Biodiesel

Biodiesel, made from the oily residue of non-food crops and animal waste, presents great potential to replace gasoline in fueling our vehicles. Biodiesel is gaining traction and its global market is estimated to reach 37 billion gallons per year by 2016. Europe has already begun a massive switch to diesel vehicles, where, little known to us, more than half of all vehicles sold in Europe are now diesel, new improved over the loud hard to start versions that we saw 25 years ago and virtually indistinguishable from gasoline-burning vehicles. Biodiesel can be mixed in any proportion with diesel made from fossil fuels, and pure biodiesel reduces net carbon dioxide emissions by 78% compared to 100% petroleum diesel.

Nearly every major automobile manufacturer has announced plans to market diesel vehicles in the U.S. starting in late 2008. But the Big Three (Chrysler, Ford, General Motors) will only be offering trucks – perhaps furthering their demise http://www.dieselforum.org/where-is-diesel/cars-trucks-suvs/other-diesel-vehicles-coming-soon/neste/5/

For many years, diesel fuel prices tended to be lower than gasoline. Since September 2004, this trend has disappeared with diesel fuel prices exceeding gasoline. This price differential is due to a variety of factors – global and domestic, economic and political. The demand for diesel and jet fuel in the last five years has grown faster that for gasoline. As result diesel fuel inventories have now reached their lowest five year level. China has been stockpiling diesel to prepare for the Olympics, and in Europe, with diesel vehicles being 20 to 40 percent more fuel efficient and with government incentives, there has been a major shift to diesel occurring over there. In the U.S. gasoline prices have not kept up with surging crude oil prices while diesel prices have. As a result, the gap between U.S. gas and diesel prices has grown. Another factor is that federal and state taxes are higher for diesel. As more diesel vehicles are introduced into the US market in 2009 oil companies will be responding by increasing refining capacity and biodiesel production should finally take off. http://www.dieselforum.org/fileadmin/templates/images/PDF/Diesel_Fuel_Price_Update.pdf

A rapid expansion in production capacity of biodiesel is being observed not only in developed countries such as Germany, Italy, France, and the United States but also in developing countries such as Brazil. About 500 million gallons of biodiesel were produced in the United States in 2007 but due to high feedstock prices and low demand from US petroleum marketers, plants where not operating at full capacity. By comparison, U.S. ethanol capacity recently hit 7 billion gallons per year http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1659947520071116
http://www.card.iastate.edu/iowa_ag_review/spring_07/article4.aspx
http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2007/12/28/us-biodiesel-production-plunges-to-22-percent-of-capacity-feedstock-costs-low-demand-are-culprits/
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/05/05/story5.html?ana=from_rss

Already the world’s largest producer of ethanol, Brazil is now betting on biodiesel. Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned petroleum giant, is already selling a fuel blend with 2% biodiesel at hundreds of its retail gas stations. It is also patenting a fuel known as H-Bio that it says will save millions of barrels of oil by using vegetable oil in the refining process to create a low-polluting petroleum diesel. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/19/business/fi-biodiesel19

Algae-Biodiesel. At least Four companies are close to making the green pond scum into green fuel. Florida-based PetroAlgae wants to test a commercial algae-biodiesel system next year, while GreenFuel Technologies and Solazyme say they’re close to commercial applications as well. In addition California-based LiveFuels has a target of 100 million gallons of biodiesel from algae in the next two years. All of this is very good news in that growing algae on our garbage spread out in fields, can produce up to 100 times more oil per acre than jatropha crops and its potential as a fuel is so promising: it’s a non-food crop, removes large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, and grows fast.
http://domesticfuel.com/2008/05/05/algae-based-biodiesel-makers-getting-closer-to-marketable/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9934274-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
http://biodieselmastery.blogspot.com/2008_05_05_archive.html

Salicornia is a crop nourished by ocean water that holds the potential to feed the world, fuel our vehicles, and slow global warming. Salicornia is a salt-loving plant that thrives in hellish heat and pitiful soil on little more than a regular dousing of ocean water. Several countries are experimenting with salicornia and other saltwater-tolerant species as sources of biofuels. And, unlike grain-based ethanol, it doesn't need rain or prime farmland, and it doesn't distort global food markets. NASA has estimated that halophytes planted over an area the size of the Sahara Desert could supply more than 90% of the world's energy needs. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/latinamerica/la-fi-seafarm10-2008jul10,0,5000326.story

While Salicornia may hold promise and Algae-Biodiesel is still in the developmental stages, the plant that the world is wild about is Jatropha, the ideal plant for biodiesel. It is a miracle plant that is taking the world by bio-quantum leaps and bounds. Jatropha is a plant that produces eight times more oil than soy bean. It thrives in arid regions like central Florida and southwestern states, land not suitable for other types of agriculture. China, India, and numerous countries in Africa and Central and South America are now growing jatropha on large tracts of land. Not only can Jatropha put oil down, its side effects of putting a huge dent in carbon emissions makes it the sure bet for the near and far future. All around the world, countries and companies are investing big dollars in Jatropha as a source for biodiesel.
http://chemicallygreen.com/jatropha-curcas/
http://www.jatrophaworld.org/

The airline industry is now on the verge of converting from jet fuel from crude oil to biodiesel. Air New Zealand is planning a 747 jumbo jet flight from Auckland in the fall of 2008 with one of the four engines being powered by fuel refined from the seed of a fast-growing jatropha plant. The three-hour test flight could mark one of the more promising -- and more unusual -- steps by the financially strapped airline industry to find cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternatives to fossil fuel. Recently the airline announced plans to use the new fuel for 10% of its needs by 2013. Jatropha oil is also significantly cheaper than crude oil. It could cost an estimated $43 a barrel, or about one-third the cost of a barrel of crude oil.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/05/business/fi-newfuel5
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9877583-54.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha#cite_note-7

Here is a list of the top five significant biodiesel plants operating, under construction, or planned. Two which have been scraped are listed as foot notes. The following web site listing these facilities is dated May 2008 but upon inspection has not been updated recently http://libtechplayground.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/al-fin-energy-12-largest-biofuel-plants-in-world-for-now/

Each lists the production in millions gallons of biodiesel fuel per year and then the crop source.

1. USA - Houston, Texas (in operation since Jun 1, 2008) 1,500 million gallons per year - waste-oil and multiple feed stocks including non-edible sources such as tallow and jatropha
http://sixthcolumn.typepad.com/duckwalls/2008/06/biodiesel-refin.html

2. USA - Grays Harbon, Washington (in production since Aug 2007) 100 million gallons per year – Washington State canola and Canada soy. http://www.imperiumrenewables.com/grays.html

3. USA - Dade City, Florida (in operation) producing 40 million gallons per year with production capacity of 120 million gallons per year - chicken fat, palm, and cottonseed oils - http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/13/Business/OJ_plant_to_deliver_n.shtml

4. Canada - Innisfail, Alberta (under construction, opens fall 2008) - 100 million gallons per year - canola oil, sunflower, and mustard seed oil. http://www.biofuelsmagazine.ca/article.jsp?article_id=16&article_title=Mega+multi-production+plant+slated+for+Alberta

5. USA - Claypool, Indiana (in operation since Aug 2007) 80 million gallons per year - soybean oil. http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?ID=25053

#. USA - Chesapeake, Virginia (financial backing fails May 2008): 320 million gallons per year – jatropha. The developers, Smiling Earth Energy LLC, were long on promotion but short on substance. Smiling Earth could not get financing, and the landowner of the 44-acre site now consider the plant "a dead story."
http://hamptonroads.com/2008/05/even-without-biodiesel-plant-south-hill-residents-deserve-help

#. Evansville, Wisconsin, USA (construction halted) 45 million gallons per year – soybean. High soybean oil prices have halted construction making the end product too expensive compared with the pump price for regular diesel. http://www.soyatech.com/news_story.php?id=5555