SupFanat - 22-5-2015 at 14:47
Since raps fuel was proven as bad idea there's a demand for some replacement.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/biofuels/981880...
Zombie - 22-5-2015 at 19:07
I'm sorry to dis-agree with the premise of that article.
Look at Brazil for an example. They are one of the world leaders in Bio-Fuels, and they are not starving the nation to be there.
That hype about starving the people is nothing more than Big-Oil spreading propaganda. They are running out of oil at an exponential rate, and Bio
fuels have proven to be both renewable, and less expensive to produce.
It;s just big oils death throws, and it won't be pretty. Their greed over the past century has proven to be unstoppable, and NOW the peoples of the
world are in a position to retaliate.
Smaller independent bio fuel companies now stand a chance to take their fair share of the fuel markets, and these same companies are NOT selling out
to big oil interests.
If you research further into this you will find the oil companies are actually the ones buying HUGE tracts of land in an effort to thwart the
independent companies from succeeding.
Look at this search page... https://www.google.com/search?q=oil+compainies+buying+farm+l...
Thousands of pages of oil companies buying up farm land under the premise that "You too can be Rich"
That is the real premise behind the article you linked.
Bert - 22-5-2015 at 20:20
Money is essentially computer data these days. Any sane person or corp/gov entity should choose to swap such bits of ephemeral binary code for farm
land or other tangibles...
As far as crop sourced bio fuels, figure out energy/square meter, Phosphorus input & other consumables required and applicable conversion rates to
liquid fuels. Then cry, if you're not near the equator and in posession of a rock phosphate deposit.
Zombie - 22-5-2015 at 23:13
As far as crop sourced bio fuels, figure out energy/square meter, Phosphorus input & other consumables required and applicable conversion rates to
liquid fuels. Then cry, if you're not near the equator and in posession of a rock phosphate deposit.[/rquote]
I don't understand.
Corn, and sugar are grown all over the US as it is. There is a much higher return per bushel when the same farmer produces feed, and fuel corn. When
the feed markets drop, the corn is then sold for fuel. OR vice versa.
This also saves the American tax payers $$$'s due to the farmers subsidies funds that WE pay when they can not produce or when the markets drop. 256
BILLION that WE pay. That was 2012.
When farmers have a market for their crop, that 256 Billion dollar burden that we pay is greatly reduced.
There are plenty of opponents to ethanol fuel but looking at the available options... There is no ready to roll alternative.
203,537,838 Brazilians are proof that ethanol from renewable crops is a viable option.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/126865/bio02.pdf
Ethanol—a fuel produced from agricultural and other organic materials
(biomass)—is considered to be one of the best alternatives to petroleum for
transportation fuel, as increased ethanol use reduces the levels of carbon
monoxide and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions relative to fossil fuel use.
Tropical sugarcane is also cited as the most efficient ethanol feedstock in
terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions avoided per hectare cropped per
year (1 hectare = 2.47 acres). A recent study found that the use of sugarcane
ethanol in Brazil resulted in a reduction of 600 million tons in CO2 emissions
since 1975, an amount equivalent to about 7 percent of Brazil’s total CO2
emissions from the consumption of energy over the same period (UNICA,
2010a; EIA 2010a). Moreover, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
deems sugarcane ethanol an advanced biofuel that reduces GHG emissions by 61 percent, compared with gasoline GHG emissions (EPA, 2010).
The ethanol energy yield ratio, which relates the energy output of ethanol
to the fossil energy input used in its production, is often cited as evidence
of the benefits of ethanol derived from biomass. The energy yield ratio of
sugarcane-based ethanol is 4 to 6 times greater than the energy yield ratio
of corn-based ethanol (von Blottnitz and Curran, 2006; Macedo and Seabra,
2008; Shapouri et al., 2010). Because of these outcomes, many countries
have implemented energy policies that call for increased ethanol use in their
transportation sectors.
http://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2013/07/returns-and-cash-re...
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/pages/ethanol-facts-agriculture
http://farm.ewg.org/
[Edited on 23-5-2015 by Bert]
SupFanat - 23-5-2015 at 00:32
Our oceans are said to be overheated.
Then such idea could work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion
[q]Cold air/warm water conversion[edit]
In winter in coastal Arctic locations, the delta T between the seawater and ambient air can be as high as 40 °C (72 °F). Closed-cycle systems could
exploit the air-water temperature difference. Eliminating seawater extraction pipes might make a system based on this concept less expensive than
OTEC. This technology is due to H. Barjot, who suggested butane as cryogen, because of its boiling point of −0.5 °C (31.1 °F) and its
non-solubility in water.[74] Assuming a level of efficiency of realistic 4%, calculations show that the amount of energy generated with one cubic
meter water at a temperature of 2 °C (36 °F) in a place with an air temperature of −22 °C (−8 °F) equals the amount of energy generated by
letting this cubic meter water run through a hydroelectric plant of 4000 feet (1,200 m) height.[75]
Barjot Polar Power Plants could be located on islands in the polar region or designed as swimming barges or platforms attached to the ice cap. The
weather station Myggbuka at Greenlands east coast for example, which is only 2,100 km away from Glasgow, detects monthly mean temperatures below −15
°C (5 °F) during 6 winter months in the year.[76][/q]
j_sum1 - 23-5-2015 at 03:26
This thread is not what I thought it was going to be.
I have heard the idea of using electrolysis to make H2 from water using solar panels on the moon or Mars -- in the event that we ever establish some
kind of base in these locations. While plausible, there are numerous engineering hurdles to overcome: one of which is the scarcity of water in both
these locations. (Lunar Prospector in the late 90s found evidence of up to 0.5% ice in the lunar soil in permanent shade zones of craters at the
lunar poles. I have not heard any updates since then.)
As for using the temperature differential between atmosphere and ocean in Arctic and Antarctic regions to provide energy -- the idea has merit.
However, even in the best case scenario a low temperature difference is observed which is less than ideal for an effective heat exchanger -- thereby
requiring a large heat exchanger area to be effective -- which in turn translates to being a large engineering project with probably low return (and
in a hostile and inaccessible part of the planet). It probably ranks below tide energy as a workable solution.