Can you please tell me if biodiesel energy is a good way to reduce pollution?
Saturday, May 28th, 2011 at
10:45 am
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Filed under: Biodiesel
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any use of products that are already available will reduce pollution overall because there is no energy used to create it. free biodiesel is great but not everyone can use it. i say use it if you can.
Not if it is made from food crops. Seriously, all the fertilizer, water, land and diesel fuel consumed to grow those crops should be devoted to food for humans.
Waste Grease BioDiesel is a good way to get rid of waste animal and plant grease, such as the stuff used in fryers at the fast food places. The Bush Administration used the Navy’s budget to standardize waste grease BioDiesel and the US Navy is now the world’s biggest consumer of the stuff.
The waste grease cannot be put into animal feed any more because of mad cow disease. So, the Bush plan to use it for fuel is a great way to reduce pollution caused by dumping it in the ground.
The greatest obstacle – there is a limited supply of plant or waste grease oils to convert to Diesel fuel. It cannot substitute for petroleum due to the massive consumption of petroleum diesel. So, it is a benefit but is limited due to supply issues.
Burning BioDiesel actually creates more of some types of pollutants (Nitrogen-based) but reduces others substantially as you can see in the link below. Also, it attacks and dissolves natural-rubber hoses and gaskets so some older engines might need a few parts replaced to use it.
NO !! It will produce CO2 just like all the fossil fuels.
There is a lot of information out there on this topic, and the answer is not cut and dry or it would not be such a politically important issue. When you look at that question you have to look at the key words. One, what is biodiesel, and two what does "a good way" imply.
What is the definition of good in this context, does it mean better than our current methods for producing energy, does good imply an amount of harmful bi product / liter or gallon, or does good imply a positive balance between energy required to make it, including: the water, soil, land area, pesticides, fertilizers, required to grow the crop, the energy required to harvest, collect, and ship the crop to a place where it can be converted to fuel, and the energy used to ship and store the fuel where it can be marketed and distributed; and is this energy cost less than the energy and pollution that the biodiesel produces?
First take into account that biodiesel, like the term suggests, is used to fuel a diesel-engine. What does that mean? It means that the fuel is combusted or burned in a diesel engine, a process which will change the make-up of the fuel into both energy and bi-product, some of which may be considered a pollutant depending on where it goes afterwards and what it does when it gets there.
Keep in mind a pollutant doesn’t necessarily imply fumes and nasty chemicals being released into the atmosphere, even if it can be filtered completely what happens to it then? Can we use it, or does the device used to store it become waste then too.
It’s a tough question, I think the most important thing is to direct it, and figure out exactly what it is you are asking. The more specific you are, the easier it will be to get some quick answers. There is so much information available for this type of search you would have a very successful google session if you could narrow it down.
Things to keep in mind, because there is not a huge government fund devoted to answering this question, the answers are often biased, depending on who is funding the project, or by whom researchers are employed and affiliated with. I found a bunch of research on the use of turfgrass for biofuel, and it made turf-grass sound really promising in comparison to some fuels, but when I clicked on the author’s info, I found that the woman heading the research was receiving all of her project money from the turf-grass industry and association, meaning although it might not be a terrible source of fuel, and may be important research, there could be plenty of other fuel sources, even grasses that are better and more efficient, but she is not payed for the time to compare them. Be weary of the "experts," they don’t have to be corrupt to misinform.
By the way, in the event that your question relates to the biofuel we produce today, we use corn, and it is devastating to the environment, and very energy and resource costly.
With bio-diesel, the CO2 released into the atmosphere is simply the CO2 that had been recently sequestered from the atmosphere by the plants used as feed-stock hence it is considered to be carbon neutral as it does not result in a net increase in CO2.
Bio-diesel is purer than petroleum diesel and has fewer compounds and hence less emissions. The products used to reduce the chain length down to that of petroleum diesel are reactive and corrosive (Sodium Hydroxide aka drain cleaner and methanol) hence bio-diesel can be more corrosive if the reactions are incomplete.
Although plants are the most efficient means that we currently have to produce fuel from sunlight, it’s hardly the only means. Sandia Labs have produced liquid fuels from sunlight with their CR5 reactors which produces CO from CO2 and H2 from H2O, CO and H2 together under heat and pressure will form liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis used by the Nazi’s in WWII and by South Africa when embargoed from world oil supplies and also used by the US Air Force as a strategically secure fuel source. Problem is that the Nazi’s, South Africa, and the US Air-Force get their CO and H2 by incomplete combustion of coal. Likewise Shell’s new synthfuel plant gets those precursors by incomplete combustion of natural gas.