New propulsion sytems for ships

Biodiesel from Algae in Argentina

An Argentine company called Oil Fox announced recently that they would produce biodiesel from algae oil for commercial use. The company has signed an agreement with the government of Chubut province to grow four species of algae in “secret” pools around the province (to avoid industrial espionage, they claim). The whole project would involve 19 million US dollars investments -from German capitals-, and is supposed to result in 240 thousand tons of biodiesel.

More at:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/biodiesel_from_1.php
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06/new_company_to.php

 

Cool, I'm reposting this in several car forums.

 

Algae Based Fuel Source

Coincidently a friend of mine phoned me today and spoke of a Popular Science magazine reference to this algae fuel source.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4213775.html
Pond-Powered Biofuels: Turning Algae into America's New Energy
Using a complex (and still expensive) photosynthetic process, breakthrough innovators have developed biodiesel and ethanol from an unlikely source that can double its output overnight and just might help give alternative energy the bump it needs: little green goo

...and that led to this interesting article:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2690341.html

Crunching the Numbers on Alternative Fuels
How far can you drive on a bushel of corn? As the race to board the alternative-fuel bandwagon heats up, Popular Mechanics discovers the truth about bio fuels in a special report. Listen to a bio fuels podcast here.

 

Ethanol

...couple of interesting side notes on Ethanol

*A gallon of E85 has an energy content of about 80,000 BTU, compared to gasoline's 124,800 BTU (thats an eye opener, huh)

*Alcohol is a corrosive solvent. Anything exposed to ethanol must be made of corrosion-resistant (and expensive) stainless steel or plastic--from fuel-injection components to the tanks, pumps and hoses that dispense E85, as well as the tankers that deliver it.
Now here is a real eye opener. Have a look at this article in the latest issue of ProBoat, " Lessons from Ethanol's Freshman Year"
http://www.proboat-digital.com/proboat/20070607/
...click on contents, then click on the article. Look at what it can do to your engine should you have a resin tank!! and to fuel lines, and its water attraction/mixing capabilities

I'm just not that impressed with this ethanol technology (hype) as a whole.

It would be real interesting to see how many of these ethanol plant investors had close allies in this last republican congress...we've been sold a bill of goods my friends

 

Very true, Brian, and I have to agree with you, I'm not particularly impressed either.
Ethanol holds some promise in the short term, although it is by no means a complete solution. The trouble is that at present we're making it out of corn and soy, which to be honest are pretty inefficient sources for it. As a result we run the risk of sacrificing food-growing land in order to fuel our SUVs.
If ethanol is to become a major component of the fuel supply, it'll have to be via cellulosic production methods using waste plant matter. Those techniques are still not feasible at a large scale, although they should be within a few years. But the US has a powerful farm lobby with lots of well-placed friends; there is a very real danger that corn- and soy-based ethanol production will just turn into another round of hidden farm subsidies, without actually helping our fuel shortage and emissions problems.

 

Matt, you hit the nail on the head. And it has already increased the price of a lot of food goods that depend on corn oils and soy bi-products etc

 

It's a roumor here that biodiesel and E85 (gasoline with 15% bio-fuel) is quite energy demanding to produce, some say that the process of making bio-fuels is very inefficient. Anyone has numbers on that?

 

I would call it ********. Gasoline is also energy demanding to produce.

It has to be procesed on the platforms befour it's pumpes to land or brought to land by fuel consuming thankers.

Then it has to be heated for destilation.

Alcohol don't nead anny energy while it's brewing(atlest not in 20-40C weather) And probartly require the same energy for destilation as gasoline. If made localy close to farms I don't think the energy bill would be higher than for gasoline. I gues they are about the same.

I worked for some time as a Service engineer for a seperator manufacturer and one off my misions was at Norsk protein(Norwegian Proteins) at Hamar. They had a big destruction plant for food and waste from the food industry.

They had big containers full off dead annimals not suited for human consumption for one reason or another. This was grinded up and pumped into big drums that would squese out the fat and it would be separated.

Worst job I ever had, You had a sweet smell of death that you read about in crime novels that made you sick and your hands had to be washed a 100times and that bloody dead annymal fat would still stick on your hands.
I did not eat that evning

Aparently this fat has restricted use since danger off desease and so, some where used in making pig food witch I find horible. Annimals should not be forced to eat other animals, a pig eating a pig is agains nature. This would do great as biofuel

 

Thanks, that make sense.

 

If made localy close to farms I don't think the energy bill would be higher than for gasoline. I gues they are about the same.

The tractor has to be created , and the fields plowed and pesticides used for the largest sellable crop.

The TOTAL energy cost is a LOSER with alcohol , and it is a more poisonous polutiant than gas.

But the various farm lobbies VOTE

And since the 10% alky in auto gas REDUCES the milage by a like amount , the various tax authorities LOVE extorting an extra 10% in taxes for every mile driven.

FF

 

Moust oilfields used for some time has no preshure in the well so they nead to pump down gas or water to get the oil up. This consume energy.
In moust cases it's not coming up pure oil, but a water oil mix and separating out the water consume energy. Shiping oil from midle east to US consume alot of energy and Shipping that diesel and gasoline to all the gasoline stations in central US with trucks can't be good eather.

That is imposible. Ethanol is burning so it has energy. If adding 10% would reduce milage by 10% Etanol would not burn. What is thrue is that Etanol has a lower energy contence than Gasoline so you would get a milage increase 2% or so.

Etanol also have a higher octane rating so you can increase your compresion alot

 

Ethanol issue far more complex

Like most things in life, the issue is complex, and the news media hype the simplistic highlights as if they were the whole story. Is anyone surprised??

Too many environmentalists jump on the "feel good" wagon without knowing much about the science, and too many environmentalist organizations are fronts for political movements, while others are professional revolutionaries, who thrive on conflict, oppose much while providing nothing in the way of constructive recommendations, because they don't really want to have problems solved -- that would put them out of work.

There are legitimate arguments against the use of corn-based ethanol as a replacement for petroleum-based fuels:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010808135444.htm

There are other ways of producing fuel for ethanol plants, possibly more efficient, but the debate hasn't really been about efficient production so far, but about subsidies for the big agribusiness companies. A prime example is corn, advocated by the big corn growers, although it is possible and more efficient to use ag waste and other, easier to grow crops: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070327113831.htm

A recent column in Car and Driver mentioned a better way of using ethanol than simply blending it. This method takes advantage of its higher octane and avoids the most common pitfall, i.e. the loss of fuel mileage because of the reduced energy content of blended fuels.

http://technocrat.net/d/2006/10/27/9631

There are many research and development projects involving biodiesel, fuel cells, hydrogen and ethanol production, etc. I read about a technology called "thermaldepolymerization" , in which garbage is fed into a chemical reactor and broken down into petroleum, basically a reversal of the way many modern materials are made from oil. This is still under development to get the costs down, but the key is that the raw material is organic garbage, the stuff we have trillions of tons of in landfills.

The point, IMHO, is that science and engineering, driven by market forces and the growing recognition that traditional fossil fuel reliance is a dead end, will work to produce alternative fuels and power plants to use them effectively. As always, however, it takes time. Meanwhile, we need to be aware of and try to prevent the danger of the unholy alliance of agenda-driven lobbyists, environmentalists, politicians, and news media forcing "feel good" laws and programs that create huge costs to the taxpayer while doing nothing to address the real problems.

 

Stian,

You're right about the higher octane rating, but you're wrong about the effects of ethanol's lower energy content. The higher octane offsets the lowr energy content somewhat, but only reduces the effects a bit. The fundamental aspect is that one gallon of 87 octane gasoline has an LHV (lower heating value, the energy available through normal combustion) of 115,500 BTU's while a gallon of ethanol has an LHV of 76,000 BTU's. That's only 2/3 the energy content. The simple fact is that E85 fuel blend yields worse mileage; so more is consumed for the same amount of travel by car or boat. Diesel fuel has a higher LHV than gasoline, which is why diesels get better fuel mileage. No one argues with those facts, but people question the same facts about ethanol vs gasoline. I suspect this is because they have heard so much about ethanol being "better" than gasoline, and they assume that better means more efficient. There are advantages to ethanol use, but better fuel mileage from E85 is not one of them.

There is a good summary of the issues with sources cited here:

http://zfacts.com/p/436.html

 

Sad but in many ways true. One very frustrating side effect of this is that legitimate citizens' groups with legitimate concerns frequently get sidelined by better-funded groups that are little more than fronts for corporate interests.

True, but not the only reason. A diesel is inherently more thermodynamically efficient, about 20-30% more so, than a gas engine by virtue of its insanely high compression ratio (18 or 20 to 1, compared to 8 or 9 to 1 for gas), even though the Diesel cycle is less efficient than the Otto for comparable compression ratios. Given a quantity of fuel containing 100 kJ of energy, a diesel will generally produce about 25-30 kJ of mechanical work (sometimes even more for a big ship diesel) compared to the 15-20 kJ of work a gas engine will produce from the same amount of chemical energy (NOT the same volume/mass of fuel, but the same energy content of the fuel).

 

Matt,

You're right, of course. I was focusing on the energy content because that's the reason why ethanol blends actually get less mileage than standard gasoline. That's rarely mentioned in media reports about ethanol.

The ethanol injection technology report I mentioned is pretty cool; the idea is to take advantage of the higher octane of ethanol by direct injecting it only under heavy acceleration, to suppress detonation (the developers claim the engine will act as if it was running on 100+ octane gasoline). This enables a smaller engine to develop high power when called on, while running at much lower output most of the time. The benefits are using smaller amounts of ethanol, only when its qualities are most beneficial, in order to enable use of a smaller and more efficient gasoline powerplant.

If we can keep the politicians from screwing things up (small hope, maybe? ), there are some interesting technologies being developed that will help things in the long run.