Fill your tank with vegetable oil

[PingSpike]

Pretty long article on MSN
Text

"Biodiesel struck me as a great and right thing to do," she said. "It's renewable. It's clean. It's grown by our farmers. It fits all the models of a culture that's taking care of itself in the long term."

I gotta say, the more I read about biodiesel the more it stricks me as the direction we should be moving. Like all other alternate fuels its main problem is it lacks a distribution network that can rival gas/regular diesel...but the fact that we could easily produce it from crops grown within the country, giving it a virtually endless supply...and that its very friendly from an envirnomental standpoint, puts it above other suggested ideas like hydrogen to me.

Gas/Electric hybrids are just a bandaid, and the vehicles are way to costly. Hydrogen lacks a distribution network and would really just be displacing the pollution problem from the car itself to the fuel 'factory'.

Seems like it would make a lot more sense to dump all the revenue from fuel costs into the midwest than into the middle east.

 

[Eli]

The main problem with using agriculture as a fuel source is that we don't have enough land.

Granted, the numbers comming to mind are for alcohol.. I wonder how much better vegetable oils are on a gallons per acre basis, if they even are...

 

[JoeKing]

the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Hmm, that too....

It must take quite a bit of energy to press the oils out of things, although I'd be willing to bet that the entire process nets more energy than producing alcohol.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Have any links? (Not calling you a liar or anything, I just want to know more about this)

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

yea its a feel good idea..but impractical and does not scale. you could replace all our food crops and still not make a dent.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Have any links? (Not calling you a liar or anything, I just want to know more about this)

I wonder if it's even been studied very much.. let's see if I can dig up anything.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Eli
The main problem with using agriculture as a fuel source is that we don't have enough land.

Granted, the numbers comming to mind are for alcohol.. I wonder how much better vegetable oils are on a gallons per acre basis, if they even are...

I wasn't expecting the whole network to be replaced overnight.

I would think that some genetically engineered crops coupled with farming with a different focus (its probably easier to grow suitable crops that are for fuel than food I would think) could probably increase the useable yield some. The thing about agriculture is we've steadily been moving forward with it for a very long time, always finding ways to squeeze more crop out of less land. Not saying that would be enough though.

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: Eli
The main problem with using agriculture as a fuel source is that we don't have enough land.

Granted, the numbers comming to mind are for alcohol.. I wonder how much better vegetable oils are on a gallons per acre basis, if they even are...

Fuel consumption (mass or volume) is bigger for bio-gasoline (ethanol) than for biodiesel

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Have any links? (Not calling you a liar or anything, I just want to know more about this)

Compare the price of oil in stores with the price of diesel. Yes, it's true more energy is needed to grow the plants, but most of it is solar energy
Here, a liter of diesel (at pump) is cheaper by 15-25% than a liter of edible oil (sunflower oil) packed in a liter plastic bottle. I think agriculture could fight. The problem is that I use more fuel than oil, so production facilities might not be enough

 

[StrangeRanger]

Ya'll may wanna check out: http://www.greasecar.com/

j

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Hmm, that too....

It must take quite a bit of energy to press the oils out of things, although I'd be willing to bet that the entire process nets more energy than producing alcohol.

What if you did both? Press the oil, then use enzymes to turn the cellulose/sugars into ethanol.

 

[dxkj]

Originally posted by: Calin

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Have any links? (Not calling you a liar or anything, I just want to know more about this)

Compare the price of oil in stores with the price of diesel. Yes, it's true more energy is needed to grow the plants, but most of it is solar energy
Here, a liter of diesel (at pump) is cheaper by 15-25% than a liter of edible oil (sunflower oil) packed in a liter plastic bottle. I think agriculture could fight. The problem is that I use more fuel than oil, so production facilities might not be enough

QFT, you beat me to it.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Hmm, that too....

It must take quite a bit of energy to press the oils out of things, although I'd be willing to bet that the entire process nets more energy than producing alcohol.

What if you did both? Press the oil, then use enzymes to turn the cellulose/sugars into ethanol.

Now there's an idea. The waste from pressing the oils would be perfect for this, too.

 

[JoeKing]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Have any links? (Not calling you a liar or anything, I just want to know more about this)

Woops I read your post thinking biodiesel is the same as ethanol.

here's what I found

Commercial biodiesel made from fresh soybeans has a net-energy ratio of 3.2. In other words, to produce 3.2 gallons of biodiesel takes one gallon of petroleum when all energy inputs are accounted for ? from farm fertilizers to shipping the product.

though I'm a little leary of the source., the article does point out some cons such as a clouding rate, where biodiesel has a tendency to solidify, and as already mentioned the use of land. But other than that I don't see why it shouldn't and will be used once the oil starts to run out.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Calin

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Have any links? (Not calling you a liar or anything, I just want to know more about this)

Compare the price of oil in stores with the price of diesel. Yes, it's true more energy is needed to grow the plants, but most of it is solar energy
Here, a liter of diesel (at pump) is cheaper by 15-25% than a liter of edible oil (sunflower oil) packed in a liter plastic bottle. I think agriculture could fight. The problem is that I use more fuel than oil, so production facilities might not be enough

Well, I'm not going to pretend I know all the economics between edible oil and diesel. But it seems like if you subtracted the cost of the plastic bottle with label and related packaging systems for it and perhaps some other costs incured from making edible oil versus burnable oil you'd be looking at the same price at the least, maybe less for edible oil.

Of course, you are correct that it would place a signifigantly larger demand for the edible oil, changing its price. But are we fully utilizing all our land now? And wouldn't we be ramping the demand up slowly, allowing us to answer for its increase in a reasonable manner?

 

[Kelemvor]

All I care about is gas mileage. Find me something that gets 100 MPG and I'll be all over it... Assuming it doesn't cost $20/gallon

 

[franksta]

The waste vegetable oil (WVO) can usually be obtained free from restaurants. Methanol can cost up to $2 per gallon if bought in bulk (55 gallon drum) and sodium hydroxide is readily available at most hardware stores for relatively cheap. The expensive part is your time to brew the biodiesel. Relatively good site with lots of information on biodiesel.

 

[Calin]

I am thinking at the fuel tax. I don't know how much the fuel is taxed here, but it might be in the order of 50% (half the price of fuel represents all kinds of taxes). Compare this to food things, produced internally, that might be not taxed.
The fuel price must increase in order for the biodiesel to be competitive.

 

[Eli]

Well..

We consume 135+ billion gallons of gasoline a year as of 2004.

hmm... So far I've only been able to find that we produce 20 billion pounds of vegetable oils a year(Soybean, peanut, sunflower, cottonseed, corn).

The average for those oils in pounds per gallon is about 7.5lbs/gallon.

So that means we produce about 267 million gallons of oils a year?

Or about 0.2 percent of our need. And most of that goes to food consumption....

We better get growin'.

 

[jalaram]

From what little I've read on the subject, the cost of biodiesel is quite a bit more than either gasoline or diesel.

IIRC, there are a few forums that are dedicated to the use of biodiesel.

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: JoeKing

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Have any links? (Not calling you a liar or anything, I just want to know more about this)

Woops I read your post thinking biodiesel is the same as ethanol.

here's what I found

Commercial biodiesel made from fresh soybeans has a net-energy ratio of 3.2. In other words, to produce 3.2 gallons of biodiesel takes one gallon of petroleum when all energy inputs are accounted for ? from farm fertilizers to shipping the product.

though I'm a little leary of the source., the article does point out some cons such as a clouding rate, where biodiesel has a tendency to solidify, and as already mentioned the use of land. But other than that I don't see why it shouldn't and will be used once the oil starts to run out.

For the current edible oil to work in diesel engines (this is now known as biodiesel), the fuel must be heated to 80+ Celsius so it will flow as easy as diesel fuel. Also, engines need changes to work with biodiesel (heated lines for fuel, mainly)

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Eli
Well..

We consume 135+ billion gallons of gasoline a year as of 2004.

hmm... So far I've only been able to find that we produce 20 billion pounds of vegetable oils a year(Soybean, peanut, sunflower, cottonseed, corn).

The average for those oils in pounds per gallon is about 7.5lbs/gallon.

So that means we produce about 267 million gallons of oils a year?

Or about 0.2 percent of our need. And most of that goes to food consumption....

We better get growin'.

Heh. Well I think it may still be feasible. Of course we don't have the supply right now, there's no demand!

 

[franksta]

Originally posted by: Calin
For the current edible oil to work in diesel engines (this is now known as biodiesel), the fuel must be heated to 80+ Celsius so it will flow as easy as diesel fuel. Also, engines need changes to work with biodiesel (heated lines for fuel, mainly)

Nope. To run straight vegetable oil (SVO) you do need the heaters and whatnot to keep the oil from congealing in the tank/lines. Biodiesel is more like regular petroleum based diesel in that it doesn't require any modifications to the motor ABSOLUTELY ZERO.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: JoeKing
the energy required to grow and process the crops is still greater than the energy produced

Have any links? (Not calling you a liar or anything, I just want to know more about this)

I wonder if it's even been studied very much.. let's see if I can dig up anything.

Whenever we've discussed this, it's been focused on ethanol, but I think this is the first discussion where we looked at a direct crop-to-biodiesel process.