Tiny Biodiesel Reactors 369
Lee_in_KC writes "A professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University
developed a small reactor to directly convert vegetable oil to biodiesel.
Goran Jovanovic reports his invention is approximately the size of a credit
card. It pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through parallel channels to
convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly. Current mainstream
methods to produce biodiesel take more than a day and also produces other byproducts which must be neutralized before disposal or use in other manufacturing processes."
How much juice is this going to produce? (Score:2, Interesting)
From the article:
The device - about the size of a credit card - pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through tiny parallel channels, each smaller than a human hair, to convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly...The device is small, but it can be stacked in banks to increase production levels to the volume required for commercial use.
Re:I'm waiting. (Score:1, Interesting)
Oil companies are no exception. There is a 100 mpg carburetor patent that an oil company is sitting on. Dozens of batteries patents are sat on by automotives, oil and petrochemical industries.
Microsoft is buying patent as a defensive mechanism against open-source software encroachments.
Proctor and Gamble has bought out some organic companies and then dissolved them overnite to protect their non-organic trade secrets.
Too many to mention...
A perfect reason for abolishing the patent system (I am a patent holder) so that the level playing field is attained (no more money wasted on litigation, lawyers, arbitration, licensing deals, cross-licensing deals). Think of the lower cost the product will become!!!!
Re:Really? or why Universities Love Printers (Score:2, Interesting)
This guy must really like printers.
Actually, many scientific labs at state universities use printers and printer heads a lot - for example, a new sealed plastic crystal suspension device created at the University of Washington uses HP inkjets (cheap to get, and colored Husky Purple) to deliver reagants in controlled amounts into plastic tubes which are then sealed by laser.
Every university has a section that recycles computers and printers - so it's easy to divert some of them for use in development of new technologies.
Thus, using printer technology to create a biodiesel converter is not that unusual.
biodiesel++ (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:better article (Score:5, Interesting)
With microchannels like he's using, the surface area is so high you've got a naturally higher rate of reaction, so you may not need the catalyst at all.
Re:We're saved! (Score:1, Interesting)
Precisely nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
IF Big Oil is greedy, and IF Big Oil owns a useful patent, they Will use it.
Re:Cellular Reactions. (Score:2, Interesting)
Now just add the glycerin to a couple of acids in the correct quantities and BOOM! (Actual details not supplied for pretty obvious reasons!)
Pogue Patent #'s (Score:2, Interesting)
http://befreetech.com/suppressed_inventions.htm [befreetech.com] has more listings, including Canadian patents (Charles N. Pogue was Canadian).
Pogue seems to have been bought out by the oil companies, and he did well for himself. Other inventors and tweakers have seen their offices/labs trashed and I have heard of disappearances and foul-play. Of course, you cannot believe everything you read, but considering what is at stake for the major movers-and-shakers, I wouldn't put it past them to do whatever it takes to keep what they have.
Re:better article (Score:3, Interesting)
he drives across the US pretty much for free, grabbing waste oil along the way. except in texas. apprently the oil there is too gross to use for fuel
Re:I'm waiting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Will that be cash - or biodiesel? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been making biodiesel for a few years now and it still gets me just how uninformed everybody is on it.
You can see pics of my reactor at http://www.watters.ws/gallery/biodiesel [watters.ws]. I just uploaded some newer pictures last week.
Re:Ostriches. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, yes, but biodiesel's energy comes from the Sun, via photosynthesis. And while solar will eventually run out, when it does the Earth will be uninhabitable anyway.
Second, the result of combustion will always be CO2 (except for Hydrogen and electricity), so forget about cancelling global warming.
Except, of course, all the CO2 put out by burning by biodisel is CO2 that the plants took out of the air in the first place, so there's no increase in atmospheric CO2.
Third, where are you going to grow all the plants needed to make all that vegetable oil and alcohol???
Ah, now you've struck a useful note. Even if all the Earth's arable land surface were farmed at American productivity levels with maximum-production oil crops, we still couldn't displace ordinary diesel use.
However, there is an alternative; oily algae. While the infrastructure to start producing it in necessary qantities would be expensive, it has high-enough oil output per acre to be a practical alternative. And the land for it can be vast tracts of desert, the pools filled with seawater.
Where are you going to take the energy needed to transform all those plants into biodiesel?
The energy content of biodiesel exceeds the energy necessary to process high-oil algae; the primary energy source for the creation of the long oil chains is the plant's photosynthesis. The result is that biodiesel-powered generators could be used to generate the power for the pressing and conversion process.
How many people will starve so the americans can still move their arses in their plush trucks???
None, just like today. Some will continue to starve because of deliberately chosen policies of thier national governments, like every recorded famine of the last thirty years. But changing that is a matter of willingness to violently violate the soverignty of the famine-causing governments, not economics or resource distribution.
There is no miracle solution,
Right, just solutions that require difficult and expensive -- but achievable -- engineering.
Re:Bio diesel from Algae has this beat by a long w (Score:4, Interesting)