RE: [TALLOW TREE] Re: Straight vegetable oil as fuel
Paul Olivier
What would you say about the possibility of gasifying biomass, producing hydrogen, and converting that hydrogen into ammonia? With ammonia, a lot can happen.
Paul Olivier
ESR International LLC
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Subject: [TALLOW TREE] Re: Straight vegetable oil as fuel
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:54:54 -0500
From: rcas...@nexant.com
To: iobb...@googlegroups.com
Neal: Sorry I didn’t make it clear. Essentially all the oilseeds that are practical to crush are now being crushed. That is, most of the production. To make any significant dent in the biodiesel demand, we would need to increase oilseed production many-fold. This does not mean that we should at all back off of natural oil use for fuel, until it significantly upsets the food supply. This is all good, it just isn’t going to change the picture much. Gasification of biomass with catalytic production of bio diesel-range fuels would.
Ron
From: iobb...@googlegroups.com [mailto:iobb...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of CA...@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 2:29 PM
To: iobb...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [TALLOW TREE] Re: Straight vegetable oil as fuel
Hello Ron,
We would be pleased to build oil crush plants wherever you would like them, and crushing whatever oil seed you prefer. This is a partial solution but we can at least start with that.
Coincident to this opportunity could be the exploration of CTT as a fuel, searching for techniques to use raw palm oil, participating in plantings of Jatropha in Africa, using polluted waters in the USA for irrigation of oil seed crops as well as a method of phytoremediation, building biodiesel plants near the source of the oil, demonstrating gasification of biomass as an energy source and potential fuel, producing Black Soldier Fly larvae as a fat source for fuels, experimenting with mustard meal as a natural fungicide to make mustard oil a viable fuel source economically, oh, and demonstrating that super high mileage vehicles are practical. Gee, I left out promoting telecommuting through virtual reality.
Those are some of the things we are doing, I bet others have better examples. :-)
Neal
rcas...@nexant.com writes:
Good luck to you. Now, what does the rest of North America do?
Ron
From: iobb...@googlegroups.com [mailto:iobb...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of CA...@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 11:49 AM
To: iobb...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [TALLOW TREE] Straight vegetable oil as fuel
Forgive me if I have mentioned this before.
We operate our diesel trucks, skid steer, back hoe, and bull dozer on a mixture of 50% cooking oil and 50% diesel fuel in Indiana. We have been doing this for a little more than 24 months winter and summer.
So far we have had no problems at all. We did nothing to the engines or the fuel tanks to prepare for this. We just poured in the cooking oil. In this case it was recycled cooking oil we retrieved from restaurants and filtered ourselves.
Neal
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Breitenbeck, Gary A.
Paul: The use of the products of gasification for the production of anhydrous ammonia is a good idea. Catalytic gasification is very similar to the Haber process used to produce ammonia—it only lacks the final few steps. The Haber process uses methane (a principal product of anaerobic combustion) and atmospheric N2. Conversion of anhydrous to urea for storage of N fertilizer and energy may also be useful as urea is easy to store and ship and you wouldn’t need to keep the meth freaks from climbing over the fence to steal a little anhydrous. --Gary
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Cascone, Ronald
Paul: Yes, definitely, why not? Syngas (CO+H2), to be converted by water gas shift to H2 for reaction over a catalyst with N2 to ammonia via the ubiquitous Haber process (the largest volume chemical synthesis practiced in the world today, does not “remember” whether it came from natural gas, coal, or biomass. Most ammonia, of course, is promptly reacted to urea (with offgas CO2) or ammonium nitrate (via nitric acid) for more convenient storage, shipment, and application.
Ron
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Cascone, Ronald
Gary: With all due respect, this is very confused. The Haber process has nothing to do with methane. When Haber started in business, there was no methane, just coal. Haber is the ammonia synthesis step. Most of the ammonia produced in the world is converted to urea or AN immediately, with several major exceptions – chemical feedstock, refrigerant, and SCR, plus, that which is shipped for reaction with phosphates (e.g., in FL or NC), plus, on farms in the USA, which is the only country in the world to use anhydrous ammonia injection directly to soil for fertilizer. Thus, its availability to rural meth freaks as a working chemical in their “labs”.
Ron
Breitenbeck, Gary A.
Ron: True, the Haber-Bosch process involves reaction of H2 with N2 in the presence of catalysts, but most if not all commercial ammonia plants in the US have used natural gas (CH4) to generate H2 via steam reformation. We have many fertilizer plants within 50 miles of Baton Rouge and until recently, many produced anhydrous using natural gas. Most of these units are now idle because of air regulations and rising costs of production. Apparently, it is more cost effective to import anhydrous. It may be possible to convert these facilities to use syngas using biomass. I do not know how such a suggestion would be received by the fertilizer industry. I’ll try to ask. --Gary
Cascone, Ronald
Gary: We have a fertilizers practice, and we have been all over this subject with market and technical due diligence for the two largest fertilizer projects ever in the Western Hemisphere (Jose, VZ and Bahia Blanca, Arg.) not too long ago. The natural gas price is too high for competitive ammonia production in North America, and especially the US, and I guess it will always be from now on. The competition is stranded gas-based ammonia in places like the Middle East (collected flare gas), Trinidad, and off the west coast of Australia. Many of the USGC plants were shut down not too long ago (I have visited some of them – like Donaldsonville, next to the Sunshine Bridge and near the cane fields), but these will eventually molder, so we better develop competitive biomass gasification fast. This latter plant is bringing in cheap ammonia from Trinidad to make urea.
FYI- we have good relations with many of the leaders in this sector here – Koch, PCS, Agrium, etc.
Regards,