Biodiesel
Threads - Biodiesel
On 10/12/2007 Jim Edwards wrote:
In the National Interest yesterday Jonathon Thwaites explained how the system he has developed at UWA for producing biodiesel fuel is far superior to anything that big oil can do with ethanol or hydrogen powered vehicles. Bob Park also comments on the moves by the Bush administration to push for more ethanol production.
http://www.sustainability.fm.uwa.edu.au/welcome/biodiesel
http://www.bobpark.org/
It is to be hoped that the new government will not be as subservient to the global energy corporations as the last one was and will allow more production of home-grown biodiesel as a matter of urgency.
Toby Fiander replied:
yes!
... although the efficiency of alcohol production is quite different if
you use something other than poorly grown corn. Even average corn
yields in Australia would probably mean that the energy alance would be
quite different, and using something other than corn would be a good
idea.
But
the problem in Australia is that the manufacturing plants are small and
having one big enough to make it efficient in terms of its own energy
use is a problem if you are starting from a low base.
Were
Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point out at
the best potential methods of alcohol production are probably based on
technology that does not yet exist other than in laboratories.
As you point out, biodiesel production looks promising.
Ray Stephens added:
Just for the record, as a mass for mass comparison the energy output from methane is superior to that from diesel (bio or fossil), LPG, (propane and butane), octane and benzene.
Methane is also almost 50 times the greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide, volume to volume, which makes its reaction products of CO2 and H2O better than the original gas as paths toward greenhouse gas reduction.
Methane is fully renewable from everything from human and animal sewerage to garbage, as well as a being present as a common component of coal and crude oil reserves.
From what I can gather its sole disadvantage as a renewable and substitutefuel to burn (given that burning is the no 1 problem anyway...on the basis
of the leprechaun on your shoulder telling you to burn things), is that
methane doesn't liquefy without freezing and containment for use is likely
to require compression of the gas as opposed to LPG type liquid storage.
Use of methane reduces at least two problems, and it also saves sacking
forests to plant palms for oil, or sacking anything else for the sake of the
4 wheeled cockroach and their self centred drivers.
A bit start in the "diesel stakes" would also be making SUVs and 4WD 10
times more expensive for "Toorak Cowboys" and other species of so-sponsored
urban farmers, and providing cut prices for those who actually need a
truck....
But I'm sure no one is going to let me poop in their pig trough.
Morris Gray commented:
On 10 Dec 2007 at 14:31, Toby Fiander wrote about Re: Biodiesel
> Were Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point
> out at the best potential methods of alcohol production are probably
> based on technology that does not yet exist other than in
> laboratories.
No sooner said than done!
(If
they were here they would suggest allocating 248 billion dollars for an
exploratory mission into deep space to find another planet that had oil
that gave off oxygen and Jack Daniels when burnt in a SUV; but, I
digress...)
The
US has passed an energy bill. Quote: ".....the bill also provides tax
incentives to increase ethanol production sevenfold in 15 years.
Two-thirds of that must be cellulosic, even though a practical
cellulosic ethanol process does not yet exist."
http://www.bobpark.org/
How apropos!
"Does
not exist..." Well, at least the Universe is still expanding and
according to latest scientific thought things pop in and out of
existence at the drop of an observation and among those should surely
be another dark, or zero-point energy there for the taking. (If you
don't actually look at it of course).
What
is (or could be) cellulosic ethanol you might ask? Check out Wikipedia
yourself; the short answer is that some of the more popular cellulosic
materials for this non-existent ethanol production is; "corn stover,
switchgrass, miscanthus and woodchip." Woodchip?
You
get the 'corn stover' from the bio-packaging and vertical transport
material that corn is delivered in when accessed from the earth using
water, chemicals, and diesel fuel.... Oh yes, I almost forgot, you get
corn as a by-product. Corn can also be turned into ethanol.
Those
perpetual motion affectionatos among us will quickly grasp that these
are the first turns being wound on the armature of the motor that will
drive the generator that will power the motor...
This
is almost too good to believe. Still, it is absolutely true that both
the bio-mass to create cellulosic ethanol and it's waste product, corn,
can both be used to create ethanol.
Those
skeptics among you, who would quickly point out that this whole
perpetual process was originally started with diesel, water, and
chemicals can easily be silenced. You see; once the process is started
with diesel it can easily be maintained by the ethanol that the process
produces.
Water
is everywhere and free. Chemicals are everywhere and easily absorbed by
most living entities. Non-living [dead] entities are also an important
and fundamental source of these same chemicals; for they can be
recycled forever within the bio-system without the restrictions
dictated by the second law of thermo-dynamics; for the dead do not
consume resources; but, instead become net suppliers of the products
that brought about their demise.
There
is a possible down-side though that I should point out. Corn is eatable
and, as such, may be plundered in the dead of night by hungry humans
who do not realize that corn is a waste product required to be used to
create ethanol to power 'Taliban Tanks'; called in the western world;
SUVs.
These
SUVs are used by skinny bobbed-hair blondes to drive their asthmatic,
ADHD, drug-ridden, useless excuses for life forms 300 metres to school
and as such; represent the friction loss that puts pay to any hope for
a self-sustaining perpetual fuel supply system.
However,
I'd never want it be said that I criticize without offering a solution
to any problem I identify. Doing so though requires separating the
wheat from the chaif. (I hesitate to inform you that these both can be
converted to ethanol and could possibly be the extra energy required to
keep our perpetual Cornpone mandala a'turning and will be the subject
of another missive.)
Careful
analysis has revealed that this whole process, from top to bottom and
side to side, was to create CO(subscript)2 as the final product often
found wafting around the outside a government subsidized private
school.
I
will admit that the following method creates only about .0715% less
CO(subscript)2; but, it does cut out a lot of the middle men. I know
you will be surprised at the simplicity of my plan.
Simply
plant the corn and when it has reached maturity, let it dry for a week
or two insitu; at the right moment torch the whole lot and watch it
burn.
This
represents an efficient and direct way of creating green house gases
without the addition of unnecessary diversionary processes.
On
another matter...for those of you who are patiently awaiting my report
about the wisdom of using nuclear radiation for boiling water (to power
the steam engines for electricity production) must understand that here
in Australia, we are struggling with a shortage of water to generate
the steam to power the generators that are needed to power the
desailination plants that are to provide the water for the electricity
production to power the plants to provide the water..... I
apologize.... we are working on it.
For
those west of the roaring forties with all these interesting energy
replacing ideas that could bring us relief - I can only ask you -
please stop pissing into the wind.
Ray Stephens replied:
Chemicals are everywhere and easily absorbed by most living entities.
Not without cost Morris, and chemicals out of place and in high enough
concentration tend to be as fatal as saponification to the sinkproof safety
of duck's feathers.
In the instance of the "biodegradability" of some things, how long have you
got, given that it takes a lot longer to convert a coral reef into limestone
than it does to turn limestone into plaster, or to convert algal bloom into
crude oil and back again from landfill plastic?
David Bridgham responded:
Toby Fiander wrote:
>> Were Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point
>> out at the best potential methods of alcohol production are
>> probably based on technology that does not yet exist other than in
>> laboratories.
If I am who you refer to as Brian's mate, I'm still around. I just tend to be rather quiet when I have nothing to say.
I
have a neighbor who's a Darthmouth professor working on cellulosic
ethanol production, and what I hear from him is that the technology
doesn't exist yet.
>> As you point out, biodiesel production looks promising.
Especially
producing biodiesel from seawater algae. Making fuel from food seems a
fools venture, but out seawater ponds perhaps not so crazy.
There's
also this process of Thermal Depolymerization. I've heard mixed reports
and am not sure if it's real, it's useful, it's a scam, or just what.
Jim Edwards answered:
According
to Wikipedia thermal depolymerization uses stuff like turkey waste and
involves the expenditure of energy in the heating process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Depolymerization
This
seems to be quite different from the process by which Jonathon Thwaites
gets the biodiesel he is using in his ute (pickup), which uses waste
cooking oil from restaurants, methanol and a little KOH.
http://www.sustainability.fm.uwa.edu.au/welcome/biodiesel/jonathons_biodiesel
With
TDP the problems seem to be obtaining the waste products which are also
used for making cattle feed, and complaints from the neighbours about
the smell. The UWA process has problems too, but they are mainly those
of bureaucratic red tape created mainly to protect the petroleum
industry from competition.
David Bridgham replied:
They're entirely different. No relation whatsoever. If I somehow implied they were similar, I apologize for the confusion.
Gary Dalrymple wrote:
Am I missing something?
The
reports of older technologies of 'biofeuls' that I recall were mostly
about claims that some scientist had come up with a process at a
furious temperature pressure regimes of converting common waste
materials into liquid fuels. These were of the nature of 'Funny old
World' stories because oil was cheap and these processes were so energy
intensive - for small batch sizes as to be interesting but an
impractical way of disposing of mass waste products.
With
the furious temperature pressure regimes of 'Hot Rocks' or Solar
Thermal, wouldn't it make as much sense to use this energy to subject
'lawn clippings' and other organic wastes (otherwise to Landfill) to
furious temperature pressure regimes to render most of the the material
inert and some by-product of Hydrocarbons, rather than in effect
brewing Rum or Whisky and distilling it off for ethanol with
inefficiencies and large by-product / waste streams and diverting
'edible fuel's?
For that matter, even coal into liquid fuels or C02 and H20 into Methane etc
This might sustain part of our 'unsustainable' lifestyle a bit longer, with Kyoto observing economies?
Thinking of selling my coal shares only well after Mr Iemma gives away the Coal munching NSW Power Industry.
Gerald Cairns added:
In
1972 we set out to demonstrate what could be done with advanced
management of intensively housed animals at least part time on a
cyclical basis. part of the plan was to develop environmentally
friendly methods of dealing with the excrement and turning it into
protein and fuels, both diesel and methane using algae. Well we got as
far as producing lots of excrement (heaps) and even constructed a
couple of prototype digesters before the bastard thieving pollies
trashed the Project. We also began some recycling involving vegetable
materials grown on excrement indirectly. Such is the interest in
innovation of government in Australia and not much has changed over the
years. I doubt I will be doing anything new in Australia with our new
innovations, they are being redirect overseas. Sad for all those Aussie
citizens who try so hard to make the bastards responsible. We had a
whole raft of innovations that were trashed over that ten years from
1972 to 1982 many are the sort of innovations we now see the
bureaucrats and pollies puffing their chests out and proclaiming what
we must now all comply with as though this was something new.
Over
the last 20 years or so my special community little "friends" can
digest thick diesel sump oil in as little as as 3-6 weeks. They have
just been allowed to exist awaiting some encouragement from those who
profess to manage the Country but don't so these are also likely to end
up in Europe in the near future with other of our technologies. Should
we bring the profits back here? Not Bloody Likely!
Ray riposted:
http://www.fuellesspower.com/water2.htm
..or you could run a car on HHO....
Jim Edwards answered:
Do you remember when Joh Bjelke-Petersen was running Queensland and was taken in by some con-man who said he could build a car to run on water? All he needed was a few million taxpayer dollars to get started. What ever happened about that scam?
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-08/934767269.Eg.r.html
Jim
Still waiting for an investigation into the LPG rip-off.
Ray replied:
On 10/12/2007 Jim Edwards wrote:
In the National Interest yesterday Jonathon Thwaites explained how the system he has developed at UWA for producing biodiesel fuel is far superior to anything that big oil can do with ethanol or hydrogen powered vehicles. Bob Park also comments on the moves by the Bush administration to push for more ethanol production.
http://www.sustainability.fm.uwa.edu.au/welcome/biodiesel
http://www.bobpark.org/
It is to be hoped that the new government will not be as subservient to the global energy corporations as the last one was and will allow more production of home-grown biodiesel as a matter of urgency.
Toby Fiander replied:
yes!
... although the efficiency of alcohol production is quite different if
you use something other than poorly grown corn. Even average corn
yields in Australia would probably mean that the energy alance would be
quite different, and using something other than corn would be a good
idea.
But
the problem in Australia is that the manufacturing plants are small and
having one big enough to make it efficient in terms of its own energy
use is a problem if you are starting from a low base.
Were
Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point out at
the best potential methods of alcohol production are probably based on
technology that does not yet exist other than in laboratories.
As you point out, biodiesel production looks promising.
Ray Stephens added:
Just for the record, as a mass for mass comparison the energy output
from methane is superior to that from diesel (bio or fossil), LPG,
(propane and butane), octane and benzene.
Methane is also almost 50 times the greenhouse gas than is carbon
dioxide, volume to volume, which makes its reaction products of CO2 and H2O better than the original gas as paths toward greenhouse gas reduction.
Methane is fully renewable from everything from human and animal
sewerage to garbage, as well as a being present as a common component
of coal and crude oil reserves.
From what I can gather its sole disadvantage as a renewable and substitutefuel to burn (given that burning is the no 1 problem anyway...on the basis
of the leprechaun on your shoulder telling you to burn things), is that
methane doesn't liquefy without freezing and containment for use is likely
to require compression of the gas as opposed to LPG type liquid storage.
Use of methane reduces at least two problems, and it also saves sacking
forests to plant palms for oil, or sacking anything else for the sake of the
4 wheeled cockroach and their self centred drivers.
A bit start in the "diesel stakes" would also be making SUVs and 4WD 10
times more expensive for "Toorak Cowboys" and other species of so-sponsored
urban farmers, and providing cut prices for those who actually need a
truck....
But I'm sure no one is going to let me poop in their pig trough.
Morris Gray commented:
On 10 Dec 2007 at 14:31, Toby Fiander wrote about Re: Biodiesel
> Were Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point
> out at the best potential methods of alcohol production are probably
> based on technology that does not yet exist other than in
> laboratories.
No sooner said than done!
(If
they were here they would suggest allocating 248 billion dollars for an
exploratory mission into deep space to find another planet that had oil
that gave off oxygen and Jack Daniels when burnt in a SUV; but, I
digress...)
The
US has passed an energy bill. Quote: ".....the bill also provides tax
incentives to increase ethanol production sevenfold in 15 years.
Two-thirds of that must be cellulosic, even though a practical
cellulosic ethanol process does not yet exist."
http://www.bobpark.org/
How apropos!
"Does
not exist..." Well, at least the Universe is still expanding and
according to latest scientific thought things pop in and out of
existence at the drop of an observation and among those should surely
be another dark, or zero-point energy there for the taking. (If you
don't actually look at it of course).
What
is (or could be) cellulosic ethanol you might ask? Check out Wikipedia
yourself; the short answer is that some of the more popular cellulosic
materials for this non-existent ethanol production is; "corn stover,
switchgrass, miscanthus and woodchip." Woodchip?
You
get the 'corn stover' from the bio-packaging and vertical transport
material that corn is delivered in when accessed from the earth using
water, chemicals, and diesel fuel.... Oh yes, I almost forgot, you get
corn as a by-product. Corn can also be turned into ethanol.
Those
perpetual motion affectionatos among us will quickly grasp that these
are the first turns being wound on the armature of the motor that will
drive the generator that will power the motor...
This
is almost too good to believe. Still, it is absolutely true that both
the bio-mass to create cellulosic ethanol and it's waste product, corn,
can both be used to create ethanol.
Those
skeptics among you, who would quickly point out that this whole
perpetual process was originally started with diesel, water, and
chemicals can easily be silenced. You see; once the process is started
with diesel it can easily be maintained by the ethanol that the process
produces.
Water
is everywhere and free. Chemicals are everywhere and easily absorbed by
most living entities. Non-living [dead] entities are also an important
and fundamental source of these same chemicals; for they can be
recycled forever within the bio-system without the restrictions
dictated by the second law of thermo-dynamics; for the dead do not
consume resources; but, instead become net suppliers of the products
that brought about their demise.
There
is a possible down-side though that I should point out. Corn is eatable
and, as such, may be plundered in the dead of night by hungry humans
who do not realize that corn is a waste product required to be used to
create ethanol to power 'Taliban Tanks'; called in the western world;
SUVs.
These
SUVs are used by skinny bobbed-hair blondes to drive their asthmatic,
ADHD, drug-ridden, useless excuses for life forms 300 metres to school
and as such; represent the friction loss that puts pay to any hope for
a self-sustaining perpetual fuel supply system.
However,
I'd never want it be said that I criticize without offering a solution
to any problem I identify. Doing so though requires separating the
wheat from the chaif. (I hesitate to inform you that these both can be
converted to ethanol and could possibly be the extra energy required to
keep our perpetual Cornpone mandala a'turning and will be the subject
of another missive.)
Careful
analysis has revealed that this whole process, from top to bottom and
side to side, was to create CO(subscript)2 as the final product often
found wafting around the outside a government subsidized private
school.
I
will admit that the following method creates only about .0715% less
CO(subscript)2; but, it does cut out a lot of the middle men. I know
you will be surprised at the simplicity of my plan.
Simply
plant the corn and when it has reached maturity, let it dry for a week
or two insitu; at the right moment torch the whole lot and watch it
burn.
This
represents an efficient and direct way of creating green house gases
without the addition of unnecessary diversionary processes.
On
another matter...for those of you who are patiently awaiting my report
about the wisdom of using nuclear radiation for boiling water (to power
the steam engines for electricity production) must understand that here
in Australia, we are struggling with a shortage of water to generate
the steam to power the generators that are needed to power the
desailination plants that are to provide the water for the electricity
production to power the plants to provide the water..... I
apologize.... we are working on it.
For
those west of the roaring forties with all these interesting energy
replacing ideas that could bring us relief - I can only ask you -
please stop pissing into the wind.
Ray Stephens replied:
Chemicals are everywhere and easily absorbed by most living entities.
Not without cost Morris, and chemicals out of place and in high enough
concentration tend to be as fatal as saponification to the sinkproof safety
of duck's feathers.
In the instance of the "biodegradability" of some things, how long have you
got, given that it takes a lot longer to convert a coral reef into limestone
than it does to turn limestone into plaster, or to convert algal bloom into
crude oil and back again from landfill plastic?
David Bridgham responded:
Toby Fiander wrote:
>> Were Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point
>> out at the best potential methods of alcohol production are
>> probably based on technology that does not yet exist other than in
>> laboratories.
If I am who you refer to as Brian's mate, I'm still around. I just tend to be rather quiet when I have nothing to say.
I
have a neighbor who's a Darthmouth professor working on cellulosic
ethanol production, and what I hear from him is that the technology
doesn't exist yet.
>> As you point out, biodiesel production looks promising.
Especially
producing biodiesel from seawater algae. Making fuel from food seems a
fools venture, but out seawater ponds perhaps not so crazy.
There's
also this process of Thermal Depolymerization. I've heard mixed reports
and am not sure if it's real, it's useful, it's a scam, or just what.
Jim Edwards answered:
According
to Wikipedia thermal depolymerization uses stuff like turkey waste and
involves the expenditure of energy in the heating process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Depolymerization
This
seems to be quite different from the process by which Jonathon Thwaites
gets the biodiesel he is using in his ute (pickup), which uses waste
cooking oil from restaurants, methanol and a little KOH.
http://www.sustainability.fm.uwa.edu.au/welcome/biodiesel/jonathons_biodiesel
With
TDP the problems seem to be obtaining the waste products which are also
used for making cattle feed, and complaints from the neighbours about
the smell. The UWA process has problems too, but they are mainly those
of bureaucratic red tape created mainly to protect the petroleum
industry from competition.
David Bridgham replied:
They're entirely different. No relation whatsoever. If I somehow implied they were similar, I apologize for the confusion.
Gary Dalrymple wrote:
Am I missing something?
The
reports of older technologies of 'biofeuls' that I recall were mostly
about claims that some scientist had come up with a process at a
furious temperature pressure regimes of converting common waste
materials into liquid fuels. These were of the nature of 'Funny old
World' stories because oil was cheap and these processes were so energy
intensive - for small batch sizes as to be interesting but an
impractical way of disposing of mass waste products.
With
the furious temperature pressure regimes of 'Hot Rocks' or Solar
Thermal, wouldn't it make as much sense to use this energy to subject
'lawn clippings' and other organic wastes (otherwise to Landfill) to
furious temperature pressure regimes to render most of the the material
inert and some by-product of Hydrocarbons, rather than in effect
brewing Rum or Whisky and distilling it off for ethanol with
inefficiencies and large by-product / waste streams and diverting
'edible fuel's?
For that matter, even coal into liquid fuels or C02 and H20 into Methane etc
This might sustain part of our 'unsustainable' lifestyle a bit longer, with Kyoto observing economies?
Thinking of selling my coal shares only well after Mr Iemma gives away the Coal munching NSW Power Industry.
Gerald Cairns added:
In
1972 we set out to demonstrate what could be done with advanced
management of intensively housed animals at least part time on a
cyclical basis. part of the plan was to develop environmentally
friendly methods of dealing with the excrement and turning it into
protein and fuels, both diesel and methane using algae. Well we got as
far as producing lots of excrement (heaps) and even constructed a
couple of prototype digesters before the bastard thieving pollies
trashed the Project. We also began some recycling involving vegetable
materials grown on excrement indirectly. Such is the interest in
innovation of government in Australia and not much has changed over the
years. I doubt I will be doing anything new in Australia with our new
innovations, they are being redirect overseas. Sad for all those Aussie
citizens who try so hard to make the bastards responsible. We had a
whole raft of innovations that were trashed over that ten years from
1972 to 1982 many are the sort of innovations we now see the
bureaucrats and pollies puffing their chests out and proclaiming what
we must now all comply with as though this was something new.
Over
the last 20 years or so my special community little "friends" can
digest thick diesel sump oil in as little as as 3-6 weeks. They have
just been allowed to exist awaiting some encouragement from those who
profess to manage the Country but don't so these are also likely to end
up in Europe in the near future with other of our technologies. Should
we bring the profits back here? Not Bloody Likely!
Ray riposted:
http://www.fuellesspower.com/water2.htm
..or you could run a car on HHO....
Jim Edwards answered:
Do you remember when Joh Bjelke-Petersen was running Queensland and was
taken in by some con-man who said he could build a car to run on water?
All he needed was a few million taxpayer dollars to get started. What
ever happened about that scam?
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-08/934767269.Eg.r.html
Jim
Still waiting for an investigation into the LPG rip-off.
Ray replied:
On 10/12/2007 Jim Edwards wrote:
In the National Interest yesterday Jonathon Thwaites explained how the system he has developed at UWA for producing biodiesel fuel is far superior to anything that big oil can do with ethanol or hydrogen powered vehicles. Bob Park also comments on the moves by the Bush administration to push for more ethanol production.
http://www.sustainability.fm.uwa.edu.au/welcome/biodiesel
http://www.bobpark.org/
It is to be hoped that the new government will not be as subservient to the global energy corporations as the last one was and will allow more production of home-grown biodiesel as a matter of urgency.
Toby Fiander replied:
yes!
... although the efficiency of alcohol production is quite different if
you use something other than poorly grown corn. Even average corn
yields in Australia would probably mean that the energy alance would be
quite different, and using something other than corn would be a good
idea.
But
the problem in Australia is that the manufacturing plants are small and
having one big enough to make it efficient in terms of its own energy
use is a problem if you are starting from a low base.
Were
Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point out at
the best potential methods of alcohol production are probably based on
technology that does not yet exist other than in laboratories.
As you point out, biodiesel production looks promising.
Ray Stephens added:
Just for the record, as a mass for mass comparison the energy output from methane is superior to that from diesel (bio or fossil), LPG, (propane and butane), octane and benzene.
Methane is also almost 50 times the greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide, volume to volume, which makes its reaction products of CO2 and H2O better than the original gas as paths toward greenhouse gas reduction.
Methane is fully renewable from everything from human and animal sewerage to garbage, as well as a being present as a common component of coal and crude oil reserves.
From what I can gather its sole disadvantage as a renewable and substitutefuel to burn (given that burning is the no 1 problem anyway...on the basis
of the leprechaun on your shoulder telling you to burn things), is that
methane doesn't liquefy without freezing and containment for use is likely
to require compression of the gas as opposed to LPG type liquid storage.
Use of methane reduces at least two problems, and it also saves sacking
forests to plant palms for oil, or sacking anything else for the sake of the
4 wheeled cockroach and their self centred drivers.
A bit start in the "diesel stakes" would also be making SUVs and 4WD 10
times more expensive for "Toorak Cowboys" and other species of so-sponsored
urban farmers, and providing cut prices for those who actually need a
truck....
But I'm sure no one is going to let me poop in their pig trough.
Morris Gray commented:
On 10 Dec 2007 at 14:31, Toby Fiander wrote about Re: Biodiesel
> Were Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point
> out at the best potential methods of alcohol production are probably
> based on technology that does not yet exist other than in
> laboratories.
No sooner said than done!
(If
they were here they would suggest allocating 248 billion dollars for an
exploratory mission into deep space to find another planet that had oil
that gave off oxygen and Jack Daniels when burnt in a SUV; but, I
digress...)
The
US has passed an energy bill. Quote: ".....the bill also provides tax
incentives to increase ethanol production sevenfold in 15 years.
Two-thirds of that must be cellulosic, even though a practical
cellulosic ethanol process does not yet exist."
http://www.bobpark.org/
How apropos!
"Does
not exist..." Well, at least the Universe is still expanding and
according to latest scientific thought things pop in and out of
existence at the drop of an observation and among those should surely
be another dark, or zero-point energy there for the taking. (If you
don't actually look at it of course).
What
is (or could be) cellulosic ethanol you might ask? Check out Wikipedia
yourself; the short answer is that some of the more popular cellulosic
materials for this non-existent ethanol production is; "corn stover,
switchgrass, miscanthus and woodchip." Woodchip?
You
get the 'corn stover' from the bio-packaging and vertical transport
material that corn is delivered in when accessed from the earth using
water, chemicals, and diesel fuel.... Oh yes, I almost forgot, you get
corn as a by-product. Corn can also be turned into ethanol.
Those
perpetual motion affectionatos among us will quickly grasp that these
are the first turns being wound on the armature of the motor that will
drive the generator that will power the motor...
This
is almost too good to believe. Still, it is absolutely true that both
the bio-mass to create cellulosic ethanol and it's waste product, corn,
can both be used to create ethanol.
Those
skeptics among you, who would quickly point out that this whole
perpetual process was originally started with diesel, water, and
chemicals can easily be silenced. You see; once the process is started
with diesel it can easily be maintained by the ethanol that the process
produces.
Water
is everywhere and free. Chemicals are everywhere and easily absorbed by
most living entities. Non-living [dead] entities are also an important
and fundamental source of these same chemicals; for they can be
recycled forever within the bio-system without the restrictions
dictated by the second law of thermo-dynamics; for the dead do not
consume resources; but, instead become net suppliers of the products
that brought about their demise.
There
is a possible down-side though that I should point out. Corn is eatable
and, as such, may be plundered in the dead of night by hungry humans
who do not realize that corn is a waste product required to be used to
create ethanol to power 'Taliban Tanks'; called in the western world;
SUVs.
These
SUVs are used by skinny bobbed-hair blondes to drive their asthmatic,
ADHD, drug-ridden, useless excuses for life forms 300 metres to school
and as such; represent the friction loss that puts pay to any hope for
a self-sustaining perpetual fuel supply system.
However,
I'd never want it be said that I criticize without offering a solution
to any problem I identify. Doing so though requires separating the
wheat from the chaif. (I hesitate to inform you that these both can be
converted to ethanol and could possibly be the extra energy required to
keep our perpetual Cornpone mandala a'turning and will be the subject
of another missive.)
Careful
analysis has revealed that this whole process, from top to bottom and
side to side, was to create CO(subscript)2 as the final product often
found wafting around the outside a government subsidized private
school.
I
will admit that the following method creates only about .0715% less
CO(subscript)2; but, it does cut out a lot of the middle men. I know
you will be surprised at the simplicity of my plan.
Simply
plant the corn and when it has reached maturity, let it dry for a week
or two insitu; at the right moment torch the whole lot and watch it
burn.
This
represents an efficient and direct way of creating green house gases
without the addition of unnecessary diversionary processes.
On
another matter...for those of you who are patiently awaiting my report
about the wisdom of using nuclear radiation for boiling water (to power
the steam engines for electricity production) must understand that here
in Australia, we are struggling with a shortage of water to generate
the steam to power the generators that are needed to power the
desailination plants that are to provide the water for the electricity
production to power the plants to provide the water..... I
apologize.... we are working on it.
For
those west of the roaring forties with all these interesting energy
replacing ideas that could bring us relief - I can only ask you -
please stop pissing into the wind.
Ray Stephens replied:
Chemicals are everywhere and easily absorbed by most living entities.
Not without cost Morris, and chemicals out of place and in high enough
concentration tend to be as fatal as saponification to the sinkproof safety
of duck's feathers.
In the instance of the "biodegradability" of some things, how long have you
got, given that it takes a lot longer to convert a coral reef into limestone
than it does to turn limestone into plaster, or to convert algal bloom into
crude oil and back again from landfill plastic?
David Bridgham responded:
Toby Fiander wrote:
>> Were Brian Lloyd or his mate here, one of them would probably point
>> out at the best potential methods of alcohol production are
>> probably based on technology that does not yet exist other than in
>> laboratories.
If I am who you refer to as Brian's mate, I'm still around. I just tend to be rather quiet when I have nothing to say.
I
have a neighbor who's a Darthmouth professor working on cellulosic
ethanol production, and what I hear from him is that the technology
doesn't exist yet.
>> As you point out, biodiesel production looks promising.
Especially
producing biodiesel from seawater algae. Making fuel from food seems a
fools venture, but out seawater ponds perhaps not so crazy.
There's
also this process of Thermal Depolymerization. I've heard mixed reports
and am not sure if it's real, it's useful, it's a scam, or just what.
Jim Edwards answered:
According
to Wikipedia thermal depolymerization uses stuff like turkey waste and
involves the expenditure of energy in the heating process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Depolymerization
This
seems to be quite different from the process by which Jonathon Thwaites
gets the biodiesel he is using in his ute (pickup), which uses waste
cooking oil from restaurants, methanol and a little KOH.
http://www.sustainability.fm.uwa.edu.au/welcome/biodiesel/jonathons_biodiesel
With
TDP the problems seem to be obtaining the waste products which are also
used for making cattle feed, and complaints from the neighbours about
the smell. The UWA process has problems too, but they are mainly those
of bureaucratic red tape created mainly to protect the petroleum
industry from competition.
David Bridgham replied:
They're entirely different. No relation whatsoever. If I somehow implied they were similar, I apologize for the confusion.
Gary Dalrymple wrote:
Am I missing something?
The
reports of older technologies of 'biofeuls' that I recall were mostly
about claims that some scientist had come up with a process at a
furious temperature pressure regimes of converting common waste
materials into liquid fuels. These were of the nature of 'Funny old
World' stories because oil was cheap and these processes were so energy
intensive - for small batch sizes as to be interesting but an
impractical way of disposing of mass waste products.
With
the furious temperature pressure regimes of 'Hot Rocks' or Solar
Thermal, wouldn't it make as much sense to use this energy to subject
'lawn clippings' and other organic wastes (otherwise to Landfill) to
furious temperature pressure regimes to render most of the the material
inert and some by-product of Hydrocarbons, rather than in effect
brewing Rum or Whisky and distilling it off for ethanol with
inefficiencies and large by-product / waste streams and diverting
'edible fuel's?
For that matter, even coal into liquid fuels or C02 and H20 into Methane etc
This might sustain part of our 'unsustainable' lifestyle a bit longer, with Kyoto observing economies?
Thinking of selling my coal shares only well after Mr Iemma gives away the Coal munching NSW Power Industry.
Gerald Cairns added:
In
1972 we set out to demonstrate what could be done with advanced
management of intensively housed animals at least part time on a
cyclical basis. part of the plan was to develop environmentally
friendly methods of dealing with the excrement and turning it into
protein and fuels, both diesel and methane using algae. Well we got as
far as producing lots of excrement (heaps) and even constructed a
couple of prototype digesters before the bastard thieving pollies
trashed the Project. We also began some recycling involving vegetable
materials grown on excrement indirectly. Such is the interest in
innovation of government in Australia and not much has changed over the
years. I doubt I will be doing anything new in Australia with our new
innovations, they are being redirect overseas. Sad for all those Aussie
citizens who try so hard to make the bastards responsible. We had a
whole raft of innovations that were trashed over that ten years from
1972 to 1982 many are the sort of innovations we now see the
bureaucrats and pollies puffing their chests out and proclaiming what
we must now all comply with as though this was something new.
Over
the last 20 years or so my special community little "friends" can
digest thick diesel sump oil in as little as as 3-6 weeks. They have
just been allowed to exist awaiting some encouragement from those who
profess to manage the Country but don't so these are also likely to end
up in Europe in the near future with other of our technologies. Should
we bring the profits back here? Not Bloody Likely!
Ray riposted:
http://www.fuellesspower.com/water2.htm
..or you could run a car on HHO....
Jim Edwards answered:
Do
you remember when Joh Bjelke-Petersen was running Queensland and was
taken in by some con-man who said he could build a car to run on water?
All he needed was a few million taxpayer dollars to get started. What
ever happened about that scam?
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-08/934767269.Eg.r.html
Jim
Still waiting for an investigation into the LPG rip-off.
Ray replied:
I reckon the same thing happened to the idea as that which often happens to things which seem too good to be true, as with other perpetual motion machines.
As we know, the big problem with ground state substances like water and carbon dioxide is that to get any energy out of them molecularly one has to push their potential energy up there that far first, which somewhat defeats the purpose (especially when the check sum almost always wastes energy between steps and totals sum negative).
Water and carbon dioxide could probably both be reduced to their more energy convenient atom components with a nice strong blast of maser or gamma 'laser', or even some nicely energetic ultraviolet perhaps, but however it is done, short of 'magic nanobots' feeding on sunlight, if it looks too good to be true it almost certainly is.
At this point in time, the best CO2 processors are still chloroplasts and water, more or less a proton when it is liquid, finds its most relaxed state is mostly unburnable.
Unfortunately a skateboard with a sail and an onboard 'coyote and roadrunner' style wind fan, won't go anywhere on the flat without being pushed by something else.
Gerald Cairnes commented:
It
was a "Brick" in the form of Milan Brick who was also involved in
cancer faith healing scams in the Philippines if my memory serves me
correctly.
and
Here
is a link to a page on our Website that relates to reforming PET not
into base chemical or oil but into high value added products. We
achieved this in 1985-6 but no one was interested now I am too bloody
old to be bothered to keep feeding "pearls" to the swine. There is much
more to this story but that might one day get into book form if ever I
get the time to do it. The point here is that the process saved a lot
of energy by creating the known molecules by a new highly efficient
pathway and doing it with minimal waste. Not often you get ahead of the
game. :-)
http://www.cairnscorp.com/Effitec.htm
This
process was linked to silver recovery from waste X-Ray films (PET) and
the complimentary flow chart for that seems to have been lost off the
Website. Sometime I will try to replace it.
Robert Moonem responded:
Robert Moonen wrote:
Jim Edwards wrote:
In the National Interest yesterday Jonathon
Thwaites explained how the system he has developed at UWA for producing
biodiesel fuel is far superior to anything that big oil can do with
ethanol or hydrogen powered vehicles. Bob Park also comments on the
moves by the Bush administration to push for more ethanol production.
http://www.sustainability.fm.uwa.edu.au/welcome/biodiesel
Actually, I asked my brother about this enviro-named, Biodiesel on the
26/12/07 and his initial response was somewhat perplexing. His response
was not forthcoming to begin with, which struck me as strange;
eventually I got a response from him regarding the interaction b/w KOH
and long chain hydrocarbons.
This of course led me to the conclusion that I am now speaking of; WTF
call it biodiesel, is that just to keep the greenies happy?
and:
Oh yeah, and before some idiot comes back at me stating that it should be called Biodiesel because it uses waste cooking oil as its precursor, that is just ridiculous, it is simply an industrial process to re-use waste product from the domestic/metropolitan market.
Ray Stephens wrote:
call it biodiesel, is that just to keep the greenies happy?
It doesn't make this Greenie any happier.
Hydrocarbon is hydrocarbon, and I would frankly prefer to see burning them
as extinct as the crude oil deposits.
Afaict, all "biodiesel" is about Robert, is hedging bets against the time of
Peak Oil decline and Boycotting certain OPEC countries.
About as environmentally friendly as the 50 kilometres of coastal floating
plastic and other assorted garbage keeping company with dog guano en route
to Fiji from Sydney....
About as economy and ecology friendly as paying people $5000 to breed so
that we all have to pay out $100,000 minimum for their basic upkeep......
Robert Moonen replied:
Ah yes, it really needs to be renamed "Keep the b?st?rds honest diesel"
About as environmentally friendly as the 50 kilometres of coastal
floating plastic and other assorted garbage keeping company with dog
guano en route to Fiji from Sydney....
About as economy and ecology friendly as paying people $5000 to breed
so that we all have to pay out $100,000 minimum for their basic
upkeep......
Well, I'd rather be paying for homegrown citizens than importing them.
Even so our population needs to grow significantly, so I believe we
really have no other choice than immigration.
Ray Stephens commented:
Yes, it has to do with the taxpayer base; but the required increase is to
allow us to become competitive in this new fangled world economy, oh and
to prompt the pollies to invest in Australian invention.
Okay Robert, but none of that actually requires more people but rather,
better education and apprenticeship and placement for the people already
here, which strangely enough is a point which tends to mock the industrially
motivated fecundity of the local population when we're not performing at our
best with the numbers we have.
Apparently.
I zealously agree with your contention of much more R&D investment in this
country, because that would help provide placement for the highly trained
and skilled.
It might also help our stakes in the competitive global economy, if
"apprenticeship" became a much wider construct than trades, whereby
on-the-job training, the practical application of educated theory, followed
similar structures to legal and medical internships.
It would lower labour costs in research and development (not too far all ye
misers) by paying in kind with that all important job experience for the CV.
Robert, I don't think we need more people (not as if a military / defence
motive fits the magnitude of neighbouring populations) but we probably do
need to invest more in the ones we already have, and this is easier done for
25 million than for 50 million.
I may hope, I suppose, that by the time Australia's human population has
doubled half of them will be heading off to Mars. (Please!!)
Robert Moonem answered:
I think it is too late for us here, for the reasons you have mentioned.
But consider this if you will, we are a country almost the same size as
the US with less than 10% of the population and 100% if the
infrastructure cost.
Is it any wonder we are one of the most highly taxed of developed nations.
Ray Stephens replied:
The figures however compare more severely between their Mississippi River and our Murray River though, don't you think?
Similarly,
we have a substantially greater percentage of land area which is
desert. However, in spite of only being colonised for just
a bit less than half as long, we've still managed to ruin as much of
the place as they have.
Is it any wonder we are one of the most highly taxed of developed nations.
That Robert is because we're exceedingly high maintenance, somewhat
Ivory-towered pima donna, hugely wasteful of natural inorganic resources
(particularly water), and underachieving with human resources, and the thing
about taxation is not so much the amount that is excised, but how the
capital is spent by the collector.
Any 'social experiment today' which replicated the experience of the great
depression last century, to this spoilt mindset of people, would be as
disastrous as the proverbial moth to the flame.
Mostly because many priorities are upside down as the lazy or the pretty
packaging and the economics of garbage manufacturing.
We're middle-men between the junk food and the land fill.
IMO the existing order desperately requires psychiatric help.
Wolfie added:
I will quite happily consider certain options or ideas in most cases. but upping the population is utterly crazy.
Look at it this way...
You throw a party for 20 people, and suddenly you have 50 at your home, all expecting to be fed.
All the shops are shut, all the resources you have are in your home.
As you're contemplating this, one of the women give birth and now the baby wants to be fed too.
As monty-python-esque as this is, it's exactly what is happening on the planet right now.
And what I thought was the biggest joke recently was that we need to breed up more people for an aging population... now of course the new
and younger generation we bred are immune from getting old themselves, or are they? maybe they are, gosh almighty! they'll have to breed twice as many to look after the last wave of elderly.
And people swallow this crap.
simple rule... don't breed, it's environmentally the worst possible thing you can do. cut it off, wear a condom, turn gay... please don't breed.
also... if there's cities everywhere, where are the farms, where's the food coming from? will we have cows producing five times the milk living in highrise farms? oh comeon, what nonsense.
We will never have a politician say this because they know they'll get stoned alive.
So China and India have millions, fine... have you been to india and china? it's filthy and crowded and stinks.
Ray responded:
I
don't think prohibitive control of breeding will take off, and I
concede that someone has to do it or we will be an endangered species
in less than 100 years, and not that there would then be anyone to
regret anything, but....
Perhaps
a cross-culture insertion of the Islamic policy for polygamy, where the
husband can only have as many wives as he can afford to keep, could be
applied to the having of more than zero hildren?
A
degree in "Animal Husbandry" before providing a licence to breed (and
the antidote to the sterilising compound in the water) might not be out
of place either.
Anyone for a bit of benign eugenics with that?
Assay of potential parental DNA for wobbly bits?
Assuming of course that we don't need those wobbly bits.
There can be cures in poisons, so I guess there might be unseen bonuses in 2 heads as well.
Good night.
(I think, I'm on a roll...)
Robert Moonem commented:
I'm sorry Wolfie, but unfortunately the new world economy in it's present form dictates this as a necessity for survival of Australian manufacturing.
The trouble is we had been used to living off the sheeps back, that is now over and has been replaced largely by the present mining boom here, but that will also cease, what then???
Wolfie replied:
We may be in a lot of trouble, that's what.
And no matter what China is up to, in the end, you can't eat money.
and once in a while it's nice to get away from the city and go bush.
it's likely the bush won't be there one day.
Alan Emmerson noted:
If I recall correctly, several municipal rubbish dumps in Aust are extracting methane from the garbage decomposition and using it to produce electricity - notably Belconnen tip in Canberra.
Wolfie answered:
The could sell little funnels to be worn in ones underwear, and tell
people they're not green if they're not into beans.
Bumper stickers "Brrrppppttttt for the environment"
And yes, that's how you spell a fart.
Mark Lightfoot commented:
Huzzah for Canberra. Some more local renewable power is produced through a hydro generator on the main water supply pipeline for Canberra at Mount Stromlo and methane plants at waste landfill sites at Belconnen and Mugga Lane.
Toby Fiander replied:
yeah,
yeah... the Brickworks in Merrylands was operated on methane from the
landfill for years. That started long ago and then finished, too.
John Winckle added:
This is done on a large scale in progressive US states, unlike here it is planned for in advance of starting the dump.
