Saturday, May 05, 2012

driving...

spinning wheels...

four of them, and no the bike plus trailer four, no the biodiesel zero carbon cycle car wheels.

got about half way to woods hole yesterday morning before realizing I'd left a 10-15% economy sucker on the roof.  i've been taking it off lately for longer road trips but needing it for hauling kids and the bike so it's been on and off.  left it on.

doh.

but still it gets decent enough economy w/ the rack on.  It was probably at 40mpg burning solar energy yesterday.  Biodiesel = chemical solar battery.  Plants turn the sun into oil, some one else uses the oil in their restaurant, Newport Biodiesel goes and picks it up, chops the glycerine backbone off and makes methyl esters, I buy it and put it in my tank.  So not only is it stored solar energy, but it already has been used once.

With the rain I'd turned the lights on for the drive down.  Parked and left the lights on for the whole day.  oops.

Got back to the car and crossed my fingers and turned the key, slow cranking speed, but, just, fast, enough, to, fire, it, up and get running. Phew.  That was a close one.

Was awesome to meet up with Chad D down there, quick visit and even passing on the coffee at 3:30 i was still wide away until midnight last night.  Nothing like being tired but unable to fall asleep.  love that feeling.

Tomorrow is the big Cox Marathon day, we'll probably use the bio burner for spectator shuttling...

This whole ride Mon-Tues-Wed only deal is getting old.  But I was just too flipping tired to leave the house to get to Freddie's Dawn Patrol ride, and there's no riding into the shop today because i've got to haul the big kid home and run a pile of errands.  Yes. If the car wasn't an option I could probably figure out a solution that involved the bike.  It would probably mean riding the borrowed tandem with the trailer, alone.  Into the city and then hoping for dry weather on the way home with the kid.  Possible, but it isn't going to happen.

Time for some more coffee.

Need to make some prints of the images, there's another employee show coming up, I had a moment of inspiration for a big image set on the drive, using some of the MIT collaboration samples and doing two big landscape shots at very disparate mags...  i might even have the images I need. Have to hit the printers. I owe someone else a print too.  Would be nice to monetize the process, get a return on the creativity and time spent.

A talk yesterday mentioned a pivotal lecture.  It drew parallels, in my mind, to The Rider.  A book every cyclist should read at the start of the season, or at least every couple of years.

The lecture is titled: There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom.

I'm not in the physical sciences world as much as biology but the biologists and the physicists are intertwined in the history of the microscope.  A good lecture.  A good thought provoking read.

I did say I was going to get more coffee. I guess I'll close, move on and get some more.

heddwch
G
written (if you can call it that) by before

4 comments:

Hill Junkie said...

There is a lot of controversy over Net Energy Balance of biofuels. Some critics claim some biofuels have negative NEB, meaning more kJ of energy are used in their production than contained in end product. Often, the kJ used in production come from fossil fuels. Thus hardly zero carbon cycle.

The advantages of biofuels gets even murkier when considering land use. Ethanol from sugarcane can be quite efficient. However, if rainforest is cleared to grow sugarcane, there can be a net increase in greenhouse gas production, as the rain forest removes more CO2 than ethanol production displaces in fossil fuel.

Biofuel production is already having an adverse effect on world food supply, and bio fuel still represents only a tiny portion of world total energy consumption.

Eventually we'll figure this out. I wish we'd invest more in solar research. Solar can generate electricy directly, and some day all cars will be 100% electric. It takes energy to produce solar cells too, and no doubt this energy would come for fossil fuels in the near future. But there'd be no need to compete with food production. Solar cells can be placed on roofs and non-arable land.

8:58 PM
gewilli said...

BioDiesel.

Very different than Ethanol.

I know my production values and the return on investment.

I needed only 30 acres of soybeans a year to produce enough raw material to power the Golf for 40,000 miles of driving a year.

The net energy value in OIL production is there.

When you factor in that the raw material has already been paid for (used in cooking) you ALWAYS win in return.

Never a question.

Never.

For Ethanol? You can never win. Ethanol is less intensive to produce than Gasoline but not by much.

BioDiesel? very different.

9:23 PM
Hill Junkie said...

Only 30 acres? Less than 1 acre of cropland per person is needed for food production. Even if 100% of cropland was used to produce bio diesel, it would barely make a dent in our energy needs and the world would starve to death. Most vehicles on the road consume more energy than Golfs too.

I think it is noble to use waste vegetable oil as a biofuel, but it becomes a moral issue with me if food cropland were converted to large scale biofuel production. We must aim for other solutions.

7:08 AM
gewilli said...

Yes, 30 it quite a bit and unsustainable for the whole populatino. BUT the oil produced by soybeans on that 30 acres, and only the oil, would cover the fuel needs (roughly calculated, this was 10 years ago) not just for my driving (40,000 miles a year) but for production.

Soybeans are consistent but also a terrible oil crop.

Bigger picture is driving 40,000 miles a year is unsustainable.

I am only using recycled oil now. No virgin feed stocks in the car.

Can we power 100% of the diesel vehicles on the road with biofuels? Not right now.

But farming now isn't about planting food for people to eat. It is planting raw materials to feed animals, to make sugars and by products.

Don't pull that holier than tho bullshit about crops being needed for human food consumption around here unless you're ready to live off of #2 corn and Roundup ready soybeans (sadly a large portion of the country does, directly or indirectly).

BioFuels for gasoline engines go beyond unsustainable. Gasoline engines are much the same. They are better than they have been but are no where near the efficiency level of a diesel.

Factor in the lower cost of fuel production (bio or dino) and compression ignition wins hands down.

There is no reason why all the cars on the road can't be as efficient as the Golf, well, beyond cultural reasoning.

Pipe dream from an idealist opinionated jackass.

aka me.

Linking Ethanol production with Biodiesel when using the umbrella term Biofuels and food supply is a great marketing push from the oil companies to keep people from pushing for improvements.

But whatever. No one really seems to give enough of a shit to push back.

I will shut up and go ride my bike to work now.

7:21 AM

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