Indian Chemists report biodiesels from tree based oil seeds with superior

[NNadir]

properties.

From the abstract:

"Biodiesel production and application are gaining popularity
in recent times due to diminishing petroleum reserves and detrimental environmental impacts. Edible and nonedible oils are transesterified in the presence of alcohol and a suitable catalyst to prepare the esters of the corresponding alcohol, commonly used as biodiesel. However, biodiesel, because of having a narrow range of
boiling points, often requires blending with petroleum diesel.1,2 In this study, biodiesel production from a variety of Pongamia glabra called “Koroch” oilseeds collected from the Darrang District of Assam, India, has been reported. The systematic analysis of the fatty acid composition along with a comparative analysis of the fuel properties of biodiesel with petroleum diesel oil has also been
reported. A Sim-Dis gas chromatography (GC) analysis has also been carried out to determine accurately the IBP/FBP and distillation characteristics, to show the prospect of blending with the lower boiling distillation cut of petroleum crude oil so as to mitigate the demand of low sulfur high-speed diesel."

A medium sized 15 year old Koroch tree seems to produce about 30 kg of oilseed per year.

[Gloria]

1. I heard a half hour on this on the BBC WS this am.....

India may wind up with a zillion hectares of this stuff growing...it grows in the desert and everywhere. I heard and Indian reporter on site describing this tree. The story also interviewed a British farmer who is growing rapeseed and they talke about a biodiesel plant being constructed now in England, the biggest one ever. Brazil is also a leader...I think they are doing ethanol.

The caveat that was discussed involved how much land it takes to do this. You would have to wipe out many species in order to get enough plant growth to fuel even part of the world.

The reporter coined the word "Carmageddon" to describe what the love of cars may be creating...

[whistle]

2. Let me see now, a kilogram of oilseed is a measure of weight...

...of the seed, not the oil produced from the seed. That would be measured in liters. If 30 kilograms of seeds produces perhaps one third of its weight in oil then the end product would be 10 kilograms of usable oil which would be about 22 pounds. Oil is lighter than water because it floats and since a gallon of water weighs about 8.5 pounds so oil would be about 7.8 pounds. Thus the yield per year from one of these trees is about 3 gallons of liquid fuel. It would take 15 trees to produce one barrel of oil. The average diameter of a 15 year mature tree is about 20 feet so lets say that equates to 400 square feet (20X20). An acre of land has 43,560 square feet, so an acre could support roughly 100 trees. Lets cut that in half to allow for cultivation, harvesting and management of the oilseed tree crop. So that's 50 trees per acre or 150 gallons of seed oil production per year. Thus an acre of these could yield a little over 3.3 barrels of bio-diesel fuel.

America's appetite for energy fuel is 50,000,000 barrels per day, I believe. That means we would need the equivalent of 15,151,515 acres of tree oilseed cultivated every single day which is 5.530 billion acres set aside for tree growth or 8.641 million square miles of land to be set aside for the purpose of growing trees for fuel. That would be a land mass area that measures 2,939.6 miles by 2,939.6 miles, or a little larger than the entire country of the United States. Looking at this from another perspective, we consume far more energy that our country could ever replace.

[Kolesar]

3. That was pretty clever

Even producing one one-hundredth of the fuel that would yield would be difficult. We would have to replace the feed corn fields with biofuels trees and we all become vegetarians.

[NNadir]

4. Not really.

One of the common energy measurements of commerce and alternative energy measurements is toe (tons oil equivalent). A ton oil equivalent is equal to 4.187 X 10^10 Joules.

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-energyunits.htm

For largely historical reasons, oil is still sold and discussed volumetrically, as in "barrels of oil." However this is commercially dubious since the actual energy value of oil, like every other chemical substance, is not tied to its volume but to its weight. The density of oil in a hot Saudi Arabian desert is quite different from its density on a Chicago fuel truck in the dead of winter. A "barrel" of oil placed in a drum in Saudi Arabia will therefore be less than a barrel in the Chicago winter without anyone adding or removing anything.

I agree with the rest of your statements however. As I said in other posts in related threads, biologically derived fuels are palliative. Still they have a role to play, especially in a transition role.

People continually act as if there needs to be some kind of magic bullet that will replace 100% of oil with one fuel that as widely applied as are petroleum based fuels. This is actually immediately impossible although for the long term some options like nuclear produced DME suggest themselves.

Still, all things considered, a concerned citizen today would have really just one practical option today should he wish to have a solar powered car: A B100 biodiesel fueled diesel car or truck.

[whistle]

5. Thanks, I was doing the mental masturbation thing, but it really...

...does come down to Americans waste a hell of a lot of energy and we do it with such indifference to the rest of humanity. Social security be damned, when it comes to energy, Americans really believe they are entitled and that the rest of the world owes us!

[amandabeech]

6. Our appetite for petroleum is 20 million barrels a day.

Transportation is by far the most common use of it, and it is the use that is most difficult to replace.

Obviously, we could cut down considerably on use by, for example, using more fuel efficient vehicles and replacing more long-distance trucking with rail transport. I won't go into the myriad other means by which we could greatly reduce our use of oil for transportation.

The point is that we don't have to replace all our energy use with bio-diesel, ethanol or other carbon-neutral fuels, only a portion of them related mostly to transportation.

[phantom power]

7. Those figures indicate that we will probably need to manufacture fuels

for applications like transportation. Unless somebody makes a quantum leap in some other energy-storage technology. So far, the effectiveness of storing chemical energy in liquid hydrocarbons has proven very hard to beat.

[amandabeech]

8. Yes, it will be very, very difficult to come up with anything like

a quarter of liquid transport fuels that we use today. Couple that with population growth, and I think that one starts to see a very different type of life.

We can substitute electricity for liquid fuels to some extent, if we can come up with the electricity. To my mind, I think that means increasing the amount of nuclear power as well as maximizing renewables, off-peak electricity use and electrical energy storage.

Electricity can substitute directly, as in electric and pluggable hybrid vehicles and electric trains of various types. Generating hydrogen via electrolysis, and storing and transporting it, is a very inefficient and technically difficult proposition. I see hydrogen used as an electrical storage battery and powering hybrid city buses commuter rail, and possibly short-haul bus and passenger rail trips of 150 miles or less.

[NNadir]

9. Population growth is the elephant on the table.

The world is far beyond its carrying capacity, and this actually has very little to do with energy so much as it has to do with available habitat.

I don't agree with the statement that it is difficult to come up with the volume of "liquid" transport fuels that are used today. It is really just a matter of price. We live in the golden age of chemistry and can make just about any form of carbon based fuel we desire, given the energy. The real question is what fuel will we choose and will we have the time to choose it.