Thursday, September 29, 2005

Discussion on the energy merits of biodiesel vs. ethanol / methanol:

While the "energy sink" issue is true of ethanol and methanol, it is NOT true of biodiesel. With alcohol, you get one unit of energy out of it for every two you put in to produce it, unfortunately. With biodiesel, you get three units of energy out of it for every one unit of energy you put into making it. See http://www.biodiesel.org

"Does biodiesel take more energy to make than it gives back?"
No. Biodiesel actually has the highest “energy balance” of any transportation fuel. The
DOE/USDA lifecycle analysis shows for every unit of fossil energy it takes to make
biodiesel, 3.2 units of energy are gained. This takes into account the planting,
harvesting, fuel production and fuel transportation to the end user.

This fact can be found in the adobe .pdf fact sheet located at http://www.biodiesel.org/pdf_files/fuelfactsheets/CommonlyAsked.PDF

For this reason and others, I strongly support the use of biodiesel, while I would recommend against increasing the use of alcohol fuels.

Fact: biodiesel can be run in un-modified U.S. manufactured diesel engines without voiding the manufacturers' warranty provided the fuel is produced to ASTM standards for biodiesel. (Yes, there has been one for several years now.)

Rumor: People often fill up with biodiesel blends when going for an emissions test because they are more likely to pass.

Notes of caution:

Biodiesel in blends higher than 20% will act as a solvent on petroleum diesel gunk deposits - in effect cleaning them out of the engine eventually - and for awhile after switching from petrodiesel to high-blend biodiesel you will need to change the fuel filter fairly often. If you have never run petroleum diesel in your engine to gunk it up with sludge deposits, this is not an issue. (Think about it, petroleum has sat underground dissolving the minerals in the soil and rocks around it for millions of years, biodiesel is freshly pressed from plants just grown and chemically stripped of it's glycerides to match diesel fuel properties - without the sludge.)

Biodiesel has similar cold weather gelling properties to #2 diesel and the same winter fuel precautions or slightly better need to be adhered to.

Diesel engines older than 1995 may have seals made of materials that biodiesel will act as a sovent on. Older diesel engines should have all non-metal seals replaced with up-to-date materials before any switch to biodiesel is made.

One further and highly significant positive of bioduiesel:

Provided the three cautions I have noted in this discussion thread are followed, diesel vehicle owners can have a highly significant impact on transportation stress on the environment and global warming. (The carbon output by burning biodiesel originally came from the plants grown to produce it taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow.) If petroleum is used to fuel the farm equipment and refining equipment used to produce biodiesel, you still net an approximate 78% reduction in atmospheric carbon emissions due to the net POSITIVE energy transaction of using biodiesel. If you start fueling the process of manufacturing biodiesel with wind or biodiesel, you go to an almost totally carbon-neutral transportation fuel.

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Biodiesel combined with solid biomass, wind power, and wave power, and hydrogen produced from clean energy sources such as wind, geothermal, and wave power have the potential to completely replace coal and oil.

There is enough potential wind energy available in just three U.S. states to generate as much electrical energy as the U.S. currently consumes. This leaves 47 other states plus the coastlines. The U.S. has more wind energy potential than any other nation on Earth.

This isn't even discussing tapping wave energy, and when you consider the scale of the coastlines of this country, there is plenty of that awaiting developement.




Chuck Minne wrote:
There are a lot of people who consider that gasohol and biodeisel are nothing but an energy wasting rip-off fueled by Midwest farm associations and ADM and Cargill. Many consider these fuels to be "energy sinks" which means it takes more energy to produce them than they furnish. Another example of an energy sink is a very old well that takes more energy to pump than the oil pumped produces.


Dan Stafford wrote:
Minnesota becomes first US state to require biodiesel
Full story:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050928/ts_alt_afp/usenergyoilgas

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