Biofuels Friend or Foe

Further to my last post, there was a relevant news item this morning -

Australia this year will have the smallest rice crop for eighty years, a direct result of the drought. This is one of the factors that has reduced the world rice stockpile by 50% in the last ten years, but biofuel production is last on the list of causes. Apart from lowered production the main cause given is the increasing urbanisation in India and China, which are the two largest consumers and producers of rice.

As an indicator of other sorts of causes, consider Burma. Fifty years ago it was the world's largest rice exporter. About ten years ago it became a rice importer. Nothing to do with biofuels, just fifty years of economic mismanagement. Very similar situation in Zimbabwe, except that it has happened a lot more quickly there, and there are other places I am sure you can think of with similar problems, albeit perhaps not as dramatic.

John

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Originally Posted by clean32

Global worming ( as it is different to the environment argument)

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Dunno if global worming is good. Can you imagine these worms getting loose around the world? :D

Giant worms destroying ancient rice terraces - Telegraph

I spent 3 years working in the Middle East (Qatar) negotiating the contract on Shell's Gas-to-Liquids facility, which will be the world's largest. The diesel fuel it will produce is pretty amazing stiff. It's clear, has no smell (or sulphur contaminants) and can run 100% in most existing engines with no problems. That said, I understand that Shell is planning to use it as a blendstock in existing low-sulphur diesel to make "ultra-low sulphur diesel". The ultra-low fuel will be able to have catalytic converters on the exhaust and will make diesel engines cleaner than petrol. GTL diesel also doesn't stain clothes with drips when refuelling, which might cause wives to actually do some of the refuelling. The plant will consume a huge amount of natural gas and just as importantly is expected to cost $12 billion:eek: to produce about 120,000 bbls of liquids (mostly diesel and jet fuel feedstock). If you take the cost and production rate it won't result in really cheap fuel. As previously mentioned, nothing left to solve is simple.

Pedro_The_Swift sorry mate, most of what you have quoted is just propaganda.
JDNSW post is much closer to the truth.

To add to JDNSW's post, there are other examples, like the Russian federation. Population 18 million, main import or largest import in dollar terms is cooking oil. Russia or what is the RF now can not feed itsself even today. This was also the same situation in Vietnam a decade or so ago, today Vietnam is the largest exporter of rice.

To try and clarify some of the preceding arguments, some of the areas can be broken down
bio fuel, = bio petrol or bio diesel? They should not be confused

bio petrol in the US and in Australia is made from basically a food crop, thus creating competition for growing space, thus prices rise, farmers make more money etc. Now the US has been subsidising farmers for decades( on some crops) by buying up surplus product and dumping it usually in Africa and other poorer nations, a valuable tool in USA policy.

Bio diesel is a different story. With the Palm plantations of the late 1800 to 1950s being closed (unprofitable competition with fossil fuels) the coconut industry going bust ( high cholesterol) the canola industry ( poisoning the farm workers, Canada being a mechanical farming). Revitalising these industries was and has been a little gold mine for some countries. And should be pushed further in this country. as none of these crops readily compete for ground/ growing space with the bio petrol/food crops.

History full circle
Just as early in the 1900s with oil production and products replacing grown products in industry, and as technology evolved. One of the largest market economic battles was fought out in the US. The adoption of fuel additives ( to stop detonation ) in short, would the powerful growers lobby win with the legal requirement to add ethanol to petrol, or would the new but equally powerful oil industry win with there additive " LEAD" . Well every one over the age of 25 knows that the oil industry own that battel, but the war still goes on. Basically there is no way that the oil industry wants a non petroleum product being added to there products. Great that it has stimulated research and improvements in there products, and the implementation of old technologies witch they were just to lazy to implement before (hydrogen added to fuels).

Maths 1 0 1

There is a finite amount of carbon on this planet, the problem is where is this carbon, in the air as C02 or locked in some other molecule IE oil. Basically what we have been doing is taking the locked up Carbon, converting in to Carbon dioxide ( ver industry cars etc) and letting it lose in the atmosphere. So much so that the earths atmosphere has changed from the early 1900 to now. we have losses 14% of our total oxygen content in air.
Now for every 1 carbon we unlock we also lose 2 oxygen.


The arguments against bio fuels are in part correct but are usually incomplete, motivated by the oil industry to protect there business. Like wise the arguments for bio fuels are incomplete, motivated by the big farming / cropping industries
So much so has the arguments for and against been distorted, (massive amounts of cash involved) they are useless in debating.
The only argument left is the oxygen levels and carbon levels in the air we breathe. The experiments of stuffing C02 into the ground are a wast of time, all this is doing is locking up both the carbon ( good) and oxygen( Bad)

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

I rather think that attributing recent increases in food prices to increased biofuel production is rather simplistic - given that Australia (one of the world's major food exporters) has been in the grip of drought for nearly eight years, it is likely that this plus the increasing imports of food to China and India to feed their increasing population and rising living standards are the main factors behind the increased prices (which, incidentally, are saving quite a few Australian farmers from ruin).

The other factor is that for forty years farm production in Europe, the US, and Japan has been heavily subsidised, depressing world food prices by making production exceed demand. With increasing world population and rising living standards as noted above, coupled with drought in Australia, and very minor effects from biofuel production, demand now looks like rising above supply, at least until the drought eases.

In the Australian situation at least, given decent prices (taking into account increased fuel and fertiliser and chemical costs - all of which depend on oil price!), and reasonable seasons, production will increase, as it will in several other countries. It may also make it possible to grow food economically in some of the major importing countries where local farmers have been put out of business by cheap imports.

John

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Clean 32, I can't argue with the general trend of your post, although I will point out that the burning of fossil fuels, while it appears to have made a measurable difference in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has not made a measurable difference in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, let alone the 14% quoted. Because of this the geosequestration of carbon dioxide cannot be questioned on the basis of reduction of oxygen in the air, although there may be other reasons for questioning it. It needs to be remembered that the vast majority of the carbon stored in the earth's crust following removal from the atmosphere is in fact stored in combination with oxygen as carbonates, mainly limestone, rather than as fossil fuels.

On this morning's news is something relevant to this thread - the cyclone in Burma is expected to have destroyed two thirds of Burma's rice crop - and the area devastated is the worlds largest rice growing area.

John

Thanks for your post, I can see that you are well read on the topic. I would counter with the following, and trying to keep it simple
Yes carbon is locked / stored in the earth with in many different and non petroleum molecules, like as you stated lime stone. But petroleum is the only carbon lock product ( mainly ) that industry ( and consumers) unlock that carbon content, stick to it a couple of oxygen and let if free into the atmosphere.
to state that the burning of fossil fuels hasn’t lead to a reduction in oxygen is in simple terms impossible, as it requires oxygen to be present when a fuel burns.
Oxygen is also locked up in the earth, the most common being water, H20. Yet there has been no noticeable increase in hydrogen in the atmosphere.
Back to the original argument, bio diesel is in my opinion the best option for Australia, and the world, will this reduce the C02 levels and increase the oxygen levels? Probably not. But what it will do is arrest the increase by producing a closed loop for both our fuels C02 and out fuels oxygen.

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

Clean 32, I can't argue with the general trend of your post, although I will point out that the burning of fossil fuels, while it appears to have made a measurable difference in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has not made a measurable difference in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, let alone the 14% quoted. Because of this the geosequestration of carbon dioxide cannot be questioned on the basis of reduction of oxygen in the air, although there may be other reasons for questioning it. It needs to be remembered that the vast majority of the carbon stored in the earth's crust following removal from the atmosphere is in fact stored in combination with oxygen as carbonates, mainly limestone, rather than as fossil fuels.

On this morning's news is something relevant to this thread - the cyclone in Burma is expected to have destroyed two thirds of Burma's rice crop - and the area devastated is the worlds largest rice growing area.

John

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Originally Posted by clean32

Thanks for your post, I can see that you are well read on the topic. I would counter with the following, and trying to keep it simple
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to state that the burning of fossil fuels hasn’t lead to a reduction in oxygen is in simple terms impossible, as it requires oxygen to be present when a fuel burns.............

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It is impossible only if you consider the oxygen in the atmosphere to be a fixed amount, which it is not. There is a whole series of dynamic, interacting processes going on all the time that affect the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere. Combustion of fossil fuels is one of them, but this is relatively minor (from the oxygen point of view) compared to the processes of life - photsynthesis increasing the amount, respiration decreasing it, and chemical processes from weathering of rocks to disassociation of H20 in the stratoshere (the hydrogen is mostly lost into space rather than accumulating in the atmosphere).

But this is not what I meant. Oxygen makes up 20.946% of the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide makes up 0.0383% of the atmosphere. This has increased by 0.0104% since 1750 (if the data is correct). Even if all of this amount had not been compensated at all, it would only reduce the oxygen content of the atmosphere by the same amount, that is, from 20.946% to 20.932%, which is within the place to place and day to day variation of oxygen content - vastly less than the 14% you quoted, and in fact, not measurable because of the variations. Loss of atmospheric oxygen is clearly NOT a problem - even if CO2 equivalent to 100 times the total to date was sequestrated underground, we would see a reduction in oxygen content of less than that you get going from Sydney to here (in terms of the partial pressure of oxygen available for breathing).

John