Biofuel from fruits

[Jamie76 0]

There is also something that everyone forgets. To produce the plant to make biofuel requires energy. To turn the plant into biofuel also requires energy. The net gain in energy gets reduced by those two factors. It just does not make sense. There is not enough net gain to make it worthwhile.

To an extent, yes. If you are using crops such as corn, you are going to get a net gain on energy but it's going to be small. Use cellulose from waste products and the amount of energy to produce that is zero. Use algae that gets its nutrients from waste water and again, the amount of energy you need to produce the product is zero.

If you burn the lignin found in plant cells to produce the energy to make the bio-fuels, you are adding zero for energy. Lignin is a by product of bio-fuel production.

As a side note, petroleum is actually a net-negative fuel source if you look at it. When you factor in the energy it takes to drill it, pump it to the surface, pump it to the port and load on to a tanker, ship halfway around the world, offload and pump to refinery, refine, pump fuel to distribution facilities, and ship by truck to gas stations. It's even worse when you take in to account the difficulties of turning oil sands in to useable fuels.

[bryantina 0]

hydrogen will be good for cars good for rainforests good for drive thru's

as hydrogen only "waste" is water it will help the environment but, it will evaperate and create more rain clouds (especially in citys if alot of people have a hydrogen car)so making the world "wetter"ratrher than better for us and our flood insurance cost more.

[GaryC 7]

Check this out. This is the future.

http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/

[GaryC 7]

This is also a way. Biofuel is not a good way to go. We need something more perm.

6Rb_rDkwGnU

[Jamie76 0]

quote name='Iniibig ko si Luz forever' date='Jun 21 2007, 06:30 PM' post='1000349']

This is also a way. Biofuel is not a good way to go. We need something more perm.

6Rb_rDkwGnU

The water torch using Brown's gas has been around for a long time so he invented nothing new there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown%27s_Gas

Looking at the amount of energy contained in 4 oz of hydrogen and oxygen...it is not enough to get him anywhere near 100 miles. The best any technology has ever gotten is about 250 miles on a tank of highly compressed H2,

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Biofuels are one of those things that sounds good but in practice will not work in America. We just don't have enough arable land to produce fuel and food at the same time. At the moment we feed most of the world, if we start biofuels on an industrial scale we will no longer be able to export food to the rest of the world resulting in widespread famine. So take your choice, slightly less imported oil and famine or finding something else.

We have for quite awhile over produced and then subsidized ag production so farmers could stay in business. Biofuels increase demand on ag production, and we no longer have to subsidize it.

I really don't think the government should then subsidize biofuels just to make it more competitive to oil based fuels. Let the market determine demand for biofuels. When oil based fuels do increase in price to the point of being more expensive than biofuels, then we should seriously consider wide scale production.

There are questions on if biofuels actually produce positive net energy. But thats another story.