Are We There Yet?

When I first started to think about this blog I thought about my previous experiences with biodiesel. It was a tedious task to measure and calculate and mix all of the necessary inputs prior to chemical reaction. The entire process took well over 14 hours but it worked, which is the most important and hardest thing to master. So I was naturally skeptical of a high production biofuel being available in the near future but as I researched and found more and more options I started to think that maybe it isn’t such an unreal possibility. I thought about how much has changed just in the production of biodiesel since I bought my processor four years ago. The entire idea around the reactor is obsolete and I need to redesign it. Four years is a short time but technology grows exponentially and therefore exponentially faster.

One thing I noticed that I found interesting was most of my sources did not agree. Biofuel.org.uk had information saying algae was the largest producer of oil but also said it had massive energy constraints and required far to many inputs, while both of the sciencedaily.com articles talked about algae as if it were only a matter of time before society saw algae biofuel at every pump. The argument discussed on the npr.org audio clip was completely against algae-biofuels claiming it was far to costly of a biomass to grow essentially stating a complete lack of efficiency in the production of the algae. With this kind of diversity in the answers it is hard to draw a conclusion on algae and probably is best to leave it open for discussion as the technology advances.

The final two sources from Tom Simpson and the USDA were, for the most part, on the same page. In my opinion, there isn’t enough information or experience recorded about pyrolysis to draw a conclusion. The idea behind the process sounds great but I would like to see a video of a pyrolysis chamber/reactor operating and a few more studies that show some values about what it can do and how clean it can do it. At the end I do not think a conclusion can be drawn other then to say fossil fuels will run out even if we slow down our consumption. Some kind of green energy must be found or we, as a society, need to slow our energy consumption to meet the worlds available resources.