Bio Fuel?

[Diche Bach]

I still don't get the "carbon fetish" ah well . . .

[Kerbart]

On 9/25/2016 at 9:21 AM, Scotius said:

Nope. We actually have overproduction of food. Europe would be able to feed entire world - heck, Romanian plain in Southern Europe is so fertile, it could feed entire population of Europe if it was turned into fields whole. In fact, governments are paying farmers to produce LESS that they comfortably could. Actual problem is distribution - no one is willing to pay for transport of products to poor areas of the world.

It's a bit more complex than that. In most of those areas the potential for food growth is there, but that potential is used for tobacco, coffee, cotton, cacao and other non-food crops (cacao is edible. It's not a food). It's more an unwillingless to let go of profits, than simply not paying for transportation.

But in the end, yes, the amount of food available globally is not the reason there's hunger in this world.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

It's a bit more complex than that. In most of those areas the potential for food growth is there, but that potential is used for tobacco, coffee, cotton, cacao and other non-food crops (cacao is edible. It's not a food). It's more an unwillingless to let go of profits, than simply not paying for transportation.

But in the end, yes, the amount of food available globally is not the reason there's hunger in this world.

Areas with real famine today is warzones or areas controlled by despots and warlords. This drive up delivery cost a lot, 
This was not true 30 years ago, 120 years since the last famine in western europe. 

In the US and Europe farmed area goes down, lots of marginal land become forest, 120 years ago the requirement was that your could survive on the land, today its if you can make $70k on it.
Lots of the farmed areas is used for pasture or for growing foods for animals, however 120 years ago lots of land was used for feeding horses who was used in farming., still ended in the pot but worked out horse needed a loot of cooking

[FleshJeb]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel

[YNM]

On 9/25/2016 at 8:21 PM, Scotius said:

Nope. We actually have overproduction of food. Europe would be able to feed entire world - heck, Romanian plain in Southern Europe is so fertile, it could feed entire population of Europe if it was turned into fields whole. In fact, governments are paying farmers to produce LESS that they comfortably could. Actual problem is distribution - no one is willing to pay for transport of products to poor areas of the world.

Proof that yourself. If that's really the case, then you people should just burn your houses down and start planting some fuel-rich plants instead of burn forests somewhere to be converted into oil palm plantation.

There's no overproduction of food - there's only excessive usage, or inefficient plantation.

[Scotius]

Actually, the area of forest in my country is 35% and is growing every year - partly because worst soils are converted from uneconomical farmland to rationally planned and planted forests. Yet my country is food and product exporter, and share of agricultural products in the export overall value grows every year. Maybe you guys should take a good look at soil usage and agricultural practises in your country and make some adjustments?

[Green Baron]

Step on a village square in central africa and repeat that. You are likely to be asked some uncomfortable questions (i was). We cannot explain to the poor people why we destroy mountains of overproduction and on the other side people starve.

Sorry, no offence meant, about a billion people are hungry, UN statistic of 2015. Mostly in developing countries, but a few live right among us in the rich countries.

 

Edited September 27, 2016 by Green Baron

[Green Baron]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

 

There's no overproduction of food - there's only excessive usage, or inefficient plantation.

Oh, yes, there is. Meat, Milk, Cheese, Butter (got better in the last years). Farmers in western european countries are highly subsidized. "Butterberg" and "Milklake" have become famous words. Millions of tons af food are thrown away. Here on La Palma are Banana plantations. But they cannot compete with southern/central american prices, so the state guarantees a high price. The bananas are produced, bought by the state and then thrown to the garbage. More and more plantations are built until water for irrigation is getting short, which is just about to happen.

That's the way ... :-/

 

Edited September 27, 2016 by Green Baron

[StarStreak2109]

Nevertheless, the hype for "biofuels" is IMHO generally not sustainable - neither from a technical point of view nor from a moral point of view.

Technical: you need extremely large areas to cultivate enough "energy plants" to generate even enough fuel for private transport, let alone for aviation and/or space flight. Furthermore it depletes the soils of nutrients and water, so fertilization and irrigation is needed. Turns out you need a lot of fuel to care for the plants before generating the first drop of fuel. Large monocultures also are subject to diseases.

Moral: Energy plants are often cultivated where labour is cheap. This means that in areas where food is scarse anyway, even more area is taken away from food production for energy production because corporations can make a tidy profit.

Problem is I cannot grasp, what sustainable alternatives are there. Would surplus energy from large-scale offshore wind farms used for electrolysis (generating hydrolox) be sufficient for the space industries?

[DerekL1963]

6 minutes ago, StarStreak2109 said:

Problem is I cannot grasp, what sustainable alternatives are there.

There's only two long term solutions - one is unacceptable because people misperceive the risks, the second is unacceptable because it's been a joke for so long that people don't understand why it hasn't happened.

[magnemoe]

3 minutes ago, StarStreak2109 said:

Nevertheless, the hype for "biofuels" is IMHO generally not sustainable - neither from a technical point of view nor from a moral point of view.

Technical: you need extremely large areas to cultivate enough "energy plants" to generate even enough fuel for private transport, let alone for aviation and/or space flight. Furthermore it depletes the soils of nutrients and water, so fertilization and irrigation is needed. Turns out you need a lot of fuel to care for the plants before generating the first drop of fuel. Large monocultures also are subject to diseases.

Moral: Energy plants are often cultivated where labour is cheap. This means that in areas where food is scarse anyway, even more area is taken away from food production for energy production because corporations can make a tidy profit.

Problem is I cannot grasp, what sustainable alternatives are there. Would surplus energy from large-scale offshore wind farms used for electrolysis (generating hydrolox) be sufficient for the space industries?

Main issue is that in the west agriculture use far more energy than the energy in the product. Big tractors and lots of fertilizer. 
On the other hand the countries who produce bio-fuel don't have an lack of food. If they had they would be too disorganized to make bio fuel for cooperation, mostly done in Indonesia and similar places.

Don't like the idea of offshore wind farms, windmills works well enough on land but is an pretty marginal business, you service an windmill on land with an pickup, To assembly or replace the blades you use an mobile crane. 
Offshore you need a ship for servicing. For repair of blades or generator you would need some scary large specialized stuff, might just as well bring it back to an dock. 
This works for the oil industry who is not marginal, wind is and will always be.  
Moral is, for generations the environmentalists has asked for wind power, finally it works their response, its noisy and ugly and kill birds, move it offshore. 
My response would be, nice now I know where to put the nuclear power plant who is neither noisy or kill birds
Say you got offshore wind work, do you really think they would be happy? 

Biofuel is perfect then used on waste. talked about McDonald, using animal excrements is more common, same with food garbage, they are starting to make methanol of wood garbage. 
There I lived earlier they had an gas field nearby, an development was build on an old refuse, you got methane leaking up into the drains with fun effects. 
Solution was to drill down to collect it then it was burned for remote heating. A poster told that the weird construction was, a container, an gas tank and a high chimney. 
 

28 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

There's only two long term solutions - one is unacceptable because people misperceive the risks, the second is unacceptable because it's been a joke for so long that people don't understand why it hasn't happened.

And you summed this up far better than me. 

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Main issue is that in the west agriculture use far more energy than the energy in the product. Big tractors and lots of fertilizer. 

But the yield is also several times greater.

Agriculture is accumulation of an external energy as chemical energy of crops.
And not at all sure which way is cheaper. With "natural scattered" energy or "concentrated" energy. Probably, the second one.

A funny moment: using tractors, industry, etc, we pump the solar energy stored in ancient plants (coal, oil) into the energy of new plants.

Edited September 28, 2016 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

19 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Oh, yes, there is. Meat, Milk, Cheese, Butter (got better in the last years). Farmers in western european countries are highly subsidized. "Butterberg" and "Milklake" have become famous words. Millions of tons af food are thrown away. Here on La Palma are Banana plantations. But they cannot compete with southern/central american prices, so the state guarantees a high price. The bananas are produced, bought by the state and then thrown to the garbage. More and more plantations are built until water for irrigation is getting short, which is just about to happen.

That's the way ... :-/

 

Maybe your gov't should send it over here. It'll help making world peace than warring over unclear things. Stomach first.

[Green Baron]

4 hours ago, YNM said:

Maybe your gov't should send it over here. It'll help making world peace than warring over unclear things. Stomach first.

Thanks, i'll tell them :-)

But then a few more guys here will be unemployed and could start to do silly things ...

 

[YNM]

On 09/29/2016 at 0:18 AM, Green Baron said:

Thanks, i'll tell them :-)

But then a few more guys here will be unemployed and could start to do silly things ...

Guess they can protect their homes...

But it seems like this surplus has been used as stockpile, to be released in bad times or help (read : sold to) other countries. At least that's what it says for EU.

Edited September 30, 2016 by YNM

[tater]

Biofuel is no different than burning trees (which I will start doing once it gets cold, I like a nice fire).

Split atoms, not wood.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, tater said:

Split atoms, not wood.

Protect the natural gravitationally oriented cellulose compounds from oxidizing!

Edited September 30, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Diche Bach]

10 hours ago, tater said:

Biofuel is no different than burning trees (which I will start doing once it gets cold, I like a nice fire).

Split atoms, not wood.

Mmmmm, the smell of biofuels in the morning, smells like . . . victory . . .

 

[TheDestroyer111]

On 9/25/2016 at 2:05 AM, magnemoe said:

You can make methane from composing waste however this is mostly used for power and heating. 
One interesting thing is making methanol from wood waste as its lots of it.
Most fun MacDonald uses their old frying fat on their trucks. 
 

Old frying fat? IIRC one old friend of mine once tried cooking something on old frying fat and hydrogen somehow got out of it, which itself soon also created a fireball.

[StrandedonEarth]

4 hours ago, TheDestroyer111 said:

Old frying fat? IIRC one old friend of mine once tried cooking something on old frying fat and hydrogen somehow got out of it, which itself soon also created a fireball.

I'm not a chemist, but I can't imagine getting hydrogen out of fat while cooking. What I have personally seen happen is putting soaking wet raw French fries in a pot of hot lard. As the water flashes into vapour it also puts a lot of fine droplets of fat in the air, and once that reaches the burner... Fwooosh!

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I'm not a chemist, but I can't imagine getting hydrogen out of fat while cooking

Just pressurize your pot and burn the fat with insufficient amount of oxygen. You get much CO, less - CO2 and H2O, and the remaining partof gas mixture will be H2.

Or you can feed a vat of fat-eating bacteries which exhaust CH4/H2 as a fart excrete.

[YNM]

11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Just pressurize your pot and burn the fat with insufficient amount of oxygen. You get much CO, less - CO2 and H2O, and the remaining partof gas mixture will be H2.

Or you can feed a vat of fat-eating bacteries which exhaust CH4/H2 as a fart excrete.

I think it's either CO, C, CH4, H2O or O2, not much hydrogen. After all, organic matter do contain them already.

H2 bond is even sliightly weaker than CH4.

Anyway

On 9/28/2016 at 2:28 AM, magnemoe said:

Main issue is that in the west agriculture use far more energy than the energy in the product. Big tractors and lots of fertilizer. 
On the other hand the countries who produce bio-fuel don't have an lack of food. If they had they would be too disorganized to make bio fuel for cooperation, mostly done in Indonesia and similar places.

It's not precisely not enough food or something, just our standards would be very low for other countries.

Edited October 1, 2016 by YNM

[wumpus]

On 9/27/2016 at 1:24 PM, Green Baron said:

Oh, yes, there is. Meat, Milk, Cheese, Butter (got better in the last years). Farmers in western european countries are highly subsidized. "Butterberg" and "Milklake" have become famous words. Millions of tons af food are thrown away. Here on La Palma are Banana plantations. But they cannot compete with southern/central american prices, so the state guarantees a high price. The bananas are produced, bought by the state and then thrown to the garbage. More and more plantations are built until water for irrigation is getting short, which is just about to happen.

That's the way ... :-/

Reminds me of the "black foe" of NASA, William Proxmire.  A Senator [Wisconsin] that thought that the US government existed entirely to produce cheese subsidies.  I'm fairly sure the US government still buys, stores, and typically throws away cheese (you know times are bad when they dig into the cheese hoard).  While I'm sure Proxmire wasn't around when they started, I'm sure he kept it running well after the Depression.

I'm sure readers of old Robert Heinlein novels are fairly familiar with the name Proxmire.

[kerbiloid]

11 hours ago, YNM said:

I think it's either CO, C, CH4, H2O or O2, not much hydrogen. After all, organic matter do contain them already.

H2 bond is even sliightly weaker than CH4.

That's how they make H2 from the natural gas. (Catalytic reforming of methane.)
A fat would give more dirt (C and N oxides), less H2.
(Of course, with catalyzator. So, an aluminium pot with platinum ladle is greatly appreciated.)

Edited October 2, 2016 by kerbiloid