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75 Comments
- rolandog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The current catalyst used is either sodium hidroxide or potasium hidroxide, and they ARE expensive.
- Tufriast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2First off, biodiesel is nice, but uh, it still emits emissions. Having 0 emissions should be the goal. It's a baby step that won't catch on b/c of the diesel stigma that's out there.
Hemp is a good "solid goods" replacement for plastic. It's strong as steel, bendy if you want it to be, and 100% growable. I saw a car made from Hemp once and a whole house made of it too. Of course, political nazis will say "It's made of pot!" , and not know their asses from a hole in the ground. B/c it's not made of pot, it's made of the stems of the plant that grows the pot. You can make "budless" cannibus plants. - ejde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Eh, Deuterium, National Geographic is pretty reputable...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1114_051114_biodiesel.html?source=rss - Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Funny how that guy has such a problem with the name "Treehugger". Have you no sense of humor and irony? That name was used, obviously, because it was once used as an insult. That's the whole point.
If a Newspaper was called that, I'd say to be careful. But since when do blogs have to have serious names? - MattH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1>this isn't a breakthrough. I saw some guy from California that >converted his datsun(nissan) to use used cooking oil. He was on >the discovery channel. he basically went to any ole kitchen in >downtown and gathered up old used cooking oil and then he >converted it into bio-diesel. old news. japanesse just simply >watched discovery channel.
You can run engines on straight veggie oil(SVO) but you still need diesel to start the engine so it can warm the SVO up to make it inject-able .
The Japs have come up with a new catalyst that's the important news here at the moment you have to use a Mixture of Lye and Methanol both dangerous chemicals in their own right and Methanol is still a fossil fuel . - nkthen, on 02/26/2008, -0/+1Great. What a breakthrough.
http://www.biodieselathome.net - globalbrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Many parts inside of vehicles will be more expensive due to the engineering requirements."
Which is no problem at all because sooner or later you won't be able to pay the prices of fossil fuels anyway. - yaroze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1reduce our reliance on oil, I am typing on a product made from oil, plastic.
even if we can get all of our vehicles to run on something other than petroleum products, you still will need to lube the thing.
Let's face it, even if we get our vehicles to not need oil, we still need it. - linker3000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Interesting site with lots of good items.
- linker3000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is a good example of where it would be really handy if digg had proper comment threading
/just sayin' - tcp1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Reading through the comments, there is a lot of misinformation here. Someone above stated that biodiesel production won't scale up to be a replacement for diesel and gas, but it actually can. There are many different ways to make biodiesel and one is from algae that can be grown in waste water and can scale to the levels needed to be a fossil fuel replacement. Also, biofuels have less emissions then fossil fuels and are carbon neutral, meaning they don't contribute to global warming because they only emit co2 that was used by the plant they were made from. Brazil is getting 1/3 or their energy from biofuels today and paying half the price of gas for it, and their economy is booming.
- Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The point about algae production above is quite good. That's probably the way they will be made in the future. I've read about bioreactors that are actually "plugge" into power plants and make the algae grow using the CO2 emissions from these plants..
- rfoos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Emperor: That was probably NOx emissions. Solved problem in gasoline engines. Apart from that, biodiesel is cleaner. The biggest advantage is that it's mostly carbon neutral (depends on energy inputs). Your exhaust test won't show you that.
- tarun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Tokyo Institute of Technology" aka TIT. Heheheheh :)
- Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oh, another advantage of biodiesel over straight vegetable oil (SVO) is that it can be blended with regular diesel with no problem, and thus can be sold through the regular channels pretty transparently.
- markthegoth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this is HUGE...(i think) though i admit my ignorance on the subject.
Apart from the obvious avaliability benifits is this bennificial to the environment? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0> Of course my best hope is that we'll soon have methods that will
> allow us to drive our huge cars using renewable sources of energy
> that don't cause pollution.
I think you're being overly optimistic. Maybe just shy of hopelessly optimistic.
> nor am I a "screw the environment" extreme right-wing 'nutcase.'
That's a mistake, because, empirically, everyone else is. All you have to do is look around to understand this.
> I'm in the middle. I want to keep driving my Lincoln Towncar but
> I don't want to wreck the environment doing it.
Cake and eat it too, eh?
Here's what I want: I want every kid in America to aspire to one day own a Honda NSX EV... you know the car that you put gasoline into the tank and out of four electric motors, one for each wheel, comes +120hp (500hp total) and you can still manage to get +50mpg while driving like a crazed American stunt driving maniac. The only way through this is to encourage change through consumerism; you're sure as hell not going to guilt people into change. The economics required to force change will be too painful to contemplate. - Osiriscky3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i drink bio diesel for breakfast
- JKimball, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Finally people are starting to relize Diesel it might be slower then gas, but its more efficient and are things like this
- qqqqmmmmttyy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0 it might be on htttp://www.Sharewareisland.com
- MattH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The original Diesel Engine ran on Peanut Oil .
- shiftless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yes, more altrnative fuels please. I don't like giving money to people in the Middle East that talk to an imaginairy friend five times a day. I'd blow myself up too.
- xnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i bet the company gets bought out by BIG OIL and we never hear anything more about this?
- Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0rolandog: I've heard that the best part about this discovery is that it's fairly easy to retrofit old biodiesel plants to use it. You seem to know what you are talking about. Any idea about that?
- Lowtech, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0now i can fill my diesel guzzling F250 with flower power to pull tree's out of the ground..yee haa
seriously, that would be a cool deal if they could do this on a larger scale. But, I am thinking big oil will slap this down. - speel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You know even if you invent a car that simply runs on air do you really think the goverment is going to let it happen on a mass scale? or even let the car companys produce air cars.. i personally don't think so but hey i could be wrong.
- globalbrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This is old news technically. The German Company CHOREN developed and already field testet Biomass-to-liquid fuel under the product name »Sundiesel«:
http://www.choren.com/en/energy_for_all/sundiesel/ - Apricot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow, this /could/ be big. One argument biodiesel folks make is that it doesn't contribute to a net increase in carbon dioxide in the environment (because the carbon comes from plants which got it by fixing the carbon out of the air originally). This is in contrast to burning fossil fuels which takes carbon trapped in the ground and puts it back in the atmosphere. Also biodiesel tends to smell like french fries if you got it from a restaurant. :)
- Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"Check this out, on digg there is 17 comment's and on the post site there is only 2..."
Well, according to Alexa, Digg.com is number 2,141 and Treehugger.com is 14,286, so there's a pretty big difference in traffic... - t35t0r, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1No, no one is going to be bought out by big oil you conspiracy freaks. One of the main hurdles with biodiesel (e.g. corn based in the US) is that it burns at a much higher temperature than regular diesel. Many parts inside of vehicles will be more expensive due to the engineering requirements.
- Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Deuterium, Treehugger is a blog, but they report on the sources: Nature Magazine and National Geographic. Maybe you should've read.
- renohardcore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0a speaker came into my Environmental Studies class last year and gave a talk about this stuff, its quite interesting.
- Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"But you can run straight vegetable oil from a grease trap into you're engine. My roommate has a bus that runs on this method."
SVO is not the same as biodiesel, though. In many places you need a heated tank to even think about SVO, and often other modifications, while biodiesel is basically almost a straight replacement for diesel. - Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"You know even if you invent a car that simply runs on air do you really think the goverment is going to let it happen on a mass scale? or even let the car companys produce air cars.. i personally don't think so but hey i could be wrong."
You should check this out:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/10/what_about_comp.php - Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0One of the problem is that diesel engines last a long time.
Modern diesel engines can be made to be quite clean and pass all emission tests. It's all the old diesel engines on the roads that are the worse offenders. - Bytor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Diesel still is a much worse polluter than gas. I walk to work and do a fair bit of cycling on roadways. Diesel sucks. Both particulate matter and NOx are problematic.
Biodiesel alone does not solve this. BioD is essentially just low sulfur Diesel. Once you have LSD then you can build engince with better particulate traps. Then you still have NOx to deal with. Only solution I have seen is MBs Urea injection.
So when we have LSD, BioD and better particualte traps, and Urea injection. Then diesel (and bioD) will be a viable alternative.
Until then it is just a smog machine. - 16x9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0> yaroze wrote: "reduce our reliance on oil, I am typing on a product made from oil, plastic."
I think you might be ignoring the key word in the above sentence which is "reduce."
I hope you'll concede the point that if we are going to use a non-renewable naturally occurring substance such as oil, we should try to use it to manufacture materials like plastics where there are long term benefits. And with continued effort we can then use renewable bio-fuels as a machine (car, truck, etc) power source.
Of course my best hope is that we'll soon have methods that will allow us to drive our huge cars using renewable sources of energy that don't cause pollution.
I guess I'm not much of a "we should all ride bikes" extremist 'tree-hugger' nor am I a "screw the environment" extreme right-wing 'nutcase.' I'm in the middle. I want to keep driving my Lincoln Towncar but I don't want to wreck the environment doing it. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0> Forbes: it costs $6,000 to put a Turbodiesel in a RAM 2500
Yeah, but that's a volume issue. There's nothing inherently more expensive about a diesel engine (they may use a bit more steel... higher compression ratio and all); it's just that retired cowboy truck drives (a definite market minority) are willing to pay more for one.
> Only solution I have seen is MBs Urea injection.
Holy fsck! I'm going to have to take a piss in the "Urea" tank after I get finished topping up the grease tank at McDs?
> my local greasy spoon is quite happy to give me his used deep fry oil
...and that's the barometer. As long as you're getting your fuel for free, you can be assured that you aren't going to be saving anything other than your own money with it. - dlaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0But you can run straight vegetable oil from a grease trap into you're engine. My roommate has a bus that runs on this method.
- Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Plastics can be made from non-petroleum sources anyway.. Some big companies are starting to make cellphones out of corn-based plastics, and I've seen some science orange peel plastics..
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Go Japan !!!
- MattH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0To the poster above my local greasy spoon is quite happy to give me his used deep fry oil so I can use it in my furnace .I still get a delivery of kerosene in Winter but I mix it with my biodiesel .I live in the Northeast and my Biodiesel costs me about 80c a gallon for the Lye and Methanol and my time ,I treat it like a hobby and gets me out of the house for about few hours so the kids and mrs cant annoy me but my 8 year old has taken an interest so she gets to do the suff that is'nt dangerous .
Heating oil is about $2.80 per gallon
- amitrix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Yes, more altrnative fuels please. I don't like giving money to people in the Middle East that talk to an imaginairy friend five times a day. I'd blow myself up too."
WTF dude!! thats just wrong!! just bcoz u r an aethist doesnt make the whole world not believe in the power of god!! - carpetguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Biodiesel can't happen soon enough
- carpetguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.biodieselamerica.org
- bloodguard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Neat. I get about 55 MPG on BioDiesel in my Jetta TDI but there are only a few places in the bay area to buy it. Better availability would make life easier.
- CarbonBridge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Following this long thread three evenings later - I wanted to add a couple of comments about bio-diesel. First - it can't begin to make a dent in the real-world fuel volumes out there. Second - bio diesel production is energy intensive beginning with the origins of the renewable oilseed crops being planted, fertilized, grown & harvested.
How much petroleum oil was burned to get these crops converted into oils before a few hardy individuals load up on waste french fry grease? How much petroleum or natural gas was consumed to make the fertilizers used to produce these oily seed crops? Grow Hemp for cordage and fiber. Don't consider growing and harvesting it for it's float on water oils...
OR think about growing more soy or canola with diesel tractors / simply making a market for farmers now in overproduction of traditional cereal grains. The net energy from these oils after being grown as a fuel crop vs: a food crop isn't all that high. Only the carbon in the oils becomes combustible diesel substitute which primary benefit is being sulfur free.
Or last: Nobody ever seems to think about this. Bio diesel still floats on water like oil spills do. It is at best a renewable Hydrocarbon. For reference, brown smog in layman's terms is nothing more than unburned, expensive gasoline, diesel & kerosene jet fuels. These unburned oils are what pollutes municipal air far and wide bring with it acute respiratory distress to more and more people.
What we want to accomplish in a global scenario is to reduce the amount of combusted emissions stream by fully combusting the petrochemical OIL products to which the earth's population is currently dependent upon for transportation AND electrical energy production.
And the easiest way to accomplish this task is to infuse Oxygen derived from boiling H2O water into steam and thus creating renewable and biodegradable Oxycarbon fuel instead of renewable, yet oily (float-on-water) bio diesel.
Oxycarbon? That's the chemist's definition for fuel grade alcohols. And I'm referring to a stronger blend of simple, bio-alcohols than anything connected whatsoever with ethanol fermentation and distillation. Something that can be produced using global warming CO2 greenhouse gas as about one-half of it's process carbon feedstocks. How about monetizing CO2 and creating a new market for it for those that emit it in tonnages as emissions from their refining, power plant or cement manufacturing industries.
But that's another topic all together.
I close asking readers of this long and interesting blog carried forward by many educated participants to JUST THINK ABOUT WATER SOLUBILITY, thus BIODEGRADABILITY of liquid, ambient temperature and pressure fuels for a moment. And this is caused by the addition of Oxygen to hydrocarbons, converting them into Oxycarbons. Nothing to do with Hydrogen Hallucinations. OK? - Gargot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0anonymoustroll, I think we're on the same side, actually. (and btw, ICE engines are more around 20% efficiency, which still sucks; fuel cells reach close to 90%)
I just see this pragmatically: Anything that makes things better than now should be encouraged. It'll buy some time so we can develop and implement the next step. There's very little chance that we'll just make a complete break and leapfrog over all our current problems, so if at least we can make the technology we have now a bit cleaner, that's positive. - ecacofonix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I read the full article at NG...it really looks possible, especially since they are talking about a cheaper acid that does the job, great news!
A site that could be of interest to some of you is the Biodiesel Encyclopedia, lots of links - http://www.castoroil.in/reference/plant_oils/uses/fuel/bio_fuels.html
Ecacofonix - floorman56, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Maybe not BIG OIL but BIG AUTO will push this down. I had someone in my shop buy a new diesel truck and just as he got ready to drive away the dealer told him "If you use biodiesel you will void your warranty"
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