Green diesel: New process makes liquid transportation fuel from plants

[buddysmellgood]

http://www.engr.wisc.edu/news/headlines/2005/Jun02.html

[Nevernose]

1. Plants grown using petro-fertilizer?

And converted using electricity made from natural gas?

Peak Oil means changing EVERYTHING, from the way we work, to the way we read at night, to where we live, to the way we grow our food. Every single aspect of our lives. This is a delaying tactic. A good one, yes, but nevertheless a delaying tactic.

[Massacure]

2. Algae + oceanic salt water + Arizona sun + California cow shit = energy.

Actually, algae is mostly oil. It may not work with that process, it would work for making biodiesel though.

[Nevernose]

4. Ocean water+algae+CA cow shit+shipment to AZ=lots of oil

It may be a step in a direction towards conservation, but it's not a solution.

Solar power. A study done a few year ago showed that if we were to cover the Nevada Test Site with 1970's technology solar power panels, we would have a surplus of energy FOR THE ENOTRE WORLD.

My point in my OP was not that new forms of bio-diesel are bad, exactly, but that they are a stop-gap measure. To solve this problem, we have to start thinking outside the box. Because what's in the box is soaked in oil.

[tinrobot]

5. In some ways, biodiesel is solar energy.

The plants get all their energy from the sun, then we burn it to release that energy.

Plus, the carbon in those plants comes from the surface, so we're not adding to the total amount of carbon on the surface (as we do when we dig up petroleum buried in the ground and burn that)

It's certainly not perfect, but a heck of a lot better than petroleum.

[Toucano]

7. That's a good point

Thank you.

That should be the "no net carbs" on everyone's mind. No net carbon atoms, that is.

Palm oil can be produced with little petro-fertalizer throughout the world's equatorial region and yields almost 35 times more oil than corn and 13 times more oil than soybeans per acre.

Plants are far more efficient at turning sunlight into energy than anything we've developed.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying, of course.

A multi-faceted approach is going to win in the long term.

[megatherium]

11. My recollection is that plants are 2 to 3 percent efficient at turning

sunlight into energy, but photovoltaic panels are 10-13% efficient. The problem with PV is it produces electricity not hydrocarbons. The problems with plants are that they require fertilizer (made from fossil fuels) and that plants grown for fuel takes needed acreage away from food production.

Unfortunately, I suspect diesel or gasoline from coal is where things are heading.

[FlaGranny]

15. Most plants grown for food

are not eaten in their entirety. We eat the fruits, seeds, and tubers. Most of the plant material is thrown away. In fact, much more plant material is thrown away than is eaten.

Ideally, manure would be used for fertilizer, like it was for thousands of years, the edible parts of the plants would be consumed by the animals and the humans, and the waste would be converted into energy/fuel.

I wonder how much waste plant material is generated every fall, when the leaves come fluttering down onto our lawns.

[Toucano]

17. The 2-3% number is too low.

It's more like 3-6%, but that is drawn from calculations measuring the total solar radiation striking the earth.

Only 45% of that is useable by plants, which causes the result to drop quickly. But it's a bit like saying you're household budget is flawed because you didn't use money you didn't earn.

Photosynthesis is an intrinsically efficient solar energy conversion process. Theoretically, as few as eight photons could convert a CO2 molecule to carbohydrate. Under optimal conditions observed efficiencies approach this ideal value. However, the paradox of photosynthesis relates to the fact that in dim light the rate of photosynthesis is low but efficiency is high. Conversely, in direct sunlight the rate of photosynthesis is high but efficiency is low. Improving the efficiency of light use when photons are available in excess is one strategy to increase agricultural productivity.

http://www.caes.state.ct.us/Biographies/PeteRich.htm

Agriculture is certainly a huge impact on the environment, but instead of growing tobacco and other useless crops, more of the earth's fertility could be put into more productive purposes.

Also, don't forget that plants absorb CO2 and help cool the earth. Your fancy schmansy photoelectric cells can't do that! :)

[chopper]

13. yeah...

and the amount of energy required to build all those solar panels would be tremendous.

solar is not free either.

[AndyTiedye]

9. You Can't Change Everything Overnight -- This Buys Us Time

Plants grown using petro-fertilizer?

Not necessarily. Could even use sewage for fertilizer, if the crop
isn't being used for food.

My preference would be to use spoiled or wasted food. There is always
some produce that spoils before it can be sold, and there is waste from restaurants and food processing plants as well. It's usually starting
to ferment on its own anyway, so the process should be extra efficient.

Waste cooking oil, of course, becomes greasel.

And converted using electricity made from natural gas?

More likely off-peak extra capacity from hydro or something. Solar or
wind works too.

Peak Oil means changing EVERYTHING, from the way we work, to the way we read at night, to where we live, to the way we grow our food. Every single aspect of our lives.

We can't do it all at once. We need a bit more thinking outside
the box by the "Peak Oil" folks too.

from the way we work,

That is already happening. Telecommuting is becoming so widespread
where I work that the managers are starting to wonder why they have
all these offices.

My real office, the one where I get most of my work done, is at home.
:-)

to the way we read at night,

We went to compact fluorescents years ago. Now looking at LED clusters.
That's an easy one.

to where we live,

The standard solution proposed by Peak-Oilers is for everybody
to move into the city.
Judging by what is happening to San Francisco, New York, and other
big-city real estate prices, too many people are trying to do that
already.
The people who can afford those prices can afford fuel for their
Hummers, and they keep them when they move into the city!

Meanwhile, the less-fortunate get squeezed out to the hinterlands,
where the services they need are far less available. That includes
transit, forcing many of them to drive long distances in old,
polluting, fuel-inefficient vehicles.

Here is where the outside-the-box part comes in.

We need to make sustainable suburbs. Parts of them become more
citified, especially near transit stations. There needs to be
a lot more transit. All transit vehicles to be GPS-equipped so
that riders can tell how far away the next bus or train is. Small
electric vehicles as well as good bicycle facilities can extend
the reach of the transit system into the lower-density areas.

Cities are not for everyone. There are neurological
differences and they are hereditary. Many of us are here because
our ancestors felt too crowded where they were.

to the way we grow our food.

We certainly can grow it organically, and there is great
demand for organic food. There is no need for petrochemical
fertilizer.

More home gardening can also play a part. The veggies you grow at
home don't have to be shipped anywhere. It is also a way that some
of that suburban land can produce food, without requiring anybody to
move into the city.

On a slightly large scale, there could be a return to more small
family farms. Most of the advantages that the hugge agribusinesses
have had over them have been due to cheap oil and transport. Take
those away, and the local producers may regain the advantage.

Every single aspect of our lives.

We can't change every aspect of our lives at once.
To do that makes people crazy.
You need to give people time to adapt.

This is a delaying tactic. A good one, yes, but nevertheless a delaying tactic.

Even if that were all it was, it would be useful.
It allows things to happen in a more orderly fashion
with less hardship.

In fact, it seems like an ongoing, sustainable source of fuel --
not perhaps in the quantities we currently consume, but fuel nonetheless.

[buddysmellgood]

26. That's how I see it. I don't want one big solution. I don't want another

drug. We need many forms of energy and many people to produce it. We need more people employed in making energy, not less. It would be nice if one big industry didn't call all of the shots. That may be a pipe dream, but it's a nice dream

[yurbud]

20. Did you see Harper's piece on agriculture in Cuba after Soviet oil gone?

Their food supply was cut like 20%, and people lost a lot of weight for a couple of years, but they figured out how to adapt their crops to less petro-fertilizer intensive stuff, and now they are back up to where they were before, just with a different combination of foods.

[pokercat999]

28. Check with an Amish farmer in PA or Oh to get the real scoop

on farming without chemicals or petro fertilizers. During the drought a few years back the soil of Amish farms and the plants were doing much better because only natural fertilizers were used.

[yurbud]

29. then after oil, the Amish will be the new oil sheiks

[Baclava]

3. Greasel

http://www.greasel.com/

[amandabeech]

6. If this process can use feedstock like kudzu or water trefoil,

even switchgrass or wasteproducts, I'd be more interested. These plants need little coaxing from us or our products to grow.

As Never pointed out, corn production uses tremendous inputs of nitrogen fertilizer produced with natural gas and petroleum-based pesticides, not to mention diesel for planting, fertiizing, cultivating and harvesting. All that energy must be deducted from whatever energy can be obtained by burning the output of this process to get any idea if this could help us with our most important transport needs as oil becomes increasingly scarce.

[buddysmellgood]

12. The process uses a whole range of sugars so a variety of plants

can be used. Corn is used as an example because it's currently used to make ethanol. All of the energy required to grow and convert the corn is factored in. Ethanol production just barely makes new energy. this process gets two units of energy out for every one put in. An advantage of this new process is that it can use the whole plant.
This system is modified from earlier technology that converts biomass directly to hydrogen.

[rfkrfk]

14. my understanding is, 'it' needs hydrogen

to replace the oxygen atoms in the {former}
carbohydrate, hydrogen must be supplied.

[anotherdrew]

18. so use solor to electrolise water in 2 O2 and H2

[amandabeech]

21. My understanding is that enzymes are necessary in obtaining sugars

from cellulosic feedstock, like kudzu, etc., but not from starchy feedstock like corn or sugar beets.

I'd like a much more clear explanation of whether this process requires the enzymes.

[buddysmellgood]

25. This process uses acid catalyzed dehydration

followed by aldol-condensation over solid base catalysts to form large organic compounds. These molecules were then converted into alkanes by dehydration/hydrogenation over bi-functional catalysts containing acid and metal sites in a 4-phase reactor in which the aqueous organic reactant becomes more hydrophobic, and a hexadecane alkane stream removes hydrophobic species from the catalyst before they go on further to form coke.

-from the paper in Science-

[TX-RAT]

22. How much ethanol can be produced per acre?

[buddysmellgood]

24. I don't know

[droidamus2]

8. Hemp Oil?

Don't have any links but I have heard that people have used a processed hemp oil to run an engine. Very renewable as it is easy to grow. Don't know how much energy it takes to process but if its a reasonable ratio might be at least a partial solution to the fuel problem.

[EST]

10. Quite a lively topic here at DU, about six months ago.

[buddysmellgood]

27. I read that somewhere too.

[LeftHander]

16. Probably works best with old growth forests...

[ooglymoogly]

19. wow!!!! good news

kick and nom.

[ecoalex]

23. Green Diesel for a Green Planet

It's just a matter of time to throw off the yoke of CO2 oil burning for clean fuels from clean sources.