Good idea 10

Making biodiesel from used restaurant grease and other waste products is a good idea. This article shows us how a large city is managing to turn waste into useful energy. They have convinced about 130 restaurants to donate their grease to the cause:

Restaurant owner Mike Dormont says that he could earn a few dollars per month selling the grease to recyclers for uses other than biodiesel fuel, but that he would rather do something that benefits the area.

This is called citizenship. Although someone is offering to purchase their waste and cart if off for free to be used for some reason or other, these restaurants have chosen to direct the waste stream to biodiesel production to benefit their local community instead of some nameless entity in the yellow grease futures market. Still, I wonder what will be used for those other "uses" now that this grease is being used for biodiesel? In any case, according to the local biodiesel refiner:

The Dallas-Fort Worth area generates more than 10 million gallons of grease each year, and the vast majority of that is thrown away.

I wonder why some restaurant owners have been paying the city to haul their grease to the dump instead of being paid for it and having it hauled away for free by some greasemonger? Maybe it's easier to dump it down the drain. Here in Seattle every citizen is legally obligated under penalty of law to recycle just about everything and get paid nothing for it. Why are restaurants in Denton not required to recycle their grease and get paid nothing for it? I don't get it.

And can you guess who said the following?

It's better for the environment, it cleans your engine, and now it's even cheaper than petroleum-based diesel ... The result is a cleaner-burning fuel that smells like french fries.

If you guessed the biodiesel refiner, you're right. Let me dissect his comments. By "it" he means biodiesel, and it may or may not be better for the environment depending on what you make it from (waste grease, Amazonian soy, Malaysian palm ... babies). And when it cleans your engine, it does so by sending that toxic sludge out the tail pipe, right into the air we all breath. It's cleaner burning than regular diesel for sure, and produces half as much CO2, but it is not cleaner than gasoline combusted in a modern three-stage catalytic converter. That may not be so in the future, but it certainly is true today. Oh, it also does not smell like french fries even though it may have originated in a deep fryer.

As I have said so many times before, biodiesel can be environmentally beneficial, but those benefits are a tradeoff and depend entirely on what you make it out of. The issue is much more complex than most people have been led to believe.

My real name is Russ Finley. I live in Seattle, married with children. Suffice it to say that although I am trained and educated as an engineer, my passion is nature. I very much want my grandchildren to live on a planet where lions, tigers, and bears have not joined the long and growing list of creatures that used to be. In an attempt to minimize the workload on Grist editors responsible for turning my submissions into intelligible articles, I will also be posting on a seperate blog called Biodiversivist, which will contain articles in addition to those submitted to Grist.

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  1. midnightowl Posted 5:26 am
    03 Aug 2006

    Mmm, friesLet's say it DID smell like French fries--well that's bound to make a lot of people happy, although I'm sure people would be rushing into fast food places for fries even more so than usual.
    By the way, I also read that in Malta, peanut oil and even cooking oil are being used to power diesel vehicles.

    www.tblbiz.info

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  2. greenstork Posted 5:57 am
    03 Aug 2006

    Spreading more FUD about biodiesel...Hooray for communities recycling waste vegetable oil, who could quibble with that excellent environmental initiative.  
    However, you're spreading some false assertions about biodiesel emissions.  
    By "It", we can only assume that the biodiesel refiner is referring to the recycled waste vegetable oil which is indeed good for the environment.  Not only is the CO2 impact 78% less than petroleum (more than the half you stated), it making use of recycled materials that already served the purpose of cooking foods and were destined to be discarded.  
    Biodiesel is an extremely clean-burning fuel, far from emitting "toxic sludge" as you so inaccurately portrayed it.  According to the 2002 EPA study of biodiesel emissions, compared to petroleum diesel, Carbon monoxide is reduced by 50%, particulate matter by 50%, CO2 by 78%, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (nPAH) by 90%.  Biodiesel is guilty of emitting  slightly more NOx than petroleum, which is a component of smog, but this is only because the US mandate for low sulfur diesel does not take effect until model year 2007.  If we had been running biodiesel for the past decade nationwide, diesel emissions technologies would be far more advanced.  Sulfur present in petroleum diesel (not present in biodiesel) has prevented widespread emissions reductions until 2007. What I am saying is that it's not the fault of the fuel but of the emissions controls on diesel vehicles put in place by automakers.
    Gasoline, on the other hand, on average emits far more carcinogenic volatile organic compounds (VOC) and carbon monoxide - depending of course on the make or model of vehicle.  VOCs are as much responsible for smog as NOx, they in fact combine to produce smog.  While smog is carcinogenic, it would be hyperbole to call it toxic sludge.  
    What does the future hold for biodiesel emissions?
    In model year 2007 all diesel vehicles will have to meet fleet standard emissions requirements.  Depending on where you live, cars will have to adhere to EPA Tier II bin 5 emissions or California Air Resources Board Low Emissions Vehicles (LEV II) standards, both of which require significantly cleaner emissions than 95% of the cars on the road today, a monumental improvement.  More info here:
    http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/01/daimlerchrysler.h...
    Diesel cars hold a lot of promise for our transportation future, don't believe the FUD in this article.  Pointing the finger at biodiesel as the culprit for NOx emissions is like blaming the waiter for bad tasting food.  Calling biodiesel emissions toxic sludge is maliciously false, even by today's standards.

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  3. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 5:11 pm
    03 Aug 2006

    Greenstork,Oh well, at least your posts give me a chance to flesh out points I couldn't make for the sake of brevity in the original post. Maybe some viewers are starting to suspect that you and I are really the same person and that Greenstork and Biodiversivist are actually strawman sockpuppets. From Wikipedia:
    Another type of sockpuppet is sometimes referred to as a "strawman sockpuppet". They are created by users with one point of view, but act as though they have an opposing point of view, in order to make that point of view look bad. They will often make poor arguments which their "opponents" can then easily refute. This can allow them to essentially make straw man arguments. Such sockpuppets thus become a personification of the straw man argument which their creators argue against.
    Trust me, anyone out there who cares, this is not what is going on here.
    And for anyone who does not know what FUD means, go here. Note also that:
    FUD can be used to offhandedly "smear" criticism or legitimate debate, even in cases where the allegations are without merit or are merely implied. Such an arbitrary usage is a general type of logical fallacy known as ad hominem circumstantial.
    Not only is the CO2 impact 78% less than petroleum (more than the half you stated)
    Remember when people used to call soy based biodiesel carbon neutral? Well, more and more people are now calling it 50% carbon neutral instead of 78%. I heard an agriculture expert on NPR last week say it was about 50 to 60% carbon neutral. That 78% number that is ubiquitously quoted came from a single study done by U.S. Department of Agriculture, you know, the one that has the picture of the bus with a "soybean" motif painted on it? Those numbers are not holding up very well under closer scrutiny. Also keep in mind I am talking about soy based biodiesel.
    Biodiesel is an extremely clean-burning fuel, far from emitting "toxic sludge" as you so inaccurately portrayed it... While smog is carcinogenic, it would be hyperbole to call it toxic sludge...Calling biodiesel emissions toxic sludge is maliciously false, even by today's standards.
    I think I see what got you into a tizzy. Maybe I should have been clearer. The distributor was touting the fact that biodiesel (being a solvent) literally cleans the sludge from the inside of an engine. I was pointing out that this sludge leaves via the tailpipe (and it is very toxic). I was not trying to insinuate that there would be a continuous flow of built-up engine sludge pouring out one's exhaust. I would hope that most people would have understood that. Once the biodiesel cleans the old sludge out of an old engine, it should stay clean as long as you keep using biodiesel. I hope that explanation puts your three above comments in the "Oh, never mind" folder. Ever see the insides of an old diesel engine? Picture blowing that out into the atmosphere. The point in critiquing the distributor was to show how they all sound like car salesmen rolling out the same dog-eared platitudes over and over again.
    I think it's interesting that you continue to use strawman arguments after all the times I have called you out for doing it. Either you don't understand what the definition is, or you don't much care. If someone were to read only your comments without reading my original post they would think that I disagreed with the fact that biodiesel is cleaner than petro diesel. Here you go on about the specifics as if I had not acknowledged that fact:
    According to the 2002 EPA study of biodiesel emissions, compared to petroleum diesel, Carbon monoxide is reduced by 50%, particulate matter by 50%, CO2 by 78%, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (nPAH) by 90%.
    But, here is what I actually said:
    It's cleaner burning than regular diesel for sure...
    By the way, the 90% reduction in hydrocarbons you quoted above over petro diesel is at the tailpipe. According to this article by the Union of Concerned Scientists (that was otherwise very positive about biodiesel), the life cycle hydrocarbon emissions of biodiesel (made from soy) are 35% higher than petro diesel, "In a full lifecycle assessment, smog forming HC [hydrocarbon] emissions were 35% higher than conventional diesel."
    And here are two more examples of strawman arguments:
    Diesel cars hold a lot of promise for our transportation future, don't believe the FUD in this article. Pointing the finger at biodiesel as the culprit for NOx emissions is like blaming the waiter for bad tasting food.
    I never said (or insinuated) that diesel cars of the future using low sulfur fuels and outfitted with emissions controls won't play a role in our transportation future. I also did not point the finger at biodiesel as the culprit for NOx emissions. I in no way suggested that the few thousand cars running on biodiesel are the "culprit" (whatever that means exactly) for our NOx emissions. I didn't say or even insinuate any of it. Here is what I really said:
    That may not be so in the future [the fact that a car running on 100% soy based biodiesel will emit 30 times more NOx at the tailpipe and 35% more HCs on a life cycle basis than an "equivalent" gasoline car], but it certainly is true today.
    In the following sentence you are seem to be saying that the lack of diesel engine emission controls is the fault of the manufacturers. In reality, it is the corrosive aspect of the "present" levels of sulfur in the petro diesel fuel that has prevented manufacturers from putting controls on diesel engines. They have no economically viable choice at the moment. If diesel trucks only used biodiesel, you could put controls on them, but since they will also use petro diesel, you can't, because of present levels of sulfur in petro diesel.
    What I am saying is that it's not the fault of the fuel but of the emissions controls on diesel vehicles put in place by automakers.
    I am assuming in the following statement that you are comparing "equivalent" gasoline cars to "equivalent" cars that burn biodiesel. Again, I have to point out that according to this article by the Union of Concerned Scientists, you are in error. Soy-based biodiesel releases 35% more hydrocarbons than petro diesel on a life cycle basis, and this EPA site shows that cars that run on petro diesel release more HCs than "equivalent" gasoline cars (a 5-speed manual diesel Jetta with an air pollution score of 1 will emit almost 30 times more HC/NMOG than a 5-speed manual gasoline Jetta with an air pollution score of 9--a score of 10 being the best).
    Gasoline, on the other hand, on average emits far more carcinogenic volatile organic compounds (VOC) and carbon monoxide - depending of course on the make or model of vehicle.
    Note1: HC is the term used to represent the general class of gaseous organic compounds called VOCs or TOCs, just as NOx is used to refer to all nitrogen/oxygen compounds.
    Note2: NMOG stands for Non Methane Organic Gases. It is a measure of the HCs emitted after you subtract out methane (which is not considered a health hazard).
    In conclusion, I still think using waste grease for biodiesel is a great idea, regardless of how many strawman arguments Greenstork makes to the contrary (this is an example of a double entendre strawman argument wrapped in a strawman argument).

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com

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  4. greenstork Posted 5:14 am
    04 Aug 2006

    My mistake...In this case, I think I misread your original post, I honestly thought you were talking about NOx emissions so any strawman arguments were certainly not intentional.  I did not see that you said "when it cleans your engine", I simply read that biodiesel emissions are full of toxic sludge, my mistake.  I assumed by toxic that you were talking about NOx emissions as you've done on more than one occasion in the past.  I apologize for insinuating otherwise, that was certainly not my intent.  
    You did fail to mention that a car running on biodiesel from day one wouldn't have any toxic sludge because biodiesel is non-toxic.  It was a little misleading.  
    And I'm having trouble accepting your 50% less CO2 argument based on your back of the napkin calculations.  I'd hardly be trotting that out there as fact when your calculations haven't been vetted at all by the scientific community.  
    This explanation is just ironic:
    In the following sentence you are seem to be saying that the lack of diesel engine emission controls is the fault of the manufacturers. In reality, it is the corrosive aspect of the "present" levels of sulfur in the petro diesel fuel that has prevented manufacturers from putting controls on diesel engines.
    I and a couple of other readers actually explained this very point to you in a previous thread. For the record, I'm not insinuating that you didn't discover this on your own, but the thread I cited was the first mention of sulfur and diesel emissions controls on Grist.  
    HC is the term used to represent the general class of gaseous organic compounds called VOCs or TOCs, just as NOx is used to refer to all nitrogen/oxygen compounds.
    Hydrocarbons are essentially anything that burns and then some.  HC's as they relate emissions discussions are typically unburned hydrocarbons, containing formaldehyde and and other nasty carcinogens. So while many types of harmful emissions are indeed hydrocarbons, the measurement of HC in emissions testing pertains to unburned hydrocarbons.
    Volatile organic compounds is a much broader category of gaseous organic compounds, as noted by bioD.  My point mentioning them is that many harmful VOCs like benzene are prevalent in gasoline emissions and absent in biodiesel.
    By the way, the 90% reduction in hydrocarbons you quoted above over petro diesel is at the tailpipe. According to this article by the Union of Concerned Scientists (that was otherwise very positive about biodiesel), the life cycle hydrocarbon emissions of biodiesel (made from soy) are 35% higher than petro diesel...
    I didn't make any assertions about unburned hydrocarbons, I was talking about unregulated (HCs are regulated by the way) polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).  I think we can only assume that the UCS article is talking about unburned hydrocabons or what are commonly referred to as HCs.
    One important footnote.  I'm having trouble accepting the UCS article as undisputed fact.  The EPA study I cited wasn't just one study, done by one government entity.  It was a combined life-cycle analysis combining 80 independent scientific research studies on biodiesel emissions.  For the record, I'm a donor to the UCS and I respect their work but it's just one scientific assessment and should be treated that way.  
    If it all comes down to biodiversity, as you state in your signature line, how can we not invest in technology and conservation measures to begin to address global climate change, that is after all, one of the biggest threats to the world's biodiversity. Before you chime in about how minute the positive benefits of biofuels are today, let me say that I know that biofuels aren't going to single-handedly stave off climate change, but it's a paradigm shift.  It's the first one percent. It's the build-out of an infrastructure, a collective change in the way we think about fuel, transportation, and carbon emissions.  The advent of cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel derived from algae will make the real impact. And we agree that import biofuels aren't the sustainable solution.

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  5. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 10:54 am
    04 Aug 2006

    I should have been more clearRecall what happened when Gore garbled his words in Dave's interview?

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com

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  6. Maywa Montenegro Posted 7:56 pm
    09 Aug 2006

    For What It's WorthPerhaps no one is going to go back 4 days and read this post, but I thought I'd chime in. Though not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, I have been steadily reading up on biodiesel from various resources, and my understanding comes down to essentially this: biodiesel is superior to gasoline (by about 80%, according to a July 2006 study published by researchers at the University of Minnesota and St. Olaf in Minn in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) when it comes to greenhouse gases, i.e. CO2. When it comes to the other stuff---the particulate matter, the soot, the smog-causing gases, diesel (bio or non) is still far dirtier than gasoline. So it boils down to a question of what you are replacing. If you have a diesel car, then it makes great sense to fill it with biodiesel instead of the petro-variety. If, on the other hand, you are lucky enough to be shopping for a new set of wheels, then a hybrid or better yet, a plug-in hybrid, is the cleanest way to go. Not only do plug-in hybrids already reduce greenhouse gas emissions somewhere between 41 and 61 percent, but they will be able to run on biofuels too, thus further reducing the CO2 output. As the power grid de-carbonizes over time, a plug-in hybrid becomes virtually CO2 neutral. And no soot, smog, or other "toxic sludge" either.

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  7. Howell Haus's avatar

    Howell Haus Posted 3:44 am
    10 Aug 2006

    Another good idea...I heard that Tesla invented a car that was so silent that it was eery to bystanders, so he parked it and it's now an unknown. Has anyone heard specifics about this? Based on what I've read about the man, it could have been our first electric car. Something we could build further upon with today's technologies.
    Myself, I'm going with total electric. Solar enhanced, lithium ion batteried, 24VDC... and not on a car, but on an Xtracycle.com kit I'm adding to my Specialized Shark Cruiser. Rod Miner of Lightfoot Cycles is helping me with the parts, pieces. When it's done I'll be able to make my commute with less water (perspiration), and at night recharge it with the 24V lead-acids that are powered by PV's. Until it's done, I'll just have to see you out there... on my pedal-powered bike, of course... JD

    JD & Kelley Howell of

    Palm Harbor, FL

    visit us: Cut20.blogspot.com

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  8. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 5:18 am
    10 Aug 2006

    MaywaA very succinct summation.
    JD:
    JD is also the name of one of my daughter's roosters. The one that sneaks up behind you and bites your ankles. The Telsa car along with the 100 MPG carburetor are persistent urban myths.



    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com

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  9. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 1:31 am
    12 Aug 2006

    Here is an interesting piece from NPRcalled Grease Wars (audio).

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com

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  10. amazingdrx Posted 2:47 am
    12 Aug 2006

    Bad, better, bestLiquid fossil fuel powered transportation, bad.
    Recycled grease powered transportation, better.
    Renewable electric powered transportation, best.
    Let the better technology be a bridge to the best technology.  Recycled grease powered plugin hybrids are a great bridge.  
    To plugin electric vehicles.  With a grid powered by non-combustion based, renewable energy sources.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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