[Homestead] Biodiesel and Ethenol

Clansgian at wmconnect.com Clansgian at wmconnect.com
Sun Jun 11 00:04:04 EDT 2006


***Can you back up this statement with some facts.  What plant oils aren't 
suitable for making biodiesel? 

Turpintine, for example, coconut oil, pine resin, unrefined linseed oil, raw 
corn oil, etc.  About a quarter of the vegetable oils produced in the world 
are either suitable in their natural state or else are refined (such as fryer 
oils) to the extent that they are suitable for direct use as biodiesel.

>   30 million gallons of waste oil go 
> into landfill now each year.  Seems to me that using it would be better than 
> putting it in landfills.
> 

Are you, Lynda, by any chance a fan of the late Douglas Adams and his 
Hitchhikers tales?  I would plug you into the motor fuel Total Perspective Vortex.  
We use something on the order of 300 billion gallons of petroleum motor fuels a 
year (21 million barrels a day, 42 gallons per barrel).  The 30 million 
gallons a year is then 1/10,000th of the motor fuel consumed.  

Better to use it than throw it into a landfill?  Of course.  But thinking 
that in the scheme of things that it makes any difference is like taking out a 
hankie and holding in front of you to shield you from being run over by a bus.





>  HOWEVER, I'd suggest you do some research because it doesn't take corn, or 
> any other primary use plant to make ethenol.  You can use 
> "throw-away" plant parts to make ethenol which is what Brazil does. 

Don't propose to me to do my research.  I can quote you book, chapter, and 
verse in six different versions.

In Brazil the per capita use of motor fuel is a tiny fraction of the use in 
the US.  Moreover, Brazil's capacity to produce biomass compared to its 
population is several times greater than the US.  

In Brazil roughly one family in 23 owns a car.  The do not commute in those 
cars 50 and 60 miles one way to work.    Of course they can be fuel self 
sufficient with ethanol.

If Brazil consumed motor fuel at the same per capita rate as the US, they 
would be out of fuel in a week.  If we consumed motor fuel at the per capita rate 
of Brazil,  we could export oil.

If the world forgot about sugar cane and corn as sources of ethanol and used 
cellulose, we would consume 10% of  ALL the vegetation of the world to supply 
the current rate of motor fuel use.

You might want to note too that the figures for making cellulose based 
ethanol from switchgrass and corn stover discount completely the cost in raising 
those sources, assuming that they will be raised anyway.  Not so in a 
pos-oil-culture world.

At any rate, as I raise a glass to the memory of Tvo,  I say it's all a waste 
of perfectly good ethanol at any rate.

I have confidence in you, Lynda.  You CAN do the math.  There ARE no 
alternatives to petrol-fuels.  If nothing else, calculate the carbon that is wretched 
from the ground and spewed as CO2 in using cellulose as motor fuel.




 And, 

> again, your math (tanks going empty in the early evening of the first day) 
> is not based on fact but on your anti-ethenol rantings.
> 
> "President Bush has made a surprising call to eliminate a two decade long 
> tariff on ethanol produced from sugarcane in Brazil.  Sugarcane produces eight 
> times more energy per pound than corn, making U.S.  corn-based ethanol appear 
> to be irrational and inefficient. But according to Monte Shaw, executive 
> director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, a biofuel trade organization, 
> competition in the global marketplace will only create demands for U.S. 
> farmers to generate biofuels more efficiently.  A potential competitor to 
> sugarcane ethanol is cellulosic ethanol, derived from switch grass and farm waste. 
> "No threat. It's an opportunity," Shaw said. "We are in Iowa. All you see is 
> cellulose."  Meanwhile, Archer Daniels Midland, one of the most powerful 
> corporate agribusiness lobbyists in Washington, continues to successfully push 
> Congress to approve subsidizing the less efficient corn-based ethanol with 
> billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Some studies have estimated that i
> n order to replace all U.S. oil imports with domestically produced corn 
> ethanol, as much as five times the entire area currently farmed for all crops in 
> the U.S. would be needed."
> 
> 





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