Bio Fuels – Are they good ?

[Sam Almaairgy]

As the term suggests, bio fuels are fuels that are formed when biological matter decomposes. The bio fuels are mostly derived from plants. Bio fuels exist in all the three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas.

Difference Between Bio-fuels And Fossil Fuels

Bio-fuels are different from fossil fuels in the following ways:

• Fossil fuels take a million years to build whereas bio-fuels can be made extremely fast, in a matter of days.

• Fossil fuels generate huge amounts of pollution. Bio-fuels are comparatively safer.

• Bio-fuels are renewable sources of energy unlike fossil fuels.

Advantages Of Bio-Fuels

Bio-fuels prove advantageous in the following ways:

• Bio-fuels lessen the burden on gradually-vanishing fossil fuels.

• Bio-fuels are environment-friendly. They help reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

• Bio-fuels, especially, bio-diesel prove to be very cost-effective for consumers.

Copyright : Bio Fuels – Are they good ? (http://www.survivalrenewableenergy.com/bio-fuels-are-they-good/)

[Annie Crossland]

I would also include the following benefits of biofuels :
- energy security
- job creation
- boosting the economy
- bringing dow those ever-increasing fuel prices

Biofuels are forming a critical part of meeting a global demand for clean alternatives. We need to encourage this fuel alternative that is independent of global oil price fluctuations and political instability.

What’s concerning is the proposed reductions in the amount of renewable fuels usage by the EPA. In a hearing last week, the amounts of ethanol produced is set to be limited because of infrastructure inadequacies and because industry isn’t able to produce enough non-ethanol fuels to mee the requirements.

read more here:[moderator: gratuitous advertising for an investment company removed]

[Joe Blake]

To maintain a balance in perspective, perhaps we ought to introduce the negatives of bio-fuels.

Energy output: Biofuels have a lower energy output than traditional fuels and therefore require greater quantities to be consumed in order to produce the same energy level.

Production carbon emissions: While they may be cleaner to burn, there are strong indications that the process to produce the fuel - including the machinery necessary to cultivate the crops and the plants to produce the fuel - has hefty carbon emissions.

High cost: To refine biofuels to more efficient energy outputs, and to build the necessary manufacturing plants to increase biofuel quantities, a high initial investment is often required.

Food prices: As demand for food crops such as corn grows for biofuel production, it could also raise prices for necessary staple food crops.

Food shortages: There is concern that using valuable cropland to grow fuel crops could have an impact on the cost of food and could possibly lead to food shortages. To make such cropland available, it is usually necessary to remove existing forests, which act as as a medium term carbon sink, to replace with a short term carbon sink, as well as creating loss of biodiversity (see below).

Water use: Massive quantities of water are required for proper irrigation of biofuel crops as well as to manufacture the fuel, which could strain local and regional water resources.

Loss of biodiversity: Usual cropping practices (wheat, corn, etc) require a monoculture ie high density of a single plant crop. This can increase the chance of introducing/ encouraging pests, weeds and/or diseases which can wipe the crops out more easily, as well as reducing the incidence of "friendly" life forms which would normally control such pests. Loss of these beneficial fauna could mean increased pesticide/ herbicide use, as well as fertiliser. These chemicals can then get into the local water table, possibly causing unwanted side effects, such as algal bloom and death of local fishlife, even render water sources too polluted for human consumption.

My recollection is that bio-fuel (diesel) came about when harnessing waste cooking oil from restaurants, fish and chip shops etc. At that level, bio-fuel is excellent, but to go further and create a sector of growing plants purely for bio-fuel I believe creates many more problems than it solves, and in the longer term is really a negative sum game.

[Brian McGowan]

I would like to add to this discussion as I believe there is some flawed thinking about this topic.

Ethanol definitely has a lower energy output than gasoline but biodiesel is only marginally lower than fossil diesel. More diesel vehicles should be used and they should burn straight vegetable oil instead of biodiesel or fossil diesel. This eliminates the cost, chemicals, waste and energy used to create biodiesel out of vegetable oil

Production carbon emissions is a flawed thinking because it is assumed that all production will be done with fossil fuels. This should not be the case. Farm equipment runs primarily on diesel which means it can run on vegetable oil. The fact that it runs many hours at a time makes it a prime candidate to run on vegetable oil. The process of pressing feed stock crops for oil can also be accomplished with the use of diesel engines running on the very oil they are pressing. So in theory, no carbon emissions need to be produced.

Even creating ethanol can be made more efficient. For starters, corn is the worst thing to make it from but even if we must use corn it can be more efficient. The current method uses the burning of fossil fuels to boil the corn to turn the starch into sugar for the yeast to eat and make alcohol out of. Instead the corn could be “malted” which is the processes of letting it sprout which naturally turns the starch into sugar for the young corn plant to consume in the process of growing. Soaking the corn and exposing it to sunlight is how this works. Basically solar power. The difference is with the boiling process it is dine in several hours and with the malting process it might take a couple of days. It’s a matter of patience but once the processes is continuous it will run at the same pace as the boiling process. Once we have sugar the process is the same until it comes time to distill it. Once again, the current process is to boil it using fossil fuels but a solar still could do the same thing using solar power instead of fossil fuels.

High cost. There will always be costs associated with change.

Food prices and shortages. One of the best crops for vegetable oil for fuel is Soy. Soy is useless as a food source for humans and 98% of this crop is used as livestock feed. Also when pressed for oil only 30% of the crop comes out as oil and the rest can still be fed to cattle and it is a higher protein lower fat feed. According to the USDA, (and I would love to verify this with actual farmers) soy produces 40 gallons of oil per acre. It also claims that it takes 5 gallons of fuel to farm an acre which makes a 35 gallon net gain per acre.
The same is also true of ethanol production. Same 30% number and what is left after is also currently used as a livestock feed. This already happens. 80% of the corn grown in the US is used for livestock feed anyway.

Waste vegetable oil is a great fuel source and there is so much of it. Here is a company a few miles from me that started out collecting with a pickup truck with 55 gallon drums in the back and it took months to get 5000 gallons which they sell to a biodiesel company. Now they use septic pumping trucks, have a bunch of high volume customers and do a couple of 5000 gallon trucks a week.
http://www.wasteoilrecyclers.com/

As for fertilizer, we are reluctant to put human waste on food crops but I don’t see the same problem with putting it on crops we are growing to use as fuel. There is plenty of human waste they already can’t figure out what to do with.

If we could convert most of the commuter transportation to electric I think we might be able to do the rest with biofuels. After all, ships and trains and long haul trucking and farm and construction equipment will probably not be possible with electric.

That’s all I have time for now.
Brian

[Alton Root]

something more...
Biomass can be converted directly into liquid fuels, called "biofuels," to help meet transportation fuel needs. The two most common types of biofuels in use today are ethanol and biodiesel. Ethanol is an alcohol, the same as in beer and wine

[Steve Beck]

Despite the many positive characteristics of bio-fuels, there are also many disadvantages to these energy sources. Energy output: Bio-fuels have a lower energy output than traditional fuels and therefore require greater quantities to be consumed in order to produce the same energy level.

[Brian McGowan]

Despite the many positive characteristics of bio-fuels, there are also many disadvantages to these energy sources. Energy output: Bio-fuels have a lower energy output than traditional fuels and therefore require greater quantities to be consumed in order to produce the same energy level.

Read what I wrote above.

[Joe Blake]

A couple of days ago it was reported that China (and Africa) were planting over 80 billion trees to try to reverse or at least minimise desertification of land.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-17/green-walls-in-china-and-africa-keeping-deserts-at-bay/11602796

This will consume a great deal of water yet China is heading towards a water shortage. (See my post above).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_resources_of_China

[cut/paste]

In a Xinhua article from 2002, Chinese experts warned of future or current water shortages. Water resource usage was expected to peak in 2030 when the population peaks. Areas north of the Yangtze river were particularly affected with 80.9% of Chinese water resources being south of the river. Northern China had used 10,000-year-old aquifers which had resulted in ground cracking and subsidence in some regions.

Don't think this bodes well for the future of "biomass".

[Steve Beck]

Read what I wrote above.

Already did boss.:cool: