Algae Biodiesel

[ttogreh]

Ok, I wrote a while ago about Butanol, and I also posted a topic about reducing home electricity consumption and dependence on the grid.

Now, for all of you contractors out there, I offer the cutting edge of biofuels; biogenic derived diesel. Yes, it's true; a Chevy Suburban with a diesel engine can be cleaner than a Prius. God, I hate Priuses.

Ok, I am sure most of you have heard of Biodiesel. Most of the feedstock for biodiesel comes from soybeans. This is monumentally stupid. Of course, ethanol from corn is twice as stupid, but I have already posted about that.

However, not every diesel engine out there running on biodiesel gets their fuel from soybeans. Some people run on waste vegetable oil (which may in fact be soybean oil, but at least it isn't competing with food, since it was already used for food). See, with a WVO system, a person starts their engine on regular diesel fuel (which can in fact be made from waste vegetable oil) for the first five minutes, which allows the engine to warm up enouch and the oil to be heated enough to lower its viscosity (less viscous = more slippery), and then the oil is used.

A perfectly fine way of doing things. However, it is not carbon neutral. See, the soybeans (or olive trees or rape seed plants or...) are fertilized with petroleum based fertilizers. That... is unsustainable, and what's more, we simply don't have enough arable land to produce enough fuel at current consumption rates.

However, we don't need to use traditional plants to make biodiesel. This article is from 2004, but it is still relevant. Say, did you know that Rudolf Diesel ran his first engine off of peanut oil over 100 years ago?

See, the bottleneck to progress, like in the butanol problem, is an entrenched agricultural industry lobby combined with public ignorance. The next person that tells you that biofuels will cause food prices to go up... punch them in the face, and then refer them to a few websites, ok?

If enough money is spent in the right places, the butanol, solar, and biodiesel industries will go from a niche market to real competition to the old sequestered carbon industries.

Oil, coal, natural gas, and oil-based fertilizer simply will get more and more expensive as time goes on. That's inevitable. What ISN'T inevitable, is our country and world having to deal with the consequences of that fact. There IS a viable alternative.