Just another idea.....

sossego

sossego

Retired from the forums
Grow hemp, maize/corn, peanuts, and soybeans. Use the maize to create ethanol. Create a biofuel - diesel or otherwise - from the other three. Add the ethanol. Booyah! High octane fuel. The crops chosen are good for crop rotation.

The vehicle. Hybrid with solar panels and generators located near the wheel wells.

There you go, an idea for someone to use.
 
I like ideas like that. In the current economic environment I don't see different businesses working in a mutually beneficial, or symbiotic, relationship though. The other problem is that biofuel has a serious downside in that it creates a battle between those who grow food and the energy industry. The net result is a shortage of food, or the price of food going out of reach of poorer people. The energy sector is more politically and economically powerful so guess who wins that battle? The bottom line is that biofuel results in more people dying of starvation. Now if we could do this in a sensible manner, like you're probably thinking, then fine. But that's not going to happen when there is such a disparity of power between the competing industries.
 
One little snag, diesel fuel (bio or traditional) is not exactly high octane. In fact it is anything but high octane. Octane number in fuels mean how much compression fuel air mixture will withstand before self igniting. Gasoline engines generally do not like self ignition of fuel (it's called knocking). On the other hand diesel engines ignite their fuel by compressing it, so diesel engines need fuel with a very low octane number. In fact diesel fuels have a setane number. Setane 100 is octane 0, and octane 100 is setane 0. :)
 
Another thing is that biomass is not waste. If you take it away, you have to replace what you took or a deficit will occur. Typically you replace that deficit with fertilizer. That's a pretty crude approach but popular with short sighted farming practice. In any case, this sort of scheme is just another way of moving energy around from budget to budget. Like I said before, more people might be driving but that will be at the expense of more people starving. I know, it's a tired old discussion but if you Google biofuel vs food you'll find it has a lot of people worried. In the end the problem is not about finding a good technology (humans are good at that), but deciding who will gain and who will lose (humans are bad at that).
 
Don't know what it is like for you guys, but in the UK we are not allowed to grow / develop our own fuel without paying most of it away in tax to the government.

Any solar panels we put on our house, we have to give away the excess for free to energy companies because we are not allowed to store it in capacitors (again without heavy tax) for a rainy day.

We are not allowed wind generators because planning wont allow it, only energy companies seem to be able to get planning for these things and they do not allow normal people to sponsor / take ownership / benefit from them. This is the reason why so many people do not want wind farms near them, because they do not get to see any of the benefit. I remember that some guy hooked up his old wind mill to generate electricity and he got fined!

So just another idea. Get rid of the government and get one in who are not effectively our masters ;)

Edit: The only one we can really get away with (for now) is underground heating. Since this is not mainstream we are not yet taxed for it. Unfortunately this also means it is quite specialist and the hardware is quite expensive.
 
You also need vast amounts of space to grow the crops for biofuel. Biofuel is not environment-friendly; quite the opposite, rainforests are being cut down to grow crops for biofuel.
 
Thanks for the information and corrections on the things I did not research sufficiently.
If people were to use the native plants of the rainforest - and of other areas - then it would be better. I am living on the Chesapeake peninsula; and, the plants I had suggested would be good for this environment. Others have informed me of hemp oil being good for lubrication.
 
Using anything from the rainforest is not a good idea. The topsoil in rain forests is very thin, so any export of biomass is one step towards a new desert (think sahara). There are promising processes which use bacteria/algae in waste water to make diesel-like fuels. These can be done at waste treatment plants.

And one thing many forget: before there were machines, there were animals used for tiling and pulling. These also required area for growing their food on - something that would need to be considered when "going back to the old ways" is considered.
 
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