Bio-diesel

David Connor and Brian Murray and Ray,

Bio-diesel (Chemical Engineering Dept.)    11/20

Terms:

·         Biodiesel-A fuel source produced from vegetable oil, fats, or grease

·         BTU’s-British Thermal Unit equivalent to 1055 joules; amount of energy to raise 1 lb of water 1 degree F

·         Ethanol-Ethyl alcohol, a two carbon alcohol found in fuels and found in liquor. Typically liquor has a maximum of 40% ethanol (diluted with water). The ethanol is very purified through distillation.  Ethanol used for fuel is essentially just ethanol, but not in a very pure form, so it tastes worse than food-grade alcohol (if that’s possible!)  Ethanol is typically mixed into fuel at a 10% content to oxygenate the gasoline so that it can burn more cleanly and meet the Clean Air Act amendments of the early 90’s. Until the mid 90’s MTBE was typically chosen for this purpose but in the late 90’s MTBE was found to be leaking into drinking water. This added a terrible taste to the water. It is unclear if MTBE is carcinogenic.

Social value-Some emissions created by biofuels are  considerably less than that of traditional diesel , reducing pollution produced by vehicles. http://www.crimsonrenewable.com/emissions.php  Specifically, net carbon emissions are less because the carbon in biodiesel comes from plants, a renewable source. (For a gram of carbon  to be released by combustion that same gram of carbon had to be  taken out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis for a net carbon emission of zero.)  This could be a useful alternative for fossil fuels in the case of a shortage or to just reduce green house gas emissions IF the biodiesel is made from used cooking oil. If the biodiesel is made from UNUSED cooking oil, its benefit is likely reversed by the deforestation it causes. (cutting down trees to grow oil-producing crops.)

Government and economics

Biodiesel could potentially reduce the reliance of the US on foreign oil, relieving some political tension.  It may also possibly reduce the cost of fuel, as fatty food wastes are abundant in America. There are about 3 billion gallons of waste fuel oil generated by the US each year.  Americans use 100 billion gallons of gas in the same period. So we would have to grow oil crops. The big issue there is  that there is some risk involved with both our major fuel and food sources being the same.  If there is a shortage then both are in trouble. Also, this would set up a trade off in resources between fuel and food ; some fraction of the water and farmland that could go to produce food would go to produce fuel instead.

Concepts continued:

·         Carbon REcycling International is a company that uses CO2 and water to make methanol products, mostly fuel for flexibly fueled (FF) cars.  One possible issue with FFcars, that I found, is that methanol is slightly corrosive, leading to increased wear on certain parts.  This process also solves the food/fuel source issue, as it is not produced from feedstock, but from CO2 and water.

Connections

o    Borton and Cleanroom and Dehnert (renewable energy,solar)

o    Dr. Silva and Dr. Linhardt (Scaling up production of a product)