Biofuels

[metta]

Bio-debatable: Food vs. fuel

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/361634_biodiesel03.html

While biofuels do compete for food and cropland, experts said they're not the primary problem when it comes to soaring food prices and global food shortages. A spate of weather-related disasters -- droughts in Australia and Russia, frost in the Midwest, torrential summer rains in Europe -- made a mess of crops over the past year. Rising incomes in China and India mean many more people are eating higher on the food chain, sending more crops to feedlots to grow beef and pork. High prices for fuel and fertilizer also contribute to the food woes.

Kelly Ogilvie has a grand vision for Seattle's sewage. With the help of nutrient-loving algae, the entrepreneur wants human waste to power buses, cars and trucks.
"You're converting human waste into an input for energy," said Ogilvie, chief executive of Seattle's Blue Marble Energy.
At least that's the idea. Ogilvie is trying to forge a partnership with King County to grow his aquatic plants in treated sewage that's rich in nitrogen and phosphorus -- nutrients that if flushed into Puget Sound can fuel algal blooms that hurt the environment.

"There are investments being made in algae by important companies, but all the technologies are so far away -- four to five years -- it's hard to know if any are going to be economically viable," said Jimmie Powell, national energy expert for The Nature Conservancy.

In addition to consuming significant amounts of greenhouse gases while it grows, algae doesn't use up precious farmland. People are developing technologies to grow it in plastic bags and tubes or shallow manmade ponds.

 

[Puzuzzu]

YES, THEY ALWAYS WERE A SCAM.
Stick with oxidation-reduction.

 

[eddielee]

A company in North Carolina is working hard to turn switch grass into ethanol. Right now, the biofuel program doesn't match all they hype it's been getting. We are going to have to rely on fossil fuels for many more years. I'm in favour of increasing the use of nuclear energy.

 

[metta]

No solution is perfect. There are still a lot of problems with nuclear energy. I was just watching a clip yesterday that talked about a nuclear power plant in florida that was closing soon because of old technology (the manatees swim in the local warm waters). It is not clear what can be done with these old locations. Storing is also still a problem. In a war, they would be very dangerous targets. Etc. Building new plants would take years as well.

I would not consider biofuels to be a scam either. It takes time to build this technology. It is too bad that we did not push the development of these technologies much sooner. We knew this was going to happen and we did not prepare for it. I feel that our government should be pushing the devlopment of these technologies like we would if it was a war. We should even consider taxing the oil companies to help pay for it. If the price is based on supply and demand and oil companies are having record profits because of it, technically, increasing taxes on them would only affect their bottom line of their ridiculous profits.

And from looking at the chart, regarding biofuels, we should focus the research on algae. We should ask the bill gates foundation to consider offering a billion dollars to the first company that develops a feasible and reliable agae based system. Or even better, have the government or a non-profit group (like the Rocky Mountain Institute that helped develop the original hybrid technology and gave it away so that a corporation could not buy it and stop it) develop the technology so that we wont be screwed by a private company owning the technology.

 

[Fire]

It is too bad that we did not push the development of these technologies much sooner. We knew this was going to happen and we did not prepare for it. I feel that our government should be pushing the devlopment of these technologies like we would if it was a war.

If you're a student of history, you'll remember that the world came to a crossroads in the 1970's during the energy crisis, and took the stupid, profitable, easy path of fossil fuel gluttony instead of developing the sustainable energy sources that science and logic told us we had to in order to maintain a comfortable way of life and the integrity of our planet. Unfortunately, scientists, statisticians, etc. have pretty clearly shown that now, even if there were a sudden sea change in popular opinion, we've almost certainly passed the point of no return where environmental catastrophe could have been averted and any kind of real 'switchover' could have been made (in the U.S. at least) to sustainable energy/nuclear before dwindling fossil fuel supplies make it so prohibitively expensive that it would bankrupt the nation to try.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't drive less or eat local or go out and buy those energy efficient lightbulbs, but let's be honest: this "green" business is too little too late. Most of it's just a half-assed attempt by guilty white Americans to feel like they're making a difference, to distract themselves from the inconvenient reality that yes, their way of life is destructive; yes, oil is a finite resource that they have selfishly squandered; and that yes, the only way now to really save the world (and themselves) is to completely change the way they live their lives, not just switch from plastic to paper at the supermarket checkout line.

Sorry for being such a Debbie Downer. Hey, on the bright side, it's almost definitely not the end of the human race unless somebody starts hurling nukes--just the end of life as we know it

 

[metta]

No solution is perfect. There are still a lot of problems with nuclear energy. I was just watching a clip yesterday that talked about a nuclear power plant in florida that was closing soon because of old technology (the manatees swim in the local warm waters). It is not clear what can be done with these old locations. Storing is also still a problem. In a war, they would be very dangerous targets. Etc. Building new plants would take years as well.

New Generation of Nuclear Power Plants More Expensive than Expected

Not just a few percents, but double to quadruple, or $5 billion to $12 billion a plant.

Thorium Power:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/10/th_solves_globa_1.php

From the article:
•There is no danger of a melt-down like the Chernobyl reactor
•It produces minimal radioactive waste
•It can burn Plutonium waste from traditional nuclear reactors with additional energy output
•It is not suitable for the production of weapon grade materials
•The energy contained in one kilogram of Thorium equals that of four thousand tons of coal
•The global Thorium reserves could cover the world’s energy needs for thousands of years

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/nuclear-power-plants-more-expensive-5-12-billions.php

 

[star-warrior]

Anything which moves is a source of potential energy, in the physics sense.

Thus, wind, waves, water are all forms of exploiting movement and converting movement into energy via dynamo like turbines.

If the government was really green, it would fund wind power for homes more. Since each roof top is ideally situated to catch passing breezes and wind, it can be used to aid in power production. Moreover, roofs are also good for sunlight, and solar panels would also provide energy for heating as well.

Other sources of energy can come from temperature differences using thermocouple effect, and trying to harness the power of the flush from your loo, or maybe the communal sewerage system, since flowing water can drive turbines, and the difference in temperature especially in winter between the surface and drains. You've noticed how the road melts snow where there are underground drains...

 

[Yooper]

Added to the above list should be Hemp.

It grows like a weed with little effort, little water, is resistant to pests, and is unbelievably useful. As a fiber it is far superior to cotton. Makes great biomass. I had a discussion with my cousin, who quit farming about 10 years ago; and he said that if he could have grown the stuff he still would be farming.

 

[tallguy297]

Interesting chart Metta - thanks for that!

GM apparently has signed a joint venture with a company that has new technology coming through that can turn refuse and waste into ethanol... even car tyres... have any of you guys heard about that???

Any bio fuel that chews up resources such as water and food crops is not a viable long term solution... and the costs involved in the process are ridiculous let alone what they do to the price of food.

You have to be careful of the marketing in all this stuff about fuels and cars in particular. If you actually figure out the extra costs involved in making a Toyota Prius, the extra and specialized resources consumed, the power required to build one, the issue of disposal in the future you being to see how little sense this overpriced marketing ploy is for very little gain over a bio diesel powered small car that nearly every manufacturer is making or is going to make...

I dont know the solution but if the GM option is real and we can get rid of refuse as well as get some sort of benefit of a bio fuel than that makes sense as a good place to start.

 

[thermodynamics]

Biofuels aren't far enough in development to be useful yet. But corn-based ethanol is a good thing--it made auto makers build cars that could stand running on an alcohol-based fuel, whether it be methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol, etc... There are legitimate technological issues on the auto side that had to be overcome before they could be used in cars. Alcohols eat rubber fuel lines, so all the fuel lines had to be made out of a different material. The fuel injectors also had to be able to squirt more fuel into the engine.

The current generation of biofuels is not that great, for the reasons outlined above. The two best (from the engine's perspective) are methanol for spark-ignition engines, and di-methyl ether on the compression ignition side.

The newest electrical generation plants are CCGT, combined cycle gas turbine. They basically use a jet engine, and those will burn just about anything, if you can get it through the injectors--any hydrocarbon or alcohol fuel. They'll even burn vegetable oil.

 

[metta]

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/celulose-cellulosic-ethanol-plant-verenium.php

First Cellulosic Ethanol Plant in the US
The first demonstration-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the United States is now open! The verenium biorefinery in Jennings, Louisiana, will produce 1.4 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol a year with agricultural waste left over after sugarcane production.

What are Second Generation Biofuels?
Ethanol made from cellulose, as opposed to ethanol made form corn, is what is a second generation biofuel. The difference, and it's an important one, is that second generation biofuels use non-food residual biomass like the stems, leaves, wood chips, and husks, or they use non-food crops that can be grown without high energy inputs, like switchgrass.

 

[star-warrior]

There are plenty of fast food joints that have waste cooking oil, which can be easily converted to useful biofuel, or diesel.

 

[metta]

Algal Biofuels Company Working with KLM and Cruise Ships

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/algal-biofuels-klm-cruise-ships.php

Algaelink has signed an exclusive agreement with the airline KLM to develop biofuels for aircraft and are developing a system which would allow cruise ships to grow and process biofuels on board for feeding directly to the ships' own engines.

 

[metta]

WHITE HOUSE LIES TO THE WORLD ABOUT BIOFUELS

A new report from the International Monetary Fund estimates that biofuels are responsible for as much as 30% of the global food shortage. Despite this fact, at the United Nation's emergency food summit in Rome, USDA Secretary of Agriculture, Edward Schafer, defended the U.S. government's decision to spend billions of dollars subsidizing corn and soybean-based ethanol and biofuel, falsely claiming that biofuels contributed only 2% to 3% of the overall increase in global food prices over the past year. According to USDA spokesman, Jim Brownlee, Mr. Schafer was unaware that his statistics were off by nearly 90%.

Take Action: Sign OCA's Biofuel Moratorium Petition:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_9980.cfm

I don't know if I agree with this moratorium petition. I think that I would like to see them divert the money to developing energy from algae instad of corn.

 

[metta]

New Algae Biofuel from Sapphire Energy "Chemically Identical to Gasoline"

http://www.treehugger.com/files/200...en-crude-chemically-identical-to-gasoline.php

Green Crude’ Milestone
In what it calls its most significant milestone yet, Sapphire Energy , claims it has succeeded in refining a high-octane gasoline from algae that is chemically identical to crude oil. According to Sapphire Energy, “The resulting gasoline is completely compatible with current infrastructure, meaning absolutely no change to consumer’s cars.” This is of course in addition to the benefit that their Green Crude is a carbon neutral fuel.

According to the original article in The Guardian, Sapphire won’t reveal exactly what sort of algae they are using, but it is suspected that they are using a genetically-modified cyanobacteria (blue-green algae).
Sapphire believes it will be able to make commercial quantities of this fuel within three to five years.

‘Completely Compatible with Current Infrastructure’
Assuming that Sapphire succeeds in making commercial quantities of their ‘green crude’—and considering the recent influx of cash into the firm, the money is certainly there to make that possible—is maintaining our current transportation infrastructure really an environmentally good thing to do?
Obviously, our petro-coal-natural gas addiction is leading us down the dirty path to an increasingly inhospitable (perhaps fatal) future. But will simply swapping petro-based gasoline with ‘green crude’ address the other interconnected environmental problems we currently face?
Switching to cleaner energy does nothing directly to address over consumption of natural resources, biodiversity loss & habitat destruction, the gross land-use disaster that is suburban sprawl, and soil degradation resulting from destructive agricultural practices. Nor will it address the 10,000 pound elephant in the environmental room: Unchecked population growth.
While of course it’s expected that Sapphire Energy will tout its green crude as the source of energy enlightenment, and it certainly could have a large impact on reducing the impact of climate change, in much of the world it’s our current civic infrastructure and consumption patterns themselves which are a large part of the environmental problem.

Before anyone comes down on me as a ‘negative nancy’, from a biofuel perspective this development is good news. However, let’s not lose sight of the bigger environmental picture.

 

[GL]

ya gotta dig willie nelson!



bio willie