Breakthrough in Biodiesel Production

MGR writes "National Geographic is reporting that Japanese scientists have discovered a way to convert vegetable oil into biodiesel with a much less expensive catalyst (between 10 and 50 times cheaper) than what is currently used. From the article: 'Any vegetable oil can become fuel, but not until its fatty acids are converted to chemical compounds known as esters. Currently the acids used to convert the fatty acids are prohibitively expensive. Michikazu Hara, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Yokohama, Japan, and his colleagues have used common, inexpensive sugars to form a recyclable solid acid that does the job on the cheap.'"

key word is catalyst

[ChrisGilliard (913445)]

with a much less expensive catalyst (between 10 and 50 times cheaper) than what is currently used.

Note: the catalyst is 10 - 50 times cheaper, not biodisel fuel itself, while the breakthrough is meaningful, the headline is misleading. I'd be curious to know what percentage of the total cost of producing biodisel is related to the cost of this catalyst.

Re:key word is catalyst

[bogaboga (793279)]

Still, this is an important development. If it is true and workable, most 3rd world countries will be able to "grow" a very essential component of fuel. Right now, there is no way these countries can avoid paying their hard earned dollars to the oil companies of the world, most of which are from the west.

Re:key word is catalyst

[TheGavster (774657)]

It should also give the third world a new market for their agricultural products; while we may make it a pain for people to sell us food, it's easy as pie to sell fuel over the border.

Re:key word is catalyst

[j-cloth (862412)]

Not just the 3rd world -- farmers in general. I ran screaming from the prairies because there are no jobs and no money there. More markets for farmers are a Good Thing.

Re:key word is catalyst

[Tracy Reed (3563)]

Biodiesal *IS* solar power. Where do you think the energy present in the plant matter comes from? Not only that but it is probably more efficient on a $/watt basis. I'm all for photovoltaics and stuff but electricity storage for vehicles is still a tricky problem whereas chemical storage of energy has worked great for many decades now.

Re:key word is catalyst

[syukton (256348)]

I hate to burst your bubble, but most crop plants achieve only 1 to 2 percent efficiency, with sugarcane being an exception at 8%.
Source: http://www.life.uiuc.edu/govindjee/whatisit.htm [uiuc.edu]

Scientific-grade solar cells are about 15% to 20% efficient with some going as high as 24%
Source: http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2006/nov/solar110205 .html [udel.edu]

Solar Stirling engines achieve nearly 30% efficiency at an installation at Sandia National Laboratories.
Source: http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/20 04/renew-energy-batt/Stirling.html [sandia.gov]

So I'm sorry to say that plants SUCK at converting sunlight into energy we can use. As the first link states, the initial reaction in photosynthesis is nearly 100% efficient, but as biological processes consume that energy, the total efficiency for the system drops significantly. Work is being done to attempt to make "biological solar cells" which use the initial reaction in photosynthesis as their method of light harvesting, but to date nothing has been produced.

Electricity storage for vehicles is a bit of a problem, unfortunately. I haven't got any links declaring that one solved. ;)

Re:key word is catalyst

[brontus3927 (865730)]

In the 2 stage reaction, which is the only time an acid is used as a catalyst for biodiesel, the ingredients are as follows per liter of vegetable oil:

200 ml methanol. I'm currently paying $2.50/gallon for methanol. Which puts my cost per gallon of biodiesel at about $.50

1 ml Sulfuric Acid. I'm currently getting this for a little over $1/oz Technically that's expensive, but so little is needed that it works out to only $.15/gallon biodD.

31-37g Sodium Hydroxide (depending on pH of oil) Lye is what's expensive. Hopefully, this is the catalyst the Nature article is replacing. Every so often a good price on lye will show up, but it is usually between $.20-$1/gallon biodiesel. If this article talks about replacing the lye, I'll definately try it.

MOD PARENT DOWN TO HELL

[imsabbel (611519)]

This isnt about ethanol. This is about biodiesel.
Minimally modified vegetable oil.

PLEASE STICK your old propaganda shit (which you already had prepared, because it would have taken you longer to write that article than the story is online) and shove it up your ass.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN TO HELL

[(negative video) (792072)]

All biofuels are plagued by the same production inefficiencies, since photosynthesis itself is less than 1% efficient (Solar irradiance at a generous max of 1000W/M^2 would leave you needing a few dozen acres per tiny car).

I thought photosynthesis was actually ~5% efficient. Anyway, assume 1.25% efficiency because much energy goes to tissues other than oil, 6 hours/day of sunlight, and a 180 day growing season. That's ~50 MJ/m^2/year of captured energy. A that car requires 37 kW (50 horsepower) for one hour a day needs ~50 GJ/year. Obviously you'd need 1000 m^2/car/year = 0.25 acres/car/year. Use a factor of four to account for various losses and that's 1 acre/car/year. Hardly dozens of acres per tiny car.

Can that be right? One acre is barely enough for a horse. Either I slipped a decimal point or horses are really inefficient.

The real problem with biofuels is not efficiency. It is chemical conversion. Getting the molecules into the proper shape at low cost will take a lot of clever chemistry that hasn't been done yet. The "breakthrough" under discussion is one piece of the puzzle.

Re:key word is catalyst

[foniksonik (573572)]

Dude, that's from 2001. It's been 4 years and improvements have been made. Plus he's talking about corn, not rape seed (Canola) or mustard seed or soybeans or cotton seed where the yields are much better for biodiesel than for ethanol (which isn't what this is talking about anyways).

Repeat after me: "Ethanol is not biodiesel" "Ethanol is not biodiesel" "Ethanol is not biodiesel"

This post is pure FUD and the guys study was probably financed by entrenched petroleum industry advocates anyways....

Re:Human energy use linked to global warming

[sam_handelman (519767)]

Evidently you skipped class when they covered photosynthesis.

All that reduced carbon in the plant-oils COMES FROM CARBON DIOXIDE IN THE ATMOSPHERE.

Thus, biodiesel is sustainable.

The *real question* is, how much energy from fertilizer does it take to make this biodiesel? I'd understood that to be the big expense (along with the water,) and not the processing, but I could be mistaken.

Re:Human energy use linked to global warming

[TykeClone (668449)]

Not much. Biodiesel is made from soybeans, or rapeseed, both of which have relatively light fertilizer requirements.

Not sure about rapeseed, but soybeans require fairly heavy herbicide treatments to get good crops. And with Asian rust coming to the states, fungicide as well!

I think that corn is a less energy intensive crop to produce per bushel than soybeans. 1 acre on a good year (like this year!) will yield about 55 bushels of beans. That same acre on a good year (like this year!) will yield about 250 bushels of corn.

Biodiesel more at the pump?

[Darlantan (130471)]

Err, this seems backwards to me. Everytime I've seen bio available, it's been below standard diesel prices. Perhaps it's just a regional thing where I'm at, but I've been under the impression that the real problem with biodiesel was A) older fuel lines may be degraded more quickly by biodiesel, and B) producing enough to fuel the world's fuel needs was a big issue.

Of course, I'm no biodiesel guru, but it is of some interest to me -- I drive an older diesel (which I plan on converting to run on SVO, as soon as I get the facilities to make this feasible.)

Bottlenecks

[pavon (30274)]

In many places biodiesel has been more expensive than regular deisel, until the recent jump in oil prices. In addition, there have been a couple of recent subsidies that have brought the price of biodiesel down at the pump. It wasn't too long ago when biodiesel was 2x the price per gallon, and not everyone has caught up to the fact that this has changed. Regardless any decrease in cost is still a great thing.

For biodiesel created with conventional crops the bottleneck is like you said, that there isn't enough enough aritable land on the planet to create as much biodiesel as we currently use in gasoline and diesel. Algae based biodiesel solves this problem but is significantly more expensive to produce than convientional biodiesel last time I checked. Honestly though, I haven't heard about any new research in that field since the DOE Algae program was put to an end back on Clinton's watch.

In reality there is no one solution to the problem. The solution will be a combination of an increase in biofuels, more efficient cars, more public transportation that runs off the grid, and even then transportation will likely be more expensive than we have become occustomed to transportation.

Re:Biodiesel more at the pump?

[Mr. Slippery (47854)]

Technically biodiesel is a blend of tradtional diesel and vegitable oil that burns cleaner than diesel by itself and if you have a free or cheap source of vegitable oil, used generally, it can be cheaper.

Er, no. Biodiesel is a fuel produced from vegetable oil, it is not vegetable oil. The article is about a cataylst to improve the process of vegetable oil to biodiesel.

Some people have done conversion work to run diesel engines on vegetable oil [greasecar.com]. That's way cool. But that's not biodiesel.

Blends of biodiesel and tradtional petroleum diesel fuel are popular. That doesn't mean biodiesel is a blend.

Vegetable fuel

[Kelson (129150)]

This reminds me of an article I read a few months ago about using corn to produce ethanol on a large scale as a renewable resource. Follow-up articles pointed out that corn (maize, specifically) isn't a particularly efficient crop, which meant that the environmental impact of drilling for oil and depleting oil reserves was just being shifted to depleting topsoil. Very much a "no free lunch" reaction.

If this biodiesel process can be applied to enough different types of plants, then it should be possible to pick and choose crops based on what does well in a given area -- after all, we don't have to worry about market pressures and what people want to eat, it's just going to be converted into fuel -- which should minimize the effects of choosing hihg-impact crops.

Re:Vegetable fuel

[Fnkmaster (89084)]

Nobody except corn farmers has ever proposed using corn ethanol as a fuel on a meaningful scale. That is just a farming subsidy scam and a straw man used by confused or malevolent opponents of ecologically sound fuels, or those with political agendas in line with the fossil fuel industry.

Bioethanol is ethanol made from cellulose feedstocks. These should, in practice, be much lower in terms of energy input required than corn or similar crops used for human consumption. The economics of bioethanol produced by SSF (simultaneous sacharination and fermentation) bears almost nothing in common with corn ethanol.

Furthermore, if you get rid of farm subsidies from the equations, then the market should take care of making sure energy costs are fully reflected in all prices. Carbon impact is another story, but shouldn't be too hard to measure (and probably is closely correlated with the portion of costs attributable to energy use).

As for biodiesel - I am under the impression that the major costs are associated with the feedstock itself, not with the acid used in processing. From memory, I think that the feedstock cost is responsible for at least 60-70% of the final cost of biodiesel, so I wouldn't expect a 10x reduction in acid costs to save more than a few percent in total cost. Genetically engineered bacteria seem to provide the most reasonable way to make an oil feedstock for bioethanol production efficiently. The reason that some people think biodiesel is cheaper than diesel is that in Europe they get huge tax breaks on biodiesel, so they are comparing apples to oranges.

Bioethanol is by far the most promising alternative fuel available today, with attractive envrionmental impact and economic characteristics, and only modest incremental cost to make Flexible Fuel Vehicle engines that can burn either ethanol or gasoline. It's too bad there is zero governmental support for this here in the US. We could greatly reduce our foreign oil dependence within 5-10 years with just a bit of political willpower.

Well

[hug_the_penguin (933796)]

It isn't going to solve the world's dependence on oil overnight, but it's perhaps a step forward.

The next problem will be a shortage of arable land due to land used to produce the vegetables that are then going to become diesel. This could solve one problem and lead straight into another

SVO

[evenprime (324363)]

You still have to play with nasty chemicals when you convert veggie oil to biodiesel. If you are dead set on producing huge amounts of particulate emmisions [epa.gov] (i.e. running a diesel) it might be better to use one of the conversion kits and run straight veggie oil.

Don't mod me into oblivion for pointing out a negative to biodiesel. I know about the benefits: http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/Green_Ma chines/Diesels_Clean_Green_Illegal.S196.A3569.html [thecarconnection.com]

bad comparison: diesel!=gasoline

[evenprime (324363)]

You didn't even respond to the relevant point of my post: I believe SVO is more beneficial to the environment than biodiesel. Worse, you didn't seem to understand what you did respond to. You said

OTOH if you had even Googled "biodiesel carcinogens" you would know that one of the benefits of BD is exhaust that is 90% less carcinogenic than exhaust from petro-diesel.

I'm already aware of the benefits of bio-fuels over petroleum diesel. I'm even aware of the CO2 benefits of bio-fueled diesel engines over gasoline engines. It would be difficult to read slashdot without being aware of the benefits, but that's not what I was commenting on. I was pointing out a negative that is seldom mentioned on slashdot; diesel engines, even when they run on biofuels, have more soot particles in their exhaust than gasoline engines. If you google "biodiesel particulate emissions" you will see that even biodiesel advocates admit this.

Gasoline produces 15 percent less Particulate Matter than B100 (Particulate matter from B100 is of a less toxic nature than that from petroleum products) [grassolean.com]

Those soot particles are the main reason [epa.gov] why the EPA gives the 2006 Jetta diesel a horrible air pollution score [epa.gov] even though it gets over 40 mpg. The difference in particulate (soot) emissions for diesel and gasoline engines is so great that it is very difficult - perhaps impossible - to get light duty diesel vehicles (i.e. cars) Tier II certified in California.

It is, therefore, believed that emission certification of light duty diesel vehicles in California will be possible only if advanced emission control technologies, such as particulate traps and NOx catalysts, are developed. [dieselnet.com]

Right now, every gasoline burning car that is replaced by a biodiesel or SVO burning car causes us to have higher levels of soot in the air. From my original link [thecarconnection.com]:

Diesel-powered cars will always produce more particulate matter. The particulate matter, now a known carcinogen, will contribute to immediate health problems if breathed in.
[...]
Bad for lungs, better for the ozone layer
Granolas are split: some think the soot from diesels does more damage to people and animals here and now, while others want to minimize reliance on fuel resources and oil drilling, and to slow climatic change.

That was the problem I was commenting on, and you responded with something totally off topic (a comparison of biodiesel and petroleum diesel.) Now, it is actually possible to clean up the exhaust on diesels quite a bit. That same article goes on to mention a way to solve the sooty particulate emmissions:

Diesel engines can be clean, as clean as comparable gasoline engines if the right measures are taken to reduce particulate matter. Advanced engine controls, particulate-matter traps, and new-design catalysts have helped all but eliminate particulate matter.

Unfortunately, the article does NOT explain the drawbacks of this process; the extra emmissions control equipment costs a LOT, and it reduces the power and fuel efficiency of the diesel engine. That's a problem, since fuel efficiency is one of the main reasons we are considering diesels in the first place, which is probably why most of these methods are still not used on new diesel vehicles. Besides using oxidizing-type particulate filters to get rid of soot can even increase the levels of carbon monoxide:
http://www.fleetguard.com/fl [fleetguard.com]

That's not the problem.

[Jaywalk (94910)]

The problem with biodiesel isn't that it's too expensive to produce. The problem is that there simply isn't enough oil to replace significant amounts of fossil fuel. And there is the issue of what happens to the price of food oil if too much vegetable oil is converted to fuel usage. According to this study [unh.edu] by the University of New Hampshire, it is possible to make the necessary oil using oily varieties of algae which can be produced on non-arable land.

Making soybean biodiesel cheaper won't solve the problem because the limited supply will only meet so much of the required energy needs. It might even cause more problems by creating economic pressure to convert food oils into fuels.

Not Invented Here

[tacocat (527354)]

Since this is an accomplishment not by American Industry and is contrary to the current powerbrokers of Dino-fuels it won't mean shit in America.

2005: law is passed giving a tax credit for bio-diesel mixes. But this eliminates all B-100 biodesiel because it's not a mix. Tax rebates are not made available to the consumer.

2006: law goes into effect which raises the bar on small diesel engine emissions (commercial vehicles excluded) making it impossible to sell a new diesel car in the United States because the fuel used in the Unites States is too dirty to pass the emissions test. It is not the engine, it is the fuel that fails the test. There are no American automotive manufacturers selling a diesel engine in the United States.

2007: law is supposed to go into effect to introduce low sulphur dino-diesel which should permit diesel sales to go into effect. I'm a little suspicious that this law isn't currently under assault. But we won't know for another year.

Go search the internet. The technology for production of bio-diesel and the studies identifying the environmental benefits have been in publication, on the internet of all places, since 1998. And what has been done about it?

A few more details, re: homebrewing etc.

[wherley (42799)]

The acid catalyst they are talking about replacing is liquid Sulphuric Acid. Most homebrewers of biodiesel, like those using an "open source" Appleseed type reactor, are not using both an acid and base catalyst, only the base being Potassium Hydroxide or Sodium Hydroxide (along with Methanol or Ethanol).
With higher Free Fatty Acid feedstock, such as really used grease, the acid cataylst helps convert those FFAs. You can read a little more on the chemistry of
the news item here:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/inexpensiv e_eff.html [greencarcongress.com]
Nature abstract:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1628102 6&query_hl=3 [nih.gov]
Another abstract:
http://www.researchsea.com/html/article.php/aid/34 0/cid/2/research/green_chemistry__efficient_cataly st_for_making__biodiesel_.html>

Seems this process is five times more reactive than other solid catalysts, but still 50% that of the liquid acid - however sepearation afterward would be much
easier.

Re:not a catalyst

[wfberg (24378)]

catalysts? acids? expensive? the definition of a catalyst is that they do not get transformed in an reaction but simply speed it up. In this case it rather sounds as if the acids are a simple consumed reactant.

A catalyst not being used up is all good and well, but it doesn't do you very much good in the cheap department if you can't easily get that catalyst to stay where the reaction is taking place; i.e. if there's no way to get the catalyst out of the resultant biodiesel and into a fresh batch of vegetable oil, it's not getting consumed, but it's getting siphoned off (via the endproduct) none the less.

necessity of exporting? maybe not...

[zogger (617870)]

The development of other fuels will not negate the usefullness or use of traditional petroleum. Nations that are oil rich will continue to use the fuel,especially if it is their primary natural resource, even if their export market diminishes. And especially then, with no imported cash from exported oil, they would be literally forced to directly use the oil themselves to the best of their ability. And it is quite possible that as the islamic world (if we want to limit the discussion to there) matures (most are under the age of 30 right now), they will want their own manufacturing and other islamo-centrist based business, rather than purchasing products from other areas. Necessity *and* desire at that point. You have to remember, petroleum is not only a transporation medium, it is also critical -today at least- for manufacturing.

With that said, I heartily welcome more R and D and deployment of biofuels. But older fuels are still used, I am using "stored solar"-wood-as my primary residential heating source, same as humans have been doing for millenia. We have a "domestic supply" and it is quite significant enough for our needs, hence no need to "export cash" to purchase someone elses developed energy product, nor do we need to "export the raw materials" for anyone else to use. That's a micro scale, macro between nations is just "larger".

Humans will use up the available petroleum, biofuels becoming massively more available or not. The use will only drop when it gets closer to a stasis point, when it takes one "barrel of energy" to produce an identical barrel of energy. Then it will stop.