Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Bio-fuels and batteries

I picked up some pricing for biofuels, and then numbers below seem awfully low to me, I do not believe that biodiesel is cheaper today. But look at the relative change in price when supply goes up. 

There is an inverted scale effect, according to the researchers.  So, making the odd lot of biofuels is cheap because you use surplus soy stock, mainly.  It has a life span.  But if you scale up, than limited farm land makes soy oil compete with edibles, biofuel loses the battle.

For soybean oil that is converted to biodiesel, the EIA estimates that the cost for 2012/1013 will be about $2.06 per gallon if 50 million gallons are produced about $2.47 per gallon if 200 million gallons are produced. The discrepancy in price due to scale arises from the fact that increased demand for soybean oil to produce biodiesel drives up the price of the feedstock. In either case, biodiesel tends to be more affordable than petrodiesel.
Batteries have the same effect. During  development, the batteries come fro easily available resources, but try to scale up. 

Compare the two approaches, scale up in biofuel means greater efficiency at the farm or bio-plant; then the covalent bonds take advantage of existing and new combustion technology.

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