Biodiesel Drawbacks?

[CaptainChewbacca]

My brother is of the opinion that there's nothing wrong with biodiesel and the U.S. could, if it wanted to, go 100% biodiesel without any drawbacks. I know that's crap, but I need specific arguments and/or sources.

For example, he says producing biodiesel causes no pollution.

[His Divine Shadow]

I wonder if biodiesel so frickin' wonderfull, why hasn't the US shedded it's foreign oil dependency and started producing it's own fuel, which would create many jobs at home as well. I mean if it's such a win-win situation why the hold up? Is the country run by a bunch of retards in suits or something? Well yes it is but I'm being rhetorical.

[Stile]

You still have to contend with the excess methanol that is a waste product in the processing of biodiesel.

Also, you use lye in the processing method and you've got to store the stuff somewhere.

[Broomstick]

If I recall, refining stuff into biodiesal produces glycerin as a byproduct. If you don't have a use for it, it's waste and pollution. Refining biodiesel form, say, leftover deep fryer oil from a fast -food restaurant leaves with a nasty sludge of non-fuel crap/impurities which, again, is waste and pollution. If you refine directly from an oil crop... well, you still get non-oil residues as non-fuel crap (which may or may not be useful elsewhere), not to mention the pollution potentials involved in modern agriculture.

Burning biodiesal does cause pollution - burning anything causes pollution. The only exception you can argue is hydrogen, which when burned produces water. However, if you get enough engines burning H2 in a small local area it is conceivable that the water vapor generated and released into the atmosphere might have local effects that are not desired.

[WyrdNyrd]

I've heard it argued here that bio-diesel is damned expensive compared to normal diesel/petrol. After all, crude oil is just sitting there waiting to be picked up and refined. You first have to grow the plants that will be refined into bio-diesel.

With crude oil, you're getting a lot of processing "for free", thanks to geological processes and the passing of several aeons. Of course, the problem is that we using up this "free fuel" many orders of magnitude faster than it's being replenished...

[FireNexus]

Burning biodiesal does cause pollution - burning anything causes pollution. The only exception you can argue is hydrogen, which when burned produces water.

Of course you get pollution, but it's not increasing the net carbon in the environment. In the end, it's effectively pollution free.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

My brother is of the opinion that there's nothing wrong with biodiesel and the U.S. could, if it wanted to, go 100% biodiesel without any drawbacks. I know that's crap, but I need specific arguments and/or sources.

For example, he says producing biodiesel causes no pollution.

xxxdiesel fuels are nice, but they still generate tons upon tons of CO2 which will give you that warm, greenhouse-effect induced, fuzzy feeling. But, you'll be producing greehouse gasses with almost any of the in-between solutions you care to think of. You also need to devote a lot of cropland for producing the plants from which you extract the vegetable oil needed to make biodiesel, and the methanol you need to add to it. Of course, you also need a catalyst, such as sodium hydroxide to make the stuff with (the catalyst, fortunately, can be recycled a fair number of times . . . if you use a solid catalyst, and it seems there are catalyst-free methods of producing biodiesel.) And, as others have mentioned, it produces glycerin as a byproduct, and some production methods also produce a lot of toxic wastewater, which must be dealt with somehow. All this means is that biodiesel is rather more expensive to produce, compared to dinosaur juice. However, petroleum will only get more expensive, and the methodologies of producing biodiesel still have much room for improvement, so the argument of expense will quickly go out the window.

[theski]

Here ya go Chewie....

The most destructive crop on earth is no solution to the energy crisis

By promoting biodiesel as a substitute, we have missed the fact that it is worse than the fossil-fuel burning it replaces
Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.
In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 1018 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota". In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals.

The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - that seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one substitute is worse than the fossil-fuel burning it replaces.
The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent for my stance on the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are performing a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet a 380th of our demand for road transport fuel. Beyond that, the trouble begins.

When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land use. Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel.

In promoting biodiesel - as the EU, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia's federal land development authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant. His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam. Two foreign consortiums - one German, one American - are setting up rival plants in Singapore. All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

"The demand for biodiesel," the Malaysian Star reports, "will come from the European Community ... This fresh demand ... would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia's crude palm oil inventories." Why? Because it is cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impact of palm oil production. "Between 1985 and 2000," it found, "the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia". In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest have been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares are scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5 million in Indonesia.

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting national park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orangutan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist. The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they've cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.

The British government understands this. In a report published last month, when it announced that it would obey the EU and ensure that 5.75% of our transport fuel came from plants by 2010, it admitted "the main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and south-east Asia (for palm oil plantations)."

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BIO

[Turin]

xxxdiesel fuels are nice, but they still generate tons upon tons of CO2 which will give you that warm, greenhouse-effect induced, fuzzy feeling.

Theski seems to have covered the worst issues involved, but I wanted to chime in and correct this. Because the carbon involved in biofuels comes from living plants, the net carbon in the atmosphere remains the same, so biodiesel isn't a problem from the CO2 perspective.

[Ma Deuce]

I wonder how much potential E85 has? I know engines running it burn very clean, but are there any side effects and bi-products in the producton process that would offset that?

[Sea Skimmer]

I wonder how much potential E85 has? I know engines running it burn very clean, but are there any side effects and bi-products in the producton process that would offset that?

You can't ship ethanol in pipelines because it soaks up too much water in the process, that means all ethanol must be moved by rail or truck on land, which is highly impractical if it ever becomes a really heavily used fuel. I don't know how Brazil gets around that. Its also more expensive then gasoline right now and runs into the same ‘not enough land’ problems as biodiesel. That remaining 15% gasoline is also mandatory because of the low volatility of ethanol works out poorly during cold starts and will cause misfires.

I’m interested in the new P-Series fuel right now, as it’s a blend of natural gas, ethanol and stuff from biomass which can be mixed with gasoline in any proportion, so it doesn’t force us to adapt any one source of energy besides crude oil.

[Ariphaos]

Burning biodiesal does cause pollution - burning anything causes pollution. The only exception you can argue is hydrogen, which when burned produces water. However, if you get enough engines burning H2 in a small local area it is conceivable that the water vapor generated and released into the atmosphere might have local effects that are not desired.

This is already the case just from people watering their lawns.

Regardless, the answer is obviously not going to amount to solely biodiesel. If anything, in the end, it will get lumped into a large array of synthetic and recycling measures used to tide us over until a real alternative is developed.

[Broomstick]

Burning biodiesal does cause pollution - burning anything causes pollution. The only exception you can argue is hydrogen, which when burned produces water. However, if you get enough engines burning H2 in a small local area it is conceivable that the water vapor generated and released into the atmosphere might have local effects that are not desired.

This is already the case just from people watering their lawns.

Yes. That is true. Now add several hundred million cars to the mix nationwide. This won't make things better.

Regardless, the answer is obviously not going to amount to solely biodiesel. If anything, in the end, it will get lumped into a large array of synthetic and recycling measures used to tide us over until a real alternative is developed.

In hindsight, developing such dependence on just one fuel source was probably not the ideal choice in the first place.