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April 15, 2005

A Simpler, Cheaper Biodiesel Production Process

Washington, D.C. [RenewableEnergyAccess.com]

A scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) may have found a new way to remove a costly component of biodiesel production.

Processing costs using dry flakes were estimated at $1.02 per gallon, which is $2.12 less than for biodiesel made from full-moisture soy flakes.

Michael Haas, a biochemist with the ARS Eastern Regional Research Center's Fats, Oils and Animal Coproducts Research Unit in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania has developed a new approach to synthesizing biodiesel.

Soybean oil is the prevalent starting material in the United States for biodiesel, and its relatively high production cost results in a high resale cost for this renewable fuel.

The method developed by Haas and his colleagues eliminates the use of hexane, an air pollutant regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, from the production of soy oil for biodiesel synthesis. Hexane, a colorless, flammable liquid derived from petroleum, is traditionally used to extract vegetable oil triglycerides from the raw agricultural material before biodiesel production.

The new method eliminates the conventional oil extraction step. Instead, the oilseed is incubated with methanol and sodium hydroxide, which are currently used to process extracted oil.

The researchers found that the moisture naturally present in soybeans - as much as 10 percent in soy flakes - requires that a large amount of methanol be used in this reaction. However, using dried flakes greatly reduced the methanol requirement. Processing costs using dry flakes were estimated at $1.02 per gallon, which is $2.12 less than for biodiesel made from full-moisture soy flakes.

The researchers are refining their economic model to account for income from the sale of the lipid-free, protein-rich flakes left over from the biodiesel reaction for use as animal feeds, and to account for differences in the cost of the refined oil and flaked soybean feedstocks.

ARS has filed a patent application on the process, which might be useful in producing biodiesel from lipids remaining in the corn meal byproduct of corn-to-ethanol plants.
Reader Comments (12)
 
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Anonymous
April 15, 2005
Can anybody tell me how this process can be utilised for the poor country to find alternative to the high price oil
Comment 1 of 12
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Anonymous
April 15, 2005
Yo! Dozer
He is talking about using one less chemical and he says the byproduct is animal feed.
I do wonder what the extraction process is for the biodiesel once it is produced in the soy meal?
Comment 2 of 12
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Anonymous
April 15, 2005
So this scientist is using a toxic chemical and a corrosive chemical to produce bio-diesel.

Too bad he doesn't talk about the waste by products and what to do with them
not to mention the manufacturing process of both chemicals. There has to be a less corrosive & toxic way to make bio-diesel.

TSS
Comment 3 of 12
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Anonymous
April 16, 2005
Jeya,

Biodeisel can be made from a wide variety of oil crops, not just soy.

In North Africa researchers are making biodeisel from a desrt shrub called jotropha that grows on unirrigated land.

In the Pacific it is being made from coconut oil
Comment 4 of 12
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Anonymous
April 18, 2005
Biodiesel may not totally displace petroleum derived diesel, but it's use is definitely in the right direction. As has been stated soybeans is not the only feedstock that can be used for making biodiesel. Biodoesel has been shown to be a net energy producer by a ratio of about 2.4:1. That is a very decent ratio when one takes into account many other benefits biodiesel provides. The fact that hazardous substances is used for its' manufacture doesn't necessarily make it bad. If society eliminated everything that used hazardous substances in its' manufacture, we'd have to do without hundreds, if not thousands of things we use daily.
Comment 5 of 12
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Anonymous
April 18, 2005
Net energy studies have already been done you can read them at biodiesel.org. As for world production of biodiesel not even being a drop in the bucket of diesel use, that would be if we only used reclaimed waste vegetable oil. And don't give me the argument that if we grow crops for fuel then we have to stop growing crops for food or that we're going to chop down every forest in the world to plant these new crops. As it is now not all agriculture is for food, and here in the States the gov't already pays farmers not to plant food crops. These lands could be used for oil seed crops (soy by the way is down on the list of high oil content) Weigh the possibilities: wait on a silver bullet technology to solve our transportation fuel woes and use petroleum in the mean time, or support your farmers and start supporting biofuels. You can't have it both ways.
Comment 6 of 12
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Anonymous
April 18, 2005
Several readers have danced around the fundamental flaw in biodiesel--it takes a lot of energy to fertilize the soil, grow it, harvest it, transport it, process it and produce it. Additionally, some unsavory chemical processes are involved (same with ethanol or any other biofuel product. If you look at the energy balance, starting with the natural gas that had to be processed in to fertilizer, included the herbicides and pesticides that have to be used to grow the soybeans, the diesel fuel for the tractors and the energy for the processing plant, I am not even sure that you get any net energy out of it. Finally, if we made all of it we could, as a world community, it would be a drop in the bucket of diesel needs. Oh, and it doesn't necessarily result in less pollution than plain, old diesel

On the positive side, "biodiesel" sure sounds good, and subsidizing it will no doubt allow a bunch of already subsidized farmers to continue to make a living.
Comment 7 of 12
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Anonymous
April 22, 2005
i have looked all over and i can not see anyone using hexane, flakes are dry biodiesel is liquid, what is the carrier
Comment 8 of 12
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Anonymous
April 25, 2005
What about algae? Algae produces the most oil per pound of any oraganism and needs just salty or fresh water, sunlight and very little nutrients. It does, however, produce more with the addition of CO2 to the water... not much of that around lately. A 1000 meter pond can produce about 50 gallons of oil per day which is a lot more than jotropha, soy, canola, peanut or other soils based plants. Algae ponds also work well in dry and arid areas not ideal for other crops and processing is easier too.
Comment 9 of 12
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Anonymous
April 25, 2005
It's been stated that biodeisel is produced from crops planted, harvested, and maintained by equipment running on diesel fuel. Some people think that means farmers can GROW their own fuel. Ethanol, commonly used as a 10% additive in gasoline, can be used in E85 (85% ethanol) E-95 (95%) gasoline additives and run in converted internal combustion engines, even tractor engines too. So, corm farmers could also GORW there own fuel. Maybe pesticide and herbicide usage could be reduced, since the plant material is used as feedstock for fuel rather than food?
Comment 10 of 12
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Anonymous
April 29, 2005
1000 meter pond? How big is that? jon
Comment 11 of 12
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Anonymous
May 19, 2005
Hopefully he means 100 meters or we are talking about one long pond for 50 gal of raw oil a day. Building ponds seems expensive, why not just seed the ocean with iron like the carbon sink dudes were talking about and then harvest it?
Comment 12 of 12
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