Dick Carlstein wrote: >in answer to: > >From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>goat industries >To: <mailto:biofuels-biz@yahoogroups.com>biofuels-biz@yahoogroups.com >Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 9:15 AM >Subject: Re: [biofuels-biz] fuzzy standards > > >The reason why Dick sneers at WVO is, it seems, because he hasn't (like >ourselves) used the right recipe for using heavily used WVO. Is this true? > >no, paddy, not at all. the reason i shy away from heavily used wvo, >is that a) it's a very variable feedstock, quality wise, b) it is >expensive (in most parts of the world), for what you get (in >argentina it goes for u$s 0.20 a litre, in spain for 0.21), c) it is >a rigid supply scenario feedstock, and d) it is more expensive, >complicated, and time consuming to transesterify satisfactorily. > >spain's wvo, for example, is superb for biodiesel. the fast food us >wvo, is not. > >i find that dangling the lure of 'free' feedstock will eventually >turn upon itself, as small operators have to confront the inherent >variability of wvo.
Small operators are well set up to confront the inherent variability of WVO, and many of them even manage to find a reliable source of supply, free, that gives them a consistent-quality feedstock. The inherent variability isn't invariably inherent. >wvo already has a market in most parts of the world. adding demand >for biodiesel production will soon erode whatever price advantage >over vvo it might have today. > >finally, there's just so much wvo available. increased demand is not >going to increase production. people will not eat more chips because >the waste oil they generate is going to be used to make biodiesel. This is very spurious reasoning, as such. First, nowhere is WVO recycled thoroughly. Everywhere that I've looked into it, and others have looked into it, there are large amounts not accounted for. Yes, it has a market, no, the market does not account for the full supply, and in many cases not even for most of the supply. Second, the WVO market is anything but stable as you say it is: "there's just so much wvo available". Several times you sneered at the debate over Mad Cow Disease, for example, oblivious to the effect that was having on the WVO market in many parts of the world. A current message on the Biofuels list describes renderers in the US preparing to go out of business because the market for their products has vanished due to BSE concerns. This is not just tallow, it includes much ordinary WVO. Several institutes have devoted research time and resources to developing transesterification techniques for high FFA feedstock to divert tallow supplies to biodiesel. In general, prices of WVO have dropped over the last year or more in many parts of the world, sometimes by so much that collectors too are going out of business, and less is thus being collected. >i am deeply grateful to my teachers at eng'g school, who hammered >two basic engineering concepts into me: 'kiss', and 'if it works >don't fix it'. in that spirit i soon came to realise that cheap can >sometimes be very expensive, and thus focused on using reliable, >predictable, readily available, feedstocks as the basis for my plant >design. > >my plant is not capable of transesterifying wvo, unless it's treated >previously, and cannot do the acid/base reaction. i don't even >recommend the base/base reaction because it is time consuming, and >cuts back plant capacity. > >the plant was really designed to do the base reaction, very reliably >(temp and pressure). > >i am much more interested in empowering people in africa so they >have access to fuel via their farming activities, that i am in >solving the us mcdonald quandary. > >there are so many feedstocks available in the market, many of them >not even edible (such as castor oil or jatropha), that to >adopt consumer society habits as the basis for a universal >undertaking such as 'making' energy, is imho, a dead end street. Where is the either/or here, that excludes all the more sensible both/and options? >where are you going to get wvo in africa. or india. or china. or >latin america in general ? Yes, well, all very laudable, though I've found your attitude to Third World rural development issues questionable, to say the least - you certainly don't understand peasant economies, and there's a long, long record of just such misunderstandings bringing more problems than solutions in their wake. That aside, how does it follow that because there's no WVO in Africa, India, China and Latin America, that makes WVO a non-viable feedstock where it is available? In fact there is a very great deal of WVO available in China, and in India, and indeed in many parts of Africa. Where there's WVO, use WVO. Where there's cheap virgin oil, use that. Where there's room for community development through local energy production from locally produced crops or crop by-products, do that. >yet all of these locations have fantastic vvo production potential. >and at a very low cost too (suggest you check out ><http://www.tinytechindia.com/>http://www.tinytechindia.com/) > >palm and coco oils are presently selling for u$s 200 a ton, refined. >and the world vvo glut continues, and is projected to remain so for >at least five more years. > >so, to each his own. i am free to choose, and have done so. When one gets this far, one can see what's coming next: "... and anyone choosing differently is dumb." >as edison said after doing 10'000 experiments before he finally made >a working bulb: 'i did not fail 10'000 times trying to make an >electric bulb. actually, i discovered 10'000 ways how NOT to make >one' > >using heavily used wvo, in my opinion, is one way NOT to make biodiesel. > >it lights the room aok, but there are better bulbs available... And there you go - using WVO is dumb. After all this tortuous denial, I think we can go back to Paddy's statement: "The reason why Dick sneers at WVO is, it seems, because he hasn't (like ourselves) used the right recipe for using heavily used WVO. Is this true?" Seems like it. And/or Dick's processor doesn't cut it with WVO, therefore it's the WVO that's no use. Keith Addison ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Small business owners... 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