BIODIESEL, Try it youll like it.

George-

If I did assume you might be motivated by the "good of society" it would only be to practice my irony.

If ever you do alter your long-held habits you will wish you had done so earlier.Maybe your study lacks a few facilities.

georgeob, I just got done reviewing a bond projection for a landfill (its a long story but I got sucked into it0. The costs for the post closure LFG system were never calculated into the cost of the LFG that is being delivered to a nearby county office complex for heat . So, if the full cost of the methane were amortized, it would include the operation AND construction/design of the original active gas control system. That 20% number jumps to maybe 60% of natural gas lines or portapropane tanks. That youve gotta admit.

farmerman,

I am duly shamed for my reference to you as a member of the class of Geologists, and not as a very interesting individual. I'll confess that your earlier arguments re economic incentives perplexed me a bit, and the opportunity to get in the "geologist under every rock " line was too good for me to pass up.

I'll willingly concede that a number of tax and other economic incentives has grown up around the extraction and distribution of petroleum products, and that a level playing field is what is needed for alternate source development. I'm very wary of government directed research, or proposals of the development of alternative sources primarily through government-based incentives. The Department of Energy's history in this area is particularly instructive.

Very interesting comments about the production and portability of biodeisel. We have focused on a relatively simple market in which the owner of the feedstock is also a willing, on site, consumer of the finished product. The collateral environmental benefits are also a factor, just as you described. I think that Biodeisel access to feedstock, production, distribution, etc. would be a much more complex and capital-intensive problem, but one with perhaps a wider application. Very interesting possibilities though.

You are correct with respect to engineered landfills. The 20% number relates to the food processing plants I cited. We build on existing waste facilities and the point of methane consumption is on site.

I'll fly a real kite.

Is there a possibility that the poor have to be kept poor because if they were not poor they would all get a car each and fly off three times a year to exotic locations and more often to help celebrate a birthday or somesuch.That the increased wealth being created is more environmentally functional given to millionaires who are already knackered and strung out from trying to spend what they already have.

Perhaps if we could all be content with a nice study we could all have one.A leisure class lifestyle which Veblen led.

Keeping a class of poor people does have collateral damage built in.

It struck me in the bath just now.Is the seeming necessity to draw invidious comparisons an instinct or do we learn it.

Cost of making biodiesle itself is low, if you have the ability to centrifuge the oil at about 100C, filter it, esterify it (using the LFG and OH in a catalyst) then separating the 3 fractions;

biodiesel complex ester

glycerine

gunk.

Gunk can go back on the fill and the glycerine is a product in its own.

Weve been putting up a small pilot study withour own capital and our data looks good. The LFG is only a temporary system to get enough data for the economics and scaling factors (like makin a pizza at home v becoming Dominos). We have the entire thing rigged in a 20 ft trailer so its portable to a landfill in Del and one in Pa.
I do have a chem E workin for us on this and hes more like a physicist (great and very weird sense of humor, kinda whacky, creative, similar to most nano guys)

Farmerman perhaps I should send you a resume. My experience in waste disposal and treatment, including engineered landfills might be of value. Besides I'm presently in want of something to do.

BTW, true engineers* IMO are practical physicists and gearheads. A practicing ChE in particular adds to that description by being a physical chemist.

Rap

*as opposed to project schedulers.

George wrote-



That is like conceding that there is sand on the shores of the oceans and trees in the forests.

rap, george has always been one who, likes a little jab now and again, we sorta engage in bits of ppie in the face slapstick. I dont believe hes serious and Im certainly not . You know damn well that if people make sense thats all we can ask.
Im not bringing any new engineering people on right now because my two biggest projects are in Argentina in a tin and rare earth prospect and in Canada. Our biodiesel foray is just the partners pissin away our savings on an idea, but I do know a few companies who may be , especially in complex lined facilities and WWT .( PM me and Ill send some suggestions about companies who now are are, or who will be in the expansion mode around the country)

You have a lot of FUSRAP and UMTRAP experience as well as radwaste and mixed waste no? How stuck are you to Ohio?

PS, from our discussion with spendi last week or so, I sent out my new list to netflix and am getting a copy of THE BANK DICK. I was chuckling when you mentioned about WC's name in the movie EGGBERT SOUSE (with a grav , accent on the second syllable).

Common sense is starting to prevail at last.

Right now, I'm not too stuck to Ohio although after almost 30 years here I think I'll always be somewhat attached to hills on this end of the river.

As for former old virgin uranium procession sites (FUSRAP) and mill tailings I was periodically involved when hot spots were discovered around former processing facilitates. Even then my involvement was in drafting cleanup requirements for the DOE and assuring that the disposal contractors followed all the P's and Q's of the specs and reqs.

Most of the time I was involved with requirements and operations around former fuel and weapons materials processing (mixed, transuranics, enriched, thorium, and mixed contaminated material processing, packaging, separation, shipment, and disposal).

I did once, long ago, did look at modeling airborne radon around the tailings piles outside of Leadville, but that was more as a Westinghouse pro-from-Dover consultant that was based on some early work I did on the radon treatment around the K-65 silos at Fernald (well before the silo remediation misadventures).

AS for specifics, I did a lot of remediation risk assessment and environmental transport modeling, sometimes on some really long term life cycle projects (WIPP and Hanford) and spent some time amusing myself with the concepts of a Nuclear Priesthood around some really hot and long lived radwaste disposal sites in extremely geologically stable areas.

Farmerman, what I'd really to do right now is to do short term project work--six to nine months' maximum duration. That way I can take time to walkabout between gigs. However, the reason I mentioned this in this thread is alternate fuels technologies appeals to my former ecohippy self.

BTW Field's names are legend---rumor has it he would take his character names from people he met when touring as a carnival juggler. Think about this--somewhere out there is a man who was the real Eggbert Souse' (guave over the last syllable).

Rap

spendious is of course correct when he says we need to break our addiction to oil, or very nearly correct anyway. It is stored energy we are addicted to. We all could do with a little more excercise and walk to the shops instead of driving. Grow food in our front yard instead of mowing it. Go to bed when it gets dark and get up when the sun comes up, and turn off the lights when we dont need them.

All the alternative energy solutions mentioned here are an important step in reducing oil consumption and to be applauded but do not really break the addiction to stored energy.

It seems to me that they will strengthen the addiction on the Parkinson principle by recruiting new addicts and upping the dose on established ones.

Has nobody noticed that a very high proportion of game show prizes require the lucky winners to tap into the energy supply in order to enjoy them and that the presentation of the prizes is carried out in such a way that those not fortunate enough to win are motivated to go out and buy them.

not really. Im more amazed that people who win prizes often dont have the money to pay the taxes on them as ordinary income.

fm-

You will have to explain that.Nobody here knows what you mean.

Also-on serious bio-deisel production what would fertiliser costs be and energy use in the manufacture of it.

The point has been argued here that government subsidies or tak deductions for the production of Ethanol from corn are counter productive for the reason spendius cites - the energy cost of raising the crop exceeds what is produced through the ethanol yield. I can't personally verify this, but accept the likely truth of it. However, new techniques, involving both more ubiquitous and easily grown crops and, equally importantly, a much greater fraction of the crop biomass, can significantly alter the resulting energy balance in favor of ethanol. The technologh appears to have advanced to the point at which larger scale production will yield even greater efficiencies, both from economic and energy perspectives -- more or less as Farmerman has already described..

The U.S. has enormous untapped agricultural potential, and there is no reason to doubt our potential to produce large quantities of biofuels without affecting food production -- as long as the economic & energy tradeoffs work out as assumed above.

George-

A few points come to mind-

1-Others have large potential too.Ukraine say.

2-Population growth.(Malthus).

3-Fertiliser run off into ground water,

4-The price.Investment decisions of the magnitude required to make worthwhile inroads into the 20 million barrels will have to take the price of other energy sources,Russian gas etc,into account.The cost of energy goes into the goods manufactured and exporting those goods against competition with lower energy costs elsewhere is doomed.

5- "significantly alter" is too vague.

6-Oil producers have become addicted to their income as well.The energy from millions of years of sunshine on tap can blow the energy from this year's sunshine out of the water on price.

7-The cost of John Foster Dulles hasn't even got serious yet.He must be the most expensive American in history along with his boss of whom Lord Salisbury said-"He means well but is a prize noodle."(I like starting arguments).

8-Have you considered pyro-flatulation?

Clearly you have been indulging in pyro-flatulence here for some time.


Nutrient runoff into streams and groundwater is indeed a significant environmental problem. Too soon to tell how great a contribution biofuels might make to this. If the propaganda is true ethanol can be efficiently made from some very hearty and competitive plants.

I agree the oil producers will not remain static in such a process. However, given the accelerating demand for petroleum, and the excess market power the producers seek (but rarely obtain), I believe the addition of significant biofuels to the consumption inventory will have large net beneficial effects. I don't for a minute believe that petroleum will be fully displaced. Instead a host of improvements in the availablity of alternate fuels and demand-reducing improvements in the efficiency of powered systems will together create a new quasi-equilibrium.

The proper role of government here is simply to get out of the way. However the ever-present crowd of authoritarian reformers and criers of doom will n o doubt demand some government action. Our task is to induce them to scurry about while doing as little harm as possible.

Malthus was wrong on every count.

George-

Maybe Malthus was wrong but population growth is a factor as is its decline.

What's the prognosis on that.I read recently that France is aiming at a 20 million increase.



"If","can","efficiently","very"--come on man.

Where are we on 5% (equivalent to 1 million barrels of oil) from bio even if the propaganda is true,which I doubt from one day's sunshine assuming no dusty conditions and no crop disease.
For a year isn't 5% 365 million barrels.

The cost factor will drive the inevitable switch to biofuel and other alternative energy sources - the upward spiral of oil pricing demands that. Its simple economics. Sailmakers and harness crafters were confident the expense, complexity, and inherent limitations and hazards attendent upon the internal combustion engine precluded its ascendance over the transportation forms which guaranteed their livelihoods.