(Credit:
USDA)
When a new biodiesel plant opens early next year in Odessa, WA, it will employ a novel strategy: take locally grown seeds, crush them on site, and refine the resulting oil for fuel. It might sound obvious, but, according to plant manufacturers, the Odessa facility will be the first of its kind in the Western U.S. to fully integrate these steps necessary for biodiesel production.
The result? The facility, according to equipment suppliers, will be less vulnerable to fluctuating agricultural oil prices, which could help stabilize fuel prices further down the supply chain. For the community, it will give Washington wheat farmers an alternative rotation crop, which is beneficial both economically and environmentally.
Turning oilseed into biodiesel is a three-stage process. First, the seeds are crushed. In the case of canola seed, the crushing produces two substances: crude oil and canola meal. The oil is refined and filtered, while the meal can be used as livestock feed. In the third stage, the filtered oil goes into a reactor and mixed with methanol or ethanol and processed. About 90 percent of oil is turned into biodiesel; the leftover byproduct is glycerin.
A Washington state law mandates that all petroleum diesel contain 2 percent biodiesel by 2008. To meet the requirement for that state alone, at least 20 million gallons of biodiesel must be produced by next year. The Odessa plant will initially produce about eight million gallons annually, with an estimated future production of about 16 million gallons a year.
The automotive industry still seems divided on the benefits of using biodiesel in cars. According to Wikipedia, car owners in the UK may void their engine warranties if they use fuel that contains more than five percent biodiesel. But many automakers say the alternative fuel reduces engine wear, since biodiesel is a better solvent than petroleum diesel and helps keeps fuel lines clean. The downside is, deposits cleaned from the lines may cause blockages in fuel injectors. But that can be solved by changing the fuel filter every few months -- something many of us do at regular oil services anyway.
It's not easy saving the world. Take it from drivers who have opted to change from gasoline to ethanol, but find themselves struggling to find alternative-fuel locations. It seems like an arduous task when a Shell and a Chevron are located at practically every corner, but less than 1 percent of all U.S. gas stations offer e85, according to a survey by Pavillion Technogies.
(Credit:
Earthcomber)
Dethroning the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine is not likely to happen soon and will only occur with decades of policies to promote alternative fuels, according to an economic analysis done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MIT on Wednesday published a summary of the research that used economic models to study how alternative fuels could come to market.
The "systems dynamic" model, which simulates how markets behave, took into account several factors, including how often people buy new cars, how manufacturers affect the market and vehicle attributes.
The researchers' conclusion is that alternative fuels suffer from a catch-22 situation.
People won't buy cars that run on alternative fuels, even if they're far more fuel-efficient, because of concerns over fuel availability. Similarly, distributors won't build the infrastructure if there is not sufficient demand.
"The challenge is not just introducing an AF (alternative fuel) vehicle," said postdoctoral associate Jeroen Struben of the Sloan School of Management, who participated in the research. "Consumer acceptance, the fueling infrastructure and manufacturing capability all have to evolve at the same time."
MIT said alternative fuels are necessary to address environmental and energy security goals. It did not make a specific policy recommendation, but it said any policies to entice alternative fuels, such as a carbon tax or subsidies to build filling stations, would need to be in place for many decades, even during times of dropping gasoline prices.
In Pasadena, Calif., a city in Los Angeles County, a family has made a break--and a living--refusing to be dependent on supermarket chains and fossil fuels.
It's another case for the Luddite files. Or is it? Can you really be called a Luddite--someone who rejects technology completely--when you publish a blog and your Web site gets a respectable 71,000 unique visitors and over 3,000,000 hits a month?
Jules Dervaes and his family are "seeding a revolution" one heirloom tomato at a time. They're demonstrating a way of life that may become necessary when the world's economy has to operate without dependence on petroleum or other fuels for shipping foods great distances and when city dwellers may need to grow their own food or purchase it from nearby sources.
Dervaes and his three children run their '88 Chevy Suburban on "homebrew biodiesel," use solar panels and energy-efficient appliances to minimize their electricity use, and harvest an astonishing three tons of produce annually, selling much of it to gourmet chefs in Los Angeles.
Besides cultivating their tenth-of-an-acre yard with more than 350 varieties of edible plants, as well as chickens, ducks and goats, they're cultivating self-reliance and--perhaps most radical of all--their own happiness. Wednesday's Los Angeles Times quotes Dervaes: "Some people might feel we're regressing, but I feel we're progressing to a better life. We've lost that independence and the things that make us truly happy. The people that got us here must have done something right. We want to repeat that for the next generation."
Even though we like technology, a lot, we have to applaud this family's persistence, ingenuity and the amount of courage it must take to create the Garden of Eden in the middle of L.A. County.
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