[biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
womplex_oo1 wrote: Ok fine. You win. They don't teach this stuff in Canadian schools, and I'm trying to find my way around using 50% intuition. The Journey to Forever website is really poorly organized - there is no top-down comprehensive table of contents, and I can't download the documents, say in pdf format, so that i can read them offline or print them out so that I can read them while suffering less computer screen walleye-vision-induced eye strain (the primary cause of goldfish attention spans). One thing I've learned from business: the more components of a machine that you can make yourself, the lower your business costs. What small start-up entrepreneurs need is comprehensive how-to information, - growing fungi bacteria, - extracting enzymes, - appropriate containers for liquid processing, - modular scalable steam explosion pre-processing equipment you can build yourself, - growing yeast, - fermentation, - making your own polyvinyl alcohol membranes, and so on... I repeat, the more components you have to buy from somewhere else, the more expensive the end product. To get the cost down, we literally have to be able to do *everything* ourselves in one fully integrated optimized operation. Repeat away, but hasn't it dawned on you by now that that's what we're discussing here all the time? If you can't see that that's exactly what Journey to Forever is on about, then you really are blind, or worse. And it's not just me who'd say that, we get loads of email from people all the time saying just the opposite of what you say, and also, very often, the opposite of your opinion that it's really poorly organized. That opinion I'd not be taking seriously from somebody who feels that PDF files are the route to proper organization. LOL! You can't grep dead trees. PDFs are a major reason the paperless office has failed to materialize - so you print it out, stuff it in a filing cabinet or something, or what, keep it on your hard disk? Have you got a full-text search program that will search it? (Whatever might be the advantage of that, eh?) Open it up, if you can ever find the thing, and no url, no way of knowing where it came from. It's as clunky as hell, and the type's all blurred - unlike html. That's probably where your goldfish vision comes from. Quite the most awkward, unwilling, otherwise piece of garbage to be found on the Web. That would really be the end of the Web, if websites were organized the way you want them to be. Why not learn something of the basics of downloading information from websites, and then handling it properly? Seriously, you're only getting a keyhole view of what's there, no use complaining about the keyhole - open the damn' door, it's not locked! there is no top-down comprehensive table of contents, and I can't download the At the top-left on every page: Sitemap (text only) http://journeytoforever.org/sitemap.html We're not about to disorganize our website for the sake of the incompetent. Blind people can use it (they're among the most able users of the Internet, and I think PDFs are particularly unkind to them), people with really old gear can use it, kids can use it, everybody likes it, but you can't use it, and complain. You're the one out of step. Keith Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- 4 DVDs Free +sp Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/MVfIAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
- Original Message - From: womplex_oo1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 22:53 Subject: [biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures and I can't download the documents, say in pdf format, so that i can read them offline There are many ways to read web documents off line. The one that I use the most is to send my self an e-mail of the page, (and save it on computer as a HTML) one reasion I like this one the best is because I can change the size of the font with out much hasle (this can help with the eye strain). I have found that a few times, I may have to goto RTF (Rich Text Format) for the e-mail then cut or copy-then paste. If for some reasion that does not work, I put it in My Favorites and mark it for off line viewing and down load the web page. One thing I've learned from business: the more components of a machine that you can make yourself, the lower your business costs. What small start-up entrepreneurs need is comprehensive how-to information, - growing fungi bacteria, - extracting enzymes, - appropriate containers for liquid processing, - modular scalable steam explosion pre-processing equipment you can build yourself, - growing yeast, - fermentation, - making your own polyvinyl alcohol membranes, I have found that all I need to do is ask on this list, and more often than not someone might have the answer, your question might be missed, and you might have to ask again, but, hey we are all here for learning and shareing info. Greg H. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- 4 DVDs Free +sp Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/MVfIAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
I just found out that dessicants like silica gel only work in humid air (because of their high surface area, low vapor pressure pores). Osmosis would work to selectively separate water from ethanol. The process uses a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) membrane developed in Japan. The process consumes very little energy, requiring only a certain amount of pressure. i've also found a gov't website on the conversion of whole plants (leaves, stem, roots) into fermentable sugars for ethanol production. Here it is... http://www.ott.doe.gov/biofuels/understanding_biomass.html It's an interesting read. Particularly important because starchy granules comprise a very small percentage of plant material, and so by throwing away plant fiber, we're wasting 99 percent of the potential chemical energy available in plants, and hence also 99 percent of the solar energy that went into growing the plants in the first place: Component Percent Dry Weight --- Cellulose 40-60% Hemicellulose 20-40% Lignin 10-25% Apparently Lignin is the hardest component to hydrolize into fermentable sugars, and the ability to do this is critical to making biomass ethanol a consumer product. Something like a 10-fold reduction in the cost of lignin-to-sugar enzymes is required, and intense research is ongoing to try to achieve this. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Looking for a more powerful website? Try GeoCities for $8.95 per month. Register your domain name (http://your-name.com). More storage! No ads! http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info http://us.click.yahoo.com/aHOo4D/KJoEAA/MVfIAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
womplex_oo1 wrote: I just found out that dessicants like silica gel only work in humid air (because of their high surface area, low vapor pressure pores). This is all in the archives, several times perhaps. You have several steps to go still before you find a good way of removing the 5% of the water content from 95% ethanol. For 15% ethanol, well. Keep trying I guess. Osmosis would work to selectively separate water from ethanol. The process uses a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) membrane developed in Japan. The process consumes very little energy, requiring only a certain amount of pressure. i've also found a gov't website on the conversion of whole plants (leaves, stem, roots) into fermentable sugars for ethanol production. Here it is... http://www.ott.doe.gov/biofuels/understanding_biomass.html Not much there. I think I've given you this before: http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_link.html#cellulose Ethanol from cellulose See especially Wood-Ethanol Report: Technology Review, Environment Canada 1999 -- good overview of the problem and the current solutions on offer. http://www.pyr.ec.gc.ca/ep/wet/section16.html It's an interesting read. Particularly important because starchy granules comprise a very small percentage of plant material, and so by throwing away plant fiber, we're wasting 99 percent of the potential chemical energy available in plants, and hence also 99 percent of the solar energy that went into growing the plants in the first place: Your idea of waste and nature's idea of waste are two different things. What you call waste is returned to the soil to maintain the organic matter content, essential for everything - soil fertility, crop production, and the viability of the soilfoodweb, the tons of micro-organisms in an acre of soil that make plant growth possible. So if you're going to take that away too and burn it in your car, what will you substitute for it? Chemical fertilizers? Maybe you'll deign to answer this time. You seldom respond to questions people ask you here. It's a discussion group, you know. Keith Component Percent Dry Weight --- Cellulose 40-60% Hemicellulose 20-40% Lignin 10-25% Apparently Lignin is the hardest component to hydrolize into fermentable sugars, and the ability to do this is critical to making biomass ethanol a consumer product. Something like a 10-fold reduction in the cost of lignin-to-sugar enzymes is required, and intense research is ongoing to try to achieve this. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Looking for a more powerful website? Try GeoCities for $8.95 per month. Register your domain name (http://your-name.com). More storage! No ads! http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info http://us.click.yahoo.com/aHOo4D/KJoEAA/MVfIAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
What questions? Perhaps I was away from my computer. Anyways there is alot of information on that website about using cellulose as a feedstock, but the webpage has failed to justify it -- they completely failed to answer the question WHY??? Here is why: Most plants are composed of less than 10% starch, the traditional component that is fermented into ethanol. The remaining 90% or more of the plant, by weight is composed of the following: Component Percent Dry Weight --- Cellulose 40-60% Hemicellulose 20-40% Lignin 10-25% These materials can be burned to generate heat, so to ignore them as a potential source of automotive fuel is a HUGE WASTE. The Journey to Forever website doesn't pay enough attention to putting this capability into the hands of the general public. Their webpages concentrate on using only the starch. No wonder ethanol as an alternative fuel is not convincing enough people -- Not even the guys who build their own stills are going as far as they could. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Looking for a more powerful website? Try GeoCities for $8.95 per month. Register your domain name (http://your-name.com). More storage! No ads! http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info http://us.click.yahoo.com/aHOo4D/KJoEAA/MVfIAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
To add to that, we have guys from the University of Pennsylvania publishing scientific articles telling the public that using corn to make ethanol is a ZERO net producer of energy. Most people just give up when they hear that. But if you armed the public with the knowledge that they are throwing away 90 percent of the potential fuel, those researchers would get a professional slap upside the head, and probably issue a formal retraction of their paper. You gotta tell people man. More than that, you gotta make the technology available so that entrepreneurs can use it. --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], womplex_oo1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What questions? Perhaps I was away from my computer. Anyways there is alot of information on that website about using cellulose as a feedstock, but the webpage has failed to justify it -- they completely failed to answer the question WHY??? Here is why: Most plants are composed of less than 10% starch, the traditional component that is fermented into ethanol. The remaining 90% or more of the plant, by weight is composed of the following: Component Percent Dry Weight --- Cellulose 40-60% Hemicellulose 20-40% Lignin 10-25% These materials can be burned to generate heat, so to ignore them as a potential source of automotive fuel is a HUGE WASTE. The Journey to Forever website doesn't pay enough attention to putting this capability into the hands of the general public. Their webpages concentrate on using only the starch. No wonder ethanol as an alternative fuel is not convincing enough people -- Not even the guys who build their own stills are going as far as they could. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Looking for a more powerful website? Try GeoCities for $8.95 per month. Register your domain name (http://your-name.com). More storage! No ads! http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info http://us.click.yahoo.com/aHOo4D/KJoEAA/MVfIAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
Here is something else that really ticks me off: coal liquefaction, making gasoline out of coal using the most environmentally destructive means, is getting far more attention than this. --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], womplex_oo1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To add to that, we have guys from the University of Pennsylvania publishing scientific articles telling the public that using corn to make ethanol is a ZERO net producer of energy. Most people just give up when they hear that. But if you armed the public with the knowledge that they are throwing away 90 percent of the potential fuel, those researchers would get a professional slap upside the head, and probably issue a formal retraction of their paper. You gotta tell people man. More than that, you gotta make the technology available so that entrepreneurs can use it. --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], womplex_oo1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What questions? Perhaps I was away from my computer. Anyways there is alot of information on that website about using cellulose as a feedstock, but the webpage has failed to justify it -- they completely failed to answer the question WHY??? Here is why: Most plants are composed of less than 10% starch, the traditional component that is fermented into ethanol. The remaining 90% or more of the plant, by weight is composed of the following: Component Percent Dry Weight --- Cellulose 40-60% Hemicellulose 20-40% Lignin 10-25% These materials can be burned to generate heat, so to ignore them as a potential source of automotive fuel is a HUGE WASTE. The Journey to Forever website doesn't pay enough attention to putting this capability into the hands of the general public. Their webpages concentrate on using only the starch. No wonder ethanol as an alternative fuel is not convincing enough people -- Not even the guys who build their own stills are going as far as they could. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Looking for a more powerful website? Try GeoCities for $8.95 per month. Register your domain name (http://your-name.com). More storage! No ads! http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info http://us.click.yahoo.com/aHOo4D/KJoEAA/MVfIAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
womplex_oo1 wrote: What questions? This one, for a start: You: It's an interesting read. Particularly important because starchy granules comprise a very small percentage of plant material, and so by throwing away plant fiber, we're wasting 99 percent of the potential chemical energy available in plants, and hence also 99 percent of the solar energy that went into growing the plants in the first place: Me: Your idea of waste and nature's idea of waste are two different things. What you call waste is returned to the soil to maintain the organic matter content, essential for everything - soil fertility, crop production, and the viability of the soilfoodweb, the tons of micro-organisms in an acre of soil that make plant growth possible. So if you're going to take that away too and burn it in your car, what will you substitute for it? Chemical fertilizers? And now we have it again from you that it's a HUGE WASTE. Perhaps I was away from my computer. Anyways there is alot of information on that website about using cellulose as a feedstock, but the webpage has failed to justify it -- they completely failed to answer the question WHY??? Huh? Journey to Forever doesn't tell you why, doesn't pay enough attention. Um, how many seconds did you spend there? It's said many web-surfers have the same attention span as a goldfish, 9 seconds. You spent more than 9 seconds at our ethanol pages and come away saying we don't justify it, don't say why, focus only on starch conversion? Then you talk about energy balances of ethanol, and you didn't see that there either? It's in the archives too, and in a few recent messages. But okay, if you insist, you pay lots of attention, we don't, LOL! Here is why: Most plants are composed of less than 10% starch, the traditional component that is fermented into ethanol. The remaining 90% or more of the plant, by weight is composed of the following: Component Percent Dry Weight --- Cellulose 40-60% Hemicellulose 20-40% Lignin 10-25% These materials can be burned to generate heat, so to ignore them as a potential source of automotive fuel is a HUGE WASTE. Before you start destroying even more topsoil than has already been destroyed by this type of thinking (?), try answering the question, eh? The obvious question. Curtis also commented on it, don't ignore him please. The Journey to Forever website doesn't pay enough attention to putting this capability into the hands of the general public. Their webpages concentrate on using only the starch. No wonder ethanol as an alternative fuel is not convincing enough people -- Not even the guys who build their own stills are going as far as they could. You're being a bit ridiculous. AFAIK there is only one way available for anything less than an industry to make ethanol from cellulose, which is by acid hydrolysis, instructions for which are to be found at... ah, go have another look, it was right under your nose and you didn't see it. The entire scientific establishment has so far failed to put that capability into anybody's hands effectively, it's not there yet, it's in the future. If you'd actually read the references you were sent you might have seen that. Arkenol, for instance, has been in the final development stages for more than three years, nothing happens. Lots of talk from Iogen, but not a lot of production yet, if any. And so on. Every year they get millions and millions in grants, and it still doesn't happen. I'm not knocking it, it'll happen - but YOU want US to make it happen yesterday? Sheesh! It also seems to have escaped you that once the enzymes or whatever have converted the cellulose to sugars, it then follows the usual route - fermentation and distillation. They don't attempt to mop up all that water with bits of various kinds of blotting paper instead. To add to that, we have guys from the University of Pennsylvania publishing scientific articles telling the public that using corn to make ethanol is a ZERO net producer of energy. Most people just give up when they hear that. Cornell University, not Pennsylvania, his name is David Pimentel. Scientific articles is stretching it more than somewhat. There's a lot of info at Journey to Forever about it, including several complete debunkings, there's been LOTS of discussion about it here (the last four days ago - see Re: [biofuel] Re: ethanol economics), and these resources have been used to counter Pimentel's BS in quite a few instances. And you? But if you armed the public with the knowledge that they are throwing away 90 percent of the potential fuel, those researchers would get a professional slap upside the head, and probably issue a formal retraction of their paper. Yes, no doubt, if it worked, which it doesn't, yet - but if you went about it your way you'd simply be handing Pimentel et al. a gun to shoot you with.
[biofuel] Re: Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Membranes to dehydrate water-alcohol mixtures
Ok fine. You win. They don't teach this stuff in Canadian schools, and I'm trying to find my way around using 50% intuition. The Journey to Forever website is really poorly organized - there is no top-down comprehensive table of contents, and I can't download the documents, say in pdf format, so that i can read them offline or print them out so that I can read them while suffering less computer screen walleye-vision-induced eye strain (the primary cause of goldfish attention spans). One thing I've learned from business: the more components of a machine that you can make yourself, the lower your business costs. What small start-up entrepreneurs need is comprehensive how-to information, - growing fungi bacteria, - extracting enzymes, - appropriate containers for liquid processing, - modular scalable steam explosion pre-processing equipment you can build yourself, - growing yeast, - fermentation, - making your own polyvinyl alcohol membranes, and so on... I repeat, the more components you have to buy from somewhere else, the more expensive the end product. To get the cost down, we literally have to be able to do *everything* ourselves in one fully integrated optimized operation. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- 4 DVDs Free +sp Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/MVfIAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
