A new kind of Bio-Diesel, just add water.

[HeadSmess]

the biggest joke about bio diesel is that rudolf diesel intended his compression ignition engine to be fueled with peanut oil...

im sorry. peple are starving to death every day, yet governments spend millions every day on manufacturing weapons. and then they have the audacity to tell us theyre "green" because theyve just converted 5000000000000 acres of prime farmland, that could be used to grow food, into a valuable fuel production plant...

oh, and investing many dollars on solar power and electric cars. someone please tell me how much power is USED to manufacture a photovoltaic cell versus what they can produce in their (20 yr at most) life span?

do the research and you may be shocked. best to stay in the dark and just go with the flow really.

good old chief white cloud....(forgive me if the names wrong) "when the last rivers poisoned and the last tree dead, white man will realise he cant eat money".

no wonder you guys did your best to eradicate them all, saying nasty despicable things like that!


maybe im too cynical?

[loquin]

Gearnut - the 15000 gallons/acre is how much fuel an acre of the algae can produce, if given the biomass to produce it. So, we still need to grow the "food" to feed the algae.

IMO, a better crop for this would be sugar cane or sorghum. It could be cut and squeezed in the field, and only the sap (a thin sugar syrup) would need to be transported to the algae. A little intermediate processing (filtering and evaporation) might be justified, if the feedstock is going to be transported very far (no need to ship excess water...)

Sugar is more digestible than starches (it takes less energy to break it down.)

One more advantage of a syrup-based feedstock is that it would not be competing against midwest food crops nearly as much, as sugar cane is a tropical climate crop (Southern coastal plains, from Virginia through Texas are ideal growing climates,) and sorghum has a wide growing range (it can grow from the deep south up through the Ohio Valley.) It's always good for farmers to have another cash crop available to them...

[SimpleSimon]

If the fuel farm requires "feeding" in the form of fertilizers or in the case of algae ponds, organic slurry, the simple need for that reduces over-all efficiency. Sugar cane, or sorghum syrup, or corn syrup, or grain and grain solids used as feed stocks are NOT the best choices.

First, they take otherwise productive crop lands out of the food production cycle and put them into the fuel production cycle. Second, the maximum conversion efficiency of green plants of solar energy to stored chemical energy runs around 5%. Algae can do better, up to about 18% - if you feed it sugar (another "bio-fuel"). Third, they tend to exhaust productive soils quickly - if you can crop them 3 years out of 5 you are doing well.

There is a thoroughly researched alternative, which yields biomass for fermentation, and produces both ethanol and light fuel oil - on marginal soils not typically suitable for crops, and generally not now used for such. It is called switch grass, and per dollar invested in growing/harvesting it, it yeilds approximately $2.50 of fuel at $50/barrel for crude price structures.

It is a perennial, self-propagating, hardy, prefers marginal soils and requires only basic farm machinery - a tractor, hay mower, hay rake and a baler to prepare it for transport to the fermentation facility. It grows well from Mexico to central Canada. Given current knowledge, current technologies, current transport infrastructure, and fuel distribution infrastructure, it makes more sense than any other single alternative.

Oh, and by the way - there is some debate as to whether petroleum is in fact a "fossil fuel" derived from plant matter.

[happycheapskate]

I hope so! I have heard of this before, guess they are still fighting the Stupid Empire (politically connected big oil and bureaucracy) over it. Other technologies have been supressed, to no surprise.

I would like to see micro-diesel mopeds, mo-bikes, and light vehicles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3-VLNjwIsg Micro-diesel testing and research.


I am also a fan of raw big-bore diesel power http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO_kj...eature=related
1970 DMC Diesel Monte Carlo '99 Cummins turbo 24 valve, sounds like a Kenworth 18wh.

Check this out! I wonder if it will catch on?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=13012206

[Happy Valley]

If the fuel farm requires "feeding" in the form of fertilizers or in the case of algae ponds, organic slurry, the simple need for that reduces over-all efficiency. Sugar cane, or sorghum syrup, or corn syrup, or grain and grain solids used as feed stocks are NOT the best choices.

First, they take otherwise productive crop lands out of the food production cycle and put them into the fuel production cycle. Second, the maximum conversion efficiency of green plants of solar energy to stored chemical energy runs around 5%. Algae can do better, up to about 18% - if you feed it sugar (another "bio-fuel"). Third, they tend to exhaust productive soils quickly - if you can crop them 3 years out of 5 you are doing well.

There is a thoroughly researched alternative, which yields biomass for fermentation, and produces both ethanol and light fuel oil - on marginal soils not typically suitable for crops, and generally not now used for such. It is called switch grass, and per dollar invested in growing/harvesting it, it yeilds approximately $2.50 of fuel at $50/barrel for crude price structures.

It is a perennial, self-propagating, hardy, prefers marginal soils and requires only basic farm machinery - a tractor, hay mower, hay rake and a baler to prepare it for transport to the fermentation facility. It grows well from Mexico to central Canada. Given current knowledge, current technologies, current transport infrastructure, and fuel distribution infrastructure, it makes more sense than any other single alternative.

Oh, and by the way - there is some debate as to whether petroleum is in fact a "fossil fuel" derived from plant matter.

Good post SS. Cannabis would make good companion cropping with switchgrass ;-)

[Happy Valley]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3-VLNjwIsg Micro-diesel testing and research.

I had been following that particular development since it's inception in 2007 but unfortunately Practica Foundation abandoned the project soon after citing the design untenable and the original Lohman Company performance claims grossly inflated. Micro however, is the key word in this instance, combining that with a renewable source of backyard bio-fuel would be extremely forward thinking.

[happycheapskate]

Link to related thread on diesel bicycle engines (engine weight up to 50lb) here:
http://www.motoredbikes.com/showthread.php?t=11161
including the famous and rare Lohman bicycle engines, and prototype asian micro diesel engines

"home made diesel bicycle engine" running, on bike: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdroxprH4xg

2cc (two) diesel engine, US made RC airplane engine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOToV1w4BlU
2.5cc diesel engine, Russian made RC airplane engine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gqw7...eature=related
Now if we could just scale that up and get some good throttle control and make it a 4 bolt interface with clutch like auger and whacker motors, it would be super.

Diesel engines (esp small ones) have their own set of engineering hurdles, but I don't see why small diesel mopeds would be a problem. R/C plane enthusiasts have been making hot plug engines (semi-diesel) out of 31cc Ryobi weedwhacker motors. I think they run on some combination fuels. A pure diesel engine might be kind of heavy for the displacement size. That would put off engine mfgrs because metal is high, shipping is high, and no one wants a 12lb weedwhacker engine. IF the engine was MADE for the scooter/atv/MaB market, 12lb wouldn't be such a big deal.

I think the hardest part would be making a mini diesel engine that was
1 easy to start
2 had wide usable rPm range
3 didn't require fuel injection
4 could pass minimal emissions regulations

[travboat]

At 800 million gallons a day consumed that's 292 billion gallons a year.
It would take approx. 3893 similar sized fuel farms to produce that volume of fuel in it's current infancy.
Is there enough room on this earth to accommodate 3893 fuel farms?

According to https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2147rank.html there is approximately 148.94 km-squared of land available on Earth; this converts to 3.68 x 10^9 acres (3.7 billion acres).

Even if each farm takes about 500 acres to grow, and assuming we needed no land for housing or business (odd assumption, considering we're using gas to fuel our livelyhood), we could make about 7 million farms, well over the required amount.