At 01:04 PM 6/26/2007, Karl Mullendore wrote... >One should also take into consideration how much energy goes into the >production of gas and diesel from petroleum Gasoline production is about 86% efficient (~1 unit of energy used for 6 produced as final product), diesel refining is about 91% efficient (~1 unit of energy used for 10 produced). Source: "Allocation of Energy Use in Petroleum Refineries to Petroleum Products"; Michael Wang*, Hanjie Lee and John Molburg; Center for Transportation Research, Energy Systems Division, Argonne National Laboratory, table 5; - http://www.transportation.anl.gov/software/GREET/pdfs/IJLCA-2004.pdf Also interesting is figure 4, which shows that "well to pump" diesel production produces about 20% less greenhouse emissions than gasoline production. Contrasted with _negative_ production efficiency for current biodiesel production, which has already been cited (e.g. 5 units used for 4 produced with soybeans, much worse with sunflower). No figures have been cited for algal oil. >Some oils, and I believe the algae oils may fall into this category as >well, can be used directly after filtering, no biodiesel conversion >process necessary. Not according to the sources you provided: "The major problem associated with the use of pure vegetable oils as well as oil from algea as fuels for diesel engines is caused by high fuel viscosity.." - http://www.oilgae.com/algae/oil/biod/prod/prod.html |
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