Diesel cars. Yep, you read that right.
"Yeah right" you're thinking. "It's been very, VERY hot and sticky in Seattle the last few and SeattleChris must be smoking the wackytobaccy" must also be what you're thinking.
But bear with me. I just saw "An Inconvenient Truth" starring Al Gore's New Personable and Electable Side (I know I know, I saw it last week, not on opening weekend, but I hate crowds). Now the material in itself didn't teach me much more than I already knew, being one of those, what John Stewart calls, "radical left-wing activits, that we call "'scientists.'" What I did take from the film though is a much more heightened sense of urgency than I had previously about the subject matter.
I'll keep this part short: Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and global temperature data over the past 650,000 years has shared a nearly inseparable correlation. Currently, atmospheric CO2 is far above anytime in the past 600,000 years, and the rate is increasing exponentially. We are, in effect, taking reduced carbon which is stored under the earth's surface in the form of oil and coal, combining it with oxygen, and releasing it into the atmosphere. And by "We," I mean industrialized nations. And we are also talking about millions and millions of years of carbon storage, and we're releasing it in decades.
Considering now for a moment that the level of CO2 is already ABOVE anytime in the past 600,000 years, which included in that period are three ice ages and three warming periods, AND we are contributing more every year, my sensibility is that carbon emission reduction simply is not enough. At this point carbon remediation is, or very shortly will become, inevitable.
So how the hell do you remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?
Well, you don't. Not on a global scale anyways. But plants do. And plants make all sorts of useful things like food, aloe, cocaine, etc, ... and vegetable oil. Now I'm going to say a word, and I don't want you to cringe back in your chair and roll your eyes as you envision another unshaven, tree-hugging, hemp wearing hippie: and that word is Biodiesel.
Biodiesel is a fuel that can run in any diesel engine. It's known to us "radical left-wing activists" as methyl alkyl ester, and is a product of the esterification of vegetable oil. "Mineral diesel," that crap you buy from Shell, is a mixture of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons that come off lower on the distillation tower than gasoline. These chemicals are dangerous, cancerous, and the fact we put them into an engine and burn them with little exhaust remediation is a crime against humanity of the most magnanimous proportions (note: gasoline isn't much better).
The by-products of diesel combustion are even more dangerous, given the fact that they are airborne. Biodiesel on the other hand is biodegradable and has the toxicity of table salt. The emissions from biodiesel are far cleaner as well. But wait, it gets better. This guy Rudolf Diesel invented the compression-ignition device and humbly named it after himself. In 1900 he demonstrated it at the World Fair using peanut oil as the fuel. Given, that 106 years ago, an engine was developed that could run on what we now consider "alternative" fuels, is encouraging to say the least, highlighting the fact that the technology already exists. Any diesel engine can run on straight vegetable oil (SVO), given two conditions. 1) The oil must be pre-warmed, and 2) the engine must be at operating temperature before any vegetable oil is injected (very good info here). Now biodiesel returns more energy than was used to produce it (the difference being solar energy captured by the sun), however biodiesel is somewhat energy intensive to make (esterification and washing), whereas vegetable oil is simply crushed, filtered, and put in the tank. A two-tank vehicle running biodiesel and vegetable oil is quite simple to make and would be many times more efficient than any commercial vehicle on the road today. According to vegetable-oil car conversion outfits, these two tank vehicles generally run on 90-95% vegetable oil. This becomes important later so stick with me.
Well this all sounds great, but Hannity told me we'd need a gazillion acres of farmland so it isn't a feasible alternative.
This is partly true. In order to replace ALL of the petroleum diesel in use we would need to sacrifice a large amount of arable land. But not all oil producing plants are created equal. Soybean oil, which is being pushed by the soybean lobby, yields a paltry 50-100 gallons of vegetable oil per acre per year (G/A-yr). Some plants do better and some worse, but at this order of magnitude Hannity is right. But some of us "radical left-wing activists" are actually pretty clever. A research group out of the University of New Hampshire has been looking at the ability of using algae to produce biodiesel. The results have shown that nasty algal ponds can yield 10,000-20,000 G/A-yr of algae based oil.
And this is where things start to get really good. First off, remember the fertilizer needed to grow the soybeans? Well the fertilizer for algae is shit. That insatiable hemp wearing, holier than thou vegetarian, OrangeClouds ran a diary discussing how the pork industry in NC killed a river. More specifically, how the pig shit dumped in the river killed it. Of course, the shit didn't kill it. The bacteria that feed on the shit release CO2, methane (CH4), and nitrogen oxides (NOx). These gases replace much of the oxygen dissolved in the river, killing aerobic animals like fish. However, anaerobic organisms like algae thrive. Now let's see, do we have lots and lots of sources of shit? Yep: Human sewage, agricultural run-off, ranching and animal farming, etc. And there's a "radical left-wing activist" at MIT found a strain of algae that thrive on smokestack exhaust, when dissolved in water:
Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40% less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86% less nitrous oxide.
After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials -- one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation.
Reducing emissions FURTHER than Kyoto requirements? PRODUCING a useful alternative fuel? Now there are two very large birds killed with one stone. Is it economically feasible?
Yep.
Now, if you had a car running on biodiesel, and the plant that produced the car ran on biodiesel, and trucks trucking the biodiesel ran on biodiesel (I think you're getting the picture), than you would have a Net Zero Carbon Emission Vehicle (NZCEV). Essentially, ALL of the energy can be accounted for through the solar photosynthesis of CO2 and water (H2O) into oil. This is an important concept, because a regular ol' fashioned Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV), like a battery powered car for example, still has to be recharged, which usually comes from the grid, which in large part is powered by oil and coal power plants. Now don't get me wrong, a battery powered car is awesome, because it localizes emission far away from the car itself, and could be considered a NZCEV if the power plant was burning the same biodiesel as the example I listed immediately before, but I'm only using it as an example of accounting for the total energy cycle.
And now for the Holy Grail. Oh man this is great. You know those left-over cellulose flakes left behind by the algae mentioned by the MIT "radical left-wing activist?" Well, cellulose contains carbon. And cellulose could be fermented into ethanol (a good idea in itself), or, stored under the right conditions, for hundreds of years or longer, essentially eliminating that carbon indefinitely from the atmosphere. IF MY RUDIMENTARY CALCULATIONS ARE CORRECT, THIS PROCESS WOULD BE NET CARBON NEGATIVE. Meaning, in terms of the total energy cycle, for every gallon of algal-biodiesel burned, a few analogous grams of solid, storable, carbon would be produced. Imagine driving around in your NET CARBON NEGATIVE EMISSION VEHICLE! If you had a vegetable oil engine, it would be even more so, since you would be removing the energy intensive esterification step of the vegetable oil to biodiesel.
Wow.
Now I will readily admit that SOMETIMES my calculations could be a little wrong and I invite others to look at the total energy cycle independently. However, even so, think of how much more efficient this process is than burning oil or coal; energy processes that are carbon dioxide positive at every single step.
What's the Catch?
Democrats. Why? Well, we need infrastructure, civil engineering, research, environmental impact assessments and development costs. We need to find the most efficient way to cultivate algae, research where to bury the cellulose by-product, etc.
In short, we need dollars. And in today's political environment, you can forget about it, unless you're an oil company of course. Our country hasn't even signed the Kyoto agreement yet. When it comes to global warming we are a total joke. And that needs to change.
What you can do now is educate yourself. Go see Al Gore's movie. Write your Congressperson and tell them how important carbon remediation is to you and our global community. Write a LTE even. Join or start a biodiesel co-op. We need to come together in our communities and unite as a nation behind the concept that global warming is something we can control; for our own survival, we MUST control.
As for me, I'll be working to ensure your next car is net carbon negative.
For more information (wikipedia):
Biodiesel: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Global warming: http://en.wikipedia.org/...