Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-05 08:18:50

The purpose of ** this ** topic is to separate discussion of production of fuel from plants, from production of fuel from air and water.

Production of fuel from air and water (without the aid of plants) is a very different business.

This topic is set up to allow focus on production of fuel (such as heating oil) from the production of plants.

In ** this ** topic, plants do the hard work of pulling Carbon from the Air, and Hydrogen from water, to make useful energy loaded materials.

The technology involved in ** this ** topic is fine tuning the product for various customer applications, such as home heating or transportation applications.

There are businesses already established to make biofuels, and posts about those companies would be welcome in this topic.

If there is a wealthy person would like to open a venture along these lines, and who would like to interact with the members of this forum, please see the Recruiting topic for procedure.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-05 11:01:25

The article at the link below reports on the regulatory environment for a variety of biofuels.

Some concern is reported, along the lines that SpaceNut identified in another topic... If biofuels are produced with input from fossil fuels, then the benefits are diluted. In a totally renewable solution, fertilizer (for example) would be produced with renewable energy,

https://www.yahoo.com/news/counts-renew … 00486.html

Gizmodo
What Counts as a 'Renewable' Fuel?
John McCracken, Grist
Wed, January 4, 2023 at 1:35 PM EST
A tractor moves hackled corn plants at a bioenergy plant on September 17, 2008 in Gross-Gerau near Darmstadt, Germany.
This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new standards for how much of the nation’s fuel supply should come from renewable sources.
Read more
Twitter Quietly Removes Its Covid-19 Misinformation Policy
Remembering Enterprise: The Test Shuttle That Never Flew to Space
Apple's 12 Most Embarrassing Product Failures
The proposal, released last month, calls for an increase in the mandatory requirements set forth by the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. The program, created in 2005, dictates how much renewable fuels — products like corn-based ethanol, manure-based biogas, and wood pellets — are used to reduce the use of petroleum-based transportation fuel, heating oil, or jet fuel and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The new requirements have sparked a heated debate between industry leaders, who say the recent proposal will help stabilize the market in the coming years, and green groups, which argue that the favored fuels come at steep environmental costs.
Below is a Grist guide to this growing debate, breaking down exactly what these fuels are, how they’re created, and how they would change under the EPA’s new proposal:
The fuels
Renewable fuel is an umbrella term for the bio-based fuels mandated by the EPA to be mixed into the nation’s fuel supply. The category includes fuel produced from planted crops, planted trees, animal waste and byproducts, and wood debris from non-ecological sensitive areas and not from federal forestland. Under the RFS, renewable fuels are supposed to replace fossil fuels and are used for transportation and heating across the country, and are supposed to emit 20 percent fewer greenhouse gasses than the energy they replace.
Under the new EPA proposal, renewable fuels would increase by roughly 9 percent by the end of 2025 — an increase of nearly 2 billion gallons. The new EPA proposal will set a target of almost 21 billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2023, which includes over 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol. By 2025, the EPA hopes to have over 22 billion gallons of different renewable fuel sources powering the nation.
Advanced biofuel, a type of renewable fuel, includes fuel created from crop waste, animal waste, food waste, and yard waste. This also includes biogas, a natural gas produced from the methane created by animal and human waste. Advanced biofuel can also include fuels created from sugars and starches, apart from ethanol.
In its newest proposal, the EPA suggests a roughly 14 percent increase in the use of these fuels from 2023 to 2024 and a 12 percent increase the year after that. The EPA wants roughly 6 billion gallons of advanced biofuel in the marketplace by this year.
Nestled inside of the advanced biofuel category is biomass-based diesel, a fuel source created from vegetable oils and animal fats. This fuel can also be created from oils, waste, and sludge created in municipal wastewater treatment plants. Under the new EPA proposal, the agency is suggesting a 2 percent year-over-year increase in these fuels by the end of 2025, which equals a final amount of nearly three billion gallons.
Cellulosic biofuel, another type of renewable fuel, is a liquid fuel created by “crops, trees, forest residues, and agricultural residues not specifically grown for food, including from barley grain, grapeseed, rice bran, rice hulls, rice straw, soybean matter,” as well as sugarcane byproducts, according to the 2005 law.
The EPA’s recent proposal aims for nearly double the amount of the use of these fuels by 2024. Then a 50 percent increase the year after, equivalent to 2 billion gallons.
The new RFS proposal also hopes to create a more standardized pathway for renewable fuels to be used in powering electric vehicles, with more and more drivers turning to EVs in recent years.
“We are pretty pleased with what the EPA proposed for 2023 through 2025,” Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuel Association, an industry group whose members primarily include ethanol producers, but also represent biogas and biomass producers, told Grist.
Cooper said that the EPA and the Biden administration recognize that alternative fuels are a growing and needed sector while the country tries to move away from fossil fuels. Setting standards for the next three years will help the biofuels industry grow, said Cooper, who predicted more ethanol, biomass, or biogas producers will emerge in the coming years.
“I think the administration recognizes that you’re not going to electrify everything overnight,” Cooper said, “and in the interim period, there’s going to be a need for lower-carbon, renewable liquid fuels.”
The controversy
While renewable fuel standards have gained a stamp of approval from industry producers and the federal government, environmental groups see increased investment in ethanol, biomass, and biogas as doubling down on dirty fuel.
“It’s not encouraging because it continues on the false premise that biofuels, in general, are a helpful pathway to meeting our climate goals,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the nonprofit environmental group Center for Biological Diversity.
Hartl argues that investing in increased corn production to fuel ethanol will continue harmful agricultural practices that erode soil and dump massive amounts of pesticides on corn crops, which causes increased water pollution and toxic dead zones across the country and the Gulf of Mexico. The United States is the world’s largest producer of corn, with 40 percent of the corn produced used for ethanol.
A study released earlier this year from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that when demand for corn goes up, caused by an increase in blending requirements from the RFS, prices increase as well, which causes farmers to add more fertilizer products, created by fossil fuels, to crops. The EPA’s own internal research has also shown greenhouse gas emissions over the next three years will grow with the increase in blending requirements from the federal mandate.
The Center for Biological Diversity has been critical of the EPA’s past support of renewable fuel without a calculation of the total environmental impacts of how the fuel is produced and is currently in legal battles with the federal agency. They’re not alone in their critiques.
Tarah Heinzen, legal director for Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit environmental watchdog group, said in a statement that an increase in both industrial corn production and biogas, a fuel created from animal and food waste, are not part of a clean energy future.
“Relying on dirty fuels like factory farm gas and ethanol to clean up our transportation sector will only dig a deeper hole,” Heinzen said. “The EPA should recognize this by reducing, not increasing, the volume requirements for these dirty sources of energy in the Renewable Fuel Standard.”
Alternative fuels, like biogas and biomass (a fuel created from trees and wood pulp), have gained steam thanks to the ethanol boom of the renewable fuel category. The biogas industry is set to boom thanks to tax incentives created by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Biomass is a growing industry in the South, with wood pellet mills popping up in recent years. Scientists from across the globe have decried the industry’s suggestion that burning trees for electricity is carbon neutral, with 650 scientists signing a recent letter to denounce the industry’s claims.
The world’s largest producer of wood pellet biomass energy has come under fire from a whistleblower who said the company uses whole trees to create electricity, despite the company’s claims of sustainably harvesting only tree limbs to produce energy. Wood pellet facilities have faced opposition from local governments and federal legislators, with community members in Springfield, Massachusetts successfully blocking a permit for a new biomass facility in November.
Despite concerns from environmental groups, the forecasted demands of the EPA show that the nation is pushing for more of these fuels in the coming years. This past spring, a bipartisan group of Midwestern governors asked the EPA for a permanent waiver to sell higher blends of ethanol year-round, despite summer-time smog created by the higher blend of renewable fuel. More recently, Missouri officials sought the same waiver
What are those fuels again?
Renewable fuel is an umbrella term for the bio-based fuels mandated by the EPA to be mixed into the nation’s fuel supply. The category includes fuel produced from planted crops, planted trees, animal waste and byproducts, and wood debris from non-ecological sensitive areas and not from federal forestland. Under the RFS, renewable fuels are supposed to replace fossil fuels and are used for transportation and heating across the country, and are supposed to emit 20 percent fewer greenhouse gasses than the energy they replace.
Advanced biofuel, a type of renewable fuel, includes fuel created from crop waste, animal waste, food waste, and yard waste. This also includes biogas, a natural gas produced from the methane created by animal and human waste. Advanced biofuel can also include fuels created from sugars and starches, apart from ethanol.
Nestled inside of the advanced biofuel category is biomass-based diesel, a fuel source created from vegetable oils and animal fats. This fuel can also be created from oils, waste, and sludge created in municipal wastewater treatment plants.
Cellulosic biofuel, another type of renewable fuel, is a liquid fuel created by “crops, trees, forest residues, and agricultural residues not specifically grown for food, including from barley grain, grapeseed, rice bran, rice hulls, rice straw, soybean matter,” as well as sugarcane byproducts, according to the 2005 law.
More from Gizmodo

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-10 13:23:29

For SpaceNut ....

The purpose of this post is to bring the topic into the Active list, in case anyone might be interested in taking a look at it.

The proposal in work is to create a heating solution for a wealthy individual or for a small business.

The goals are:

Provide natural (plant based) heating oil for a season (assuming six months)

Insure adequate storage for heating oil at the desired location.

Insure a backup power generator capability for intervals when utility power is not available.

Acquire plant material from US suppliers in the first round.

Manage the project from start to finish to insure success.

Estimated budget: $1,000,000 (USD)

***
The second iteration would aim to eliminate the use of fossil sourced fuels for all phases of the project.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-01-10 19:35:25

first up is location of growing season.

Length of Growing Period (LGP), in Days

next up is the crop topic which contains the food germination a length to harvest.

we already gotten the data for conversion of them to oils or other fuel types and even the secondary power requirement with a generator.
What we do not have is the equipment fuel amounts to plant and harvest or to process them into the fuel we are desiring.

Last up is the quantity needed in the local changes the size of the planted crop coupled with conversion that completes the equation for this purpose.

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-12 10:59:39

For SpaceNut ....

Thanks for your post showing a map of growing regions in the entire globe ...

The purpose of this post is to keep the topic in the Active list, in case anyone might be interested in taking a look at it.

The proposal in work is to create a heating solution for a wealthy individual or for a small business.

The goals are:

Provide natural (plant based) heating oil for a season (assuming six months)

Insure adequate storage for heating oil at the desired location.

Insure a backup power generator capability for intervals when utility power is not available.

Acquire plant material from US suppliers in the first round.

Manage the project from start to finish to insure success.

Estimated budget: $1,000,000 (USD)

***
The second iteration would aim to eliminate the use of fossil sourced fuels for all phases of the project.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-01-12 19:16:05

A growing season limits the area to the east side of the Mississippi River.

Of course, you end up with the extremes of nearly no heat requirement or needing lots some years.

we also know that you need crop storage while harvesting and processing it and that takes time and hopefully, we have enough of it before needing that first drop to keep the homestead warm.

A secondary generator is the simple part to making use of the fuel.

Equipment needs for processing and for the farming are to do items.

Storage for the processed fuel is the easy part to this equation.

One might assume that the first year is less about growing since your building will take the better part of a year to get done mostly depending on land use regulations and setting aside the farmhouse to be able to make use of the production start the following year.

Time to look at the costs for equipment since a farming location and homestead structure will probably be close to 1/2 of that million.
That leaves the distillery to make use of the other half of the funding.

Production then is a slow pay back if the normal cost of fuel would be one the low side of possibly 250 gallons versus maybe 2000 gallons at the coldest locational use.

Of course, the farm equipment and generators all want to work on these same fuels that we are creating. Probably not even 100 gallons would be used worst case for any area of the eastern US, but I have not a clue for the farming equipment types or fuel allotment needed for each yearly use.

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-12 21:01:36

For SpaceNut re #6

This topic started out with a simple objective ... to develop a plan to deliver vegetable derived home heating oil to a single household, sufficient to provide warmth for a heating season and to provide a budget for a supplemental supply of electrical power in case utility power is lost.

The original concept anticipated use of the principles of Division of Labor and Specialization, so that multiple groups of people would handle the phases of the project that they are best suited to handle.

Your post carries the original concept in a different direction.

If I understand your vision correctly, you would see a farm sustain itself completely with vegetable/plant derived fuels.

Again, it is my reading of your post that may be in error ... it would seem that your vision would require the farm operator to perform all the highly specialized operations that are required to prepare vegetable material/plant material for use as fuel.

On the ** other ** hand, it was not so long ago that ** all ** farms were self supporting, by drawing wood from local forests and growing crops to feed the animals and people dependent upon the farm, with a bit of produce left over to trade with townspeople for a few specialized items like glass windows and iron tools. In that respect, your vision may be achievable, if the specialized processed needed to make useful fuel can be encapsulated in devices that the farm operator can purchase, just as such an operator purchases a tractor or combine today.

Because this topic is entitled "Business Opportunity", I'd like to (at least try to) return the focus to the elements that must be combined to achieve the desired delivery within a budget of $1,000,000 USD.

All the needed businesses already exist. The challenge is for the contracts to be written to achieve the desired objective.

The farms exist now, capable of producing whatever vegetable/plant material that is needed to serve the customer.

The chemical plants exist today, to convert vegetable/plant material to high quality biodiesel equivalent suitable for reliable use in an oil burning furnace, as well as to supply a small diesel motor for auxiliary power if needed.

Delivery services exist today.

Architecture design firms exist today, to design the storage facility for the fuel to be stored for a winter's heating.

Construction firms exist today to complete construction as needed.

Heating companies exist today to install or update equipment to work with the planned fuel supply.

Electrician specialty houses exist today to complete design and installation of control systems. I'm thinking here in particular of the specialized circuitry needed to detect a power outage, to start the backup generator, and to manage operation until utility power returns.

The project I have in mind for this topic would manage existing resources to achieve the objective without the need to invent anything new.

Specializations that are needed to support the management function include:

<> Attorney (most likely a firm with coverage of all the regions involved, from farm through processing to customer site)
<> Financial Team - Budget management, accounting, tax preparation/oversight

The most important member of this entire project: The Customer!

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-01-14 10:48:18

Current scale of separate actions is not really giving the results of creation of these fuels and while once its processed from organic to a sort of crude for inputting into distillation it's not getting the desired action of creation. So, a beginning might just be the looking at how to turn back the hands of time. We know that farming was crew hands intensive to achieve the ability to be self-sufficient and with equipment that has lessened.

What we need for the in between items are the means to create the crude to put into the distillery in grinding and compressing and fermenting equipment. That are things required by Beerman's operations.

The closing is for sure required for any business so you the creator is protected from those that want to take the IP and the physical property from you.

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-14 11:15:15

For SpaceNut re #8

Thank you for explaining further about your vision of a self-sustained farm on Earth.

That is not what this topic is about.

I'll create a topic for you to develop.

This topic is about serving a customer who wants a supply of vegetable/plant derived heating fuel sufficient to last for an Earth winter.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-01-29 18:37:00

When talking about land and being arid one might wonder if some of that land needs to be shaded to aid in the crop growth under what might be used. Of course that seems to also be the best place to make use of excess eat as well as for sand batteries and more.

Letters to the Editor: Should more desert farmland in California be used for solar?

This might be part of an answer for those things of growing a crop to turn into a fuel.

16c08e7457504ca9acf569ecd45ac8d8

For those not familiar with the challenges we face on a warming planet, Roth has provided up close and personal perspectives about farmers losing water and crops, cities growing despite diminishing resources, and the folly of those who promised Colorado River water to everyone without understanding the consequences.

Cooling the land would mean less water being lost and a better condition for the plants to grow.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2023-01-05 08:18:50

Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#2 2023-01-05 11:01:25

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#3 2023-01-10 13:23:29

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#4 2023-01-10 19:35:25

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#5 2023-01-12 10:59:39

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#6 2023-01-12 19:16:05

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#7 2023-01-12 21:01:36

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#8 2023-01-14 10:48:18

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#9 2023-01-14 11:15:15

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

#10 2023-01-29 18:37:00

Re: Business Opportunity Plant based Fuel from Solar/Wind Power

Board footer