Hi Zeke
Thanks, I didn't know about the palm oil. Palm oil biodiesel isn't
bad, just that it has a high melting point - and quite a low IV, it
won't polymerise easily. It needs pour-point depressants in winter
though.
But is that truly US biodiesel? It sounds more like the kind of
value-added operation you get in so-called emerging economies, or in
SEZs.
As we all know, there are two kinds of bad biodiesel, bad-as-fuel and
bad-unsustainable, and palm oil has been at the centre of the row
over unsustainable biofuels ("Worse than fossil fuel", according to
George Monbiot, etc etc etc
<http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/>),
on the grounds that, spurred by European demand for biodiesel, new
palm oil plantations in SE Asia are rapidly replacing what's left of
the rainforests. (Or even more rapidly than before, to be more
accurate.) Loud complaints in the EU and the UK eventually yielded
official commitments to import only sustainably produced palm
biodiesel, though I don't know how dutiful they've been about it. I
wonder if the Galveston plant may be a way round that: rest assured,
it's US biodiesel, everybody knows there aren't any tropical
rainforests in America. Hm. Sorry to be so distrustful.
Even if it is sustainably produced, how much real-world carbon
reduction would be left after you'd deducted the emissions bill of
transporting it a third of the way round the world to Galveston and
then another third of the way round the world to Rotterdam?
No such concerns here in Japan, whose backyard is SE Asia. The B5
mandate simply got handed over to big sogo soshas like Mitsubishi,
who produce it and blend it in Malaysia and Indonesia and ship it
here direct, "sustainable" or not. :-(
Best
Keith
>Not ALL of the US biodiesel being dumped on europe is Soy based. I know of
>one plant in Galveston (a subsidary of the same company that bought my solar
>company) that was designed to buy palm oil from SE asia, and turning that to
>biodiesel to send to Europe. Not any better than soy (quite possibly even
>worse...) but, not soy :)
>
>For a while the local biodiesel company here (blue sun) had canola and
>sunflower based biodiesel, and it had quite a bit better properties -- I
>could run B100 down to 25F without any gelling problems, unlike the soy
>based stuff they had most of the time. But, they're back to the soy based
>stuff now.
>
>Z
>
>On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 3:49 AM, Keith Addison
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
>
>> Hi Jan and Denise
>>
>> >hello Denise, I think that US BD is more or synonomous with soy biodiesel
>> >although it may be a myth.
>>
>> It seems to be correct. The biodiesel the US is dumping on Europe is
>> soy biodiesel.
>>
>> >US is the biggest soy producer in the world and
>> >that is not a myth.
>>
>> Not a myth. It's a major agribusiness monster, much like US corn
>> (maize). They're evil monsters, pretty much, industrialised GMO
>> monocrops, heavily chemicalised (more so than non-GMOs), dependent on
>> fossil-fuel inputs at every stage, the usual catastrophe. Both crops
>> are heavily subsidised. Soy oil is essentially a by-product, the main
>> product is the press-cake, which is used as livestock feed in factory
>> farms (as is most US corn). A previous list discussion, maybe 10
>> years ago, was about the massive soy oil surplus in the US, which was
>> stored in "the world's biggest tank-farm", IIRC. Of course, with the
>> manipulated magic of the "free" market, it wasn't any cheaper for
>> consumers to buy soy cooking oil in a supermarket, the unbreakable
>> laws of supply and demand notwithstanding.
>>
>> The US also produces other oils, such as canola (Canadian oilseed
>> rape), sunflower, and others, but none of them comes close to Big Soy.
>>
>> The biodiesel boom was an opportunity to soak up all that surplus soy
>> oil, and maybe even make a profit out of it, especially since it
>> meant extra tax breaks and so on for being "green". (The use of B20
>> has a lot to do with that.) So Big Soy set up the NBB to push
> > biodiesel.
>>
>> But they're not very good at it - another long-ago discussion,
>> several times I think, was on how very much better backyarder brewers
>> are than the NBB at spreading the biodiesel message. What the NBB
> > refers to as "the grassroots" have quite often generated front-page
>> stories in newspapers, for instance, while the NBB seldom gets
>> further than a truncated press-release downpage in the business
>> section. The NBB privately acknowledges this, commenting that the
>> grassroots can be useful in helping to spread the marketing message,
>> but should be disparaged nonetheless because they make poor-quality
>> fuel. :-) (See "Homebrew quality"
>> <http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_vehicle.html#qual1>, "Homebrew
>> vs commercial production"
>> <http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_vehicle.html#commrcl>.)
>>
>> The NBB's marketing efforts focused on fleets, where again B20
>> brought the best benefits, and it was an easy hit anyway because the
>> fleets could earn tax brownie points by using "green" fuel, and some
>> of them were mandated to do so (eg the US military, which complains
>> about the poor quality of the BD they buy).
>>
>> The NBB didn't even do anything to encourage the farmers who were
>> growing the soy to switch to biodiesel for their tractors and
>> combines.
>>
>> So, it turned out to be rather less of a boom than it might have
>> been. There certainly was and is still a biodiesel boom at the
>> small-scale and local level, but not with the corporate stuff. And,
>> as a result, there's a US soy biodiesel surplus, as there'd been a
>> soy oil surplus before it. So they dump it on other markets.
>>
>> Where's the WTO when you really need them? LOL!
>>
>> I have occasional contact with the NBB, it's cordial, I don't have
>> any reason to fight with them. I've had a few chuckles though, like
>> when they asked me (a grassroot) to rally round the cause and write
>> to my Congressman/Senator in defence of the soy subsidy. :-)
>>
>> Anyway, Denise, I think it's quite safe to say that most biodiesel in
>> the US is soy biodiesel, certainly if we're talking about quantities
>> of biodiesel produced, and quantities sold commercially. It almost
>> certainly applies as well to the total amount of biodiesel actually
>> used, including the unknown factor of how much is made and used by
>> the "grassroots", since most of the WVO they use is also soy oil.
>>
>> Sorry to hear about your BD plant. Isn't that the way they do things,
>> though, the big agribiz interests? Always pushing production, ever
>> more production, until there's overproduction, and a surplus, and a
>> slump, and then when things get a little better they do it all over
>> again. Commercial biodiesel production growth in the US between, say,
>> 2000 and 2008 was rather spectacular, but market development wasn't
>> as rapid. I don't think production reached the high EU levels, and EU
>> production seems less prone to surpluses and bursting bubbles, or at
>> least that's the impression I get.
>>
>> I'm not sure where you might find a list of currently operating
>> biodiesel plants in the US, maybe the commercial biofuel magazines
>> might have such a thing (the ones for "decision-makers and
>> stakeholders"), but I don't know, I don't read them. Also perhaps
>> some of the market reports produced by consultancies might help, but
>> they can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Keith
>>
>>
>> >----- Original Message -----
>> >From: "denise farley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >To: <sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org>
>> >Sent: Saturday, October 17, 2009 11:34 PM
>> >Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Merceds-Benz
>> >
>> >> Keith,
>> >> Just out of sheer curiosity, where does the information that "Most
>> >> biodiesel
>> >> in the US is soy biodiesel" come from?
>> >>
>> >> I was wondering too, since I cannot find the information even on the
>> NBB
>> >> (unless I am blind which is never outside the realm of possibility),
>> where
>> > > might be a good source to look for a list of currently operating
>> biodiesel
>> >> plant? Ours closed and is in bankruptcy and of the other two in the
>> local
> > >> area, only one is operating. We couldn't compete even switching to
>> animal
>> >> fats - and all those inherent processing problems. Of course, the one
>> >> operating is big-bucks AGP and, yes, uses soy.
>> >>
> > >> Hmmm. D'ya think I might have sort of answered my own question here?
>> >> Although I will say there is a soybean processing coop south of here
>> that
>> >> ceased production of biodiesel in their facility for at least 6 months
>> >> last
>> >> I heard. They sold their soybean oil to AGP during that period. Sigh.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks so much!
>> >> Denise
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Keith Addison
>> >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>> Most biodiesel in the US is soy biodiesel, which doesn't need high
>> >>> pressure to oxidise and polymerise, it's a semi-drying oil, it'll
>> >>> polymerise anyway. The IV is well above the EU biodiesel standard
>> >>> upper limit. (See "Iodine Values"
>> >>> <http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html#iodine>, "National
>> >>> standards for biodiesel
>> >>> <http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield2.html#biodstds>.) The
>> >>> biodiesel industry in the US seems to be more are less in denial
>> >>> about this, but then the US National Biodiesel Board is a creature of
>> >>> US Big Soy.
>> >>>
>> >>> Hm, I must check how the US-EU row over the US dumping cheap soy
>> >>> biodiesel on the EU market is progressing. IIRC last time I looked
>> >>> the US was accusing the EU of protectionism, on the basis of what
>> >>> sounded like GMO-style "substantial equivalence" of America's soy and
>> >>> Europe's rapeseed oil, though they're not equivalent when it comes to
>> >>> iodine values and polymerisation. Rapeseed oil has a much lower IV
>> >>> and is much less likely to polymerise. Nonetheless, a lot of
>> >>> Europeans use anti-oxidant with their biodiesel, while very little
>> >>> anti-oxidant is used in the US, by contrast. Also, in the US most
>> >>> biodiesel is the NBB's commercial B20, a low blend with a lower risk
>> >>> of polymerisation, so they have to care about it that much less.
>> >>>
>> >>> They're never going to accept that soy could be anything less than
>> >>> ideal. I get the impression that, even if there is such a thing,
>> >>> high-pressure polymerisation could be just a convenient scapegoat for
>> >>> soy's shortcomings.
>> >>>
>> >>> Best
>> >>>
> > > >> Keith
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