A New System for Open, Location Independent, Reliable, Clean and Renewable Energy.
An Idea for More Efficient Ethanol and Biodiesel
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The idea of making
renewable types of fuels is to convert solar energy into something
transportable and easy to use in existing engines. Making Ethanol and
Bio-diesel from traditional corn, oilseed and cereal crops has many
issues due to the agricultural system being orientated to producing
edible food and the reliance on fossil fuels and fertilizers.
U.S.
DOE Study on Algae Production
The ideas presented here focus on these concepts:
- The long maturity of traditional crops (~90 days for barley, ~100
days for canola) means that a lot of sunlight has fallen on the crop
for little output (2% of total solar energy).
- Traditional farming methods use a lot of fossil fuels, $350 of
diesel to fill a combine is expensive and a lot of fossil fuel (never
mind the rest of the inputs to grow the crop).
- Using a plant with a really short life cycle and easy to harvest
would lower costs.
- It would be possible to recycle the CO2 from fermentation and
some of the waste heat and CO2 from distillation.
- A plant that was high in both carbohydrates and oil could be used
for both ethanol and bio-diesel.
- "Trapping" CO2 in charcoal and spreading it on farmland is a
method to lower Greenhouse Gasses. The charcoal is stable and almost
100% carbon and apparently there is some value in soil fertility.
This idea is very much a concept
and there is a lot of research to do. I find it more productive to just
throw the idea out there and let everyone tell me what is wrong with it
and then work on fixing the issues.
The general idea is to grow a high oil content algae in glass covered
tanks. The algae grows and dies and falls to the bottom in a relatively
short period (i.e. 24
hours) and the mature algae is pumped out. Malted cereal and oilseeds
are added to the mixture and the algae is fermented and
ethanol is produced. The bi-product is then dried, the oil is squeezed
out and bi-diesel is produced. The bi-product of that is "roasted" into
charcoal or rotted for fertilizer.
Again, this is just a concept and needs a lot of work in the biology,
distillation and bio-diesel fields. If you have any feedback, send it
to the below email.
This page, images and other documentation on this website are
copyright Robert J.
Rohatensky, August 2006
and are published under the Design Science License.
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