Re: More Infor on BioDiesel

|> |>If it does come to that sort of situation , you may do well to look at |> |>powering a perol power genset from woodgas . |> |>Not a whole comunity as alan carries on about , but a small producer unit |> |>big enought to run a small engine. |> |>They burn anything that will burn , literaly , coal ,wood ,old tyres ... |> |>if things get realy desperate , it may not always be real easy to locate |> |>vege oil or fat to turn into bio- diesel , but we always got crap laying |> |>around what will burn... |> | |> |Some things running on anything that will burn... |> | |> |

|> ||> ||> |> Would point out that ethanol is not an efficient fuel. It takes |> as much energy to produce it as it gives back. Bio diesel is |> more energy effective. Steam even more so. Water power is the |> best, if you have a source. | |You are probably right about the energy to produce ethanol but if you |use the sludge from the fermenting process, (put it through a oil press, |(They work pretty neat for this application too)), the sludge will come |out as a solid round cake like rod that can be broken up in to pellets, |then dryad and then fed into the still as fuel. |I have a pelletizer for converting alfalfa into feed pellets and it |looks like it works on the same principal as a oil press, except their |is no strainer and the water/oil removing chamber has much larger holes. | |Remember the conversion factor for potatoes to alcohol is only 20% so |you 80% of the original spud left. This can be used as fuel or for |cattle feed. | |I suspect that the commercial ethanol manufactures that use corn (big |thing in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) first press the corn to remove |the oil and syrups. Remove the corn oil from the liquid, wash out the |sweeteners, and then ferment the starch into ethanol which is distilled |out. Then what remains is used as cattle feed. So the economics are |not just from ethanol but from corn syrup, Corn Oil, ethanol, and cattle |feed. | |Back on the farm we used to go to the Sugar beet processing plant and by |sugar beet pulp, (stuff left over after the sugar has been processed |out) for cattle feed. The stuff stank like high heaven but the dammed |cows had an orgasm over it. | |The Independent

By steam, I mean a small boiler on your property that runs a piston or two thus powering a generator of about 20 KW. Enough to power a typical house. Could be wood fired or fueled by whatever.

As for hydro, I am thinking of a small stream, much like we used to see for powering grist mills. There are catalogs out for people who want to run their own generators off of a local stream. You just divert a little off (if you have a steep enough drop) so that you can power your generator.

Again this was not for large scale but for local usage.

|> |I'm have not and have never said bio-diesel would replace petroleum oil |> |derived diesel fuel. We use 178 trillion gallons of petroleum products |> |per year in the United States today. The most we can hope to replace |> |with Bio-diesel under the most favorable conditions is about 2 to 5%. |> | |> |May be with a crash program that would convert a large part of our |> |agricultural lands to the output ot bio diesel and ethanol we might make |> |it up to 10%. However that 10% would go a long way to wipe out our |> |balance of payments debt. | |First off, the "balance of payments debt" is one of those silly |fictions. _Specific_ companies buy _specific_ shipments of crude or |refined oil: they don't incur any long-term debt. | |Second, it's a fiction anyway. | | |> |> By law (2003 Ag bill) we are now required to have 20% of our |> diesel supply in the US be soy diesel. | |Another one of those silly, uneforceable (watch) laws. Unless the U.S. |government sets up its own soy diesel company and undercuts the normal |diesel market, people will buy what is available and cheapest. | |Governments can't issue edicts to markets and actually enforce such |edicts. | |But Bush probably thinks he can. This is what comes of getting a |"gentleman's C" at Yale in his economics class.

Soy producers want it. I have family members on the soy board. They were the ones who turned me on to diesel cars! The soy producers want the protection of the government so that they can create new markets. The law is doing that.

How do you get the power to the user?

Run the numbers. It won't work.

Plus unless you use the hydrogen in a fuel cell, you still get nitrogen-oxygen compounds... e.g. from burning hydrogen in ordinary air.

I don't really see how that is possible because according to the tables at journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html the yield of oil from soy beans is 48 gallons an acre.

According to the US Department of Energy the United States

consumed 4.430 million barrels a day of Diesel fuel in 2002. Lets assume that half of the 4.420 million barrels were for heating fuel that leaves

2.21 million barrels a day for transport diesel fuel.

So a barrel of oil is 42 gallons so now we have 9.28 million gallons a day of Diesel fuel used in 2002

So 9.28 million * 365 is 33.879 billion gallons of diesel fuel at 20% we would have to produce 6.7775 billion gallons of biodiesel

(Still working with 2002 stats) At 48 gallons an acre of soy oil we would have to allocate 141.163 million acres to the cultivation of Soy Beans That would be 220,568 sq miles to soy beans. That is a plot of land 469.6 miles by 469.6 miles which ain't going to happen.

Now if we included bio diesel from other sources like rape seed which has much higher oil output per acre we could just possible do it.

BTW the web site

all kinds of information about energy issues The Independent

Which renewable resources? Biodiesel?

Or do you mean your clever plan to have 6 billion people move to Iceland?

So you reckon that either (a) Iceland has enough geothermal to supply six billion peoipel with hydrogen (unlikely) or (b) we have enough geothermal to generate that hydrogen locally.

Guess what dullard, wrong on both counts.

Six billion of us moving to Iceland is probably more feasible.

There are (sic) no (significant) geothermal energy available in most coutnries in the world.

My cites generally tend to be long and detailed.

Uh huh, how much hydrogen? Answer a gnat's fart. Hydrogen is produced on a commercial scale by reducing methane.

Err no, you have to salinate water in order to be able to electrolyse it.

Your ignorance of basic chemistry is noted.

snipped-for-privacy@malloc.co.uk (Steve Firth) wrote in news:1gdwles.fe4ixjzxu0ihN%%steve%@malloc.co.uk:

I would have thought the bodyheat generated by 6 billion people crammed so close together would melt the place .

Then there is a sanitation problem , where are six billion people going to poop ?

A small amount of mineral salts are necessary, but if you electrolyse sea water you get caustic soda (lye;sodium hydroxide) and chlorine gas, mostly.

Which makes hydrogen from water even a worse idea than it seemed at first glance. Making fresh water from sea water is very costly and fresh water is becoming scarce almost everywhere.

In fact, fresh water shortages are probably a more serious issue than petroleum shortages. Only 1% of the water on the planet was fresh to begin with, and much of that is in a handful of large lakes, like Lake Baykal in Siberia, Just north of the Mongolian border. It is incredibly deep.

AC

Now I am going back to my Engineering school chemistry here so:

It depends on the voltage and current used

In Salt (NaCl) the Chlorine atom is more electronegative than the Oxygen atom in the water in that the Chlorine atom holds on to its electron tighter than water.

It the electrolysis process.

Oxygen is stripped away from the Hydrogen forming Hydrogen gas and Oxygen gas.

If the voltage and current are high enough the Chlorine is stripped away form the sodium or the potassium (both are in salt water) and collecting as a a gas on the negative electrode with the Oxygen. The Sodium on the other hand now reacts with the water stripping the H2O molecule of a Hydrogen atom to make Na(OH) plus a single Hydrogen atom. This atom will migrate to the positive electrode to produce even more hydrogen than the electrolysis of water. So the whole process becomes even more efficient.

Not if you count the ice at the north and south poles as fresh water which it is....

Like every thing else you post it is flat assed wrong.... But then " He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool"

The Independent

"When you play with the big dogs your going to get bit."

Post their names and addresses. They need killing for trying to get Big Brother to support their interests.

--Tim May

>

You think your small-scale generator is somehow more efficient than the big generating plant nearby?

Have you calculated the Carnot efficiency of a small steam boiler?

Have you calculated how many cords of wood per month it will take to generate your 20 KW? Or even 10 KW?

Have you calculated the costs to deliver these cords of wood, for you to then feed your firebox, and maintenance on a sooty system?

I didn't think so, for any of these points.

Why do you think it is that utilities are not burning wood, if you think this is a cost-saving measure for home users?

Duh. If you were in fact a senior military officer, as you seem to imply at times, this explains a _lot_ about where we are today.

--Tim May

>

Greg, cows have nothing on you.

|> |> |>If it does come to that sort of situation , you may do well to look at |> |> |>powering a perol power genset from woodgas . |> |> |>Not a whole comunity as alan carries on about , but a small producer unit |> |> |>big enought to run a small engine. |> |> |>They burn anything that will burn , literaly , coal ,wood ,old tyres ... |> |> |>if things get realy desperate , it may not always be real easy to locate |> |> |>vege oil or fat to turn into bio- diesel , but we always got crap laying |> |> |>around what will burn... |> |> | |> |> |Some things running on anything that will burn... |> |> | |> |> |

|> |> ||> |> ||> |> |> |> Would point out that ethanol is not an efficient fuel. It takes |> |> as much energy to produce it as it gives back. Bio diesel is |> |> more energy effective. Steam even more so. Water power is the |> |> best, if you have a source. |> | |> |You are probably right about the energy to produce ethanol but if you |> |use the sludge from the fermenting process, (put it through a oil press, |> |(They work pretty neat for this application too)), the sludge will come |> |out as a solid round cake like rod that can be broken up in to pellets, |> |then dryad and then fed into the still as fuel. |> |I have a pelletizer for converting alfalfa into feed pellets and it |> |looks like it works on the same principal as a oil press, except their |> |is no strainer and the water/oil removing chamber has much larger holes. |> | |> |Remember the conversion factor for potatoes to alcohol is only 20% so |> |you 80% of the original spud left. This can be used as fuel or for |> |cattle feed. |> | |> |I suspect that the commercial ethanol manufactures that use corn (big |> |thing in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) first press the corn to remove |> |the oil and syrups. Remove the corn oil from the liquid, wash out the |> |sweeteners, and then ferment the starch into ethanol which is distilled |> |out. Then what remains is used as cattle feed. So the economics are |> |not just from ethanol but from corn syrup, Corn Oil, ethanol, and cattle |> |feed. |> | |> |Back on the farm we used to go to the Sugar beet processing plant and by |> |sugar beet pulp, (stuff left over after the sugar has been processed |> |out) for cattle feed. The stuff stank like high heaven but the dammed |> |cows had an orgasm over it. |> | |> |The Independent |> |> By steam, I mean a small boiler on your property that runs a |> piston or two thus powering a generator of about 20 KW. Enough |> to power a typical house. Could be wood fired or fueled by |> whatever. | |You think your small-scale generator is somehow more efficient than the |big generating plant nearby? | |Have you calculated the Carnot efficiency of a small steam boiler? | |Have you calculated how many cords of wood per month it will take to |generate your 20 KW? Or even 10 KW? | |Have you calculated the costs to deliver these cords of wood, for you |to then feed your firebox, and maintenance on a sooty system? | |I didn't think so, for any of these points. | |Why do you think it is that utilities are not burning wood, if you |think this is a cost-saving measure for home users? | |Duh. If you were in fact a senior military officer, as you seem to |imply at times, this explains a _lot_ about where we are today.

The topic was the use of bio diesel for emergency purposes or to survive if the grid went down. Bio diesel would work but for long term, off the grid usage, steam or water would be a better way to make power. We are talking survive here, not our current culture.

Think out of the box.

|In article , R. David |Steele wrote: | |> Soy producers want it. I have family members on the soy board. |> They were the ones who turned me on to diesel cars! The soy |> producers want the protection of the government so that they can |> create new markets. The law is doing that. | |Post their names and addresses. They need killing for trying to get Big |Brother to support their interests.

Skipping school, I decide to respond to what The Independent fosted Sun, 16 May 2004 12:04:45 -0700 in misc.survivalism , viz:

Minor problem with most geo thermal sites is that the water coming back "up" usually has a lot of dissolved solids in it. So flashing that into steam is a "bad" idea. (Unless you have a need for those dissolved solids. but keeping them out of the piping is a problem.) But those are a engineering problems, not a conceptual ones.