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"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."
The one and only problem with biofuels (apart from the fact that they produce as much greenhouse gas as petroleum products) is and always has been that we really like our food prices low, and diverting food to vehicle fuel increases the demand and therefore price.
In fact, the main factor in the current food price increase is not oil prices or inflation (though they're helping), it's actually the higher demand for corn due to ethanol subsidies for vehicles [citation: The Economist magazine].
Making more biofuel will increase food prices which is probably not a good idea from a political standpoint. What we need to do is continue to work on hydrogen tech--the main hurdle being the low energy density. Hydrogen is chiefly derived from extracting it from water using electricity (thermodynamics states this does not "create" energy, just change its form).
At present, per joule, electricity (which can be converted into hydrogen energy) is 1/4 the cost of gasoline. Obviously, as with food prices, that would change if we were using electricity to fuel our cars. However, it still may ultimately be less costly to switch over to hydrogen (or some other pure electric car).
Latewire
> they apparently just use thermal depolymerization
"High heat? Using what, free energy? But that means the organic crude isn't an actual fuel source but a product that, unlike oil, requires energy input to get energy output."
Wow, that whiney hydrogen-naysayers argument is like lego; completely interchangable. Wait, lemme try it out on solar energy, wind and nuk-u-lar power...
I think it burns really cleanly if you add some snake oil to the mix of magic free ingredients.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.