The Ugly Little Secrets of Biofuels

... is that the subject is fraught with subsidies, the wrong sort of trade protectionism, food price scandal, and that there are no easy answers to Peak Oil (Fossil Fuel energy depletion). I'm sorry, its a mess.

G.W. Bush wasn't wrong (completely) when he said there are promising biofuels we could grow in the USA to cut our dependence on foreign oil. Dealing with the Saudis makes everyone angry. America gets most of its oil from Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, and Nigeria, btw. So why aren't we awash in happy farmers growing biofuels? Well, its somewhat complex. A lot complex. See, to pass his biofuels plan through congress, he had to promise to enact trade tariffs on Brazil, which grows lots of sugar cane and uses it to make ethanol to fuel its own fleet of cars.

They also grow coconuts and palm oil, which can be made into biodiesel, both of which they can do cheaper than we can grow corn to accomplish the same thing. Importing ethanol doesn't look good and it pisses off the farmers. So that cheap imported ethanol is blocked to pay corn farmers big subsidies to grow land-depleting corn, just one crop each, that pays bills all year to grow other crops. Maybe they can get shoes for their kids, this winter. Soybeans are good for growing cows and pigs and pump nitrogen back into the soil so you can grow more corn or wheat (for export to India). So before and after corn, soy. Which makes soybean oil, which the FDA just banned because it's a source of Trans Fat. It's almost like the current president hates farmers? Ahem.

So its on Congress's best interest to keep the farm states happy with this corn ethanol subsidy, even though the amount of ethanol produced is minimal and other biofuels aren't being produced because the subsidy it just for corn, ethanol, not sugar beets which grow in more places and are less damaging to the soil than corn, nor has the govt authorized or paid for construction of ethanol refineries for biofuels feed stock processing so it can actually get sold to gas stations etc. You know, like a fuel. From what I've seen, most biodiesel is still being made in garages by hippies.

Considering we really need smaller diesel motors for smaller diesel vehicles, like motorcycles and scooters and tiny Japanese trucks that all putter along at 30 mph so this small scale production of diesel actually makes sense at the neighborhood hippie barter level (home canned peaches for a liter of biodiesel? Sure), that's what is needed. Getting out of the heavy safe comfortable luxury cars and SUVs is a hard sell. I admit that. When I'm driving in the rain or snow, I'm damn glad to be in a car. Still, when the tiny diesels finally get out there, and people use them for personal transportation, a great deal will change. The biggest advantage of diesel is it doesn't go bad. You can leave it in storage pretty much forever and it will still work. A winter for gasoline without stabilizer? Its goo. Its a famous problem with improperly stored motorcycles, and why you can buy them cheap because their carburetors are full of jelly. Gotta tear them apart and rebuild to make it work again. This is what happens when you lean your bike against a shed under a tarp if its lucky.

There are guys all over the world buying old beater bikes and installing Yanmar diesel motors in them. They're 10 hp, slow as heck, but they will run on low quality diesel fuel, even farm diesel or biodiesel. So instead of throwing the nasty grease from the Panda Express fry vat at the dump, you turn that rancid mess into biofuel. At this point, however, I think those fryer fats are sold to a wholesaler rather than tossed. Still, tractors aren't the only diesel engines that can use biodiesel. Trains will run on it too. And semi-tractor trailers, delivery trucks, all sorts of things will use diesel more efficiently than say, a 26K mile toxic lithium battery for example.

Meanwhile ethanol is pretty easy to use in vehicles designed for them, and mixed with gasoline, all cars since 1998 are E85 compatible. Odds are, your car is already setup to run it. E85 means 15% gasoline, 85% ethanol. Standard gasoline mix in California is E35, I think. They don't tell you that, but its there, just the same. That's the special oxidizer which makes "clean burning gasoline" and "fuel system cleaning". Since ethanol is a degreaser, duh. As I understand it, to convert a motorcycle, 90% of which are carbureted, to run on ethanol you may need to change parts in the carburetor, possibly the piston since the chamber is smaller slightly different shape, and possibly the fuel lines since rubber falls apart in contact with alcohol. This is one of those things a restore bike already has done, but a basket case parts mess might need that done.

Or this really fast bike already converted.

And here's how messy E85 can make a carburetor.

I think eventually we'll see farms exporting their own certified biodiesel to local fuel stations, and those will eventually get further up the mountain to places like the Sierras or Rockies or Cascades. It makes sense. They'll also be exporting their good ethanol as legal whiskey/hooch and the bad stuff as fuel, also at gas stations. Better test for water content, however.

Too much water and your engine won't run. And setting up your EFI to deal with that will be an interesting exercise, I suspect. I haven't the faintest how to mess with EFI, other than knowing you need a computer with the right proprietary pin port setup to do it. It will keep the mechanics busy, right up until the angry owner sets it on fire and rides a carbureted motorbike instead. That's the trouble with high technology. Low tech is easier to maintain.

I wonder if the current president will cut the ethanol subsidy? He doesn't care about votes anymore. He's a Lame Duck. He's been making lots of enemies in congress and the general public anyway, so what's a few more, like farmers? If he does, the corn farmers will be pissed, but the other farmers might be just a little happier, and perhaps quietly see about turning sugar beets into fuel up in Idaho and here in my own state.

So maybe, because we just can't count on the idiots in DC, maybe we'll start doing this stuff ourselves because we're sick of broken promises and upscale failures of big business bought out by billionaires that squash technology that would solve problems.

Where are these? At $8/sq. Meter, where? Oh, right. Shut down. For "research", shortly after being bought by a certain billionaire. That factory in Sunnyvale was going to employ hundreds of people, on three shifts. They were bragging about selling the rolls on the shelf at Home Depot, with install kits or certified installers via their customer service desk. Supercheap, super easy, self adhesive peel and stick even. Dead before it got past the above stage.

We can't count on those people to get out of the way of progress that we, on the bottom or struggling to stay afloat, can't wait for any longer. Iran has nukes. Its just a matter of time before OPEC oil is a sad footnote of history. Fracking will help, but its not enough, by itself, to keep us able to move and the lights on. We'll need everything, every kind of biofuel feedstock, every home covered in solar panels, all railways lined with them to power electric freight and passenger trains, every vehicle running ethanol, E85, or biodiesel because battery-electric cars are a fantasy created by people ignorant of mining realities. Sorry, Elon Musk. You haven't got enough Lithium on Earth to realize your dreams. Even if you push for an invasion of Bolivia to get theirs.

Real fuels are still the future. Getting them is going to take effort, innovation, and a lot of water. I expect we'll reduce our demands once it costs a fortune. There's just no getting around that. Reality is cruel. Too bad.