End of D.O.E. BioDiesel

I found this post on BioDiesel Now:

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On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:45:27 EST, Tilapia from the evworld yahoo-group wrote:

The top researcher from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Dr. Shaine Tyson, reports that the entire biodiesel research program has been terminated by the Bush administration. The staff for this research program has been notified of termination or transfer.

Dr Tyson writes:

DOE has canceled all biodiesel related research at this time. I will be permanently laid off April 1, if not sooner. I am also in the process of canceling contracts either before we award them or canceling them and pulling the money back to fund other salaries. ...snip...

In preparation for leaving NREL, my management has blessed all of our job hunting activities. So I'll be lining up biodiesel consulting work under my own shingle to commence after April 1. If you ever find yourself in need of my services, let me know. My new contact info is below. NREL has approved of us using our NREL phone and email until then to discuss new business if I can develop any, so don't hesitate to call if you need me.

K. Shaine Tyson
Biodiesel Feasibility and Consulting, Ltd.
3142 C.R. 115
Glenwood Springs, CO 81601
Phone: 970-945-9148

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So...I guess this is a little like Darell's "End of the EV1" thread. Thank goodness that biodiesel is already "out". Even if the DOE (Dept Of Energy) stops its research program, biodiesel will go on. Shoot, you can make it in your garage if it comes to that. I guess the Bush administration feels like it is a better gamble to go for Hydrogen (from fossil fuels?) than to pursue a fuel that we have now and works now (and BTW, can be completely renewable).

I must say, I like the idea of manned missions to Mars, but I do think we need to solve our imported petroleum dependencies here as a higher priority. This is highly disappointing to see the Federal program gutted for a fuel (biodiesel) that exploits something we have in abundance; sun and agriculture.

I sadly welcome you to my world. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

I was chatting with a person inside the petroleum business one day. I was talking about the oil importation "problem". He said something very interesting, which I am forced to agree with. Now I don't know if this is only his opinion, or a seldom spoken bit of knowledge that all people really involved in petroleum know.

Without further ado... he said that with petroleum being a finite resource, it is a good strategic move for us to import it as long as it is remotely possible. That way, when supplies run low, we will be left sitting on what's left. Which places us in a very good position economically, militarily (is that a word?), etc.

And Darell... don't worry about electric cars. It's just a matter of time till they get that pesky teleporter perfected!

Regarding importation of oil... Yep, that is a common suggestion I make to people that want to limit our dependency on imported oil--just after they say they don't want any drilling in the US owned Artic. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

Regarding Teleportation--Have you thought of the moral implications of this?

1. Scan the body/mind at source
2. Send the information
3. Reconstruct the body/mind at the destination
4. Destroy the source body/mind at source (upon confirmation of receipt).

There was an Outer Limits TV show that even had this premise. There was a problem with the confirmation and it took a couple of hours/days to confirm that the teleport was successful. And the alien needed to "balance the equation" by killing/destroying the source. And source:she was none too happy about having this done.

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Just saw an interesting show. Outer Limits. Neat concept.

An alien race helped humans to leave their over polluted planet by lending their teleport device--supervised by the pacifist, reptilian advanced aliens.

The process of teleportation works like this.
The person strips down, gets in a chamber and remains still. A liquid surrounds her. She keeps breathing. Then once frozen she is teleported. Once a confirmation is received, the redundant copy still remaining is eliminated. As in, the person is copied in a new location, and then the original copy is deleted. It is done when the person is immobilized in that liquid so they never notice anything.

But in the story, the drama starts when the original redundancy isn't terminated. She wakes up and thinks there was an error.

Once it is found that the teleport was successful, the machine operator needs to 'balance the equation.'

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-Bill

funny as ****

turbodog said:...when supplies run low, we will be left sitting on what's left. Which places us in a very good position economically, militarily

Too bad that our U.S. production rate is only 50% of our demand. So that when everyone else is out...our economy will still be crippled even if we had every drop left on earth. The other thing this idea misses... before the rest of the world would run out... we would long have been fighting over what's left.

As far as drilling in Alaska...even the most optimistic estimates would only make a blip in our total production. If you look at the historic curve of U.S. production, the "huge find" of Prudhoe Bay in Alaska only improved the rate of production decline a little. Our U.S. production has been in decline since 1970, well before Prudhoe Bay came on-line.

No...I feel like there really isn't any easy answer. This will be a problem that will be hard to deal with (the kind that we in the U.S. don't like to face).

My family used to have about 8-10 oil and gas wells. They had been in production for many (20+) years. Gas prices were not high enough to make them viable (I guess cheap imported crude), so they were closed. When things get tight and prices go up, I am sure they will be uncapped. Point is that domestic production is likely low for several reasons, one of which is cheap foreign supply. Let's not forget that prices at the pump are 1) lowest on earth for a superpower (pretty sure I'm right on this one) 2) prices have stayed the same or decreased adjuste for inflation

We talk and talk about "gas". We need it, but there are vast supplies of other forms of petroleum. Realistically, I figure that by the time gasoline becomes hard/harder to get, we will have figured out how to make these other forms economically viable. There was a recent article in wired magazine (I think) about gargantuan stores of frozen methane. It was pretty good reading.

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turbodog said:
We talk and talk about "gas". We need it, but there are vast supplies of other forms of petroleum. Realistically, I figure that by the time gasoline becomes hard/harder to get, we will have figured out how to make these other forms economically viable. There was a recent article in wired magazine (I think) about gargantuan stores of frozen methane. It was pretty good reading.

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economically viable or not we won't see them as long the oil interest controls the administration, and control of the new substance is limited to keep prices up. Money is the only reason we will never see free energy. Even though it is all around us.

Free energy's not "free". Take solar... it has a payback for a typical house of say 10 years on average. Most people who are involved in alternative energy are responsible, intelligent, do their own work, take care of their equipment. Move solar or other new technology into the open market where any joe will use it and watch what happens. He'll abuse it, neglect it, forget to maintain it, injure himself (battery acid/etc). This will be followed with laws, lawsuits, regulations, government oversight, etc. Stuff will end up costing the same as what we have now when is has reached mature technology and market penetration.

Sure, there's political influence from ANY big business of company in the political arena. However, in our free market economy, if there emerges a better/easier/etc choice/source/alternative, people will use it and buy it. Consumers love a choice. If there is only 1 source around for something, take cellular service for example, the market will automatically split when ANY decent competitor enters the arena. Historically, you can get about 40% market penetration JUST BY SHOWING UP! Hilarious when you think about it.

If "free" energy's not in the mainstream market, there are good reasons. Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea, and am in the planning phase of adding solar panels to my new house... and I'm not even in california with it's incentive programs.

Yeah, money is a huge factor. None of us feel like giving any away now do we? If free energy made dollars and cents for the average person, they would have it.

turbodog, this arguement doesn't work. We only have one elctric and gas company here, and it is regulated that way by the government that suffers from special interest dollars.

As for "If "free" energy's not in the mainstream market, there are good reasons. Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea, and am in the planning phase of adding solar panels to my new house... and I'm not even in california with it's incentive programs."

There is no good reason for this, other than the current petroleum companies have control. Either through monetary, or political means.

And no matter how much sense it makes to have free energy we won't. The current energy barons will squash, buy out, control any thing that be considered free energy.

Really? You know that BP is a manufacturer of solar panels?

I think maybe we're interchanging the terms free energy and renewable energy. Solar would be renewable, free is a pipe dream.

turbodog said:... we will have figured out how to make these other forms economically viable. There was a recent article in wired magazine (I think) about gargantuan stores of frozen methane.

Yep. I saw that article (Discovery, I think). That thing about vast stores of methane was very interesting ...although I wonder about the CO2 implications of using that for a fuel. We increased the CO2 concentrations of our entire atmosphere by about 30% in the last 200 years. I'm not completely convinced about global warming but I do know that CO2 is definitely a "green house gas" (so is methane BTW) and that doesn't seem to be a good trend.

There is good historical precedence that when we need another source...another source will be developed.

I just finished reading "Coal: A Human History". It makes the point that when wood began to grow scarce in 17th century England, that the price went way up. That's when people starting getting really serious about using coal as a replacement. Naval ships started out using coal, but when the performance and range of oil fired ships started becoming a clear advantage (and therefore a market opportunity), the technology shifted rather naturally to oil. You could even site that air craft carriers switched over to nuclear for range and power the same way.

One thing I wonder though...might that biodiesel research that just got stopped...been part of that natural shifting? And...in the interest of prolonging an existing industry, we missed the chance to get the timing right on it's replacement.

None of this is so clear that "what's right" is a slam dunk. It's just disappointing to me to see a fuel technology that obviously works (I've been using the darn fuel now for a year) to be discarded from our list of new energy technologies.

According to this link, bio-diesel is a *bit* more efficient than the regular kind /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/faint.gif

I think you have made or added to the point I have been thinking and/or trying to make. The market will shift when the people have a good reason. It has happened before and will happen again.

And like before, everybody involved with the old technology will fight to keep it, but you can only hold your finger in the dam so long.

This is just speculation, but if biodiesel was adopoted on a large scale it there *really* enough production to keep up?

What would be the implications of regular diesel consumption dropping by 50%? We might find that that might have some very bad unintended consequences.

This is more speculation, but of all US diesel consumption, where does it all go? I would hazard a guess as to 18 wheelers/construction/etc. My guess is that passenger cars are a small part of the pie. From an administrative/economic/etc standpoint... if you can't penetrate the large market... what's the use anyway? Return on the investment is just not there.

turbodog said:...I think you have made or added to the point I have been thinking and/or trying to make.

Yes. I agree with much of the point you made.

turbodog said:...if biodiesel was adopoted on a large scale it there *really* enough production to keep up?

Some of that is discussed in Is BioDiesel Worth Considering?

I haven't had a chance to study this yet myself (19 pages).

We use about 60 billion gallons of diesel fuel in the U.S. each year. We produce roughly 3.8 billion gallons of all combined vegetable oils and animal fats (waste lard) each year. A little more than half of that is from soy. So...from soy beans we could only make a small dent in petroleum diesel. In 2002 there were 20 million gallons of BD made and in 2003 it was 32 million gallons (steady increases every year). To make enough BD to replace 50% of our diesel, you'd have to use a variety of feedstocks (not just soy). You get 48 gallons of biodiesel from every acre of soy. I've seen numbers from algae ponds for making biodiesel that are like 10,000 gallons per year. So...we'd have to do something like that.

turbodog said:...What would be the implications of regular diesel consumption dropping by 50%? We might find that that might have some very bad unintended consequences.

If you mean economic dislocation...I'd point out that the transition would be gradual.

turbodog said:...This is more speculation, but of all US diesel consumption, where does it all go? I would hazard a guess as to 18 wheelers/construction/etc. My guess is that passenger cars are a small part of the pie.

Yes, that is true in the U.S. Only about 1% of our passenger cars are diesel. In Europe it is about 40% and biodiesel is widely available there. Here, it would require a shift over time to make a difference for our passenger cars (the same sort of shift to get onto hydrogen or battery powered cars). One advantage of biodiesel is that it can be done a little at time; no massive changes to our infrastructure for fueling, etc.

Even shifting our diesel trucks over to a locally produced, renewable fuel would be very helpful to our imported oil situation.

This could be wrong, but I thought I remembered that more then 50% of the diesel used in the US was for home heating. Does anyone have current numbers on that? Also most large freighters and tankers use diesel, and a LOT of it. How much do cruise ships use a week?

Because bio-diesel, solar, bio-mass and other renewable energy resources are good for the USA's economy, job market, environment, and national security, those in power will resist their usage. That is, until enough of us make enough noise at the polls - this November and every one after that.

brock: I thought that was "heating oil" not diesel. But, I live in the south, where the winters are only about 55F and pretty short. I though heating oil was oilier and less refined than diesel. Sort of like a waste product...

Speaking of which, wonder why we don't have heating oil around here. This part of the country uses: electricity (heat pumps), propane/butane, natural gas.

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ikendu said:
One thing I wonder though...might that biodiesel research that just got stopped...been part of that natural shifting? And...in the interest of prolonging an existing industry, we missed the chance to get the timing right on it's replacement.

None of this is so clear that "what's right" is a slam dunk. It's just disappointing to me to see a fuel technology that obviously works (I've been using the darn fuel now for a year) to be discarded from our list of new energy technologies.

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I believe you're on the right track here - as you say, it's now an existing fuel, perhaps the time has come for it to be no longer considered as a "new energy technology".

Or looking at it from another direction: Perhaps the federal government shouldn't be funding the research at all - why should all taxpayers (for example: Darrell and his Electric Car, or users of gasoline-only vehicles) pay for this when it's something that belongs to private industry - and the research paid for by the users. By that I mean, funding for research paid by the diesel/biodiesel companies out of the profits made from the sale of existing products or by investors in the newer products.

I guess I'm a die-hard capitalist /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Since it's been on the market for over a year now, I would assume the major part of the research is completed anyway. All that's left is improving an existing product. The same way Devcon still does research into epoxy glues (for example).

Turbodog,

Diesel and #2 heating oil are essentially identical. Often "dyed diesel" is used as heating oil. (red dye indicates no road use tax, you're in big $$ trouble if it's ever found in your on-road vehicle's fuel tank)

Be glad you have natural gas! It's usually cheaper and MUCH cleaner and easier to heat with than oil, and, I believe, always cheaper than propane. You live in an area where heat pumps work. I use heating oil only because I have no other affordable choice. I use propane only for the kitchen stove, barbecue grill, and forge - it's way too expensive to heat the whole house.