Biofuels

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Comment by Trevor Cree on February 9, 2009 at 8:58am

Both Scott and Isaria have made interesting observations about the use of biofuel in agriculture. Although global fuel prices have fallen back to low levels there seems no doubt that prices will rise rapidly in the future and therefore it is a good time for agricultural engineers to study the pros and cons of that technology. A useful introduction to biofuels can be found in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel)

Comment by Isaria on February 3, 2009 at 12:14pm

There are many eco-benefits to replacing oil with biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. For one, since such fuels are derived from agricultural crops, they are inherently renewable--and our own farmers typically can produce them domestically, reducing our dependence on unstable foreign sources of oil. Additionally, ethanol and biodiesel emit less particulate pollution than traditional petroleum-based gasoline and diesel fuels. They are also claimed that they do not contribute to global warming, since they only emit back to the environment the carbon dioxide that their source plants absorbed out of the atmosphere in the first place.

Comment by Scott E. Justice on September 14, 2008 at 1:40pm

Well I'll be the first.
Our NGO here has started working with bio diesel from water buffalo fat as it is the only source of oil thus far that is priced low enough (and we find that there is no used veg oil from restaurants or snack factories as they simply keep adding new oil to the old oil which has us reducing our consumption of locally made snack/fried foods). We tested a litre the other day in a two-wheel tractor and low and behold there was no difference other than smell.
As the supply of fat is quite low, potentially 500 kilos a day this would be a niche market that would in the beginning at least by pass the government petroleum company and sell directly to these two-wheel tractor owners who appear willing.l This would also start a "conditioning" process here to et people use to the idea of BD.
We read where biodiesel in other east asia has been hit very hard by leaps in price of palm oil etc , putting lots of Chinese factories out of business.
We also watched with some amazement the Indian government a couple years back jump into jatropha with both feet making claims about it for poverty alleviation and environment benefits. And then we watch just as amazed as last month they pulled out of jatropha promotion claiming just the opposite and adding that it will increase food deficits. And despite the huge money spent by government of India we still cannot find on the internet a supplier of jatropha or even evidence of any large scale manufacturing in India though there are plenty of high pronouncements of companies 'plans' for producing bio-diesel.
So we scratch our heads about all these regional developments but are confident we will have a small supply of animal fat based BD shortly here in Kathmandu.