How Do You Displace the Glycerin During Biodiesel Production?

During the production process of biodiesel, you will add either a methanol or ethanol based alcohol to separate the glycerin from the oil. In order to trigger the reaction that causes the separation, lye is used as the primary catalyst to start the chemical reaction.

Where Do You Find Methanol?

When you go to buy methanol to make your homemade biodiesel, you’ll find that there are a lot of different products out there to look through. Some of these include wood alcohol, wood spirits, alcohol, methyl hydroxide, methylol, pyroxylic spirit, monohydroxymethane, hydroxymethane, colonial spirits, carbinol, stove fuel, methy hydrate, and wood naphtha to name a few. They all describe methanol. If you are in doubt, you should double check before purchasing. One of the product names, methylcarbinol, can be used to describe methanol or ethanol. Ethanol is several degrees harder to work with when making your own biodiesel. The other thing to watch, is to not substitute isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) or methylated spirits (denatured alcohol) or your biodiesel production will fail. Do not buy methanol in large quantities until you have successfully made biodiesel and have your process nailed down.

What Does Lye Do in the Biodiesel Production Process?

Lye is the catalyst that helps change the glycerin into biodiesel. When choosing what type of lye to use for your production, you can choose between potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide. Normally, you will find it a bit easier and cheaper to buy sodium hydroxide. If you decide to use potassium hydroxide, check your biodiesel instructions with many of them requiring you to use up to 1.4 times as much as with sodium hydroxide. You will also need to use isopropanol for the titration of your biodiesel. All of these ingredients can be purchased at your local drug store, craft store, and chemical suppliers.

Biodiesel Production Safety When Handing Lye

You should be safe and careful during the entire biodiesel process, but especially so when handing lye. You will need to wear eye and hand protection when handling lye as well as a respirator rated to protect against the chemical. You should not eat around it, and do not store your materials in tin, zinc, or aluminum containers to avoid a reaction with the lye. Ensure you review biodiesel safety precautions before starting to make your first batch of biodiesel in the home.

When the Biodiesel Production Process is Completed

When you finish making your biodiesel, you will see the separated glycerin sitting on the bottom of the container in two different layers. The bottom layer of the gylcerin will be separated from the remainder of the mixture. You can then use the biodiesel fuel you have created as an alternative energy source that is located at the top of the container.

How Do We Obtain Hydrogen?

There are a number of resources than can be used to produce hydrogen. These include but are not limited to using fossil fuels, natural gas, biomass, nuclear, and other alternative energy sources such as hydroelectric, solar, wind, and geothermal energy production sources. One of the reasons behind the significant amount of research into hydrogen as an alternative energy source is the abundance of the resource. When hydrogen is produced, it can be at a centralized plan that is hundreds of miles from where the hydrogen will be used or in small distributed locations such as a refueling station or local power site location.

How Do We Produce Hydrogen?

There area several methods and technologies used to produce hydrogen to include natural gas reforming, renewable elctrolysis, gasification, renewable liquid forming, nuclear electrolysis, and photobiological and photoelectrochemical methods.
Harvesting Hydrogen from Natural Gas
Hydrogen can be harvested from the methane found in natural gas. The process is referred to as steam methane reforming and is used to produce approximately 95 percent of the hydrogen used in the United States today. An alternative method is called partial oxidation which harvests the hydrogen by bruning methane in the air. Each of these methods creates a synthesis gas that is then reacted with water in order to produce even more hydrogen.

Renewable Electrolysis and Gasification

The electrolysis method of hydrogen harvesting makes use of electric current in order to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. An even greener manner of this type of harvesting is to use an alternative energy source such as solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, or wind in order to produce the energy used in the harvesting process.

Gasification is the hydrogen producing process that uses coal or biomass and applies heat while putting the substance under pressure with steam present. A number of chemical reactions then occur which produces a synthesis gas that is then combined with the steam in order to produce additional hydrogen. Using this method is more efficient than directly burning coal to harvest hydrogen. Researchers continue to work on new methods to separate and store the carbon dioxide that is produced in the currently used process in order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that currently result from gasification.

What Are the Barriers to Hydrogen Harvesting?

The largest barrier to wide-spread hydrogen harvesting for energy use is reducing the cost of the harvesting process and transportation. The goal of research and development is to reduce the cost of a gallon of gasoline equivalent of hydrogen to approximately $2 to $3 USD before tax. Current technology is not quite there yet, but photobiological and photoelectrochemical harvesting techniques are still in the early stages of research and may have the most potential to be the cheapest and cleanest means of hydrogen harvesting for use in fuel cell technologies as an alternative energy source.

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How Does Biodiesel Improve the Environment?

Using biodiesel as an alternative, renewable energy source for your vehicle produces significantly less pollution than using fossil fuel based gasoline. Biodiesel does not produce the same level of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides found in traditional diesel fuel. Tests conducted on the exhaust output produced by the biofuel have proven that the pollution levels are reduced by more than half when using biodiesel as an alternative energy source.

Biodiesel Impact on Global Warming and Acid Rain

Global warming has received a significant amount of press of the past few years. If you choose to use biodiesel, the overall lifecycle emissions of carbon dioxide are reduced by 78% when using biodiesel when compared to traditional fossil fuels. When you take a look at the impact on acid rain, the reduction is a bit less, but the alternative fuel does produce sulfur oxide at a 8 % lower rate than that seen from traditional diesel fuel.

Biodiesel Impact on Human Health

One of the significant triggers for asthma sufferers and those that have lung cancer are the aromatic pollutants produced from combustion engines. Deliberate research has proven that biodiesel exhaust is significantly less harmful to human health than traditional gasoline. Reductions in carcinogens produced by biodiesel are reduced by 75 to 85 percent when you use biodiesel. The reduction in asthma irritants has been tested to be approximately 47%. Shifting to the alternative fuel also results in a 83.6% reduction in soot which is also considered to be a carcinogen.

How You Can Make a Difference Using Alternative Fuels

If you make the choice to start using biodiesel, you will have an impact on improving our environment. If you use just a 2 percent blend of biodiesel in your vehicle, you can help reduce the impact on the Earth’s environment. Carbon monoxide emissions will be significantly reduced along with hydrocarbon, and acid rain contributing substances. Regardless of what choices you make, it is definitely worth exploring how you can best leverage biodiesel in your daily life to help you live a greener life.

How Does a Fuel Cell Work?

A single hydrogen fuel cell is an electrolyte that is placed between two electrodes, has an anode, and a cathode. There are bipolar plates located on each side of the fuel cell that serve as collectors of the current produced by the cell and help spread out the gases produced during the energy extraction process.

Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell

The PEM fuel cell is the most researched of the varieties of fuel cells for propulsion of vehicles. In this design, hydrogen gas is channeled to the cell anode where a catalyst is used to separate the hydrogen molecules into electrons and protons. The membrane then only allows protons to pass through it to the other side of the cell. At the same time, the electrons follow an external circuit to the cathode section of the cell and is the electricity that is produced by the cell. On the opposite side of the fuel cell, oxygen gas is channeled to combine with the electrons that creates heat from an exothermic reaction that can be used external to the fuel cell.

All hydrogen fuel cells to date have consisted of two electrodes and an electrolyte. The different classifications of cells is based on the type of electrolyte used in the cell. Different ones will result in a variance in chemical reaction within the call and temperatures produced by the fuel cell.

What Are Some Hydrogen Fuel Cell Applications?

Hydrogen fuel cells have been looked at for a variety of power options. Some of these include use in stationary power stations for remote power backup, distributed power generation, and cogeneration. On the smaller scale, miniature hydrogen fuel cell research has focused on being able to replace traditional batteries in order to provide power for portable devices and small generators. Probably the most well-known use of fuel cells has been as an alternate power source for automobiles and marine engine replacements.

Why Should We Develop and Use Hydrogen Fuel Cells?

Since hydrogen fuel cells directly convert the chemical energy stored in hydrogen to electricity with water and heat as the only waste products, it is significantly more friendly to the environment. Fuel cells also have been shown to have up to three times the efficiency of fossil fuel combustion. For example, the engine in your car is at most 20 % efficient when converting the energy potential of gasoline where an equivalent hydrogen fuel cell would be between 40 and 60 percent efficient. Fuel cells also require less machinery to use for conversion to power than a traditional gasoline-based engine and would require 2 to 3 times less the equivalent volume of fuel that a gasoline-powered car does.

Barriers to Adopting Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology

The most significant barriers to wide-spread adoption of hydrogen fuel cell technology as a green energy source is the reduction of cost and improvements in the durability of fuel cell systems. At the time of this writing, fuel cell systems were still not cost-competitive with fossil fuel based propulsion systems. Current research in fuel cell technologies remains focused on trying to find new materials that will help reduce the cost of fuel cells and improve the durability of fuel cell systems.

What Are the Different Layers of the Earth?

The Earth layers are logically split into:

Core: Consists of two layers, one that is solid, and the outer core that is made of molten lava or magma

Mantle: The mantle surrounds the core and is approximately 1,800 miles thick. It is comprised of lava and solid rock

Crust: This is the outer layer of the earth and is 15-35 miles thick on the continents and 3 to 5 miles thick on the ocean’s surface. Magma comes to the surface near the edge of the crust’s plates.

Jeremy Kemp, Wikimedia Commons

Where Are Geothermal Resources Found?

Most geothermal resources are found near the boundaries of the plates with many of these locations occurring around the Ring of Fire in the Pacific ocean. When there is a large area of hydrothermal or geothermal resources, the area is referred to as a geothermal reservoir. When geothermal energy finds its way to the Earth’s surface, it does so in the form of volcanoes, geysers, and hot springs. When geologists are searching for geothermal reservoirs, they will drill a well similar to those done when searching for water and test the ground temperature. In the United States, the majority of geothermal resources are found in Hawaii and in the western states with California having the largest dry steam field in the world.

How is Geothermal Energy Used?

Depending on what the energy is going to be used for, it may not be necessary to drill too deep to make use of geothermal energy. Some of the primary uses of geothermal energy are:

• Direct Use – Make use of hot water from springs that are naturally heated for heating systems or water use.
• Electrical Power Generation – At this scale of use, the water/steam has to be between 300 and 700 degrees Fahrenheit. These types of plants will normally be built where the geothermal reservoir is less than two miles deep.
• Geothermal Heat Pumps – Use the ground temperature to control the building temps above ground for heating needs.

Use of Geothermal Energy in the United States

The United States is the world leader in geothermal energy production, but it is only 0.5% of that produced in the United States. The five states with plants include California, Hawaii, Montana, Utah, and Nevada. California has the most capacity with 34 geothermal production plants, followed by Nevada with 15 plants, and the remaining three states have one plant each respectively.

How Are Biofuels Made?

Biofuels are made from plant or animal material that are processed from dead material. The process can entail trapping methane gas as it escapes decomposing material or can be similar to that used when extracting ethanol from corn. The carbon contained in the organic material has to be extracted and then refined in order to be used to generate energy. Biodiesel is created from a process using chemical reaction with fats with a catalyst added to the solution such as sodium hydroxide. The end result is a mixture that creates esters which are used as biodiesel. Some biofuels are created through the use of the fermentation process to create bioethers from soybeans and rapeseed.

How Are Biofuels Used?

Just like a traditional fossil fuel, once a biofuel is extracted, it is used in internal combustion engines. Existing diesel engines can be run on biofuels which burn more efficiently than traditional diesel fuel. Some biofuels require turbine or engine modifications due to burning cleaner and hotter than traditional fuel. Soy beans and corn are two of the more popular organic products used to produce ethanol used in internal combustion engines today.

What Are Second Generation BioFuels?

Second generation biofuels refers to using non-food crops to produce renewable energy sources. Some of these options include using wheat and corn stalks, wood, and special crops such as miscanthus to create biomass that can then be converted to liquid fuel. There is significant development and research ongoing in this field in order to find a cheaper alternative to corn and soy for producing fuel.

What Are Third Generation BioFuels?

Third generation biofuels refer to using algae to produce bio fuel. Ongoing experimentation is still being conducted at the time of this writing, but algae are considered to have the potential to be able to produce up to 30 times the yield per acre that soybeans and corn can produce. Algae is relatively easy to grow when compared to soy and corn, however, the extraction process to remove the algae oil is still significantly more expensive and difficult to accomplish. Another approach that is being taken with algae is to extract the naturally produced ethanol from the algae without killing the organism in order to produce fuel.

How Does a Wind Energy System Work?

A system designed to create energy from the wind will take the movement of the wind, or kinetic energy, and use it to create either mechanical or electrical energy. The traditional usage of a windmill in the United States was to help move water, but today includes generating electricity on the individual or regional scale. There have been two designs of wind mills or wind turbines that have become prevalent in use: the horizontal-axis or traditional looking windmill, and the vertical axis or egg-beater style windmill. Each wind turbine system will consist of a rotor that is used to take the wind’s energy and create rotational shaft energy, a nacelle that has the drive train and generator, a support tower, and various electronic equipment depending on how the electricity is going to be used. As the energy is created and transferred to the drive train and generator, it can then be part of the electrical grid in your home once converted to 120 V AC current or stored as DC current in a battery for future use. On wind farms, it will be mixed with the electricity produced by other power plants to be delivered to customers. Some of the larger wind turbines being tested in the later 2000′s can produce 5,000 kW of power. Most windmills have towers that are made of steel with fiberglass poly or wood-epoxy blades.

How Large Does a Wind Turbine Have to Be?

The windmills or wind turbines used for large scale commercial purposes will range from a 50 to 90 meter diameter of the blades with towers approximately the same height. The larger windmills would stand at approximately 440 feet in height. There has been testing for off-shore windmills to stand another 60 feet in height. Wind turbines for use at the home are normally much smaller and have a diameter of 8 meters and smaller depending on the amount of electricity that needs to be created.

How Much Power Do Wind Turbines Make?

The total output of a windmill or wind turbine will depend on how big the turbine is and the wind speed in the area. The current windmills being produced have a rating of 5 MW. These turbines can produce up to 15 million kWatts of power in a year which can power up to 1,400 average households in the United States. The average electrical consumption in the United States is approximately 10,000 kWatts. In order to produce electricity near the total rating of the wind turbine, an average annual wind speed of more than 9mph is required, so wind turbines are not necessarily suitable for use in all areas.

Alternative Energy Sources

Solar Energy

Solar energy has been used in various forms over the past several decades. The amount of energy potential from solar energy exceeds the world’s energy consumption by a factor of 35 or more. Unfortunately, the cost of entry into the solar market has precluded average consumers from being able to adopt this power resource to supplement that received from traditional power sources. It has been used successfully for home furnaces and water heaters. Another advantage of solar power is that there are no harmful by-products from use of the sun as a power source. As the cost for solar panels decreases, solar energy has the potential to become a replacement for power plants, homes, and beyond.

Wind Power

Wind power or wind energy is an alternative energy source that has been used for a number of years. Using wind power to help you Go Green for your home power needs has become increasing popular as the cost to build wind power generation units, or small windmills has significantly decreased over the past decade. The primary idea behind harnessing wind power is through the use of a windmill. As the wind goes across the blades of a windmill, it rotates and can be used to generate electricity. Wind power has been used at two different levels over the past several years: 1 – through large windmill farms, and 2- Building small wind generators for home use.

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy refers to using the heat of planet Earth to make steam that can then rum a steam turbine to make electricity. The Earth’s radius is approximately 4000 miles with the temperature at the core being approximately 4000 degrees Celsius. The temperature of the Earth mantle and surface crust boundary is approximately 375 degrees Celsius. If you drill approximately three miles into the Earth’s surface, the temperature is approximately 100 degrees Celsius which is hot enough to create steam. This is still pretty deep, however, so focus of geothermal energy has been on using geothermal hotspots located throughout the world. A hotspot is a volcanic feature where there is a reduced thickness in the Earth’s mantle that results in excessive heat to be transmitted from the Earth interior to the crust. Some examples of these hotspots include Yellowstone National Park and the Hawaiian islands. Geothermal energy sites do require extensive maintenance and cost more than other forms of alternative energy.

Harnessing the Power of the Ocean

Similar to the technology behind hydroelectric dams, harnessing the power of the Earth’s tides can be used to create energy. This method uses the natural motion produced by tides to fill reservoirs which are then discharged back to the sea to turn turbines that produce electricity. Although renewable, this method incurs a large cost but is used.

Hydroelectric Power

Hydroelectric power or energy is created from damming a river and then releasing the water stored behind the dam to generate energy through the turning of specialized turbines. The United States currently produces up to 60,000 MW of power through the usage of dams. Constructing a dam results in a large up-front cost, and also can play a significantly negative role on the surrounding environment. Once constructed, however, the hydroelectric energy produced by a dam has low maintenance and production costs.