Requesting Feedback on Renewable Diesel Essay
Posted by Robert Rapier on July 14, 2007 - 10:10am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: biodiesel, green diesel, sustainability [list all tags]
As some of you may know, I am writing the renewable diesel chapter for a book on renewable energy. My submission is due at the end of July. The chapter is well underway, but I have a nagging feeling that I am forgetting to address something. So, I wanted to share the outline I have, and see if anyone has any comments. If you know of a substantial feedstock that I have missed, or can think of some things you think should be covered in a specific section, let me know.
For instance, in the section on environmental considerations, I am going to point out that tropical forest is being cut down to produce palm plantations for palm oil. On the other hand, biodiesel, unlike petroleum diesel, is non-toxic. What else? Are there specific, little known facts about rapeseed oil that I should include? Just things like that. Basically, if you were reading a comprehensive story about renewable diesel, what specifically would you hope to see covered? To my knowledge, what I am writing has not been comprehensively covered before. I don't know of any other work that has an extensive compare/contrast between biodiesel, SVO, green diesel, etc. I think many people hear "biodiesel", and think it's all the same.
The intent here is to provide a completely objective view of renewable diesel as an option in the future. I will cover pros and cons. As I said, the chapter is well underway, and I have portions of all sections done. But I just want to make sure I haven't overlooked anything major. I can't share any of the actual writing, as one stipulation is that this material may not have been published elsewhere. But here is the outline I have at the moment:
Renewable Diesel
Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO)
Biodiesel
- Definition/Production Process
- Fuel Characteristics
- Energy Return
- Glycerin Byproduct
Green Diesel
- Definition/Production
- Hydroprocessing
- Gasification/Fischer-Tropsch
Feedstocks
- Soybean Oil
- Palm Oil
- Rapeseed Oil
- Jatropha
- Algae
- Animal Fats
Environmental Considerations
Is worth mentioning considerations of mixing any of the types with each other and standard diesel. The article on wikipedia is very good for bio diesel and well worth reading if you havent already.
Also practical considerations such as viscosity and freezing points are worth mentioning and how they can be over come *cough* white spirit.
Also the effects on engines and fuel lines, it will degrade some types of plastic usually on much older engines, it is also a better engine lubricant and when used for the first few times will clog the filter as the engine gets cleaned.
Mentioning a bit about the various crops would be good too, how difficult they are to grow what their yields are that sort of thing.
Hope this helps there is lots of information out there but lots of people are doing different things in different ways so is hard to find reliable data.
Best of luck
This could be reduced by switching to high quality synthetic lubricating oil beforehand to clean things out and further reduce friction. Not to mention the 25000 mile oil changes or eliminating oil changes with a low micron bypass filter, and the associated reduction in oil use and disposal, increased engine life, etc.
"You get what you pay for. $4/gallon pays for an awful lot of terror."
An excellent, and very comprehensive book on biodiesel is "Biodiesel, Basics & Beyond" by William Kemp. He's Canadian and focuses on using used cooking oil to produce a highly refined, commercial grade biodiesel. He differentiates this high-quality product from other more "down and dirty" products produced on a small scale. He covers alot of issues relating to processing and reusing catalysts, by-products.
Great subject
How about some discussion on scale.
How much space required to harvest enough fuel to drive a car/truck x miles/klm/s and extrapolate that for a much larger global car fleet.
You could even calculate what area would be requited to be cultivated to offset global oil declines of say 3% 5% 8% 12% etc
I agree with you Concerned – the scaling issue is THE Alfa and Omega in understanding biofuels and ethanol, today and for the future. Obviously alongside the reality of EROEI.
I recall the essay titled “That Cubic mile…”, depicting the annual world wide crude oil consumption to be approximately 1 cubic mile. And if we agree that oil is virtually gone in 100 years for all practical uses – the frenetic chase taking place today to substitute this must be done with renewable crops ….
And if memory serves – hardwood (threes) may render 25% of it’s volume/mass to be converted into ethanol – I think ….
Now from my metric part of the world I reached for my calculator – and defined my standard three to be ½ cubic meters (that’s a square trunk 0.25mX0.25mX 8.0m height- a realistic three-volume …)
And the cubic mile is equals 4096000000 m3, and some math on this give me 8192000000 threes, and for that size of threes I need 5 meters between them in a grid pattern. Making a square patch from this I’m getting 453 km X 453 km.
Wowww….
And for ease I round up to 500 km X 500 km – NOW these threes are PURE OIL THREES (from my original cubic) – so I have to make real threes from it by multiplying this amount with 4…
The energy needed to convert this square patch into actual fuel is coming on top of this, and should hopefully NOT overshoot the initial energy content contained in it….
If it takes say 50years to grow one of these sample trees, we WOULD CONSTANTLY HAVE THE WHOLE OF THE AREA OF AFRICA GOING AS A PERMANENT FUEL-GENERATING-AREA FOR THE WORLD –
I’m sighting U-t-o-p-i-a all over the place here …
I'm afraid simular utopian issues apply for all other crops as well ...
THE singlemost constraints of scaling stuff is - mass,volume,seasons,timelines and the boogeyman EROEI.
We obviously cannot produce enough biofuels to keep everything running at present levels. Just as obviously, not everything we presently run is of equal importance.
The world can probably live without fast sports cars. the truth of the matter is that the number of private passenger vehicles and the amount to which they are used could be reduced to a small fraction of present levels with the implementation of a serious electrified mass transit program in places that don't yet have it.
Agricultual equipment, ambulances, fire trucks, shuttle buses, ships, heavy equipment, etc. - that is a different matter. It is truly a matter of life or death that we keep these high priority devices running.
We undoubtedly CAN produce enough biodiesel to at least keep the high-priority equipment running. That is why RR's article is so important.
The great virtue of vegetable oil is that is now available in bulk at warehouse stores at prices only slightly higher than toxic fossil fuels. It can be stored for long periods (until you open it) and can also be eaten.
If you take out the Ponzi schemes of a constantly growing world population and world energy use, saving becomes a very different matter than on the rising side of the Hubbert curve. Imagine one is willing and able to work for 40 years and plans to live 20 more years in retirement. One needs to save 1/3rd of one's lifetime income - in some durable form - in order to retire.
Along with the stockpiled wheelbarrows and bicycles, some cans of vegetable oil would be worth saving in the cellar.
Not only can it be stored safely and for long times, and not only can it be used as food, it is also local - that is, rapeseed oil does not have a lot of overhead in areas where it is grown, such as southern Germany. The containers used are the same used for vineyards, adding another aspect to the idea of 'renewable'.
As a matter of fact, I can buy a thousand liters of rapeseed oil a couple of miles down the road, and have it delivered - no permits, no safety concerns, and as for taxes - well, that is complicated.
To be honest, I expect such solutions to be very far down on the list tried, since such simple changes to lifestyle will require a select group of people to lose their accustomed lifestyle - those in the production and distribution of petroleum products, and those involved in manufacturing, maintaining, and driving IC driven vehicles for personal transport. Which describes a lot of people, doesn't it?
In terms of keeping farm machinery, fire fighting equipment, and necessary construction machinery going (repairing water mains, for example), towns in this region could probably manage without any major problems in terms of infrastructure - what would suffer, hugely, would be the local economy if such a shift was actually carried out.
I think any attempt to describe the proper place of renewable fuels requires describing a properly functioning social structure around them - and what we have today most certainly isn't the proper structure.
I think you ought to comment on the pollution effects of the types of fuel. Standard diesel has a high level of particulates which cause respiratory problems in urban areas. Do the other fuels do that as well? In NY, for example, the buses have changed from Diesel to Electric to cut urban pollution (probably cheaper to run too!)
CapeCodGreen
Bio-fuel articles seldom deal with soil depletion. Removing all of the vegetable matter from our fields means fewer nutrients and poorer soils. How tough is this choice: Maintain productive (but maybe not so healthy) soils by covering our fields with fossil fuel based fertilizers, or maintain productive and healthy soils by returning vegetable matter to our fields?
Some oil seeds work well in crop rotation schemes, and can thus help to maintain soil fertility.
There is no choice to do so in the long run. The nutrients in the soil come from microorganisms that break down the surrounding rock and dust and make nutrient forms that are available to plants. Long term monocropping sterilizes the soil, especially when the feed for the organisms that live there is depleted. The lack of organic material makes the ground harder to till and plow. ('no-till' alternatives are designed for leaving more material on top of the ground than conventional tillage, but the point is that you always need to add organic matter to the soil or it loses productivity, no matter how much conventional fertilizer is used).
Other comparative uses of the land and plants should be considered. The problem with all energy/agriculture discussions is that they treat themselves as specialized, isolated functions, like a factory built on concrete. Agriculture requires synergistic thought, or it fails. Instead of growing biodiesel, the fields would be better off getting covered by solar panels and growing mushrooms underneath. All this tilling, hauling, conversion, processing and hauling is the biggest scam the banks have come up with yet to loan money to people to build processing facilities, buy trucks, buy advertising, and sell their cows which used to do it all themselves.
http://www.acresusa.com is a good place to find more earthy discussions of the effects of soil abuse.
AS for corn, rapeseed, etc; I would like to see comparisons between the use of these crops as home heating and greenhouse heating on the farm itself (look at http://www.growingformarket.com for past articles on greenhouse heating with corn and wood) instead of all the processing and hauling off-farm.
We need to start over with the energy equations from the standpoint of what is necessary for people to survive, then add the luxury of more consumption as we evaluate available excess natural productivity, instead of starting with what people are demanding, which is fed by what they are marketing, which is fed by what they are demanding.
Back to basics.
I would also like to see some comparison between the advantages of diesel in general over gasoline/ethanol in terms of working efficiency. There are several reasons that hard working engines are mostly diesels and recreational engines are spark-ignition.
"If you want Change, keep it in your pocket. You vote for a faux president every four years, but you vote for real corporations thousands of times each month. Your money is your only real vote."
The nutrients in the soil come from microorganisms that break down the surrounding rock and dust and make nutrient forms that are available to plants.
One attempt to address part of that problem:
http://www.remineralize.org/
"We need to start over with the energy equations from the standpoint of what is necessary for people to survive".
Having read all the comments so far I think "auntiegrav" has said it best. Forget about all of the luxury consumption currently taking place and calculate what is really needed to maintain foodstocks, critical infrastructure, etc. Sustainability must be the determining factor when weighing the different biofuel options for the PO world. In the days before synthetic fertilizers, crop rotations, animal manure and plowdown crops (green manure) provided soil fertility, and going forward this will once again have to be considered.
Biofuels produced on the farm will first be used to power farm equipment and provide electrical generation for the farm. The fact that bio-diesel can be stored for long periods will allow the farmer to save some fuel for a rainy day much like what is done with on farm grain storage. The first priority for the farm is the survival and viability of the farm, any excess biofuel may be sold to the open market. This is much like the predictions for the oil exporting countries, take care of your own needs first, there will always be a market for any excess.
Why, Thank You.;-)
Yes, think about this aspect as we look at using the biodiesel on the farm. Small scale extruders are available to produce the oil locally (farm or village level), and we have to ask how many people are going to survive the coming crisis.
If you could get humans to look ahead and follow this advice above, then we wouldn't be so locked into a crisis. The majority of petroleum use is unnecessary as far as survival is concerned. We are burning up fuels mostly so people can drive for the sake of driving, not so they can get anywhere useful. Most people, with a little planning, can drastically reduce transportation, food, and home energy costs. The fact that the major players have a name like "Demand Destruction" for it illustrates the seriousness of our insanity.
We don't have to destroy demand going back to the Stone Age, we only have to go back to the mid-20th century consumption level (WWII period without the war) to greatly improve our prognosis while we look for alternatives.
"I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!" -"Network", c.1976
Two farm based energies intrigue me, one is pelletized warm season grasses, this is being used in Canada in greenhouses to replace propane and natural gas. I produce native grass seed (organically managed) and prior to the growing season the grassland must be burned or the dried native grass harvested. At 2 ton per acre and 16 million btu per ton my 60 acre rotation (120 acres total grassland) would yield just under 1 billion btu's or 9,600 therms and this is a byproduct. This is 13 times the natural gas my house uses in one heating season in Minneapolis. See http://www.reap-canada.com for pelletized grass info.
The other is biodiesel, we will need some type of fuel to continue producing food in large quantities. The fact that most all large farm equipment burns diesel makes this attractive. I like the idea of farm scale biodiesel processing equipment, growing your own fuel so to speak. When the fossil fuels run out the highways could be a bit lonely as I tool along in my biodiesel powered Maserrati?
While the majority of people on this blog agree with "wasteful" energy usage, those wastes supply people with hundred of millions of jobs worldwide. Those jobs to supply the world with iPods, sports cars, gaming LANs, and plastic everything.
How many different programming languages, cereals, shoe brands, and cosmetics do we need as a society?
And who makes the call? And what happens to the suppliers and consumers of the obviated options?
And we still haven't addressed our seeming need to grow. Because if we calculate the minimum necessary to maintain foodstocks, infrastructure, etc., and implement a suitable plan but we keep growing, then we are at this point again in 10 to 30 years, and left with no more efficiencies to find, no more slack to take up, no more fat to trim from the system.
And then what will we do?
There used to be hundreds of thousands of people employed making horse carriages, saddles, tack, and buggy whips. There used to be stables in every town and city, each employing lots of people. Everyone forgets what a huge business ice used to be before refrigeration; hundreds of thousands were employed in the harvesting of ice each winter and in the transport, storage and delivery of ice year round.
Maybe all those jobs will be re-created - who knows?
Times change. Nobody gets a guaranteed lifetime job (except maybe tenured academics, and even then only if their institution and program continues to exist).
I am not the first one to think that perhaps if energy will from here on out become increasingly expensive, then the long-term trend of substitution of energy-powered mechanization for human labor might unwind, and the demand for human labor increase. There could be a demand for plenty of workers in the future for jobs that don't even exist now. Unfortunately, most of these are not likely to be well-paying jobs.
And we still haven't addressed our seeming need to grow. Because if we calculate the minimum necessary to maintain foodstocks, infrastructure, etc., and implement a suitable plan but we keep growing, then we are at this point again in 10 to 30 years, and left with no more efficiencies to find, no more slack to take up, no more fat to trim from the system.
Oh! YES! YES! YES!
This is the point which is ABSOLUTELY, CONSTANTLY OVERLOOKED.
Even if we could get out of the current predicament this would be of no use and even DETRIMENTAL if we don't find a cure for the general problem of decreasing marginal returns (and population growth too).
Deep lack of understanding of Tainter's ideas (or plain ignorance).
Jobs don't matter. What matters is basic needs, and long term survival of the species. What's the point in making a lot of people fat, dumb and stupid just for the sake of having a lot of people?
I make the call. Or I can tell you how to make the call. It's called "Net Creativity", or "Good and Evil" or "For the Children". Nature decides which species survive based upon their Net usefulness to the future after subtracting the resources they consume. Good and Evil is determined by what benefits the most people FOR THE LONGEST TIME. Our Children will need resources to survive. They don't need 6.5 billion people in order to preserve the future capabilities of our species.
Whether we figure out how to live cooperatively and rationally as a species will be determined by our forethought and planning. It is already too late to preserve the 6.5 billion numbers that we have spawned. Nature will see to that. However, we have to decide how to preserve as many as we need to ensure genetic diversity and adaptability for whatever disasters may come, or to be able to prevent such disasters to our planet. In other words, we can't throw away all of our knowledge and technology and live in caves, but we need to live in the caves that are available, and minimize our impact so that we have a possible future to save for at least some of the species.
Cooperation, trumps competition. Wisdom trumps blind faith, conservation trumps consumption, Scientific caution trumps corporate profits, needs trump wants, and especially; future needs trump present demands.
Except we have several historical examples of societies that would much rather die trying to hang on to their current mode of existence than convert to something more workable, and very few of the opposite case.
It seems highly unlikely that Western societies, accustomed as we are to an abundance of food, comfort and luxury are going to willingly give it up.
Honestly I only see two alternatives: we somehow magically invent and implement enough new technology in time to be able to continue providing the same level of existence without continually degrading the planet (technically feasible, but I wouldn't put any money on it), or we suffer a severe, extended economic depression that is sufficent to forcibly change government, corporate and consumer attitudes. Attitudes towards consumerism were surely very different coming out the 1930's than they are now. The difference next time will be that there will be too many of us, a too-heavily-degraded environment, and a lack of cheap abundant energy with which to allow a return to our current mode of existence.
Congratulations. You just condemned the 90% of the people in America that exist off of luxury consumption to death. Either that, or we are looking at a future america which consists of 350 million serfs and a few thousand lords.
That's only because you presume 350 million people will readily submit to serfdom under the control of a few thousand lords.
Poppycock!
Or should I say: poppyseeds. ;-)
Since it's poppycock, can you explain to me the operational difference, other than vocation, between a serf and a person with no property rights and no habeus corpus? 'Cause Americans happily submitted both those things in the last year or so. Who needs rights, we've got American Idol!
Regardless of whether it has happened already or not, you're both overlooking the third population group, the new middle class: feudal soldiers personally loyal to those few thousand lords, whose job will be to encourage folk to submit to serfdom. Feudalism will be making a comeback, not least because it relieves the masses from the terrifying burden of thinking.
IMO, anyone looking to learn a useful post peak skill should consider learning to make black powder and muzzleloaders.
"Let us wrestle with the ineffable and see if we may not, in fact, eff it after all."
-Dirk Gently, character of the late great Douglas Adams.
No difference. In fact, in a neofeudal world, no one has an assured place if they fall out of favour. Lord Conrad Black is facing a possible 20 years in prison for theft of a mere $60 million. Yet Dov Zackheim, who saw over $2 trillion vanish from the pentagon on his watch is a free man.
Oh, I don't deny that our present arrangement doesn't amount to much more than a form of glorified serfdom.
However, such an arrangement is dependent on a lot of top-down control mechanisms -- political, social, ecological, etc. -- that is increasingly coming apart at the seams precisely because it is all beyond anyone's control. Once this Humpty Dumpty control system starts breaking down for good, it won't be going back together as before.
Nor would I say that "Americans happily submitted" to the losses you mentioned. There has been a surge of push-back against their theft. Whether any of this really matters I would further argue that the true test of such submission has yet to have happened. Despite the lack of mass protests in the streets I do think there is more than enough animosity at the grass roots level and from a thousand and one different angles against the controlling naked emperor interests that could erupt given the right circumstances.
With any luck it could be, like in the Soviet Union breakdown, a mostly non-violent event that pulls the rug out from under our modern serfdom system once enough people recognize how ill-served they are by the controlling interests. We may not be there yet, but we aren't far from it.
While I certainly don't rule out the use of force upon us, such brute control will not long stand in the face of all the other unraveling factors beyond any Powers That Be, not the least of which will be to further shred the legitimacy of those in control.
In any event, a post crash Feudalism may well be forced upon, and/or submitted to in some areas, but it will by no means be complete or unresisted. That is clearly what I was objecting to.
You are setting up a false dichotomy. The present US economy and medieval serfdom are not the only two possible ways in which an economy can be organized. There are many others, including many that haven't been tried yet. Some of them might even look pretty good.
Our most scarce resource right now apparently is not crude oil but imaginative and creative thinking.
I've been trying to make that very point for quite some time now.
I'm not sure I see real lack of imaginative and creative thinking...it's the lack of imaginative and creative doing that's a problem, and it's becoming really hard to see what will force people into taking part into that sort of doing.
Not to mention the fact that ideas are all very well and nice, but until proven to work successfully in reality, they are just that: ideas.
The day we start to genuinely see a lack of imaginative and creating thinking is the day we can be sure the human race is truly in a state of decline.
You can't get people to do something if they think it's useless or counterproductive. They have to think that it will get them somewhere first.
But I don't believe that's the reason people aren't doing enough. You have companies like Exxon explicitly coming out and saying that have no interest in renewables. You have car manufacturers explicitly fighting against proposed CAFE standards even while losing business continuing to build over-sized, inefficient vehicles. And worst of all you have governments explicitly promoting one of the few "oil-substitute" technologies we all know doomed to fail: corn ethanol.
In Australia, we have car manufactures preferring to shed jobs and complain about reducing import tariffs and/or the strong Aussie dollar rather than invest in smaller car sizes and/or new technologies. And we have governments still planning to spend far more on freeways than on public transport, despite a whole host of suggested options for improving public transport in our cities, and strong evidence that increasing petrol prices are already beginning to encourage people to drive less and use P.T. more.
It seems the large corporations and governments that could genuinely make a difference are all singularly determined not to, or to go about it the wrong way. You could blame this on a lot of things, but lack of creative and imaginative ideas doesn't strike me as one of them.
Hard to stop the "business as usual" mindset relative to fossil fuels, what drives the government of any country, follow the money.
I have no problem with a "follow the money" principle, providing it's "Follow the money, without jeapordising the long-term prosperity of the company, and indeed the human race".
Or to put it more simply, "Follow the long-term money".
Currently the attitude seems to be "Increase this year's bottomline at all costs, screw the future".
And among governments "Make it look like you're doing something in order to get elected this/next year, screw the future".
You missed BTU's point. One follows the money to find out why today's political pressures are what they are. This tells you where you have to push to change them.
One source of pressure behind corn ethanol is, not suprisingly, corn farmers. This is one reason why I proposed incentives for non-grain biomass as part of my Sustainability scheme; it would benefit the same farmers for the same crop, without going through the thoroughly wasteful conversion steps for the ethanol product or competing with food consumers.
Here I think are some key issues.
electrification and alternative diesel ...is there a smooth path to grid plugged hybrids with small diesel backup engines? ie phasing in as petrol phases out
biodiesel
nonfood lipids eg jatropha. (BTW I'm experimenting with sedge grass oils) Food complementation such as crop rotation to boost soil nitrogen. Recycling phosphorus and potassium via composts. Biodiesel tractors. Dangers of monoculture eg previously minor bugs taking a liking to canola
Dangers of climate change eg summer frosts. Less cattle acreage but extending meat with soybean meal. Fossil input via methanol catalyst. New uses for glycerol.
gasification diesel
Capital cost of FT equipment..are
mini-reactors viable? FT vs plasma vs microwave. Affordability eg $3/L. The bulk in-out handling problem ie trainloads of sawdust. Recycling charcoal as a soil additive or solid fuel. Using municipal solid waste or woody weeds.
Optimum location.
Writing the jatropha section right now. Need to do some calculations, but after reading about 6 articles on jatropha, I think it has more legitimate potential as a biofuel than anything else I have ever run across. It is non-edible, and can be grown on marginal lands. Trying to work out the yields, though, and the availability of marginal lands.
Keep in mind that jatropha is a tropical plant. Nothing wrong with that, except that countries like the USA and UK will have to import it, not grow it themselves.
Importing jatropha (or finished biodiesel) from the tropics will also entail some energy cost and affect EROEI.
It could be an economic boom for countries like Brazil.
Wikipedia has a nice jatropha page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha
If I'm not mistaken, jatropha is indigeneous to Mexico. The jatropha in Africa originated in Mexico. This crop may be an option for the southwest U.S. (if not elsewhere).