Bio-Fuel. Just been reading a question about when mineral oil runs out.?

Question

Answers included use Bio-Fuel. It shows a lack of joined up think. It's already happening in some places where plants are being grown for fuel, people go HUNGRY for lack of food crops.

Answer 1

Alex, the government isn't worried about the couple hundred gallons of fuel you make in your backyard.  All the used fryer oil in the country probably couldn't make enough biodiesel to replace 1% of our diesel needs.

Also, sometimes used fryer oil is used in cattle feed.  If it's used for fuel, a food crop will have to replace it.

Answer 2

Any biofuel needs to have nutrients to grow it. The cheapest most reliable source of volume nutrients at a good price is sewer wastewater.

To manufacture enough fuel to replace petroleum products isn't a big deal if you have this very reliable and growing supply of renewable resources. Nothing needs to be grown, no fertilizers and pesticides for the corn, no oil tankers at sea.

What happens is that right after the solids are removed from the sewage instead of expensive flocking to precipitate heavy metals and other pollutants from the sewage before it can be released back into the world safely, you use the wastewater as the source of nutrition for the algae or bacteria culture.

So, after saving money in wastewater treatment, you make tons of money selling the fuel by being able to produce it cheaper than the oil companies can. Capitalism wins, and we reduced emissions by 40% over what gasoline/ethanol can do.

For the real capitalist, the effluent from the biofuel farm is pretty clean and the biological activity binds the heavy metals, so what you do is tertiarily treat it to get drinking water, bottle it and sell it, my brand name in mind is "Stinky Water" ... it'll be a hit ...

Wastewater is not a food crop yet ...

Just keep in mind that all we're doing so far is talking about reducing emissions, it's not enough, we'll overheat the planet if we reduce all excess emissions today. Our systems release too much heat directly into the world, that's the ultimate problem.

So, when you burn a high energy fuel like gas or biodiesel there is waste heat, gas/ethanol are about 30% efficient overall in terms of heat so the world is getting the rest as waste heat and gases out the tailpipe, the radiator and engine are made to transfer heat away as well.

It's just a matter of time, emissions heat the planet faster but removing the waste heat is far, far more difficult than reducing emissions. So, until our expertise in making machines is actually sophisticated in terms of the laws of thermodynamics we are on a one way street.

Just burning the gas any fool can do because we're doing it and we are fools right now. If you want to be sophisticated you must deal with the waste heat and transfer that energy somehow to doing work instead of heating up the universe and losing that heat to entropy.

Until we redesign every combustion machine, power plant, refrigerator, air conditioner and even electric motor driven machine to recycle the heat in a way that uses it for work, the ocean will keep rising and we are definitely overheating the planet really fast ...

Having noticed how popular thermodynamics is in high schoolers today we can take great relief knowing they are ready for the challenge.

Answer 3

The 'People going hungry' is just a scare mongering by governments not being able to tax users of Bio fuels.

I make my own Bio diesel from used cooking oil from Resteraunts. The oil is surpluss to their needs so NO ONE IS MISSING OUT ON THEIR FOOD.

Apart from that, who in their right mind would eat old, used cooking oil?

Answer 4

The average oil consumption will end the current oil storage in 50 years or so and for that other fuel sources such as biofuels should be invented.

The total used biofuel now (e.g. sunlight, wind, etc.) is 13% of the world usage with 1% only biodiesel but this precentage will going to change dramatically in the upcoming years, and it is not true that plants crops used as food are transfered to biodiesel; research still open to find good resources for biodiesel, however the focus now is on three specimens: soy oil form the American region (16% production), rapeseed form the Europe region (83%) and palm oil from the Asian region (1%).

Biodiesel can be used by 100% from the natural source and can be also mixed as "blends" with the normal diesel (e.g. 50%, 30%, 15% but the effectiveness of the biodiesel is lost under 5% of the biodiesel into the diesel ), and biodiesel does enhance the engines performance and lower the emission of burning gases. The price of biodiesel is pretty the same with the diesel price and it is expected to be lowered in the future.

Answer 5

World population is increasing at a rate of 94 million per year...

It's the time to make a choice:

- biofuels

- more persons

I choice biofuels without any doubt.

The reason is easy:

if Borneo and New Guinea islands become two biodiesel wells then India China etc... have at their disposal more than 300 million tonnes of biodiesel instead of  some other billion persons...

Answer 6

Great way to control the ever increasing global population

Answer 7

Plants have recycled CO2 into O2 and the plants keep the C. The C will deteriorate to oil & gas. Plants have recycled the CO2 for millions of years,where do U think our present supply came from. The plants will continue to recycle and as what they were  designed for.

Answer 8

Government-dictated preference for corn-based ethanol and other biofuels is causing massive land overuse, soaring food prices, and increased hunger in the poorest places. A single SUV tank of ethanol-based gasoline burns enough food to feed a starving African for a year.