel ($1.90/gal).
The tech is real, so why don't we have the gas yet?
http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2007/sep/28/judge-oks-rivera-fraud-suit/ Yup, do people that get scammed by these people not have access to google? That took me 32 seconds to find.
His previous endeavour is still chugging along.
I think he may have discovered a sustainable income source. It's kept him fed for a few years at least.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Hmmm. An alcohol flame gets plenty hot. Hot enough to melt glass rods if you don't have a bunsen burner handy, so temps can probably reach over 1000 degrees F.
Alcohol flames burn so clean that they look innocuous. You also can do some impressive stunts that exploit the cooling effect of alcohol evaporation. These seem to have combined to create the myth that alcohol burns cool. Anybody mucking around with alcohol flames for amusement would be well advised not to believe this.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Mostly - fuel/air vapor is compressed, then detonated. The expansion of that detonation pushes the piston. Heat causes the majority of that expansion force.
The trick is that their fuel is either: cold as Hell to start with (e.g. like putting dry ice in a bottle of water and sealing the bottle - there's still heat involved in making the detonation, but it's still way colder than pretty much anything immediately surrounding it), or dissipating the heat before the exhaust can get out of the tailpipe.
The problem is that this alleged wunderfuel is still a hydrocarbon, which means that you still have carbon atoms to dispose of (lots of 'em), and the nature of a car's combustion process still involves compression and ignition of the fuel, which will still generate a lot of heat.
Now some fuels do burn cooler than others, esp. in a short test run like the CEO was describing (for example, alcohol burns far cooler than gasoline), and a short test run with a cooler fuel will likely not give you as much heat in the exhaust (then again, on a really cool/cold day, a gasoline engine would only produce "some warm air" at your tailpipe if the engine has only ran for "a couple of minutes").
As for what's in the stuff? *shrug* - I dunno. I'm not holding my breath until/unless I see some show up in marketable quantities, though.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I make a point to follow emerging trends in new energy technologies and there is certainly no silver bullet (unless we can get cold fusion going). However, I'm also of the opinion that the US (and certainly most other nations) has the ability to independently supply its own energy through using a healthy balance of diverse energy technologies.
Off the top of my head:
Combine this with newer technologies that reduce consumption.
Again, none of the above (which are incomplete lists) alone can be a viable solution and each as their own set of problems to overcome. What is needed is a diverse portfolio of renewable energy technologies combined with a more conscious responsible use of resources. I really do believe that in doing this, there is a potential to achieve complete energy independence. What people seem to be having a hard time with is that this requires a huge infrastructural investment as well as the creation of a whole new industry. The infrastructural problems, I think, will work themselves out as the potential of ROI of these different technologies becomes attractive. A jump start from the government would help as well.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
CO2 emission from agricultural waste is a zero sum process. The problem with CO2 release from fossil fuels is that you are releasing sequestered carbon in the form of CO2. When you burn the by products of agricultural waste, or even wood for that matter, the carbon you release was all recently absorbed from the atmosphere. Carbon in == carbon out.
The Ideal gas law is PV=nRT, so while the increased number of moles of gas will inherently increase the combustion chambers pressures and temperature, but the lion's share of the pressure increase is due to the exothermic nature of the combustion heating the gasses.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Technically speaking the air/fuel charge does not detonate, it deflagrates. In a gasoline engine detonation is a bad thing, and is marked by ping or knock.
You know this is how the Germans survived WWII? Even though they had no
GTL is looking to be the next "big thing" bio-fuels. Now I'm not saying that this guy has figured out all the hard stuff that is holding big corporations back, but there's a chance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_to_liquid
If the cost of diesel fuel goes much higher I might look into buying some from racing stores. Shipping is the killer right now.
There are a few people running it on the forums and say it's great. 63 Cetane Number, 20% more BTU vs regular D2, etc, etc.
If this pans out, it's a major problem for the oil companies, but a major boon to consumers, many of whom are voters.
I don't anticipate many politicians standing in the way of $2/gallon gas with no net carbon emissions, no matter what happens to big oil. They'd get trampled in the stampede.