American Biodiesel news

It still smells good: B20 Biodiesel emissions show no NOx increase.
Clayton Bodie Cornell's picture
Filed on Jan 3, 2007 at 12:27 PM PST
By Clayton Bodie Cornell
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An important stumbling block to the
incorporation of B20 biodiesel
(20% biodiesel/80% diesel) into the nation's fleet of heavy-duty diesels has been concern over nitrogen oxides (NOx), a group of pollutants initially found to increase in biodiesel exhaust. In 2002, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests concluded that B20 causes a 2% increase in NOx when burned in standard heavy-duty diesel engines, though this figure approaches 10% for higher biodiesel blends. Nitric oxides are produced when nitrogen from the air is drawn into the hot combustion chamber and reacts with oxygen. NOx contribute to acid rain, smog, and ground-level ozone formation. Generally speaking, an acceptable "green" fuel should reduce pollution, not increase it, and running city fleets on B20 where smog is already endemic could be a bad idea.

Good news for biodiesel advocates came from an October 2006 report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The report not only reviewed the EPA's work, but also tested 8 heavy-duty diesel vehicles including several transit buses, school buses, Class 8 trucks, and a motor coach. NREL researchers found that smaller vehicle testing showed no significant impact on NOx emissions, while larger trucks varied by engine model:

Our study shows that the NOx impact of B20 varies with engine design, such that some engines show a small increase while others show a small decrease. The EPA's 2002 review was based on a data set made up primarily of data from one engine model that produces a small NOx increase. EPA uses these data to draw a general conclusion for on-highway engines that B20 causes a 2% increase in NOx," McCormick said. "The chassis dynamometer testing along with careful review of previously published data suggest that their conclusion is not correct, and that on average B20 has no effect on NOx. According to the report, some state governments had previously considered banning B20 due to concerns over NOx emissions. These new findings may relieve those concerns and increase the proportion of diesel fleets using the renewable fuel blend.

For the vehicles tested, NREL's experiments also found that B20 caused an average reduction of 16% to 17% for Particulate Matter (PM, i.e. soot) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) emissions, respectively*. Interestingly enough, there was no significant change in emissions between regular diesel and B20 for vehicles equipped with a diesel particulate filter, underscoring the importance of newer technology in reducing diesel-engine emissions.

*Biodiesel also contains no sulfur (a major factor in acid rain caused by sulfuric acid) and, depending on how it’s produced, causes a significant decrease in net CO2 emissions. Higher blends of biodiesel such as B50 or B100 emit 2-3x less CO, PM, and unburned hydrocarbons. To see a complete emissions profile, visit the National Biodiesel Board (NBB).

Photo Credit: National Renewable Energy Laboratory

A family Energy Farm, biodiesel, ethanol and pork chops

Nobody will argue that we need to reduce our dependence on oil, both foreign and domestically produced. Reducing our carbon footprint is also a worthy goal. A few thousand farms like this one could go a long way toward solving both problems.

A lot of ideas have been kited to help with our energy needs. Most are singular ideas like wind power or biodiesel, or Ethanol. No one has mentioned putting all these things together on one farm or a community of neighboring farms.

Putting several technologies and crops together on a single farm could produce a synergy that will make the whole more powerful than the individual elements.

Some sources are saying that it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol or biodiesel than is gained from them. Part of the total energy cost of production is transportation, the corn must be hauled to the distillery, the soybeans to the processing plant. This energy cost could be lessened considerably by processing the corn or soybeans at the farm. It is much cheaper, and less energy intensive to transport a gallon of ethanol than it is to transport the corn needed to make it.

Add a methane digester which extracts natural gas from the wastes from both the corn and soybeans and you the extra energy extracted from the crop tips the balance.

Consider this.

Soybeans are pressed to produce oil for biodiesel.
The corn is turned into ethanol.
The pigs are fed the waste mash from the distillation process, and some of the soybean wastes.
All waste from all of the above is fed to a methane digester to produce natural gas.

Look at each of those a little more closely.

Soybeans for oil and pig food.
The soybeans are pressed on the farm to extract the oil, which is sold to a biodiesel producer. This step alone has reduced the total energy cost of the gallon of biodiesel, by reducing the weight of product transported off the farm.

To increase the energy savings and increase profits to the farm, the farm could process it's soybean oil into biodiesel itself.

This would add value to the soybeans and thus profit to the farm's bottom line. The biodiesel could be used on the farm, or sold to a biodiesel distributor or locally to other farmers.

Another benefit of locally processing the soybeans into biodiesel is a reduction in transportation cost, with it's reduction in carbon footprint.

The process of turning soybean oil into biodiesel is relatively simple and can easily be done on a farm.

Make your own biodiesel
Mike Pelly's biodiesel method
The FOOLPROOF way to make biodiesel

The waste from the soybeans is then processed by a methane digester or fed to those pigs.. More on that in a bit.

Corn for ethanol and pig food.
The corn is used to produce ethanol on the farm. Options for it's use include use as a motor fuel on the farm or sale to a gasohol distributer. Producing the alcohol on the farm reduces transportation costs, as it is more fuel efficient to transport the ethanol than it would be to transport the corn it was made from.

Ethanol production is a relatively low tech endeavor. People have been building stills to produce moon shine for millennia.

Introduction to a Farmer's Fuel ... Alcohol
The Revenoor, small scale alcohol production
Animal Feed By-product
Alcohol yield tables, by acre and by source
Alcohol distillation info
Ultra Low Tech alcohol production
News of the weird, a still on Space Station MIR

The pig lot.
When the corn is fermented a very high protein mash is created by the yeast as it turns the sugars in the corn into alcohol. The high protein waste "mash" from the fermentation process is then fed to pigs.

The waste from the soybeans can be fed to these pigs. The bean mash left over after the oil is removed is very high protein and has been used in animal feeds for several decades.

Wiki soybean page,

Some or all of the soybean hulls might also be fed to livestock.
Soybean Hull Feed Ingredient

The pigs lot may be the main cash crop of the farm.

The waste from the pig lot can be used in the methane digester

Methane digester.
A methane digester can turn almost any plant waste into natural gas. The methane (A.K.A. natural gas) from the digester is used for energy around the farm, including providing heat for the distillation of the ethanol, heating and cooking in the farm house, possibly powering the tractor. This energy source would almost certainly need to be used on the farm, as there is seldom any place it could be sold off the farm.

There's another energy and carbon footprint savings here, as the methane from the digester would be used instead of fossil carbon energy.

If a market is found for the methane, it would be profitable to harvest the corn stalks and soybean vines and process them in the digester.

The solid waste from the methane digester is very good fertilizer. This of course would be spread on the fields.

Biogas production Basics
270 cows generating electricity for farm
Anaerobic digestion from WIKI
Anaerobic Manure Digestion Information and Resources
Methane Digester page at Yahoo
DOMZ alternative fuels page

Add Solar
The addition of solar power will provide many more benefits.

Solar electric panels would provide electricity for the pumps and controls of the several processes, and the farm house. Solar heat systems could be used to provide the warm temps needed for the alcohol fermentation process. Solar dryers to dry the mash before it is fed to the pigs. Solar heaters to preheat the mash before it goes into the still. Solar heater for the first stage of the biodiesel process.

This whole farm could be profitable, have zero carbon footprint and reduce the carbon footprint of every vehicle that is powered by it's biodiesel or ethanol.

Other crop options.
Many other crops can be raised to produce Ethanol. I use soybeans and corn in my examples because in most of the temperate zones of the world one field can produce a crop of corn and a crop of soybeans per year. Also the two crops complement each other as soybeans are a nitrogen fixer, and corn uses nitrogen but puts down deep roots that bring nutrients up from deep in the soil.

An experienced farmer could probably pick out other good crop rotations that would be suitable in other climates.

Alcohol yield tables, by acre and by source
A variety of oils can be used to produce biodiesel

Fast-food fat--future fuel for cars

By Michael Kanellos
http://news.com.com/Fast-food+fat-future+fuel+for+cars/2100-1008_3-6157412.html

Story last modified Fri Feb 09 02:20:06 PST 2007

Fast-food fat--it's what's for cars Oren Rubin says you can help wean America off oil imports by going to Long John Silver's more often.

The deep fat fryers and waste oil containers of America house a large, untapped source of transportation fuel, says Rubin, business development general manager for BiOil, a biodiesel company based in Sausalito, Calif. Namely, billions of gallons of animal fat and waste vegetable oil that can be converted into domestically produced, cleaner-burning biodiesel, says Rubin, among others.

BiOil's plan--which will require sizable funding--is to build a national network of disposal centers, with help from biodiesel producer Pacific Biodiesel, based in Kahului, Hawaii, to collect a substantial portion of the 3.9 billion gallons of waste vegetable oil produced at fast-food eateries, refine it and then sell it to trucking companies and drivers.

"We rely on people to eat Chinese food, fast food, whatever," Rubin said.

More significantly, big agribusiness has its eye on the grease bucket too. Last November, chicken giant Tyson Foods announced it has formed a renewable-fuel division. Rival Perdue has said it is exploring the idea as well.

Tyson harvests approximately 2.3 billion pounds of chicken, hog and animal fat from its operations each year. The fat could be converted into about 300 million gallons of fuel, according to the company. (Industrial oil gets measured in pounds, while fuel oil is measured in gallons.)

"That's the equivalent of 20,000 barrels a day of feedstock that can be turned into renewables," Jeff Webster, senior vice president of strategy and business development for Tyson, said at an investor conference last year. "It's the equivalent of bringing renewable content to one-third of the (diesel used) on highway diesel within the U.S."

Companies such as Imperium Renewables in Washington state already operate refineries that convert soy or palm oil from farms into biodiesel. A few individuals, meanwhile, fill up their biodiesel vehicles at fast-food restaurants. Cars need to be retrofitted, however, before they can accept oil straight from the Dumpster.

Methodically collecting and refining waste biodiesel for sale to vehicles that have not been retrofitted could help transform biodiesel from an asterisk as a fuel source into a something of a sustainable industry. In the U.S. last year, only 150 million gallons of biodiesel were produced while Americans consumed 62 billion gallons of regular diesel.

Additionally, a focus on animal fat could help insulate the industry from the increasingly erratic pricing in the commodities market. Some expect that prices for vegetable cooking oil will begin to rise in a few years because of biodiesel demand. Animal fat already costs 70 to 80 cents less than new vegetable oil per pound, according to Tyson, while restaurants have to pay people to get rid of waste vegetable oil.

No guarantees on the menu
Success, though, is not guaranteed. Smithfield Foods a few weeks ago shut down its biodiesel subsidiary after two years because it determined that the project, based in Utah, was not economical. Smithfield BioEnergy, however, differed from these other projects in that it was trying to make diesel by mixing vegetable oil and methane culled from the manure of the animals on its farm.

"The nutrient content of the animal manure produced on our farms proved to be more than 50 percent below published estimates," the company said in a statement. Smithfield, however, will explore ways to exploit the methane.

Converting waste oil or animal fat into biodiesel is a somewhat straightforward chemical process. Through the transesterification process, glycerols, which make the oil more viscous, are removed from the oil. Hobbyists who run their cars on deep fat fryer oil today have to insert an additional tank inside their cars or trucks where the oil can be heated up before going into the engine. The heating counteracts the effects of the glycerols. (Biodiesel hobbyists also filter the oil.)

As a fuel source, biodiesel has distinct advantages over conventional diesel based on fossil fuels, say advocates. When burned in cars, it produces far less carbon dioxide in most cases and can produce fewer sulfur compounds, although an extensive debate surrounds the sulfur issue. Drivers can get fewer miles per gallon, but the difference is not big, and the cost is somewhat similar to regular diesel. Many big diesel consumers buy their fuel directly from refiners so biodiesel makers don't have to worry as much about being snubbed by Big Oil gas stations.

Interestingly, biodiesel was the first form of diesel. Rudolf Diesel ran his first engines on peanut oil. Petroleum-based diesel, however, became popular because it cost less.
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However, variations in the feedstock lead to different kinds of biodiesel. Soy-based biodiesel, for instance, can produce more sulfur. Also, animal fat biodiesel doesn't work as well in colder climates. Mixing different types of feedstocks can ameliorate the problem.

If anything, the economic circumstances of waste oil appear to make it an attractive feedstock. Most restaurants and fast food outlets, which are largely independently owned by franchisees, currently pay waste-disposal companies such as Waste Management 10 to 15 cents a gallon to haul away their used oil.

By contrast, BiOil will pay fast-food outlets for their oil. The company hopes to pay only a few cents a gallon, but that's more attractive than paying to have it hauled away, Rubin says.

"When we tell them we are going to pay them, they are like, 'Excuse me? I don't get it,'" he said. "But once they hear the explanation, they love it. They can even advertise themselves as a green restaurant."

Industrial disposal companies resell the oil they collect. Some of it goes to cattle feed, while the rest gets processed into glycerols for the soap and cosmetic industry. Here too, though, biodiesel is a better bet economically. Biodiesel can sell for around $2.75 a gallon, more than waste oil. BiOil and others can also sell the glycerols they extract during the process.

Perhaps one of the most difficult challenges in entering the market will be getting started. A plant that can churn out 5 million gallons of biodiesel a year can cost a few million dollars, and erecting the plant requires going through regulatory processes.

BiOil hopes to raise $97 million--an exceedingly large amount for a start-up--to build 30 processing plants. Rubin admits that the company hasn't produced a gallon of biodiesel yet either.

But unless burger sales plunge, the potential will be there.

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