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Archive for category biofuel

Bio Fuel

Sep 22

Posted by admin in Transport, biofuel | No Comments

It seems that with the High price of oil people are beginning to turn to Biofuel as a way to beat the pump price of oil. This also has its share of problems. The more people use, say Rapeseed oil instead of diesel the harder it is to buy it. It seems that the market for Rapeseed has gone through the Roof, where as even a few months ago farmers were still wondering what to do with all the Oil they produced.

A friend of mine as been running his van on rapeseed for the last 2 years. He is now finding it harder and harder to get rapeseed as a lot of local farmers have run out. It seems that supply cannot keep up with demand and its going to get to a stage that it might only be a few cents cheaper than Diesel….

According to an article in the Irish Times we use “183,000 barrels of oil per day”

I wonder how much land it would take to generate 183,000 barrels of oil a day, so that our economy can keep on ticking.

Considering that “One acre of rapeseed yields 115 gallons of biodiesel” That equivalent to 1591 acres, roughly 6 square kilometers. It take between 6-7 months to grow, (plant in march and harvest in September/ September to march). It is a very bad idea to have a mono crop so the land would have to grow other crops for the rest of the year. So we use on average 66,795,000 Barrels of oil a year. (70% for transport).

So to supply all the Biodiesel for Ireland for one year, if we could! it would take 2350 Km/2. But because we can only grow the crop in rotation and some time the land would have to be left idle(good farming practice, IANAF). so 3 to 4 times this amount of land would have to be set aside. So taking maybe 3x2350km/2 = 7051km/2 which isn’t a small patch of land by a long shot, Cork County is 7457km/2 in size. So providing Irelands need in Oil for one Year using Biofuel is huge undertaking and I don’t think that it is even possible to do.

What’s left for Ireland to do? Reduction would be a start! Increase the use of public transport, that is alot easier to say than to implement. I think for the foreseeable future Ireland will depend on Oil. Unless there is a radical shift in Goverment policy!

Biofuel or Biomass

Jun 27

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The EU Think tank JRC (Joined Research Center) has published a document on biofuel and the impact it has on food/fuel price, the Carbon offset that may or may not be present. depending on how the bio fuel is grown and made. It also as some recommendations on the use of biomass instead of Oil for heating etc.

There are some interesting things said in this document, it touches on a lot of area including security of supply etc.

The EU as a good energy site, its a bit overloaded with information energy.eu the link for the document is here

Food for fuel

Apr 22

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Just a few years ago it seems that bio-fuel would save the world, now it seems as the world looks to food crops to make ethanol  there is a shortage of food on the world market. Countries that rely on vast imports of rice/corn/wheat are finding that the price for these staple crops are doubling or getting so expensive that some countries have imposed restrictions on exports.

While we in the rich countries can afford to spend a few Euro more at the local supermarket, for the vast majority of people around the world a few euro mean the difference in eating at all. I don’t think the people who pushed for bio fuel really understood the problems that would arise from using food for fuel.  Even now the EU has allowed farmers that put aside land, to be used to stop the rise of even higher prices next year. It looks to me as if there will be a bumper crop next year… Will that not depress the market then ? so that the following year farmers won’t plant as much ? or will the extra crops be used for making bio-fuel.

I do hope that the summer will be a good one :)   At least if i don’t feel the price difference poorer people will. I do think that over the next few years we will all be in for a lot of interesting times.

I think that the whole plan for bio-fuel has to go back to the drawing board!

Corn Can’t save us