Wednesday 29 November 2006

Sjoe!

The blog got all intelligent all of a sudden. On an engineering tip then, i noticed today that De Beers Fuel will be unveiling a biodiesel farm and processing plant to produce the fuel from algae - an extension of their existing plant that produces biodiesel from sunflower oil. This is ambitious on an international scale, but even more so, i would imagine, in the Sasol dominated fuel market of SA (although i think much of the biodiesel will be used for industrial fuel, and Sasol has always tried to make it seem like they were doing the country a favour by making its fuel).

Anyway, for those that don't know, biodiesel is a fuel derived from fat (vegetable or animal) and an alcohol (ethanol, methanol, etc.), so you can literally grow your fuel feedstock - see diagram below. Biodiesel has a number of advantages over regular mineral diesel (no sulphur, burns cleaner, etc.) and can be blended with normal diesel and used in regular car engines without modification. The greenies will tell you that its primary advantage is that the the algae consumes CO2 as it grows, so you are cycling the carbon, instead of just pulling it out of the ground and burning it. I am not entirely convinced of the 'infinite sustainability ' of the biodiesel cycle, but it is a whole lot better than mineral fuel...







Anyway, the point is BRAVO SOUTH AFRICA, because energy diversity is the way of the future. Stay tuned for more energy news : Next week...
"Ode to Nuclear - a poem by Greg"

1 comment:

Alex said...

Completely agree. Why do you think we have invested (well ex-we) millions of bucks into an algal plant in Upington? Cause the little algae love it and did you know that Upington has 360 sunshine days a year? And it is ecologically friendly and phil this is for you - it needs semiskilled people and is labour intensive so has massive support from the local governments of our poorer provinces as it will increase job creation and economic development. Plus if you want to feel super wired and need to stay up for hours i would highly recommend spirilina!