Dana Linscott wrote: "Message: 3 Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 06:07:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Dana Linscott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Glycerine and absolute alcohol
"Lots of interest here! Am I to understand that this has potential to lower energy requirments for alcohol production including ethanol? If so the ethanol cooperatives in MN would be hugely interested as it would serve to "delink" ethanol production with natural gas prices. What a coup if this pans out." I'm not sure about the overall energy requirement. After all, the glycerine has to be regenerated, which requires both vacuum (steam ejector or shaft-driven pump) and heat. Somebody will have to run numbers - maybe perform bench-level tests. What excites me about this is integration. Glycerine is a bye-product of soap and biodiesel production, and needs to be purified to make it marketable. If the same apparatus can both regenerate the glycerine used as adsorbent for making pure ethanol AND make clean glycerine for market, there is a reduction in capital cost per unit of capacity for an integrated ethyl ester plant. That spells early returns, which should make projects of this sort easier to finance. Ever since I heard of biodiesel, I've been trying to make the numbers come out right so that I can get some coconut oil plants back up and running. Right now they refine coco oil for cooking, but Malaysian palm oil is so cheap that it's displacing coconut oil from the domestic market! Unfortunately, just grafting a biodiesel plant onto an existing coconut mill doesn't work, so there needs to be other products making maximum use of existing capital equipment. The "energy balance" is not the whole story in any case. If the energy input is from a waste product and the energy out is in the form of high-grade liquid fuel, there is a net gain no matter how many BTUs are on which side of the ledger. A low pressure steam plant burning ag waste can furnish both the vacuum and the heat. I'm looking for a site here in the Phils with about 4 meters of hydro head and about 1/2 ton/min flow, because liquid driven ejectors can be used for vacuum, saving a lot of steam. The ejector principle can also be used for deacidification with fatty acid recovery and for refrigeration. There is a similar controversy in the seawater desalination world (another stray interest of mine). The reverse-osmosis folk are fond of pointing out that their plants require "less energy" per unit of fresh water than multiple-effect thermal plants. What they neglect to mention is that their energy input is in the form of shaft power, while a thermal plant uses low-grade heat, preferably waste heat. The result is lots of idle RO capacity after the new owners learn the bottom line cost of operation. Best to all, Marc de Piolenc Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
