Biofuels, the 2nd generation: trees, straw and sour milk

there are plenty of systems and methods that can be used to produce biofuels , but in the end it comes down to cost imo .
if biofuels can be produced at a cost equal to - or even lower - than conventioal fuel , i'm sure everyone would singing the praises of it .

in ontario , hydro customers that produce some or all of their own electricity can feed back excess electricity into the net and will be paid a HEFTY premium for the excess .
the idea is to encourage more customers to produce power through wind , water or solar cells .
this'll only work as long as only a few customers take advantage of that . if we all decide to do that , the electricity rates would shoot up and most people would again rely and the conventioal power supply - and we'd be back to square one imo .

perhaps some day there will be a "breakthrough" and energy will be produced in a less-polluting way and even be cheaper than today - it's happened before .

i remember a program showing some old filmclips and pictures from NYC when horses were still one of the main methods of transportation .
the claim was made that if the automobile would not have been invented to replace the horse , NYC would have drowned in horse-manure

i guess we are going back to manure in a different way :wink:
hbg

Great stuff Walter, particularily because it is not just research.

I have passed the links on to several "Forest and timber" publications here in Aust and NZ.

The interesting thing from a synthesis POV is that, if the biomass contains >4% fatty acids it is made into diesel by a different (acid) process, whereas , if the biomass contains <4% fatty acids it uses a (base) process, Both use hot metanol with either acid or base. I wonder how this is controlled in a direct feed process.

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