BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

Daer all, 

There are claims that up to 40% of semidry biomass can be converted providing much better biofuel than ethanol.

 The University of Wisconsin is doing research on this topic. It's still laboratory scale research, however.

I know of many researchers doing different chemical pathways to make various liquid fuels/industrial chem's. FPL is a crownjewel of research which sits on the campus of UWMadsion which is a R&D powerhouse in itself. Additionally, many various campus around the state are doing still other pathways. I was just @ UW SP biofuels conf (Isoprene- Reagan's favorite blue haze) and a UW EC/NanoRite facility. The amount of brute force being put on R&D of biofuels now is in the B's in Wisconsin alone.

DME, DMF... the world is gonna run on biofuel/abiotic-synfuels/synchems to order.

Slightly off topic... I was in a FabLab today that can make virtually anything. You come in there with an idea and for a few 100's$, you get coaching, IP help, biz plan help and prototype fablab network with Local, MIT, World experts all at your fingertips. Instant prototype, instant biz incubator, in weeks-not years. Innovation is alive and kicking in Wisconsin, in and out of biofuels.

Conifer (Pine) farming only uses ~ 50% of all the biomass in the harvest.

Corn farming only uses ~ 50% of all the biomass in the harvest.

Cocoa, cranberries (Erik), Coconut, cucumbers, currant and cantalope and that's just the C's.

~ 90% of all the bioproducts eventually digest into CO2 thru bio decomp pre, during (you might call it breathing) and post consumer 

Humans farm ~ 1/6 of all lands. The earth puts on more than 6x more biomass energy than humans total energy footprint. We can harvest ~ 100% of all the energy we harvest. Thus... if we do a good job of it, we can power ourselves.

Thus... the vast majority of human Ag production is going to eventually be turned into chem's like DMF. Its not a matter of IF, its a matter of WHEN. And it will be a very very large industry.

 Froggy,

(Joke on)

I finally figured out why you try to discourage people from researching algae - you want to stop the competition for your research project.

(Joke off)

If you remove all the corn stover every year, the fertility of the land will decline.  Likewise with your other examples.  We would need to devise a technique for restoring the fertility and humus of the land. 

Damir,

Seems to be still in the lab at this stage. Checked out what wikipedia had and some of the links seem to show the process is similar to production methods for petroleum and cost of production would be around 10x more than for transesterfication system. However DMF is not a diesel fuel.

Liberty, and all along I have thought Froggy was a big oil plant

Interesting thought though that if forestry and agbis only use 50% of their products, if the 50% "waste" was processed into DMF, there would still be a residual waste that could go back to the land. What the fertilizing value of that would be I have no idea - just a thought.

I wonder how much glucose/fructose remains in sugar cane once it has passed through the mill. There must be some and then the rest is cellulose so another potential feed stock right there.

Of course if we started taking the sugar cane leaves to convert into fuels we would have a fight with the gardening brigade who love sugar cane mulch on their gardens. Poor blighters would have to pay a premium for a waste product that has suddenly become high demand - sound s like the corn for ethanol argument with a different accent!!!!!!!!

Slippery:

Seems to be still in the lab at this stage. Checked out what wikipedia had and some of the links seem to show the process is similar to production methods for petroleum and cost of production would be around 10x more than for transesterfication system. However DMF is not a diesel fuel.

As long it works better than ethanol or biodiesel, DMF is an option. I have asked the question simply because DMF seems to be on its way out of lab. They are now testing its safety, toxicity etc. And costs could be driven down.
Regarding sugar cane, I think that they are already working on it. Even cellulose seems to be a potential source of ethanol. However, you might be in better position to check this out.
They are many other biofuels investigated and, regardless of which comes out on the top, the main thing remains: seawater algae cultivation will be the most desired source. And Froggy is right here: they are not only potential source of biofuels. They are much, much more and my Greening Method is just a small piece in the puzzle. We can all profit from a broader picture, for its context will always bring new life to our little pieces.

Best,
Damir

liberty1:

  If you remove all the corn stover every year, the fertility of the land will decline.  Likewise with your other examples.  We would need to devise a technique for restoring the fertility and humus of the land. 

Ah ha, now we are cooking!

If what liberty says is true, farmers that leave corn stover and dumps manure and fertilizer on farmer fields should be building soil (carbon) year over year. Yet we all know that is not the case and that farming typically removes soil year over year. Is it the tilling? No because farmers that do no-till still are not building soil.

The answer can be best explained in the compost pile... what happens during compost?

Making up number for example...  lets say you have 100lbs of bone dry plant material that will decomp in the pile.

~ 50% is carbon.

~ 7% is in the form of NPK Mg Cu Fe... better known as minerals or ash.

 All of the rest is H and O that leaves in the form of H2O, CO2, CH4 C5H5... etc.

When we compost, we start with 100lbs of material and are left with 10lbs of material with 7lbs of that being ash... where does everything else go or more to the point... where does the C go? Bugs eat it and breath it out in the form of CO2 or CH4 and only a very tiny amount of the original 50lbs of C actually turns into something called 'stable soil carbon' or for the uneducated 'blackness in the soil'. All the energy and C goes to make more bugs and ATM and very very little turns into 'soil'.

Oh yea... now expand this concept outward to the whole of the planet... what happens to all of the 200B or so tons of biomass the planet puts on every years? Why froggy, it all digests away with a very small fraction turning into stable carbon in the form of soil and/or fossil fuels. ~ 1% of the carbon from plants turns into soil and ~ .000001 and .000000001% turns into fossil fuel. The rest goes back into the ATM to recycle for the next years plants. Heck, one can see this by looking at CO2 emissions season over season and even day/night emissions.

Thus, if we dont collect the stover... we lose ~ 99% of the carbon to the ATM at a cost to the soil. If we DO collect the stover, we lose ~ 100% of the carbon to the ATM at a cost to the soil.

So... what is the solution?

Terra Preta. We learn how to remove 100% of the biomass. We learn how to stop erosion by land manipulation and veg standing and not thatch. We learn how to suck the carbon out of biomass for the use of humans. We learn how to cleanly burn the fixed Carbon into CO2. We learn how to replace more than the 1% typical stable soil carbon, thus improving soil over composting and simple digestion ever could. We learn how to re-mineralize with the ash.

We can have biofuels AND build soil. Oh yea, by dumping Charcoal back into the soil at a greater % than ecology can... we are fixing Al Gore's problems to boot!

Anything else you need me to solve?

liberty1:

  Froggy, (Joke on)  I finally figured out why you try to discourage people from researching algae - you want to stop the competition for your research project.  (Joke off) 

Im not tying to discourage people from researching algae... Im just giving people a dose of reality. And its quite obvious that most of you have no idea what the reality of algal production really is.

Damir:

There are claims that up to 40% of semidry biomass can be converted providing much better biofuel than ethanol.

What is its flame speed, octane rating, cetane rating, bte in an ICE, etc? I can't find this info about it.

As a liq transportation fuel, it is hard to beat methanol. Known tech, bte same or better than diesel & lowest cost alt liq fuel.

Cost from biomass $0.50 - 0.75 a gallon. Two guys a Los Alamos National Laboratory say they can make methanol from atm CO2 & H2O for $1.65 a gallon with a nuke plant.

IMO, the main problem a lot of fuel researchers are trying to solve is how they can get more money & not solving the current liq fuel problem.

Martin 

 Froggy,

The farmer's problem is not the carbon, but the nutrients, micronutrients, and the humus.  (By humus, I mean the partially broken down organic residue that is plowed into the soil - it makes the soil more workable, retains moisture better, and makes it easier for the sprouting seeds and roots to penetrate the soil).   If we cart the stover off, we remove all of these, not just the carbon.

Agricultural agents spent years convincing farmers not to burn their fields and now you want to do something even worse. 

Terra preta is an interesting concept, but have produced anomalous results.  Getting farmers to do something that will produce results in 500 years will probably be a hard sell.

 Froggy,

Well, since you know the reality of farming algae, please explain to us how to do it.