why is biodiesel presented as fuel vs. food?

[yurbud]

You guys have probably already talked about this before, but the big rap on biofuels is that they will use cropland that we need to grow food. When you press the oil out of something though, it leaves behind the solids--which could be dried and made into flour, which we have figured out how to use as food for a couple of millenia.

Obviously, the process is not as simple for ethanol, but it does seem that simple for biodiesel. Am I missing something?

[FloridaPat]

1. Wheat germ is taken out of wheat, and that has the oil in it. Along

with all the vitamins. Good pooint.

[smtpgirl]

2. how is that

the govt. gives farmers subsidies for growing grain, so why can't the farmers stave off the govt. welfare gravy train and actually make an honest living. I'll bet that the crops they grow will garner more profits from private industry rather the govt. giving them money not to grow crops.

[yurbud]

4. yeah, we have pretty big crop surpluses every year.

[Strelnikov_]

3. Most Of The Feed Value Of Corn Remains Following Ethanol Production

On Edit:

The problem with corn ethanol is that you only get one unit of ethanol energy for each unit consumed in the production of the ethanol, for an EPR of one. In other words, no net energy gain. So the problem is not really fuel vs food, but fuel vs fuel, as I see it.

Corn + One Unit Energy -> Feed + One Unit Energy

I am using the term 'feed' since the most common corn ethanol process, dry milling, yields DDGS meal as the end product, which is generally used as a feed supplement for livestock.

[yurbud]

5. ok, you lost me after feed value. You mean there are no calories left?

[Strelnikov_]

6. Post Corrected To Be Slightly More Coherent n/t

[amandabeech]

7. Many of the crops grown for biodiesel or ethanol yield

animal feed after extraction of the sugar or oil. Clearly, that's the case with corn and soybeans. The leftovers from sugar processed into ethanol are woody stalks burned for processing fuel in the case of cane or fibrous material used for animal feed in the case of sugar beets.

Opponents would argue that the corn should be sent to African countries where corn is a staple to be ground into meal and consumed by people. Those same folks need cooking oil that could be provided by the soybean. Also, soybeans can be made into tofu and tempeh for consumption in the far east, and tofu does contain fats.
Alternatively, the sugar should be used as human food.

Alternatively, the land should be plants with crops that really nourish humans, such as wheat, rye, rice, beans, vegetables and fruits. Those products could be dried, canned or even shipped fresh, if feasible, to people around the world who don't have enough food.

[yurbud]

8. I have read that a lot of African farmers can't make a profit because

we dump our surplus on them now, and when we want to do relief, we insist on sending our surplus over there instead of buying crops in neighboring countries.

[amandabeech]

10. Yes, I've heard that, too.

But I've never seen any discussion of both ideas in one presentation of any form. Perhaps it is out there, but I haven't seen it.

[yurbud]

11. find out who is doing ag work over there. Maybe Peace Corps could do it

Africa could also lead on this issue.

Since they don't have a lot of infrastructure, they wouldn't be replacing anything, but putting it in place for the first time, so there would be less of a psychological barrier. This happened with cell phones--in some places, they skipped land lines altogether and went straight to wireless.

[NNadir]

12. Biodiesel need not be manufactured from unused biological oils.

There are many industrial processes that use cooking oil; most of them in the food industry. (Potato chips is just one example.) This oil can be recovered and conveniently used as fuel.

Some restaurants also produce drum quantities of oil.

I do not know that virgin oil is necessarily economic, but at current oil prices, it may be close to profitable to use spent, used oils.

The milling and extraction processes for vegetable oils (the latter uses the petroleum derivative hexane as a solvent) do not involve quite the expenditure of water and energy that fermentation and distillation of ethanol require. Nor does it require quite the same time in a reactor. Therefore I strongly suspect that biodiesel is a far superior fuel to ethanol. (I am largely agnostic on whether ethanol itself is a great idea, although I do think that many people, going back to the Carter Presidency, vastly overstate its potential.)

But biodiesel does involve a potential role for ethanol. If ethanol esters replace methanol esters (methanol esters being more common in biodiesel) biodiesel can represent a totally solar generated fuel, ignoring process energy. As such and as of today, therefore, the only real totally solar car - irrespective of scale - is probably a biodiesel powered car.

I don't imagine in any way that biodiesel is a comprehensive solution to the fuel problem or the global climate change problem, but I do believe that it has an excellent niche capability. One of the best uses for biodiesel may be as a home heating fuel. In the Northeast US many homes and businesses have underground fuel tanks that can leak. Biodiesel is biodegradable whereas #2 heating oil (diesel fuel) is not. This suggests biodiesel as a replacement for home heating oil.

[smtpgirl]

15. Wow, you know about biodiesel

You can take that restaurant grease from McD's for free, filer the grease, now you have a fuel source

[phantom power]

9. How true that is (or isn't) depends a lot on...

a few different factors.

1) How much biodiesel are we going to make? We currently use something like 9 million barrels of oil a day (in the form of diesel, gasoline, kerosene, etc) for transportation. Are we going to "squeeze" 9 million barrels of oil every day from our existing crops? I don't know, but my guess is "hell no" It's a safe bet that in the future we will all be doing less traveling and transporting. But exactly how much is a very open question.

2) What will the climate be like in the coming decades? It's pretty clear that even if we need extra cropland, we have it under the current climate, but that climate is even now starting to change out from under us, and it's not in a good way.

3) What technology will we use? Will we reform it from algae? Press it from soybeans? Squeeze it from our freedom fries? Render it from the fat of liposuction clinics?

4) Will we actually use biodiesel? Or will it be ethanol? Will we have "ethanol-from-cellulose" technology? That makes a big difference.

5) A dozen other factors that I don't even know about, because I'm not a fuel chemist. I'm just a programmer with an endless supply of opinions.

[Dead_Parrot]

13. Horses for courses, I expect...

In the same way that - until relativly recently - diesel was for trucks and buses and gasoline was for cars, we'll probably wind up with (for example) H fuel cells for delivery vans & buses where they travel a limited distance before returning to base, biodiesel for long-haul work, & ethanol for cars. Or somesuch.

Expecting any one of the oil replacements to do the whole lot on it's own is going to be "challenging", but spreading the load this way might just work...

[amandabeech]

14. Actually, we are using close to 20-21,000,000 barrels a day,

365 days a year. At least 2/3 is imported, if not more since parts of the Gulf production are still shut in and other production areas are clearly depleted or depleting.

Agricultural machinery including tractors and implements like combines run on diesel. Trucks taking produce to market or for processing are sometimes gasoline and sometimes diesel, generally depending on size, as diesel engines are usually found in the largest vehicles. Produce moves across the country mostly in diesel trucks, but grains generally are shipped longer distances by rail or barge, which generally use diesel.