Today's the day: Petrol must include biofuels in Britain

[hoon]

All petrol and diesel which is sold at UK pumps now has to include at least 2.5% biofuels.

These renewable fuels, made from crops such as sugar cane or maize, have been added to fuel sold around the country.

This target will rise to 5% by 2010. The moves is aimed at making transport fuels more environmentally friendly and will not change how cars work.

BBC NEWS | UK | Petrol must now include biofuels

Woop.

[spadlet]

I was told that the first ever diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil. I've never seen a citation though, is this correct?

I was also taught that using a 20% biodiesel 80% fossil fuel derived diesel mix had been found to improve engine life, due to the improved lubricating quality of the mixed fuel. Does anyone know of any good quatily citations either way on this? (as there seems to be alot of people jumping on the band wagon making unproven claims both for and against biodiesel)

It would be interesting to know if they've had to modify the petrol to ensure that the biofuel is compatable with a petrol engine. I didn't know that they could produce biofuels that ran in petrol engines, though I guess that maybe they use cracking or something to produce shorted hydrocarbon chains that are compatable with the petrol engine. It would be great to know the processing that is used.

[Cricket Tragic]

Spadlet, the first diesel engines were designed to use coal dust as a fuel. Later designs used fuel oils. The peanut oil story comes from the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. Diesel later tested vegetable fuels and began to promote them as an alternative, hence the confusion.

As to biofuels, early diesel engines could burn on a variety of fuels, so long as they are liquid and flow quickly enough and provide sufficient lubricity.

You wouldn’t add a biodiesel to vehicle petroleum because it would not be volatile enough. Petroleum engines require not too much and not too little volatility. Ethanol is the preferred additive to petroleum for cars. It increases the octane rating (reducing volatility of the fuel). Too volatile a fuel will combust prematurely under compression damaging the engine. A fuel with too little volatility will not combust properly losing power.

Any motor engineering text will have more detail for you.

[Rog]

The Telegraph is weighing in.

Global warming rage lets global hunger grow - Telegraph

The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits.

[Rog]

And Bloomberg.

Bloomberg.com: Energy

Seems the world is waking up to the fact that biofuels can really do a whole lot more harm than good.

[sparky]

Lula's happy about it anyway. I can almost hear the rainforest screaming.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Brazil president defends biofuels

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has rejected allegations that biofuels are responsible for the recent rise in global food prices.

He said food had become more expensive because people in developing countries were gaining greater access to it.

[Cricket Tragic]

Sparky, with all due respect Brazil has been producing ethanol from sugar cane for many years now, right through a period of intensely low food prices. From their point of view increased food prices are not the result of what they have been doing. This is not to say Lula’s comments are right or wrong, just indicating the whole exercise is not as simple as it might seem. For the record, as is clear from my posts on the topic, I am not a general supporter of biofuels as they are being delivered now. However, I should also point out that simplistic solutions without understanding the issues can cause more problems than they solve.

Brazil’s ethanol program produced 2 results. It provided a subsidy to the sugar industry allowing it to compete with subsidized, but much less efficient, sugar beet industries in North America and Europe and it provided a level of energy independence. Sugar production in Brazil is concentrated in the south-east, with a smaller area on the coastal north-east. The north-east is responsible for the vast majority of sugar exports from Brazil, whereas the south-east contributes more to ethanol. Recent growth in area has been at the expense of other industries such as citrus that have declined in area, rather than plantings on virgin land. Sugar has contributed minimally to rainforest destruction in Brazil.

Rainforest destruction in Brazil is a complex problem with a number of causes. It is popular to blame agriculture at the moment, but in fact the first moves into virgin rainforest are for timber and mining. Agriculture comes later once timber access roads appear and beef production is first. There is certainly pressure on agricultural land created largely by the growing soybean sector. Soybeans growing has moved aggressively into more northern areas of Brazil, largely on demand created by some European market’s demand for non-GM soy, but also because of the relative profitability versus cattle – although that is now changing. Brazil has a small biodiesel industry based on crops including sunflower, castor oil and soybean, but is also exporting soy oil to Europe to back-fill food oil requirements caused in part by rapeseed oil going into biodiesel.

If Brazil stopped their biofuels programs today, it would probably have minimal impact on the rate of destruction of rainforest. If Brazil were to massively increase biodiesel production, that may have some impact. If the EU were to reduce soy imports from northern Brazil, that would take some of the pressure off agricultural land and may slow rainforest destruction a bit. If meat prices were to rise significantly on the world market, I would expect a lot of rainforest to go as cattle became a more attractive option. There are lots of ifs and buts here, but the best policy is surely government protection of the rainforest land than trying to influence complex markets through trade policies. I think we have seen how the EU biofuel policy has seriously backfired on its intentions.

[spadlet]

Originally Posted by Cricket Tragic

Ethanol is the preferred additive to petroleum for cars.

So can bioethanol be produced from anything that we currently consider to be waste, or does it have to be grown as a crop in it's own right? That was the main thing I was trying to work out, as it doesn't seem to me that substances such as waste chip fat can be converted into bioethanol, but then I don't know the organic chemistry behind the conversion techniques.

The other thing I was wondering was, what about the sustainability of producing the reactants and catalysts required for all of these fuel conversions? Nobody ever seems to go into that.

[Cricket Tragic]

Originally Posted by spadlet

So can bioethanol be produced from anything that we currently consider to be waste, or does it have to be grown as a crop in it's own right? That was the main thing I was trying to work out, as it doesn't seem to me that substances such as waste chip fat can be converted into bioethanol, but then I don't know the organic chemistry behind the conversion techniques.

The other thing I was wondering was, what about the sustainability of producing the reactants and catalysts required for all of these fuel conversions? Nobody ever seems to go into that.

Spadlet, to make ethanol you need to start with a carbohydrate that can be broken down into simple sugars. Potentially a lot of waste that is made of cellulose, like cardboard, could be used provided we can find a way of efficiently reducing it from a complex carbohydrate to a sugar.

Waste chip fat is an oil rather than a carbohydrate, so you would not get ethanol out of it.

The fuek conversions from the simple building blocks are actually quite easy. You only need yeasts and a distillation process to turn sugar into ethanol. Oils are esterified with either an alcohol, typically methanol, using a base catalyst generating an alkyl ester and glycerine. The alkyl ester is used for biodiesel.

[spadlet]

Originally Posted by Cricket Tragic

The fuek conversions from the simple building blocks are actually quite easy. You only need yeasts and a distillation process to turn sugar into ethanol. Oils are esterified with either an alcohol, typically methanol, using a base catalyst generating an alkyl ester and glycerine. The alkyl ester is used for biodiesel.

and the glycerine can be used to make soap? Have I remembered that correctly? If so, it sounds like a process in which the only waste products would be from the processing of the chip fat/other base susbstance.

Do you think we could get municipal waste oil collection for conversion, seems better than it solidifying and blocking up the pipes?