[OFB Cafe] Bio Fuels

[Derek Broughton]

On July 18, 2008 20:47:47 Chris Olson wrote:

> > Of course there are, but when you expend more than a gallon of petroleum
> > to generate a gallon of biofuel - which is the case with corn-based
> > ethanol - you are paying the expense of _both_ fuels.
>
> No, it's not the case with either corn-based ethanol or biodiesel fuel. 
...
> There's some weenie groups out there trying to portray biofuels, especially
> corn-based ethanol, as being energy net-deficient, and they're dead wrong. 
> This includes university professors who've written papers on the topic, and
> who've never actually seen a bushel of corn produced in their life, nor
> ever toured an ethanol plant.  In the ethanol process we simply extract the
> starch from the corn and what's left over is livestock feed, just like if
> the corn had been fed directly to the livestock in the first place, except
> minus the starch.  Too many "studies" seem to ignore the fact that we don't
> get only ethanol from a bushel of corn - we also get meat (food) when the
> byproduct is fed to livestock.  We now have processes to remove not only
> the starch from the corn when distilling alcohol, but also the oil (fat -
> without sending it thru a press - it's a chemical process) from which we
> can make corn-based biodiesel.

OK, that sounds good, but it's not "_some_ weenie groups" portraying ethanol 
as net-energy-deficient.  It's _all_ the weenie groups.  I've never found 
figures showing otherwise.

Now, I _do_ know something about making alcohol, and you can't make alcohol 
from starch, at least with ordinary yeast, so what's the process to convert 
it to sugar?
>
> Biodiesel is more efficient yet.  

Absolutely.

> The end product, after separating the fats from the oil,
> is a clear colorless liquid that you can drink (it's biodegradable) and it

_You_ can drink it...  My wife might, too, seeing as how it's probably 
acceptable on an Atkins diet, but I think I'll pass.
>
> The "revenuers" are on my ass all the time (they caught my wife this spring
> and fined her for driving her truck on the road without paying the Federal
> and State highway fuel tax on the biodiesel in her tank)

Yeah, I've heard about that.  I'm still not sure if the Canadian revenuers 
have figured out whether you have to pay tax or not.  Last I heard, there was 
nowhere to send your money, but they still thought you should...

> but when you take 
> that damned tax out of the picture, I can make a gallon of biodiesel on my
> own farm for about 93¢ from tilling the soil to dumping the final product
> in the fuel tank.  

What's the cost for refining petroleum (I know right now, that's a moving 
target with the way the cost per barrel is fluctuating)?

> Make no bones about it - the US government has this 
> whole thing illegal now with the blending tax law.  If you get caught
> burning straight B100 in anything - the fine is $10,000 per occurrence. 

Does that apply to "Griesels" - burning straight vegetable oil?
-- 
derek