Archive for Biofuels

Vegetarianism

February 12, 2007 at 9:29 pm · Filed under Biofuels, Life style

Well, my girlfriend is vegetarian and I don’t eat a huge amount of meat so we save a fair amount of CO2 that way. It would be interesting to know how much CO2 could be saved by cutting down on our cows and growing biofuel crops instead…

It’s simple energy conservation principles to realise that grass->cow->person is more wasteful of energy than grass->person (where grass = wheat, corn/maize etc. – amazing stuff grass!). For example, Kathy Freston writes:

“Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of the total land surface of the planet … when looking at gases besides carbon dioxide–gases like methane and nitrous oxide, enormously effective greenhouse gases with 23 and 296 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, respectively. If carbon dioxide is responsible for about one-half of human-related greenhouse gas warming since the industrial revolution, methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for another one-third. These super-strong gases come primarily from farmed animals’ digestive processes, and from their manure. In fact, while animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide.“

Now, we can save a deal of the manure and use it for food/fertiliser but it’s still clear that breeding animals as food is highly energy intensive and bad for the environment.

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Cambridge Energy Forum

February 10, 2007 at 10:57 pm · Filed under Biofuels, Car, Transport

I spent a very interesting evening attending talks and general chat organised by the Cambridge Energy Forum. A very interesting set of speakers – Prof. Roger Kemp, Dr. Gail Smith and Simon Harris – talked about sustainable transport, biofuels and new gadgets to log and display vehicle emissions.

Prof Kemp talked about the complexities of determining what is the greenest way to travel.  Key indicators are the “passenger intensity” versus distance balance.  It’s not as simple as plane/car bad, train/bus good.  In some cases, flying can actually use less fuel / passenger km than taking the train.

Dr. Smith talked about the difficulties of supplying sufficient biofuels to successfully replace our usage of mineral oils.  The main problem is that the amount of farmland required to make sufficient fuel-crops would a) be huge, b) increase the cost of food and c) need to be carefully managed to make sure the most suitable crops are grown.  Current “1st generation” biofuels may not actually offer much in the way of CO2 reductions due to the energy required to make them in bulk – after food displacement, land clearance, fertiliser, farm management, transport and processing are all taken into account.

Simon Harris talked about a new device his company is developing.  It aims to be a cheap add-on to vehicles which enables logging and display of emissions data (NOX, CO2 and particulates), a little like a more advanced version of the fuel economy displays you get today.

In general, it was heartening to see so many interested people from the local science/engineering field.  However, it was also discouraging to hear that the complexities of the issues don’t lend themselves well to good policy advice for politicians and the public.  Should I now review my burning of biodiesel in my Fiesta because it’s not necessarily clear how carbon neutral it might actually be?

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Measuring my car’s mpg – Ford Fiesta Finesse, 1.4 TDCi

January 30, 2007 at 10:18 pm · Filed under Biofuels, Car, Life style

[Also see my earlier post]

Without specific data being available from the ECU, it’s not completely straightforward or accurate. However, I think it’s reasonable over time.

I kept a record of the fuel efficiency of the vehicle during most of it’s current life using mineral diesel (using a cheap but pretty basic mobile phone app). All I do is record the odometer reading and amount/cost of fuel bought each time – the aim is to always buy a new tank of fuel just after the fuel warning indicator comes on. That way, you can get a reasonably accurate and consistent measure of fuel used since the last odometer reading.

The general conclusion so far is that I’m getting about 5 ltr/100km (or about 47mpg) combined urban/extra-urban. This doesn’t compare well to the Ford spec of around 67mpg combined! No doubt it’s my driving style… (nothing to do with the ultra-conservative simulated driving style of official testing).

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Biodiesel – with a Ford Fiesta 1.4 tdci

December 23, 2006 at 2:41 pm · Filed under Biofuels

I bought a diesel Ford Fiesta 1.4 TDCi 4 years ago with the intention of using biodiesel. Ford only allow 5% biodiesel under their warranty, so it was a slow start. Even slower due to the lack of nearby outlets to buy the stuff :-( . However, now that my car is out of warranty, I’ve signed up with a local organisation CambridgeBiodiesel who supply up to 100% biodiesel. Current price is comparable with regular pump prices, although there are/will be some additional set-up costs. Hopefully the government will continue it’s glacial progress towards reducing fuel duty for bio fuels…

I kept a record of the fuel efficiency of the vehicle during most of it’s current life using mineral diesel (using a cheap but pretty basic mobile phone app). All I do is record the odometer reading and amount/cost of fuel bought each time. The general conclusion so far is that I’m getting about 5 l/100km (or about 47mpg) combined urban/extra-urban. This doesn’t compare well to the Ford spec of around 67mpg combined! No doubt it’s my driving style… (nothing to do with the ultra-conservative simulated driving style of official testing).

One of my current problems is getting the biodiesel into the vehicle. It arrived in two 25 liter screw-top drums of 50% mix, which are quite heavy to shift around. I got a siphon, which works OK at getting the stuff into the tank – my problem is that getting to the organisations pump is tricky, hence current arrangement.

I’ll update the info here in a few months when I’ve a reasonable set of fuel economy data.

Current thoughts though are that the fuel system (either the pump or other) is struggling slightly with the increase in viscosity. It’s fairly cold at the moment (-2 to 5 C) which magnifies the effect. Symptoms being slightly longer crank to start and intermittent judder at low speed – using mineral diesel the engine when warm will happily chug along at 30mph in 5th but it’s not always so smooth with the approx 50% biodiesel.

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