"... Make your own fuel <http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html> and no longer will you have to worry about the rising price of crude oil, waiting at gas stations, toxicity and health concerns, as well as the environmental hazards of petroleum."
------ http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20080425/gw1 Biodiesel decisions Thinking of converting your jalopy to run on french-fry oil? Wondering when guilt-free gasoline might be coming to your town? Ethanol blues got you down? Read on. By Andrew Januszak I don't drive a biodiesel car and I definitely don't own anything that could be converted to run on biodiesel as far as I know. But it's looking more and more like I should start, because my wallet is getting distressed and it seems like the planet is, too. As a young-adult non-farmer with organic interests but no land, where do I begin? Do I buy a diesel car and convert it to run on french fry oil? If I don't have the means or the time to make it, where do I buy it? What if I were a farmer and wanted to convert all of my equipment to run on biodiesel? What crops would I grow to expel the oil? What equipment would I use to process it? Could I actually sell it to turn a profit? How do I know this is truly the most economic decision to make? With our lurch into ethanol showing the unintended ecological consequences of burning crops for fuel, what are the extended impacts of using anything we can grow as an alternatives to petroleum? It's not difficult to imagine some of the questions people are confronted by when they begin to contemplate the idea of producing or converting their car, furnace or farm to use biodiesel, or any biofuel for that matter. All over the Internet biodiesel is gaining popularity. In theory, it's a self-sustainable fuel anyone can produce. And people are producing it-there's a handful of co-ops complete with websites; a farmer up in Vermont who is producing and running his equipment on it (see our archive article Green Energy); and there are even biodiesel plants scattered across the country-but at what environmental and economic cost? Browse the web for just a couple minutes, and you can find a handful of articles shedding light on current problems bubbling to the surface of this greasy situation. Take the current feedstocks used for example: Soybeans, like corn, had some great potential for fuel, but now people are starting to notice the direct negative impact of using food crops for something other than food. There's also a lot of growing concern (pardon the pun) about rainforests being slashed to make way for palm-oil production, and problems such as starting temperatures (for engines in colder climates), refinement and production prices, and other various feedstock issues. Despite how old the technology appears, it's still relatively young and in a heavy new experimental phase-where alternative processes and feedstocks are being tested. While more and more information is becoming available to everyone largely thanks to the Internet, biodiesel still hasn't reached its ultimate peak of eco-perfection where the ideal conditions are known (at least publicly) for it to function on a large-scale and become a prime economical, self-sustainable and environmentally friendly fuel. Powered by possibility From a consumer perspective, one of the most inspiring things about biodiesel may be its DIY capability. A lot of people get revved up just on this aspect alone, and no wonder. It's an opportunistic way to at least partially cut the government and corporations-which have created not only a (foreign) dependency-based market, but some other serious global consequences as well-out of the fuel picture. If you have a piece of land, some space, some capital and a boatload of willpower, you can find everything you need on the Internet to begin your biodiesel operation now. Make your own fuel <http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html> and no longer will you have to worry about the rising price of crude oil, waiting at gas stations, toxicity and health concerns, as well as the environmental hazards of petroleum. But if you can't make it yourself, there are still ways to get on the biofuel bandwagon. Cooperatives (co-ops) are member-owned-and-operated democratic businesses where everyone who works or uses the services offered gets a piece of the pie, or tankful of the barrel, in this case. The different types of co-ops span almost the entire spectrum of conceivable businesses, but the ones of interest here are biodiesel co-ops, and they're gushing up everywhere. When you join a biodiesel co-op, you will generally have to sign an agreement, pay out a share (which covers overhead like rent, storage, equipment purchasing and maintenance, production, etc.) and then you become entitled to, at the very least, buy the fuel that the co-op either makes or purchases in bulk. You'll also get to go to meetings, vote on the board of directors, pool your resources and get help from people who are, for the most part, in it for the same reasons you are. Starting a biodiesel co-op that keeps money in your area instead of sending it overseas is an incredibly patriotic means for fuel production and distribution. But supporting the local farmers who grow the feedstocks and the community by supplying them with fuel, despite good intentions, is a serious ton of work. It involves dealing with the IRS, zoning and fire laws, waste disposal, health codes and even the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (if you decide to make your own methanol) amongst other government regulators. Give me convenience or give me death Despite the hurdles from the law, regulations, production issues and pretty much anything else you might think of that seems to be confronting community-based biodiesel viability, there are some highly successful co-ops out there making bigger and bigger runs, and getting their fuel out to masses. Piedmont Biofuels in Pittsboro, North Carolina, is a prime example. Starting out as a small-scale producer for local customers, Piedmont has made fuel out of everything from soy oil to peanut oil to canola oil to waste oil to even poultry fat. They've helped start other producer co-ops and provide a full range of services including consultation, reactor design and classes at a local community college. They even operate a mobile biodiesel production station that displays the entire process from start to finish. In fact, Piedmont has been so successful that, according to Rachel Burton, one of the original founding members, they "have bids on their fuel from lots of customers all over, even a company that ships to Europe." The reasons? The weak value of the dollar, the fact that Europe's cars are mostly diesel and Piedmont's volume and quality being high enough to attract serious attention. However, Rachel assured, the co-op's main objective remains to "keep local customers happy." The Energy Cooperative in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is another co-op that really seems to be working hard to find sustainable answers to local energy production, and they've been at it for more than 25 years. According to their website, they not only offer thousands of households and businesses in the Philadelphia region renewable electricity and biodiesel-based heating fuel, they also have a sister company called Philadelphia Fry-o-Diesel, Inc., that specializes is refining fuel out of one of the most foul and rancid untapped gold-mines around: recycled grease from retail business grease traps. Grease traps essentially are designed to collect all the food wastes that get flushed down the drains of restaurants and food-service facilities. Most municipalities require them, and until now, restaurants have had to pay sewage or grease haulers to come in, suck up all the waste and dispose of it at a sewage treatment facility. Fry-o-Diesel has demonstrated that they not only can create an ASTM-standard biodiesel fuel out of trap grease at their facility, their fuel is also claimed to be cost-competitive with conventional diesel. All of this is especially remarkable because Fry-o-Diesel is taking an actual waste instead of a grown feedstock crop and creating fuel with it. This not only eliminates overhead costs of producing a feedstock to begin with, but also recycles something that's otherwise problematic and completely worthless. The technology is a pole vault in the right direction because if there's one thing we have an abundance of in the U.S., it's waste. Recycling waste to make fuel is key where constant waste sources exist. When either the technology is monopolized , efficiencies lessen the stream or there's no dependable supply, then it's back to the drawing board. Technology transfer With recycling, the biggest task seems to be developing the technology necessary to convert the target waste into the desired fuel. In contrast, the essential technology for feedstock-based biodiesel production is readily available, but figuring out what, and where, the optimum feedstock is presents the biggest challenge. On the Internet you can find data listing a number of potential oil-producing, plant-based feedstocks for making biodiesel. Some yield more than others, some are food crops and others are completely inedible. The only unifying factor among all of them but one is that they're surrounded by some general controversy. The first and most significant argument is that it's not only counterintuitive to use food crops such as soy for large-scale fuel production but that doing so, even with crops that are used as livestock feed, will inevitably drive up food prices across the board (as we have seen in recent weeks and months). The second argument is that the growing enough bio-feedstocks to phase out petroleum will also have a negative impact on food prices due to the acreage required. It's easy to see the mounting anxiety over these issues, and if there's going to be any progress made with plant-based feedstocks, it's going to be in finding out what highest-yielding, inedible plant does best where (with minimal input requirements or environmental impact), while taking into consideration all the variables of the local growing environment it's in. Some say biofuels in general shouldn't be tarnished because of ethanol excesses and mistaken hopes. (See The right biofuel. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/opinion/24cohen.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin>) Previously it was mentioned that there was only one oil-producing, plant-based feedstock that wasn't steeped in the argument of food vs. fuel: algae. Con algae Algae requires only light, water and carbon dioxide to survive; it grows at a faster rate than any other current feedstock, and the amount of oil collected from certain strains makes it one of the most efficient candidates for biodiesel production. The various methods of algae cultivation also prove to be exciting because some methods-like Fry-o-Diesel's-rely on recycling. For instance, one way to create an algae farm for biodiesel production is to utilize waste streams (either human or livestock) as a sustainable food source for the algae. The waste becomes recycled, and through this the algae helps to filter and clean the water, which if then treated properly, can be used for human consumption. Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, a New Zealand-based biofuels developer, demonstrated this technology in 2006 by producing the world's first sample of algae biodiesel from sewage ponds. Another approach, which is currently in use by GreenFuel, a Massachusetts-based corporation, is to recycle the carbon dioxide from smokestacks emissions. The CO2 goes directly into either a pond or a specialized container exposed to sunlight called a photobioreactor. The algae absorb the CO2 emissions as food, which helps to reduce CO2 emissions as well as other pollutants released from smokestacks. This potential technology perks the ears of factory owners and industry-related government officials since it provides the opportunity to recycle carbon emissions into a marketable, sustainable fuel, and also cuts enough emissions to please the EPA and proponents of the Kyoto Protocol. Like its soil-based counterparts, however, the reason why algae aren't kick-starting biodiesel into large-scale production is because the technology hasn't reached homeostasis. Developing answers continue to lead to more questions in a dynamic interplay of supply and demand for food, land, fuel and technology, with new attention paid to carbon-footprinting and ecological concerns. All in all, it's just a matter of time, perceived need, funding and research coming together to dramatically increase production of this earth-friendly fuel . Those who can't or won't wait are the ones driving the bio-innovation to help chug us out of corporate fuel dependency and away from eco-destruction. April 25, 2008 _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
