Issues with your account? Bug us in the Discord!
Cost of Bio Diesel reduced
croxis
I am the walrus
in Zocalo v2.0
[url]http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1114_051114_biodiesel.html?source=rss[/url]
[quote] Japanese scientists may have found a cheaper and more efficient way to produce "biodiesel." The renewable, vegetable oil-based fuel can be used in conventional diesel engines, which are found in about 2 percent of cars currently sold in the U.S. and in about 40 percent in Europe.
The breakthrough could be just in time—industry experts say that demand for the cleaner, greener fuel is on the rise.
Any vegetable oil can become fuel, but not until its fatty acids are converted to chemical compounds known as esters. Currently the acids used to convert the fatty acids are prohibitively expensive.
Michikazu Hara, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Yokohama, Japan, and his colleagues have used common, inexpensive sugars to form a recyclable solid acid that does the job on the cheap. Their research is reported in last week's issue of the journal Nature.
"We estimate the cost of the catalyst to be one-tenth to one-fiftieth that of conventional catalysts," Hara said.
more in atricle[/quote]
[quote] Japanese scientists may have found a cheaper and more efficient way to produce "biodiesel." The renewable, vegetable oil-based fuel can be used in conventional diesel engines, which are found in about 2 percent of cars currently sold in the U.S. and in about 40 percent in Europe.
The breakthrough could be just in time—industry experts say that demand for the cleaner, greener fuel is on the rise.
Any vegetable oil can become fuel, but not until its fatty acids are converted to chemical compounds known as esters. Currently the acids used to convert the fatty acids are prohibitively expensive.
Michikazu Hara, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Yokohama, Japan, and his colleagues have used common, inexpensive sugars to form a recyclable solid acid that does the job on the cheap. Their research is reported in last week's issue of the journal Nature.
"We estimate the cost of the catalyst to be one-tenth to one-fiftieth that of conventional catalysts," Hara said.
more in atricle[/quote]
Comments
Biodiesel is cleaner, but it's still not really clean.
1) The technology reduces polution
Yes it still polutes, but emissions are far less than regular diesel (and gasoline?) and there is no net carbon gain in the atmosphere from B100 fules as new crops scrub that carbon from the atmosphere.
2) Much of the infrastructure exists NOW
Unlike H-fules, the only element of the infrastructure not in place are the refineries. We have the farms, we have the pipes, we have the pumps. Little investment is needed compared to what is needed for a H system or possibly even for building new oil mines in remote and hard to reach locations.
4) Shifts from foreign oil to local economy and supports farming
Massive ammounts of money is being given to foreign countries in exchange for oil and massive multi-national corupterations. Biodiesal keeps money in the national--even regional--economy. Money also goes to farms, an industry that is suffering a big decline. Biodesel will allow consumers to select where their fule comes from, a large corperate farm or one familey own, or organic vs conventional farming; much like consumers do with their food today.
3) The technology exists NOW
Fice years ago H fule cells were "5-10 years away from the amrketplace." Today it is still 5-10 years away. Yes we shoudl continue research into this technology, but SOMETHING needs to be done now.
Jake
[url]http://www.missouri.edu/~pavt0689/biofuel.html[/url]
A whole list of papers and thesis that were written by the faculity at my alma, the University of Missour, Columbia. Many of these persons listed I had for professors, and one was my academic advisor.
Jake
For soybeans, one can extract about 48 gallons per acre of oil out, generally about 80% of that is usable as fuel, but to make that calculations simple, we will assume that 42 gallons per acre of soybeans can be converted to fuel, and since 1 barrel of oil = 42 gallons, it makes thing easy now that 1 barrel can be extracted per acre.
In 2004, the US consumed approximately 2,774,000 barrels per day of diesel and similar fuel oils. There are a total of 376,997,900 farmable acres in the US. Given only one crop cycle per year (which is true for most of the US, but not all areas), we can only produce about 135 days worth of biodiesel in the US.
To site sources [i](is this geeky or what)[/i]:
[url]http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html[/url]
[url]http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0513c.html[/url]
[url]http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/land/mappdfs/m4964.pdf[/url]
Jake
Even though you can only produce 135 days of biodiesel, that's still assuming you don't want to grow your own food.
Jake
Needless to say the technologys that would be needed for doing so makes it a pipe dream.