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!

[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.

[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.

[joea]

No one read what I wrote or posted. This method uses any waste non-food biomass and as a by-product removes CO2 from the atmosphere.