Alternative Fuel Watch: Bio-Diesel
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, Environment, Foreign Policy, The War On TerrorismDean Esmay links to an interesting story about do-it-yourselfers who convert the oil used to cook french fries into extremely cost efficient fuel.
From the Smithsonian:
Every few weeks, Etta Kantor goes to a Chinese restaurant and fills a couple of five-gallon pails with used cooking oil. Back in her garage, the 59-year-old philanthropist and grandmother strains it through a cloth filter and then pours it into a custom-made second fuel tank in her 2003 Volkswagen Jetta diesel station wagon. Once the car is warmed up, she flips a fuel toggle on the dashboard to switch to the vegetable oil. Wherever she drives, she’s trailed by the appetizing odor of egg rolls.Sean Parks of Davis, California, collects his cooking oil from a fish-and-chips restaurant and a corn-dog shop. He purifies it chemically in a 40-gallon reactor that he built himself for about $200. The processed oil can be used even when his car’s engine is cold, at a cost of about 70 cents a gallon. Parks, 30, a geographer for the U.S. Forest Service, makes enough processed oil to fuel his family’s two cars.
But it is clean? Well…pretty much.
Another benefit of burning biodiesel is cleaner air. Compared with fossil fuels, it emits less carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, as well as sulfur compounds related to acid rain. Pure biodiesel also substantially reduces overall emission of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to climate change, because the plants from which the oil was extracted absorbed atmospheric carbon dioxide while they were growing. A bus running on pure biodiesel would emit 32 percent less particulate matter, which has been implicated in the dramatic increase in asthma cases in cities. The only air pollution downside of pure biodiesel, according to the 1998 U.S. study, is a slight increase of smog-inducing nitrogen oxides.
I’m telling you people, some may think this is just hippie-dippie stuff, but alternative energy will allow us to slowly, but surely, remove ourselves from the Arab oil teet. The result will be a more common sense involvement in the region where we actually have more leverage. This will put pressure on the leaders to truly do away with the terrorists within their borders once and for all because they’re threatening the sustainability of the nation’s wealth.
Because no matter how much a government is dedicated to Islamic ideals, they are ultimately motivated by two very simple things: fear and greed.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 and is filed under Economy, Environment, Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 20th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
This is a pet topic of mine. Last year we produced about 25 million gallons of biodiesel. This year we might produce 125 million. And I’ve been reading about huge new production facilities being planned and constructed all over the country. This has the potential to increase exponentially.
Not that there aren’t some very challenging problems (such as increasing energy return, finding better oil crops, finding alternative sources for methanol than natural gas), but this industry is still in its infancy.
September 20th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
YOu know what I like? This is a home-grown remedy that requires no subsidy or tax break. Yes, it is also a benefit that things like this speed the day when the US no longer depends on the politically, socially, and culturally disfunctional Arab world; and the Arabs in turn have to collectively earn a living by work.
I foresee the day when someone in the US has fast food joints paying that someone to take away their used cooking oil to some bulk filtering operation attached to a garage that transforms vehicles. As long as petroleum prices continue to rise solutions of this sort will become more attractive investments. BTW I think it is safe now to theorize that lack of refining capacity is as much behind rising gasoline prices as the cost of oil. Face it. There ain’t gonna be no more refineries built in this country. No one wants one in their back yard. Discovery of and drilling for new oil supplies will not mean much if there is no infrastructure for refining and delivering the product to market.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:15 am
Biodiesel is one of several biofuels that can have an impact on kicking the US’s fossil fuels addiction, but it is definitely not the only one. One of the biggest challenges here in the states is that there are very few diesel passanger vehicles on the market, and it seems that there is a stigma surrounding them, for the most part. There are currently at least 5 states that new diesel passenger cars cannot be sold in.
Today, I was actually test driving some older (mid 80′s) diesel Mercedes-Benz with the intent of running biodiesel in it. There is still one more highly driven gasser vehicle in the household, and when I get the diesel, will be able to curb that other car.
Jason Younker
Alternative Fuels Awareness Organization
http://www.iE85.com/
September 21st, 2005 at 10:36 pm
Unfortunately, there isn’t enough vegetable oil produced in the USA to replace more than a relatively small fraction of diesel fuel consumption. (The same is true of ethanol; even if the entire 11.8 billion bushels of the 2004 corn harvest were converted to ethanol, it would only replace about 6% of gasoline consumption after all the inputs are accounted for. See http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2005/07/money-grubbing-mendacity-of-ethanol.html for a rather acerbic view of the matter.)
Biodiesel is a great way to make a high-value product from waste cooking grease, but it’s no panacea. What we really need are ways to kick efficiency higher at the same time that we substitute other energy supplies for petroleum; my blog is largely devoted to the exploration of these possibilties.
September 22nd, 2005 at 1:48 pm
Engineer-Poet,
It takes a considerable amount of time to displace a deeply entrenched industry such as that of the petroleum industry. I’m not sure how much you’ve been keeping up with biodiesel and ethanol plant announcements, but there are more and more being announced on a regular basis (I blogged two content items this week alone related to plant announcements). Another interesting, and currently heavily researched feedstock for biodiesel is algea. Its theorized that algea ponds the size of Rhode Island could completely displace the entire US’s need for petroleum. Right now though, thats a lot of if’s, ands, & buts.
I’ll completely agree that we must continually strive for ever increasing fuel effeciencies, but we must begin breaking away from our dependence on imported fossil fuels and we cannot sit idly by and wait for more effecient technologies to come about before we start the transition process. Diesel cars are widely overlooked when respected organizations such as Consumer Reports neglect to include them on a top 10 list of most fuel effecient cars. I know of VW TDI owners that very consistently get 40-50+ mpg plus on their cars. Did Consumer Reports have a single VW TDI on that list … NO!! Appalling.
Looking at your blog, you spend an incredible amount of effort refuting the possibilities of ethanol. Do you know that Panda Energy (has announced 3 ethanol plants to be built this year alone) will be using cow manure to power their ethanol plants … each plant will be saving the equivalant of 1,000 barrels of oil a day (so a total of 3,000 barrels of oil a day between the 3 plants). At least ethanol has a positive energy ratio VS petro-gasoline that has a negative energy ratio.
Jason Younker
Alternative Fuels Awareness Organization
http://www.iE85.com/
September 23rd, 2005 at 1:36 am
Test of HTML formatting vs. Donklephant’s filters.
link.
September 23rd, 2005 at 2:06 am
Jason Younker writes:
And if you’d read the figures a little more deeply you’d understand why, but I’ll give you the executive summary of the immediate situation here:US ethanol production capacity is roughly 4 billion gallons per year.Distilling a gallon of ethanol requires on the order of 33,000 BTU of heat.There are exceptions as you noted, but most distilleries get this heat by burning natural gas or LPG.There is a severe shortage of natural gas in N. America leading up to this heating season, and LPG will be little better.The average gas-heated home uses 50 million BTU per heating season. If even 3/4 of those 4 billion gallons of ethanol are distilled with natural gas and LPG, the gas they will use would have sufficed to heat 2 million homes.A bushel of corn can be burned to yield about 380,000 BTU of heat; converted to ethanol, it yields perhaps 220,000 BTU of motor fuel (and that’s after ~87,000 BTU of other fuel is used for distillation). We’ve got a looming crisis, and we just cannot justify this much waste. Government policy for this winter should be to get corn-burning stoves into as many homes as possible and shut down all gas-fired distilleries until gas supplies are assured. Panda Energy’s biogas-fired systems are good, but they should cogenerate with their heating fuel. We can’t afford the losses; every bit of fuel saved will go to good use somewhere else.
At $2.50/bushel, corn burned in a stove costs about as much as natural gas at 75 cents a therm.
Biodiesel from corn processing doesn’t save it. You get about 1.6 pounds (about a fifth of a gallon) of corn oil per bushel, compared to about 2.5 gallons of ethanol. Converting the oil to esters even consumes some of your alcohol product.
The truth is that we can’t afford to go converting 380,000 BTU of biomass (corn) and another 80 to 90 thousand BTU of home-heating fuel into a mere 220,000 BTU of gasoline-substitute. That’s an efficiency of less than 50%, when we’ve got a crisis on our hands. And as a taxpayer, I resent having to shell out more so that this waste can continue.
Ethanol yields less than 50% of the energy of its inputs (corn and distillation fuel). If you consider the corn oil as another fuel product at perhaps 130,000 BTU/gallon, you beat 50% by a hair; either way, this is much worse than gasoline. Maybe corn is worth growing for fuel, but it is NOT worth fermenting and distilling except to drink.
We’ve got the technologies; we’ve had them since the 1970′s. We need to get them onto the market.
The crucial technology is the “plug-in hybrid” or “gas-optional hybrid” (GO-HEV). It doesn’t just run on a different liquid fuel (which maintains petroleum dependence), it will run on anything which can feed it electricity. The 100-mile electric car is expensive and difficult, but the 20-mile electric car has been cheap and easy for at least two decades (I’ve been talking about it since 1992 if not earlier). Need to go more than 20 miles? Just start burning fuel like a regular hybrid. But if your first 20 miles every day is petroleum-free, you’ll eliminate a huge fraction of all consumption.
The best EROEI I’ve seen for ethanol is 1.67:1, the typical one I see is 1.34:1. No matter how you cut it, even at the most optimistic figure your 20 miles of operation on E-85 is going to consume 3 miles-equivalent of petroleum directly and 10.2 miles-equivalent of fossil fuel to make the ethanol; at most, you’re getting 6.8 miles (34%) from the sun, at today’s $2.59/gallon pump price plus another $1.30/gallon in subsidies for the non-fossil energy created in the process. The actual cost of the energy that ethanol makers make is about $3.90/gallon-equivalent of gasoline.
At $3.90/gallon and 20,460 BTU/lb, burned in an engine achieving 20% efficiency, energy from gasoline costs 52.8¢/kWh at the wheels. Solar PV electricity costs about 25¢/kWh or about half that. Wind, 4.5¢ to 6.5¢. Cogeneration, dirt cheap.
Let’s quit the dilly-dallying with subsidies and mandates and just charge $3.90/gallon at the pump for gasoline. Same thing for off-road fuel used to grow corn; it wouldn’t do to leave a back-door for hidden subsidies or outright tax evasion. Maybe people will still find it worthwhile to make ethanol from corn when the full costs are charged on everything, or maybe they’ll find it more productive to do something else. As long as energy waste is mandated by subsidies and blending requirements, we’ll never get there.
And as long as I’m here… you know why I’m spending so much effort talking ethanol down? It’s because there have been two decades of PR coming from the farm lobby and the likes of Archer Daniels Midland talking it up, writing laws and regulations… and it’s all been half-truths and outright falsehoods to help put MY money in THEIR pockets and leave me NO options.
I figure that anyone representing “iE85.com” should know that, no matter how little they want to admit it.
September 23rd, 2005 at 2:14 am
Message for the Donklephant website author:
1. Allow lists in your HTML.
2. Close your bold tag at the end of a blockquote whether or not there’s a break there.
3. Give us a freaking preview already; it’s not rocket science.
September 23rd, 2005 at 2:48 am
I fixed the comment. This formatting is standard across the Weblog Empire, so I won’t change it.
if you want to blockquote, please leave a full space after the
Like this.
I don’t know why sometimes the blockquotes go bold, but that’s just how it is.
Much appreciated.
February 26th, 2006 at 10:01 am
All of you folks need to take a serious look at coal.To not do so would be a mistake.It is cheap,abundant,efficient and soon to be used in zero emission power generation in our country (FutureGen). As you probably know,a large variety of fuels can be derived from coal. Coal could well become the leading fuel source to get us off the “petro tit”and enable both economic and physical security. Give it a serious study. Thanks.
May 11th, 2006 at 12:50 am
Biodiesel is not the same thing as vegi oil. Vegi oil requires engine (more specifically, fuel delivery) modifications to run in a diesel.
Biodiesel is refined vegi oil and 99% of diesels can run biodiesel with zero modifications.
I have a 02 VW Golf TDI that I’ve been running on 100% biodiesel for over a year with zero mods and an 86 Golf diesel that I’m running on 100% biodiesel as well (zero mods).
People need to stop talking about how cool it sounds and start buying diesels and supporting alternative fuels.
May 11th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
[...] Alternative Fuel Watch: Bio-Diesel Donklephant - 11 hours ago A bushel of corn can be burned to yield about 380,000 BTU of heat; converted to getting 6.8 miles (34%) from the sun, at today’s $2.59/gallon pump price plus [...]
May 11th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I’m in the renewable timber business, and biofuel has been interesting me for a while as well… Sounded great until I realized that at this point, now that early adopters (mostly, at this point, people who think they’re really contributing to our economy and environment) have pushed up the prices of biofuels sufficiently that some countries, such as Malaysia (home of some of Asia’s largest remaining tropical forests) are cutting down natural forests to feed (it’s a global economy!) America and Europe’s hunger for biofuels. Palm oil trees gives about 10 times the oil/acre as corn, obviously making them a lucrative crop in modern times. Natural tropical forests in those regions sit on top of many feed of loam/peat. When turning these forests into plantations, the palm trees like the wet loam a lot less than the original forests. Being smart farmers these guys drain the land of moisture by cutting large trenches in the land. When this happens the loam oxidizes (taking oxygen from the air and releasing CO2). It would take 1000s of year of growing oil palms on that land to displace the CO2 that the planting of those crops caused. Bad news: the way they grow these corps they usually exhaust the land in 35 years. AND THAT while using petro-chemical based soil nutrients. (these are used in US corn production as well).
Biofuel seems like the plan, but it’s not. Just not enough land in the world to grow enough food and fuel for all of us (approaching 7 bln people). Nothing, not even nuclear energy will save us (think of the proliferation if the 3rd world wants to have it, and they have all the right we have! Sucks, but true.). Remember, biofuels are just a biological version of solar cells, and it would take the whole of Texas (not Rhode island) to give us the kind of energy to power up the US. The only way save nuclear FISION, which has been held back by international rivalry for over a decade now is a culling of 90+% of the world population. That could do the trick. Given time it will happen as it is the only solution we will (through lack of planning) be left with. Nature will of course take care of this for us…
Rutger
May 12th, 2006 at 10:49 am
I’m not going to tell you that alternative energy sources are “bad”….BUT…bicycles are the most efficant form of transportation. I know it is not a solution for everybody…BUT…I know that there are many, many people who do not have to drive everywhere they go. A reduction is people’s dependance on privet automobiles is usually excluded from all discussion on the topic of energy.
May 12th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Rememeber: Bicycles!
May 14th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Let’s not confuse biodiesel with ethanol as a fuel alternative.Ethanol does less work per gallon than Gasoline. Biodiesel does more, a lot more,like 40% or more. Thats 40 miles plus more per 100 miles of gas. That fact alone reduces our volume of fuel just by using biodiesel.We are currently wasting millions upon millions of gallons of biodiesel already made but needs some small processing to use right now!! (used cooking oils) There are already known sources of plant matter that yield high percentages of oil for fuel.Did you ever wonder why all heavy equipment uses diesel? MORE WORK PER GALLON. A LOT more.We have had the solutions to this problem for over 100 years, so what’s the stop??? Figured it out yet? Follow the money. Oh ,how much was gas today!?!
May 15th, 2006 at 9:48 am
[...] Alternative Fuel Watch: Bio-DieselDonklephant - May 10, 2006… One of the biggest challenges here in the states is that there are very few diesel passanger vehicles on the market, and it seems that there is a stigma … [...]
May 16th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
I think this point was made earlier, but I feel it is worth making again…while it sounds very interesting to make biodiesel out of waste vegetable oil as well as oil from soybeans etc., biodiesel made from traditional oilseeds can solve only a tiny fraction of our diesel needs…newer explorations have provided us sources such as algae ( see Biodiesel from Algae) which have much higher yields and hence are at least theoretically capable of completely replacing petro diesel
Ec, Plant Oils A-Z
May 22nd, 2006 at 7:49 am
[...] Alternative Fuel Watch: Bio-DieselDonklephant - May 10, 2006… I foresee the day when someone in the US has fast food joints paying that someone to take away their used cooking oil to some bulk filtering operation attached … [...]
September 30th, 2006 at 11:35 am
The entire issue discussed here is just more positive proof of the amazing stupidity of the abject (asshat) politicians in this country. The intelligent opportunists (corporations, et. al.) with their astute chicanery use these sycophants to their best advantage four boundless exploitation of almost everyone with avarice and greed! They (corporate megalomaniacs AND rapacious politicians) quite obviously have little regard for the overall good of this country or they would not be contributing to this incipient energy “Charlie Foxtrot”.
November 14th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
In to days world we need moer al. fuel ideas. one day we are going to run out. An that day will be comeing soon.
October 30th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Amazing Cooking Guide…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
June 13th, 2008 at 5:44 am
The steadily greater industry of growing crops to make fuel, can signify a hunger cathastrophy to the poor masses of the world. This business takes up cropland and is making food shortage and higher food prizes.