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I deleted the reference to NRDC. See http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/biofuels.asp
R1 : Alkyl radical.
? This should be alkyl group, not radical. You won't be doing any radical chemistry in a solution that has -OH's floating around, not to mention the amount of energy it would take to generate alkyl radicals.
CodeCannon 10:05, 18 Nov 2003 (Eastern)
I reverted the removal of the description of the army study that encountered problems with filter clogging. If you wish to remove it, please state your reasons. Kat 16:09, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)
These statements puzzle me and seem contradictory "It is practically immiscible with water." and "Biodiesel is hydrophilic. Some of the water present is residual to processing, and some comes from storage tank condensation." It does not seem like both can be true.
This paragraph puzzles me:
"The issue is economic: one of the exceptions Nassau Senior noted to the idea that machines aren't harmful to wages is, where the machines themselves make demands on resources that would have gone into food production. So the important question isn't whether biodiesel can be produced as whether that it is the most efficient use of resources, and the expense of biodiesel in comparison to traditional forms of diesel suggests that the answer is no."
Is it badly written or some kind of economic theory (not my strong suit)? Can anyone elucidate? Rmhermen 16:24, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I didn't write it, but I believe it is a response to critics of biofuels. Two common cricisism are: (1) it is said that there is no net gain because more than a gallon fossil fuel is used in production of a gallon of biodiesel; (2) biofuels are bad because they displace food production, and everyone knows we don't have nearly enough soybeans as evidenced by their high price. I don't buy into either of these arguments, especially not (2). The paragraph in question appears to be an attempt to address one or the other or both. Kat 17:13, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)
As for (1), why isn't the negative net gain for biofuel research from David Pimentel (Cornell University) and Tad W. Patzek (Berkeley) not brought up in the article? The news link from Cornell is here: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html
Summary: This research indicates that using plants for fuel sources results in a net energy loss, e.g. system wide, it takes more energy to create biofuel than the resultant biofuel contatins.
To the frequent editor with no username: Please provide evidence where biodiesel is cheaper than petrodiesel. As I have added to the article it is still more expensive in the U.S. (but getting closer all the time). A different tax structure in another country could easily make up this difference. Also the sentence you keep adding is trying to change a necessary rebuttal paragraph into another advocacy paragraph. The article has to present an balanced point of view (NPOV). If you can find evidence, please put it in the appropriate place. By the way, in the U.S. at least diesel and gas are cheaper in real and inflation-adjusted dollars now than at the time of the gas crisis. And the wars (which?) have never produced a permanent price change. Rmhermen 18:29, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)
But this nowadays is no true. Vegetable oil is cheaper than petroleum ( the original fight was between vegoil , read again vegoil, and petroleum).
Is vegetable oil cheaper than petroleum? . For sure:
In the midwestern US, where soybean oil is produced, biodiesel is still more costly than fossil fuel. I can get price quotes, or you can ring the local petroleum dealer if you want. And biodiesel production is subsidized where fossil fuel production is not. Some of the animal tallow based formulations are showing more potential for low cost, since the tallow is cheaper than soybean oil.
I must say that I am skeptical of claims regarding biodiesel made from waste oil sources. The fiddly engineering problems in waste oil processing affect transesterification just as they do building a burner or engine. To my knowledge, they have not been solved in an economically effective way. Can you cite any sources--newspaper, magazine, etc-- to back up your claims? Kat 01:41, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I removed the following links:
Not very relevant, only sketchy information or what is already well understood: http://www.eere.energy.gov/biomass/ http://www.nrel.gov/ http://www.biodieselnow.com/ http://www.greenfuels.org/biodiesel/index.htm http://www.biofuelcanada.ca/
http://www.intertek-cb.com/newsitetest/news/biodiesel03102003.shtml - not authoritative site on ASTM specifications
http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel.html - NPOV - more advocacy than objectivity
-- 137.132.3.12 17:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed some links for the following reasons
Thanks - Taxman 17:17, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
Ok I removed a bunch more. This article really seems to be a magnet for every site that mentions biodiesel to want to get linked from here. Here are the ones I removed:
They are all either not very directly related to biodiesel or not high quality. - Taxman Talk 15:02, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
I think this link is worth including: http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/03/biodiesel-king-of-alternative-fuels.html It is written by a chemical engineer, and has a good comparison of ethanol versus biodiesel in the first section.
One of the requirements to be a featured article is for a GFDL or PD picture or diagram representing the topic. Does anyone have one or can think of one to use? - Taxman 17:17, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
I did add a little bit (since removed) that pointed out the UKP2,000 fine and possible jail sentence for using your own biodiesel in the UK. Don't the Poms deserve some kind of warning?
I think the press reports I referred to that talked of "mixing methanol with cooking oil" may have missed out the necessity of adding caustic soda.
I did try to fit it in nicely. I'm a journalist and used to doing that kind of thing thank you very much.
And thirdly they were fined for using biodiesel, and avoiding the tax on it - not just one person but a whole bunch of them. To me that makes it relevant to biodiesel. There's a lot of information on cost comparison in the page, which is economics but which you leave in. Do try to run your page on consistent lines. - Vik :v)
If it's 'non-flammable,' how in the ever-lovin' blue-eyed world can it be burned in a diesel engine? User:sca
From the article: Biodiesel reduces emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by approximately 50% and carbon dioxide by 78.45% on a net basis... Mmm... if net emissions of CO2 are reduced by 78.45%, where do the 21.55% come from? Where does the extra carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere come from? -- Deragon 17:15, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm not an expert on fuel technologies, but these statistics appear biased to me and undermine the article. In common usage, a claim that product x reduces emissions vs. product y implies a measurement at the tailpipe. Not the lifecycle measurement. In fact, the energy to grow, process, and transport a soybean product, for example, certainly generates some amount of CO2 emission to offset the amount claimed captured by the soybean. Also, growing, harvesting, processing/refining soybeans is certainly more energy-intensive than drilling for oil or gas. Consequently, as a layperson, I find the claims of reduced emissions disingenuous at best. --[User:Guest]] 22:59, Jun 7, 2005
The article states that the United States uses more energy per capita than any other country. I'm not sure that this statement is entirely true. I believe I once found that Canada actually had a higher per capita energy use than the United States. Perhaps someone could investigate this possibility futher? -- Silver86 06:15, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for looking into the possibility. While it may not have seemed important to some, I like to point out the small things I see in articles. -- Silver86 06:07, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The following was already in the intro and there is already a section covering the properties. Possibly if much more detailed list of chemical properties was produced, it could be added back as a subsection. - Taxman 13:46, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
I couldn't find a source to verify the following, and I believe it is out of date, and not entirely correct, so I removed it. In any case, it would be better to include a more general discussion of availability in Europe. So far the only sources I can find in English are about the US. I do know production is as high or higher in Europe though. Anybody have any good sources? - Taxman 00:12, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
The article states: "Some environmental groups, notably NRDC object to the vast amount of farming and the resulting over-fertilization, pesticide use, and land use conversion that would be needed to produce the additional vegetable oil."
I'd like to see references to flesh out this point. My own search of the NRDC web site does not substantiate this idea. It's an important point, though, which is why I'd like to get more information.
I've added a disambig after people repeatedly confused the two at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/French fry car, which rather spectacularly demonstrates a need for greater clarity on this point. I'd hope this is an ugly temporary measure, and that the link can be incorporated into the text. And perhaps there is a better name for straight vegetable oil? Like most people it seems, I had assumed that the term biodiesel included the peanut oil on which the early demonstration diesel engine ran, but that seems not to be strictly true. At least that's the way the article reads now. Andrewa 19:39, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The one complaint I have is the reference to 3 million gallons annual in America of WVO. Other sources on the web (such as biodiesel.org and Willie Nelson's BioWillie) state a much higher number at 3 billion. I am not sure if the poster had a typo or what. Currently millions (if not billions) of gallons of WVO are being dumped into landfills. Can someone confirm?
Among other references - http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,683903,00.html - shows the 3 billion gallon mark. If further references are needed - please let me know. A more interesting reference from a University - http://www.me.iastate.edu/biodiesel/Pages/bio1.html. I think Im getting into Wiki now - so I better sign up - TW. I signed up and the reference from Iowa State approximates to 2.95 billion gallons per year of vegetable oil, close to the 3 billion mark. Check the Iowa State reference. It seems as if all the million reference points should be billion (3 billion gallons, 23 billion lbs of vegetable/animal oil etc). And the Iowa state link has references itself, albeit from 2002 or 2003. Taxman can you update it?
What about using fat obtained via Liposuction to produce biodiesel? Think about all of the fat lazy americans who drive two blocks to the corner "convenience store" for a pack of cigarettes, a bag of potato chips, a box of ho-ho's and a rack of cheap "beer". If they got liposuction and we turned the fat into biodiesel, then they actually walked to the corner gymnasium, it would save tons.
Perhaps a scented oil should be added to biodiesel, to make it smell nice when it's burned, similar to scented lamp oil you can get for 'kerosene' lamps?
A citation is needed for this paragraph; when was the study, and where? Tempshill 22:59, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I still can't find the Military study, but I'm against removing the material because the information there is correct according to a number of other sources I've seen. Also, the NBB website has a page on heating oil that lists a couple of studies, the best of which doesn't appear available for free. - Taxman Talk 14:43, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
I just read through the article and thought it was very good. There were a couple of minor things I thought might be improved:
I like to help get this article to FA status, and think the next step is to take it through peer-review. Thoughts?
— Jwanders 20:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
The issue in this article (effect of deforestation) should be addressed in the Wikipedia entry. Rd232 talk 14:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Moved in from Talk:Algae: Hi, i'm writing this to get some information about biodiesel production from algae. I first got interested in biodiesel when i came across some do-it-yourself tutorials on how to make your own biodiesel, using waste vegetable oil. I was very interested in this, especially since the tutorials said that you could get the WVO for free from fast food resturaunts. But with energy shortages, the high price of gas, and the lack of significant public transportation, once fast food chains and slaughterhouses see their waste being used to produce something valuable it seems that it will only be a matter of time until that free-supply will be taken away, either by no longer giving the oil away, but selling it, or having it contracted out,(which seems more likely once ultra-low sulfur requirements go into effect for regular diesel). Without a stable supply of oil, any investment into a biodiesel system,(a proccessor, a diesel car, diesel generators for electricity), seem dangerous. I started looking at oil crops, and was surprised by the yields, you hear so much about soy-biodiesel, but it turns out to be one of the worst of the oil producing crops. There were a couple of crops that were slightly better than the rest,(jatropa, and palm), but they're both regional, and no good unless you live in those areas. Then I see the next leap, from 635gpa for palm oil, to 5,000 to 20,000gpa for some types of algae. The implications of something like that seemed amazing, a single family doesn't use anywhere near the equivalent of 10-20 thousand gallons per acre of oil, and to meet their energy needs could set up a system at a tenth of that size, or use a swimming pool, and essentially be energy independent. But then there was no information about it. After searching around the internet I found the DOE's Aquatic Species Program www.eere.energy.gov, and I found the University of New Hampshires; Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae page www.unh.edu The DOE's report presented alot of information that I didn't know before, but overall it seemed to describe a program that didn't work, at least for a cost-efficient means for producing biodiesel. And then there was the UNH page, which gave the same numbers, but then went on to talk about how great such a system would be, and presented next to nothing about details. Since then I've been searching the internet for anything about algal cultivation, harvesting, or processing, and have found out alot about algae; it's use in CO2 mitigation, for the production of hydrogen, as a health food, for dyes and medicines, but most all of the information that i've found for the production of biodiesel seems to be rehashed, always citing the same few papers. Every once in awhile I find some specific information about an aspect of production, but i haven't found anything about an integrated, fully functioning system that is successfully producing anywhere near the quantities that have been estimated, i've gotten the impression that there is alot of private research going on, but i can't find any specifics about it.
For the efficient cultivation of algae for the production of biodiesel, this is a list of specific questions that i am tring to find answers to:
what algal species are proving most successful for producing the largest
amounts of oil, including the whole process, cultivation, harvesting,
and extraction of oil.(much of the information i've found will cite a
species that only performs well in one aspect, ie. it will grow well,
but is expensive to harvest, or it's easy to harvest, but has a lower
oil content.)
what temperature range do they do best in
is there an optimum depth for a tank or pond(ie- 4 inches of water, 5 feet, etc), in which the algae grow best, or is it more a matter of light penetration
do freshwater, or saltwater species seem to be more promising
if saltwater, does the salt you put into the water get consumed, needing to be replaced often, or is it a one-time thing
where can you inexpensively obtain specific species of algae,(i know of the university of Hawaii, i was looking for cheaper sources, perhaps someone doing research themselves within the connected U.S.)
what are the most cost-efficient means that are being used to harvest high-oil content algae, (i know of microscreens, flocculation, and centrifugation.)
how do you extract oil from algae(the only method i've seen is to dry it and then press it out)
what is the most efficient means of growing algae, open-pond, photobioreactor, green-house pond, polyethylene sleeves, tanks.
where do you get the nutrients for the algae, aside from expensive "fresh" fertilizer used for food crops,(i know about waste water, and fertilizer runoff, but i'm looking for efficient sources for if you don't live by a stream, or a sewage plant)
i've read that algae need only 1/10 the amount of light they recieve to grow, and was wondering whether it can be grow successfully using florecents, i don't know what spectrum light algae need to grow
how do you get CO2 into the water of an algae system,(do you have to compress it and pump it in, or some type of permeable membrane?)
how do you collect or seperate CO2, from the air, or from smoke, like in a coal plant
could a modification of a septic tank be used as an algae pond, the human waste being used as nutrient for the algae
what scientific equipment do you need to start an oil-producing algae pond, for a basic, home system(microscopes, ph-meter, etc)
could the exhaust from a wood stove be used to supply a pond with CO2
do you know of anyone, -university, corporation, individual-, who is currently doing research on biodiesel production from algae, espescially actual working systems.
If anyone reading this post has information about any of these questions please post it under the Wikipedia entry:
Algaculture: Biodiesel production from algae
Algae resources(general)
posted by Daemon(not registered-wikipedia requires cookies) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.80.15.216 ( talk) 17:36, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
In case somebody manages to have the time, I found an article which may give extra material for either this article, or the Algal biodiesel article proposed above. Essentially a company in NZ has managed to produce biodiesel using a variety of algae commonly found in sewage ponds. Link here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10381404 83.67.100.39 21:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Biodiesel reduces emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by approximately 50 % and carbon dioxide by 78 % on a net lifecycle basis because the carbon in biodiesel emissions is recycled from carbon that was already in the atmosphere, rather than being new carbon from petroleum that was sequestered in the earth's crust. (Sheehan, 1998)
Does anyone have a link to the source matireal for this?
This statement only works if the crops that you get your oil from were organically grown, otherwise you're discounting the all the CO, and CO2 that went into the production of the chemical fertilizers, which are made from petroleum sequestered in the earth's crust. If chemical fertilizers are made specifically for the production of oil crops for biodiesel, then chemical fertilizers are part of the "lifecycle" productiion of biodiesel
If the statement is just about the emissions of biodiesel from a diesel engine, then it may be true, but that isn't a "lifecycle" estimate.
-Daemon
I am not an expert on biodiesel, but a few points in this article seem to be flawed in my opinion. In the case of biodiesel made from oilseed, certain energy and environmental costs are not mentioned in the article.
The article does not mention the following environmental costs:
1) the cost of clear-cutting natural ecosystems to produce any significant percentage of current diesel in use
2) the cost of monoculture crops on biodiversity
3) the cost of fertilizers used on watershed quality
4) the costs of soil fertility depletion by industrial agricultural practices
In the case of efficiency, the TVA study by Van Dyne and Raymer does not look convincing for the following reasons:
1) The energy inputted seems unreasonably low. This would make sense if it only included on-farm consumption of liquid fuel. A true look at energy return on investment would include all of the energy inputted to produce, transport and process the involved fertilizers and pesticides, as well as the energy inputted to process the oilseed. The energy efficiency ratios included in this article are better than that for extracting light crude oil, which seems absolutely impossible. As far as I know, there has been no comprehensive study looking at the energy efficiency of biodiesel. One such study has been done for ethanol by David Pimentel, which shows ethanol to be an energy-negative fuel.
2) Different crops require different energy inputs due to their specific needs and cultivation time requirements. The study is reported to just provide a national average, rather than being specific to oilseed crops
3) There is no reference for the study (neither citation nor year), and a Google search yielded only citations by biodiesel advocacy groups, in exactly the same language as this article. Jfeldman Feb. 20, 2006
I placed the following link in the external links section:
I am not sure why the link was removed - I thought it was related to the subject, and a good resource.
Thanks! User:Alex Ramon
I am still curious as to whether or not my external link will be allowed on this page. Biodiesel Fuel: News. I have been checking back here for a month and no reply. I work very hard to build and maintain the site where you can get the latest news about Biodiesel Fuel - updated daily.
Is that relevant for this page?
Ok, thanks - I will keep linking to this page from my website regardless as I think this is an excellent resource.
That's right - the section should only have one link to Dmoz - any more than that is too many!
I think this section needs to cite more sources. And perhaps some touch-ups? Who is "we" that section refers to and where did the "see operations"? Did they just copy that text from somewhere? -- 71.36.52.230 16:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
The numbering of the notes is seriously off. Note 12 and should be at 16 for example.... 06:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
In the Guardian yesterday http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1745535,00.html there is a report on the Blooker Prize, a new prize for books which have resulted from blogs. The runner-up in the non-fiction category was BIODIESEL POWER: The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel By Lyle Estill, http://www.biofuels.coop/book.shtml and the source blog was http://energy.biofuels.coop/. Should this get a mention? -- Salix alba ( talk) 11:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I split off the topic "availability" to a new page to make the parent page more readable. I hope this is a positive change. If anyone disagrees, perhaps we can discuss it here. -- Rifleman 82 15:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I rewrote the article to try to reduce the duplicating information generated by the piecemeal nature of edits, and tried to reorganize the information from the most important ( Biodiesel#Description, Biodiesel#Applications) to the less important ( Biodiesel#Historical background, Biodiesel#Current Research). Edits were made in good faith, and I hope it is a positive change.
Biodiesel#Environmental benefits is a tarbaby. It is messy and some claims appear dubious to me. It needs to be un-listed and wikified. Perhaps someone can take on this task.
I suggest that Biodiesel#Efficiency and Economic Arguments be spun off to a new article, leaving a summary of the major arguments for and against.
Comments on my edits? -- Rifleman 82 21:04, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Biodiesel is a light to dark yellow colorless liquid.
How can something colorless be described as light, dark, or yellow?
A New Zealand company has announced that it has successfully extracted biodiesel from sewage [3]. I'm not sure whether this should be included on this page, I just thought I'd bring it to the attention of the regular editors here.
A number of paragraphs in the above discussion and the associated wiki entry claim that biodiesel is sulfur free without providing evidence. Sulfur is common in nature and is part of many biological substances, such as amino acids. Some biodiesel manufacturers use sulfuric acid and other sulfur containing species as a catalyst, and the sulfur is not recovered. Also, the term "sulfur-free" is highly subjective. Do you consider less than 10 ppm sulfur free? 1 ppm sulfur is enough to degrade fuel cells. 10 ppm or less may deactivate certain catalysts over time. UPDATE: I found a page on Pacific Biodiesel's site that shows nominal sulfur content: http://www.biodiesel.com/why_biodiesel.htm According to this, it is typically between 0.012 and 0.023% by weight, between 33% and 66% the sulfur content of low sulfur diesel. Clearly this is not sulfur free. I notice Willie Nelson's biodiesel site claims that biodiesel reduces sulfur emissions by 100%. It seems this misinformation is widespread. According to Chevron, 0.05% sulfur diesel is currently in use in the US, and starting in 2007, we will be switching to 0.015% Sulfur diesel (ULSD). So based on current Diesel fuel, it is only a 50-75% decrease in Sulfur, and based on next year's diesel it is anywhere from a 20% decrease, to a 60% increase in Sulfur. This indicates that not all biodiesel is ULSD. I don't believe the Pacific Biodiesel numbers include sulfur added from sulfur containing catalysts. It seems most claims on the internet of biodiesel being sulfur free are based purely on speculation and not fact.
I removed the chart on oil production levels to trim it the article to length. I also removed the dead notes, which are a waste of bytes. Ordered the "see also" section by alphabets, and removed a duplicated link (appropriate technology). Added the expert tag on the claims of the benefits of biodiesel - some dubious, some just need a cite.
Tried to clean up the language for consistency as well.
-- Rifleman 82 17:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I recommend adding something like this to the history:
In Sept 2005 Minnesota became the first state to require that all diesel fuel sold in that state contain part biodiesel. The Minnesota law requires at least 2% biodiesel in all diesel fuel sold. [4]
-- 4.232.0.63 16:21, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that a section should be added labeled Better alternatives in witch the following is mentioned:
- KVDP 09:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm having problems adding a footnote, if anybody could help I'd appreciate it. I tried using proper web cite reference format, and it looks OK in preview. However when saving the page, there are duplicate A and B backpointers in each footnote ref at article bottom. I tried switching to an in-line external link, still same problem. Finally gave up and totally removed the link, still same problem. Copied and pasted entire article to my sandbox and experimented with deleting various article portions; couldn't isolate problem. Duplicate A/B refs still appear with article truncated to just one line with one footnote reference. Would appreciate any help or advice. Sorry about the problem if I did something wrong. Joema 13:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I would add http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/
I realise links need to be kept to a minimum but (as per the request in the External Links section) I recommend adding: http://biodieselinthenews.com/ - it's right up-to-date every day and has a full archive of previous news. IMHO it complements this article.
I've got a good idea. Why doesn't Wikipedia hand all external links over to dmoz. That would stop any argument ever over them. So let's remove the Edit facility from the External links because it's not needed any more seeing as that section's now dmoz. Now I think about it, there are quite a few sections you could take the edit facility away from - yeah - I think I'm onto something here... —The preceding
unsigned comment was added by
166.214.59.177 (
talk •
contribs) .
How about a link to http://www.bettybiodiesel.org/? It's a nice non-profit website.-- Tdkehoe 00:24, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Crazy idea, and maybe it's even based on my once hearing something about this (though a Google search turned up nothing.), but I was wondering if the heavy economic toll of the Zebra mussel invasion could be partly compensated by turning the mussels they remove into biodiesel. I'm not suggesting that it's any kind of solution to the problems of the Zebra mussel invasion and biodiesel supply, just that if they are removing large quantities of mussels from ships and infastructure, would it be a good idea to convert the biomass into biodiesel? The alternative is it being thrown away and not used at all. Could such an endeavor possibly break even once the animal-remains-to-biodiesel infastructure is in place?
The first line of this section was recently changed (Oct. 3) to state that biodiesel is "hydrophobic". Previously, it had stated that biodiesel is "hydrophilic" -- the opposite of hydrophobic. (This change was made several days after a question was raised in the "To-do list" -- the original statement seems to have gone unchallenged for a considerable period of time.) The change to "hydrophobic" seems to me to be consistent with the statement in the "Description" section that biodiesel "is practically immiscible with water...."
On the other hand, these statements appear to flatly contradict the assertion in the WP article on Hygroscopy, which states that "An example of a hygroscopic substance is biodiesel, which absorbs water to about 1200 parts per million (PPM)." I checked around and found that this claim is repeated widely on numerous websites, but I could not find definitive substantiation -- merely repetition of the same statement. I was hoping this apparent contradiction would be explored here on Wikipedia -- but this specific claim is not addressed anywhere in the Biodiesel article.
This is not a minor point. If biodiesel is indeed hygroscopic -- meaning that it has a strong tendency to pull water molecules out of the atmosphere -- there are serious implications in terms of its use, storage, etc., which would need to be addressed in the article. Currently, the problem of "Water contamination" is stated to arise because "Some of the water present is residual to processing, and some comes from storage tank condensation." But there's no mention of continuing accumulation of water due to its alleged hygroscopic properties.
So I pose the following question: Is it, in fact, possible for a substance be BOTH hydrophobic AND hygroscopic?? In other words, can it, somehow, both repel water molecules and also absorb them? One way or the other, this question needs to be settled. Cgingold 14:10, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Again, my apologies for adding the Verification tag. My sense is that the explanation given is probably correct, but there is nonetheless a serious question re Hygroscopy, as I detailed above. I was hoping to elicit a response on that question, but it's been over a week now, so I thought it was time to give it another try. Cgingold 13:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Surely pure plant oil without any processing qualifies as 'Biodiesel'because it is made entirely from biomass and will operate many kinds of diesel engine! If one uses Methanol and caustic soda (neither of which are biomass)to make FAME, fatty acid methyl ester, this surely disqualifies it from being called bio-diesel! replies appreciated <email removed>
Due to the volume of ongoing vandalism of this article, I have just made a request for semi-protection at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. This would prevent anonymous users from editing the page. Keep your fingers crossed. Cgingold 11:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I've been trying to find the actual source for the yields from crops section, and I can't find it anywhere. User Ddelpercio cited globalpetroleumclub.com as his source, but that website has no actual information on it. All it has is a forum with zero substantial information, and an RSS news feed. I think that these data look reasonable, but without a source I don't think Wikipedia should display it. But if someone can find a source for it, I'd be more than interested.
Should it be noted that on one episode of the mythbusters, they created biodiesel using used cooking oil? They just took used cooking oil from a resturant, filtered it, and were able to run a car on it. see MythBusters (season 3)#The Great Gas Conspiracy —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.154.185.186 ( talk) 21:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC).
Straight vegetable oil and vegetable oil blends can be used in diesel engines, but they are different than biodiesel. Vegetable oil is transesterified to make biodiesel, so they are close relatives, but not the same thing. Vincecate 13:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I propose that some of the sections in this article would really fit better in Vegetable oil economy as they apply to straight vegetable oil and vegetable oil blends just as well. I am thinking of most parts of the following sections:
What do other people think?
Vincecate 22:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
What is the basis for the significant changes at 18:45:50 by 82.127.42.52? If no rationale is presented, this will be reverted. Skyemoor 19:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
A portion of the gelling section is essentially an advertisement for Wintron. While I've heard that the claims made are true, there are no citations; further, this seems to be inappropriate context for an encyclopedia. At very least, this needs a citation or it will be deleted. E8 23:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to delete the Wintron segment unless it's referenced. E8 02:38, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Deleted Wintron advertising segment as no support was provided. E8 00:43, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.145.201.52 ( talk) 13:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC).
To me the lead spends a disproportionate amount of text on negative feedback from vehicle manufacturers. It reads almost like non-biodiesel advocacy by the car companies, and some might think it is skirting WP:SOAP. The lead does not serve as a proper summary of the article, per WP:LEAD. I think it is in need of a significant rewrite—no offense intended though. Thanks. — RJH ( talk) 18:46, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Consider this link describing tests of biodiesel use in a US railroad locomotive. Does this belong in the external links section? User_talk:David Jordan 5/21/2007.
I found this sentence in the Description section, added in this edit:
"The industry standard for the amount of time it takes to produce biodiesel used to be 4 hours, but a San Antonio based company is currently experimenting, and has claimed to produce biodiesel fuel in a fraction of what it formerly was, with a 1.4 minute contact time."
First of all, 4 hours or 1.4 minutes to do what, exactly? Produce one liter? Produce 55 gallons? Secondly, it doesn't seem to be referenced; accordingly I'm putting a {{ fact}} tag on it. Thirdly, wouldn't it be better placed in the Production section? Fourthly, is it just vandalism? Nibios 23:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I am deleting this statement: "According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), restaurants in the US produce about 3 billion US gallons (11,000,000 m³) of waste cooking oil annually.[20]"
If that were correct, with 300 million people in the U.S. that would equal about a thousand gallons a year per capita. That's a hell of a lot of french fries. The document linked to as a source is unreferenced and therefore, while it does meet WP:RS guidelines, it doesn't reach WP:V standards.
The figure is also in complete disagreement with a peer-reviewed journal article, which trumps a government white paper in terms of reliability: Mustafa Canakci. 2007. The potential of restaurant waste lipids as biodiesel feedstocks. Bioresource Technology 98(1):183-190. That paper says that 23.09 pounds of waste vegetable oil are produced in the U.S. annnually per capita.
If someone wants to fight for the sentence, that's fine, but I'll add a "disputed" tag to it.-- Margareta 16:30, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I've also deleted this: "According to a report from Cornell University, used cooking oil has an available potential to produce almost 1.7 billion gallons of biodiesel which is 1.1% of petroleum imports today. [7]" The document cited doesn't say that the 1.7 billion gallons could come from waste cooking oil; it says it could come from all oil produced in the U.S., including virgin oils. Someone might want to add the reference back in with the correct information and in the appropriate context.-- Margareta 16:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
The German-language article cited in support of "60% less net carbon dioxide emissions than petroleum-based diesel" states that (google translation) "60% of the energy result from plant growth", which is quite a different thing. I've replaced the footnote reference with a citeneeded, but left the reference at the bottom. Megacz 17:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I heard recently, from some people who were experimenting with making biodiesel, that there is a certain type of blackfly larvae that can be processed to make biodiesel. Can anyone provide specifics and add to this article? This is definitely a renewable resource. -- Auric 00:10, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
North Carolina State University had a pilot project on the use of the black soldier fly for hog waste reduction. Sprinkling maggots into the hog waste, they found the flies would ingest vast quantities of hog waste, and at the right moment in their life cycle, would "self harvest" by climbing up runways and falling into chutes where they could be easily crushed. The resultant oil, which was black and smelled horrible, was sent to the Becon Center at Iowa State University to be reacted into biodiesel. That never happened. And the pilot ended. Leaving everyone to wonder if we missed an important biodiesel feedstock.
Fuel is fuel. Any hydrocarbon based material can be oxidised to produce fuel. In fact, it probably makes more sense to just burn all the dried raw material at a central plant and produce electricity from it rather than using so much energy to extract the oil and refine it into biodiesel. This just makes it useful as a automotive fuel that requires no change in current infrastucture and technology. A centralised plant capable of efficiently reducing emissions is much more environmentally friendly than at the tailpipe of a car. Halogenated 23:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Recent changes refer to various studies supporting the added info but do not actually cite them. The one that caught my eye was that government studies supported the less toxic than table salt. That seems like an uncareful attribution to a source as that's not the type of thing the government sources would explicitly say. I'm tempted to revert, but I thought it was better to ask for explicit sources before doing so. - Taxman Talk 23:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Well I wouldn't suggest it is like parrafin oil, that it a short to long chained alkane from petroleum that is certainly much more difficult to degrade than sugar, and composes the bulk of petroleum diesel. My concern is that the reference itself seems unreferenced - it is a simple statement made on the Bentley website without a source AFAIK. Since the very sentiment of the statement is to try to highlight how benign biodiesel is, and it seems to be made without any real scientific basis, I am concerned over the placement of the statement - it seems somewhat partial and idealised, and therefore not appropriate. If someone can find a reference that actually demonstrates this from an actual scientific point of view, then it would be a lot more convincing. Halogenated 16:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I have found one primary source discussing the degradation of vegetable oils and biodiesel in lab trials in comparison to petroleum diesel, and it indicates that rates are significantly quicker for biodiesel than for petroleum diesel, and that the addition of biodiesel can facilitate the degradability of the petroleum diesel. I have found another example of the sugar statement, but again the source is a tertiary one. It also states that biodiesel biodegrades 4 times faster than petroleum diesel. This all has to be put in perspective though however - these are lab trials, not field studies, and may have little bearing on real world situations. In virtually all cases of oil spills (petroleum or vegetable), human intervention is required to facilitate bioremediation by the addition of a significant amount of nutrients (N,P,K, etc) and electron receptors (generally oxygen in some form). Biodiesel could sit and contaminate soil or waterways for years to decades in many cases, similar to petroleum diesel. However due to its non-toxic status, associated ecosystem health problems are significantly reduced. But the organic carbon load on the environment can induce significant problems such as decreasing oxygen concentrations in bodies of water (leadinging to loss of aquatic life), contaminating sensitive tissues of organisms (e.g. amphibians, birds, benthic organisms), contaminating aquifers and source waters, aesthetic problems, etc. So as you can see biodegradation is not as simple as it spills, it disappears "naturally". Halogenated 04:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Another meaning of biodiesel exists, which is the mixture of the fuel produced by transesterification of vegetable oils/animal fats and conventional petroleum based disel fuel or the diesel fuel (gasoil) fraction of petroleum. I shall alter the first sentence, to include this meaning or add an other statement as a second sentence, unless somebody objects, or does the job before me. LouisBB 16:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
This section should be moved. TDP does produce a product Biodiesel (by the given Wikipedia definition), though it doesn't produce Alkyl Esters. Thus, it should be listed as a type of Biodiesel, rather than being discussed in the feedstock section. As is, it's a bit out of place. E8 06:10, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
In the 'Applications' sections it is stated that biodiesel has better 'lubricity' than conventional diesel fuel. This statement, with its Ref 17 has to be checked. I have not managed to get access to the article. To my knowledge, the lubricity of the neat transesterification product is worse than that from petroleum source and an additive needs to be added to resolve the problem, otherwise it has to be used in (low concentration?) blends. If Ref 17 is confirmed is there a secondary evidence? LouisBB 09:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
But I just checked it again and it's very direct on the claim of improved lubricity. That term shows up probably 20 times in the document, including in the section heading "Biodiesel Improves Lubricity ". Specifically it gives:
Hello everybody, I have managed to see all the titles of the NREL review, but still have not managed to download any of the PDF files you mentioned.
However, I guess I have probably worked out where our differnces come from: My information comes from a time when the sulphur content of the diesel fuel was higher than today, namely late 70s, early 80s, so probably we are mixing apples with pears. With suppression of diesel fuel sulphur content by hydrogenation, which will also take out some of the other reactive compounds in the fuel (beneficial for boundary lubrication), the lubricity would become worse, so biodiesel might compare better against such fuels. The differences might be found there, but unfortunately I cannot get access to relevant literature you quote.
The lubricity measuring rig might either be a dedicated device which contacts two surfaces under load in the presence of the lubricant and measures the size of the wear trace optically, or measures the wear after a given period at strategic points in a lubricated piece of equipment such as a high pressure pump, which again may be optical or perhaps by the collection of wear debris; in both cases back to back against two fuels (presumed to be acting as lubricants) or a fuel with a reference lubricant. Of course other sorts of ingenious devices or ways of measurement are also possible.
If anybody finds out any direct citations/description of fuels and methods I shall be very interested. Thanks again. LouisBB ( talk) 15:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I managed to download the reference EB quoted above ( http://www.biodiesel.org/pdf_files/fuelfactsheets/Lubricity.PDF), (my modem is playing up) and indeed my suspicion was well founded. It is since around 1993 (when I retired !) that, due to environmental pressures about sulphur dioxide emissions, causing acid rain, the manufacture of severely hydrotreated diesel fuel has started in earnest, which caused the conventional diesel fuel lubricity to drop precipitously. It is easy to be better than abominable. Well, at least I got that sorted out for myself.
I have edited the article accordingly.
An erroneous remark in the same section talking about methanol catalyst which does not exists, has been removed.
It is interesting to see the figures of Stanadyne, quoted by the above report, claiming dramatic improvement by the addition of biodiesel to a hydrotreated conventional fuel even in small proportions. Right enough, the lubricity mesurement using the HFRR rig does shows a good improvement in these circumstances, but the benefit flattens out pretty quickly, in fact after 2% the improvement is pretty negligible. This gives me the suspicion, that it is not necessarily the ester fuel which does the boundary lubrication effect, but its impurities (like unreacted oil for intance) Vegetable and animal oils have been used for a long time (by the oil companies themselves) as lubricants/lubricating oil additives for difficult situations.
Thanks again LouisBB ( talk) 12:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Before I get into 3RR issues, I am pretty sure that www.evolvingenergies.net doesn't meet wp:links and should not be included. Please feel free to explain why a commercial links belongs here in talk before adding it again. Pharmboy ( talk) 15:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi - I made a couple of alterations, and should have put them into the "discussion" first, I think. The one was with a link to CSIRO about greenhouse gas savings, and one about supercritical method of production. Perhaps the first was better placed in the "Environmental Benefits" section, but I was responding to the "citation needed" about recycling carbon added during plant growth. I don't understand what citation is needed here, a citation that photosynthesis takes CO2 from the air and turns it into biomass? For the other, I can offer different links, for example from the Journal Energy and Fuels -Continuous production of biodiesel via transesterification from vegetable oils in supercritical methanol, Bunyakat, K et al. 2006, a web link: http://www.biodieselgear.com/documentation/Methanol_Super_Critical_Method.pdf or journal citation from which the information on th above link is taken (Methyl esterification of free fatty acids of rapeseed oil as treated in supercritical methanol, Kusdiana and Saka, Journal of Chemical Engineering in Japan, 2001, vol34 No.3 pp383-387 or several others, I just picked one which summarised the process, although not substantiated. Should I add it back with one of these links? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stainless316 ( talk • contribs) 16:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a part in the introductory section on heaters that states "However, thanks to its strong solvent power, burning biodiesel will increase the efficiency of your home heater." I don't understand this - how does solvent power improve efficiency? Could this sentence be clarified or removed, as it creates a bad impression in the opening section, in my opinion. Stainless316 ( talk) 12:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a big white space after the first small paragraph, which I don't think looks very good. This could be removed by left justifying the diesel prices picture. ALso what is the procedure - if nobody posts a reply saying No! after a while, am I ok to just make the change? or should I just make a change anyway, and see if anyone undoes it? Thanks for information. Stainless316 ( talk) 13:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Comments have been added to the page regarding the Ford Focus. This statement is problematic, as no vehicle should require "conversion" to Biodiesel. Secondly, the recent addition regarding sales numbers is unsupported. The comment will be deleted if no citations are added. E8 ( talk) 01:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I am not any expert on this sort of thing, so I would not edit the page myself, but shouldn't algae be mentioned as a potential source for biodiesel?
There is a project page with some estimates related to production / location / economic viability at the University of New Hampshire:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
Sorry, I am not registered, so I dodn't have a nick. I should register. What do you need help with? I would liek to learn more about biodiesel, since I am trying to get the local .gov to look into it...
Call me jpg (I will go register, I guess...)
I think there should at least be a seperate section on algal Biodiesel and the Aquatic Species program if not a seperate page. It is important to mention (UNH doesn't), that the aquatic species program involved feeding the algae CO2. Anyway If I don't hear back I will start a page on the aquatic species program.-- 63.206.118.188 04:00, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I participated a discussion on this topic on sci.energy recently. Lots of points were discuted, and here is a summary :
The section on algae indicates that it would be possible to produce 95,000 Litres/hectare of biodiesel per year vs. 5,800 Litres/hectare for Palm Oil the next most productive source. This simply is not possible due to the amount of sunlight energy available and limitations on the efficiency of photosynthesis.
I believe that Algae farms will yield significantly more than Palm, and that this could be one of the most significant developments for solving the problem of declining oil supplies and CO2 emissions. However it is important to be objective about the prospects.
The 95,000 figure seems to be implicit in one of the references: http://oakhavenpc.org/cultivating_algae.htm where the author referring to the Aquatic Species Close Out Report ( http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf) states that one of the conclusions was that: "One quad (10^15 BTU or 7.5 billion gal.) of biodiesel could be produced on 200,000 ha of desert land". In fact no where in the report does it imply these numbers. One of the conclusions of the ASP report was that the price of land particularly in the US South West would not be an issue and that the limiting factor would be the cost of setting up the farms and running them.
The 10^15 BTU per 200,000 ha implies 5 billion BTU per ha per year = 5,275,276 mega joules per ha per year = 5,275 mega joules per square meter per year. This is 1465.35 kilowatt hours per square meter per year.
The economics of solar power are well understood. In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics we have a table: Kilowatt-hours per peak kilowatts per year at various locations. The highest value given anywhere is 2,410. At that location, 1465.35 kilowatt hours per square meter per year implies a peak solar energy capture of 608.03 watts per square meter. In photovoltaics we usually assume the peak power from the SUN is 1,000 watts per square meter, so this would imply an energy capture efficiency of 60.8%. This is not credible for reasons I will outline shortly.
Before doing so I should point out that the peak power from the SUN is actually about 1,300 watts per square meter. The reason we use 1,000 in Photovoltaics is that we assume the solar panels are at a fixed orientation. They will only reach their peak in March and September, at other times they will not be face on at midday and this lowers the average daily peak.
Also note that the shadow area or footprint of a tilted solar array is greater than the area exposed to the SUN. This reduces the power yield by the Cosine of the given latitude.
Now about that 60.8% efficiency: most solar cells are rated at 12% or less. The theoretical maximum efficiency is about 70%, so 60.8% would be truly remarkable if it were true. The number is however unreasonable.
See http://www.upei.ca/~physics/p261/Content/Sources_Conversion/Photo-_synthesis/photo-_synthesis.htm.
I quote: "At least eight photons are required to store one molecule of CO2 which means 1665 kJ of light energy are required to store 477 kJ in the plant. This issue alone gives a maximum efficiency of 0.286 or 28.6%. Additionally only light in the range 400-700 nm can be used (in photosynthesis). This amounts to 43% of total solar incident radiation. Combining these two factors means that the solar efficiency cannot exceed 12.23%".
They then go on to take into account two other factors that limit solar efficiency in plants: Respiration losses and Canopy losses. This implies plants at best will achieve an efficiency of 6.6%. Very likely these two factors do not apply to algae. One of the biggest losses during respiration is a reaction between oxygen and RuBisCO that releases some of the captured energy. Since algae farms proposed will use flue gasses rich in CO2 and depleted in oxygen, the effect will be much less, but will still be a problem since the algae will be releasing oxygen into the gas feed.
If we assume that an algae farm can achieve a solar energy capture efficiency of 12.23% this would reduce the yield of oil from 95,000 Litres/hectare per year to 19,109 Litres/hectare per year, and this would only be attainable near the equator.
As an aside, the stated value for Palm oil 5,800 Litres/hectare per year implies a solar efficiency of 3.71% assuming we are again talking about an equatorial farm, this is within range of 6.6%. Differences could be attributed to various factors. Only desert regions have high Kilowatt-hours per peak kilowatts per year, typical locations where Palms grow tend to be cloudy. Also Palms like other plants close their stomata to limit water loss through evaporation, particularly when there has been no rain. This limits input of CO2 and reduces photosynthesis.
Conclusion: I think we need to reduce the 95,000 Litres/hectare per year to 19,109 Litres/hectare per year for equatorial based algae farms. There are no real references cases, although the GreenFuel trail at Redhawk may provide some numbers in 2007.
I also think that reference cases need to take into account latitude, perhaps showing an actual as well as a normalised yield, and the Kilowatt-hours per peak kilowatts per year at the location of the reference, again factored into the normalised yield.
bi-ker-shi
Taxman, I have not requested rights to edit the page, and I don’t think I am appropriate person to do so. I am an investment banker, my skills are in numerical analysis, and I simply could have not written the original page as I do not have the immediate knowledge of all of those aspects on biodiesel.
My concern is however that the number you quoted for algal biodiesel at 95,000 liters / ha / year simply did not add up. It used to be that wikipedia users when they spotted errors could simply correct them, but it seems those days have long since gone.
Precisely who is it who claims the 95,000 figure? Even if it was derived from a quoted reference, readers will view the fact that wikipedia decided to publish it as wikipedia adding their reputation to that of the quoted publisher. If there is no link to any quoted source, then readers will view this as a situation where wikipedia are staking their reputation on the number.
You seem to imply that the number came from a UNH article, yet I cannot find this in either of the two UNH articles: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html and http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/pdf/algae_salton_sea.pdf and so I attribute the claim to wikipedia alone.
The only reference I can find anywhere where a practical test has been done to determine the yield of CO2 fed algae is in http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/biodiesel_from_algae.pdf. This was an article looking back on the aquatic species program, and they state that in relation to real tests conducted in Hawaii and New Mexico: “Single day productivities reported over the course of one year were as high as 50 grams of algae per square meter per day, a long-term target for the program”.
If we convert this number as follows: 50 grams of algae per square meter per day = 18.2625 kilograms per square meter per year = 18.2625 metric tons per hectare per year. Now assuming 1191.17 liters of biomass per metric ton of biomass (density = 0.84 grams per cc), we get 21,753.68 liters of biomass per hectare per year. This is not out of line with my calculations involving photosynthesis efficiency and available sunlight.
Perhaps you got your numbers from the second UNH article where on page 4 in relation to setting up an algae farm to provide biomass to fuel a power station they state: “Assuming an average productivity of 33 g/m2/day, or 120 mt/ha/yr (a lower productivity than assumed in some studies) …”. The 120 mt/ha-yr is roughly equivalent to 142,940 liters biomass/ha/year, and maybe you calculated 95,000 liters of biodiesel could be extracted?
Can you spot the mathematical error?
33 g/m2/day = 12,053.25 g/m2/year = 12.05325 kg/m2/year = 12,053 kg/ha/year = 12.05 mt/ha/yr (not 120 mt/ha-yr). It would seem UNH are out by a factor of 10.
This article presented a pessimistic view on the economics of using the algal biomass as a feedstock for a local power station. They determined that the biomass electricity would cost 2-3 times more than fossil fuel electricity. Consequently I believe this article received a lot less peer review than it would have if it had presented an optimistic view.
In my view, using biomass to generate electricity is a particularly stupid idea given that the existing thermal power stations have efficiencies of about 30%. If you combine this with the low efficiencies of solar energy capture evidenced in energy crops so far, the possibility seems somewhat remote. Using biomass, particularly algae, to produce transportation fuels does however look promising.
While you are looking into your 95,000 liters/ha/year number, you might like to also look at the following reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#_note-BiodieselFromAlgae; where you estimate 5,000 to 20,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre, per year. This equates to 46,769.78 to 187,079.13 liters per hectare per year, and again there is no reference to track the quoted figure and again way too optimistic.
You might also like to review the following links where your claims are being discussed externally:
Arizona Utility Recycles Smokestack Exhaust to make Biofuel ( http://technocrat.net/d/2006/12/23/12545 )
Kind Regards
bi-ker-shi
Ooops looks like I dropped a naught in my calculations, how embarrassing. At least your readers won’t know the voice behind Mr. Ed. My problem is that I am not familiar with hectares and was using 1000 m2 per hectare not 10,000.
Reworking some of my previous calculations:
The 10^15 BTU per 200,000 ha implies 5 billion BTU per ha per year = 5,275,276 mega joules per ha per year = 527.5 mega joules per square meter per year. This is 146.535 kilowatt hours per square meter per year. This implies an energy capture efficiency of 6.08% not 60.8%
So it seems that 95,000 liters/ha/year of biodiesel is indeed quite reasonable as 6.08% is within the limits set by the efficiency of photosynthesis.
Another place where I made the same mistake in relation to the Salton Sea:
33 g/m2/day = 12,053.25 g/m2/year = 12.05325 kg/m2/year = 120,530 kg/ha/year = 120.5 mt/ha/yr UNH were correct, my apologies.
I still think the main page could do with some improvement as it is very hard to track where the numbers are coming from, and the fact that in the case of algae, the yields still need to be proven. User: bi-ker-shi
Hi everyone,
I found the original sentence shown below a little confusing:
Due to government subsidization, Biodiesel is generally more expensive to purchase than petroleum diesel, although this differential may diminish due to economies of scale, the rising cost of petroleum, and legislation favoring the use of Biodiesel.
I altered it slightly and added an endnote to give an example of direct subsidies being applied to biodiesel (as opposed to indirect ones like general farm subsidies) to make it a little more clear, balanced, and accurate:
Biodiesel is generally more expensive to purchase than petroleum diesel, although this differential may diminish due to economies of scale, the rising cost of petroleum, and government subsidization favoring the use of biodiesel.
Sarann 04:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I was altering what is now ref 28 to a citation format (instead of URL link). I checked the precious chicken fat link (No. 25), and it was not working - is this permanent broken link? ALso, the three references (25, 28 and 29) seem to come from the same press release, published in three different places - is there a protocol here to replace all the links by one? Is this sufficient verification? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stainless316 ( talk • contribs) 12:15, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
There is a link to Thermal depolymerisation in the opening section which I do not think is justified. I have posted some comments on the thermal deplymerisation talk page (lack of references), but basically this is not (yet?) a process of sufficient scale or with sufficient independent verification to be included as a prominent link from here. Biodiesel is a fact and is produced on a large scale. Thermal depolymerisation is not, and this link from here seems to suggest that it is of similar nature and importance to biodiesel. Stainless316 ( talk) 12:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I think the lead section is too long, and contains some detailed information better suited to the main body. I think the main areas to be covered are what is biodiesel, where does it come from, what are the environmental issues and where can it be used. I have attempted a first draft of a shorter intro, pasted below, without the diagrams for brevity (I think they can stay in the article). What do you think? Am I going about this the right way?
Biodiesel refers to a diesel-equivalent processed fuel consisting of short chain alkyl ( methyl or ethyl) esters, made by transesterification of vegetable oils or animal fats, which can be used (alone, or blended with conventional diesel fuel) in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles.
Biodiesel is distinguished from the
straight vegetable oils (SVO) or
waste vegetable oils (WVO) used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some diesel vehicles.
Biodiesel is biodegradable, non- toxic and may produce less greenhouse gas than petroleum based fuel. There is some debate over the size of the greenhouse gas reduction, and this will depend on the choice of feedstock. Recent studies indicate that 60% reduction in net-lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions when compared to petroleum diesel are realistic, and reductions in emissions of smog forming hydrocarbon are 65% less, although the Nitrogen Oxide emissions are about 10% greater than those from petroleum-based diesel. [1] [2]. However, this estimate does not consider land conversion, where natural land is converted to agricultural use. Greenhouse gas emissions could be significantly increased if vegetable oil is sourced from new plantations [3]. There is also concern that using land to grow non-food crops will push up food prices. Biodiesel can be made from almost any oil or fat. Currently vegetable oil is the most common feedstock, but algae could provide a useful source whilst allaying some of the environmental concerns.
Some vehicle manufacturers are positive about the use of biodiesel, citing lower engine wear as one of the fuel's benefits, while others are more cautious. In the UK many only maintain their engine warranties for use with maximum 5% biodiesel — blended in with 95% conventional diesel — although this position is generally considered to be overly cautious. [4], with some manufacturers allowing 100% biodiesel. [5] [6]. Most manufacturers release lists of the cars that will run on 100% biodiesel. [7]
The British businessman Richard Branson's Virgin Voyager train, number 220007 Thames Voyager [8] was converted to run on biodiesel, although an adverse effect occurred when it was proven to reduce reliability and to raise costs of maintenance significantly. Biodiesel can also be used as a heating fuel in domestic and commercial boilers.
Biodiesel can be distributed using today's infrastructure, and its use and production are increasing rapidly. Fuel stations are beginning to make biodiesel available to consumers, and a growing number of transport fleets use it as an additive in their fuel. Biodiesel is generally more expensive to purchase than petroleum diesel but this differential may diminish due to economies of scale, the rising cost of petroleum and government tax subsidies. Stainless316 ( talk) 18:19, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Biodiesel quality is regulated by international standards (insert reference) and has slightly different physical properties to petro diesel (reference). Minor modification of engines or burners may need to be made if switching to biodiesel. Some vehicle manufacturers are positive about the use of biodiesel, citing lower engine wear as one of the fuel's benefits, while others are more cautious. In the UK many only maintain their engine warranties for use with maximum 5% biodiesel — blended in with 95% conventional diesel — although this position is generally considered to be overly cautious. [9], with some manufacturers allowing 100% biodiesel. [10] [11]. Most manufacturers release lists of the cars that will run on 100% biodiesel. [12] Biodiesel has also been used on a diesel locomotive [13] and as a heating fuel for domestic and commercial boilers (reference). Stainless316 ( talk) 12:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Biodiesel refers to a diesel-equivalent processed fuel consisting of short chain alkyl ( methyl or ethyl) esters, made by transesterification of vegetable oils or animal fats, which can be used (alone, or blended with conventional diesel fuel) in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles.
Biodiesel is distinguished from the
straight vegetable oils (SVO) or
waste vegetable oils (WVO) used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some diesel vehicles.
Biodiesel is biodegradable, non- toxic and may produce less greenhouse gas than petroleum based fuel. There is some debate over the size of the greenhouse gas reduction, and this will depend on the choice of feedstock. Recent studies indicate that 60% reduction in net-lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions when compared to petroleum diesel are realistic, and reductions in emissions of smog forming hydrocarbon are 65% less, although the Nitrogen Oxide emissions are about 10% greater than those from petroleum-based diesel. [14] [15]. However, this estimate does not consider land conversion, where natural land is converted to agricultural use. Greenhouse gas emissions could be significantly increased if vegetable oil is sourced from new plantations [16]. There is also concern that using land to grow non-food crops will push up food prices. Biodiesel can be made from almost any oil or fat. Currently vegetable oil is the most common feedstock, but algae could provide a useful source whilst allaying some of the environmental concerns.
Biodiesel quality is regulated by international standards and it has slightly different physical properties to petro diesel. Minor modification of engines or burners may need to be made if switching to 100% biodiesel. Some vehicle manufacturers are positive about the use of biodiesel, citing lower engine wear as one of the fuel's benefits, while others are more cautious, with between 5% and 100% allowed by different manufacturers. Most manufacturers release lists of the cars that will run on 100% biodiesel. Biodiesel has also been used on a diesel locomotive and as a heating fuel for domestic and commercial boilers.
I suggest include a link to the BdPedia.com - The Biodiesel WWW Encyclopedia , so the user can read more encyclopedic content about this biofuel. -- Mac ( talk) 07:04, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The London accord has published what looks like a sober economic analysis of biofuels (definitely not a sales pitch!) I'd like a link to this... any problems with this?
Economic Analysis of biofuels for the London Accord. Mike Young ( talk) 11:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Came to this article trying to find the difference, can someone who knows put it in? Mentioned in this document [8] Mike Young ( talk) 09:56, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Edit 1: Following from my comments on the "chicken fat" links, earlier, I have had a further look at the section on feedstocks. The link for ref25 is named "chickenfat" and used twice, but it doesn't work for me. It is also first used in an innappropriate place. Later on there is a link (ref 28) by the same author about the same thing, so I propose to delete the current "chickenfat" reference and replace it with the current ref 28. I will also remove the first use as it is talking about Jatropha, not chicken fat.
Edit 2: Ref 26 is an article aboput Minnesota farmers, and is out of place where it is. I propose to remove it.
Edit 3: The feedstock of "sewage" is not really correct, as this is actually algea grown in sewage ponds. The feedstock is therefore algae, which is already mentioned. I propose to delete this part. The reference is used elsewhere, so I will make sure the reference is kept for where it is properly used.
Edit 4: The paragraph about photosynthesis is misplaced. It is actually about environmental benefits. There has been some discussion about the need for citations, which seems to be resolved, but it is still in the wrong place. I propose moving this paragraph, with slight alteration, to the beginning of the "Environmental benefits" section, where it can serve as a quick overview as to why biodiesel in principle reduces greenhouse gasses. I don't think 1 and 2 will cause any problems, so I will get on with them soon. 3 and 4 may be a bit more contentious, so I will wait a while before making these edits, bit will do them if there is no adverse comment. Stainless316 ( talk) 12:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I am working on a restructure of the article at User:Mike Young/Sandbox2. Please feel free to comment or even help out. I haven't removed anything, but have shuffled it about. Mike Young ( talk) 23:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
The selection of links is clearly biased in favor of biodiesel. I recommend the addition of
- an excellent critical article. -- 88.73.70.13 15:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
This article is just crazy in places. For example, anything related to the safe use of biodiesel in particular is just assinine. Who the hell is some anonymous guy on Wikipedia to tell a person with a diesel vehicle that his or her seals should have been replaced long ago? Furthermore, since when is volkswagen an independant firm? Since it's established earlier in the article that volkswagen is one of the few companies whose motors generally are capable of running B100, it seems to me that they'd have a very good reason to have a bias, just as the petrol companies do. Could someone with all the facts remove some of the bias and creeping POV? 204.112.165.3 03:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
US DoE made a study on biodiesel from algae, here is the report : www.eere.energy.gov/biomass/ pdfs/biodiesel_from_algae.pdf
see also : http://www.masshightech.com/displayarticledetail.asp?Art_ID=69103
hope it will help Raminagrobis
In "Rudolf Diesel: Pioneer of the Age of Power" by Nitske & Wilson it states on p. 139 "At the Paris exposition of 1900, a Diesel engine, built by the French Otto Company ran wholly on peanut oil."
Diesel is quoted in the paper "Historical perspectives on vegetable oil-based diesel fuels" - http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/reportsdatabase/reports/gen/20011101_gen-346.pdf- '...at the Paris Exhibition in 1900 there was shown by the Otto Company a small Diesel engine, which, at the request of the French Government, ran on Arachide (earth-nut or pea-nut) oil, and worked so smoothly that only very few people were aware of it."
Also despite the fact that the engine designed by Rudolf Diesel won the "grand prix" 4 of the 5 diesel engines were of French manufacture. "Rudolf Diesel: Pioneer of the Age of Power" by Nitske & Wilson it states on p. 166 "Interestingly, four of the five models exhibited had been built by the French-owned and engineered Bar-le-Duc corporation."
The insinuation of the article is that R. Diesel won the prize and did it with peanut oil. That is not true. Engines of his patent won and were run on peanut oil, but R. Diesel was not responsible for the peanut oil.
P.S. My personal blog about making biodesel http://www.wvofuels.com/ is both about biodiesel and high quality! If I can get a second I'll resubmit it.
There is a seemingly comprehensive chart in the article that shows which VW models are capable of running on neat biodiesel, but it has no citation. Considering that it seems to give stats that directly contradict VW, I would really like to see some attribution.
In america, VW says that B5 is the maximum blend acceptable and that this is only true for B5 that is sold commercially. http://www.vw.com/vwcom/content/objects/pdf/service_maint/BIODIESEL_ENG.pdf Christopher 22:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
This chart was added on Dec. 22 by Rnt20. I put a note on his user page asking where it came from. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Biodiesel&oldid=95892791 Christopher 16:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi,
I am happy for this chart to be (re)moved. I only put it on the Wikipedia page because:
Here is the text of the email:
Sehr geehrter Herr Dr. Tubbs,
vielen Dank fuer Ihre Anfrage.
Das oben genannte Fahrzeug ist fuer den Betrieb mit Kraftstoff nach der EN 14214 (Biodiesel) freigegeben. Die Normung EN 14214 ersetzt die bisherigen Normen DIN E 51 606 und DIN V 51 606.
Sollte es dennoch zu Schwierigkeiten am Kraftstofffilter und am Einspritzsystem kommen, obwohl Sie diese Hinweise und Vorgaben eingehalten haben, ist mangelnde Qualitaet des Kraftstoffes die Ursache.
Wir empfehlen Ihnen, sich vor dem Betanken zu vergewissern, dass die Normung EN 14214 an der Zapfsaeule genannt wird.
Wurde nachtraeglich eine Standheizung in Ihrem Fahrzeug eingebaut, informieren Sie sich bitte beim Zulieferer des Geraetes ueber die Vertraeglichkeit mit Biodiesel.
Wir hoffen, dass Ihnen diese Informationen weiterhelfen.
Mit freundlichen Gruessen
i.V. Bernd Schmitter i.V. Katja Schott
Volkswagen AG 38436 Wolfsburg Tel +49 (0) 800 8655792436 Fax +49 (0) 800 3298655792436 Mail to kundenbetreuung@volkswagen.de Homepage http://www.volkswagen.de
And here is the text pasted (messily!) from the PDF document attached to the email
Diese Auflistung umfasst alle Volkswagen PKW, die mit Biodiesel (RME) betrieben werden können bzw. für die ein Nachrüstsatz für den Betrieb mit RME zur Verfügung steht. 0RGHOO 6HULHQPl‰LJ�ELRGLHVHOWDXJOLFK 1DFKUVWP|JOLFKNHLWHQ Fox nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Lupo/Lupo 3L alle - New Beetle/ New Beetle Cabriolet alle - Polo Typ 6N alle Ausnahme: Post Polo - nicht vorgesehen Polo Classic Polo Variant alle - Polo Typ 9N alle - Golf/Vento Typ 1HX0 Typ 1H ab Modelljahr '96 (auch TDI) alle ab Modelljahr '92 (außer TDI) Nachrüstsatz Limousine 1H0 298 215 Nachrüstsatz Variant 1H9 298 215 Golf Ecomatic Typ 1HX0 ab Fahrgestell-Nr. 1HRP491791 bis Fahrgestell-Nr. 1HRP491790 Nachrüstsatz 1H0 298 215 Golf/Bora Typ 1J alle - Touran nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Jetta 1KM nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Golf V/Golf Plus Typ 1K / Typ 1KP serienmäßig nicht biodieseltauglich, als Sonderausstattung (PR-Nr. 2G0) wird für den Golf V und den Golf Plus ein Biodieselpaket angeboten nicht vorgesehen Passat Typ 35I ab Modelljahr '96 (auch TDI) Limousine/Variant ab Fg.-Nr. 31PE240001 31PB240001 Nachrüstsatz 3A0 298 215 Passat Typ 3B/3BG alle, $XVQDKPH��3DVVDW�����7',�'3) nicht vorgesehen Passat Typ 3C nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Sharan ab Modelljahr 1997 nicht vorgesehen Phaeton Fz mit DPF nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Touareg Fz mit DPF nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Caddy Typ 9K Wirbelkammer und SDI ab Produktionsdatum KW 23/96 nicht vorgesehen · Die zehnte Stelle der Fahrgestell-Nummer gibt das Modelljahr an: zum Beispiel T = 1996, V = 1997, W = 1998, X = 1999 oder Y = 2000. · Der RME-Kraftstoff muss der DIN EN 14 214 (FAME) entsprechen. · Bei Betrieb mit RME-Kraftstoff müssen zusätzliche Wartungsarbeiten durchgeführt werden. · Beachten Sie bitte die Hinweise in der Bedienungsanleitung zum Betrieb mit RME. ,KUH�9RONVZDJHQ�.XQGHQEHWUHXXQJ
The article seems imbalanced about fossil fuel usage. Of course, supporters claim a positive energy balance. They always do. But what do critics claim, about the units of energy of fossil fuels used in various places and approaches per unit of biofuel energy produced? - 69.87.200.84 23:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
There are two primary problems with this page. Firstly, there is a strong neutrality issue with how the article has been written. It is plainly obvious that a large amount of this page has been written by individuals focussed largely on the benefits of biodiesel and little about the drawbacks comparatively. This has led to the second issue, which is that with questionable citations. Many of these citations are 3rd-hand, come from energy consultants and personal websites, and stray from the original point of the article in some cases. Some are plain wrong.
Here is a good example:
"Furthermore, otherwise unused desert land (which receives high solar radiation) could be most effective for growing the algae, and the algae could utilize farm waste and excess CO2 from factories to help speed the growth of the algae".[ [9]]
The citation opens up with some diatribe about terrorism and human rights issues related to the middle-east. This is not a solid citation people!!! I don't care if the guy is from a university, it does not necessarily legitamise the work. Especially when in reference to the above claims the website states:
"Building the ponds in deserts also leads to problems of high evaporation rates. There are solutions to these problems, but for the purpose of this paper, we will focus instead on the potential such ponds can promise, ignoring for the moment the methods of addressing the solvable challenges remaining when the Aquatic Species Program at NREL ended."
This is crap. You don't write a paper and state that we won't worry about the problems, they're solvable, lets just focus on what we want to talk about. These guys are consultants. They write what their clients want to hear to sell their idea. This is not science, it's business.
Here is another example: "Furthermore, otherwise unused desert land (which receives high solar radiation) could be most effective for growing the algae, and the algae could utilize farm waste and excess CO2 from factories to help speed the growth of the algae."
Okay. Except how many factories and farms are out in the desert currently? Where will the water come from to grow the algae? The fertiliser? How will contaminants be kept out? None of these very pertinent points are addressed.
I understand many people are very enthusiatic about some of the possibilities regarding biodiesel, but in the excitement people are ignoring and/or downplaying some very blatant issues, such as the fact that there is no possibility of a switch to a biodiesel energy economy based on a lack of sufficient arable land to meet even a fraction of the world's need. The reference for promotion of the use of algae [ [10]] actually provides a dissuading analysis of the use of algae, and was misinterpreted by the person using it by picking out some values without apparently reading over the article itself that discusses how the figures are not realistic. I will follow up on this later, with an in-depth examination of the article and provide any necessary corrections.
One other line that struck me from this article. This is a quote from the website [ [11]]
"When straw was left in the field, biodiesel production was strongly energy positive, yielding 1 GJ biodiesel for every 0.561 GJ of energy input (a yield/cost ratio of 1.78). When straw was burned as fuel and oilseed rapemeal was used as a fertilizer, the yield/cost ratio for biodiesel production was even better (3.71). In other words, for every unit of energy input to produce biodiesel, the output was 3.71 units (the difference of 2.71 units would be from solar energy). "
So what this says is that it actually makes much more sense to just burn the biomass for fuel period. The energy wasted processing the oil from the seed could be instead used to produce electricity, and save a significant amount of wasted fuel. This should be noted on the biodiesel page. Obviously the idea is to produce a readily substitutable fuel for current infrastructure, but it makes more sense envrionmentally to not make biodiesel in the long run!
Halogenated 22:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
{{ Expert-subject}}
The intro is like this: "Biodiesel refers to a non-petroleum-based diesel fuel consisting of short chain alkyl ( methyl or ethyl) esters, typically made by transesterification of vegetable oils or animal fats, which can be used (alone, or blended with conventional diesel fuel) in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles. Biodiesel is distinguished from the straight vegetable oils (SVO) or waste vegetable oils (WVO) used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some diesel vehicles. "Biodiesel" is standardized as methyl ester and other non-diesel fuels of biological origin are not included...."
I added the word "typically" to the intro, since
E8 has reverted out the word "typically" a couple of times and is clearly of the opinion that other biologically derived fuels that can be burned in unmodified diesel engines and meet standards are not worthy of the term biodiesel even though his cited reference does not support that position.
I'm thinking NPOV is on my side on this one.
-- Treekids ( talk) 01:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, you clearly were fine with most of my changes- I think the article is better now.
On this topic, namely the use of typically, I guess we come out on the same side. You concede that transeterification is only the major commercial source of biodiesel and thus by implication that there may be other ways. Fine. We agree violently. And wikipedia is better. (In spite of some of the changes I thought were uncontroversial turned out not to be so). -- Treekids ( talk) 02:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
There is a bit at the end of the feedstock section comparing total current US use of diesel with current vegetable oil and animal fat production. Looking at all the units and millions and billions is a bit confusing, I find. Anybody object if I change 190 billion litres to 190 million tonnes (or 161 million tonnes assuming density of 0.85)? That would put all the 3 figures (current diesel use, veg. oil and animal fat) in the same unit (tonnes) and allow instant comparison. I would keep the US unit in brackets. The value of 50 biliion US gallons looks like an approximation, so the error would be not significant, but maybe expressing oil use in weight rather than volume terms would be offensive to some? Stainless316 ( talk) 14:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
I have drafted a feedstock section below at the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stainless316/sandbox5
Any comments welcome. I think it makes clear just how much oil needs to be produced to replace petrodiesel at current useage, and puts it in terms that can be understood - all those millions and billions are hard to follow. Stainless316 ( talk) 16:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The UK government on Page 130 here says diesel has an emissions factor of 0.086 kgCO2e/MJ fuel.
Carbon and Sustainability Reporting Within the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation
The US government says on page 19(or 45 according to acrobat reader) that normal diesel produces 633.28 g CO2/bhp-h
Life Cycle Inventory of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus
Now my unit converter [12] says there are 2.68452 MJ in a horsepower hour.
so the UK government says 0.086*1000*2.68452 = 230 g Co2/bhp-h and the US says 633
So the US and the UK don't agree on the NORMAL diesel Co2 footprint, yet alone the biodiesel.
Help!!! Which of these is right?
This may be the reason the UK thinks that Biodiesels have about 70% the footprint of normal diesel and the US thinks it's 17%. They disagree on the footprint of normal diesel !!
Answers please!
Mike Young (
talk) 22:38, 20 February 2008 (UTC)on
OK, a few more thoughts on the C02 problem.
Let's check the UK calculation.
The UK says it's 0.086 kg CO2 produced per MJ
We also have an energy density of 43.1 MJ per Kg
so we get 0.086 * 43.1 = 3760g CO2 per Kg diesel = 3.706 kg CO2 per kg Diesel
Check the US calculation
The US says it's 633/2.68452 = 235.793 g Co2/MJ Multiply by the (uk) energy density and we get 236.2* 43.1 = 10162 g = 10.162 kg Co2 per Kg diesel
Calculation by simple chemistry
Assuming a formula of C12H23 for Diesel Fuel. Let's calculate what % weight of diesel fuel ends up as CO2.
12*12(atomic weight Carbon) = 144
23*1(Atomic weight Hydrogen) = 23
So diesel is 144/167 Carbon
144/167=0.862275449
so 86% of weight of diesel is Carbon that ends up as atmospheric C02
so for 1 kilo 860g of Carbon is changed into CO2
Atomic weight of Oxygen is 16 and Carbon is 12: So we get
862 g of carbon produces 862*(16+16+12)/12 = 3160.666667 g of CO2 or 3.16 kg CO2 per kg Diesel
Extending
3.16 kg Co2 per kg
But diesel has a density of 0.89 kg/litre
So Diesel produces 2.812993363 kg CO2 per litre
But there are 3.785 litres in a (US) gallon so 2.812 * 3.785 = 10.64 kg CO2 per (US) gallon Close to the 10.1 stated at the start!
This is closer to the UK value than the US Mike Young ( talk) 21:59, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
More proposals. There are a few sections at the beginning describing different uses / applications (cars, trains etc.), then later a section on applications. This is duplication. I propose to put the "applications" section near the beginning, with all the different uses as sub-sections. It would be useful if the "description" section were before this, as this includes the "B" nomenclature, which could be used for all the subsequent sections. Some of the detail I will remove, for example the data about UK heating oil being 1.5 million tonnes, requiring 330000 hectares - I calculate that as 500gpa, which seems a bit high compared to the yields described later. A section on differences from petrodiesel would also be useful near the start. This should include the different solvent properties, gelpoint, water contamination etc, which are refered to in the application sections.
So, the contents table would look like this:
1. Origin
2. Description
3. Differences from petrodiesel
4. Applications
5. Distribution
6. Historical Background
7. Technical Standards etc as before
Any comments? Stainless316 ( talk) 15:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Good idea to remove the weird stuff at the start, but the article must try to give something simple for the layman, rather than diving into chemical detail. I'd vote for the following major headings:
probably in something like that order, with everything else as a sub article. Pull off some stuff into seperate articles. Mike Young ( talk) 23:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
As wikipedia becomes a powerful informational tool for public information, more and more "consumers" look to it for basic information before they make important purchasing decisions. A strong "vehicular use and manufacturer acceptance" section would assist potential biodiesel users in making decisions about whether to consider purchasing diesel vehicles and then whether to use the fuel (blends or 100%). Do any of you out there know of a website that monitors changing manufacturer attitude about biodiesel. My concern is that most printed materials become outdated quickly... Perhaps a link to a reputable site would help potential users know what is currently happening in the "warranty" world... deanzateacherman ( talk) 18:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi. I think calling things that are 95% and 80% petroleum "biodiesel" is confusing to the point of greenwashing. One person said "you wouldn't tolerate it if your orange juice was 80% toxic." Let's have some clarity and consistency here. -- Treekids ( talk) 23:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
We have gone from long and rambling to over concise, in my opinion. The wp:lead section describes it thus: The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should establish context, summarize the most important points, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describe its notable controversies, if there are any. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic according to reliable, published sources. The lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at but not explaining important facts that will appear later in the article. It should contain up to four paragraphs, should be carefully sourced as appropriate, and should be written in a clear, accessible style so as to invite a reading of the full article. I think it fitted this description before, and is now too short. Some tweaking could no doubt improve it. Stainless316 ( talk) 11:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
As author of above section I can't but agree. But these things can grow rapidly, as people add their bits and pieces. Think of what I've put more as a placeholder. 90% of intro paras are too big, rather than too small, so don't be afraid to add stuff. Mike Young ( talk) 14:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
The 1998 study "US Life Cycle inventory of of Biodiesel and Petrolioum Diesel for use in an Urban Bus" [13] has often been quoted in this article. This is a detailed study that contains many useful calculations. However it does contain an error, and some of the conclusions that it makes are dependant on this error. The error occurs on page 211 to 220 in the calculations of the Life Cycle Energy Demand and the Life Cycle Emissions of CO2. The actual omission is that the calculations on these pages use data for energy and Carbon produced earlier in the report in generating a Tonne of Soy Beans and apply that to a Tonne of Soy Bean Oil. 1 kg of Soy Beans will only produce about 170g of Soy Bean Oil. This means that the study has underestimated the cost of producing Biodiesel at the beginning of the chain by a factor of over 5. This is why the study's conclusions (e.g. that Biodiesel reduces the Carbon by 78%) are at variance with many other studies. I have therefore removed these references Mike Young ( talk) 22:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I have just spent some time looking at the different conclusions about Carbon Intensity published by two government departments, Carbon and Sustainability Reporting Within the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation by the UK Department of Transport (UKDoT) and Life Cycle Inventory of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus by the US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Energy (USDoADoE).
Both of these studies attempt to generate the Carbon Intensity of US Soy bean Biodiesel, but they come to remarkably different conclusions, with the UK study showing that the Fossil fuel intensity is about (58-3)/86 = 64% (i.e using B100 produces 64% the net carbon of fossil fuels) and the US study saying it is 17%.
The studies are supposed to go through essentially the same calculations, but come to radically different conclusions. I was determined to find out why this was. Fortunately as I could look at the two independant studies side by side, this enabled me to highlight the differences and find the mistakes. This was not a particularly easy job, as the two studies used different units, and there was a lot of conversions between one data value and another that had to take place.
The differences were:
1)Different data values: The UK figures are probably less accurate than the US here, as they are deliberately "pessimistic". This is because they are designed to encourage producers to calculate the actual energy used in the processing of the Biodiesel. Relatively high "default values" have been used in the hope that producers will provide data for actual usage which will be lower. As biodiesel with a low footprint collects greater subsidies, the default values are designed to encourage producers to actually calculate and report the fuel used in production, rather than relying on the less than generous "default values". So we would expect the US data values to be somewhat lower than the UK "default" values. This is true. We would also expect the US figures to be more accurate.
2)Differing Assumptions. Some calculations take some things into account that others do not. The major difference here is that the UK studies take into account the penality for the change in land use, but also the benefit for the production of biproducts. In the case of the US Soybean, these values are +25 g CO2/MJ penalty for land use change and -41 g CO2/MJ benefit for the use of biproduct (Soy meal used as cattle feed). Thus the differing assumptions should make the UK figures better than the US.
3)Mistakes in Calculations. The UK study is much better at actually showing its working, (as it is hoping that biodiesel producers will actually go through similar calculations themselves). The US study performs a lot more calculations but uses an especially odd method of aggregating the total CO2. When comparing the UK and US calculatons, I think the US calculation is just plain wrong here. Using the (simpler) UK method of calculation with the US data and assumptions yields figures of the same rough order of magnitude as the UK.
If you compare the US and UK figures with each other, then you get the following graph. I can't put it on the page as it would be original research, but it shows what I think are the true values for the footprint, what you get when you use the (accurate) US data with the correct (UK) method. Mike Young ( talk) 22:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
There has been far too much loosely-added, uncited material here as of late. Please take more care in citing sources and research. The contributing author is responsible for providing accurate information WITH supporting sources. If you need help finding quality sources for this page, I will help. Leave me a message on my user talk page.-- E8 ( talk) 03:44, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel.html (1/4 the way down the page there are links to studies that prove the ~90% reduction in cancer risk.)
The above was unsigned, but I did find this at the source: "According to a U.S. Department of Energy study completed at the University of California at Davis, the use of pure biodiesel instead of petroleum-based diesel fuel could offer a 93.6% reduction in cancer risks from exhaust emissions exposure." Here's a link to the PDF. This is worth mention on the main.-- E8 ( talk) 01:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Someone added that distribution for Biodiesel is possible using existing infrastructure. I've read otherwise in numerous industry articles include this one from Biodiesel Magazine, where concerns over contamination of other fuels was cited as a concern: “There isn’t enough empirical data and testing equipment,” says Nazzaro, referring to a problem called “trail back,” where trace amounts of residual biodiesel may stay in the pipeline and end up in future fuels. “[The biodiesel] could be extremely low, but until more work is done there is no tolerance for any measurable level of biodiesel in jet aviation fuel.”-- E8 ( talk) 03:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Would a section explaining the differences between biodiesel and petrodiesel be appropriate? A differential (with molecule models) would provide greater explanation on many of the common topics that are discussed here (e.g. combustion, energy density, hygroscopic properties, etc.) Thoughts? Worthwhile or just complicating?-- E8 ( talk) 05:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Al the media reports I have seen on the Virgin use of biofuel in planes have described vegetable oil, not biodiesel, including the one cited in the article. Is this a case of the media doing its usual poor job of reporting science based stories, or was it actually straight vegetable oil in the trials? If it was oil, then it does not belong here. If it is biodiesel, perhaps someone can find a reference which says it is. Stainless316 ( talk) 10:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I am working on a Biofuels research project and am interested as to the source of the oil source for the statistics discussed in the Base Oils section where the gal/acre numbers are discussed.
Thanks!
TRL 18:46, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, so there are new figures there, and there are, IMHO, better references, and they relate to biodiesel specifically, not UVO. The references have gallons per acre. They are apparently US gallons since the references appear to be mostly American. -- Treekids ( talk) 00:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi folks. We also should have imperial and metric values. It would be cool if someone ...
Hi folks. Can someone help with the arithmetic and formatting? We should add imperial and metric and make it back into a table. -- Treekids ( talk) 00:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
The marketing of biodiesel has been so successful that it is difficult to find critiques of it buried in all of the hype. The sites that sell or promote biodiesel are the wrong places to go to find unbiased data. Here is an article in Grist that summarizes some of the growing awareness that biofuels may do untold damage to the planet. There was also an article in New Scientist pointing out the same thing.
Another point to keep in mind is the confusion over different blends of biodiesel. For example, A B100 (100% biodiesel) blend is partially carbon neutral,
but gets 15% worse gas mileage than diesel and increases NOx emissions 110% over gasoline cars.
A B20 blend is far from carbon neutral. Biodiesel is also not 78% carbon neutral. Its neutrality is dependent on the plant being used. The 78% figure quoted in Wiki is for Soybeans and even that number appears to be biased. I can show you the sources if you want.
Claims that biodiesel can impact CO2 emissions are misleading as are claims that it will make a meaningful difference in foreign oil dependency. Let me know if you want to see the sources and math.
Farming is not environmentally friendly. It is a necessary evil to grow food. It usurps vast areas of land and water and requires billions of tons of pesticides and fertilizers. A cornfield is one species away from being just as biologically impoverished as a mall parking lot. Environmentally friendly biodiesel is an oxymoron.
When one considers that, next to burning fossil fuels, deforestation is the second leading cause of global warming, one has to stop and ask: should the world be cutting down rainforests and plowing under its conservation reserves to grow biofuels?
I think this article needs a criticisms section similar to the one found on the Precautionary Principle. I would be happy to submit one for your critique. Sarann 03:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Folks, there is nothing short of giving up farming completely and going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle that would "save the planet". Algae is the way to go because it does not use farmland, doesn't need fresh water, and can actually result in a net reduction of greenhouse gases we're putting into the atmosphere if we use the CO2 emitted by power plants. No, it's not a perfect fuel. But we don't live in a perfect world. -- JSleeper 08:41, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
The aspects of this section related to vehicle modifications need sources and should then be adapted to fit in the Vehicular use... section. The infrastructure component is spurious and should not be re-added to the main (see comments above).
"Distribution is possible using today's Petro Diesel infrastructure as long as minor adjustments are made citation needed to both the distribution fueling systems as well as vehicle fuel systems, such as replacement of fuel system, solvent-sensitive o-rings, gaskets, fittings and hoses, filtering of loosened fossil fuel varnishes, prevention and growth of mold and additives to prevent solidification at colder temperatures."
-- E8 ( talk) 02:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
The increase in biodiesel production of 5 times in 5 years is matched by the references in the Production levels section I have just added (Europe 0.9 million tonnes in 2001, US 5 million gallons or 0.02 million tonnes, compared to about 5-6 million tonnes 2006) However, this section mostly duplicates information already in the article. Stainless316 ( talk) 13:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
(please don't delete this graph from the talk page or the discussion below will make no sense) The recent additions to Environmental Benefits fails to mention a critical detail - the values are specific to the UK. Transportation costs (for fuel, not feedstock) were figured in, inflating the values for foreign imports. At very least, this needs to be addressed, though I am in favor of removal. It's common for individuals to overlook details when presented with graphical displays; since this display provides a distorted view of the situation, it should be removed or replaced with something unbiased. Also, other, more general sources and comments were removed in favor of this nation-specific source.-- E8 ( talk) 19:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
“ | NB. The Government recommends that fuel chain default values should be defined ‘conservatively’ (i.e. a higher carbon intensity) in order to provide an incentive for companies to collect more data. The use of conservative default values means that the values in the tables below should not be interpreted as being an accurate assessment of the GHG saving potential of the biofuels. | ” |
Here's a new graph with the UK specific contributions in (i.e. the cost of transportation form the country of origin to the UK. I think this makes it clear enough what the UK specific values are. Mike Young ( talk) 20:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Below it is another graph with the UK specific data (the red bits in the graph above) removed. This graph shows no country specific bias (although it does use figures calculated in the UK, it assumes that the biodiesel is burnt in the country of origin). Mike Young ( talk) 20:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I have another concern about this graph: Deforestation of tropical rain forest is the second largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. ( http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf, Global anthropogenic GHG emissions chart on p. 36) Clearing of such forest to make room for oil palm plantations is the biggest cause of clearing of rain forest. As far as I could tell that was not taken into consideration when calculating the figures for palm oil. If anything it looks like they made the assumption the oil palms where being grown on what was previously cropland (which is ridiculous imo). I haven't read through the entire report yet, but if you look at the section Land use change on p. 12 they state that "Where information is not provided (i.e. ‘unknown’ is reported), the Government recommends that, in the early years of the RTFO, the calculation should not require the use of a default value for land-use change impacts". Deforestation also have severe impact on the biodiversity in the affected areas. I think this graph gives the wrong impression of the environmental effects from these fuel sources and should be removed. It is far too technical to be presented as it is. I'm going to be bold, and remove the graph for now since I feel it is misleading. After all the data is still available in the reference if anyone reading the article is interested.-- Apis O-tang ( talk) 07:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Note. Moved this discussion from the above Land use change not considered properly discussion under the Environmental Benefits section, since they are not directly related.-- Apis O-tang ( talk) 14:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Administrator note Both of you seem to be engaging in an edit war, please, before either of you edit the article again, work out the differences here (and agree). I'd hate to see blocks occuring. thanks-- Hu12 ( talk) 13:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Why is this under "enviromental efects"? It shoudld rather be only under "Properties". If nobody objects, i'll intergrate it to the propperties paragraph. - GeiwTeol 19:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
WP:Lead section: "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should establish context, summarize the most important points, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describe its notable controversies, if there are any."
The following is what I think should be in the lead section. if everyone agrees, we could then figure out how best to get it in. I stress that this is not the form it should take, but the main points to include. Once the points to include are agreed, then the form will be relatively easy to complete. Hopefully, if we have consensus on what to include, the section will be robust when completed. Feel free to say what should or should not be included, and if my definition is correct.
It refers in this article ONLY to transesterified triglycerides. Other forms of biofuel are covered elsewhere. Biodiesel is used as a replacement for petrodiesel, which is used in engines, and Heating oil, which is used in heaters.
Biodiesel can be made from transesterification of the triglyceride part of any fat or oil, from vegetable oil, animal fats and algal oil (is algal oil vegetable oil? Algae are not plants.) Different scources give slightly different properties, e.g. higher gel point for animal fats. If it comes from anywhere else, then it is not biodiesel according to the definition.
As I see it, there are three reasons. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy security and help local farmers. It is also biodegradeable and non-toxic, so oil spills are not a problem. It seems to be pretty generally agreed that biodiesel can be made to produce less CO2 than petrodiesel, but the estimates of the savings vary. It is probably also agreed that equatorial forest clearance to put in new palm oil plantations produces more CO2 than petrodiesel. Energy security is improved, as the other energy inputs (fertilizer etc.) can be made from non-petroluem sources, e.g. coal or other renewables. Any subsidies or price increases will help local farmers, but I think this is less of an issue then with corn ethanol.
Possible increased greenhouse gas production due to land use issues. Different properties from diesel, e.g. solvent properties, gel point, water content, biological contamination. Possible damage to engine. Displacement of food crops leading to increased food prices. Cost.
In blends with 95% diesel, almost all diesel engines. In other stronger blends, gaining acceptance in blends up to 100% biodiesel, similarly for heating boilers. Has been demonstrated in locomotives and airoplanes.
What is current production compared to diesel fuel. Stainless316 ( talk) 14:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Biodiesel refers to a non-petroleum based fuel consisting of short chain alkyl ( methyl or ethyl) fatty acid esters, made by transesterification of triglycerides from vegetable oil, animal fat or algal oil. Biodiesel is used as a replacement for petrodiesel in engines, and heating oil in heaters. It can be used alone or as blends with petroleum derived fuel. Biodiesel is distinguished from the straight vegetable oil (SVO) (aka "waste vegetable oil", "WVO", "unwashed biodiesel", "pure plant oil", "PPO") used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some converted diesel vehicles. "Biodiesel" is standardized as mono-alkyl esters and other non-diesel fuels of biological origin are not included. [21]
Biodiesel has slightly different properties from petrodiesel. It has a higher gel point, can allow the growth of molds and bacteria and has different solvent properties, which can corrode older rubber components and dislodge diesel varnishes which have built up in engines and heaters. Experience suggests that these problems are minor, but most engines today have been designed for use with petrodiesel, so the use of a different fuel raises some concerns among manufacturers. In blends up to 20% there is very widespread acceptance for use in motor vehicles, and its use in locomotives and aeroplanes has been demonstrated. Use of 100% biodiesel is widespread in Germany with no apparent major problems.
One impetus for its use is to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions from fossil fuels. There is debate over the size of the greenhouse gas reduction and this will depend on the choice of feedstock and method of calculation used. Recently published figures vary from 75% [ [18]] to 15% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions when compared to petroleum diesel. [22] [23]. However, these estimates do not consider land conversion, where natural land is converted to agricultural use. Greenhouse gas emissions could be higher than that of petrodiesel when these factors are taken into account, and there could be other undesirable consequences of deforestation. [ [19]] [ [20]] Even if biodiesel is grown from sustainable sources, there is concern that using land to grow non-food crops will push up food prices. Fuel security is another major driver for its use, since much of the energy inputs can be derived from non-petroluem, locally available sources such as coal, gas or other renewables. The the US NREL says that energy security is the number one driving force behind the US biofuels programme. (p8 (p14 including initial pages) of[ [21]].
Europe is currently the largest producer of biodiesel, with Germany on its own producing 2.6 million tonnes in 2006, or nearly half of world production. Biodiesel production is currently a tiny fraction of the petrodiesel production, in 2006 it was about 1% of combined Europe and USA diesel use, and about 5% of total world vegetable oil production. Stainless316 ( talk) 10:52, 9 April 2008 (UTC) Stainless316 ( talk) 14:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
This article's current data speaks to many of the above issues or points, it is a wealth of information and vinmax applauds the contributors. There is always an additional detail or observation that might be mentioned or added to a subject of this magnitude. I am new to wikipedia, you are all magnificent to contribute your time and energies to exapanding the Akashic record of the 22nd century. I offer some edits to this article, based on my experience in manufacturing biodiesel facilities, 100m, 25m, 13m and a 5,000,000 gallon per year plants. Could someone help place the upper pictures in a horizontal config? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vinmax ( talk • contribs) 04:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Intro concept well taken, first thing to do is eliminate anything obviously subjective, we need objectivity and data with proofs and/or a contiguous stream of logic. News articles are not proof of fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vinmax ( talk • contribs) 03:26, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
E8 - V8 whateva, the vacuum Db were on high, if you can use any of this for the intro, please help yourself: Biodiesel is a term applied to diesel fuels manufactured of materials of biological origin, ie.(vegetable - bean, cottonseed, rapeseed etc. & animal fats - beef, pork and poultry, etc. The process whereby these biologically originating oils are converted to biodiesel/biofuel is know as transesterfication. In organic chemistry, an example of transesterification is the process of exchanging the alkoxy group of an ester compound by another alcohol. These reactions are often catalyzed by the addition of an acid or base. Transesterification: alcohol + ester → different alcohol + different ester. (see Wikipedia for Transesterification) Biodiesel is an alternative fuel to hydrocarbon (crude oil) based diesel. These BIO-fuels are utilized in diesel fuel applications and diesel engines. Biodiesel is a renewable sustainable fuel that produces less CO2 that crude oil based conventional diesel. Blends of biodiesel and conventional hydrocarbon based diesel are products most commonly distributed for use in the retail diesel fuel marketplace. Unsigned by "Vinmax"
The April edition of Time Magazine put out a very good article on biodiesel highlighting a lot of the environment concerns at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html.
This Wikipedia entry on biodiesel talks a lot about the benefits of biodiesel and barely touches on the drawbacks and environmental costs. All of the criticism is tucked away at the bottom of the page while all of the hype is at the top. This is especially troublesome when you consider that biodiesel has driven up the cost of food, increased deforestation, and increased global warming. Biodiesel based on sugar ethanol is more effective than corn ethanol but because of high tariffs on sugar and large subsidies to Midwest farmers in the U.S. inefficient and more environmentally costly biodiesel based on corn ethanol is able to succeed in the marketplace. The farm lobby is one of the strongest lobbies in the country and every presidential candidate needs to pander to the biodiesel industry in order to win Iowa which is the first state to have a presidential primary. The worst part of biodiesel is that the government and the special interests masquerade policies that are designed for special interests as green and environmentally friendly. ( Ajhendel ( talk) 20:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC))
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajhendel ( talk • contribs) 20:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi. Just caught myself responding to comments here from two years ago. Can somebody archive some of the old stuff or point me to instructions on how to do it. -- Treekids ( talk) 02:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Good thought. I'm unsure what the procedure for this is, but when you find out, please inform me.-- E8 ( talk) 22:04, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I propose to establish an auto-archiver for this page. Since it is so large, I will be bold and start. Please, if any objections, speak now! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregalton ( talk • contribs) 11:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
This page looks much better now. I've manually archived some discussion as it was either 1) unsigned and undated, but notably older, OR 2) older, but not automatically archived.-- E8 ( talk) 01:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there a way to have new sections and comments go at the top instead of at the bottom? I just added something but its way at the bottom where I'm not sure people will see it. ( Ajhendel ( talk) 20:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC))
Yes it does look better since you manually archived some of the discussion. No objections here to stop it. -- DavidD4scnrt ( talk) 08:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
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This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I deleted the reference to NRDC. See http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/biofuels.asp
R1 : Alkyl radical.
? This should be alkyl group, not radical. You won't be doing any radical chemistry in a solution that has -OH's floating around, not to mention the amount of energy it would take to generate alkyl radicals.
CodeCannon 10:05, 18 Nov 2003 (Eastern)
I reverted the removal of the description of the army study that encountered problems with filter clogging. If you wish to remove it, please state your reasons. Kat 16:09, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)
These statements puzzle me and seem contradictory "It is practically immiscible with water." and "Biodiesel is hydrophilic. Some of the water present is residual to processing, and some comes from storage tank condensation." It does not seem like both can be true.
This paragraph puzzles me:
"The issue is economic: one of the exceptions Nassau Senior noted to the idea that machines aren't harmful to wages is, where the machines themselves make demands on resources that would have gone into food production. So the important question isn't whether biodiesel can be produced as whether that it is the most efficient use of resources, and the expense of biodiesel in comparison to traditional forms of diesel suggests that the answer is no."
Is it badly written or some kind of economic theory (not my strong suit)? Can anyone elucidate? Rmhermen 16:24, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I didn't write it, but I believe it is a response to critics of biofuels. Two common cricisism are: (1) it is said that there is no net gain because more than a gallon fossil fuel is used in production of a gallon of biodiesel; (2) biofuels are bad because they displace food production, and everyone knows we don't have nearly enough soybeans as evidenced by their high price. I don't buy into either of these arguments, especially not (2). The paragraph in question appears to be an attempt to address one or the other or both. Kat 17:13, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)
As for (1), why isn't the negative net gain for biofuel research from David Pimentel (Cornell University) and Tad W. Patzek (Berkeley) not brought up in the article? The news link from Cornell is here: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html
Summary: This research indicates that using plants for fuel sources results in a net energy loss, e.g. system wide, it takes more energy to create biofuel than the resultant biofuel contatins.
To the frequent editor with no username: Please provide evidence where biodiesel is cheaper than petrodiesel. As I have added to the article it is still more expensive in the U.S. (but getting closer all the time). A different tax structure in another country could easily make up this difference. Also the sentence you keep adding is trying to change a necessary rebuttal paragraph into another advocacy paragraph. The article has to present an balanced point of view (NPOV). If you can find evidence, please put it in the appropriate place. By the way, in the U.S. at least diesel and gas are cheaper in real and inflation-adjusted dollars now than at the time of the gas crisis. And the wars (which?) have never produced a permanent price change. Rmhermen 18:29, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)
But this nowadays is no true. Vegetable oil is cheaper than petroleum ( the original fight was between vegoil , read again vegoil, and petroleum).
Is vegetable oil cheaper than petroleum? . For sure:
In the midwestern US, where soybean oil is produced, biodiesel is still more costly than fossil fuel. I can get price quotes, or you can ring the local petroleum dealer if you want. And biodiesel production is subsidized where fossil fuel production is not. Some of the animal tallow based formulations are showing more potential for low cost, since the tallow is cheaper than soybean oil.
I must say that I am skeptical of claims regarding biodiesel made from waste oil sources. The fiddly engineering problems in waste oil processing affect transesterification just as they do building a burner or engine. To my knowledge, they have not been solved in an economically effective way. Can you cite any sources--newspaper, magazine, etc-- to back up your claims? Kat 01:41, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I removed the following links:
Not very relevant, only sketchy information or what is already well understood: http://www.eere.energy.gov/biomass/ http://www.nrel.gov/ http://www.biodieselnow.com/ http://www.greenfuels.org/biodiesel/index.htm http://www.biofuelcanada.ca/
http://www.intertek-cb.com/newsitetest/news/biodiesel03102003.shtml - not authoritative site on ASTM specifications
http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel.html - NPOV - more advocacy than objectivity
-- 137.132.3.12 17:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed some links for the following reasons
Thanks - Taxman 17:17, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
Ok I removed a bunch more. This article really seems to be a magnet for every site that mentions biodiesel to want to get linked from here. Here are the ones I removed:
They are all either not very directly related to biodiesel or not high quality. - Taxman Talk 15:02, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
I think this link is worth including: http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/03/biodiesel-king-of-alternative-fuels.html It is written by a chemical engineer, and has a good comparison of ethanol versus biodiesel in the first section.
One of the requirements to be a featured article is for a GFDL or PD picture or diagram representing the topic. Does anyone have one or can think of one to use? - Taxman 17:17, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
I did add a little bit (since removed) that pointed out the UKP2,000 fine and possible jail sentence for using your own biodiesel in the UK. Don't the Poms deserve some kind of warning?
I think the press reports I referred to that talked of "mixing methanol with cooking oil" may have missed out the necessity of adding caustic soda.
I did try to fit it in nicely. I'm a journalist and used to doing that kind of thing thank you very much.
And thirdly they were fined for using biodiesel, and avoiding the tax on it - not just one person but a whole bunch of them. To me that makes it relevant to biodiesel. There's a lot of information on cost comparison in the page, which is economics but which you leave in. Do try to run your page on consistent lines. - Vik :v)
If it's 'non-flammable,' how in the ever-lovin' blue-eyed world can it be burned in a diesel engine? User:sca
From the article: Biodiesel reduces emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by approximately 50% and carbon dioxide by 78.45% on a net basis... Mmm... if net emissions of CO2 are reduced by 78.45%, where do the 21.55% come from? Where does the extra carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere come from? -- Deragon 17:15, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm not an expert on fuel technologies, but these statistics appear biased to me and undermine the article. In common usage, a claim that product x reduces emissions vs. product y implies a measurement at the tailpipe. Not the lifecycle measurement. In fact, the energy to grow, process, and transport a soybean product, for example, certainly generates some amount of CO2 emission to offset the amount claimed captured by the soybean. Also, growing, harvesting, processing/refining soybeans is certainly more energy-intensive than drilling for oil or gas. Consequently, as a layperson, I find the claims of reduced emissions disingenuous at best. --[User:Guest]] 22:59, Jun 7, 2005
The article states that the United States uses more energy per capita than any other country. I'm not sure that this statement is entirely true. I believe I once found that Canada actually had a higher per capita energy use than the United States. Perhaps someone could investigate this possibility futher? -- Silver86 06:15, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for looking into the possibility. While it may not have seemed important to some, I like to point out the small things I see in articles. -- Silver86 06:07, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The following was already in the intro and there is already a section covering the properties. Possibly if much more detailed list of chemical properties was produced, it could be added back as a subsection. - Taxman 13:46, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
I couldn't find a source to verify the following, and I believe it is out of date, and not entirely correct, so I removed it. In any case, it would be better to include a more general discussion of availability in Europe. So far the only sources I can find in English are about the US. I do know production is as high or higher in Europe though. Anybody have any good sources? - Taxman 00:12, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
The article states: "Some environmental groups, notably NRDC object to the vast amount of farming and the resulting over-fertilization, pesticide use, and land use conversion that would be needed to produce the additional vegetable oil."
I'd like to see references to flesh out this point. My own search of the NRDC web site does not substantiate this idea. It's an important point, though, which is why I'd like to get more information.
I've added a disambig after people repeatedly confused the two at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/French fry car, which rather spectacularly demonstrates a need for greater clarity on this point. I'd hope this is an ugly temporary measure, and that the link can be incorporated into the text. And perhaps there is a better name for straight vegetable oil? Like most people it seems, I had assumed that the term biodiesel included the peanut oil on which the early demonstration diesel engine ran, but that seems not to be strictly true. At least that's the way the article reads now. Andrewa 19:39, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The one complaint I have is the reference to 3 million gallons annual in America of WVO. Other sources on the web (such as biodiesel.org and Willie Nelson's BioWillie) state a much higher number at 3 billion. I am not sure if the poster had a typo or what. Currently millions (if not billions) of gallons of WVO are being dumped into landfills. Can someone confirm?
Among other references - http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,683903,00.html - shows the 3 billion gallon mark. If further references are needed - please let me know. A more interesting reference from a University - http://www.me.iastate.edu/biodiesel/Pages/bio1.html. I think Im getting into Wiki now - so I better sign up - TW. I signed up and the reference from Iowa State approximates to 2.95 billion gallons per year of vegetable oil, close to the 3 billion mark. Check the Iowa State reference. It seems as if all the million reference points should be billion (3 billion gallons, 23 billion lbs of vegetable/animal oil etc). And the Iowa state link has references itself, albeit from 2002 or 2003. Taxman can you update it?
What about using fat obtained via Liposuction to produce biodiesel? Think about all of the fat lazy americans who drive two blocks to the corner "convenience store" for a pack of cigarettes, a bag of potato chips, a box of ho-ho's and a rack of cheap "beer". If they got liposuction and we turned the fat into biodiesel, then they actually walked to the corner gymnasium, it would save tons.
Perhaps a scented oil should be added to biodiesel, to make it smell nice when it's burned, similar to scented lamp oil you can get for 'kerosene' lamps?
A citation is needed for this paragraph; when was the study, and where? Tempshill 22:59, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I still can't find the Military study, but I'm against removing the material because the information there is correct according to a number of other sources I've seen. Also, the NBB website has a page on heating oil that lists a couple of studies, the best of which doesn't appear available for free. - Taxman Talk 14:43, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
I just read through the article and thought it was very good. There were a couple of minor things I thought might be improved:
I like to help get this article to FA status, and think the next step is to take it through peer-review. Thoughts?
— Jwanders 20:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
The issue in this article (effect of deforestation) should be addressed in the Wikipedia entry. Rd232 talk 14:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Moved in from Talk:Algae: Hi, i'm writing this to get some information about biodiesel production from algae. I first got interested in biodiesel when i came across some do-it-yourself tutorials on how to make your own biodiesel, using waste vegetable oil. I was very interested in this, especially since the tutorials said that you could get the WVO for free from fast food resturaunts. But with energy shortages, the high price of gas, and the lack of significant public transportation, once fast food chains and slaughterhouses see their waste being used to produce something valuable it seems that it will only be a matter of time until that free-supply will be taken away, either by no longer giving the oil away, but selling it, or having it contracted out,(which seems more likely once ultra-low sulfur requirements go into effect for regular diesel). Without a stable supply of oil, any investment into a biodiesel system,(a proccessor, a diesel car, diesel generators for electricity), seem dangerous. I started looking at oil crops, and was surprised by the yields, you hear so much about soy-biodiesel, but it turns out to be one of the worst of the oil producing crops. There were a couple of crops that were slightly better than the rest,(jatropa, and palm), but they're both regional, and no good unless you live in those areas. Then I see the next leap, from 635gpa for palm oil, to 5,000 to 20,000gpa for some types of algae. The implications of something like that seemed amazing, a single family doesn't use anywhere near the equivalent of 10-20 thousand gallons per acre of oil, and to meet their energy needs could set up a system at a tenth of that size, or use a swimming pool, and essentially be energy independent. But then there was no information about it. After searching around the internet I found the DOE's Aquatic Species Program www.eere.energy.gov, and I found the University of New Hampshires; Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae page www.unh.edu The DOE's report presented alot of information that I didn't know before, but overall it seemed to describe a program that didn't work, at least for a cost-efficient means for producing biodiesel. And then there was the UNH page, which gave the same numbers, but then went on to talk about how great such a system would be, and presented next to nothing about details. Since then I've been searching the internet for anything about algal cultivation, harvesting, or processing, and have found out alot about algae; it's use in CO2 mitigation, for the production of hydrogen, as a health food, for dyes and medicines, but most all of the information that i've found for the production of biodiesel seems to be rehashed, always citing the same few papers. Every once in awhile I find some specific information about an aspect of production, but i haven't found anything about an integrated, fully functioning system that is successfully producing anywhere near the quantities that have been estimated, i've gotten the impression that there is alot of private research going on, but i can't find any specifics about it.
For the efficient cultivation of algae for the production of biodiesel, this is a list of specific questions that i am tring to find answers to:
what algal species are proving most successful for producing the largest
amounts of oil, including the whole process, cultivation, harvesting,
and extraction of oil.(much of the information i've found will cite a
species that only performs well in one aspect, ie. it will grow well,
but is expensive to harvest, or it's easy to harvest, but has a lower
oil content.)
what temperature range do they do best in
is there an optimum depth for a tank or pond(ie- 4 inches of water, 5 feet, etc), in which the algae grow best, or is it more a matter of light penetration
do freshwater, or saltwater species seem to be more promising
if saltwater, does the salt you put into the water get consumed, needing to be replaced often, or is it a one-time thing
where can you inexpensively obtain specific species of algae,(i know of the university of Hawaii, i was looking for cheaper sources, perhaps someone doing research themselves within the connected U.S.)
what are the most cost-efficient means that are being used to harvest high-oil content algae, (i know of microscreens, flocculation, and centrifugation.)
how do you extract oil from algae(the only method i've seen is to dry it and then press it out)
what is the most efficient means of growing algae, open-pond, photobioreactor, green-house pond, polyethylene sleeves, tanks.
where do you get the nutrients for the algae, aside from expensive "fresh" fertilizer used for food crops,(i know about waste water, and fertilizer runoff, but i'm looking for efficient sources for if you don't live by a stream, or a sewage plant)
i've read that algae need only 1/10 the amount of light they recieve to grow, and was wondering whether it can be grow successfully using florecents, i don't know what spectrum light algae need to grow
how do you get CO2 into the water of an algae system,(do you have to compress it and pump it in, or some type of permeable membrane?)
how do you collect or seperate CO2, from the air, or from smoke, like in a coal plant
could a modification of a septic tank be used as an algae pond, the human waste being used as nutrient for the algae
what scientific equipment do you need to start an oil-producing algae pond, for a basic, home system(microscopes, ph-meter, etc)
could the exhaust from a wood stove be used to supply a pond with CO2
do you know of anyone, -university, corporation, individual-, who is currently doing research on biodiesel production from algae, espescially actual working systems.
If anyone reading this post has information about any of these questions please post it under the Wikipedia entry:
Algaculture: Biodiesel production from algae
Algae resources(general)
posted by Daemon(not registered-wikipedia requires cookies) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.80.15.216 ( talk) 17:36, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
In case somebody manages to have the time, I found an article which may give extra material for either this article, or the Algal biodiesel article proposed above. Essentially a company in NZ has managed to produce biodiesel using a variety of algae commonly found in sewage ponds. Link here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10381404 83.67.100.39 21:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Biodiesel reduces emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by approximately 50 % and carbon dioxide by 78 % on a net lifecycle basis because the carbon in biodiesel emissions is recycled from carbon that was already in the atmosphere, rather than being new carbon from petroleum that was sequestered in the earth's crust. (Sheehan, 1998)
Does anyone have a link to the source matireal for this?
This statement only works if the crops that you get your oil from were organically grown, otherwise you're discounting the all the CO, and CO2 that went into the production of the chemical fertilizers, which are made from petroleum sequestered in the earth's crust. If chemical fertilizers are made specifically for the production of oil crops for biodiesel, then chemical fertilizers are part of the "lifecycle" productiion of biodiesel
If the statement is just about the emissions of biodiesel from a diesel engine, then it may be true, but that isn't a "lifecycle" estimate.
-Daemon
I am not an expert on biodiesel, but a few points in this article seem to be flawed in my opinion. In the case of biodiesel made from oilseed, certain energy and environmental costs are not mentioned in the article.
The article does not mention the following environmental costs:
1) the cost of clear-cutting natural ecosystems to produce any significant percentage of current diesel in use
2) the cost of monoculture crops on biodiversity
3) the cost of fertilizers used on watershed quality
4) the costs of soil fertility depletion by industrial agricultural practices
In the case of efficiency, the TVA study by Van Dyne and Raymer does not look convincing for the following reasons:
1) The energy inputted seems unreasonably low. This would make sense if it only included on-farm consumption of liquid fuel. A true look at energy return on investment would include all of the energy inputted to produce, transport and process the involved fertilizers and pesticides, as well as the energy inputted to process the oilseed. The energy efficiency ratios included in this article are better than that for extracting light crude oil, which seems absolutely impossible. As far as I know, there has been no comprehensive study looking at the energy efficiency of biodiesel. One such study has been done for ethanol by David Pimentel, which shows ethanol to be an energy-negative fuel.
2) Different crops require different energy inputs due to their specific needs and cultivation time requirements. The study is reported to just provide a national average, rather than being specific to oilseed crops
3) There is no reference for the study (neither citation nor year), and a Google search yielded only citations by biodiesel advocacy groups, in exactly the same language as this article. Jfeldman Feb. 20, 2006
I placed the following link in the external links section:
I am not sure why the link was removed - I thought it was related to the subject, and a good resource.
Thanks! User:Alex Ramon
I am still curious as to whether or not my external link will be allowed on this page. Biodiesel Fuel: News. I have been checking back here for a month and no reply. I work very hard to build and maintain the site where you can get the latest news about Biodiesel Fuel - updated daily.
Is that relevant for this page?
Ok, thanks - I will keep linking to this page from my website regardless as I think this is an excellent resource.
That's right - the section should only have one link to Dmoz - any more than that is too many!
I think this section needs to cite more sources. And perhaps some touch-ups? Who is "we" that section refers to and where did the "see operations"? Did they just copy that text from somewhere? -- 71.36.52.230 16:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
The numbering of the notes is seriously off. Note 12 and should be at 16 for example.... 06:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
In the Guardian yesterday http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1745535,00.html there is a report on the Blooker Prize, a new prize for books which have resulted from blogs. The runner-up in the non-fiction category was BIODIESEL POWER: The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel By Lyle Estill, http://www.biofuels.coop/book.shtml and the source blog was http://energy.biofuels.coop/. Should this get a mention? -- Salix alba ( talk) 11:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I split off the topic "availability" to a new page to make the parent page more readable. I hope this is a positive change. If anyone disagrees, perhaps we can discuss it here. -- Rifleman 82 15:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I rewrote the article to try to reduce the duplicating information generated by the piecemeal nature of edits, and tried to reorganize the information from the most important ( Biodiesel#Description, Biodiesel#Applications) to the less important ( Biodiesel#Historical background, Biodiesel#Current Research). Edits were made in good faith, and I hope it is a positive change.
Biodiesel#Environmental benefits is a tarbaby. It is messy and some claims appear dubious to me. It needs to be un-listed and wikified. Perhaps someone can take on this task.
I suggest that Biodiesel#Efficiency and Economic Arguments be spun off to a new article, leaving a summary of the major arguments for and against.
Comments on my edits? -- Rifleman 82 21:04, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Biodiesel is a light to dark yellow colorless liquid.
How can something colorless be described as light, dark, or yellow?
A New Zealand company has announced that it has successfully extracted biodiesel from sewage [3]. I'm not sure whether this should be included on this page, I just thought I'd bring it to the attention of the regular editors here.
A number of paragraphs in the above discussion and the associated wiki entry claim that biodiesel is sulfur free without providing evidence. Sulfur is common in nature and is part of many biological substances, such as amino acids. Some biodiesel manufacturers use sulfuric acid and other sulfur containing species as a catalyst, and the sulfur is not recovered. Also, the term "sulfur-free" is highly subjective. Do you consider less than 10 ppm sulfur free? 1 ppm sulfur is enough to degrade fuel cells. 10 ppm or less may deactivate certain catalysts over time. UPDATE: I found a page on Pacific Biodiesel's site that shows nominal sulfur content: http://www.biodiesel.com/why_biodiesel.htm According to this, it is typically between 0.012 and 0.023% by weight, between 33% and 66% the sulfur content of low sulfur diesel. Clearly this is not sulfur free. I notice Willie Nelson's biodiesel site claims that biodiesel reduces sulfur emissions by 100%. It seems this misinformation is widespread. According to Chevron, 0.05% sulfur diesel is currently in use in the US, and starting in 2007, we will be switching to 0.015% Sulfur diesel (ULSD). So based on current Diesel fuel, it is only a 50-75% decrease in Sulfur, and based on next year's diesel it is anywhere from a 20% decrease, to a 60% increase in Sulfur. This indicates that not all biodiesel is ULSD. I don't believe the Pacific Biodiesel numbers include sulfur added from sulfur containing catalysts. It seems most claims on the internet of biodiesel being sulfur free are based purely on speculation and not fact.
I removed the chart on oil production levels to trim it the article to length. I also removed the dead notes, which are a waste of bytes. Ordered the "see also" section by alphabets, and removed a duplicated link (appropriate technology). Added the expert tag on the claims of the benefits of biodiesel - some dubious, some just need a cite.
Tried to clean up the language for consistency as well.
-- Rifleman 82 17:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I recommend adding something like this to the history:
In Sept 2005 Minnesota became the first state to require that all diesel fuel sold in that state contain part biodiesel. The Minnesota law requires at least 2% biodiesel in all diesel fuel sold. [4]
-- 4.232.0.63 16:21, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that a section should be added labeled Better alternatives in witch the following is mentioned:
- KVDP 09:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm having problems adding a footnote, if anybody could help I'd appreciate it. I tried using proper web cite reference format, and it looks OK in preview. However when saving the page, there are duplicate A and B backpointers in each footnote ref at article bottom. I tried switching to an in-line external link, still same problem. Finally gave up and totally removed the link, still same problem. Copied and pasted entire article to my sandbox and experimented with deleting various article portions; couldn't isolate problem. Duplicate A/B refs still appear with article truncated to just one line with one footnote reference. Would appreciate any help or advice. Sorry about the problem if I did something wrong. Joema 13:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I would add http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/
I realise links need to be kept to a minimum but (as per the request in the External Links section) I recommend adding: http://biodieselinthenews.com/ - it's right up-to-date every day and has a full archive of previous news. IMHO it complements this article.
I've got a good idea. Why doesn't Wikipedia hand all external links over to dmoz. That would stop any argument ever over them. So let's remove the Edit facility from the External links because it's not needed any more seeing as that section's now dmoz. Now I think about it, there are quite a few sections you could take the edit facility away from - yeah - I think I'm onto something here... —The preceding
unsigned comment was added by
166.214.59.177 (
talk •
contribs) .
How about a link to http://www.bettybiodiesel.org/? It's a nice non-profit website.-- Tdkehoe 00:24, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Crazy idea, and maybe it's even based on my once hearing something about this (though a Google search turned up nothing.), but I was wondering if the heavy economic toll of the Zebra mussel invasion could be partly compensated by turning the mussels they remove into biodiesel. I'm not suggesting that it's any kind of solution to the problems of the Zebra mussel invasion and biodiesel supply, just that if they are removing large quantities of mussels from ships and infastructure, would it be a good idea to convert the biomass into biodiesel? The alternative is it being thrown away and not used at all. Could such an endeavor possibly break even once the animal-remains-to-biodiesel infastructure is in place?
The first line of this section was recently changed (Oct. 3) to state that biodiesel is "hydrophobic". Previously, it had stated that biodiesel is "hydrophilic" -- the opposite of hydrophobic. (This change was made several days after a question was raised in the "To-do list" -- the original statement seems to have gone unchallenged for a considerable period of time.) The change to "hydrophobic" seems to me to be consistent with the statement in the "Description" section that biodiesel "is practically immiscible with water...."
On the other hand, these statements appear to flatly contradict the assertion in the WP article on Hygroscopy, which states that "An example of a hygroscopic substance is biodiesel, which absorbs water to about 1200 parts per million (PPM)." I checked around and found that this claim is repeated widely on numerous websites, but I could not find definitive substantiation -- merely repetition of the same statement. I was hoping this apparent contradiction would be explored here on Wikipedia -- but this specific claim is not addressed anywhere in the Biodiesel article.
This is not a minor point. If biodiesel is indeed hygroscopic -- meaning that it has a strong tendency to pull water molecules out of the atmosphere -- there are serious implications in terms of its use, storage, etc., which would need to be addressed in the article. Currently, the problem of "Water contamination" is stated to arise because "Some of the water present is residual to processing, and some comes from storage tank condensation." But there's no mention of continuing accumulation of water due to its alleged hygroscopic properties.
So I pose the following question: Is it, in fact, possible for a substance be BOTH hydrophobic AND hygroscopic?? In other words, can it, somehow, both repel water molecules and also absorb them? One way or the other, this question needs to be settled. Cgingold 14:10, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Again, my apologies for adding the Verification tag. My sense is that the explanation given is probably correct, but there is nonetheless a serious question re Hygroscopy, as I detailed above. I was hoping to elicit a response on that question, but it's been over a week now, so I thought it was time to give it another try. Cgingold 13:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Surely pure plant oil without any processing qualifies as 'Biodiesel'because it is made entirely from biomass and will operate many kinds of diesel engine! If one uses Methanol and caustic soda (neither of which are biomass)to make FAME, fatty acid methyl ester, this surely disqualifies it from being called bio-diesel! replies appreciated <email removed>
Due to the volume of ongoing vandalism of this article, I have just made a request for semi-protection at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. This would prevent anonymous users from editing the page. Keep your fingers crossed. Cgingold 11:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I've been trying to find the actual source for the yields from crops section, and I can't find it anywhere. User Ddelpercio cited globalpetroleumclub.com as his source, but that website has no actual information on it. All it has is a forum with zero substantial information, and an RSS news feed. I think that these data look reasonable, but without a source I don't think Wikipedia should display it. But if someone can find a source for it, I'd be more than interested.
Should it be noted that on one episode of the mythbusters, they created biodiesel using used cooking oil? They just took used cooking oil from a resturant, filtered it, and were able to run a car on it. see MythBusters (season 3)#The Great Gas Conspiracy —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.154.185.186 ( talk) 21:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC).
Straight vegetable oil and vegetable oil blends can be used in diesel engines, but they are different than biodiesel. Vegetable oil is transesterified to make biodiesel, so they are close relatives, but not the same thing. Vincecate 13:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I propose that some of the sections in this article would really fit better in Vegetable oil economy as they apply to straight vegetable oil and vegetable oil blends just as well. I am thinking of most parts of the following sections:
What do other people think?
Vincecate 22:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
What is the basis for the significant changes at 18:45:50 by 82.127.42.52? If no rationale is presented, this will be reverted. Skyemoor 19:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
A portion of the gelling section is essentially an advertisement for Wintron. While I've heard that the claims made are true, there are no citations; further, this seems to be inappropriate context for an encyclopedia. At very least, this needs a citation or it will be deleted. E8 23:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to delete the Wintron segment unless it's referenced. E8 02:38, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Deleted Wintron advertising segment as no support was provided. E8 00:43, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.145.201.52 ( talk) 13:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC).
To me the lead spends a disproportionate amount of text on negative feedback from vehicle manufacturers. It reads almost like non-biodiesel advocacy by the car companies, and some might think it is skirting WP:SOAP. The lead does not serve as a proper summary of the article, per WP:LEAD. I think it is in need of a significant rewrite—no offense intended though. Thanks. — RJH ( talk) 18:46, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Consider this link describing tests of biodiesel use in a US railroad locomotive. Does this belong in the external links section? User_talk:David Jordan 5/21/2007.
I found this sentence in the Description section, added in this edit:
"The industry standard for the amount of time it takes to produce biodiesel used to be 4 hours, but a San Antonio based company is currently experimenting, and has claimed to produce biodiesel fuel in a fraction of what it formerly was, with a 1.4 minute contact time."
First of all, 4 hours or 1.4 minutes to do what, exactly? Produce one liter? Produce 55 gallons? Secondly, it doesn't seem to be referenced; accordingly I'm putting a {{ fact}} tag on it. Thirdly, wouldn't it be better placed in the Production section? Fourthly, is it just vandalism? Nibios 23:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I am deleting this statement: "According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), restaurants in the US produce about 3 billion US gallons (11,000,000 m³) of waste cooking oil annually.[20]"
If that were correct, with 300 million people in the U.S. that would equal about a thousand gallons a year per capita. That's a hell of a lot of french fries. The document linked to as a source is unreferenced and therefore, while it does meet WP:RS guidelines, it doesn't reach WP:V standards.
The figure is also in complete disagreement with a peer-reviewed journal article, which trumps a government white paper in terms of reliability: Mustafa Canakci. 2007. The potential of restaurant waste lipids as biodiesel feedstocks. Bioresource Technology 98(1):183-190. That paper says that 23.09 pounds of waste vegetable oil are produced in the U.S. annnually per capita.
If someone wants to fight for the sentence, that's fine, but I'll add a "disputed" tag to it.-- Margareta 16:30, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I've also deleted this: "According to a report from Cornell University, used cooking oil has an available potential to produce almost 1.7 billion gallons of biodiesel which is 1.1% of petroleum imports today. [7]" The document cited doesn't say that the 1.7 billion gallons could come from waste cooking oil; it says it could come from all oil produced in the U.S., including virgin oils. Someone might want to add the reference back in with the correct information and in the appropriate context.-- Margareta 16:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
The German-language article cited in support of "60% less net carbon dioxide emissions than petroleum-based diesel" states that (google translation) "60% of the energy result from plant growth", which is quite a different thing. I've replaced the footnote reference with a citeneeded, but left the reference at the bottom. Megacz 17:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I heard recently, from some people who were experimenting with making biodiesel, that there is a certain type of blackfly larvae that can be processed to make biodiesel. Can anyone provide specifics and add to this article? This is definitely a renewable resource. -- Auric 00:10, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
North Carolina State University had a pilot project on the use of the black soldier fly for hog waste reduction. Sprinkling maggots into the hog waste, they found the flies would ingest vast quantities of hog waste, and at the right moment in their life cycle, would "self harvest" by climbing up runways and falling into chutes where they could be easily crushed. The resultant oil, which was black and smelled horrible, was sent to the Becon Center at Iowa State University to be reacted into biodiesel. That never happened. And the pilot ended. Leaving everyone to wonder if we missed an important biodiesel feedstock.
Fuel is fuel. Any hydrocarbon based material can be oxidised to produce fuel. In fact, it probably makes more sense to just burn all the dried raw material at a central plant and produce electricity from it rather than using so much energy to extract the oil and refine it into biodiesel. This just makes it useful as a automotive fuel that requires no change in current infrastucture and technology. A centralised plant capable of efficiently reducing emissions is much more environmentally friendly than at the tailpipe of a car. Halogenated 23:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Recent changes refer to various studies supporting the added info but do not actually cite them. The one that caught my eye was that government studies supported the less toxic than table salt. That seems like an uncareful attribution to a source as that's not the type of thing the government sources would explicitly say. I'm tempted to revert, but I thought it was better to ask for explicit sources before doing so. - Taxman Talk 23:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Well I wouldn't suggest it is like parrafin oil, that it a short to long chained alkane from petroleum that is certainly much more difficult to degrade than sugar, and composes the bulk of petroleum diesel. My concern is that the reference itself seems unreferenced - it is a simple statement made on the Bentley website without a source AFAIK. Since the very sentiment of the statement is to try to highlight how benign biodiesel is, and it seems to be made without any real scientific basis, I am concerned over the placement of the statement - it seems somewhat partial and idealised, and therefore not appropriate. If someone can find a reference that actually demonstrates this from an actual scientific point of view, then it would be a lot more convincing. Halogenated 16:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I have found one primary source discussing the degradation of vegetable oils and biodiesel in lab trials in comparison to petroleum diesel, and it indicates that rates are significantly quicker for biodiesel than for petroleum diesel, and that the addition of biodiesel can facilitate the degradability of the petroleum diesel. I have found another example of the sugar statement, but again the source is a tertiary one. It also states that biodiesel biodegrades 4 times faster than petroleum diesel. This all has to be put in perspective though however - these are lab trials, not field studies, and may have little bearing on real world situations. In virtually all cases of oil spills (petroleum or vegetable), human intervention is required to facilitate bioremediation by the addition of a significant amount of nutrients (N,P,K, etc) and electron receptors (generally oxygen in some form). Biodiesel could sit and contaminate soil or waterways for years to decades in many cases, similar to petroleum diesel. However due to its non-toxic status, associated ecosystem health problems are significantly reduced. But the organic carbon load on the environment can induce significant problems such as decreasing oxygen concentrations in bodies of water (leadinging to loss of aquatic life), contaminating sensitive tissues of organisms (e.g. amphibians, birds, benthic organisms), contaminating aquifers and source waters, aesthetic problems, etc. So as you can see biodegradation is not as simple as it spills, it disappears "naturally". Halogenated 04:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Another meaning of biodiesel exists, which is the mixture of the fuel produced by transesterification of vegetable oils/animal fats and conventional petroleum based disel fuel or the diesel fuel (gasoil) fraction of petroleum. I shall alter the first sentence, to include this meaning or add an other statement as a second sentence, unless somebody objects, or does the job before me. LouisBB 16:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
This section should be moved. TDP does produce a product Biodiesel (by the given Wikipedia definition), though it doesn't produce Alkyl Esters. Thus, it should be listed as a type of Biodiesel, rather than being discussed in the feedstock section. As is, it's a bit out of place. E8 06:10, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
In the 'Applications' sections it is stated that biodiesel has better 'lubricity' than conventional diesel fuel. This statement, with its Ref 17 has to be checked. I have not managed to get access to the article. To my knowledge, the lubricity of the neat transesterification product is worse than that from petroleum source and an additive needs to be added to resolve the problem, otherwise it has to be used in (low concentration?) blends. If Ref 17 is confirmed is there a secondary evidence? LouisBB 09:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
But I just checked it again and it's very direct on the claim of improved lubricity. That term shows up probably 20 times in the document, including in the section heading "Biodiesel Improves Lubricity ". Specifically it gives:
Hello everybody, I have managed to see all the titles of the NREL review, but still have not managed to download any of the PDF files you mentioned.
However, I guess I have probably worked out where our differnces come from: My information comes from a time when the sulphur content of the diesel fuel was higher than today, namely late 70s, early 80s, so probably we are mixing apples with pears. With suppression of diesel fuel sulphur content by hydrogenation, which will also take out some of the other reactive compounds in the fuel (beneficial for boundary lubrication), the lubricity would become worse, so biodiesel might compare better against such fuels. The differences might be found there, but unfortunately I cannot get access to relevant literature you quote.
The lubricity measuring rig might either be a dedicated device which contacts two surfaces under load in the presence of the lubricant and measures the size of the wear trace optically, or measures the wear after a given period at strategic points in a lubricated piece of equipment such as a high pressure pump, which again may be optical or perhaps by the collection of wear debris; in both cases back to back against two fuels (presumed to be acting as lubricants) or a fuel with a reference lubricant. Of course other sorts of ingenious devices or ways of measurement are also possible.
If anybody finds out any direct citations/description of fuels and methods I shall be very interested. Thanks again. LouisBB ( talk) 15:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I managed to download the reference EB quoted above ( http://www.biodiesel.org/pdf_files/fuelfactsheets/Lubricity.PDF), (my modem is playing up) and indeed my suspicion was well founded. It is since around 1993 (when I retired !) that, due to environmental pressures about sulphur dioxide emissions, causing acid rain, the manufacture of severely hydrotreated diesel fuel has started in earnest, which caused the conventional diesel fuel lubricity to drop precipitously. It is easy to be better than abominable. Well, at least I got that sorted out for myself.
I have edited the article accordingly.
An erroneous remark in the same section talking about methanol catalyst which does not exists, has been removed.
It is interesting to see the figures of Stanadyne, quoted by the above report, claiming dramatic improvement by the addition of biodiesel to a hydrotreated conventional fuel even in small proportions. Right enough, the lubricity mesurement using the HFRR rig does shows a good improvement in these circumstances, but the benefit flattens out pretty quickly, in fact after 2% the improvement is pretty negligible. This gives me the suspicion, that it is not necessarily the ester fuel which does the boundary lubrication effect, but its impurities (like unreacted oil for intance) Vegetable and animal oils have been used for a long time (by the oil companies themselves) as lubricants/lubricating oil additives for difficult situations.
Thanks again LouisBB ( talk) 12:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Before I get into 3RR issues, I am pretty sure that www.evolvingenergies.net doesn't meet wp:links and should not be included. Please feel free to explain why a commercial links belongs here in talk before adding it again. Pharmboy ( talk) 15:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi - I made a couple of alterations, and should have put them into the "discussion" first, I think. The one was with a link to CSIRO about greenhouse gas savings, and one about supercritical method of production. Perhaps the first was better placed in the "Environmental Benefits" section, but I was responding to the "citation needed" about recycling carbon added during plant growth. I don't understand what citation is needed here, a citation that photosynthesis takes CO2 from the air and turns it into biomass? For the other, I can offer different links, for example from the Journal Energy and Fuels -Continuous production of biodiesel via transesterification from vegetable oils in supercritical methanol, Bunyakat, K et al. 2006, a web link: http://www.biodieselgear.com/documentation/Methanol_Super_Critical_Method.pdf or journal citation from which the information on th above link is taken (Methyl esterification of free fatty acids of rapeseed oil as treated in supercritical methanol, Kusdiana and Saka, Journal of Chemical Engineering in Japan, 2001, vol34 No.3 pp383-387 or several others, I just picked one which summarised the process, although not substantiated. Should I add it back with one of these links? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stainless316 ( talk • contribs) 16:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a part in the introductory section on heaters that states "However, thanks to its strong solvent power, burning biodiesel will increase the efficiency of your home heater." I don't understand this - how does solvent power improve efficiency? Could this sentence be clarified or removed, as it creates a bad impression in the opening section, in my opinion. Stainless316 ( talk) 12:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a big white space after the first small paragraph, which I don't think looks very good. This could be removed by left justifying the diesel prices picture. ALso what is the procedure - if nobody posts a reply saying No! after a while, am I ok to just make the change? or should I just make a change anyway, and see if anyone undoes it? Thanks for information. Stainless316 ( talk) 13:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Comments have been added to the page regarding the Ford Focus. This statement is problematic, as no vehicle should require "conversion" to Biodiesel. Secondly, the recent addition regarding sales numbers is unsupported. The comment will be deleted if no citations are added. E8 ( talk) 01:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I am not any expert on this sort of thing, so I would not edit the page myself, but shouldn't algae be mentioned as a potential source for biodiesel?
There is a project page with some estimates related to production / location / economic viability at the University of New Hampshire:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
Sorry, I am not registered, so I dodn't have a nick. I should register. What do you need help with? I would liek to learn more about biodiesel, since I am trying to get the local .gov to look into it...
Call me jpg (I will go register, I guess...)
I think there should at least be a seperate section on algal Biodiesel and the Aquatic Species program if not a seperate page. It is important to mention (UNH doesn't), that the aquatic species program involved feeding the algae CO2. Anyway If I don't hear back I will start a page on the aquatic species program.-- 63.206.118.188 04:00, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I participated a discussion on this topic on sci.energy recently. Lots of points were discuted, and here is a summary :
The section on algae indicates that it would be possible to produce 95,000 Litres/hectare of biodiesel per year vs. 5,800 Litres/hectare for Palm Oil the next most productive source. This simply is not possible due to the amount of sunlight energy available and limitations on the efficiency of photosynthesis.
I believe that Algae farms will yield significantly more than Palm, and that this could be one of the most significant developments for solving the problem of declining oil supplies and CO2 emissions. However it is important to be objective about the prospects.
The 95,000 figure seems to be implicit in one of the references: http://oakhavenpc.org/cultivating_algae.htm where the author referring to the Aquatic Species Close Out Report ( http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf) states that one of the conclusions was that: "One quad (10^15 BTU or 7.5 billion gal.) of biodiesel could be produced on 200,000 ha of desert land". In fact no where in the report does it imply these numbers. One of the conclusions of the ASP report was that the price of land particularly in the US South West would not be an issue and that the limiting factor would be the cost of setting up the farms and running them.
The 10^15 BTU per 200,000 ha implies 5 billion BTU per ha per year = 5,275,276 mega joules per ha per year = 5,275 mega joules per square meter per year. This is 1465.35 kilowatt hours per square meter per year.
The economics of solar power are well understood. In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics we have a table: Kilowatt-hours per peak kilowatts per year at various locations. The highest value given anywhere is 2,410. At that location, 1465.35 kilowatt hours per square meter per year implies a peak solar energy capture of 608.03 watts per square meter. In photovoltaics we usually assume the peak power from the SUN is 1,000 watts per square meter, so this would imply an energy capture efficiency of 60.8%. This is not credible for reasons I will outline shortly.
Before doing so I should point out that the peak power from the SUN is actually about 1,300 watts per square meter. The reason we use 1,000 in Photovoltaics is that we assume the solar panels are at a fixed orientation. They will only reach their peak in March and September, at other times they will not be face on at midday and this lowers the average daily peak.
Also note that the shadow area or footprint of a tilted solar array is greater than the area exposed to the SUN. This reduces the power yield by the Cosine of the given latitude.
Now about that 60.8% efficiency: most solar cells are rated at 12% or less. The theoretical maximum efficiency is about 70%, so 60.8% would be truly remarkable if it were true. The number is however unreasonable.
See http://www.upei.ca/~physics/p261/Content/Sources_Conversion/Photo-_synthesis/photo-_synthesis.htm.
I quote: "At least eight photons are required to store one molecule of CO2 which means 1665 kJ of light energy are required to store 477 kJ in the plant. This issue alone gives a maximum efficiency of 0.286 or 28.6%. Additionally only light in the range 400-700 nm can be used (in photosynthesis). This amounts to 43% of total solar incident radiation. Combining these two factors means that the solar efficiency cannot exceed 12.23%".
They then go on to take into account two other factors that limit solar efficiency in plants: Respiration losses and Canopy losses. This implies plants at best will achieve an efficiency of 6.6%. Very likely these two factors do not apply to algae. One of the biggest losses during respiration is a reaction between oxygen and RuBisCO that releases some of the captured energy. Since algae farms proposed will use flue gasses rich in CO2 and depleted in oxygen, the effect will be much less, but will still be a problem since the algae will be releasing oxygen into the gas feed.
If we assume that an algae farm can achieve a solar energy capture efficiency of 12.23% this would reduce the yield of oil from 95,000 Litres/hectare per year to 19,109 Litres/hectare per year, and this would only be attainable near the equator.
As an aside, the stated value for Palm oil 5,800 Litres/hectare per year implies a solar efficiency of 3.71% assuming we are again talking about an equatorial farm, this is within range of 6.6%. Differences could be attributed to various factors. Only desert regions have high Kilowatt-hours per peak kilowatts per year, typical locations where Palms grow tend to be cloudy. Also Palms like other plants close their stomata to limit water loss through evaporation, particularly when there has been no rain. This limits input of CO2 and reduces photosynthesis.
Conclusion: I think we need to reduce the 95,000 Litres/hectare per year to 19,109 Litres/hectare per year for equatorial based algae farms. There are no real references cases, although the GreenFuel trail at Redhawk may provide some numbers in 2007.
I also think that reference cases need to take into account latitude, perhaps showing an actual as well as a normalised yield, and the Kilowatt-hours per peak kilowatts per year at the location of the reference, again factored into the normalised yield.
bi-ker-shi
Taxman, I have not requested rights to edit the page, and I don’t think I am appropriate person to do so. I am an investment banker, my skills are in numerical analysis, and I simply could have not written the original page as I do not have the immediate knowledge of all of those aspects on biodiesel.
My concern is however that the number you quoted for algal biodiesel at 95,000 liters / ha / year simply did not add up. It used to be that wikipedia users when they spotted errors could simply correct them, but it seems those days have long since gone.
Precisely who is it who claims the 95,000 figure? Even if it was derived from a quoted reference, readers will view the fact that wikipedia decided to publish it as wikipedia adding their reputation to that of the quoted publisher. If there is no link to any quoted source, then readers will view this as a situation where wikipedia are staking their reputation on the number.
You seem to imply that the number came from a UNH article, yet I cannot find this in either of the two UNH articles: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html and http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/pdf/algae_salton_sea.pdf and so I attribute the claim to wikipedia alone.
The only reference I can find anywhere where a practical test has been done to determine the yield of CO2 fed algae is in http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/biodiesel_from_algae.pdf. This was an article looking back on the aquatic species program, and they state that in relation to real tests conducted in Hawaii and New Mexico: “Single day productivities reported over the course of one year were as high as 50 grams of algae per square meter per day, a long-term target for the program”.
If we convert this number as follows: 50 grams of algae per square meter per day = 18.2625 kilograms per square meter per year = 18.2625 metric tons per hectare per year. Now assuming 1191.17 liters of biomass per metric ton of biomass (density = 0.84 grams per cc), we get 21,753.68 liters of biomass per hectare per year. This is not out of line with my calculations involving photosynthesis efficiency and available sunlight.
Perhaps you got your numbers from the second UNH article where on page 4 in relation to setting up an algae farm to provide biomass to fuel a power station they state: “Assuming an average productivity of 33 g/m2/day, or 120 mt/ha/yr (a lower productivity than assumed in some studies) …”. The 120 mt/ha-yr is roughly equivalent to 142,940 liters biomass/ha/year, and maybe you calculated 95,000 liters of biodiesel could be extracted?
Can you spot the mathematical error?
33 g/m2/day = 12,053.25 g/m2/year = 12.05325 kg/m2/year = 12,053 kg/ha/year = 12.05 mt/ha/yr (not 120 mt/ha-yr). It would seem UNH are out by a factor of 10.
This article presented a pessimistic view on the economics of using the algal biomass as a feedstock for a local power station. They determined that the biomass electricity would cost 2-3 times more than fossil fuel electricity. Consequently I believe this article received a lot less peer review than it would have if it had presented an optimistic view.
In my view, using biomass to generate electricity is a particularly stupid idea given that the existing thermal power stations have efficiencies of about 30%. If you combine this with the low efficiencies of solar energy capture evidenced in energy crops so far, the possibility seems somewhat remote. Using biomass, particularly algae, to produce transportation fuels does however look promising.
While you are looking into your 95,000 liters/ha/year number, you might like to also look at the following reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#_note-BiodieselFromAlgae; where you estimate 5,000 to 20,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre, per year. This equates to 46,769.78 to 187,079.13 liters per hectare per year, and again there is no reference to track the quoted figure and again way too optimistic.
You might also like to review the following links where your claims are being discussed externally:
Arizona Utility Recycles Smokestack Exhaust to make Biofuel ( http://technocrat.net/d/2006/12/23/12545 )
Kind Regards
bi-ker-shi
Ooops looks like I dropped a naught in my calculations, how embarrassing. At least your readers won’t know the voice behind Mr. Ed. My problem is that I am not familiar with hectares and was using 1000 m2 per hectare not 10,000.
Reworking some of my previous calculations:
The 10^15 BTU per 200,000 ha implies 5 billion BTU per ha per year = 5,275,276 mega joules per ha per year = 527.5 mega joules per square meter per year. This is 146.535 kilowatt hours per square meter per year. This implies an energy capture efficiency of 6.08% not 60.8%
So it seems that 95,000 liters/ha/year of biodiesel is indeed quite reasonable as 6.08% is within the limits set by the efficiency of photosynthesis.
Another place where I made the same mistake in relation to the Salton Sea:
33 g/m2/day = 12,053.25 g/m2/year = 12.05325 kg/m2/year = 120,530 kg/ha/year = 120.5 mt/ha/yr UNH were correct, my apologies.
I still think the main page could do with some improvement as it is very hard to track where the numbers are coming from, and the fact that in the case of algae, the yields still need to be proven. User: bi-ker-shi
Hi everyone,
I found the original sentence shown below a little confusing:
Due to government subsidization, Biodiesel is generally more expensive to purchase than petroleum diesel, although this differential may diminish due to economies of scale, the rising cost of petroleum, and legislation favoring the use of Biodiesel.
I altered it slightly and added an endnote to give an example of direct subsidies being applied to biodiesel (as opposed to indirect ones like general farm subsidies) to make it a little more clear, balanced, and accurate:
Biodiesel is generally more expensive to purchase than petroleum diesel, although this differential may diminish due to economies of scale, the rising cost of petroleum, and government subsidization favoring the use of biodiesel.
Sarann 04:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I was altering what is now ref 28 to a citation format (instead of URL link). I checked the precious chicken fat link (No. 25), and it was not working - is this permanent broken link? ALso, the three references (25, 28 and 29) seem to come from the same press release, published in three different places - is there a protocol here to replace all the links by one? Is this sufficient verification? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stainless316 ( talk • contribs) 12:15, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
There is a link to Thermal depolymerisation in the opening section which I do not think is justified. I have posted some comments on the thermal deplymerisation talk page (lack of references), but basically this is not (yet?) a process of sufficient scale or with sufficient independent verification to be included as a prominent link from here. Biodiesel is a fact and is produced on a large scale. Thermal depolymerisation is not, and this link from here seems to suggest that it is of similar nature and importance to biodiesel. Stainless316 ( talk) 12:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I think the lead section is too long, and contains some detailed information better suited to the main body. I think the main areas to be covered are what is biodiesel, where does it come from, what are the environmental issues and where can it be used. I have attempted a first draft of a shorter intro, pasted below, without the diagrams for brevity (I think they can stay in the article). What do you think? Am I going about this the right way?
Biodiesel refers to a diesel-equivalent processed fuel consisting of short chain alkyl ( methyl or ethyl) esters, made by transesterification of vegetable oils or animal fats, which can be used (alone, or blended with conventional diesel fuel) in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles.
Biodiesel is distinguished from the
straight vegetable oils (SVO) or
waste vegetable oils (WVO) used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some diesel vehicles.
Biodiesel is biodegradable, non- toxic and may produce less greenhouse gas than petroleum based fuel. There is some debate over the size of the greenhouse gas reduction, and this will depend on the choice of feedstock. Recent studies indicate that 60% reduction in net-lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions when compared to petroleum diesel are realistic, and reductions in emissions of smog forming hydrocarbon are 65% less, although the Nitrogen Oxide emissions are about 10% greater than those from petroleum-based diesel. [1] [2]. However, this estimate does not consider land conversion, where natural land is converted to agricultural use. Greenhouse gas emissions could be significantly increased if vegetable oil is sourced from new plantations [3]. There is also concern that using land to grow non-food crops will push up food prices. Biodiesel can be made from almost any oil or fat. Currently vegetable oil is the most common feedstock, but algae could provide a useful source whilst allaying some of the environmental concerns.
Some vehicle manufacturers are positive about the use of biodiesel, citing lower engine wear as one of the fuel's benefits, while others are more cautious. In the UK many only maintain their engine warranties for use with maximum 5% biodiesel — blended in with 95% conventional diesel — although this position is generally considered to be overly cautious. [4], with some manufacturers allowing 100% biodiesel. [5] [6]. Most manufacturers release lists of the cars that will run on 100% biodiesel. [7]
The British businessman Richard Branson's Virgin Voyager train, number 220007 Thames Voyager [8] was converted to run on biodiesel, although an adverse effect occurred when it was proven to reduce reliability and to raise costs of maintenance significantly. Biodiesel can also be used as a heating fuel in domestic and commercial boilers.
Biodiesel can be distributed using today's infrastructure, and its use and production are increasing rapidly. Fuel stations are beginning to make biodiesel available to consumers, and a growing number of transport fleets use it as an additive in their fuel. Biodiesel is generally more expensive to purchase than petroleum diesel but this differential may diminish due to economies of scale, the rising cost of petroleum and government tax subsidies. Stainless316 ( talk) 18:19, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Biodiesel quality is regulated by international standards (insert reference) and has slightly different physical properties to petro diesel (reference). Minor modification of engines or burners may need to be made if switching to biodiesel. Some vehicle manufacturers are positive about the use of biodiesel, citing lower engine wear as one of the fuel's benefits, while others are more cautious. In the UK many only maintain their engine warranties for use with maximum 5% biodiesel — blended in with 95% conventional diesel — although this position is generally considered to be overly cautious. [9], with some manufacturers allowing 100% biodiesel. [10] [11]. Most manufacturers release lists of the cars that will run on 100% biodiesel. [12] Biodiesel has also been used on a diesel locomotive [13] and as a heating fuel for domestic and commercial boilers (reference). Stainless316 ( talk) 12:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Biodiesel refers to a diesel-equivalent processed fuel consisting of short chain alkyl ( methyl or ethyl) esters, made by transesterification of vegetable oils or animal fats, which can be used (alone, or blended with conventional diesel fuel) in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles.
Biodiesel is distinguished from the
straight vegetable oils (SVO) or
waste vegetable oils (WVO) used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some diesel vehicles.
Biodiesel is biodegradable, non- toxic and may produce less greenhouse gas than petroleum based fuel. There is some debate over the size of the greenhouse gas reduction, and this will depend on the choice of feedstock. Recent studies indicate that 60% reduction in net-lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions when compared to petroleum diesel are realistic, and reductions in emissions of smog forming hydrocarbon are 65% less, although the Nitrogen Oxide emissions are about 10% greater than those from petroleum-based diesel. [14] [15]. However, this estimate does not consider land conversion, where natural land is converted to agricultural use. Greenhouse gas emissions could be significantly increased if vegetable oil is sourced from new plantations [16]. There is also concern that using land to grow non-food crops will push up food prices. Biodiesel can be made from almost any oil or fat. Currently vegetable oil is the most common feedstock, but algae could provide a useful source whilst allaying some of the environmental concerns.
Biodiesel quality is regulated by international standards and it has slightly different physical properties to petro diesel. Minor modification of engines or burners may need to be made if switching to 100% biodiesel. Some vehicle manufacturers are positive about the use of biodiesel, citing lower engine wear as one of the fuel's benefits, while others are more cautious, with between 5% and 100% allowed by different manufacturers. Most manufacturers release lists of the cars that will run on 100% biodiesel. Biodiesel has also been used on a diesel locomotive and as a heating fuel for domestic and commercial boilers.
I suggest include a link to the BdPedia.com - The Biodiesel WWW Encyclopedia , so the user can read more encyclopedic content about this biofuel. -- Mac ( talk) 07:04, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The London accord has published what looks like a sober economic analysis of biofuels (definitely not a sales pitch!) I'd like a link to this... any problems with this?
Economic Analysis of biofuels for the London Accord. Mike Young ( talk) 11:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Came to this article trying to find the difference, can someone who knows put it in? Mentioned in this document [8] Mike Young ( talk) 09:56, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Edit 1: Following from my comments on the "chicken fat" links, earlier, I have had a further look at the section on feedstocks. The link for ref25 is named "chickenfat" and used twice, but it doesn't work for me. It is also first used in an innappropriate place. Later on there is a link (ref 28) by the same author about the same thing, so I propose to delete the current "chickenfat" reference and replace it with the current ref 28. I will also remove the first use as it is talking about Jatropha, not chicken fat.
Edit 2: Ref 26 is an article aboput Minnesota farmers, and is out of place where it is. I propose to remove it.
Edit 3: The feedstock of "sewage" is not really correct, as this is actually algea grown in sewage ponds. The feedstock is therefore algae, which is already mentioned. I propose to delete this part. The reference is used elsewhere, so I will make sure the reference is kept for where it is properly used.
Edit 4: The paragraph about photosynthesis is misplaced. It is actually about environmental benefits. There has been some discussion about the need for citations, which seems to be resolved, but it is still in the wrong place. I propose moving this paragraph, with slight alteration, to the beginning of the "Environmental benefits" section, where it can serve as a quick overview as to why biodiesel in principle reduces greenhouse gasses. I don't think 1 and 2 will cause any problems, so I will get on with them soon. 3 and 4 may be a bit more contentious, so I will wait a while before making these edits, bit will do them if there is no adverse comment. Stainless316 ( talk) 12:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I am working on a restructure of the article at User:Mike Young/Sandbox2. Please feel free to comment or even help out. I haven't removed anything, but have shuffled it about. Mike Young ( talk) 23:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
The selection of links is clearly biased in favor of biodiesel. I recommend the addition of
- an excellent critical article. -- 88.73.70.13 15:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
This article is just crazy in places. For example, anything related to the safe use of biodiesel in particular is just assinine. Who the hell is some anonymous guy on Wikipedia to tell a person with a diesel vehicle that his or her seals should have been replaced long ago? Furthermore, since when is volkswagen an independant firm? Since it's established earlier in the article that volkswagen is one of the few companies whose motors generally are capable of running B100, it seems to me that they'd have a very good reason to have a bias, just as the petrol companies do. Could someone with all the facts remove some of the bias and creeping POV? 204.112.165.3 03:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
US DoE made a study on biodiesel from algae, here is the report : www.eere.energy.gov/biomass/ pdfs/biodiesel_from_algae.pdf
see also : http://www.masshightech.com/displayarticledetail.asp?Art_ID=69103
hope it will help Raminagrobis
In "Rudolf Diesel: Pioneer of the Age of Power" by Nitske & Wilson it states on p. 139 "At the Paris exposition of 1900, a Diesel engine, built by the French Otto Company ran wholly on peanut oil."
Diesel is quoted in the paper "Historical perspectives on vegetable oil-based diesel fuels" - http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/reportsdatabase/reports/gen/20011101_gen-346.pdf- '...at the Paris Exhibition in 1900 there was shown by the Otto Company a small Diesel engine, which, at the request of the French Government, ran on Arachide (earth-nut or pea-nut) oil, and worked so smoothly that only very few people were aware of it."
Also despite the fact that the engine designed by Rudolf Diesel won the "grand prix" 4 of the 5 diesel engines were of French manufacture. "Rudolf Diesel: Pioneer of the Age of Power" by Nitske & Wilson it states on p. 166 "Interestingly, four of the five models exhibited had been built by the French-owned and engineered Bar-le-Duc corporation."
The insinuation of the article is that R. Diesel won the prize and did it with peanut oil. That is not true. Engines of his patent won and were run on peanut oil, but R. Diesel was not responsible for the peanut oil.
P.S. My personal blog about making biodesel http://www.wvofuels.com/ is both about biodiesel and high quality! If I can get a second I'll resubmit it.
There is a seemingly comprehensive chart in the article that shows which VW models are capable of running on neat biodiesel, but it has no citation. Considering that it seems to give stats that directly contradict VW, I would really like to see some attribution.
In america, VW says that B5 is the maximum blend acceptable and that this is only true for B5 that is sold commercially. http://www.vw.com/vwcom/content/objects/pdf/service_maint/BIODIESEL_ENG.pdf Christopher 22:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
This chart was added on Dec. 22 by Rnt20. I put a note on his user page asking where it came from. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Biodiesel&oldid=95892791 Christopher 16:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi,
I am happy for this chart to be (re)moved. I only put it on the Wikipedia page because:
Here is the text of the email:
Sehr geehrter Herr Dr. Tubbs,
vielen Dank fuer Ihre Anfrage.
Das oben genannte Fahrzeug ist fuer den Betrieb mit Kraftstoff nach der EN 14214 (Biodiesel) freigegeben. Die Normung EN 14214 ersetzt die bisherigen Normen DIN E 51 606 und DIN V 51 606.
Sollte es dennoch zu Schwierigkeiten am Kraftstofffilter und am Einspritzsystem kommen, obwohl Sie diese Hinweise und Vorgaben eingehalten haben, ist mangelnde Qualitaet des Kraftstoffes die Ursache.
Wir empfehlen Ihnen, sich vor dem Betanken zu vergewissern, dass die Normung EN 14214 an der Zapfsaeule genannt wird.
Wurde nachtraeglich eine Standheizung in Ihrem Fahrzeug eingebaut, informieren Sie sich bitte beim Zulieferer des Geraetes ueber die Vertraeglichkeit mit Biodiesel.
Wir hoffen, dass Ihnen diese Informationen weiterhelfen.
Mit freundlichen Gruessen
i.V. Bernd Schmitter i.V. Katja Schott
Volkswagen AG 38436 Wolfsburg Tel +49 (0) 800 8655792436 Fax +49 (0) 800 3298655792436 Mail to kundenbetreuung@volkswagen.de Homepage http://www.volkswagen.de
And here is the text pasted (messily!) from the PDF document attached to the email
Diese Auflistung umfasst alle Volkswagen PKW, die mit Biodiesel (RME) betrieben werden können bzw. für die ein Nachrüstsatz für den Betrieb mit RME zur Verfügung steht. 0RGHOO 6HULHQPl‰LJ�ELRGLHVHOWDXJOLFK 1DFKUVWP|JOLFKNHLWHQ Fox nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Lupo/Lupo 3L alle - New Beetle/ New Beetle Cabriolet alle - Polo Typ 6N alle Ausnahme: Post Polo - nicht vorgesehen Polo Classic Polo Variant alle - Polo Typ 9N alle - Golf/Vento Typ 1HX0 Typ 1H ab Modelljahr '96 (auch TDI) alle ab Modelljahr '92 (außer TDI) Nachrüstsatz Limousine 1H0 298 215 Nachrüstsatz Variant 1H9 298 215 Golf Ecomatic Typ 1HX0 ab Fahrgestell-Nr. 1HRP491791 bis Fahrgestell-Nr. 1HRP491790 Nachrüstsatz 1H0 298 215 Golf/Bora Typ 1J alle - Touran nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Jetta 1KM nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Golf V/Golf Plus Typ 1K / Typ 1KP serienmäßig nicht biodieseltauglich, als Sonderausstattung (PR-Nr. 2G0) wird für den Golf V und den Golf Plus ein Biodieselpaket angeboten nicht vorgesehen Passat Typ 35I ab Modelljahr '96 (auch TDI) Limousine/Variant ab Fg.-Nr. 31PE240001 31PB240001 Nachrüstsatz 3A0 298 215 Passat Typ 3B/3BG alle, $XVQDKPH��3DVVDW�����7',�'3) nicht vorgesehen Passat Typ 3C nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Sharan ab Modelljahr 1997 nicht vorgesehen Phaeton Fz mit DPF nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Touareg Fz mit DPF nicht biodieseltauglich nicht vorgesehen Caddy Typ 9K Wirbelkammer und SDI ab Produktionsdatum KW 23/96 nicht vorgesehen · Die zehnte Stelle der Fahrgestell-Nummer gibt das Modelljahr an: zum Beispiel T = 1996, V = 1997, W = 1998, X = 1999 oder Y = 2000. · Der RME-Kraftstoff muss der DIN EN 14 214 (FAME) entsprechen. · Bei Betrieb mit RME-Kraftstoff müssen zusätzliche Wartungsarbeiten durchgeführt werden. · Beachten Sie bitte die Hinweise in der Bedienungsanleitung zum Betrieb mit RME. ,KUH�9RONVZDJHQ�.XQGHQEHWUHXXQJ
The article seems imbalanced about fossil fuel usage. Of course, supporters claim a positive energy balance. They always do. But what do critics claim, about the units of energy of fossil fuels used in various places and approaches per unit of biofuel energy produced? - 69.87.200.84 23:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
There are two primary problems with this page. Firstly, there is a strong neutrality issue with how the article has been written. It is plainly obvious that a large amount of this page has been written by individuals focussed largely on the benefits of biodiesel and little about the drawbacks comparatively. This has led to the second issue, which is that with questionable citations. Many of these citations are 3rd-hand, come from energy consultants and personal websites, and stray from the original point of the article in some cases. Some are plain wrong.
Here is a good example:
"Furthermore, otherwise unused desert land (which receives high solar radiation) could be most effective for growing the algae, and the algae could utilize farm waste and excess CO2 from factories to help speed the growth of the algae".[ [9]]
The citation opens up with some diatribe about terrorism and human rights issues related to the middle-east. This is not a solid citation people!!! I don't care if the guy is from a university, it does not necessarily legitamise the work. Especially when in reference to the above claims the website states:
"Building the ponds in deserts also leads to problems of high evaporation rates. There are solutions to these problems, but for the purpose of this paper, we will focus instead on the potential such ponds can promise, ignoring for the moment the methods of addressing the solvable challenges remaining when the Aquatic Species Program at NREL ended."
This is crap. You don't write a paper and state that we won't worry about the problems, they're solvable, lets just focus on what we want to talk about. These guys are consultants. They write what their clients want to hear to sell their idea. This is not science, it's business.
Here is another example: "Furthermore, otherwise unused desert land (which receives high solar radiation) could be most effective for growing the algae, and the algae could utilize farm waste and excess CO2 from factories to help speed the growth of the algae."
Okay. Except how many factories and farms are out in the desert currently? Where will the water come from to grow the algae? The fertiliser? How will contaminants be kept out? None of these very pertinent points are addressed.
I understand many people are very enthusiatic about some of the possibilities regarding biodiesel, but in the excitement people are ignoring and/or downplaying some very blatant issues, such as the fact that there is no possibility of a switch to a biodiesel energy economy based on a lack of sufficient arable land to meet even a fraction of the world's need. The reference for promotion of the use of algae [ [10]] actually provides a dissuading analysis of the use of algae, and was misinterpreted by the person using it by picking out some values without apparently reading over the article itself that discusses how the figures are not realistic. I will follow up on this later, with an in-depth examination of the article and provide any necessary corrections.
One other line that struck me from this article. This is a quote from the website [ [11]]
"When straw was left in the field, biodiesel production was strongly energy positive, yielding 1 GJ biodiesel for every 0.561 GJ of energy input (a yield/cost ratio of 1.78). When straw was burned as fuel and oilseed rapemeal was used as a fertilizer, the yield/cost ratio for biodiesel production was even better (3.71). In other words, for every unit of energy input to produce biodiesel, the output was 3.71 units (the difference of 2.71 units would be from solar energy). "
So what this says is that it actually makes much more sense to just burn the biomass for fuel period. The energy wasted processing the oil from the seed could be instead used to produce electricity, and save a significant amount of wasted fuel. This should be noted on the biodiesel page. Obviously the idea is to produce a readily substitutable fuel for current infrastructure, but it makes more sense envrionmentally to not make biodiesel in the long run!
Halogenated 22:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
{{ Expert-subject}}
The intro is like this: "Biodiesel refers to a non-petroleum-based diesel fuel consisting of short chain alkyl ( methyl or ethyl) esters, typically made by transesterification of vegetable oils or animal fats, which can be used (alone, or blended with conventional diesel fuel) in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles. Biodiesel is distinguished from the straight vegetable oils (SVO) or waste vegetable oils (WVO) used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some diesel vehicles. "Biodiesel" is standardized as methyl ester and other non-diesel fuels of biological origin are not included...."
I added the word "typically" to the intro, since
E8 has reverted out the word "typically" a couple of times and is clearly of the opinion that other biologically derived fuels that can be burned in unmodified diesel engines and meet standards are not worthy of the term biodiesel even though his cited reference does not support that position.
I'm thinking NPOV is on my side on this one.
-- Treekids ( talk) 01:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, you clearly were fine with most of my changes- I think the article is better now.
On this topic, namely the use of typically, I guess we come out on the same side. You concede that transeterification is only the major commercial source of biodiesel and thus by implication that there may be other ways. Fine. We agree violently. And wikipedia is better. (In spite of some of the changes I thought were uncontroversial turned out not to be so). -- Treekids ( talk) 02:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
There is a bit at the end of the feedstock section comparing total current US use of diesel with current vegetable oil and animal fat production. Looking at all the units and millions and billions is a bit confusing, I find. Anybody object if I change 190 billion litres to 190 million tonnes (or 161 million tonnes assuming density of 0.85)? That would put all the 3 figures (current diesel use, veg. oil and animal fat) in the same unit (tonnes) and allow instant comparison. I would keep the US unit in brackets. The value of 50 biliion US gallons looks like an approximation, so the error would be not significant, but maybe expressing oil use in weight rather than volume terms would be offensive to some? Stainless316 ( talk) 14:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
I have drafted a feedstock section below at the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stainless316/sandbox5
Any comments welcome. I think it makes clear just how much oil needs to be produced to replace petrodiesel at current useage, and puts it in terms that can be understood - all those millions and billions are hard to follow. Stainless316 ( talk) 16:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The UK government on Page 130 here says diesel has an emissions factor of 0.086 kgCO2e/MJ fuel.
Carbon and Sustainability Reporting Within the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation
The US government says on page 19(or 45 according to acrobat reader) that normal diesel produces 633.28 g CO2/bhp-h
Life Cycle Inventory of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus
Now my unit converter [12] says there are 2.68452 MJ in a horsepower hour.
so the UK government says 0.086*1000*2.68452 = 230 g Co2/bhp-h and the US says 633
So the US and the UK don't agree on the NORMAL diesel Co2 footprint, yet alone the biodiesel.
Help!!! Which of these is right?
This may be the reason the UK thinks that Biodiesels have about 70% the footprint of normal diesel and the US thinks it's 17%. They disagree on the footprint of normal diesel !!
Answers please!
Mike Young (
talk) 22:38, 20 February 2008 (UTC)on
OK, a few more thoughts on the C02 problem.
Let's check the UK calculation.
The UK says it's 0.086 kg CO2 produced per MJ
We also have an energy density of 43.1 MJ per Kg
so we get 0.086 * 43.1 = 3760g CO2 per Kg diesel = 3.706 kg CO2 per kg Diesel
Check the US calculation
The US says it's 633/2.68452 = 235.793 g Co2/MJ Multiply by the (uk) energy density and we get 236.2* 43.1 = 10162 g = 10.162 kg Co2 per Kg diesel
Calculation by simple chemistry
Assuming a formula of C12H23 for Diesel Fuel. Let's calculate what % weight of diesel fuel ends up as CO2.
12*12(atomic weight Carbon) = 144
23*1(Atomic weight Hydrogen) = 23
So diesel is 144/167 Carbon
144/167=0.862275449
so 86% of weight of diesel is Carbon that ends up as atmospheric C02
so for 1 kilo 860g of Carbon is changed into CO2
Atomic weight of Oxygen is 16 and Carbon is 12: So we get
862 g of carbon produces 862*(16+16+12)/12 = 3160.666667 g of CO2 or 3.16 kg CO2 per kg Diesel
Extending
3.16 kg Co2 per kg
But diesel has a density of 0.89 kg/litre
So Diesel produces 2.812993363 kg CO2 per litre
But there are 3.785 litres in a (US) gallon so 2.812 * 3.785 = 10.64 kg CO2 per (US) gallon Close to the 10.1 stated at the start!
This is closer to the UK value than the US Mike Young ( talk) 21:59, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
More proposals. There are a few sections at the beginning describing different uses / applications (cars, trains etc.), then later a section on applications. This is duplication. I propose to put the "applications" section near the beginning, with all the different uses as sub-sections. It would be useful if the "description" section were before this, as this includes the "B" nomenclature, which could be used for all the subsequent sections. Some of the detail I will remove, for example the data about UK heating oil being 1.5 million tonnes, requiring 330000 hectares - I calculate that as 500gpa, which seems a bit high compared to the yields described later. A section on differences from petrodiesel would also be useful near the start. This should include the different solvent properties, gelpoint, water contamination etc, which are refered to in the application sections.
So, the contents table would look like this:
1. Origin
2. Description
3. Differences from petrodiesel
4. Applications
5. Distribution
6. Historical Background
7. Technical Standards etc as before
Any comments? Stainless316 ( talk) 15:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Good idea to remove the weird stuff at the start, but the article must try to give something simple for the layman, rather than diving into chemical detail. I'd vote for the following major headings:
probably in something like that order, with everything else as a sub article. Pull off some stuff into seperate articles. Mike Young ( talk) 23:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
As wikipedia becomes a powerful informational tool for public information, more and more "consumers" look to it for basic information before they make important purchasing decisions. A strong "vehicular use and manufacturer acceptance" section would assist potential biodiesel users in making decisions about whether to consider purchasing diesel vehicles and then whether to use the fuel (blends or 100%). Do any of you out there know of a website that monitors changing manufacturer attitude about biodiesel. My concern is that most printed materials become outdated quickly... Perhaps a link to a reputable site would help potential users know what is currently happening in the "warranty" world... deanzateacherman ( talk) 18:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi. I think calling things that are 95% and 80% petroleum "biodiesel" is confusing to the point of greenwashing. One person said "you wouldn't tolerate it if your orange juice was 80% toxic." Let's have some clarity and consistency here. -- Treekids ( talk) 23:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
We have gone from long and rambling to over concise, in my opinion. The wp:lead section describes it thus: The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should establish context, summarize the most important points, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describe its notable controversies, if there are any. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic according to reliable, published sources. The lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at but not explaining important facts that will appear later in the article. It should contain up to four paragraphs, should be carefully sourced as appropriate, and should be written in a clear, accessible style so as to invite a reading of the full article. I think it fitted this description before, and is now too short. Some tweaking could no doubt improve it. Stainless316 ( talk) 11:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
As author of above section I can't but agree. But these things can grow rapidly, as people add their bits and pieces. Think of what I've put more as a placeholder. 90% of intro paras are too big, rather than too small, so don't be afraid to add stuff. Mike Young ( talk) 14:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
The 1998 study "US Life Cycle inventory of of Biodiesel and Petrolioum Diesel for use in an Urban Bus" [13] has often been quoted in this article. This is a detailed study that contains many useful calculations. However it does contain an error, and some of the conclusions that it makes are dependant on this error. The error occurs on page 211 to 220 in the calculations of the Life Cycle Energy Demand and the Life Cycle Emissions of CO2. The actual omission is that the calculations on these pages use data for energy and Carbon produced earlier in the report in generating a Tonne of Soy Beans and apply that to a Tonne of Soy Bean Oil. 1 kg of Soy Beans will only produce about 170g of Soy Bean Oil. This means that the study has underestimated the cost of producing Biodiesel at the beginning of the chain by a factor of over 5. This is why the study's conclusions (e.g. that Biodiesel reduces the Carbon by 78%) are at variance with many other studies. I have therefore removed these references Mike Young ( talk) 22:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I have just spent some time looking at the different conclusions about Carbon Intensity published by two government departments, Carbon and Sustainability Reporting Within the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation by the UK Department of Transport (UKDoT) and Life Cycle Inventory of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus by the US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Energy (USDoADoE).
Both of these studies attempt to generate the Carbon Intensity of US Soy bean Biodiesel, but they come to remarkably different conclusions, with the UK study showing that the Fossil fuel intensity is about (58-3)/86 = 64% (i.e using B100 produces 64% the net carbon of fossil fuels) and the US study saying it is 17%.
The studies are supposed to go through essentially the same calculations, but come to radically different conclusions. I was determined to find out why this was. Fortunately as I could look at the two independant studies side by side, this enabled me to highlight the differences and find the mistakes. This was not a particularly easy job, as the two studies used different units, and there was a lot of conversions between one data value and another that had to take place.
The differences were:
1)Different data values: The UK figures are probably less accurate than the US here, as they are deliberately "pessimistic". This is because they are designed to encourage producers to calculate the actual energy used in the processing of the Biodiesel. Relatively high "default values" have been used in the hope that producers will provide data for actual usage which will be lower. As biodiesel with a low footprint collects greater subsidies, the default values are designed to encourage producers to actually calculate and report the fuel used in production, rather than relying on the less than generous "default values". So we would expect the US data values to be somewhat lower than the UK "default" values. This is true. We would also expect the US figures to be more accurate.
2)Differing Assumptions. Some calculations take some things into account that others do not. The major difference here is that the UK studies take into account the penality for the change in land use, but also the benefit for the production of biproducts. In the case of the US Soybean, these values are +25 g CO2/MJ penalty for land use change and -41 g CO2/MJ benefit for the use of biproduct (Soy meal used as cattle feed). Thus the differing assumptions should make the UK figures better than the US.
3)Mistakes in Calculations. The UK study is much better at actually showing its working, (as it is hoping that biodiesel producers will actually go through similar calculations themselves). The US study performs a lot more calculations but uses an especially odd method of aggregating the total CO2. When comparing the UK and US calculatons, I think the US calculation is just plain wrong here. Using the (simpler) UK method of calculation with the US data and assumptions yields figures of the same rough order of magnitude as the UK.
If you compare the US and UK figures with each other, then you get the following graph. I can't put it on the page as it would be original research, but it shows what I think are the true values for the footprint, what you get when you use the (accurate) US data with the correct (UK) method. Mike Young ( talk) 22:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
There has been far too much loosely-added, uncited material here as of late. Please take more care in citing sources and research. The contributing author is responsible for providing accurate information WITH supporting sources. If you need help finding quality sources for this page, I will help. Leave me a message on my user talk page.-- E8 ( talk) 03:44, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel.html (1/4 the way down the page there are links to studies that prove the ~90% reduction in cancer risk.)
The above was unsigned, but I did find this at the source: "According to a U.S. Department of Energy study completed at the University of California at Davis, the use of pure biodiesel instead of petroleum-based diesel fuel could offer a 93.6% reduction in cancer risks from exhaust emissions exposure." Here's a link to the PDF. This is worth mention on the main.-- E8 ( talk) 01:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Someone added that distribution for Biodiesel is possible using existing infrastructure. I've read otherwise in numerous industry articles include this one from Biodiesel Magazine, where concerns over contamination of other fuels was cited as a concern: “There isn’t enough empirical data and testing equipment,” says Nazzaro, referring to a problem called “trail back,” where trace amounts of residual biodiesel may stay in the pipeline and end up in future fuels. “[The biodiesel] could be extremely low, but until more work is done there is no tolerance for any measurable level of biodiesel in jet aviation fuel.”-- E8 ( talk) 03:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Would a section explaining the differences between biodiesel and petrodiesel be appropriate? A differential (with molecule models) would provide greater explanation on many of the common topics that are discussed here (e.g. combustion, energy density, hygroscopic properties, etc.) Thoughts? Worthwhile or just complicating?-- E8 ( talk) 05:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Al the media reports I have seen on the Virgin use of biofuel in planes have described vegetable oil, not biodiesel, including the one cited in the article. Is this a case of the media doing its usual poor job of reporting science based stories, or was it actually straight vegetable oil in the trials? If it was oil, then it does not belong here. If it is biodiesel, perhaps someone can find a reference which says it is. Stainless316 ( talk) 10:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I am working on a Biofuels research project and am interested as to the source of the oil source for the statistics discussed in the Base Oils section where the gal/acre numbers are discussed.
Thanks!
TRL 18:46, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, so there are new figures there, and there are, IMHO, better references, and they relate to biodiesel specifically, not UVO. The references have gallons per acre. They are apparently US gallons since the references appear to be mostly American. -- Treekids ( talk) 00:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi folks. We also should have imperial and metric values. It would be cool if someone ...
Hi folks. Can someone help with the arithmetic and formatting? We should add imperial and metric and make it back into a table. -- Treekids ( talk) 00:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
The marketing of biodiesel has been so successful that it is difficult to find critiques of it buried in all of the hype. The sites that sell or promote biodiesel are the wrong places to go to find unbiased data. Here is an article in Grist that summarizes some of the growing awareness that biofuels may do untold damage to the planet. There was also an article in New Scientist pointing out the same thing.
Another point to keep in mind is the confusion over different blends of biodiesel. For example, A B100 (100% biodiesel) blend is partially carbon neutral,
but gets 15% worse gas mileage than diesel and increases NOx emissions 110% over gasoline cars.
A B20 blend is far from carbon neutral. Biodiesel is also not 78% carbon neutral. Its neutrality is dependent on the plant being used. The 78% figure quoted in Wiki is for Soybeans and even that number appears to be biased. I can show you the sources if you want.
Claims that biodiesel can impact CO2 emissions are misleading as are claims that it will make a meaningful difference in foreign oil dependency. Let me know if you want to see the sources and math.
Farming is not environmentally friendly. It is a necessary evil to grow food. It usurps vast areas of land and water and requires billions of tons of pesticides and fertilizers. A cornfield is one species away from being just as biologically impoverished as a mall parking lot. Environmentally friendly biodiesel is an oxymoron.
When one considers that, next to burning fossil fuels, deforestation is the second leading cause of global warming, one has to stop and ask: should the world be cutting down rainforests and plowing under its conservation reserves to grow biofuels?
I think this article needs a criticisms section similar to the one found on the Precautionary Principle. I would be happy to submit one for your critique. Sarann 03:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Folks, there is nothing short of giving up farming completely and going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle that would "save the planet". Algae is the way to go because it does not use farmland, doesn't need fresh water, and can actually result in a net reduction of greenhouse gases we're putting into the atmosphere if we use the CO2 emitted by power plants. No, it's not a perfect fuel. But we don't live in a perfect world. -- JSleeper 08:41, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
The aspects of this section related to vehicle modifications need sources and should then be adapted to fit in the Vehicular use... section. The infrastructure component is spurious and should not be re-added to the main (see comments above).
"Distribution is possible using today's Petro Diesel infrastructure as long as minor adjustments are made citation needed to both the distribution fueling systems as well as vehicle fuel systems, such as replacement of fuel system, solvent-sensitive o-rings, gaskets, fittings and hoses, filtering of loosened fossil fuel varnishes, prevention and growth of mold and additives to prevent solidification at colder temperatures."
-- E8 ( talk) 02:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
The increase in biodiesel production of 5 times in 5 years is matched by the references in the Production levels section I have just added (Europe 0.9 million tonnes in 2001, US 5 million gallons or 0.02 million tonnes, compared to about 5-6 million tonnes 2006) However, this section mostly duplicates information already in the article. Stainless316 ( talk) 13:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
(please don't delete this graph from the talk page or the discussion below will make no sense) The recent additions to Environmental Benefits fails to mention a critical detail - the values are specific to the UK. Transportation costs (for fuel, not feedstock) were figured in, inflating the values for foreign imports. At very least, this needs to be addressed, though I am in favor of removal. It's common for individuals to overlook details when presented with graphical displays; since this display provides a distorted view of the situation, it should be removed or replaced with something unbiased. Also, other, more general sources and comments were removed in favor of this nation-specific source.-- E8 ( talk) 19:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
“ | NB. The Government recommends that fuel chain default values should be defined ‘conservatively’ (i.e. a higher carbon intensity) in order to provide an incentive for companies to collect more data. The use of conservative default values means that the values in the tables below should not be interpreted as being an accurate assessment of the GHG saving potential of the biofuels. | ” |
Here's a new graph with the UK specific contributions in (i.e. the cost of transportation form the country of origin to the UK. I think this makes it clear enough what the UK specific values are. Mike Young ( talk) 20:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Below it is another graph with the UK specific data (the red bits in the graph above) removed. This graph shows no country specific bias (although it does use figures calculated in the UK, it assumes that the biodiesel is burnt in the country of origin). Mike Young ( talk) 20:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I have another concern about this graph: Deforestation of tropical rain forest is the second largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. ( http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf, Global anthropogenic GHG emissions chart on p. 36) Clearing of such forest to make room for oil palm plantations is the biggest cause of clearing of rain forest. As far as I could tell that was not taken into consideration when calculating the figures for palm oil. If anything it looks like they made the assumption the oil palms where being grown on what was previously cropland (which is ridiculous imo). I haven't read through the entire report yet, but if you look at the section Land use change on p. 12 they state that "Where information is not provided (i.e. ‘unknown’ is reported), the Government recommends that, in the early years of the RTFO, the calculation should not require the use of a default value for land-use change impacts". Deforestation also have severe impact on the biodiversity in the affected areas. I think this graph gives the wrong impression of the environmental effects from these fuel sources and should be removed. It is far too technical to be presented as it is. I'm going to be bold, and remove the graph for now since I feel it is misleading. After all the data is still available in the reference if anyone reading the article is interested.-- Apis O-tang ( talk) 07:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Note. Moved this discussion from the above Land use change not considered properly discussion under the Environmental Benefits section, since they are not directly related.-- Apis O-tang ( talk) 14:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Administrator note Both of you seem to be engaging in an edit war, please, before either of you edit the article again, work out the differences here (and agree). I'd hate to see blocks occuring. thanks-- Hu12 ( talk) 13:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Why is this under "enviromental efects"? It shoudld rather be only under "Properties". If nobody objects, i'll intergrate it to the propperties paragraph. - GeiwTeol 19:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
WP:Lead section: "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should establish context, summarize the most important points, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describe its notable controversies, if there are any."
The following is what I think should be in the lead section. if everyone agrees, we could then figure out how best to get it in. I stress that this is not the form it should take, but the main points to include. Once the points to include are agreed, then the form will be relatively easy to complete. Hopefully, if we have consensus on what to include, the section will be robust when completed. Feel free to say what should or should not be included, and if my definition is correct.
It refers in this article ONLY to transesterified triglycerides. Other forms of biofuel are covered elsewhere. Biodiesel is used as a replacement for petrodiesel, which is used in engines, and Heating oil, which is used in heaters.
Biodiesel can be made from transesterification of the triglyceride part of any fat or oil, from vegetable oil, animal fats and algal oil (is algal oil vegetable oil? Algae are not plants.) Different scources give slightly different properties, e.g. higher gel point for animal fats. If it comes from anywhere else, then it is not biodiesel according to the definition.
As I see it, there are three reasons. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy security and help local farmers. It is also biodegradeable and non-toxic, so oil spills are not a problem. It seems to be pretty generally agreed that biodiesel can be made to produce less CO2 than petrodiesel, but the estimates of the savings vary. It is probably also agreed that equatorial forest clearance to put in new palm oil plantations produces more CO2 than petrodiesel. Energy security is improved, as the other energy inputs (fertilizer etc.) can be made from non-petroluem sources, e.g. coal or other renewables. Any subsidies or price increases will help local farmers, but I think this is less of an issue then with corn ethanol.
Possible increased greenhouse gas production due to land use issues. Different properties from diesel, e.g. solvent properties, gel point, water content, biological contamination. Possible damage to engine. Displacement of food crops leading to increased food prices. Cost.
In blends with 95% diesel, almost all diesel engines. In other stronger blends, gaining acceptance in blends up to 100% biodiesel, similarly for heating boilers. Has been demonstrated in locomotives and airoplanes.
What is current production compared to diesel fuel. Stainless316 ( talk) 14:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Biodiesel refers to a non-petroleum based fuel consisting of short chain alkyl ( methyl or ethyl) fatty acid esters, made by transesterification of triglycerides from vegetable oil, animal fat or algal oil. Biodiesel is used as a replacement for petrodiesel in engines, and heating oil in heaters. It can be used alone or as blends with petroleum derived fuel. Biodiesel is distinguished from the straight vegetable oil (SVO) (aka "waste vegetable oil", "WVO", "unwashed biodiesel", "pure plant oil", "PPO") used (alone, or blended) as fuels in some converted diesel vehicles. "Biodiesel" is standardized as mono-alkyl esters and other non-diesel fuels of biological origin are not included. [21]
Biodiesel has slightly different properties from petrodiesel. It has a higher gel point, can allow the growth of molds and bacteria and has different solvent properties, which can corrode older rubber components and dislodge diesel varnishes which have built up in engines and heaters. Experience suggests that these problems are minor, but most engines today have been designed for use with petrodiesel, so the use of a different fuel raises some concerns among manufacturers. In blends up to 20% there is very widespread acceptance for use in motor vehicles, and its use in locomotives and aeroplanes has been demonstrated. Use of 100% biodiesel is widespread in Germany with no apparent major problems.
One impetus for its use is to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions from fossil fuels. There is debate over the size of the greenhouse gas reduction and this will depend on the choice of feedstock and method of calculation used. Recently published figures vary from 75% [ [18]] to 15% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions when compared to petroleum diesel. [22] [23]. However, these estimates do not consider land conversion, where natural land is converted to agricultural use. Greenhouse gas emissions could be higher than that of petrodiesel when these factors are taken into account, and there could be other undesirable consequences of deforestation. [ [19]] [ [20]] Even if biodiesel is grown from sustainable sources, there is concern that using land to grow non-food crops will push up food prices. Fuel security is another major driver for its use, since much of the energy inputs can be derived from non-petroluem, locally available sources such as coal, gas or other renewables. The the US NREL says that energy security is the number one driving force behind the US biofuels programme. (p8 (p14 including initial pages) of[ [21]].
Europe is currently the largest producer of biodiesel, with Germany on its own producing 2.6 million tonnes in 2006, or nearly half of world production. Biodiesel production is currently a tiny fraction of the petrodiesel production, in 2006 it was about 1% of combined Europe and USA diesel use, and about 5% of total world vegetable oil production. Stainless316 ( talk) 10:52, 9 April 2008 (UTC) Stainless316 ( talk) 14:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
This article's current data speaks to many of the above issues or points, it is a wealth of information and vinmax applauds the contributors. There is always an additional detail or observation that might be mentioned or added to a subject of this magnitude. I am new to wikipedia, you are all magnificent to contribute your time and energies to exapanding the Akashic record of the 22nd century. I offer some edits to this article, based on my experience in manufacturing biodiesel facilities, 100m, 25m, 13m and a 5,000,000 gallon per year plants. Could someone help place the upper pictures in a horizontal config? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vinmax ( talk • contribs) 04:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Intro concept well taken, first thing to do is eliminate anything obviously subjective, we need objectivity and data with proofs and/or a contiguous stream of logic. News articles are not proof of fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vinmax ( talk • contribs) 03:26, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
E8 - V8 whateva, the vacuum Db were on high, if you can use any of this for the intro, please help yourself: Biodiesel is a term applied to diesel fuels manufactured of materials of biological origin, ie.(vegetable - bean, cottonseed, rapeseed etc. & animal fats - beef, pork and poultry, etc. The process whereby these biologically originating oils are converted to biodiesel/biofuel is know as transesterfication. In organic chemistry, an example of transesterification is the process of exchanging the alkoxy group of an ester compound by another alcohol. These reactions are often catalyzed by the addition of an acid or base. Transesterification: alcohol + ester → different alcohol + different ester. (see Wikipedia for Transesterification) Biodiesel is an alternative fuel to hydrocarbon (crude oil) based diesel. These BIO-fuels are utilized in diesel fuel applications and diesel engines. Biodiesel is a renewable sustainable fuel that produces less CO2 that crude oil based conventional diesel. Blends of biodiesel and conventional hydrocarbon based diesel are products most commonly distributed for use in the retail diesel fuel marketplace. Unsigned by "Vinmax"
The April edition of Time Magazine put out a very good article on biodiesel highlighting a lot of the environment concerns at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html.
This Wikipedia entry on biodiesel talks a lot about the benefits of biodiesel and barely touches on the drawbacks and environmental costs. All of the criticism is tucked away at the bottom of the page while all of the hype is at the top. This is especially troublesome when you consider that biodiesel has driven up the cost of food, increased deforestation, and increased global warming. Biodiesel based on sugar ethanol is more effective than corn ethanol but because of high tariffs on sugar and large subsidies to Midwest farmers in the U.S. inefficient and more environmentally costly biodiesel based on corn ethanol is able to succeed in the marketplace. The farm lobby is one of the strongest lobbies in the country and every presidential candidate needs to pander to the biodiesel industry in order to win Iowa which is the first state to have a presidential primary. The worst part of biodiesel is that the government and the special interests masquerade policies that are designed for special interests as green and environmentally friendly. ( Ajhendel ( talk) 20:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC))
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajhendel ( talk • contribs) 20:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi. Just caught myself responding to comments here from two years ago. Can somebody archive some of the old stuff or point me to instructions on how to do it. -- Treekids ( talk) 02:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Good thought. I'm unsure what the procedure for this is, but when you find out, please inform me.-- E8 ( talk) 22:04, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I propose to establish an auto-archiver for this page. Since it is so large, I will be bold and start. Please, if any objections, speak now! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregalton ( talk • contribs) 11:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
This page looks much better now. I've manually archived some discussion as it was either 1) unsigned and undated, but notably older, OR 2) older, but not automatically archived.-- E8 ( talk) 01:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there a way to have new sections and comments go at the top instead of at the bottom? I just added something but its way at the bottom where I'm not sure people will see it. ( Ajhendel ( talk) 20:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC))
Yes it does look better since you manually archived some of the discussion. No objections here to stop it. -- DavidD4scnrt ( talk) 08:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
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