The Woods' Lake renewable energy project


or put it
another way


"BioDiesel 101"

Actually, this is more of a journal than anything.  But I want to dedicate this to renewable energy. If you'd like to know what is really happening in the world of renewable energy (the thing that is eventually supposed to get us off of foreign oil), start here.  I will provide you with links, reference material and more 

 

For quite a while now, I've heard politicians talking about doing something to get us off of imported oil.  Then again, they've been saying that since the 70s and we're more dependent on foreigh oil today than ever.  The trouble is, NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS EXCEPT TALK. In fact, I'm doing more in my garage addresses this issue more than anything I've see come out of Washington to in over 30 years (and I'm not very good at it).  It isn't that they don't mean well, it simply means they are trying to do something about, about which they know absolutely nothing.

The facts are that at this point in time, the only renewable fuel that even comes close to being viable is biodiesel.    Ethanol doesn't get it, it costs too much to make and produces too little energy per gallon.  About the only thing ethanol has done for us is raise our food prices.  In all fairness, BioDiesel isn't far behind because it has driven the price of soybeans through the roof!  But there ARE alternatives to Soy for Biodiesel that make more sense and could become a factor within a couple of years.  These alternatives have the ability to revitalize our agricultural economy in this country and make small farms profitable again.

After doing a lot of research I will try to list below, the facts on renewable energy as they stand today.  I did the research out of self defense because I got tired of paying $2.75 a gallon to run my Diesel Pickup which gets about 16 MPG.  Since president has a lot to say about where we go from here, I wanted to find out if he knows what he's talking about, and in order to do that I had to find out what was really happening.  As it stands today, I've concluded that Washington IS the problem and aparently isn't all that interested in solving it.    

I thought we'd begin with a few basics.

The first thing you need to know is about the efficiency of the gas powered cars we drive today.  Gas powered cars (internal combustion engines) convert roughly 27% of every dollar you pour in your gas tank into power you can use to turn your wheels.  In other words, 27 cents out of every dollar you spend actually gets to the wheels on your car.  The rest blows right out your tailpipe in the form of heat and that does no one(including our environment) any good.  Yet the first thing the government did when they got their hands on GM and Chrysler was to cancel their diesel programs.  Even renewable fuels aren't going to change this fact so I'll leave the heat vehicles produce for another discussion.

Diesels on the other hand convert roughly 42% of every fuel dollar you spend into power for your wheels .  That's about 30% more value you will receive out of every gallon you burn, and I assume, 30% less heat to warm our planet.

Hybrids?  Well they run anywhere from 50 to a little over 60% efficiency and Electric motors check in at roughly 80% efficiency.  It's too bad that battery technology hasn't caught up with the electric motor's efficiency because the weight of today's batteries cost big bucks and add weight to the vehicle which drives down the "bang for your buck". 

These facts (and I'll be happy to back them up at any library if anyone asks) lead me to wonder why our lawmakers in Washington don't encourage our car companies to manufacture more diesels instead of canceling them.  Today's diesels are cleaner than gas engines and 30% more efficient.  They rival Hybrids in terms of mileage and you don't have to replace a three thousand dollar battery every few years.  It's a no brainier to see that Diesels could have an immediate impact on our dependence on imported oil if you could buy one.  Sadly, you won't see it because every lawmaker in Washington is likely to have a stock portfolio that includes Ford, Exxon, Texaco and BP (the government already owns GM and Chrysler).  Who wants to mess with all those generous dividends from the sale of gas?

Apparently the Auto industry doesn't want to see gas powered vehicles bite the dust and frankly, I don't understand why.  In my years on this earth, Auto manufactures have always tried to maintain the status quo.  Gas powered vehicles have been about the only thing you could buy in the US for as long as I can remember.  This is not the case in the rest of the world by the way.  I have always believed that General motors did the American public a TERRIBLE disservice when they brought out those poorly designed diesels back in the 70's because that more than anything else turned the American Public off when it came to Diesel engines. They finally got their comeuppins for all that stupidity last year. 

Unfortunately for GM, Foreign auto makers aren't as married to internal combustion gas guzzlers and at the moment, which is one of the reasons they are eating Detroit's lunch.  To counter cars like the Prius, GM is bringing out the VOLT.  If the reports I read are true, it is going to sell for around 40 grand(I've owned houses that didn't cost 40 grand).  These are cars you plug in and drive for 40 miles or so on about two dollars worth of electricity.  Then those 27% efficient internal combustion engines kick in and your car becomes a $40,000 Prius.  On the other hand,

Ford Motor Company is about to start selling a car in Europe called the Focus that is powered by a diesel engine built in England and reportedly gets 63 MPG (http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2008/07/diesel-ford-fie.html).  Ford doesn't want to bring this car here because they don't think it will compete when you consider euro the exchange rate, it would cost you and me about the same as a Prius in this country ($24,000).  But at least that Focus is a step in the right direction and it gets better mileage than any hybrid on sale today.  They could make those engines in this country using American labor and bring that Focus price down to  around $20,000 more or less.  This could give the American public a car that burns less fuel than a Prius does that costs less and doesn't need several thousand dollars worth of batteries to be replaced every few years. 

But Ford says they would have to build about 350,000 of those engines a year, just to break even and they don't think they can sell that many in the US. 

It should be pointed out that Congress and the president could change that with the stroke of a pen by coming up with a way to encourage the use of more Diesels by American Manufacturers.  Instead, they made GM and Chrysler cancel diesel engine programs for their pickups that would have yielded clost to 30 MPG, makes you proud doesn't it?  They could do it by giving you and me a tax break if we bought a diesel, but we got cash for klunkers.  They could encourage Ford to build that Diesel engine plant in America through incentives and according to the wall street journal, Ford can afoard it.  Would you pay 20 grand for a car that gets 63 miles per gallon?  I would. 

Ford is going to find itself a day late and a dollar short when people start snapping up Accords that get 52 MPG in europe after they arrive here in a year or two and hopefully Korean Auto maker Hyundai will bring in a little car called the Soul with a three cylinder diesel that's being sold now in the far east.  That one should approach 70 MPG.  "But Diesel costs more than Gas" these days, but then again, I know something you don't.

Cars are only half of the equation, those pesky high Fuel prices are the other half.  

OK, let us talk about the other part, FUEL! 

Again, our politicians think Ethanol was the place to start in replacing gas for our cars so, they enacted legislation to encourage the manufacture of Ethanol.  But Ethanol (which is made from corn) produces only 66% of the energy that the same amount of gas produces.  In other words, if you're getting 10 MPG with gas, you will get 6.6 miles per gallon on ethanol. On top of that, it costs more to make and ethanol's use will dry the seals out in your gas engine, thus shortening it's life.  Congress mandated the use of ethanol to help get us off gas a few years ago and in Because of that, they have driven the price of food made from corn through the roof and gas is still expensive.  Everything from the food we feed cattle(which translates into higher beef prices) to the can of corn you buy at the store has hit the ceiling, all for a fuel that produces only 66% of the power produced from Gas.  Will someone please tell me where this was a good deal?  That's what happens when congress tries to run everyone's business think Social security, the post office and soon your mecical care.

As I write this, there is only one clost to viable alternative to petroleum that is ready to go right now.  It costs slightly more to produce than Diesel fuel at today's prices and it produces virtually as much energy.  Furthermore it's a better lubricant so diesel engines last about 20% longer. 

The Diesel engine came to life around 1900, when a man in Germany developed an engine that would run on peanut oil.  His name was Rudolph Diesel and the engine he designed carries his name.  There was also a man in the United States by the name of John D. Rockefeller who had some "gook" left over after refining gasoline from oil that was otherwise useless and he found out it too would burn in diesel engines.  The stuff wasn't very clean and it produced a lot of soot (that's the black stuff you see coming out of a diesel's exhaust OR out your chimney when you burn the same oil  also called fuel oil to heat your home)  but it was cheap so he sold it to heat homes and to power Diesel engines.  Remember that word "cheap" since that too now seems to be a memory.  It's still a better deal than Gas though.

Truckers and Railroads were among the first to find out about the efficiency Diesels along with Farmers, they have known about them for decades.  Most people didn't like diesels because of the soot problem and the smell.  Diesels have a lot of power at low rpm's and are ideal for moving heavy loads so industry has made heavy use of them.  Today, the rest of the world is now driving automobiles powered with Diesels, but not here.  That's why demand for that #2 fuel oil (Diesel fuel) is now out stripping the supply and sending the cost above gas for something that used to be called "a biproduct".  In spite of that, at 30% better efficiency, you still come out far better with a diesel than you do with a gas powered car.  Since the American public isn't familiar with this fact, Ford doesn't think they can sell that diesel Focus in the US.

Now, let's talk a minute about BioDiesel. 

Biodiesel is a product made from the same oil you use to cook your french fries with and as I said, it produces roughly the same energy as fuel made from petroleum.  The fact is, as long as restaurants don't cook meat in fryer oil, The french fry oil they throw away can be easily converted into biodiesel in much the same way soybean oil is converted.  Presently, much of the biodiesel made in this country comes from soybeans, from which oil is extracted at the rate of about 52 to 55 gallons per acre.  At today's market price, that makes BioDiesel more expensive than Petroleum Diesel fuel. But keep in mind used fryer oil can be had for free and converted to great biodiesel for less than a dollar a gallon. 

However, there is an alternative to Soy called Rapeseed which produces two to three times as many gallons per acre and is commonly grown in Europe.  Canola oil is derived from rapeseed, rapeseed is somewhat acidic for humans but not a problem diesels.  Rapeseed can be easily grown even in relatively poor soil.  That makes rapeseed a viable crop for farmers who are looking for something to grow that will make money.  They can press the oil out of rapeseed and make Biodiesel with it to run their farms and sell what they don't use.   In addition they can sell the remaining pulp which is high in preteen for other uses such as animal feed.  This is a particularly good deal for everyone because all farm equipment runs on Diesel Fuel and the less they have to pay to raise other crops, the less we have to pay at the supermarket.  Eventually this alone sould give diesel fuel users some relief at the pump. 

But the real hope for the future is in Algae. 

That's right that green stuff you see in lakes and ponds is about 50% oil.  Growers can produce as much as 30,000 gallons of oil an acre per year when it's done with bio engineered algae, grown in a closed loop system in a greenhouse.  And that's not the best part.  Algae eats CO2(carbon dioxide) and can be grown just about anywhere you can find sunlight and water.  And are able to build a suitable greenhouse near a coal fired power plant.  You could actually pipe the co2 from a power plant into those greenhouses and increase your yield while cleaning the air at the same time. The system they are experimenting with is actually a series of plastic sleeves, into which you pump water, Algae and the CO2.  Imagine that, something that cleans up the atmosphere and grows the stuff that we use to power our cars at the same time.  While that algae is using up carbon dioxide, it is also creating Oxygen.  How good is that?

Don't get too excited yet, this technology is still in the experimental stage and about the earliest you might see Diesel fuel from Algae years away.  When the first commercial facility is constructed and brought on-line that will extract the oil from the algae and refine it cheaply enough to give petrolium a run for our money.  Then it will probably take two to three years to get the bugs out of the system and establish a market before a second plant is even started.  After that, the price of manufactured fuel should begin to fall(and we get a little break at the grocery store as well becuase the cost of manufacture and transpor come down).

Here is a link that explains one of these projects if you're interested in knowing more, CLICK HERE

There are other technologies that are also coming on line for you Gas users.  There was a good article in Popular Mechanics (link below) that talks about the state of the art of alternative fuels.  There's a plant being built in Brazil that should be in operation by the end of this year that produces an alternative fuel that is said to produce a fuel that releases 103% of the energy that gas produces.  There are two more plants using different technologies that produce about the same energy in the USA and Canada that will be on-line by the end of 2012.  Again, these plants will have to work the bugs out of the system before other plants are even started but the future for renewable fuels is getting brighter, if you have the time to wait on it. I doubt I have that much time so we here at Woods' Lake have started an initiative to produce our own renewable diesel fuel from what's available today.  I'd like to think we have the possibility and eventually the capability to make a big difference for some farmers, truckers and contractors in this area by simply setting an example.

We call it, The WoodsLake Renewable Energy Project.       

Honestly, I don't know where it's going to go, but we're working on it every day and that's better than sitting around talking about it and doing nothing.  If you'd like to find out more about what we're doing here, CLICK HERE

Finally if you would like to know more, there are several articles and books I could recommend if you'd like to find out more about renewable energy.  I plan to add to this list as I find more.

There was an article in the September 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics (I spoke of this above) on the state of the art for renewable energy.  It's the cover story so you won't have any trouble finding it at your local library.  Click here for a synopsis from PM's web site

There is also a book called "BioDiesel America" which is crammed with facts about the manufacture and use of Biodiesel.  It was written several years ago but to my knowledge it's still the author's latest effort (actually he just released a movie about renewable fuels.  It was written before the spike in gas prices in 2008 which actually make it a more interesting read. 

There is also another great article in Popular mechanics comparing the VW Jetta TDI to the Toyota Prius, the results of which will undoubtedly surprise you. (By the way VW was testing a Diesel Hybrid manufacturers and claim they were averaging right at 70 MPG some time ago but nothing has been published recently about it. 

There are lots of other sites too, Journey to Forever is an excellent source for information on Bio.  As we go along, I will try and keep you up to date on the discoveries I'm making and who knows, maybe together we can make a difference. 

 

This page last modified on Tuesday, March 02, 2010