Biodiesel. World catastrophe in the making. (but the profits are good).

"I think Biodiesel Is the way to go. Why you may ask..................

There are a few reasons.(Not getting into environment reasons either.)"



What nonsense!

OK, I'm quoting another thread, but as it zoomed off into a Cummins diesel sales pitch, I would like to see a thread that actually looks objectively at it all.

Everything about Biodiesel is bad (ok, I like the Chippy smell bit (for the ose not in the UK that means the smell of a chip shop (for those not in the UK that is a shop that sells fish and chips))). It costs more to create than it saves (energywise). The only reason it looks good now is governmental subsidies, nothing to do with good science or environmental concerns.

Just so you know, the current manmade destruction of the Earth is not really a concern to me (yes I have children, and it would be nice for them to know what a Panda, Albatross, Kakapo etc etc was). Man is small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, so if he fails to save the world, I won't worry, the World will save herself.
I have not done HUGE research, but what I have seen goes something like this: Each year, we use 400 years of biomass, in the form of fossil fuels, ie it takes the total growth of 400 years of vegetable matter (the entire vegetable matter of the Earth that is), for us to do all we do each year. Let's say they got this wrong, really wrong, and it only take 1 years' worth, and we want to replace just 10% of that, with wonderful biofuels, of whatever sort. So do we give up all all arable crops, for use in this venture? maybe not, the vegetarians would all starve. ok then, let's just plant 10% extra of the world with suitable crops; hack down the forests, trash the Amazon, Indonesia, The New Forest, all the Redwoods we can shake a stick at, and get the job done.

Any one any objections?

PS Please try and stay on topic, I used to work for Cummins (nice new Logo guys) I really do not need a lecture on stoichiometric processes.

Sort of -

1. Biofuels are costly when using fossil costs as the production basis. If the production was based on the biofuel cost then the basis changes. Yes it is lower in energy and in todays world where fossil fuels are cheap and highly energy dense there are issues to be dealt with but those would change as the whole infraturcture would move to the new fuels. Same for solar - costly in comparison, but vastly available and renewable for say the next 4 billion years. If the incentives are there to move away from oil we would all do it but given cheap oil, there is litttle reason unless mandated in the form of incentives to do so (read tax or investment credits).

Now- the land thing, you ever fly over the US..?? Lots of land my friend, lots and lots of land. Various subsidies are used to to help controls costs of basic farm goods, but given a change in the cost basis of production and letting the market work, a happy balance would eventually be reached. Problem is in making sure that basic food stocks are not "eaten" into to make the fuels (like the Aluminum people did - stopped making aluminum and sold their electricity because they made more money doing it....).

Fun times ahead and don't forget the destablaization that would occur in the world as those societies that have only oil as their major export would be wiped out with a wholesale shift to something else - you think things are bad now, wait until that happens and how the fingerpointing and blame would be leveled....

Done quite a bit of research into biodiesel, and a lot of math.
If I get around to it, I'll post it here. But suffice it to say, your sources suck.

Just a couple of highlights:

1.) EVERYTHING costs more to produce in the beginning. It is not until advances in technology in addition to competing market forces that drive the costs down.

2.) The biomass currently used is in no way viable to solve all the problems. In a real-world, widespread application, they will need a biomass that makes VERY efficient use of space. Such as algae. These projects are already in the work and showing considerable promise.

3.) The difference in emissions between conventional oil-based fuel and biodiesel is over 80%. Just adding biodiesel, in fact, to normal gasoline cuts it by 20%.

4.) Biodiesel can be created in any city. It does not require foreign or even domestic government, or corporate control.

5.) Biodiesel works in most diesel motors already, those that can't currently use it only need a small conversion of $100-200.

6.) Unlike conventional oil based fuel, short of some major ecological disaster, biodiesel will be a comparatively stable, declining price.

7.) Because Biodiesel can be made in (almost) any city, the cost in fuel and pollution to transport this fuel from point A to point B can be reduced to a fraction of a percent of what it currently is.

8.) Because algae can be fed from wastewater and runoff from farms, cities may use a biomass farm as an initial layer of water filtration before the water treatment plant, which means not only will the end result of treatment be cleaner, but it will be less taxing on the treatment plant itself.

9.) Unlike conventional fuel, the combustion process from biodiesel is due to compression, not explosion, making storage of it MUCH safer.

I apologize if I gave that impression. Biodiesel isn't a magic bullet for our dependence on fossil fuels, pollution, bad government, or corporate greed.

Oil is used for a lot of stuff besides gasoline, a lot of things pollute besides gas, and bad government and corporate greed are just par for the course.

However, I do wholeheartedly believe, with a vast amount of evidence to support the claim, that biodiesel (given a chance) will become the dominant source of fuel for the next few decades, until some other method of propulsion for overland passenger and freight transport is perfected.

An additional few benefits to biodiesel that I forgot to include:

10.) The infrastructure to transport, store, and distribute it already exists across the entire globe (aka. gas stations, gas tanks, gas trucks, etc), unlike other proposed alternative fuels which would require a new infrastructure to be first brought online.

11.) Mileage for vehicles ranged from 20%-80% better, depending on the make, model, etc.

12.) Ailing domestic car manufacturers (like Ford) could jump onto this opportunity early in the game, giving them a car to produce that people actually WANT, basing the design around biodiesel's capabilities, reduced emissions, and improved mileage.

13.) Farm and Fleet industries would see an immense savings on fuel costs, which is incidentally, their single largest expense.

I could go on, but I believe I've given the OP enough to digest, and the casual reader enough to see through the OP's "sources".

Clearly, we're not going to be accepting famines in order to have biodiesel fuel. I don't see how this is going to be a catastrophe. Biodiesel isn't going to replace oil, coal, natural gas, etc. And its not even going to replace oil in all industries, the most it can be is a replacement for car gasoline, and even then, probably only a part of the replacement.

you can never find it...

i HAVE done the research...

ask around at your local restaurants... and if any agree to sell you lightly used oil for less than $1 per gallon, then get a kit, and start saving money...

that is the problem though... i have only seen (smelled) one vehicle in my town that runs on biodiesel... and he seems to buy all the town produces for his one truck...

I couldn't find a supplier that didn't want me to "bid more" for their oil, except for certain fast food chains, that agreed to allow me to "steal" their oil for $1 a gallon, but they used it too much to make good fuel...

so the long and short of it is this...
If you can FIND lightly used cooking/frying oil (about 10 gallons a week) then its great, but good luck on that...
Most fast foods use the oil to much, and it becomes poor quality oil.

and as the OP stated... making vegatable crops for oil is just bad land planning, so you would never want to use new oil...

Well, if you would make biodiesel from algae for example, it will take almost no land at all. I've read that it would be less than 1% mostly arid US land, unsuitable for normal agriculture for whole US consumption. Also biodiesel is not costly - according to most estimates 1 barrel of biodiesel costs app 35$ - two times less than current oil price.
Also people are forgetting one important thing - biotechnology. In near future (10 years) it would be possible to "design" ideal plants for biodiesel production.

Nor would we have to. The assertion by the OP that we would starve the world to fuel our cars is ridiculous, and at the current usage for rate of growth vs. technological advances, completely unneeded.




Well now, let's not be too quick to compartmentalize BD (I'm just gonna call it BD right now to save on chars). BD may end up having uses we never dreamt of later on down the road. With an increase in demand will come a naturally catchup period of supply. Once someone has figured out a way to fill all of the demand for biofuel, then serious research will begin into things like:

Lubricants

Rubbers

Dyes

Fertilizers

Chemicals

Glass

Medicines

Power Plants

Heating oils

and so on... and so on... You can bet that in a capitalist free-market economy, people who are well-vested in the biomass industry are going to be looking at every possible way to squeeze a dime out of that algae.

Now, as for the replacement of just gasoline, I think realistically that over 3/4 of the U.S. demand for conventional oil-based gasoline could be met with biodiesel, because most fuel is consumed by farmers and fleets, not average joes. This is because, while people only drive to and from a particular place and usually turn their car off, leaving it in place hours on end, farmers and fleets are typically operating their vehicles all day, every day, and letting them idle when not in use. This is why fuel also accounts for their largest expense.

However, you aren't going to find Formula-1 and NASCAR drivers filling up their racing cars with biodiesel, because it's not a high-performance high-temperature fuel. But these account for a pretty low percentage of the fuel use.

Then you've got the average joes. Some will NEED to use conventional fuel, for whatever reason, some will use it "just cause", some will switch to biodiesel, or maybe have one vehicle for each fuel type.

But if we could just get all the farmers and fleets moved over to biodiesel... wow... what a difference 75% would make.

Originally posted by LazarusTheLong
you can never find it...

We're actually lucky enough in Texas to have Willie Nelson. Well... before he got busted for possession...again... damned Louisiana. We take in half their refugees, and our thanks is they bust Willie for weed. WEAK! Anyway... enough about that. He's been a pretty big proponant of biodiesel and has made it somewhat available locally. But keep in mind that this is still very much in the early stages of research, development, production, distribution, and consumption. It is a complex chain consisting of many individual entities that will take a while to get up to speed.

Don't give up on it just cause it's so hard to find right now. Just think of it as the initial stages. Unless you're considering going into the field, or investing in it, you really don't need to worry about it for another few years, to be honest. However, I WOULD advise that, the next time you buy a car, buy a diesel car, that way if you still have the same auto when BD is abundant, you have the option of switching without having to buy yet another auto.

Originally posted by LazarusTheLong
and as the OP stated... making vegatable crops for oil is just bad land planning, so you would never want to use new oil...

Hence the research into oil-producing algae as biomass. If you can get the same amount of oil out of a cubic foot of algae that would otherwise require a football-field sized field of corn, which is going to be the most efficient producer? Another very significant advantage to algae is the fact it can be stacked, quick high, if neccessary. You could easily construct literal skyscrapers upward, whose sole purpose is to grow algae, producing the equivolent of a continent's worth of corn biomass, and only use up one city block of horizontal space. You cannot do this with corn, switchgass, or any other complex plants.

Originally posted by longbow
Well, if you would make biodiesel from algae for example, it will take almost no land at all. I've read that it would be less than 1% mostly arid US land, unsuitable for normal agriculture for whole US consumption.

Another very significant advantage to algae is the fact it can be stacked, quite high, if neccessary. You could easily construct skyscrapers upward, whose sole purpose is to grow algae, producing the equivolent of a continent's worth of corn biomass, and only use up one city block of horizontal space. You cannot do this with corn, switchgass, or any other complex plants.

Biodiesel aside, the sheer amount of potential of algae itself for other purposes will be much more readily available for research.

Consider the amount of fertilizer that went into your crops and you'll understand. there's probably enough biological waste (including dung - methane source!) to power a farmer's equipment (very important, btw, in case of breakdown) it will never be enough to replace anything on a larger scale, obviously, because economies are supposed to be efficient, especially if ecological impact is concerned.

The same is true for just about any alternative source of energy unless it's merely designed to power remote farms and tiny villages, of course, in which case cost is paramount, not technology. Furthermore, biomass is a very limited resource and miniscule expansion means destroying land. imagine wood pellet furnaces in a sizeable portion of homes the greenies would probably cut down the last few remaining forests to save the environment.

what was this site's motto again?

the best thing to do with waste is to reduce it. i never said that you can't use anything, in fact i even gave examples of sensible use i think. you can defend the ideology as much as you want, the visible results of political ecologism are sobering. wind turbines all over the place, mandatory, subsidized rape seed oil added to diesel fuel in Germany, rising wood prices because of steeply increased demand for wood pellets, that's the real, tangible result of these misguided policies.

in every single instance, so far, the greenies failed to consider scale. biomatter is just as limited as any other resource, perhaps even more so.



location. that's nice to hear, unfortunately reality doesn't seem to mirror this kind of understanding, or things like wind turbines wouldn't be used as electric generators (you need full backup capacities, wind is unreliable) and wouldn't have to be subsidized. electric wind power needs a wide area grid, offers low power density AND is location sensititve. does it get worse? yeah, it's ugly and kills birds. don't know if you consider it a 'green tech' or industry's trojan horse, though.


your village is all nice and dandy, but let me ask you one simple question: is green policy directed towards such projects? would be be having a conversation on biodiesel?

PS: you went OT, there are many hydro plants thoughout the world, they may produce renewable energy, but they are not 'green'. don't need to have gills to understand that.

so, when are the ones i see popping up everywhere (on land) going to be moved offshore? in 2020 just like everything else? the idea of windfarms at sea sounds good and has been around forever, so why hasn't it been favored over landbased windmills? is the reason purely political or are initial costs even higher (need ships and high voltage sea cables, not the same ballpark as glass fiber data cable, mind you) or is it simply the result of misguided subsidies?


you said criticism was easy, and you're certainly right, but claiming to be a visionary doesn't change much, does it? i'm sure if you asked a lot of people, they would come up with fantastic stuff, like utilising the temperature gradient between the surface and deep ocean waters (combine with solar power maybe?) in tropical areas or tapping methane hydrate just by sucking on a pipe and whatnot. as nice as that may sound to some, it's as good as science fiction unless somebody actually does it on a decent scale and i do not believe that leaving alternative power to politicians and their useful(less?) idiots is the way to go. it needs to work, preferably from the start, and in an at least partially scalable way. f-ex. if the autonomous village idea works, use it everywhere possible. these projects need the spotlight, not biodiesel or ethanol.

Anyone notice how most of the detractors in this thread seem to have some derivation of the word "Long" in their username? I can't help but wonder if there's either one person using multiple aliases to make their arguement look stronger, or if there's just something about the psychology of one who uses "long" in their username... anyway...

Sardion2000 thankfully continued the point I was trying to make: There's no magic bullet to end all conservation problems.

In fact, I'd even go so far as to wager that someday, a few decades from now, what we currently consider "green" will be dirty energy compared to some newer source that is far cleaner, and that in turn, will be outmoded in another few decades...

The "Longs", however, would have one believing that it just isn't worth advancing, it isn't worth attempting to make cleaner energy. They would go so far as to accuse the very people trying to save the planet of trying to destroy it. To them, I say, kiss off. It's not like they've added anything constructive, any alternate forms of energy that may be cleaner, or any solutions. All they've done is given ignorant, catcalling replies to a thread that they largely did not read or research on, and instead parrotted what you've heard some apparently anti-green "experts" say.

Now, I would never be so bold as to claim that any source of energy anywhere is foolproof or without risk or harm in some way. That is the cost of energy. You are artificially extending the natural abilities of mankind, energy is neither created nor destroyed, but rather transferred. So something, somewhere, at the source, something is going to be depleted, and at the other end something, somewhere, is going to generate waste through the conversion process.

What biodiesel attempts is the next logical step along the way, creating a renewable source of petrol that is compact (like an algae tank) and generates less pollution (about 80% less), and with a minimal impact on the infrastructure that we currently use today. That's it.

And I don't know where the hell this whole discussion on wood pellets came from, or how the "greenies" want to cut down the forests. Sounds like someone has been listening to some Rush Limbaugh bullsh-t instead of learning to read. Or is that book-learnin' just too high-fallutin' fer ya?


EDIT: Please exclude "LazarusTheLong" from the "Longs", as he is far from ignorant and has actually contributed constructive comments to this thread.


[edit on 9/25/2006 by thelibra]

Sorry it took so long to get back, but ATS was all weird over the weekend.

The long and the short of all this seems to be that "We just don't know" if BD is practical on any large scale. So what we nned is something from those spending investment cash on this technology. I heard that Tesco is building a BD plant in the UK somewhere in Lincoln i think. I will see if they have an info pack available and see what they have to say about where the Biomass they use comes from.
If they have not burned down new Forest, converted food crops or gennerally made the environment worse that it was, maybe I will give it a go. I already drive a diesel anyway. (hate to think I will smell like a chippy though)

Thanks for a continuously "on-track" discussion.

thanks, that's a first. i've never before been called a disinfo dude or some cheater with multiple handles, hehe. i guess i must be doing something right.

With that out of the way, let me paraphrase:

constructive means 'in total agreement'

let me get one thing straight, i don't see why we would use something with little energetic benefit when its side effects are substantial and there are better alternatives, all of which are localised and largely overlooked (a few model villages excluded, which do NOT make the news but biofuels regularly do).

good intentions are not enough, if you continue down that path and succed guess who will lose credibility? if you consider anyone who disagrees with you your enemy then you will not gain much sympathy, will you? green has become a cult, forget overal efficiency, fuel cells are 'zero emissions' just like electric cars, forget about the production of hydrogen or electricity and how much pollution is generated, short and long term. forget about it all as long as it's fashionable, right?


if you cannot adress and invalidate specific points, then you are short on arguments and bringing rush limbaugh into this thread, while insulting doesn't contribute (<-- see that i can use this #, too) anything either, does it?


PS: before i waste my breath, i will introduce you to a classic example of the willfuly shortsighted stance among die-hard cultists: (emphasis mine)



wake up and smell the roses and don't forget that

you should call the admins and verify my IP address and longbows, to see if they're identical instead of shouting imposter and

consider the vague possibility that this thread is not 'your personal creativity contest to see who can invent better energy sources, but

BIODIESEL.