Name your favourite BioFuel Technology

Good point. Perhaps the Pope, monks and puritans were correct. That recreation tool is the work of the Devil!

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Absolutely! This is a huge problem with current hybrid cars - the batteries...which is why I keep bringing up the latest generation of ultracapacitors as an alternative. They are lighter, take up less space and can be re-charged for the life of the vehicle:
http://www.maxwell.com/news/release.asp?prid=181

 

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I was wondering about the 'three year' quote here, so I looked it up. Apparently, the batteries are included in the warranty which extends for 8 years/100,000 miles in the Prius.
http://hybridcars.about.com/od/hybridcarfaq/f/batterieslast.htm

 

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http://www.jatrophaworld.org/

 

Thanks

You Indian reference is interesting. Here is some text and photos of what Brazil is doing:

(1) Hype from 28 year old company that makes foam insulation, but now is getting into oil production from same plant (locally a weed, called Mamona, but you have heard of it as the caster oil bean plant). It will grow in terrible soil, almost desert part of year*, in Brazil’s NE, where 4,500 family farms are growing that weed now, but of coursee good rich soil is better, more productive. See:
http://www.undp.org/montrealprotocol/docs/Brazil_Mamona_Prsnttn.pdf

(2)Hype from a Brazilian state in NE. more about the production of bio diesel and the economics. Shows a production module in one shipping container contain that can be placed near the farms - little mass to transport helps economics, etc. (after traveling half way around the world, your gas still has typically 500 miles to go from refinery to the gas stations.) from:
http://www.forte-balance.com/Mamona_Brazil_part2.pdf
Note “part1” is more introductory but on my computer the slides a overlapped etc.

(3) For lots more search “oil” with “Mamona” to get what is going on in Brazil or with “caster bean” for a more global view.

SUMMARY:
It looks like that alcohol and bio diesel can make a big dent in fossil fuel use and be cheaper (especially if the feed stock for the alcohol can be any cellulose in a few years.); however, they will compete with food production. Tropical countries will always have a cost advantage. (They have more sun and this is solar energy, made liquid as fuel, or solid as food.) I do not mention the cheap labor and land, because that may only be true for 100 or so years. Perhaps that is as long as the bio fuel game will last, if fusion power is ever economical. (I doubt it can be because of the expensive nature of the heat generator (compared to a brick firebox and chimney) and fact more than 80% of even today’s power cost is the capital cost - fuel cost is not very important even if fusion’s fuel were free.)
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*I guess it learned / evolved to make so much oil to keep water loss low.

 

SO this BioFuel will make food expensive ?

millions will die Hungry ?

 

Not yet.

Why should this current truth change?

 

It'll make beer expensive!

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Well, if the producers don't add benzene or something to ethanol to make it poisonous, then you essentially have near 200 proof moonshine! 'Denatured' alcohol is ethanol with benzene or something added to make it unsuitable for human consumption. Pure ethanol is not toxic, just a high-proof alcohol similiar to vodka.

 

Not that I am an expert on ethanol consumption, but, beer at 5 or 10 percent by volume at 1.50 US by quart, compared to pure ethanol at 4.00 US or whatever by gallon, HMMM.

Very interesting.

 

Ethanol, Methanol, Hydrogen: All across Asia the big talk of the town is now the Jatropha plant. Apparently they can produce biodesiel fuel directly from it.

"It appears to have advantages in Asia over competitors like palm oil, since it can be grown almost anywhere....BP is spending US$9.4 million (euro7.6 million) to study jatropha in India....The Indian government says it has successfully run dozens of trucks and buses on jatropha-based biodiesel."

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10367
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12482341/
http://ap.lancasteronline.com/4/asia_crops_for_fuel

 

Seems like the Next rich Arabs are going to be the unexpectedly

the farmers, how funny, zero to hero.

 

Hi Valich - welcome back. I missed your first hand knowledge of China. Where are you now?

In Brazil the "diesel plant" of choice is Mamona, but you know it better as the casteroil plant. It grows as wild weed all over Brazil, but now hundreds of small farms are raising it as a crop.

I have posted a now lost ref showing a photo of a diesel fuel purification unit installed in a half-module "cargo container" carried by small truck. The production in Brazil is still very limited, but some bio-diesel is being mixed into the fossil diesel already. At this stage, the social benefits of providing jobs to thousands of small farmers in the dry NE of Brazil seem to be the governments main motivation. - Nice to convert a weed that requires little water and grows on poor soil into a cash crop.

 

Of possible interest, CWT (links below) has developed a economical process and is in commercial production to turn just about anything organic into a high quality diesel fuel. I remembered reading an article about it but couldnt find the source until now

In related (but discouraging) news, another economical (through the use of catalysts) process has been developed to cheaply turn coal (of which the US has stupendous reserves of) into ethane, diesel, and heating oil, its a redo of the Fischer-Tropsch method of making synthetic liquid fuels from coal, the greatly added yield makes the process economically competitive with imported oil.

Damn, a cheap way to continue to use fossil fuels.

I'm personally a huge advocate of biodiesel and the topmost thermal polymerization process of which both result in a (small) net reduction in atmospheric CO2 (the glycerol is also bound carbon)

http://www.changingworldtech.com/what/index.asp
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16713&ch=biztech

 

Lawnmower clippings.

People already spend megabucks for lawnfertilizers, lawnmowers, etc., and then dump the clippings in landfills, some of which nowadays have pipes for the methane they produce.

Why not by-pass the dumps, and set up plants for direct conversion of lawn-clippings (with appropriate bacTerial conversions).

In Hawaii, grass (Graminae, not hemp) was used to power the electric plants. When sugarcane bagasse (grass, or the cellulose that was left over after the sugar was squeezed out of the cane) was ended ten years ago, they kept the power-plants, and switched to importing Australian coal, which is burned in lieu of the bagasse the plants were originally built for.

Bio-Fuel does not just mean oil derived from plants. Corn-seed-oil is probably the cheapest, far cheaper than hemp-seed oil or coconut-seed oil. However, most of the energy is in the cellulose (leaf and stem), not in the oil. Converting the cellulose back into sugar from which it is made, and then fermenting the sugar into ethanol, is the trick. In cows, the cellulose is converted into sugar by bacterial action in the "stomachs" (and also into methane, as anyone who's lived on a farm can attest to).

In general, even simply burning of well-managed farm-produced cellulose could produce an appreciable energy source. In Hawaii, serious thought is being given to growing bamboo, a rapid energy converter into cellulose, as a fuel source to replace the messy coal now being burned, which produces a disgusting ash that can't be readily disposed of, and just piles up in heaps instead.

 

Maast:

Again, thanks for your comments. Biodiesel could also be produced from bamboo, lawnclippings, etc. Converting those into 'charcoal' by heating (which releases methane gases, etc. which could be used), and then into bio-diesel via the processes you cite might be a good methodology.

 

What about straight vegetable oil?