Biofuel

[JebKeb]

Sorry, contains business maths, not really science. Still a bit though.

When I first found out about the idea of biodiesel, I found it fascinating. It seems to be the obvious current solution - feed the current fleet with less polluting fuel and then transition to full electric when the fleet is too old. It seems to be a waste just leaving trillions of dollars of petroleum powered devices to rot before they've even reached their end of life.

Since I found awesome, I ran a bit of maths and the sort of revenues...

As in, tens of millions of dollars! For a reasonably small company!

So, I decided I would start a company that would make biofuels that I have creatively dubbed "ecofuel".

One day, I want to space. I don't have collateral. This company could provide the funding for the space program's loans! (Oh dear, I'm dodgy with finances. )

I'll wait a bit before I go into the actual stuff. In the meantime I will answer quesitions and ponder constructive criticism.

 

 

[RainDreamer]

Well, gonna wait till you post your math to comment, since I am wondering how you came up with the tens of millions dollars in revenue and professionals in the industry did not already attempt to grab that.

[Streetwind]

The biofuel industry is a pretty dodgy thing in my experience. A lot of what it does is because you can milk money out of "being green", not because of a fundamental desire to "be green", and because it lets big oil companies avoid changing the status quo too much while still making it look like they're doing something. And on the consumer side you have issues like older engines being unable to cope with the fuel mixture's increased corrosiveness, constantly changing standards, and also higher prices (although governments subsidize this difference away to equalize prices at the pump, that subsidy money is still coming out of your taxes and going into the pockets of fuel companies).

Still, I suppose, it is helping a little. The CO2 emitted by biofuel is not CO2 that was previously bound underground for millions of years and now gets dumped into the atmosphere; rather, it is CO2 that came from the atmosphere in the first place (that's how plants get their carbon). So every liter of biofuel used slows down the mass flooding of our atmosphere with bound CO2 by a tiny amount. So long as people don't use it as an excuse to avoid more fuel efficient cars, of course. Replacing 20 MPG cars by 40 MPG ones saves far more carbon emissions than mixing biofuels into gasoline or Diesel will. (Electric cars obviously beat this several times over.)

[Nibb31]

In Europe, service stations already sell E10, which contains 10% ethanol and can be used by any regular petrol/gas vehicle. It's cheaper, but only because it has less taxes.

The problem with biofuel is that it takes a lot arable land to produce. That arable land could be put to much better use, such as, for example, producing food. Where I live (in the south of France), crop rotations are nearly exclusively rapeseed, corn, and sunflower. The rapeseed is increasingly dominant because it's used to make biofuel. As a result, we are progressively moving towards a monoculture, which is encouraged by various subsidies, producing less corn and sunflower. Our agriculture used to be much more diverse, meaning that nowadays we have to import pretty much everything, which increases the transport costs and generates a negative commercial balance. 

 

[KSK]

First generation biofuels - obtained from plant oils or sugars have the problems that Nibb31 mentioned. Second generation fuels (derived from lignocellulosic material such as woody crops or plant waste in general) are possibly more promising but harder to manufacture economically. Lignin is a pain to deal with but unfortunately it's also what gives plant stems much of their structural strength. You can breed or engineer low-lignin plants for improved digestibility, but there's a fine balance between a plant stem that's more easily processed into biofuel and a plant stem that's too weak to grow properly. Lot's of research going on at the moment, both into process conditions and underlying biology of biofuel crops.

Even with second generation fuels, I suspect there's going to be a balance between using plant waste for fuel and using it as a raw material (ploughed back into the soil) for growing new crops and maintaining soil quality.

[lajoswinkler]

Concept of biofuel is plausible and promising, but its current implementation is shoddy. One day it will most certainly be our source of complex organic substances as crude oil is today, but I doubt it will have much application in energy production.

[YNM]

Biofuel ? Have you considered how our forest fires are caused by the need for new palm plantation, which palm oil is very rich in Biofuel ? If anything, diesel running on used cooking oil would be better economy wise and ecology wise (no, you can't refine them back). Or from plastics.

Out Topic : Additionally, I can't stand people's opinion here (residence, not the forum) on plastics bags - they're built to last, so why charge more it instead of recycle it ?

Edited April 13, 2016 by YNM

[Jovus]

3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

The problem with biofuel is that it takes a lot arable land to produce. That arable land could be put to much better use, such as, for example, producing food.

My impression is that the primary problem with biofuel is that corn-based ethanol has a theoretical maximum EROEI of ~1.4, whereas conventional oil even these days has an EROEI of ~30, and even tar sands have an EROEI of ~10

[jwenting]

Biofuels are good for one thing and one thing only: leeching subsidies out of governments wanting to be seen as "green". Their product requires more energy to produce than it generates. IOW for every kilo Newton of energy contained in a liter of biodiesel you need to expend more than a kilo Newton of energy in the form of fossil fuels and electricity in order to create it (taking the entire production cycle from tilling the land, tending and harvesting the crops, etc.).

For fossil fuels and nuclear energy this is not the case, obviously.

Solar and wind are not quite as bad but also less efficient than fossil or nuclear. Geothermal comes in reasonably well but is largely untested as to its long term effects on the surroundings of the installations (wind and solar are known to have negative effects, especially wind at a large scale).

[JebKeb]

I am aware of the market for biofuels being competitive. I just don't know how. For reference, I live in Australia which only really has ethanol at the pump.

Also, this company is not the solution to global warming - it's part of one. Run the existing fleet on less polluting fuel before it dies, and as that happens the petroleum fleet is slowly replaced by electric. At the end of the process, we liquidate mostly and stick to making lubricants.

I don't really believe in ethanol. It can't really be made out of waste products and it releases formaldehyde. I like biodiesel because it can be made out of waste oil. Any oil we can't get we can probably make with algae or something like that. But NOT from crops in the middle of deforested amazon!

Practically, biofuels are only really for transport. We need fusion and solar now.

 

 

 

On that maths. It was pretty terrible.

projected price: 60c

yay cheaper than diesel

60x50 million

bwahaha

[James Kerman]

I live in Perth, Jebkeb, and there are a few private bio-reactors.  The problem you may face is the lack of waste vegetable oil to make bio-diesel - over here most sources are already being exploited for profit.

[JebKeb]

I have been developing a chemistry flowchart. No amounts have been taken into account, and it produces chlorine gas, so there are still a few issues.

 

Apologies for not including the filtering and titration.

Responding to James, I think I'll also be able to make money out of collecting green bin waste. And we can still develop algae oil or something similar.

oooOOOooo (because I like how it looks)

I've been procrastinating on the maths for ages, so here we go.

As the company grows, we reach different stages, which are essentially plans on how to increase our litres per year. The first stage would be homebrewed biodiesel and biomethane, relying heavily on chemical supply stores and the like.

Along we go, growing larger and larger and gaining more profit and lowering in price and employing more. Originally starting in a backyard, we buy a warehouse and get equipment for more autonomous production. We start selling the fuel to more and more bowsers around the suburb, and get more warehouses around the city. From then on, we build plants in every township, and spread across Australia and Asia and beyond.

Very sound, isn't it? (That was sarcasm.)

Over time as we produce millions to billions to trillions of litres of fuel per year, the price clicks and the fuel is cheaper than petrodiesel and natural gas. ExxonMobil goes broke and we have a party.

Edited April 17, 2016 by JebKeb

[JebKeb]

I've developed the final flowchart. It should be arriving soon.

 

 

[WinkAllKerb'']

superlobbies and superlobbies are on a boat with biofuel(s) from a large range of Bio(things)
- that regrow more or less faster,
- that require more or less fertilizer,
- that require more or less chemical remanufacturing,
- that arm more or less the environnement.

superlobbies and supperlobbies are very annoyed ; ) i won't say more ... because you know how superlobbies and supperlobbies are ...

Edited April 22, 2016 by WinkAllKerb''
rep limit for today but consider i granted you rep @JK for opening the topic

[JebKeb]

I am having a mental battle.

I have two methods of doing this, and they are both very different.

The first method is the one I've been writing about presently.

The second very attractive option is carbon capture.

We capture the carbon, mix it with steam and apply UV light and we have syngas. (I have other methods of producing syngas, so if the current system is shoddy, no worry.) Then some of the syngas is taken and put through a catalyst. (There are several options.) The vapours that leave the reactor are condenses and refined into naptha and diesel. That is known as the Fischer-Tropsch process.

The rest of the syngas is mixed with CO2 and dehydrated yielding dimethyl ether. The the DME is dehydrated futher over a zeolite catalyst to produce an unrefined petrol-like thing that can be refined into petrol. This is the Mobil process.

So, which one should I choose? The second one removes more CO2, but the fuel is more toxic. The first one has unknown products on the biodiesel end.

Anyway I'll leave you to decide while I try as well.

P.S. Ironic, isn't it? A large climate denying oil company might help save the planet.

[WinkAllKerb'']

1 hour ago, JebKeb said:

P.S. Ironic, isn't it? A large climate denying oil company might help save the planet.

missinformation and exchange market are ironic no doubt ; )

so you need the subtitles ; )

Edited April 26, 2016 by WinkAllKerb''

[JebKeb]

It looks like I can't add a poll to this thread so in a few days I'll start a thread on general renewable fuels from biomass. It'll be a while away and I am planning to name it "Closed-loop petroleum replacement development."