Cancel all Biofuels projects - they are a dead end and finially someone spoke up

[SUBMAN1]

Someone did the math - If you starved the entire UK of all its farmland, no food to the people, you would have the capability to basically keep up with the needs of Heathrow airport and nothing else.

Nice.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03..._biofuel_bash/

-S

[Spoon 11th]

Yeah, first generation biofuel is bad. Second generation, not so.

[Jimbuna]

Does this mean the third generation will be positively healthy.

Now that Terminal 5 is complete, will that not lead to even more air traffic ?

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Spoon 11th

Yeah, first generation biofuel is bad. Second generation, not so.

link me to the differences. Apparently this article was supposed to take the latest tech into account, so I'd be interested to see how much can be squeezed out of a field of crop.

-S

[joea]

Originally Posted by Mikhayl

The flaws of the "first generation" biofuels is well known, actually there's no need for any maths since there are already facts : in Brasil for example the use of crops for fuel had the effect to raise the price of 1st need agricultural products, so much that many "poor" guys working in these farms couldn't afford anymore what they were working to produce.
The "new" biofuels should use only non-edible products from various sources, like some "fast growing" trees that have no other use, also some algae and other vegetal sources.

Not only that, but if you use pyrolyis for the conversion, producing biochar, you not only will get a "green petroleum" out of it but biochar...basically a charcoal which can be used to make soils more fertile and means the process is carbon negative and removes carbon from the air. This is what they think the Amazon Indians did, using slash and char rather than slash and burn to make fertile soils that still exist and may have supported large populations in the past.

Links?

http://www.biochar.org/joomla/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon...eldorado.shtml

This links is from one of the leading researchers in the field.

http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/l...aPretahome.htm

A Canadian company involved in the production of this fuel.

http://www.dynamotive.com/

[Platapus]

Making a fuel out of something that people eat did not sound like a good long term solution. Now if we can make bio fuel out of waste or stuff people can't eat than maybe it could work.

[DeepIron]

Now if we can make bio fuel out of waste or stuff people can't eat than maybe it could work.

Hey, I've known businesses that have been run on bullsh*t for years!

[Letum]

Originally Posted by DeepIron

Hey, I've known businesses that have been run on bullsh*t for years!

Pfft!

[STEED]

When I heard about Bio fuels a few years ago I knew damn well the whole idea was a pipe dream.

[joea]

Originally Posted by STEED

When I heard about Bio fuels a few years ago I knew damn well the whole idea was a pipe dream.

Did you read my links? You can make it out of non-food crops...and store CO2 as well.

[joea]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Making a fuel out of something that people eat did not sound like a good long term solution. Now if we can make bio fuel out of waste or stuff people can't eat than maybe it could work.

Yup, read my links....so we could grow corn and use the rest for biofuel and this biochar which can be used to make soil more fertile and store excess co2.

[Trex]

There's nothing really wrong with the basic biofuel concept, but it sure has been implemented badly, or at least without much foresight.

While I'm not rabid tree-hugger (come see my NUKE THE WHALES bumpersticker), we are indeed living in a fool's paradise. The law of supply and demand is unlikely to be repealed anytime soon, so gas is not going to get cheaper. Given the rise of third-world markets, it is going to get much more expensive.

Ideally, we need to come up with a transportation system sufficiently flexible to meet the need, cheap enough that people will buy it and (to make sure it gets past the neo-luddites) doesn't have any effect on climate. It would also be a nice bonus if we could make it happen without being dependent on somebody else for our fuel supply. Gas won't do that, nor will biofuels. Electrical cars do not yet have the range or speed and too many people overlook that that electricity has to come from somewhere with its own set of ecochallenges. Hydrogen looks good (there's an elegant simplicity to 2H2 + O2 à 2H2O) but I was reading an article last week where somebody was seriously claiming that large-scale use of hyrdrogen as a fuel would cause a water shortage (Shake yer head, junior. Hear anythin?), which sort of illustrates the hurdles even good technology faces. Moreover, the refining and infrastructure problems are enormous.

(Somebody once asked the obvious question about automobiles. Let's pretend that it's a new invention and the inventor is trying to make the pitch for it to be adopted. "Well, in return for your accepting 100,000 deaths a year from collisions and untold numbers more from respiratory disease, turning thousands of square miles of productive famrland into paved desert and skewing our economy in favour of people who really don't like us, you'll get individual convenience." Like that would sell.

Solution? Damfino, but blind optimism is not a viable strategy.

[sonar732]

Living next to Audrian County the Biofuel capital of Missouri, I am scarred of this topic. I've thought about for a while to utilize the "fat method" of taking used fat and burning it as fuel.

Just the look on the faces of people when I drive by with my car smelling like a mexican resturant one day and McDonalds the next.

:rotfl::rotfl:

[August]

Originally Posted by Trex

Let's pretend that it's a new invention and the inventor is trying to make the pitch for it to be adopted. "Well, in return for your accepting 100,000 deaths a year from collisions and untold numbers more from respiratory disease, turning thousands of square miles of productive famrland into paved desert and skewing our economy in favour of people who really don't like us, you'll get individual convenience." Like that would sell.

Well compared to the pre automobile era of 100,000 deaths a year from train accidents, extensive pollution from coal run locomotives, and rail road tracks slicing through the countryside, the automobile might not be viewed as negatively as you may think.

[moose1am]

I am hearing good things about switchgrass which is a fast growing weed.

The only down fall to this plant is that it may deplete the soils nutrients over time. But all plants will do that. Switch grass can be harvested more than one time per year so it's a fast growing plant. It will then require some fertilizers to replenish the soils it grows on. That will increase the amount of energy needed to grow this stuff for biofuel feed stock.

I think that we are making a big mistake by growing corn to use to fuel or vehicles. This takes food away from people and increases the price of a lot of food. Many products are made from corn. Corn syrup is used in a lot of our food products.

Instead of letting our vehicles eat or food I would much rather see the USA spend a lot more money on helping the fuel cell products get going in this country. I see that as an almost endless energy source.

We need to learn how nature captures the sunlight to manipulate carbon like the green plants have been doing for millions of years now.

We can use coal or nuclear in an emergency but I would not want to depend on nuclear energy if we can produce energy in other ways.

Fuel cells using hydrogen and the suns energy would be the ideal.

Originally Posted by Mikhayl

The flaws of the "first generation" biofuels is well known, actually there's no need for any maths since there are already facts : in Brasil for example the use of crops for fuel had the effect to raise the price of 1st need agricultural products, so much that many "poor" guys working in these farms couldn't afford anymore what they were working to produce.
The "new" biofuels should use only non-edible products from various sources, like some "fast growing" trees that have no other use, also some algae and other vegetal sources.