Scumming surface for fuel

www.denverpost.com ^ | 12/07/2006 | Steve Raabe

[Red Badger]

Now when someone calls you scum, you just say, "Thank You!" and smile........

[Red Badger]

Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.......

If you want on or off the DIESEL "KNOCK" LIST just FReepmail me........

This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......

[WideGlide]

They're going to make something at the brewery and only charge $2.68 per gallon for it? Where's my straw?

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I wonder if diesel fuel can be made from the stock certificates of bankrupt IPOs?

[gridlock]

So when big diesel SUVs are non-net-carbon emitting, do you think the enviro-weenies are going to cut them a break?

Puhleez. They'll just move the goal-posts again.

[Red Badger]

Cellu-losers to diesel?.........

[Jeff Chandler]

"We're facing two global challenges: depletion of our petroleum reserves and a buildup of greenhouse gases," said Bryan Willson, director of CSU's Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory.

Might as well play along. There's gold in them there lies.

[Argus]

"Soylent Green is PEOPLE!"

[thackney]

BTTT

[alloysteel]

Algae to Diesel fuel - how extraordinary.

Now it is not unheard of that Diesel fuel can get bacterial infestations, that turn the fuel back into some sort of gunk that absolutely cannot be sent through injector needles, or burn well if it does ignite.

Thermal depolymerization still has a lot of positives to recommend it. Even the extraction of oil shale seems to be a less difficult way to obtain energy. But this method of using algae to create the Diesel fuel might have some marginal value as a way to utilize what would otherwise be discarded byproducts (CO2 and heat).

[Red Badger]

http://www.greenstarusa.com/products/photos8.html

http://www.greenfuelonline.com/index.htm

[taxcontrol]

The process is expected to yield 8,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre

... per ... what? year, month, week, hour?

annually I suspect. Now lets see, the estimated demand for diesel is 2 to 3 million barrels per day. At 55 gallons per barrel that would give us a rough working number of about 125 million gallons per day (or roughly 45 Billion gallons/year). At 8,000 gallons per acre per year... we would need about 5.6 million acres to replace the exiting production.

That would be covered by a space of 100 miles by 100 miles (6.4 million acres - assuming some loss due to pipes, roads, power lines, etc). You could fit that inside Kansas or Oklahoma and still have room to spare. Heck, with some additional work I'm sure you could even put up some locations in the desert southwest and not cut into valuable farm land.

Not bad, at least far better than turning a land mass the size of Texas into soybean or peanuts for oil production.

[Red Badger]

There are much better yields from other algae diesel technologies, in the order of 10-15k gallons per acre per year, and that's just to start......

[JAKraig]

Don't laugh, this IS important news.

If you don't drive a diesel now you will soon.

Much of the Southwest desert is now useless, at 8,000 gallons per acre (@ $2.50 a gallon that is $20G's), it will become the most valuable farm land in the country. Once everybody starts getting into it the price of that diesel oil will come way down. Middle eastern oil will be near useless and pollution will not come from cars since they will now be green.

Already half of Europe drives on diesel much of it home grown vegetable oil, this is a much bigger news item than many of us think. I am watching it closely!

[wacko rightwinger]

So the production equipment costs $60k for an acre, and by their estimates an acre could produce about 6,000 gallons of diesel per year. That is $10/gallon for a year, or $1/gallon even spread over 10 years. That is just the cost of the reactor. Add in maintenance, overhead, labor, transportation, and there is no way, even over 20 years that it could cost-efficient.

[taxcontrol]

I had not heard of those. Do you have any references you can point me to? 15 to 16 thousand per year per acre would make the technology almost efficient enough to start to replace gasoline production... assuming a 40 mpg plus diesel vehicle was the standard.

It might even be possible to go back and revisit some of the steam car, external combustion engines to boost the mpg even further.

[Red Badger]

see # 11......

[Red Badger]

http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html#othercrops

[TKDietz]

"...we would need about 5.6 million acres to replace the exiting production."


That would be nothing. We already devote a lot more acreage than that to producing corn for ethanol. We'll soon have 20 million acres of corn being cultivated for ethanol production. If these guys can really produce 8,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre with reasonable production costs, the biodiesel industry will explode. One acre would be enough fuel for 32 of the standard 10,000 mile a year drivers if they drove 40 mile per gallon diesels. Ten million acres would be enough for 320 million of these drivers, or half that many who drive twice as many miles in a year or who drive big trucks that get half as many miles per gallon. This would be huge, a massive improvement over the 40 or 50 gallons or so of biodiesel they are currently getting from soybeans.

The problem with this technology will be production costs. The startup costs will be high, and my guess is ongoing costs will be high as well. Then again, it probably isn't easy or cheap to grow 200 acres of soybeans, which is about what you'd need to grow to equal just one acre of algae that produces 8,000 gallons of biodiesel a year. Super high yielding biofuel feedstocks probably will end up having much higher per acre production costs, but per gallon costs could be much lower in the end because it will take far fewer acres to produce a lot more fuel.

[patton]

Seems to me the cost analysis is incomplete - what will the coal-fired power plant pay you to scrub all the C02 out of their emissions? Also, the exhaust gas from the smokestack provides all the free heat you need, even in CO.