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dedalus
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Intergalactic_Captain
Yeah, I guess that's a valid point... The thing is, though, we're not really all that interested in making the biodiesel itself. The primary aim is
to sell relatively small, self-contained, self-powered reactors capable of supplying farmers with cheap fuel. |
I had much the same idea.
I think the kicker is going to be waste disposal. I have to go look up this URL from the State of Ohio later, when I find it, I'll post it for you.
They've (the regulators) already got bio-diesel in their sights.
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Ozone
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Here is another thread concerning "what to do with all of that glycerol".
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=7036&a...
Toward this, I have put together this preamble (please *do not* directly quote this without contacting me first):
The eventual exhaustion of petroleum, coupled with uncertain foreign policy is pushing the United States toward the development and use of bio-derived
fuels and feedstock chemicals. The current plan, outlined by the President, calls for the production of 35E9 (billion) gallons of renewable fuels, in
the US, by 2015.
Considering a nominal ethanol yield of 355-370 L/t from corn1, and a crop yield of ~135 bushels/acre2, we can expect this to demand 97,062,608 acres.
Not counting pasture or idle acres3, the land requirement for this effort is around 22% of the total harvested land or ~123% of all corn in the US. In
2006, the US made 4,855 million gallons of ethanol4 or, approximately 17% of all corn grown. This means that we are using ~83% of our corn for food,
be it domestic, foreign or reserve. Following this, we will need to plant 177,732,608 acres in order to meet the desired fuel quota and remain flush
with food. This is only ~8% of the total projected agri-capable land, but the projected population of 324,509,473 people by 20155 will increase
demand. It becomes clear, that like petroleum, the amount of corn that can be grown without conflicting with the food supply is finite. This can be
circumvented by producing cellulosic ethanol.
Cellulosic ethanol, or ethanol produced from biomass mitigates many of the limiting factors associated with ethanol production including: competition
with the food supply and feed transport costs. The sugar mill is perfectly suited for the production of cellulosic ethanol since fuel costs are rolled
into the price of cane. At the current rate of use, 1/3 of the total bagasse, or about 467 t.bagasse/d (14% fiber) is available for production of
ethanol. Cellulose can be expected to yield ~56.82 % w/w1 ethanol from bagasse, which can theoretically provide a sugar mill with ~256 t (190,192 L)
of ethanol per day. At $0.51/gallon6, this turns into a profit of $25,526/d ($2,297,320/season.mill). Assuming a cooperative venture, significant
savings can also be achieved by routing some of the product ethanol to produce biodiesel sufficient to power the heavy equipment associated with
planting, harvest and processing of sugarcane.
Unfortunately, the production of biodiesel yields glycerol at a 1:3 molar ratio. Assuming 35 billion gallons of liquid fuel, and the current rate of
consumption (40% of the total in diesel), we will be making ~1.2 billion gallons of glycerol per year. Once a desirable value added product, glycerol
prices are streaking downward in response to a glut market. This can convert value added into storage and disposal costs. In order to see a profit on
glycerol, we must first convert it into some product of value.
Works cited ( sorry cut-paste parsing was strange)
1. Klass, D.L. (1998). “Biomass for Renewable Energy, Fuels, and Chemicals”. Academic Press Ltd.; an Imprint of Elsevier. ISBN# 978-0-12-410950-6:
416, 418,
2. National Agricultural Statistics Service. (2001). “Crop Production”. USDA, Washington, D.C. http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/nassr/field/pcp-bb/2...
3. Lubowski, R.N, Vesterby, M., Bucholtz, S., Baez, A. and Roberts, M.J. (2006). “MajorUses of Land in the United States, 2002.” USDA, Economic
Research Service, Economic Information Bulletin No. (EIB-14): 54 pp. http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB14/eib14d.pdf.
4. Renewable Fuels Association. (2006). “Ethanol Industry Statistics.” http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/statistics/
5. U.S. Census Bureau. (2007). “U.S. POPClock Projection: Component Settings for April 2007.” http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html\
6. DiPardo, J. (2002). “Outlook for Biomass Ethanol Production and Demand”. EIA Forecasts. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biomass.html.
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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dedalus
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Bio-diesel link
The Ohio EPA url is:
http://www.epa.state.oh.us/ocapp/sb/publications/biodieselgu...
It's fairly exhaustive.
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dedalus
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I finally googled this issue. Everybody's thinking about this.
Anaerobically digesting it...been tried. Doesn't work too well. Some people tried to in conjunction with pig manure, but dosing in too much suppressed
methane production.
There was some other people trying to convert it to succinic acid, via fermentation. That sounded kind of promising...is there much demand for that?
The sweet solution would be to convert it into some kind of monomer.
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not_important
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| Quote: | Originally posted by dedalus
I finally googled this issue. Everybody's thinking about this.
Anaerobically digesting it...been tried. Doesn't work too well. Some people tried to in conjunction with pig manure, but dosing in too much suppressed
methane production. |
It needs to be run through an acid-former fermentation, with select microorganisms to convert the glycerol to feed for the methogens. Tends to be
slow, unfortunately; perhaps the gene shufflers can do something.
| Quote: | There was some other people trying to convert it to succinic acid, via fermentation. That sounded kind of promising...is there much demand for that?
The sweet solution would be to convert it into some kind of monomer. |
Already mentioned in my earlier post. The CO2 + glycerol fermentation would couple ethanol or methane fermentations with biodiesel production, using
wastes from both to make salable products.
The fermentation to 1,3 propylene glycol would give an alternative to ethylene glycol for making a PET like polyesters. Controlled oxidation gives
acids and hydroxy acids that can be used in making plastics.
In theory glycerol could be used to make synth gas
C3H8O3 => 4 H2 + 3 CO
C3H8O3 + 3 H2O => 7H2 + 3 CO2
But there's a lot of engineering in that.
The attached PDF estimates the succinic acid market at 270,000 t yr, if price is low enough.
[Edited on 4-5-2007 by not_important]
Attachment: 21020267.pdf (191kB)
This file has been downloaded 9448 times
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UnintentionalChaos
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What about swapping it out for ethylene glycol for the production of PETE (PGTE?)? The result would most likely be an extremely highly crosslinked
polymer (and hence hard and rigid) somewhat resembling bakelite, although properties are somewhat hard to predict before any testing. Any polymer
using it would most likely be rigid due to heavy crosslinking What if you made polyglycerol as a substitute for PEG? If you could control the amount
of crosslinking, it could probably substitute for many of the same uses. The best part is that of it works, you have the fact that it's "green
technology" behind you, which seems to be the most recent "hot word"
Department of Redundancy Department - Now with paperwork!
'In organic synthesis, we call decomposition products "crap", however this is not a IUPAC approved nomenclature.' -Nicodem
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not_important
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Highly cross-linked plastics tend to be thermosetting, which limits what they can be used in, and often are brittle. Typically crosslinking is
limited to a few percent.
PEG is made in effect by reacting ethylene oxide with ethylene glycol, givng repeating -O-CH2-CH2- units. How would you do that with glycerol,
squeeze out water to form the ether linkages without dehydrating the glycerol?
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xxxxx
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i was wondering if a glycerine water mixture could be used as antifreeze/coolant in an automotive radiator system. presumably the vapor pressure of
the mixture would be lower than a comparable mixture of ethylene glycol and water allowing the engine to operate at a somewhat higher temperature,
presumably increasing fuel efficiency slightly. there would be the environmental advantage over ethylene glycol, assuming that the glycerine water
mixture is not too viscuous to function as a coolant.
[Edited on by xxxxx]
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not_important
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Glycerol has been used as antifreeze in the past, and still is for some applications such as preservation of biological specimens. Besides the cost
in the past, I believe there can be a problem with the formation of acrolein and from that gums.
Looks like they're working on making 1,2 propylene glycol from glycerol
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/11277118...
Another application is making glycerol acetals for use as oxygenate additives to (bio)diesel and gasoline. Reactive distillation of glycerol and
acetaldehyde made from ethanol appears to be an attractive route. In fact, going to reactive distillation to make the fatty acid esters from oils is
a much better method to make biodiesel than the current base catalysed method, it needs no alkali input, produces no waste salts, and the glycerol
by-product is neutral and rather pure. Besides that the process can handle high levels of free fatty acids, something the base catalysed method can
not.
Research on using glycerol:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/11422961...
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=377
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dedalus
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The Glycerol Challenge
It's a dedicated website, at http://theglycerolchallenge.org/
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