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Bio-diesel Made from Sewage
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri May 12, 2006 06:42 AM
from the gas-that-really-smells dept.
from the gas-that-really-smells dept.
tito writes "A New Zealand company has successfully turned sewage into modern-day gold. New Zealand Herald is reporting that a Marlborough-based Aquaflow Bionomic yesterday announced it had produced its first sample of bio-diesel fuel from algae in sewage ponds.
It is believed to be the world's first commercial production of bio-diesel from 'wild' algae outside the laboratory - and the company expects to be producing at the rate of at least one million litres of the fuel each year from Blenheim by April."
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But will it smell like (Score:4, Funny)
You've got to be shitting me. (Score:5, Funny)
I can already think of a slogon- "Waste makes haste"
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
This won't do us any good (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This won't do us any good (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This won't do us any good (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, in terms of oil dependency this is almost entirely useless. If my waste was pure gasoline coming out of my body with the same mass, I'd still be right on the edge of being able to supply my own driving needs. So it's not going to get us off of oil.
However, a "waste shortage" sounds like a good thing to me. Much better than a surplus, no?
It's just one of many steps towards
Re:This won't do us any good (Score:3, Interesting)
We could reduce our [petroleum based] energy usage to zero - and we still wouldn't have beaten the shortage. (Hint: Petroleum is used for much more than energy - much, much, much, much more.) The rising consumer prices aren't just about rising gas prices.
Rising oil prices means the feedstocks used to produce fertilizers get more expensive. (Which
one million litres? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:one million litres? (Score:4, Informative)
NZ consumes around 151,900 blue barrels a day [cia.gov] that's around 8815 million litres a year. So this plant will be able to provide around 0.01% of NZ's fuel.
But, there is going to be no single replacement for fossil fuels, there's going to be many (and this is just the first plant).
I wish Aquaflow Bionomics Corporation's [bio-diesel.co.nz] home page was a little more professional looking, but this is most certainly good news!
Parent
Re:one million litres? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, lets see; they reduce their waste problem, they lower their oil usage, and even lower their co2 emissions. Well, it appears to be headed in the right direction, rather than in wrong.
Parent
Re:Direction (Score:3, Insightful)
But - as is starting to be seen in some European countries - significant cheap energy contributions can be made when the technology begins to mature and get the sort of level of massive investment traditional energy generatio
Re:one million litres? (Score:4, Interesting)
The modifications are minimal. Some seals and fuel lines may need to be replaced, and a larger fuel fiter is often required. Any diesel engine can be converted to run 100% unrefinned cooking oil by simply adding a cooking oil fuel tank. The problem with most bio-diesel is that the fuel becomes too thick at lower temperatures. In the artic 2% bio-diesel may be too much. In California you may be able to run 100% all year long. Engines that run on unrefinned cooking oil typically start on dino-diesel and heat the cooking oil with waste heat from the engine.
Parent
Re:one million litres? (Score:3, Informative)
That said, the tricky part with getting above 10% biofuels is not with biodiesel in diesels - modern diesels (1995 and newer) can handle 100% without much problem at all. And older diesels just need fuel lines replaced with urethane or Viton lines.
Lets do a little math shall we? (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmmmmmmmmn, (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember folks - there is not going to be a single replacement for fossil fuels, but many (and lets not forget the other half of the equation - reducing our energy consumption).
Re:Hmmmmmmmmmn, (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Hmmmmmmmmmn, (Score:4, Funny)
Some might say it's already started.
Parent
Natural Selection (Score:3)
More Than One Solution Here? (Score:3, Informative)
Correct you are, I was searching around for that local government's PDF on their sewage ponds. I was wondering what the area of pond was exposed to air and whether or not this had any ill effects on residents. What I found was an interesting abstract from the Assets & Services List of the Marlborough District [marlborough.govt.nz] and from P.04/05.665:
The UNH Study (Score:5, Informative)
I like biodiesel as a long-term solution for several reasons. . .
Because an air-breathing engine draws much of its "fuel" mass from the air, it starts with a large advantage in energy density, and it will be hard for other energy sources -- batteries, supercapacitors, flywheels -- to ever compete.
Unlike hydrogen, we already have the infrastructure in place to handle, store and distribute biodiesel, and millions of vehicles that can already run off it, and the capacity to economically produce millions more of them.
Producing it from algae mimics the process by which petroleum originally formed, over the eons. It might seem unrealistic to produce enough biofuel on a year-by-year basis to replace the *millions* of years worth of petroleum that we routinely burn without thinking anything of it. . . But the natural processes that created petroleum were haphazard, and hardly what anyone would call efficient.
If you replace haphazard processes with specially selected (maybe genetically engineered) strains of algae kept in controlled conditions, with concentrated feed of nutrients and sunlight, the production capacity could be immense. So yeah, I think it can be done.
We might not ever see dirt-cheap fuel again, but I'm optimistic that we can come up with petroleum alternatives at a level that allows our economy and industry to keep on functioning.
Parent
Re:Biodiesel Yield Per Land Area (Score:5, Informative)
According to the UNH study and Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the yield of algae farms is about 5000 to 20,000 gallons per acre of pond per year. This number varies mostly due to the pond conditions, strain of algae used, and oil collection method employed.
However, it is worthwhile to note that even the low end (5000 gallons per acre per year) is over 100 times better than soybeans (50 gallons per acre per year) or rapeseed (about 120 gallons per acre per year)... which are the two dominant crops providing biodiesel in America and Europe today.
To supply the entire US fuel needs would require as little as 0.3% of US land area to be covered by algae ponds. This translates to about 28,000 square kilometers, or about 11,000 square miles. To put this in perspective, that is about 1/8th the size of Kansas... and well less than the area devoted to Soybeans currently.
Parent
Re:Biodiesel Yield Per Land Area (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:The UNH Study (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, that is what a company called GreenFuel Technologies wants to do. Put up a couple of hundred acres of special vertical tanks (maybe derived from metal tanks used by large commercial breweries) and feed the tanks full of oil-laden algae with the exhaust gases from a coal-fired or natural gas-fired plant. This results in VERY fast growth of the algae and also absorbs 40% of the CO2 gas and 86% of the NOx gases, with the final exhaust gases having way below the Kyoto Protocol mandates for coal-fired powerplant emissions. Just a single 200-acre setup could produce an astonishing 15 million gallons of biodiesel fuel/heating oil per year, and the "waste" from the processing of the algae could be used to make animal feed, plant fertilizer or even make ethanol!
If we set up such "farms" of algae tanks next to every large coal-fired or natural gas-fired plant in the USA we could make enough biodiesel fuel/heating oil to drastically reduce the need for refining diesel fuel or heating oil from crude oil. Given modern catalytic "cracker" technology at most US refineries this means more of the crude oil can be used to make gasoline and/or kerosene motor fuels.
Parent
Algae biodiesel (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Hmmmmmmmmmn, (Score:4, Interesting)
On a side note - I believe the Australian waterways are clogged with blue-green algaes? [sfwmd.gov] (The same neon-blue blooms you see in many US waterways). It's a big problem - but I'm not sure blue green algaes are suitable for this method of biodiesel production.
Parent
Nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't tell me (Score:5, Funny)
Humans contain lipids.
Parent
Solving the Obesity and Energy Crises (Score:4, Funny)
This could solve the obesity crisis and energy crisis at the same time! Instead of driving around on your fat ass, you'll be driving around on your ass fat! So how much of this untapped resource is there? Let's see:
Should Middle East cut off the tap, it will become the patriotic duty of every overweight person to donate their fat for biodiesel production. We'll no longer have an obesity crisis. We'll have a Strategic Lipid Reserve.
Parent
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Informative)
(I've been told it's BP Diesel Supreme, which is refined right here in Ohio, and made from 0% Middle Eastern oil.
And, I plan on running homebrew biodiesel in the future, as well.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Informative)
It IS hygroscopic (attracts water), but an additive will take care of that - and, so is regular petroleum diesel, for that matter. Using it quickly, or not letting it sit in a container that air can get in, solves that problem, as well.
BTW, fuel tanks on most diesel cars are plastic. Even on my Jetta, which is a 1985, I have a plastic tank.
Check the following sites:
http://www.biodieselnow.com/ [biodieselnow.com]
http://biod [infopop.cc]
1 million litres? (Score:4, Interesting)
1 Million litres may be a decent start, but it sure isn't much. There's a corn-fuled ethanol producing plant in Kansas that produces 26 million gal of ethanol a year, and that hardly makes a dent (src: popular mechanics). (and yeah I know bio-diesel has a higher BTU then corn-based ethanol, but it still wouldn't reach even close to the output of another alt fuel plant).
If we were smart we would pull a brazil and start producing more corn to use as ethanol. They will be oil-independent by next year. Sugar-based ethanol is something like 8 times more efficient then corn-based. Shows what we know right?
Re:1 million litres? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:1 million litres? (Score:3, Informative)
That's a small one. I live less than 20 miles from one that is currently making 100 million gallons per year - and it will be doubled in capacity within the next year.
Re:1 million litres? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1 million litres? (Score:3, Informative)
To "pull a Brazil," the USA would have to do a lot of things, and I don't think producing more corn would be one of them.
First, as the parent post notes, getting ethanol from sugar cane, as Brazil does, is much more efficient than getting ethanol from corn. With corn, d
Re:1 million litres? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure I see your point. You're saying we'd need to find 26 municipalities with wastewater treatment plants to convert to algae farms, which would be part of the requisite wastewater treatment solution as well as producing fuel, in order to match one plant which requires farmers to go out and actively produce feedstock for at added expense? That's more than just 'decent' in my book. And imagine what your municipality would say if you told them they could offset the costs of fuel and wastewater treatment at the same time - ka-ching!
Taking advantage of existing feedstock (read: waste) beats growing feedstock for most efficiencies. And if you want to look for more viable biodiesel feedstocks, there's a wide number - rapeseed, mustard, jatropha, and palm oil. See the table at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. Note that algae wins hands down over crops.
Parent
Inventor contributes 1st SewageBio-Diesel Car Seat (Score:4, Funny)
Simpson said, "It's just a prototype right now, but it has been my lifelong dream to contribute something truly my own to this bio-movement."
Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
What about thermal depolymerization? (Score:3, Informative)
The Bright Side of the Bright Side. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we're forgetting that the fuel need not leave town, though. Locally produced bio-fuels could supply limited geographic areas with at least some quantity of cheap fuel, which at least helps whoever lives there. It doesn't have to travel, meaning it retains much more of its value since less energy and effort has to be spent to move it from point 'A' to point 'B', and since a township produces it, a township reaps the benefits, immediately benefitting the local economy. It's like the farmer's market for gas, yaknow?
I have to wonder if anyone here has ever heard the phrase, "Think global, act local." I also have to wonder if anyone here considers that it's pretty stupid to rely on just one source of fuel. Let me lay it out for you, here - we already have an absolutely massive bio-fuel 'portfolio', detailing dozens of ways that businesses and communities can produce useful quantities of bio-deisel and ehtanol, but using just one or two of them probably isn't going to be enough to take oil out of the picture, especially if only a few people give it a shot. Right now, we need to take what we can get, and the ability to produce fuel in the process of purifying wastewater is something nobody should overlook. If nothing else, the cost of water purification could be offset by fuel sales, potentially reducing utility costs.
A US company already started this around 2000 (Score:3, Interesting)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1
What some people on slashdot should be interesting to know is Bush proposed some tax credits for this company in 2004 to help with R&D. It got shot down by the Democrates who literally made fun of Bush and called them "Turkey Credits".
HEMP for bio-diesel (Score:3, Informative)
From 1 acre of hemp you can produce
1300 gal of bio diesel
The equivalent amount of paper as 10 acre's of trees
The equivalent of 5 acres of cotton in cloth.
Hemp Seed flower (For cake, bread, etc)
and
Pulp products that can replace cardboard and many plastic products.
This is from the different parts of the plant. That means that you get ALL of them at the same time. Not just growing corn for fuel and throw away the rest.
Pig Diesel is much better. (Score:4, Interesting)
Once it is rejected you can't recall it, that is not good. But here is the link: UI researcher makes crude oil from pig manure [belleville.com]
Re:E85 costs more than regular gas! (Score:3, Informative)
E85 is ethanol.
Biodiesel is
Re:E85 costs more than regular gas! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:E85 costs more than regular gas! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:E85 costs more than regular gas! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:E85 costs more than regular gas! (Score:3, Insightful)
Another is that the crops we produce are net-energy negative. When you use petrolium-based fertalizer, you're putting more stored energy into the crop than you can hope to get out of it, nevermind the energy used in extraction.
Ethanol might be a stop-gap measure, but we cannot rely on it for any long term means. Repeat after me:
Energy is a zero-sum game.
You get out no more than was put in. We are using at a faster rate than it can be replenished. Now, I'm environmentally friendly to a point - I try to r
Re:E85 won't save money (Score:3, Insightful)