JUN 12

Oh how wonderful, let's engineer life and save what?

This is my greatest problem with biofuels, the genetical engineering, the God-play. Let's not kid ourselves, biofuels are not a rational solution. They are perhaps even worse as a concept than hydrogen fuel cells.
Of course this is not completely true, let's have some nuance. There is one good biofuel, it's not made at farms, it's what some people get for free at restaurants, I think it's called waste cooking oil.
Having crops dedicated to making fuels simply doesn't make sense, neither does engineering bugs for fuel.
Electricity from renewably sources is the fuel of the future (except maybe for planes, how they'll make those sustainable I really don't know).

Thank you for listening to my rant,
Lenny

I think biofuels will be a part of the future energy mix.

Solar and wind are progressing, but fluctuation of supply is one problem - unless we get a good, reliable energy storage. Biofuels might be a good "backup fuel". And for solar and/or wind energy to replace jet fuels we need really good batteries that re-charge quickly.

I think for the short and medium-term mixing biofuels into jet fuel might help reduce the environmental impact and in the long-term it might be a good alternative for jet fuel.

Maybe soon we'll have a hybrid LS9 / electric airplane :-).

I think with cars the electric vehicles are gaining momentum with Tesla and GM coming out with their cars and I hope it does catch on.

You have a good point there Oliver.
Biomass for electricity generation is absolutely necessary, but there's a difference between that and vehicle fuels.
The difference is that biofuels are primary crops and biomass for electricity is waste material. The electricty generation can come for the burning of anything from straw to cow-shit. For biofuels however you use not the cornstalks (which are essentially not for eating, and therefore low value) but the corn itself which people (and animals later eaten by people) eat. You don't need to use up any extra valuable fertile land to get straw, it's a byproduct (in anthropocentral terms) of wheat or barley or whatever cereal.
I agree about the jet fuel thing, that needs to be looked into, but for cars biofuels are nonsense.

Thank you for listening,

There seems to be an assumption here that biofuels will require some displacement of crop plants. I don't think this is a valid assumption. There is a great deal of research into non-crop feedstocks, including various forms of algae. If we can figure out the cellulosic ethanol trick, than almost any cellulosic source becomes open to exploitation--including, perhaps, recycled paper at the end of its useful life as fiber, cotton rags, even invasive weeds like kudzu. There's certainly no shortage of kudzu, and harvesting it for fuel feedstock would actually bring great advantages to the ecologies where it is growing.

Biofuels may be an important mix in our energy security. Like it or not, the most mature mobility technology out there is still the internal combustion engine.

:- I've been hearing about that biofuel last year. I believed that it is economical and will save us lots and lots of energy plus a decrease in pollution. However scientist had been studying about its side effects. They said that biofuel might not be working to some engines and the engines will have a higher risk to malfunction. They added that biofuel has residue. How is it true? Can anybody give a table of its pros and cons?

- Commercial Roofing | Residential Roofing

Why would these bio-fuels be carbon neutral?

Petrofuels add carbon to the atmosphere because they use carbon that has been locked away underground for billions of years. Plants, however, only make use of the carbon that is already in the atmosphere. Thus burning plants for biofuel is carbon neutral--you're not adding any net carbon (unless, of course, you used petrofuels in the production and harvesting of the plants.)

As for the question of biofuels in internal combustion engines, the worries expressed above may or may not be valid depending on what you are driving. Alcohol-based fuels, especially methanol, can corrode aluminum and plastic engine parts. Biodiesel can act as a solvent on natural rubber parts, so you need to ensure your fuel train has only synthetic rubber parts. In addition, alcohol fuels combust somewhat differently than gasoline, so more modern vehicles with electronic fuel injection require additional sensors to properly run the fuel. If I remember correctly, you need an additional oxygen sensor in many cases.

But these are not insurmountable problems. I have an old Mercedes Benz diesel and it runs great on biodiesel. Biodiesel also acts as a detergent in your engine, cleaning up the sludge left by petrodiesel. This may be the residue refered to above--actually a residue left by petrodiesel, but freed up by biodiesel. Generally it is good to change your fuel filters a couple times when you first start running biodiesel to account for this. After that you should be running clean.

"Solar and wind are progressing, but fluctuation of supply is one problem -"
No. This is a problem in our mind.

Fluctuation is OK. The problem is that we want to use lamps when normally we should go sleeping because of darkness.
Ever wondered why nature-close people are generally happier then "civilised" people? Because they wait till the rain stops. Not needing for an umbrella.

Stable need of luxury is a problem.

To me, it looks like this photo is really about something that needs clarification with water like biodiesel does. Notice the phase separation where clear liquid is floating on the top one-half of the flask and cloudy stuff sinks to the bottom. Genetic engineering isn't gonna make it here folks to arrive at designer bugs that convert crop waste into high volume new fuels. Neither will super algae growth or diversionary ruses like hydrogen hallucinations.

wow. this is strange, yet quite refreshing. I first heard about a bacterium that could do this more than 10 years ago, and haven't been able to find a trace of the story since. Nice to see this is being revived. It doesn't solve the pollution issue, but it might solve part of the supply chain-from-nations-that-hate-us issue.

as people question wether one bio.fuel or another willbe the answer how about consider all bio-fuels to be part of the solution alittle of of this and some of that from diferent sources mix into a useable. concoction,i think a first step would be to requier all oil companies to mix a percentage of a soup of alternatives in each gallon of their fuel.this would spread financial resources around to many players not just the usual suspects

as a former rubbish truc driver.land fill construction eqiptment operator that recycling is a joke. that curbside recycling and saturday morning trips to the recycling center is pathetic waste of time and fuel. i would bet a cost benefit analysis would be very discuoraging.its mainly provided so people feel their doing something.if you were to spend a week at a large land fill you would be shocked at the resources being buried.actully so much usefull resources are and have been buried in landfills i can see in the future that land fills will be mined like open pit coal or iron ore mines.i have worked on landfill remediation pojects. where we moved the old leaking cell to new modern lined cells.think giant pool liner,i spent my downtime reading news papers from the 60s and 70s. found a lot of superballs!landfills are really morelike wearhouses for your garbage.its sittig there waiting to be found. i sometime hoped i might find something from some well known person