Methanol is Different than Ethanol, But it Can be Used for Automobile Fuel

What is Methanol? Well it is wood alcohol or methl-alcohol and for automobiles there is an M85 Blend, which is like the Ethanol E85 Blend. The M85 Blend has 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent methanol. In the United States our methanol blends use natural gas but we can also make it from coal, biogas, sewage were even cow pies, pasture patties, meadow muffins, sidewalk Sundays and well, you get the point.

The good thing about methanol is the octane rating is fairly high in that means good performance and even better performance than normal gasoline. The methanol can be unstable it is used in some high performance racecars, but when it is mixed with gasoline it is not quite is dangerous.

Since most methanol is made from natural gas and natural gas can be expensive it can be problematic and it is difficult to store because it is very corrosive. Ethanol is much more efficient and you get better economy than with ethanol. Ethanol refineries cost less to build also, as methanol refineries are really distilleries and when you make methanol from natural gas you actually get CO2, which believes the atmosphere or has to be collected.

All in all ethanol is the better bet and this is why ethanol E85 has been chosen as the biofuel of choice for our cars. Of course Methanol makes sense to power other things and it can be an option in other endeavors. Consider this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is an online writer in retirement.

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Home Biodiesel Production Part 2

Now that we've filtered our oil, we're now going to make a batch of biodiesel. And we want to show you what you do. We now have filtered oil. I have oil in a 55 gallon drum, and I'm going to put oil into this machine. Inside this machine it has marks that tell me the different sizes, and so I will transport this oil in using this big behemoth. Click it on, and then we can start the flow by turning the power on. I've already preloaded this machine full of oil, but basically this suck pump would suck the oil up, and put it into this machine. Once the oil is in here then we're ready to get started with the batch. Remember it takes methanol, and lye, and we use a secret ingredient, we use sulfuric acid and I'll tell you what that's for in a minute.

After we've loaded our oil into this machine it's now time to load the chemicals and everything else needed to get it going. Our next is to put methanol into these quarts up here. So I'm going to climb up here, and what we have is; one quart for our methanol, one quart for our methoxide, which is going to be our combination of sodium or potassium hydroxide, we're going to use potassium hydroxide in this case, and some methanol. I have some handy gauges on the side here that let me know when I get the amount of methanol I've needed, into the machine so I'm just going to step down here for a moment, put my methanol in the barrel, and I'm going to chug away, with a pump, then I'll get methanol into our machine here.

What you see now is a gauge that's coming up. You're able to see that we can fill this full of methanol. This tank is going to be used for what we call our estarification process which is where we use sulfuric acid. We'll show you that in a minute, but for now it's time to get the methanol into the machine.

The next step that we're going to do is we're going to measure out some chemicals. It's really important that you wear something to protect your face and hands because what we're about to do is really nasty. Using a scale, we're going to way out enough catalyst to make our biodiesel with. I have tarred my scale, and what that means is I've set it to zero so I know how much I'm putting in. I'm going to bring this up to 1600 grams and I'm going to do it again. So my goal is to put 4800 grams of catalyst into that machine. So with that, we're going to take it over and put it in.

The next step is to put the catalyst into the machine. This is a very careful process of making sure all the stuff in the pitcher just gets into the machine. It generates lots of dust. It's kind of gross. It's basically annoying, but it's a necessary evil. I have to do this a couple more times and then we'll be ready to start a batch.

So we've got now a certain amount of catalyst in here, and we're now going to introduce methanol. A chemical reaction is going to occur. I'll top that off. It's important that after you've put the catalyst in that you seal your catalyst back up. So we're now going to go over and seal our catalyst before we get started on our next set.
One of the things that we do when we're done with our catalyst is we seal everything so that we don't let the catalyst get moist. So, I've sealed my catalyst bucket that I've got, I'll get a towel and cover up my scale, to keep it nice and dry. I put this inside here to keep it dry and I cover everything. I don't want any moisture getting on there. Our next step is to put more methanol in the machine, and we'll get the batch started.

The Hypertech Diesel Programmers & Quadzilla Diesel Parts are both fully compatible with biodiesel- Nathan Young

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nathan_Young

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Making Biodiesel at Home - Part 1

Hi! On behalf of Parleys Diesel Performance and Utah biodiesel supply we're now going to show you how to make a large batch of biodiesel. We're going to show you how we collect out oil, we'll talk a little bit about how we filter our oil, how we transfer that oil into a biodiesel processer, how we do the process, and then how we use the fuel. We're going to talk about various things along the way so let's get started.

First of all we have a shop, that we go out and collect oil in 55 gallon drums. We put these drums behind restaurants that we've contracted with, and they put oil into these drums, and then we bring them back to this shop on the back of a truck. We have a lift-gate on the back of the truck so it makes it really easy to swap them in and out. A lot of people try to collect oil using pumps, they'll go and they'll actually pump the oil, and we tried that for a little while, but a lift-gate was just so much easier. They're about 2,500 to 3,500 dollars but they are the best thing in the world. If you get one be sure you don't let your uncles, aunts, friends, and everyone else know because soon you'll be transporting pianos down the street. They're just a wonderful piece of equipment to have on a truck. However, what we have when we go to collect oil is, we'll bring a barrel back here, bring it right to about here, and then we'll get out a filter. And this looks nice and kind of grimy. It's a four-hundred micron baron filter. We put it over the barrel, and we filter the oil. Once our filtered oil is done we'll haul it to a production facility that I'll show you in a moment, and we make the biodiesel.

I want to tell you a little bit about what we use here. Remember in our smaller setting we talked about using methanol, lye, and oil. Well, up here is our methanol. This methanol is a 325 gallon tank. Most of you won't need anything this large, but we make so much fuel we get this delivered to us. Then we go through it and we take it back to our area. You can get it pretty cheap when you get it this way. This is a 55 gallon drum. This is typically how methanol is purchased. This is one common way. The easiest way to transport it home, it can be put on the back of a pick-up. And then when you get it home you get to transport it into the back of your biodiesel processor.

These are our glycerin barrels, and as we produced our fuel if you'll remember right we had our byproduct of glycerin. So we just take that glycerin out of the machine and we'll come over here and we pour this glycerin right into these barrels. The glycerin's going to contain crude glycerin, some soap, some catalyst, and some methanol. We cap these barrels up, we use our lift-gate, we throw it on the back of the truck, and we haul it over to a waste water treatment plant where they take it off our hands. They add it to their methane digester which produces methane gas they use to run their generators. We get rid of it that way. They don't charge us for it, we don't get paid to get it taken off our hands, but it's a nice way to get rid of it. Once we get the glycerin out of here we then can take the fuel out of here and make biodiesel with it. I'll show you in a moment how we make the fuel.

After we have our oil filtered, in a drum such as this, we get a sump pump. And all this is is a good old cheap sump pump from Home Depot, Lowe's, what have you. We've mounted a big pipe on it, and a tube, and we use this to fill the machine full of oil. We just turn it on, it works great, we put these drum on dollies so that we can move them over to our equipment, and we're able to make biodiesel. A moment ago we showed you some methanol. This is a methanol drum right here. This is just a pump that we've attached to it so that we can quickly pump methanol into our machine. We're going to make a batch today so you can see how that works as well. Methanol, oil, and then if he pans over to my side over here, this is lots and lots of catalyst. This particular catalyst contains potassium hydroxide, and we use it to make biodiesel. Remember it takes methanol, oil, and catalyst to make fuel. Behind me is on the right is fuel. This is biodiesel that we have produced in our machines. We'll show you how that's done, and this fuel is ready to use in diesel pickups. Again remember it's being made for about a dollar a gallon, and we are able to save ourselves a lot of money by using what normal people would throw away. Welcome to biodiesel, we'll show you how to filter, we'll make a batch, and be on our way.

Once we've brought our oil into our warehouse we have to filter it. In order to make biodiesel it's a really good idea to filter it so you get all your crustys and crunchys out. This is just a 55-gallon drum strainer. It's a 400 micron. It's the one that we personally use. It looks kind of gross and uky but we've probably put about 3,500 gallons of fuel through this filter. So they're really durable and they last long. It's just a poly based filter. You can get them on most sites. Take a look at my site I carry them as well. We're going to put the filter on, we're going to take our oil and just simply poor it through it. Now, oil coming from restaurants is really gross, and nasty. As you see there are some crustys and stuff in here, and as you notice it doesn't like to go through this really quick so we get ourselves a spatula with rounded corners, and we just scrape back and forth to let those crustys go out. So this oil is just going to filter through. Can you hear it filtering down in there? Once it's filtered we'll take it into our lab or into our shop and make biodiesel. So we're going to kind of let this sit here for a while while we go do that. One thing I want to show you though, a lot of times you're going to get really thicky crap oil and you need to get rid of the crustys. So we cut a car boy open which is what your going to typically get oil in, and we just scrape it into there. So again I'm just moving back and forth real slow. You can see some of those chunks that I'm getting out of that. It's usually food particles and stuff from the grill, it's French fries, just all that stuff they put in the oil over at the restaurant that you really don't want in your fuel. Particularly in your truck, okay? I'm just going to filter that out, and our next step is showing you how we load our machine, full of oil. Then we're going to make a batch. So we'll see you in a second.

Our next step is we've filtered the oil so now it's time to make the biodiesel. Remember from before, to make biodiesel you need a heated mixture, so I happen to have sitting next to me one heck of a heated mixture. This is a stainless steel piece of equipment with a giant mixer in it, and a big heater on the bottom. It allows me to make biodiesel very quickly, and in a fairly automated fashion. Now to make biodiesel you don't need something like this, but we make so much that we like it. Let me tell you just how much we make. You've seen the fuel sitting behind me a minute ago. Last year alone we made 6,800 gallons of fuel that we used in a wide variety of diesel pickups. Anything from an 07 Duramax down to a 93 F350 to the stapid large DT466 with an international harvester engine, and we're running biodiesel in all of those. We have a Ford, Chevy, and a Dodge that we run it in so we've got it all across the gammit.

We know about what it's going to do. We're in Utah here and we are cold outside and in the winters we are starting to blend. We make primarily our biodiesel from canola oil, canola is wonderful cold flow added diesel properties, so when it gets down to about 50 degrees we start blending. Before that we can pretty much handle it. Some of our diesels are a little bit more sensitive, others aren't. Pretty much if it's a diesel it will handle biodiesel, and handle it really well. That's anything from dump trucks, to big earth movers, to farm equipment, to tiny little TIs. You name it if it's got a diesel engine in it and it's direct injected or indirect injected chances are it will run on biodiesel. Believe it or not, Rudolph Diesel when he made the biodiesel engine his goal was to have an engine that was ubiquitous with all sorts of oils, and biodiesel just happens to be one of those that will run in it.

The DR Performance Diesel Products & Edge Diesel Products are both fully compatible with biodiesel- Nathan Young

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nathan_Young

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Cellulosic Ethanol - An Advanced Ethanol Fuel That Could Be the Answer to Our Global Energy Needs

We live in a society that has made it easy for us to develop very bad energy consumption habits. We have been spoiled over the last 50 years because of the fact that oil from fossil fuels is a very rich energy source, but the problem is that it is not a renewable energy source and therefore it will run out one day in the near future. We got a little glimpse of what a shortage of oil can do to us as a nation last summer when gasoline prices went over $4.50 a gallon. Now this was just a temporary shortage. Imagine what will happen when we are close to using up the global oil supply. President Obama, has started to earmark millions of dollars towards research on alternative energies . In this article we will take a look at some alternative energies that continue to show promise.

Ethanol is a pretty good alternative energy fuel source and it is already being used in a few foreign countries. Brazil for example, powers most of the vehicles in its country of ethanol fuel and while it is a very green energy since it is made from corn and other farm sugars it can really exhaust the global food supply really fast if we do not have ways to manufacture it on a large scale. There must be another alternative fuel source which is readily available that we really don't depend on as our main food sustenance.

Cellulosic ethanol is one of the most exciting advanced ethanol fuel sources that is being talked about globally and it is one that can potentially solve our future energy crisis. Cellulosic ethanol is an advanced type of biofuel that is made from the different parts of plants and trees that are not edible.cellulosic ethanol is made mainly from Lignocellulose, which makes up almost all of the mass of vegetation and it is mainly made up of three different types of cellulose. Woodchips are an example of material that can be used to make cellulosic ethanol, and it can be found all around us in abundance. When we cut our lawn and trimming trees with chips or byproduct of this, so instead of throwing these woodchips away we can use them in the future to create cellulosic ethanol. Another great benefit of this type of fuel is that it has been proven to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 85% compared to conventional gasoline fuel, and this is something that regular ethanol fuel cannot even come close to matching.

The only drawback to this alternative fuel is that it takes a lot more processing to get it to the end result of becoming an actual fuel source. If our government really get serious about this and pours in billions of dollars into this research they cut down the processing steps which will enable us to make this a readily available global alternative fuel. Let's hope the Obama administration lives up to its promise of funding these alternative fuel sources.

I love writing about alternative fuel sources such as Biofuel. You can read about the newest advances in biofuels at http://www.biofuelguide.net which is updated regularly with the newest, most exciting biofuel technologies coming out.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Randooke

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Biogas and Biomethane Gains Wider Acceptance

Biogas is a wonderfully flexible and renewable form of energy and it can be used as a building block to make not only a wide variety of liquid fuels, but also organic chemicals and even plastics.

The biogas digestion (anaerobic digestion) process can be installed and run at the household level with simple training and support, and it can also be developed in huge projects to anaerobic make community and district anaerobic digestion plants. These can take up to 100,000 tons per year of organic waste and create methane from it. When the methane produced is cleaned and compressed it is called biomethane, and can be pumped into the district grids which nowadays deliver us natural gas from fossil fuels.

A household biogas plant consists of a tank (at its simplest just an underground brick pit) where manure (human sanitary waste) and other organic materials are mixed with water and allowed to ferment.

A farm biogas plant does the same but in a larger reactor and usually takes the farm animal slurries, but can also in some Scandinavian plants also use silage. The silage is stored for use to feed farm biogas plants during the long cold winters, when other feed organic feed materials may be in short supply. The farm anaerobic digestion (AD) plant can in this way strengthen the ability of farm businesses to withstand bad weather and poor years when crops are poor, and its adoption in large numbers will therefore improve the resilience of the agricultural sector.

Let us not forget either that greater biogas production and the use of it will result in a reduction in greenhouse emissions and sizeable plants can make reductions of the order of 50,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalents annually.

An AD plant always contains two main components: a digester (or fermentation tank) and a gas holder. The digester in the most common types of plant is a rectangular-shaped or cylindrical leakproof vessel with an inlet into which the fermentable mixture is introduced in the form of a liquid slurry.

China is an example of a nation where the government has introduced a biogas program. More and more governments are realizing that biogas production brings benefits not only the ecological system, but it also benefits rural populations. India and Nepal are also well known for their digesters.

The benefits are many and include it being an alternative energy source, methane is very useful for cooking, improving rural sanitation, reducing firewood consumption, relieving the rural women's burden, providing a liquid fertilizer for the fields, and proving a sludge which can improve soil quality, plus more. What is more, each farmer my be able to obtain a cash income from this as well.

The actual results of bio-gas programmes have shown these real benefits improving rural life in so many ways.

In one example the biogas digester attached to toilets provides cooking gas for a 600-student school and vocational-training program the foundation runs. In the past, non-governmental organizations were the only ones offering these ideas but that is rapidly changing as the good word gets around.

After the fermentation has been completed in an AD plant, the biogas leaves from the top of the digester at a low pressure, sufficient to overcome the losses provide enough pressure to push the gas through a gas burner, and similarly through some power generation motors, without any compressor to raise pressure.

The countries in Europe are now beginning to sit up and take stock of successes in China and other nations, and are introducing new legislation to encourage the uptake of AD technology. These laws will be explained and discussed extensively at both the plenary sessions and in the workshops in a surprisingly large number of conferences this year.

Steve Last is an anaerobic digestion expert, and web master. You will find much more about this fascinating subject at his Biogas Digester web site. But for a simple Biogas Calculator follow the link earlier in this sentence.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephen_Last

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A More Fuel-Like Biofuel - Producing Biofuels That Actually Resemble Gasoline

The offspring of Jay Keasling's synthetic biology research and vision, Emeryville, CA-based Amyris Biotechnologies has made a double impact. First, the company, with more than $40 million of backing from the Bill Gates' Institute for One World Health charity, developed a microbial route to the anti-malarial compound artemisinin. In and of itself this work was a stunningly successful scientific achievement, and the resulting process has been licensed to Sanofi-Aventis for low-cost manufacturing and distribution in the third world.

But how does that relate to biofuels? Well, producing the anti-malarial drug relied on the engineering of a metabolic pathway to produce a key intermediate that is in the class of chemicals called terpenes. Chemically, terpenes are hydrocarbons, similar to diesel or gasoline, and are therefore very good fuel compounds. Thus, the same basic science that led to artemisinin can be applied, with appropriate tweaking, to produce fuels based on terpenes. And according to the company, a desired fuel compound can be selected based on its properties (flash point, cloud point, boiling point, density, fuel value, etc), and then the pathway to produce it can be designed. Voila! You have a designer fuel. And being hydrocarbons with properties similar to gasoline, terpenes do not suffer from the limitations that alcohols (particularly ethanol) have as fuels. If you want to put something into your gas tank or jet engine, a designer hydrocarbon is likely to be superior to any alcohol. At least that is what Amyris argues.

Amyris has the backing of a well-heeled group of VCs: Kleiner Perkins, TPG Biotech, and DAG Ventures. In the area of bio-based production of gasoline-like fuels, Amyris is at the head of the class. Economics remain to be proven, but Amyris has formed a joint venture with the second largest Brazilian sugar producer, Crystalsev, to get access to inexpensive sugar feedstock, and the first demonstration plant is scheduled to be built right on the sugar plantation in Brazil by 2010. It will produce a biodiesel (with the interesting name of "No CompromiseTM"), currently being piloted at Amyris' Emerville facility. Amyris promises that a bio-gasoline and a bio-aviation fuel are not far behind. If any company can make terpene-based fuels successfully, Amyris appears to be that company.

David Rozzell maintains a web site and blog dedicated to the latest developments and news in biofuels, biocatalysis, and industrial biotechnology. For informative, sometimes amusing, always opinionated analysis go to http://www.bio-catalyst.com He has 25 years of experience in biocatalysis and industrial biotechnology, and speaks frequently at international symposia. He is available for consulting projects. Contact him at david@bio-catalyst.com.

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