Biofuel

Simply on news related to biofuel and related stories.

RELATED INFORMATION FOR READERS Raymond Cheng

    EDIBLE CROP AS FUEL

• The U.S. now uses more corn for fuel than for feed - for every 10 ears of corn that are grown in the United States today, only 2 are consumed directly by humans as food; the remaining 8 are used in almost equal shares for animal feed and for ethanol - Scientific American (2011/10/07)
• Argentina, Indonesia threatened with EU biodiesel tariffs - vegetable oils and animal fats for use in diesel engines faces expanding EU renewable-energy trade barriers following import levies against the U.S. - Bloomberg (2012/08/29)
• Indonesia CPO still has a chance to join US fuel program - the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assessed the latest scientific data on greenhouse emissions generated from palm oil; Indonesia says palm oil could reduce emissions by 50 percent, EPA says 17%, less than the 20% threshold - Jakarta Post (2012/09/12)
• Corn for food, not fuel - more than one-third of the U.S. corn crop is used to feed livestock; 13 percent exported, much of it to feed livestock as well; 40 percent used to produce ethanol (as renewable-fuel); the remainder goes toward food and beverage production; yet midwestern drought (in 2012, previous one in 1988) has now parched about 60 percent of the contiguous 48 states - New York Times (2012/07/30)
• Senators ask EPA to relax corn-to-fuel rule - extreme weather in the U.S. has pushed corn yields lower which raised prices for corn and also animal feed prices to rise; time for EPA to relax rules requiring a percentage of the corn crop go to making ethanol - Yahoo! Finance (2012/08/09)
• Indonesia's Aceh revokes palm permit after legal challenge - a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by saving Indonesia's dwindling tropical rainforests, the world's third-largest, versus the soaring global demand for palm oil, which is used in everything from biscuits to biofuel - Reuters (2012/09/28)

    POOP FUEL & POOP-POWERED GIZMOS

• Poop power? Sewage turned into electricity - biodegradable solid waste is stored in large tanks, called digesters, for three to four weeks; bacteria decompose the waste, releasing methane gas while also reducing the amount of solid waste - MSNBC (2004/07/19)
• Turning cow poop into car power cuts harmful gases - Western Washington University powers cars with natural gas, called "biomethane", harvested from cow manure; the gas is less flammable than gasoline and produces fewer greenhouse gases than manure left to decompose naturally in fields - Seattle PI (2006/05/29)
• Cows to kilowatts: U.S. farms save big turning manure to energy - transforms 8 million gal of manure and wastewater a year into electricity, bedding, fertilizer and heating fuel – saving hefty sums of money while also preventing emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, two potent greenhouse gases - Popular Mechanics (2009/02/01)
• Chicken manure to power 90,000 homes in the Netherlands! - the world's largest biomass power plant to run exclusively on poultry manure, converting a third of the nation's chicken waste into energy while running at a capacity of 36.5 megawatts – enough to power 90,000 homes - Inhabitat (2009/08/08)
• Chickens can help save the planet too - convert the chickens' waste streams into methane gas for a mini-power plant; this 1.4 megawatt fuel cell plant will reportedly provide enough power for the entire facility, making the egg ranch a closed-loop system - Fast Company (2010/08/19)

  
  Illustration of the biogas technology. Retrieved from Heifer International - see "Biogas: More than a source of energy" dated October 25, 2011.

• NYU Student wants to convert dog poop into fuel - an NYU student from Ethiopia is applying for a grant to put machines into dog parks that would turn waste into energy to power lamps - DNAinfo.com (2011/12/20) - see also parksparkproject.com

  
  Methane produced by the digester is being burnt in the form of a lamppost for light. Graphics retrieved from parksparkproject.com

  
  Theoretically, any organic material (in this case dog poop) put in an "air-tight" container will start to produce methane. Graphics retrieved from parksparkproject.com

• Japan toilet maker unveils 'poop-powered' motorcycle that can travel as far as 180 miles on a tank filled with animal waste - no plans to commercialize it, though - NY Daily (2012/09/03) - read more from "TOTO unveils poop-powered 'Toilet bike Neo' Motorcycle!" by Marc Carter dated September 2, 2012

Oh, where can I order one of these?

TOTO rolled out the eco-friendly three-wheel 250cc motorcycle with a specially customized toilet-shaped seat that runs on bio-fuel from the discharge of livestock or waste water. Photo © TOTO International - see www.toto.co.jp

    McDONALD'S FRYING OIL

• Mac turns cooking oil into biofuel - McDonald's announces that the cooking oil used to fry the chips, hash browns and chicken McNuggets at its 1,200 outlets across the UK will be recycled into fuel for its fleet of lorries; the company switched its fleet in Austria earlier to biodiesel derived from its cooking oil, claims the move will cut its carbon emissions by 75 per cent in this country, the equivalent of taking 2,400 cars off the road - Telegraph (2007/07/02)
• McDonald's frying oil to fuel lorries in Emirates - vegetable oil that has been used to cook French fries at McDonald's fast-food outlets across the UAE is being converted into fuel for lorries in the region's first biodiesel factory; a first step into the biofuels market that is expected to account for 27 per cent of transport fuel worldwide by 2050 - The National (2011/07/04)

    MISCELLANEOUS

• Rabbits themselves as fuel, sinister!
  1. Heating plant burns bunnies to warm Swedes - 6,000 rabbits were culled from parks; rabbits peaking their heads out of their little rabbit holes early in the morning are shot dead with rifles by animal control officers - Huffington Post (2009/10/15)
  2. Rabbits: Great for green gardens - rabbits produce "exceptionally wonderful fertilizer" because their droppings are rich in nitrogen but they are not hot like cow and horse manure, which means rabbit poop doesn't need to be stored to allow it to age and can be applied directly to ornamental plants and fruit trees - Networx (2012/06/25)
  3. No wonder the Swedes are so efficient in processing anything, merely four percent of household waste goes into landfills, check this: Sweden: So clean it's payed to import garbage - waste-to-energy power plants are big in Europe; not so much in the U.S. - Take Part (2012/09/13)

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