THE Biofuel Thread pt 3 (merged)

[pedalling_faster]

i suggest going to a small conference, where people actually bring their cars and their gear and talk shop.

http://www.biodieselconference.org/2010/default.asp

last year the conference was in SF, next year in Texas.

that's not what i mean by a small conference, but it might be helpful.

the one i went to in SF in 2006 had about 7 different teams, most of them with Mercedes, showing off their systems, including refining - the works.

basically i decided, if i was going to do it, i'd buy a 300D for $1500 to $2000, then give it to one of the specialists to do the conversion for about $1500.

i believe Rudolf Diesel originally designed the Diesel engine to run on plant-derived fuels.

[Gerben]

Biodiesel producers lose $1 a gallon tax credit

A federal tax credit that provided makers of biodiesel $1 for every gallon expired Friday. As a result, some U.S. producers say they will shut down without the government subsidy.
...
A key driver for the alternative fuel — the high cost of oil — disappeared as diesel prices dropped 18 percent since the beginning of the recession. Then in March the European Union placed import-killing tariffs on biodiesel and other biofuels.
It was a huge hit for U.S. biofuel makers, with Europe taking 95 percent of all global exports. Biodiesel, which is usually blended with traditional fuel, had over the past few years been the fastest growing fuel among fleet vehicles like buses, snow plows and garbage trucks.
...
The biodiesel industry is now operating at only 15 percent of its potential capacity

The subsidy was a bad measure as it promoted production for exports. Vegetable oils were imported from South-America and Asia, converted to biodiesel (to collect the subsidy) and then re-exported to Europe.

[Cloud9]

The advantage to bio fuels is simple. They can be produced locally from waste. In the case of ethanol, the sour mash can be fed to the hogs after the alcohol is extracted. Will these fuels allow commuters to live forty miles from their job sites? No, they will not. What they will do is allow farmers to power their machines.

The folks over at Mother Earth News are working on a small scale methane generator designed for a single family. The Chinese have similar projects up and running on small farms.

http://www.cityfarmer.org/biogasPaul.html

The last thing the statist want is any kind of energy independence on the local level.

[pstarr]

The advantage to bio fuels is simple. They can be produced locally from waste. In the case of ethanol, the sour mash can be fed to the hogs after the alcohol is extracted. Will these fuels allow commuters to live forty miles from their job sites? No, they will not. What they will do is allow farmers to power their machines.

The folks over at Mother Earth News are working on a small scale methane generator designed for a single family. The Chinese have similar projects up and running on small farms.

http://www.cityfarmer.org/biogasPaul.html

The last thing the statist want is any kind of energy independence on the local level.

So people who don't believe in the biofuel hype are statists? Is that the same as a corporate stooge? An unimaginative drone? A non-dreamer? Or a communist?

Biolfuels will never power our industrial society. Ethanol at best has an eroei of 1.34:1 (compared to current petroleum fuels of about 30:1),.but only if the process of delivering the brewers waste does itself not take energy, otherwise the process is not self-sustaining.

As for methane it will never fly. How can I be so sure? I will explain.

Each of us supplies (each time we flush the toilet on Mr. Hanky) suitable organic matter to highly efficient municipal waste systems. The anaerobic secondary treatment vessels at the your local sewage treatment plant heats and digest carbon material with the aid of methane producing microbes. Even the copious quantities of converted poo that flood the system daily are not enough to power the paddles and heat the digester itself. How can there ever be enough to power and industrial society and drive Mom and the Kids to the Mall?

If this made sense than why would the American farmer still spend his/her hard-won money on Arabian petroleum when they would just power the farm on the back 40?

[VMarcHart]

Pstarr, I disappointed you don't believed in the fairy godmother. She'll sprinkle her pixie dust and make biofuels work for all soccer moms to drive their ankle biters to the mall.

[highlander]

Biodiesel producers lose $1 a gallon tax credit

A federal tax credit that provided makers of biodiesel $1 for every gallon expired Friday. As a result, some U.S. producers say they will shut down without the government subsidy.
...
A key driver for the alternative fuel — the high cost of oil — disappeared as diesel prices dropped 18 percent since the beginning of the recession. Then in March the European Union placed import-killing tariffs on biodiesel and other biofuels.
It was a huge hit for U.S. biofuel makers, with Europe taking 95 percent of all global exports. Biodiesel, which is usually blended with traditional fuel, had over the past few years been the fastest growing fuel among fleet vehicles like buses, snow plows and garbage trucks.
...
The biodiesel industry is now operating at only 15 percent of its potential capacity

The subsidy was a bad measure as it promoted production for exports. Vegetable oils were imported from South-America and Asia, converted to biodiesel (to collect the subsidy) and then re-exported to Europe.

Yes, direct gov't subsidies for alternative fuels is bad policy. Especially if it is written with loopholes so dino-diesel producers get in on the action.

Much better are the indirect subsidies we pay to keep the spice flowing.

[Gerben]

The anaerobic secondary treatment vessels at the your local sewage treatment plant heats and digest carbon material with the aid of methane producing microbes. Even the copious quantities of converted poo that flood the system daily are not enough to power the paddles and heat the digester itself. How can there ever be enough to power and industrial society and drive Mom and the Kids to the Mall?

If this made sense than why would the American farmer still spend his/her hard-won money on Arabian petroleum when they would just power the farm on the back 40?

There are a couple of sewage treatment plants in the Netherlands that produce biogas, use some for heating and upgrade the rest to natural gas quality and inject it in the gas grid. Most plants produce heat and power - selling most of the power to the electricity grid. It's not a problem of insufficient energy, it's about economy: it takes long to earn back the extra investments.
No, this won't provide enough power to power an industrial society, but it helps a bit. There are more sustainable sources of energy, this is just one of them.

[Graeme]

Sustainable biofuels to run commercial jets

Qatar Airways and Qatar Petroleum announced a joint effort, supported by Airbus, to develop, produce and supply a sustainable bio jet fuel.

The partners, who last year completed a feasibility study of a sustainable Biomass-to-Liquid (BTL) jet fuel with US company Verno Systems say they can produce a biofuel without affecting food or fresh-water supplies. “By entering into the production and supply of bio jet fuels, we will be able to get closer and closer to carbon neutral growth,” said Qatar Airways CEP Akbar al Baker.

A second consortium of airlines have also announced similar plans, with Masdar, Boeing, Honeywell’s UOP and Etihad Airways developing and producing biofuels.

ukprwire

[Tanada]

Given the huge energy investment it takes to produce biofuels is flying all over really the best way to use them? I know people will do whatever they want, but all the way back when Henry Ford was making Model T cars there were plans for biofuels to supply the needs of the agricultural sector. That use makes sense to me, if you grow your fuel on the farm it is rather like feeding your oxen or mules from your own farm which adds to the security of the food supply. Using the fuel for aircraft does the exact opposite IMO.

[Graeme]

Engineers Aim to Make Air Travel Greener

Carbon emissions from air travel could be reduced thanks to a new collaboration between engineers from the Universities of Bath and Bristol and the aerospace industry.

The £1.4 million project will investigate new ways of using composite materials for wing panels in aircraft.

The research, funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and aircraft manufacturers Airbus and GKN, will be using carbon fibres that are curved within flat plates to produce damage-tolerant, buckle-free structures.

sciencedaily

[Phildo]

Given the huge energy investment it takes to produce biofuels is flying all over really the best way to use them? I know people will do whatever they want, but all the way back when Henry Ford was making Model T cars there were plans for biofuels to supply the needs of the agricultural sector. That use makes sense to me, if you grow your fuel on the farm it is rather like feeding your oxen or mules from your own farm which adds to the security of the food supply. Using the fuel for aircraft does the exact opposite IMO.

Good analysis -- but this is about chasing the dollar. No sense needed. Just money. Folks with money tend to like flying. Even the knucklleheaded Heads of "Big Auto" made that mistake when going to Congress to grift . . . . er, ah ask . . .. for money. Flew when any PR person could have told them to Car Pool in one of their Crap-Mobiles.

Now if you trace through any successful business model, it always begins with -- The Customer Must Have Money. Folks flying tend to have money, especially ones with all important private jets. So who do we serve? Them or US? Certainly not farmers.

So really America ought to stand on a street corner with a sign that says "Will Be Stupid -- For Money." Pretty much what we do.

[lahmanwokard]

I have to say that making it run on Biodiesel would be a much smarter choice right now. Biodiesel is in the brink of becoming a real Thing, and if you want something you can actually fill up at a regular retail station , you should really go with the real stuff.

[Tanada]

I have to say that making it run on Biodiesel would be a much smarter choice right now. Biodiesel is in the brink of becoming a real Thing, and if you want something you can actually fill up at a regular retail station , you should really go with the real stuff.

IMO if you have a diesel engine vehicle the smart thing to do is to convert it to run on straight vegetable oil, that way it can run on fossil diesel, biodiesel or plain old vegetable oil. The problem with biodiesel is it requires a large ethanol or methanol input, most of that made in the USA in factories is Ethanol based and most home made is Methanol based. Neither one is available in large excess, especially not with the whole E-10/E-15/E-85 subsidy craze going on.

[truecougarblue]

I ran my 96 Dodge Ram Cummins for years on straight WVO. It died on me and I thought I'd killed it with veggie. It turned out to be a fatigue failure of a sheet metal piece inside the fuel tank that caused a pinhole in the uptake fuel line. There was a degredation in acceleration vs diesel and it started harder in winter below freezing, but this was greatly alleviated by running 5-10% unleaded gas in the tank.

I promised the wife I would quit running veggie in it once I got it fixed so despite conclusive evidence that the oil wasn't the cause I now use diesel diesel, but I've got 500 gallons of veggie waiting in the wings in reserve in case of supply disruptions.

The key to using straight WVO is 2Ds De-acidify and De-water. The best method I've found is baking soda. It nuetralizes acids and is water soluable (and dirt cheap). I take my bulk dirty oil and put it in a stock tank, and set it to mix well with 5lbs soda/100 gallons. I then let this sit for a week. The acid is a fatty acid molecule, and this is what the standard biodiesel process breaks down using lye. One can see this chemical process as the whole mix bubbles up continuously over a couple of days. The water and solids sink to the bottom, the glycerin floats to the top and the paydirt sits in the middle, and the bulk oil is mostly paydirt.

The "clean" oil is drawn off by pump or by siphon into a second settling tank through a 5 micron bag filter, being careful not to draw the dirty salt water that has settled to the bottom of the first tank.

The second tank sits for a week, and is then transfered through another bag filter (1 micron) to a third tank. In a 55 gallon drum I leave the bottom 12 inches for collection of solids and water so I only transfer at most 30 gallons or so.

Third tank same as second, but fourth tank is for use in automobile. I've never needed to change the last filter, it doesn't plug up which tells me I'm getting most everything out before it goes into the fourth tank.

Bag filters are readily available from mcmastercarr.com. If you want to get truly fancy (or smart) use air pressure to transfer from tank to tank instead of a siphon or pump.

Feel free to PM me if you have other questions.

[Graeme]

Biofuel breakthrough on non-food crops

Current methods of converting agricultural by-products into ethanol are too expensive to consider at a commercial level, while biofuels produced from food crops have been blamed for pushing up commodity prices and leaving the world’s poorest people short of food.

But a Danish biotechnology company, Novozymes, says it has cultivated a new enzyme that could convert maize, wheat, straw and woodchips into ethanol for as little as 32 pence per litre.

“We have been working on this for the past 10 years and promised our customers and the market to be ready by 2010,” said Steen Riisgaard, Novozymes chief executive.

Large-scale commercial production of the cellulosic ethanol could begin as early as 2011.

farmersguardian

[Tanada]

While it certainly would not hurt my feelings any I want to see it before I believe it. All of my life I have been hearing these sort of claims for a new way of doing things, yet somehow very few of them ever come to fruition.

[ian807]

As always...

1) ]What does it cost per unit of energy relative to other sources?

2) Considering all production energy, what's the energy return on energy invested?

And as always....

Neither of these is ever mentioned in these "breakthrough" articles whose only job is to sell advertising or penny stock.

Cheers!

[NeoPeasant]

These "biofuel breakthrus" always make me wonder: Where is all this cellulose going to in the environment now, and what sort of problems will be caused by it' sudden absence?

Another thing I wonder: If you create an enzyme that makes cellulose into sugars digestible by yeast, don't you also make it digestible by livestock and/or people? Perhaps when we outgrow our obsession with ways of life based on excessive amounts of moving ourselves and our stuff around, we will be able to use this technology to alleviate future famines.

[TheAntiDoomer]

http://www.physorg.com/news189084268.html

Using genetic sleight of hand, researcher Xinyao Liu and professor Roy Curtiss at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute have coaxed photosynthetic microbes to secrete oil—bypassing energy and cost barriers that have hampered green biofuel production. Their results appear in this week's advanced online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[EnergyUnlimited]

However they still didn't address 2 critical issues:

1. If we are to rely on atmospheric CO2, then there is not enough of it in air to secure adequate production rate of fuel (however installation could still work coupled to power plant).

2. Species control in large scale production systems might be impossible to achieve at reasonable cost and effort.
It is likely that other microorganisms (bacteria, algae, fungi, viruses) will invade your bacterial cultures, start to compete with desired microorganism and spoil a fun in no time at all.