Biodiesel. Are we there yet?

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Shake&Bake

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Somehow I got to thinking about it today as I got into the office.
So I got to reading on wikipedia about it.

Googling got me the following article from January 2013, stating that. "South African biofuels boom waits on paperwork."

So then looked up some more and found the following site, with a .pdf which gives you advice on how to change to biodiesel.

But based on what I read on wiki, pricing isn't really any better than petro-diesel - in some cases even more expensive.

In 2007, in the United States, average retail (at the pump) prices, including federal and state fuel taxes, of B2/B5 were lower than petroleum diesel by about 12 cents, and B20 blends were the same as petrodiesel.[50] However, as part as a dramatic shift in diesel pricing, by July 2009, the US DOE was reporting average costs of B20 15 cents per gallon higher than petroleum diesel ($2.69/gal vs. $2.54/gal).[51] B99 and B100 generally cost more than petrodiesel except where local governments provide a tax incentive or subsidy.
Click to expand...

Either way, its making for intersting reading for me.

Apparently newer cars don't even need much mods, just the fuel filter apparently.
But then again, it may just be too good to be true.

Upon searching the forums for any discussion regarding Biodiesel, it was all a bit dated.
But I did come across a post from Budza that was going to fill up on biodiesel.

Budza said:
On a side note, I'm filling my next tank with a biodiesel blend. Will see how that pans out. B20 I reckon?

http://www.green-diesel.co.za/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=2&vmcchk=1&Itemid=2
Click to expand...

So how did that go for you Budza?

Do we have any readily available suppliers of various grades of biodiesel?
 
I try to look at biodiesel in a favorable light. Really I do. But I just can't look past the fact that you're still burning a carbon based fuel & releasing crap into the atmosphere. And then planting more of the corn/whatever and release more said crap into the atmo.

Its a victory over oil...but anyone with half a brain can see that its a pyrrhic victory. Look at Norway...99% of their energy is provided by clean hydro. Thats clean tech. They have favourable conditions though, so you can't judge say America against that 99%.

Now I'm no hippie...the world need juice...serious juice. More than can be provided for with solar / wind / whatever. So right now nuclear is the only viable answer. Still...we need to push Thorium and fusion. Those two are the sum total of humanities hopes. Thorium we can make work today. Fusion...in 50 years.
 
Yip - have also done some reading on the Effiency and economic arguments about it - and granted that some of it is flying over my head at this time of the morning.

I get where you're coming from in your post Havoc - though I wasn't looking at it being used on such a scale - that's why I posted in the Motoring section.

I'm rather looking at the angle of whether its a viable, cheaper alternative to petrodiesel in South Africa.

Fuel increases are crazy, even with the 14c reduction for diesel right now - I just wonder whether biodiesel coming out of a Stikland Factory with ads placed on Gumtree is something to consider for my 2.0L Turbo Diesel car.
 
biodisel is not as environmentally friendly as you think. Its also not that cheap.

You require a crop and land for that crop and if you planing to take on the oil industry you will need MASSIVE plantations. Now as a species we must juggle our food supply for energy for our machines. Then you need a lot of water to grow these crops.

After that you need guys to modify the genetic structure of yeast to produce the biofuel and to process it into a pure refined fuel for the vehicles. Essentially you need a brewery.

So as said above its a pyrrhic victory.

Nuclear although safe and reliable the risk it carries in case of failure is great. When a reactor melts down it disperses a plethora of radioactive isotopes that can take centuries to 'go away' and then there is the issue of nuclear waste. Nuclear cant be used in a vehicle because what happens when two nuclear powered cars crash ? how would one contain the radiation ? its difficult as it is with isolated power stations.

wind and solar simply wont work for motorvehicles. In terms of powering cities solar is more than enough but its unreliable due to weather conditions. In a day the earth gets hit with approximately 100tW of power by the sun. The reason we dont or rather cant utilize it is because solar pannels are very expensive to make and do not last long and you would need large areas to be exposed to sunlight. Perhaps if you replaced every roof title and skyscraper window with a solar panel it could be done but again this is logistically impossible.

fusion. Well thats just a dream and we are very far IMO to obtaining the power sustainable fusion. The smallest fusion reactors that are self sustaining are far bigger than our planet and space has had 14 billion odd years to perfect the design, so putting the power of the sun in the palm of our hands will not be comming as soon as most optimists think (I really hope im wrong on this though)

So therefore the fastest and most effective solution for powering the motor industry would be to use hydrogen. Again the logistical costs will be enormous even if you phase it in.

I would say that ships, tankers, aeroplanes, military vehicles should be powered by hydrogen or fuels that require high maintainence and leave the oil for commercial public use. The reason I say this because big ships use AN INSANE amount of disel and there is always an engineer on site to manage the engines. So once the technology is perfected in trial with these zones it can move towards the general public. This might not solve our energy problems but it may serve to stretch the time we have to come up with a solution.

This is a big problem. Resources are running short and when they run out then we will see how savage humans can be when they start to fight over the last energy reserves. I hope a solution comes quickly or I dont live long enough to see it run out

Another way would be to synthetically accelerate the generation of crude oil from refuse or any carbon base trash cheaply and effectively (dont confuse with synthetic oil as that still uses a pretroleum base that chemically modified). Although that will not solve our climate issues it might solve our energy ones.

EDIT:

im speaking globally not a single person perspective
 
I've seen a few people advertising biodiesel recently..


They want R11.50 or so per litre, but the specific energy of biodiesel is lower than normal diesel so at that price point, I'm not sure if its worth it.
 
I would bet on bio butanol and algae oil to produce things like bio butanol and bio diesel.

Solazyme seems to have made inroads with scaling up the process and it solves the "huge land requirement and digs into food supply" issues.
 
Oh the irony.
Diesel is a generic term for liquid fuel used in compression ignition engines based on Rudolf Diesels' designs.
The original designs ran on hemp oil, peanut oil or coal dust. The fractional distillate of petroleum was only used as the generic fuel due to its low cost at the time.
So basically - the Diesel engine was designed to run on biofuel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel
 
RiaX said:
Nuclear although safe and reliable the risk it carries in case of failure is great. When a reactor melts down it disperses a plethora of radioactive isotopes that can take centuries to 'go away' and then there is the issue of nuclear waste. Nuclear cant be used in a vehicle because what happens when two nuclear powered cars crash ? how would one contain the radiation ? its difficult as it is with isolated power stations.
Click to expand...


You forget one big factor and that is cost, currently Nuclear plants that are being built in the US have overshot their original budgeted figures by huge factors and there is no end in sight both in terms of cost and date of completion.

In terms of powering the grid, co-generation seems like a pragmatic solution for South Africa, using sugar cane as the biomass. It would address a lot of issues such as land reform, employment initiatives, agro processing (beneficication), agriculture development, and a lower carbon footprint as we would no longer rely as much on coal based power stations.

I am strongly against nuclear anything at this stage, not because of the potential environmental impacts but because of the certain severe financial implications it will have upfront on this country. To put things in perspective although uncosted at this stage, estimates put any nuclear build project in South Africa at well over 1 trillion, the Medupi project is just a 10th of that.
 
There was a story about this on carte blanche, basically the government tossed the idea out the window because more people would buy biodiesel instead of buying from the pumps, causing a loss to the government or something along those lines.
 
I have used on a few occasions. Scored almost R2.50 per liter. Didn't notice any performance difference. IIRC, then biodiesel is better for your engin than other.
 
Rickster said:
There was a story about this on carte blanche, basically the government tossed the idea out the window because more people would buy biodiesel instead of buying from the pumps, causing a loss to the government or something along those lines.
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Bio fuels like diesel, butanol and ethanol will be sold via existing infrastructure and pumps .... so it wont bypass the government coffers. At least that is how it is done in other countries like US and Brazil.
 
Ockie said:
Bio fuels like diesel, butanol and ethanol will be sold via existing infrastructure and pumps .... so it wont bypass the government coffers. At least that is how it is done in other countries like US and Brazil.
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But i think what they were trying to say is anyone could do it with the right equipment, so basically free fuel. And thats a big no no.
 
Rickster said:
But i think what they were trying to say is anyone could do it with the right equipment, so basically free fuel. And thats a big no no.
Click to expand...

That is true.... but then they will just have a bunch of back yard brewers making watered down biofuel.

If anyone wanted to make this on a serious scale they would have to submit to standards and legislation.

Its definitely (one) of the way(s) forward.
 
Rickster said:
But i think what they were trying to say is anyone could do it with the right equipment, so basically free fuel. And thats a big no no.
Click to expand...

Nerfherder said:
That is true.... but then they will just have a bunch of back yard brewers making watered down biofuel.

If anyone wanted to make this on a serious scale they would have to submit to standards and legislation.

Its definitely (one) of the way(s) forward.
Click to expand...

Oh ok .... I understand. I guess you will get some of these people here or there .... but trust me .... most people are WAY TO LAZY for that.
 
Nerfherder said:
That is true.... but then they will just have a bunch of back yard brewers making watered down biofuel.

If anyone wanted to make this on a serious scale they would have to submit to standards and legislation.

Its definitely (one) of the way(s) forward.
Click to expand...

There are standards and legislation is currently something along the lines of you can produce below xyz amount and not have to register as a fuel provider.

Shake&Bake said:
Stikland Factory with ads placed on Gumtree is something to consider for my 2.0L Turbo Diesel car.
Click to expand...

These are the same people I've been using. I've been using B50

I've got a 1.7dti Corsa Bakkie- it's due for a service now, where I'll replace the fuel filter (It seems to have lost a bit of power- apparently a symptom of BioDiesel being a cleaning agent and dissolving **** from your tanks which then gets stuck in the filter. Either that, or it's just the colder winter weather causing *** with the fuel...)

The Green Diesel crowd are very friendly and helpful- for your car S&B, perhaps start on the B20, or even fill your tank such that it's B5 to start (phase in the switch as per your PDF in OP).

RE price, Diesel is R12.62 wholesale- probably north of R13 at the pump (I haven't checked recently as I use B50 ;)).
I'll fill up tomorrow- B50 is probably around R11.50- it's usually around R1/l cheaper.

Apparently B100 is 10% less economical than B0 - so make that 5% for the B50 I'm using. As it's R1/R13.50 ~ 7.5% cheaper, I'm winning ;)

I work near TygerValley, so it's not far out of my way to fill up...

NOTE:GreenDiesel is blended with 500ppm regular Diesel. My bakkie used that up until I bought it. When on the road, I'll opt for 500ppm if it's available.

I've noticed something along the lines of:
500ppm gives best economy, followed by B50 & 50ppm gives the worst.
500ppm seems loudest, followed by 50ppm & B50 seems quietest.

YMMV! :)

Some reading:
http://abe-research.illinois.edu/pubs/T_Grift/EffectOfBiodieselOnEnginePerformancesAndEmissions.pdf

Torque and power reduced by 3–6% for pure cotton seeds biodiesel compared
to diesel

It was reported that there was no significant difference in engine
power between pure biodiesel and diesel

High lubricity of biodiesel might result in the reduced friction
loss and thus improve the brake effective power
 
Nerfherder said:
That is true.... but then they will just have a bunch of back yard brewers making watered down biofuel.

If anyone wanted to make this on a serious scale they would have to submit to standards and legislation.

Its definitely (one) of the way(s) forward.
Click to expand...

There are standards and legislation is currently something along the lines of you can produce below xyz amount and not have to register as a fuel provider.

Shake&Bake said:
Stikland Factory with ads placed on Gumtree is something to consider for my 2.0L Turbo Diesel car.
Click to expand...

These are the same people I've been using. I've been using B50

I've got a 1.7dti Corsa Bakkie- it's due for a service now, where I'll replace the fuel filter (It seems to have lost a bit of power- apparently a symptom of BioDiesel being a cleaning agent and dissolving **** from your tanks which then gets stuck in the filter. Either that, or it's just the colder winter weather causing *** with the fuel...)

The Green Diesel crowd are very friendly and helpful- for your car S&B, perhaps start on the B20, or even fill your tank such that it's B5 to start (phase in the switch as per your PDF in OP).

RE price, Diesel is R12.62 wholesale- probably north of R13 at the pump (I haven't checked recently as I use B50 ;)).
I'll fill up tomorrow- B50 is probably around R11.50- it's usually around R1/l cheaper.

Apparently B100 is 10% less economical than B0 - so make that 5% for the B50 I'm using. As it's R1/R13.50 ~ 7.5% cheaper, I'm winning ;)

I work near TygerValley, so it's not far out of my way to fill up...

NOTE:GreenDiesel is blended with 500ppm regular Diesel. My bakkie used that up until I bought it. When on the road, I'll opt for 500ppm if it's available.

I've noticed something along the lines of:
500ppm gives best economy, followed by B50 & 50ppm gives the worst.
500ppm seems loudest, followed by 50ppm & B50 seems quietest.

YMMV! :)

Some reading:
http://abe-research.illinois.edu/pubs/T_Grift/EffectOfBiodieselOnEnginePerformancesAndEmissions.pdf

Torque and power reduced by 3–6% for pure cotton seeds biodiesel compared
to diesel

It was reported that there was no significant difference in engine
power between pure biodiesel and diesel

High lubricity of biodiesel might result in the reduced friction
loss and thus improve the brake effective power
 
Filled up on Friday- R12.43 / L.

Fuel consumption for the last 3 tanks (all B50) is at 6.3L/100km.

Average for all fuel types over the last 20k km is 6.12L/100km.

I'll update again after the service and the fuel filters etc are replaced.
 
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