Butanol

[matrixscarface]

Does anybody know anything about butanol, i don't mean a cut and paste from wikipedia, im talking about first hand experence. do you think this can easily replace gasoline as a fuel? and be made a whole lot cheaper and save us from oil? what are your thoughts?

[cwes99_03]

I think that this question doesn't belong in the Math and physics forum. Not sure what forum to put it in though chemistry maybe, but probably social sciences forum.

[Roadam]

Save us from oil? What are you thinking? Gas reserves are the first thing that will run out after oil reserves. I dont think that they would last more than 10 years after.

 

Still there are many automobiles which use gas, and forklifters are more common to run on gas than anything else.

[Mercedes Benzene]

To be short, no. Butanol could not efficiently be used as a replacement for gasoline. Current produciton methods are just not efficient enough to supply the world's demand for gasoline.

Also, most butanol is currently produced through petroleum refining.

THe same problem arises with hydrogen fuel cells. Most hydrogen if produces as a byproduct of oil refining.

 

It gets interesting though. One of the hottest issues in biochemistry today is the use of bacteria to produce fuels for the future. I know bacteria can produce hydrogen, but I've never heard of bacteria that produce butanol.

Oh well, I guess its off to do some more research.

CHEERS!

[matrixscarface]

To be short, no. Butanol could not efficiently be used as a replacement for gasoline. Current produciton methods are just not efficient enough to supply the world's demand for gasoline.

 

Forget that, im saying if there was enough of this to fuel the world forever, can it be used tomorrow? and would people accept it?

[Mercedes Benzene]

Forget that, im saying if there was enough of this to fuel the world forever, can it be used tomorrow? and would people accept it?

 

Hmmm... I'm not sure if today's gasoline engines are compatible with butanol or not?? As for people accepting it.... HELL YEA!! With the way gas prices are now, why would people not accept it?

[Jay-qu]

moved to chemistry forum.

 

Jay-qu

[matrixscarface]

Hmmm... I'm not sure if today's gasoline engines are compatible with butanol or not?? As for people accepting it.... HELL YEA!! With the way gas prices are now, why would people not accept it?

 

if you go to butanol.com, it shows how close it is to gasoline.. a man drove across america in a buick le saber using only butanol.. thats amazing.. his man made a process to make butanol at 83 cents a gallon, thats amazing.. its only pollutant is co2, thats good for things around that breath co2 like plants and such.. i really started thinking about opening butanol stations in major cities in america maybe else where.. starting with florida (gas is murder there) i gotta find funding, but if you really look at this, can you find any problem with it? hydrogen has storage problems, ethanol has problems putting it in the engine without mods, butanol you just throw in PLUS you don't got to do squat to it.. i can throw a gallon in my hog right now.. and no problems...

[matrixscarface]

By the way, im SURE there would be HUGE support from the government... plus enviromental orgs. :)

[UncleAl]

You could burn face oil for fuel if you had a large enough resource and could collect more energy than you expend in obtaining it. You cannot. No fuel that starts as photosynthesis can return a positive energy balance if it is farmed or is dilute/m^2.

[Qfwfq]

You cannot. No fuel that starts as photosynthesis can return a positive energy balance if it is farmed or is dilute/m^2.

Still waiting for proff of this theorem of yours. :)

[theBike45]

You could burn face oil for fuel if you had a large enough resource and could collect more energy than you expend in obtaining it. You cannot. No fuel that starts as photosynthesis can return a positive energy balance if it is farmed or is dilutet.

This is totally and demonstrably incorrect. There is , obviously, no "law"

concerning energy extractions from farmed feedstocks. There mere idea can be seen as absurd simply by the fact that those ethanol energy extractions from a bushel of corn have doubled since 1980 without any increase in energy inputs. Even ethanol, which is at the bottom of alternatives fuels in terms of energy expended versus energy obtained, requires only .73 BTUs for each 1 BTU extracted. It also must be noted that each BTU from ethanol combusted in an auto engine produces more energy that a BTU from gasoline, since it burns more completely. (The same can be said for butanol) And those cost/obtained BTU figures, from Dr Wang at the Argonne Labs may not take into account that the process also produces significant amounts of butanol, which has BTU energy content nearly the same as gasoline (and actualy produces more usable energy during combustion - i.e. butanol gets better mileage than gasoline). Newly developed butanol processes extract 42% more energy from a given amount of corn than ethanol processes can. Ethanol is not the preferred alternative automotive fuel as a gasoline replacement, butanol is. There is no comparison in which butanol is not shown superior to ethanol. Butanol is virtually an exact replacement for gasoline. No modifications of the engine are required and butanol produces no NOX, SOX or carbon monoxide emissions. It can be transported in existing gasoline pipelines, which siginificantly reduces transportation costs. It does not have to be mixed with gasoline (although it can be, in any desired proportions) and thus does not have to be sent to a refinery.

[theBike45]

To be short, no. Butanol could not efficiently be used as a replacement for gasoline. Current produciton methods are just not efficient enough to supply the world's demand for gasoline. Also, most butanol is currently produced through petroleum refining.

This comment happens to be correct that as of the moment there certainly are not enough facilities to produce enough butanol to entirely replace gasoline (there currently are NO commercial biobutanol facilities, using either of the two competing processes), we are talking about the future when we talk of any alternative fuel, so the comment is more or less pointless. Ethanol

production facilities are very similar to what a biobutanol facility would look

like, and no doubt could be transformed rather easily.

Butanol is an exact replacement for gasoline as far as gaoline engines are concered. Its advantages over gasoline are absolutely enormous and well known by those in the alternative energy field. It produces practically no emissions aside from CO2, and it that regard it is CO2 neutral, assuming the production input energy is also. If butanol were used widely, then most of that input energy would also be CO2 neutral. In this regard, the Ramey/Yang OSU method produces significant hydrogen as a byproduct, which can be applied to the production process,and it is, obviously, also CO2 neutral. Their production process produces 42% more energy from a bushel of corn that the ethanol fermentation procedures currently used. If the Argonne National Labs estimates of input versus output energy are accurate, then butanol production using the Ramey/Yang procedure requires around .5 BTU to produce each 1.0 BTU of butanol. BP and Dupont claim that their stage II procedure using a genetically modified microbe catalyst will produce butanol using commercial feedstocks (such as sugar beets, which will power their plant currently under construction) that should match the Ramey procedure

output claims (they expect to be competitive with $30-$0 oil). Butanol can

be produced from a wide variety of agricultural waste material, material that currently must be transported to landfills. Using this as feedstock would

reduce the cost per gallon of butanol from $1.25 to .85 cents.

[Jay-qu]

what are your thoughts?

 

butanol goes bang with oxygen :naughty:

[Roadam]

Well butanol is a gas isnt it? For handling it is easier if it is in liquid state.

To think a little more wider... almost all our energy sources come from the sun. As oil, coal, natural gas will soon be exousted beyond economical extraction, I think that we`ll have to harness energy directly from the sun. And as far as I know photosynthesis in the plants is times more efficient than solar cells and cheaper. The future is whether in artificial photosynthesis or making ethanol, butanol from plant products. (I have been doing some wikipedia browsing)

[UncleAl]

Theoretical minimum area necessary to generate 1 GW electrical: 1000 mi^2. Photosynthesis is very optimistically equivalent to producing 15 bbl/day-mile^2 of diesel fuel while ignoring all energy inputs. If you must do stuff like plant, fertilize, weed, exert pest control, harvest... it is Ouroboros eating his own tail.

 

Don't invest in anything that violates thermodynamics - or at least get out before government subsidies are suspended.

[Roadam]

That is where genetics comes in. If someone could design a tree that would store its extra energy as something like oil... And generally nature works without any extra help.