Diesel from Natural Gas

[lowenbrau]

I started looking into the synthetic diesel fuel that Audi used to win the 24 hours of Lemans. I had heard about making bio diesel from coal or algae but wasn't aware of the possibility of using Natural Gas. Pretty cool. I predict gasoline is going to go out of style.

Gas to liquid

[Diescipel]

Sounds good. Nice low emissions, lower than BioD I believe. Agree that gas/petroleum is going to become pase', but I believe the masses won't do it until it is more expensive than the alternatives, which may happen sooner or later....

Also, if you follow the links to the Shell site itself you get lots more info on potential sources of biofuel etc.

Questions:

Cost?
Lubricity? (says it's NO sulphur, not just ULSD) other engine wear conerns?
Splash mix with BioD like petrol diesel? Yes.

B

[brownbear]

yah and as we stop using pertoleum the price per drum will come down and it will be cheap again, but the oil companies won't have such a large market...

Fawkem, greedy bastids.....

[M John Galt]

"yah and as we stop using pertoleum the price per drum will come down and it will be cheap again, but the oil companies won't have such a large market..."

ROTFLTMSH

thanks, that's the best laff I've had all day.

[brownbear]

I got that from a Popular Mechanics magazine article in last month's copy. It was on alternate fuels.

Glad I made your day

[Diescipel]

Originally Posted by brownbear

yah and as we stop using pertoleum the price per drum will come down and it will be cheap again, but the oil companies won't have such a large market...

Fawkem, greedy bastids.....

This presupposes that supply will remain constant and demand will drop. I don't know how much us biodiesel users are going to drop supply, how much the gas to liquid process will drop it, but one thing's for sure: China is going to increase demand just slightly. India too, maybe the whole rest of the 3rd World. Some feel that supply is also going to drop, not the least because of the ongoing 'instability' in the Middle East, but also because we have reached or soon will reach "peak oil."

But I've never published in Pop Mechanics so take it all with a grain of salt

[brownbear]

Have you seen all the new gasser advertized as flex fuel vehicles? Ethanol 85 is the fuel they want to main stream with in the USA like right away. It's already being offered all over the place. It's those kinds of changes that are going to drop the need for oil. Also bio diesel in larger production.

It's not possible for the USA to switch to all bio, otherwise all your crops will be for fuel only and you will have to import all the food into the USA(and Canada).

China may use more fuel. doubtful China will care about pollution either.

IMOP anyhoo.

[M John Galt]

Demand for petroleum will surely increase as more of the world emulates the Great NorthAmerican Lifestyle. The oil that has reached peak production is the easy to find, easy to refine, light sweet crude that our cheap petro based lifestyle is based on. There are abundant supplies of heavy oil but it's expensive ot extract and refine When oil reaches $150 / bbl we will have lots of $5 per gallon fuel.

[lowenbrau]

Originally Posted by M John Galt

Demand for petroleum will surely increase as more of the world emulates the Great NorthAmerican Lifestyle. The oil that has reached peak production is the easy to find, easy to refine, light sweet crude that our cheap petro based lifestyle is based on. There are abundant supplies of heavy oil but it's expensive ot extract and refine When oil reaches $150 / bbl we will have lots of $5 per gallon fuel.

The beauty of this expensive fuel is it drives the alternate technology. Instead of using a great deal of natural gas to extract crude for tar sands, maybe its more efficient to turn the gas into synthetic diesel. The $ will make that decision. There is a real possibility that the Alberta tar sands will be getting nuclear reactors so they can produce electricity and oil and not have to burn the saleable natural gas. Saskatchewan has huge tar sand reserves too that no one talks about and, regardless of demand, if oil gets to $150 barrel it will stay in the ground because alternative fuels will out price it. 20 years ago few people knew you could make fuel from veggie oil, now we are learning that it can be economically made from canola, corn, coconut, peanut (where it all started) coal, natural gas, pulp mill waste, algae, turkey guts and likely a bunch of other things. If the production comes from biomass then the use of that fuel results in a neutral or near neutral net co2 production. In 50 years our fuel crisis will be that we can't grow crops for fuel because the planet is too cold and the co2 levels too low.

[mjohn7]

FYI:
Diesel demonstrated his engine at the Exhibition Fair in Paris, France in 1898. This engine stood as an example of Diesel's vision because it was fueled by peanut oil - the "original" biodiesel. He thought that the utilization of a biomass fuel was the real future of his engine. He hoped that it would provide a way for the smaller industries, farmers, and "commonfolk" a means of competing with the monopolizing industries, which controlled all energy production at that time, as well as serve as an alternative for the inefficient fuel consumption of the steam engine. As a result of Diesel's vision, compression ignited engines were powered by a biomass fuel, vegetable oil, until the 1920's and are being powered again, today, by biodiesel

[lowenbrau]

Originally Posted by mjohn7

FYI:
This engine stood as an example of Diesel's vision because it was fueled by peanut oil - the "original" biodiesel.

Right! It all started with peanuts. I can see a future where home or at least community based fuel production is the reality that Rudy invisioned. The ultimate curb side recycling program os one where the byproduct is the fuel you use at home and to get home. Maybe a Delorian that you fuel with some stuff from your trash can isn't so futuristic after all.

[Diescipel]

There was a thread in the Chat section on ethanol--apparently it costs more petroleum to produce it than it saves at the pump.

http://forum.ih8mud.com/showthread.p...=ethanol+sucks

Originally Posted by lowebrau

The beauty of this expensive fuel is it drives the alternate technology.

Word. That's why I love the twin turbo, twin e-motor diesel hybrids that are being developed. Links in the "LeMans" thread. Combine 80 mpg with biomass fuels as much as possible, and I think we'll be all right. Let's hope the technology can become low cost enough to trickle down to China etc.

[fe sus]

Even better than BioDiesel, IMO, is BioDiesel made from CRAP. Well okay, not crap, but in fact turkey guts... there is/was a plant outside of Carthage, MO, that uses a process called "thermal depolymerization" to turn turkey guts into oil. This process could be used to turn just about any biomass into oil, which could then be processed into bio-fuel. I believe the company is called "changing world technologies" and is at least partly funded by one of the big oil companies... also worthy of note is that the government SHUT THIS FACTORY DOWN! Why? Because they said it smelled bad. No shit. A f*cking turkey gut cooking factory smelled bad? Oh, and it's located NEXT TO a factory turkey farm. I bet that smells pretty good on a hot summer day... anyway, the technology is out there... I was thinking of running my cruiser on stray cats...

[Diescipel]

Yep, I'll burn anything that doesn't damage my vehicle.

Some friends are visiting from the UK and they said a local bioD producer was canned because of "environmental concerns," which is a little ludicrous in light of Exxon Valdez etc. I don't like conspiracy theories, but I do think when people do something original, even entrepreneurial, outside the box, people in power get a little nervous.

[roscoFJ73]

If North America switched to GTL technology you could get your supplies from a nice stable place like Oztralia where we have one of the biggest gasfields in the world
http://www.aie.org.au/pubs/globaltrends.htm

[lowenbrau]

Biggest?

Rank Country Proved Natural Gas reserves
(trillion cu ft)
1. Russia 1,680.0
2. Iran 940.0
3. Qatar 910.0
4. Saudi Arabia 235.0
5. United Arab Emirates 212.1
6. United States 189.0
7. Nigeria 176.0
8. Algeria 160.5
9. Venezuela 151.0
10. Iraq 110.0

I do agree with the notion of having supply in stable regions of the world and trade among friendlies.

[roscoFJ73]

Originally Posted by lowenbrau

Biggest?

Rank Country Proved Natural Gas reserves
(trillion cu ft)
1. Russia 1,680.0
2. Iran 940.0
3. Qatar 910.0
4. Saudi Arabia 235.0
5. United Arab Emirates 212.1
6. United States 189.0
7. Nigeria 176.0
8. Algeria 160.5
9. Venezuela 151.0
10. Iraq 110.0

I do agree with the notion of having supply in stable regions of the world and trade among friendlies.

I should have said one of the biggest gas fields in production.
Its estimated Australia would produce 25% of the world supply in 2005
Still a lot more to come on line.The present reserve estimates are 100-135 tcf

[fe sus]

Yeah, too bad the natural gas is running out/will run out before the petro bubblin crude does. At least with crude you can pump sea water into the fields and force that last bit of goo up. No such luck with a natural gas well. Whe they're done, they're done. I'm not sure what we're going to have to do to meet our (as a planet) energy needs into the future, but we sure as sh*t need to do something. Were there any cruisers in mad max?