The ugly side of biofuel development ...

[ZEZOZE]

The ugly side of biofuel development ...

increased flammability!!

YouTube - Man on fire stunt

[roastelk]

in other nuclear news..

The Canadian government is likely going to allow a reactor to be built here in northern alberta, mainly for the oil compamies to power
their extraction sites, up grader stations, and refineries near the tar sands.

at this point even the oil companies are looking for cheaper alternate energy souces, as they are burning about 90% of the fuel created in extracting tar sands oil...in the prosses of extracting it and refining it

[S.Vashti]

Biodiesel tree

Uses for the Biodiesel tree.

[TomJoe]

We're going to need multiple feedstocks for a truly stable biofuels economy. Studies (though I do not have them handy) have indicated that weather effects on a biofuel economy would be more severe and uncertain than what we experience with current political effects on the oil industry. In other words, it's actually a smarter play to bet on pipelines in the Middle East surviving a terrorist attack (and your general social and political unrest) on them than to bet on acceptable rainfall in Iowa and Nebraska for corn year to year.

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by roastelk

at this point even the oil companies are looking for cheaper alternate energy souces, as they are burning about 90% of the fuel created in extracting tar sands oil...in the prosses of extracting it and refining it

Cite, please.

[fragment]

A quick look around doesn't net me good figures on that. This has the EROI as pretty damn low. Wiki has a cite saying "1 to 1.25 gigajoules of natural gas is needed per barrel of bitumen", but then the wiki writer goes and cocks it up by directly equating a barrel of bitumen with a barrel of oil equivalent... when the source just cited also says "Bitumen is the heavy oil extracted from the oil sands. It must be treated and upgraded before being used as oil." Any idea how much energy this refining requires?

[Dingfod]

Oddly enough, and only tangentally related, today I noticed a job posting within my company for a job at the McKenzie River project, one for which I am qualified.


The average barrel of crude oil contains 5-6 gigajoules of energy, that's five times as much as the natural gas used in tar sand extraction, roughly 20%, far from 90%. I seriously doubt fuel costs for equipment used to mine and transport the tar sands exceeds more 10 percent of the energy content of the oil itself. Generic crude oil distillation requires only a small percentage of the energy content of a barrel, perhaps from a little less than 2% to 3%; processing bitumen, a bit more, but not significant.

[godfry n. glad]

Another "breakthrough" story I stumbled across on a blog.

[Dingfod]

Well, they're certainly making it easier to use ethanol fuel.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by Dingfod

Oddly enough, and only tangentally related, today I noticed a job posting within my company for a job at the McKenzie River project, one for which I am qualified.

I assume here you're talking about the McKenzie River Pipeline Project in Canada's Northwest Territories, rather than the McKenzie River Hydro Project just south of Eugene, Oregon.

If so...you'd better like it colder than bejebus eight months out of the year. I like it cool, but even I wouldn't go for that. SAD has got to be a major deal there, though, considering how long it's dark in the depths of winter.

[Sorrel]

I haven't read all the way through the thread. Apologies if it's already been mentioned. It's worse than just the food price issue. The drive towards biofuels is somewhat couter productive re carbon emissions. I've been reading about indonesia.

From April 2008 the UK law requires that a percentage of vehicle fuel be biofuel, and that the % increase in futre. The EU has followed suit in the hopes of reaching their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. I assume the US is doing much the same.

More global demand, higher prices, increased supply.

Indonesia's peat swamp rainforests are being destroyed to produce palm oil. Masses of CO2 are released when peat is drained, damaged, or burned. To prepare land for conversion to a palm plantation they log then burn. So, little Indonesia is the third largest carbon-emitter in the world, and emissions are set to go up. The government has an annual oil palm planting target and aims to be the largest palm oil exporter in the world.

Then there are all the other effects. Indonesian rainforests contain threatened and endangered species including species found nowhere else.

Indonesia was bad for logging their rainforests beforehand. Not great, but not as bad as oil palm plantations. Logged rainforest remains rich in biodiversity and is capable of regeneration. Oil palm plantations are low on wildlife and deplete the soil.

Then people. Peat swamp forests provide resources to local communities. In contrast, deforestation has seen people eviced from their homes and is responsible for the deterioration of water quality, and land slides. Peat fires set to prepare the land for palm oil plantations cause respiratory illness in those who live nearby. Something like 1/3 of all children under 5 have respitory disease.

Papua is its largest province, and rainforest. Gov doesn't care about what's happening there. Indonesia has a history of human rights violations and reports out of Papua say that the military tortures people, so the people don't get a say.

The gov is actively promoting the drainage of rainforest for conversation to oil palm plantations. It caress about the money and that's it.

So much for biofuels.

FT.com / Search

[Adam]

Anyone seen this yet? TomJoe? I'm not qualified to know if this is great news, or a harbinger of something stupid and destructive.

One option would be to make fuel from cellulose - the tough, inedible parts of plants - but until now the process has proved too costly and laborious. Bacteria are genetically modified to produce cellulases that digest cellulose, turning it into sugars which are then fermented into ethanol fuel.

Now Mariam Sticklen of Michigan State University in East Lansing and colleagues have engineered a fuel plant to make its own cellulases - a bit like oil that refines itself into petroleum.

[Dingfod]

OK, now they've gone too far: ethanol fuel corn is causing farmers in Mexico to plant corn in their agave fields. Agave is what they make tequila from. Es un disfraz, puede ser que también beba la gasolina.

[godfry n. glad]

One tequila, two tequila....poorhouse.

[Angakuk]

If I recall correctly, Gus Arriola's cartoon character, Gordo, drove a tour bus, the Haley's Comet, which was fueled by tequila. Who knew that Arriola, in addition to being a pioneer cartoonist, was also a biofuels visionary?

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by Adam

Anyone seen this yet? TomJoe? I'm not qualified to know if this is great news, or a harbinger of something stupid and destructive.

Actually I think that if you are gonna go that route then bioengineering the plant is a much better idea than creating a new strain of bacteria. Bacteria are hard to control but in some sense the plant is an inferior species that if let loose into the wild would self destruct since it contains enzymes that essentially destroy its own feeding system. It is unlikely that there would be genetic exchange of information between plants and bacteria since as far as I know no one has ever seen it happen. But that would be the one thing that would make the plant approach scary.

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

If I recall correctly, Gus Arriola's cartoon character, Gordo, drove a tour bus, the Haley's Comet, which was fueled by tequila. Who knew that Arriola, in addition to being a pioneer cartoonist, was also a biofuels visionary?

Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on ethanol or gasoline. He envisioned every farmer distilling their own fuel, which was perfectly legal from 1906 when the Liquor Tax was repealed until Prohibition commenced in 1919. Those years were the golden age of ethanol fuel.

[Dingfod]

The findings of a University of Nebraska study indicates cellulosic ethanol made from waste material from corn production is worse for carbon emissions than gasoline when all energy required is factored in, casting doubt on the use of waste corn production biomass to make ethanol fuels, not mention the energy balance of same. It also reduces carbon in the soil, making soil depletion a concern.