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+--- Thread: biodiesel from cane (/showthread.php?tid=2127)
RE: biodiesel from cane - JWFITZ - 04-27-2008
THANK YOU DR JAMES!
We must get beyond the whole hemp deal. Listen, I don't care if you smoke the stuff. Puff on! Its mostly harmless, and certainly makes anyone who smokes it harmless as well. But the fact is as an industrial fiber or oil its an extraordinarily destructive soil deleter, worse than cotton, which is difficult. I've done a lot of restoration ship rigging, working with some of the more important hemp rigged vessels of the late 1700s. I know hemp as a fiber, as a material, though ironically not as a recreational substance. There is nothing to commend it, except, at one point in history, it was the only game in town. There was a program that compelled farmers in the US to farm the stuff, to support the navy, such that it was. They mostly, historically rebelled, as it would destroy a field for years. That IS the history.
The single largest promoter, per dollar, of hemp propagation in this world is BP. Don't take my word for it, verify that, if you doubt.
Oh, and while I'm at it. The Diesel engine was designed to run on COAL DUST, not on vegetable oil. Just to set yet another record straight.
Biofuels is a lost cause, and worse. People go hungry now because progressives do not understand the history nor the science. I fear in a huge way that cane WILL come back to Hawaii, but the fact is we need land for food, like many, and that would be a terrible mistake.
RE: biodiesel from cane - Guest - 04-27-2008
I got a bit of a different take on the Hemp/Pakalolo energy answer.
If we legalized the sale of it and taxed the eff out of it, we could end fuel taxes. The taxes that could be collected alone off weed could in my personal opinion could be "HIGHER" then cigarettes and it would be a product that is grown locally.
A local product that we could tax at an even "HIGHER" rate if we exported it out of state.
Medical and recreational users around the world could look at the price per lb. of weed in Hawaii and set their markets accordingly the same way that we look at the price of a barrel of oil in the middle east.
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Damons Digest
Acceptance will take you further in life then Denial ever will
RE: biodiesel from cane - Bob Orts - 04-27-2008
For the discussion on biofuels
If Hawaii County were to put full support into a single biofuels program, which would benefit the people of the BI the most?
Biodiesel or Ethanol?
RE: biodiesel from cane - Carey - 04-27-2008
Much of the electric & large scale transportation is diesel
Gas/ethanol blends would mainly be for automotive transportation
BUT, look at the energy input to output of each, and the waste emissions, and the land use/degradation, and.....
You have to look at all of the little things... and they start growing...
Now for a little reality check for all of those complaining:
from the mid 1970's through to the early 2000's gasoline pump prices remained relatively constant....
In the mid 1970's, at the time of the gas embargo, gasoline went from $0.59 a gallon to $1.29 a gallon. Minimum wage was $1.09
In the early 2000's gasoline went from $1.59 a gallon to $1.99 a gallon. Minimum wage was $5.15.
Hate to say it, in that quarter of a century, we lost the gas efficiency race. The average fuel mileage in the early 2000's was less than the mid 1970's. The decade from 1995-2005 fuel economy went down (first time ever). The American thirst for bigger vehicles & the very cheap price of gasoline drove us to the point of using more fuel per person than ever.
We have had fuel prices that were cheaper (real time) than at any other time in history, and we became complacent.
Fuel is now close to (but not at) the same proportion of minimum wage that it was prior to the 1970's gas embargo. Fuel prices will have to more than double to be at the same proportion after the embargo.
We have got to learn to reduce our fuel useage first.
So, if you are complaining about the fuel prices, then you have been driving in a haze of denial for a quarter of a century.
If you are looking for self sufficiency.... look to your vehicle first, how efficient is it & how often do you rely on it & can you be self sufficient with it?
If you are looking to reduce your emmisions & fuel footprint, really look at the production #'s & lengthy research that has been done on bio-fuels.
Sorry this is sooo long, but I am seeing so many people that complain, and so few that are doing anything to reduce what they contribute to in this global mess that we have made (much of it from the first Earth Day!)
RE: biodiesel from cane - gtill - 04-27-2008
The only ethanol producer would be sugar cane, which is out if just because of burning! Plus there will be such an outcry from the world about using our food supply for Oil! Corn would ruin our soils in no time, and the oil palm is food again!
This Jatropha Curacas looks like a stiff shrub, probably adaptable to mechanical harvesting! Is very hearty, needs little water, and lousy ground is OK! Plants are permanent, and they control erosion! The straight oil (strained) should burn well as deisel! Worth a try!
Produces after 1 year, full production in 4, lives 40 more years in full production!
RE: biodiesel from cane - Guest - 04-28-2008
Applications are being accepted for Sean Penn's Dirty Hands Caravan
...Participants in the caravan will have their food, water, transportation and campground accommodations paid for in exchange for their service. As the bio-diesel buses make their way across U.S. cities, members of the caravan will be offered opportunities to volunteer on behalf of established local organizations....
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Damons Digest
Acceptance will take you further in life then Denial ever will
RE: biodiesel from cane - gtill - 04-28-2008
We know bio deisel is coming to Puna, is Penn coming too?
Every one is following Willie Nelson, who was true to this thing! How much cooking grease is there with busses running publicity tours nationwide?
willie was looking at a home brew solution for private transportation, it's grown into a yuppie status symbol, everyone is getting hip till now bio costs s much as gas, and raising!
I think when a lb. of flour costs as much as a gallon of gas things will change!
The pity is we are probably the only place in the world with the potential of geothermal power for all our needs, including transportation. But that would hurt a perfectly effective monopoly, HELCO wouldn't approve!
Plus that awful plant leaked some fumes 10 years ago, and can't be trusted, we must retain our pure air!
We stopped burning cane, succesfully running most of the local populace out, now we have to convince the Jim Naybers and Oprah's to come to Puna where life is good! Get away from all that cane smoke! Plus the taxes are cheap!
RE: biodiesel from cane - james weatherford - 04-28-2008
Still burning cane on Maui? You got me there [B)]
The smoke, the ashes, and such like are not healthy to have in the air. The real downer is the destruction to the soil -- burns up the nitrogen and potassium, and destroys microbial life. Plus, it is not necessary, just convenient for passing the cost on to other places and other generations.
There is no panacea fuel or machine or any other gizmo gimmick that is going to address the security, environmental, and economic shortcomings of this petroleum-dependent situation.
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Alber Einsten
As for biofuels: look at joules (energy) per land area. Oil palm will always win out. Food? Yes, it is edible; which is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Inedible crops (e.g., jatropha) still take up land space, but have fewer potential uses and lower efficiency in terms of land area. In addition to oil for fuel, oil palm (as well as other cotton crops such as soybean and sunflower) also yields a high protein meal that is a good livestock feed, or, if preferred, an excellent fertilizer. Except, that is the fruit flesh of oil palm where fuel or cooking oil is extracted, where as it is the seed of other crops that is used for oil extraction. With the oil palm, that seed or 'kernel' also yields a useful oil, generally for non-fuel industrial purposes. And, the kernel meal is also useful for feed or fertilizer.
Jatropha's potential is greatest is harsher growing environments. Is it likely to go weedy?
As a general matter, with existing technologies, biodiesel is much more energy efficient than ethanol -- amount of energy out for the total amount of energy in. A promising, but not-yet-if-ever commercialized technology is cellulose alcohol for ethanol.
For power, diesel engines are used because it does better in tractors, backhoe diggers, etc.
for the low-speed, high rpm, workload under a strain.
Conservation is very well developed, convenient, and readily accessible. We just need to do more of it.
James Weatherford, Ph.D.
15-1888 Hialoa
Hawaiian Paradise Park
RE: biodiesel from cane - james weatherford - 04-28-2008
typo...
(as well as other crops such as soybean and sunflower)
biodiesel is made from cottonseed...that is what Willy Nelson did in Texas.
James Weatherford, Ph.D.
15-1888 Hialoa
Hawaiian Paradise Park
RE: biodiesel from cane - gtill - 04-29-2008
Soybean was tried succesfully on the best of island conditions in North Kohala. That was at the end of the task force fiasco. The soybean failed because it was a short variety, not the one for mechanical harvest! But it is an open dirt operation, terribly dusty and muddy plus constant harvesting. Here you're competing with mainland guys with millions of acres and no townies to cry over a bad odor or dust!
The corn grown by the task force was a special seed variety, capable of paying for most of the cost the entire task force (multiple millions of dollars), but was a dismal failure! Why was this DR W.? It was directed by the UH, Ag dept?
Burning a field does no harm to the soil or the plants in it. If not for harvest, crops are often burned to refresh the species, kills bugs and many weeds. In fact, rigid controls onbrush clearing in western states, this aversion to small burn clearing results in major fires like in california! Hell,fire is a major natural means of building soil!
Hawaiians used to burn huge fields of Pili grass, so it would come back better for Thatching Roofs! Many of the range fires in grasslands are owner started!
If your Oil Palm is a tropical, how will it do in our some what cooler clime! I know there are trial plantings somewhere Hamakua, mabe Paauilo, how are they doing?
Whatever happened to Kohala Task Force?