I love it! BIODIESEL (talking point re: OIL)

[midwayer]

Thanks to MadHound for posting this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2087213&mesg_id=2087366&page=



I love it! BIODIESEL

Biodiesel fuel has the potential to revolutionize the motor fuel industry. For the first time, motor fuel can be manufactured from domestically produced materials, freeing dependence from foreign oil producers, and eliminating environmentally destructive drilling, super tanker transport ships, and other expensive and unsustainable practices. In addition, Biodiesel reduces pollution emissions from diesel engines up to 90%, is cleaner burning, reduces required engine maintenance, has better lubricitive properties, and best of all, the exhaust smells like french-fried potatoes. Biodiesel is easily made from waste vegetable oil, a product of fast-food and restaurant fryers which is frequently considered a disposal problem. Many individuals are able to obtain the used oil free of charge from these establishments. Imagine being able to get free motor fuel from old fryer oil!

Here's the Link

http://www.eugeneweb.com/~bios/biod.htm

[havocmom]

1. Any politician who claims to be able to make America safer but doesn't

put great effort to get make alternative energy use commonplace in America is not really concerned with America.

So long as we depend on oil, we are vulnerable in a way we need not be. And we are wrecking the planet.

So many alternatives, if we could just elect lawmakers who would pass legislation to encourage R&D of other energies and economic incentives for implementing other sources of energy.

And beware the Trojan Horse of hydrogen fuel for cars. Some folks want to make it using: same old fossil fuels. Those folks have $$ in fossil fuel extraction/refinement. But they will market it as being clean. Well, it can be, if we do it correctly. Read the fine print.

I love these chaps who run vehicles on oil cooking oil!

[DrWho]

2. Kerry's Promise

10 years to weed us off Middle Eastern Oil.

If Kerry does not grab this friggin amazing technology, which would create 1000's of jobs in the US, I will be very dissappointed.

Neil Young uses this fuel for his trucks while on tour.

THIS STUFF WORKS!

I would love to see a huge push to start using this in every diesel truck or car currently available.

Right now it runs at about $2.50/gallon. If we bothered to really mass produce this, $1.00/gallon would be easy to maintain.

No more flucuation Fuel Prices!

[MadHound]

3. And here is a couple of more helpful links

<http://www.dancingrabbit.org/biodiesel/>
<http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookSearch/isbnInquiry.asp?sourceid=00387615288267847196&ISBN=0970722702&bfdate=07-28-2004+10:54:18>

Another point, if the US really starts converting to biodiesel, this would give a tremendous boost to the farm economy. For the demand would soon outstrip the supply of used fryer oil, and the American farmer would have to start growing crops to produce vegetable oil. The two best oil producing plants are sunflowers and *gasp* hemp.

What a concept, help out the family farmer, wean ourselves off of dino-gas, and good for the enviroment to boot. Wow!

[DrWho]

5. exactly

Farmers would have work.

The Oil Refinery Workers could be the first to work in the Vegtable Refineries, so they won't lost thier jobs.

All money would stay in the USA instead of going to oil barons in the Mid East.

Environment would improve.

It's so promising on so many level and makes so much sense.
But Sensible Approaches are so often ignored.

[midwayer]

24. MadHound

I have faxed this out to a few who CARE.........

THANKS!

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. It's no panacea

If you converted every single acre of American agricultural land to growing crops for biodiesel, and got the maximum yields for all the land, you might just be able to produce enough biodiesel to substitute for the gasoline currently used in the USA. The amount of waste vegetable oil currently available is, of course, tiny. Compare the amount you use (a lot of which, of course, isn't waste, but is food for you) with the amount of gasoline you use.

More realistically, the USA needs to cut down on its use of motorised transport. Smaller cars, more public transport, use of mopeds, bicycles and walking; this is what people need to think about.

[drdigi420]

7. actually....

your point is only using current biodiesel techniques.

using HEMP would greatly increase the efficiency of biodiesel, as HEMP produces more useable oils

but then again, we might have to back off of the war on the people that use certain drugs to take advantage of that


we know the republicans make too much money off the drug war to ever allow that (especially when some democrats aid them in it)

most of our problems can be solved by ending the drug war

[wabeewoman]

9. Actually the amount of waste

oil is huge. A McDonald's in a busy location close to here uses 60 gallons a day of oil. However,I think electric cars and other transport methods are needed. It will take a combination of ways but there is lots of used vegetable oil going to the landfill now.

"Even with filtering, most restaurants replace their frying oil weekly. Luigi's generates about six 35-pound plastic jugs of used oil each week."
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12474537&BRD=1078&PAG=461&dept_id=151025&rfi=6

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. so Luigi's generates about 30 gallons of use oil a week

or about 1500 gallons a year. If there's one restaurant like that for 1500 inhabitants in a town, that's one gallon each, per year. Compare that with about 400 gallons of gasoline used per American per year. Recycling oil makes sense, but it won't put a dent in the crude oil use.

[midwayer]

25. BS

the multiplication factor will throw it though the roof

If it can cut 1/3 and put SOME farmers back to work


I'm all for it

then multiply it across the world

do the math

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. What is the 'multiplication factor'?

What third are you talking about?
Post #15 was about used oil (yes, there was a typo in it). That wouldn't affect the number of farmers in work.

Multiply it across the world - OK, everyone in the world gets one gallon of fuel a year. That doesn't affect how much the USA gets.

So far, I've done all the math. Will you show me where the BS is?

[MadHound]

11. You're exagerating a bit there friend

With rapseed oil producing aprox 100 gallons of oil per acre, followed by sunflower at 60 gal of oil/acre, we have enough land. The US currently consumes apox. 131 billion gallons of oil per year. Also, consider that you can grow both hemp and sunflowers on land that is unsuited for any other crops.

However I do agree with you that we need to start conserving fuel also, that would help a great deal.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. No exaggeration

US land area = 9,158,960 sq km
Arable land = 19.32%
(from http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Geography)

1.31 billion acres = 5,300,000 sq km = 58% of the whole USA (including Alaska).

Also, is that a net yield (after you've run the farm machinery and anything else than would have to run on the oil)? I suspect it is, but it would be good to know.

[MadHound]

16. Actually you still are

There is 1.33 billion acres of arable land, between cropland and pastureland(which is usually fallow cropland)<http://www.malcolmbeck.com/articles/CarbonCycleandHealth.htm>
Add in the vast acreage that hemp can grow on, such as mountains, arid regions etc. and you have well over enough land to grow both biodiesel and food crops on. Especially condsidering that in most regions you could get 2-4 crops of sunflowers out of the same land every year, thus dropping your total needed land use for biodiesel.

This is a viable alternative to regular gas, and will help a great deal towards weaning the US off of it's oil addiction.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. I think that "grassland pasture" may be permanent pasture

For instance, the FAO gives the 2002 US 'Arable Land' as 176 million hectares (435 million acres) and 'Permanent Pasture' as 234 million hectares (578 million acres): http://faostat.fao.org/faostat/servlet/XteServlet3?Areas=231&Items=1421&Elements=31&Elements=51&Elements=61&Elements=71&Elements=121&Elements=131&Years=2002&Format=Table&Xaxis=Years&Yaxis=Countries&Aggregate=&Calculate=&Domain=LUI&ItemTypes=LandUse&language=EN

It may not be feasible growing crops on the permanent pasture - certainly at the concentration necessary to get the full yield of oil.

But even if we take the figures from your link, we get "455 million acres of cropland in the US, and 578 million acres of grassland pasture" which is 1.033 billion acres. This is still less than the 1.31 billion acres needed - and my original point was that if you converted all this farmland, you might get close - which these figures have just proved. I was not exaggerating.

You can't just say "we'll grow hemp on mountains and arid regions too" - harvesting machinery won't work on mountains, the soil won't be fertile enough, there won't be enough water, etc. You could chop down some forests if you wanted to - you're more likely to be able to grow crops where something grows now. The yields I've seen for hemp are under half that of rapeseed for oil, too. How many acres extra do you think could be used for hemp?

Are you saying the sunflower yield you gave was per crop? What's the source? How much of the USA can get 2 crops per year?

[MadHound]

20. You seem to wish this wasn't feasible, why?

Sorry about the addition, my bad. Anyway, if you've done any farming at all, you'll realize that most pastureland is simply cropland that is going under a hay crop rotation. As far as growing hemp on mountains, etc, have you ever heard of terracing? The yield per acre on rapseed oil is 100 gallons of oil per acre, sunflower is aprox. 60 gallons per acre. I'm sure with some nifty hybrid and grafting work, one could get an even better yield. And my neighbor down the road got in two crops of sunflowers last year. This year he has rotated in a corn crop, I live in Missouri. I'm sure that down in southern climes you could get in one or two more crops per year. Sunflowers generally take between sixty to one hundred days to go from seed to crop.

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. FAO definitions of 'arable' and 'permanent pasture'

Arable Land:
land under temporary crops (double-cropped areas are counted only once), temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow (less than five years). The abandoned land resulting from shifting cultivation is not included in this category. Data for "Arable land" are not meant to indicate the amount of land that is potentially cultivable.

Permanent Pasture:
land used permanently (five years or more) for herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild (wild prairie or grazing land). The dividing line between this category and the category "Forests and woodland"; is rather indefinite, especially in the case of shrubs, savannah, etc., which may have been reported under either of these two categories.

http://www.fao.org/waicent/faostat/agricult/landuse-e.htm

So their 'permanent' is pretty permanent.

Terracing might be possible, but it takes a lot of work - and would the soil be fertile enough?

Again, are you sure those sunflower oil yields are per crop, not per year?

It's not that I don't want it to be feasible - it's that I don't think it is - not with the current oil use in the USA. If the oil use could be cut to say 20%, then it could be a good way of supplying the transport requirements. But the reduction in usage is vital.

[midwayer]

27. If it can cut 1/3

I'm all for it

[cheezus]

6. Q: Where does the fuel to do the farming of the biodiesel come from?

Not to mention fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides

[drdigi420]

8. it can come from HEMP

[cheezus]

10. I'm with you there

a crop that's insanely useful and grows like a weed pretty much anywhere you plant it? Yeah, better make that illegal... fast!

heh. And I just noticed your handle.

[Gregorian]

12. It's still COMBUSTION.

The problem is we are burning oil. Not that we are out of oil. If we had all of the oil we could ever use, for free, that wouldn't solve our problem. I think three hundred years ahead. What will their lives be like? If the answer contains something like, no icecaps, or carbon dioxide content so high that humans cannot exist, then we must change. I'll stop here, but I'd love to go on and on. People do not get it yet.

[ejcastellanos]

18. Carbon cycle

Yes it is combustion, but the carbon released is already in the carbon cycle so the net effect is less CO2 produced than burning fossil fuels. Use of fossil fuels frees carbon that has been trapped for millions of years. The carbon in biodiesel was captured from the atmosphere by the plant that was alive days, weeks, or months ago.

[Gregorian]

21. That doesn't solve the problem

That's like saying, I'll drink 100,000 beers in my lifetime, so I'll just have half of those tonight. That carbon wasn't airborne when it was in nature. It was bound.
And furthermore, combustion has the problem of creating heat. A big problem.

What I want to hear people talking about is "less". Less growth, less activity. Slower and less. Not more and faster.

Anything is ok, in moderation.

[midwayer]

28. Combination,economically,farming

it all adds up

too many seem to be looking for the SINGLE SOLUTION cures all

it will not work that way

combination effect

[DrWho]

13. hydrogen cells

hydrogen cells won't get us anywhere anytime soon, but bush jr. in an attempt to seem concerned is giving millions to the study

when right now we can make a huge difference. that is the fallacy of it all

if we can improve hydrogen cells, fine, great, but right now we can put into place steps to get us off the oil

[Gregorian]

17. Hydrogen cells are fine. It's how we make hydrogen that is the problem.

He wants to produce hydrogen because it would cause us to use 150 percent more energy than we do now.

We need photovoltaics.

Hydrogen is just the "battery". It's a method of storeage. It can also be combusted, but that's not how it should be used.

[midwayer]

23. I'm kicking this..........

Even before I have even had a chance to read the thread

even since I have not had the chance to to read the whole thread after I posted it and just now walked in the door.

It reminds me of the de salinisation (spelling in question) of water


WTF is the problem with the technology?

If it works,

PUT IT IN TO PRODUCTION NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[HippieCowgirl]

26. Saw something on TV...

there is a refinery making biodiesel out of turkey processing byproducts. The skin, bones, fat, etc. from a nearby turkey plant. They are not getting subsidies because, as it's not made from grain, the USGVT doesn't see it as actual "biodiesel."

If I can ask a stupid question: Can you put biodiesel in a regular diesel engine, or do you need to have the engine reworked to accept it? (stupid because I should probably go read one of those articles, but don't have time at this point)

[htuttle]

29. Yes, you put it in a regular diesel

There are two ways to burn vegetable oil in a diesel.

A) Make 'bio-diesel' out of the vegetable oil. You do this by processing it with something like lye to do something called 'esterfication', which has something to do with breaking apart the fat molecules in the oil. This stuff burns just like diesel, and can be directly substituted for diesel.

B) Get two fuel tanks. A small one for diesel or bio-diesel, and a main one for pure vegetable oil (used or new). Start the engine on the diesel, use the heat to warm the vegetable oil tank feed, and switch over to vegetable oil once you get the engine running. Then, before you shut the engine off, switch back to diesel for a moment to sort of clear the pipes out.

Here's some recipies for bio-diesel. You can make it in your garage.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_aleksnew.html
http://www.bagelhole.org/article.php/Transportation/149/
http://www.stewardwood.org/resources/DIYbiodiesel.htm

[KansDem]

30. Isn't this what Henry Ford had in mind?

I seem to recall that Ford developed his Model Ts with the idea that they would run on fuel derived from agricultural products. This way rural citizens and farmers could produce their own fuel.

[htuttle]

32. I think Ford was looking at ethanol

But the original diesel engines were designed to run on vegetable oil, not petroleum diesel.