OK. Well biodiesel works. And it smalls nice!

[tomanique]

Yup, there were riots in Mexico in January because of the quadrupling price of corn. Pretty said when you can't even afford to make your staple food.

[Schwa]

The main reason for the corn issues right now is because it's the main feedstock for ethanol in the US, and recently the EPA stopped underwriting the use of a certain octane booster that was used to make premium fuel (MTBE, I think) so everyone's switching over to use ethanol at the same time since it doesn't have all the toxic, carcinogenic properties and is the next cheapest chemical that can do the job. This is not E85 (85% ethanol) fuel for flex-fuel cars, even though GM made a big push selling tons of flex-fuel gas-guzzling SUVs most of them don't fill up on the ethanol anyhow, this is somewhere around 5% of gasoline, but that's a big number since there's so much sold... but that's what's going on with corn. Unfortunately corn is a very poor feedstock for ethanol, there are better ways of producing ethanol, such as with a natural mix of grasses, but the technology to turn that into ethanol is in it's infancy, but over the next several years it should be coming online and corn won't be so much of an issue.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the US government has generously subsidized corporate agribusiness and then dumped the product into developing countries at less cost than production for years, putting local small farmers out of business and making it possible for the price of US corn to affect them. There are a lot of reasons this crisis came about, and unfortunately it won't be the last because nothing in this department has changed at all.

Similar things will happen with biologically sourced diesel substitutes, right now algae looks fairly promising as a future feedstock, and is totally separate from the food supply.

[tomanique]

Similar things will happen with biologically sourced diesel substitutes, right now algae looks fairly promising as a future feedstock, and is totally separate from the food supply

Great, now fish food prices will skyrocket and my clown fish will riot.

[mark]

Just a note on what Schwa was saying, there is an interesting piece on the politics and economics of corn-based ethanol in the May 10, 2007 edition of The Economist. Corn-based ethanol is apparently supported both by subsidies to the domestic US industry, and by tariffs against foreign ethanol imports. Unfortunately, corn-based ethanol is more energy-intensive to produce (relative to certain foreign imports), and hence the overall environmental friendliness of E85 is questionable...

Spoiler:

The craze for maize

May 10th 2007 | BELMOND, MARCUS AND NEVADA, IOWA
From The Economist print edition
Ethanol is rapidly transforming life in Iowa and the rest of the corn belt
Corbis

YOU might think that the opening of a new ethanol facility in Nevada, Iowa—a town of 6,700 in the centre of the state—would be of interest mainly to the local farmers who supply the corn that the factory turns to car fuel. You would be wrong. Investors in the refinery include the person who delivers fuel to it, a couple of local parts-suppliers for John Deere (a big farm-equipment company) and the local school-bus driver, among 900 or so other small investors. Like many others in the corn belt, the Nevada refinery is seen as a way for the whole rural community to thrive by exploiting America's new craving for ethanol and the corn (maize) that is being used to make it.

Corn-based ethanol is neither cheap nor especially green: it requires a lot of energy to produce. Production has been boosted by economically-questionable help from state and federal governments, including subsidies, the promotion of mixing petrol with renewable fuels and a high tariff that keeps out foreign ethanol. The federal government offers ethanol producers a subsidy of 51 cents per gallon (13.5 cents per litre); and a growing number of states are pushing for wider use of E85, a fuel blend that is 85% ethanol and only 15% petrol. Since oil prices rose above $30 a barrel in 2004 (they are more than double that now), ethanol capacity has grown especially rapidly. And although the country is experimenting with other renewable plant-based fuels of varying feasibility, from biodiesel to (much greener) ethanol derived from trees, the biggest boom has been in corn-based ethanol.

California has helped to lead the way. When the state banned the use of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) as a fuel additive after 2003, everyone had to use ethanol instead to meet clean-air standards; and local refineries for the product began popping up to cash in on a state subsidy of 40 cents per gallon at the time.

Outside the Golden State, however, the states most eager to subsidise ethanol were those with golden fields of corn. Wallace Tyner, an agricultural economist at Purdue University, points out that states that had introduced subsidies early, such as Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, were already building lots of ethanol factories before 2004, whereas corn-belt states without subsidies, such as Indiana and Ohio, did not do much until oil prices rose. Since then, rural areas across the region have been swept up in the ethanol craze, with new facilities sprouting all over corn country (see map).

Iowa, in the heart of the region, already has 28 ethanol refineries, producing 1.9 billion gallons of the stuff a year, nearly a third of America's total capacity. Many new facilities and expansions of existing ones are in the works. On consecutive days in Iowa last week there were ceremonies to break ground for a new factory in Hartley and to open a completed one in Corning—where bad weather had grounded the Vanguard Squadron, the world's only 100% ethanol-powered aerobatics fleet.

Although agribusinesses such as Archer Daniels Midland have built many ethanol refineries, farmers' co-operatives and local investors have also been busily building as well. The first local groups to do so were in remoter areas where farmers could not get the best prices for their corn because of the high cost of transporting it to market. In Iowa, that region is the north-western part of the state, which enjoys high crop yields but gets 25-50 cents less per bushel because it is too far from the Mississippi river barges.

The same logic applied in the eastern counties of North and South Dakota, in south-west Minnesota and in other parts of the corn belt where getting corn to market is costly. So long as a refinery can be built near good rail terminals in these areas, says Ken Eriksen, who analyses transport patterns at Informa Economics, a research firm specialising in agriculture, it is more cost-effective to convert the corn into ethanol and send that to distant markets.

All this activity is benefiting rural economies and related industries big and small. Land prices in Iowa rose 10% last year, and are still climbing. Jobs are being created around the factories. In places such as Lakota and Marcus, which built some of the state's first modern refineries and have made a bundle because of high oil prices and subsidies, local investors have ploughed their profits into home improvements, college fees and farm equipment.

Some people in Iowa are also beginning to talk about livestock. Besides extracting corn's starch content to be turned into fuel for cars, ethanol refineries convert the rest of the crop into distillers' grains. These contain the corn's protein and other nutrients and are increasingly being fed to cows, pigs and chickens near ethanol factories around the country. As Dave Nelson, the chairman of an Iowa ethanol outfit who also grows corn and raises swine, puts it, “we take the candy bar out of the corn and then feed the rest to the pig.”

However, though Iowa has lots of pigs, distillers' grains work much better as feed for beef and dairy cows. And, according to researchers at Iowa State University, the state's refineries already churn out more than five times as much of the stuff as its small stock of dairy cattle can eat. Most of those refineries, therefore, have to use a great deal of energy drying the distillers' grains so that they can be shipped to Texas and other cattle states in the South.

Feeding the by-product directly to local animals would cut energy use at the refineries and transport costs for the feed. Iowans and other Midwesterners think this logic will drive a boom in the region's beef and dairy industries. Plenty of investors, however, view it as an excellent reason to start building ethanol refineries in Texas, which has plenty of hungry cattle.

A more serious long-term threat to Iowa's ethanol industry might come from other biofuels. The federal government is already subsidising investments in cellulosic ethanol, for example, which can convert a wide range of plant life into fuel, but is still very inefficient. Iowans do not seem worried. For one thing, even if cellulosic ethanol can be made viable, that feat remains years away. Moreover, even though switchgrass and other plants can be grown in places outside the Midwest, Iowans will benefit from the fact that leftover corn stalks can also be used for cellulosic ethanol. Instead of worrying about the murky future, the state's farmers are planting as much corn as they can—and hoping that oil prices stay nice and high.

[josh]

And in the end, prices are not being driven up by lack of available farm land... but by lack of farmers. It is because farmers don't get enough income to survive. So wouldn't this just mean that more farmers could start producing these products now that the market is at a need, and not just being flooded with a product and having the opposite effect of dropping prices...

I'm not all that read up on the issue, but thought I would put that feeler out there.

Josh

[Steveo]

A little food for thought on bio diesel. My work place has it's whole fleet running on bio diesel. I've noticed that the kilometres per litre has gone up, the maintenance on the vehicle is more expensive (fuel filters changed more frequently, exhaust components get gummed up) and the cold starting is bad. Think about this I've cleaned the plastic water/fuel seperators on diesel filters and found mould (makes sense it is "bio") just think what that does to your fuel lines. That is only using B5, B20 is even worse. Here is the kicker, it's not even better for the environment. This in my experience with bio diesel if it's working for you then that's great but I wouldn't touch the stuff.

Steve

[Schwa]

The absolute best quality biofuel diesel substitute is the type where they put SVO / WVO / animal fats into a hydrocracker (high pressure hydrogen + heat), same thing they do to heavy crude oil and then distill it just like crude to get the diesel fraction (and all the various other fractions like naptha, propane, butane, etc) that way you have a chemically identical fuel without the nasty impurities found in all petro-diesel. It's cleaner burning than anything else and other than lubricity issues due to a complete lack of sulfur (other additives can do the job) it's compatible with any diesel engine. It's economical to produce because refineries are already setup to process it and because they have the capacity to process large volumes of it. The downside is that it's not something you can home-brew, so that pretty much makes it just like dino-diesel, you'd still be bending over at the pump and refineries aren't in a rush to switch to a more expensive feedstock, so we won't be seeing it any time soon.

Some day we are going to have to figure out how to live within our environment without cheap, abundant petroleum and one way or another biologically sourced fuels will have to play a part as electric storage technologies mature.

[Kuan]

Here is the kicker, it's not even better for the environment.

How do you figure??

From what I have learned, burning waste veggie oil in your engine should be significantly better than burning petro diesel.

[Steveo]

Ok maybe saying it's not better for the environment needs some explaination. I also work for a testing company. We tested exhaust pipe emissions on 2 trucks on a dyno, basically air care but way more accurate. First test was with standard diesel from the pumps, then we ran them with bio diesel on the exact same test. There was no significant difference. Granted the test was done on larger CAT engines but it's all the same. Add that to the problems that I've seen with running biodiesel on a fleet of trucks, I'm not convinced bio diesel shouldn't just be used to make my french fries and a chicken wings. Honestly if I could get the actually test results I'd gladly share it with my you and my employer using the biodiesel but I get the same answer that it breaches my IP contract.

Peace out

[Kuan]

Steve,

Thats interesting. I'd like to see the info. Every test I've looked at on the internet seems to indicate much better results from biofuels. Having said that its all academic since I have not tested my own van.
I know people who have driven up to 100,000kms on biofuels over the last 5-7 years and their vehicle engines are in excellent condition with no apparent adverse effects. HOwever, they make their own fuel and are very scientific and careful about it as they are with maintaining the vehicles.

In terms of environmental/social factors, the big draw for me is running a fuel that is domestic, local, recycled and no one has to die for. I am not talking large scale veg oil production but just grassroots wvo collection and use.

Well, to each his own - I mean if everyone was on the waste oil trip there probably wouldn't be enough to go round!

Cheers,
Kuan

[Green1]

it's not that biodiesel puts out less emisions, that's not the improvement, it's all in the carbon cycle, biofuels are "Carbon-neutral" meaning that they don't put any more CO2 into the atmosphere than the plants they were made from took out of it in the first place.
THAT is what makes them better for the environment.
If you're using WVO that's even better because you're making use of a product that would otherwise need to be disposed of.

[BCDelica]

Well put Kuan and Green1! Air results, after WVO, had a greatly reduced particulate percentage from diesel. Air care only measures opacity and you shouldn't be fooled, with low numbers that's still junk coming from the pipe. Guess it good at indicating how your diesels tune/running condition.

[apok]

Quote:
Similar things will happen with biologically sourced diesel substitutes, right now algae looks fairly promising as a future feedstock, and is totally separate from the food supply

an interesting attribute of emerging biomass(algae) technologies is that it lacks the attractive carbon neutral aspect of petroleum alternatives such as biodiesel or ethanol in the applications I have seen. an american company(the name escapes me) is sequestering carbon from coal power plant smoke stacks. they are able to harvest the carbohydrates and lipids created by the rapidly growing biomass and manufacture ethanol, and biodiesel respectively.

although this is but one application of an emerging technology in its infancy, I hope to hear about an application of biomass technology that is carbon neutral. the present application is making a product from a waste, but the sequestered carbon goes right back into the carbon cycle; improving nothing.

Quote:
there are better ways of producing ethanol, such as with a natural mix of grasses, but the technology to turn that into ethanol is in it's infancy, but over the next several years it should be coming online and corn won't be so much of an issue.

cellulosic ethanol production seems to be a promising future for ethanol in north america. cellulosic ethanol can be manufactured from native grasses and plant waste(corn stalks) and other non-food species of grass. this source of vegetable matter can be harvested from marginal lands unfit for food agriculture, thus creating fuel without stealing food from mouths. currently the technology is still in development, as the process of fleecing any plant of its carbohydrates requires breaking down the tough plant structure.

I stumbled upon this forum after searching for information on the sick Deli s I have seen around town and am super stoked to find a discussion packed with info on my favorite research topic: alternative fuel sources and carbon neutrality!

l8er- apok

[Adam]

an interesting attribute of emerging biomass(algae) technologies is that it lacks the attractive carbon neutral aspect of petroleum alternatives such as biodiesel or ethanol in the applications I have seen. an American company(the name escapes me) is sequestering carbon from coal power plant smoke stacks.

Green Fuel Tech Corp might be the company you are thinking of. There's a nice explaination of the process on YouTube: