BioFuels are made from plants or manure, and have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as reducing the dependence on imported oil and all the turmoil that seems to come with the imports.
Page Directory:
Information on making and using BioDiesel, Vegetable Oil, and Ethanol as a replacement for petroleum fuels in vehicles:
Information on burning bio-fuels such as wood, corn and methane as fuels for heating, cooking, power generation, and other uses:
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/
The EERE's alternative fuels site. A wealth of information on alternative fuels: properties, incentive programs, models, infrastructure...
Getting Started Making Biodiesel,
Graydon Blair, ESSN, Nov 2005
Graydon Blair
Energy Self Sufficiency Newsletter
http://www.rebelwolf.com/essn.html
In the Nov 2005 issue
Good article on how the process of making biodiesel fuel works. An easy to understand explanation of the chemistry involved and the processes used to go from vegetable oil to biodiesel.A good starting point.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_mike.html
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library.html
Which is part of the Journey to Forever site:
http://journeytoforever.org
The Journey To Forever site is very interesting, with a good collection of information on biofuels and many other fine projects.
http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/
A good site for getting started with BioDiesel. Lots of free tutorials, equipment building, etc.
How-to on making the Appleseed Biodiesel processor.
Some good links to other Bio Fuel resources.
Classes and a biodiesel guide book from the inventor of the Appleseed biodiesel processor described just above.
Quite a detailed how-to on making biodiesel from fryer oil (vegetable oil).
Lots of detail.
A good and detailed article dispelling some of the myths surrounding biodiesel fuel.
Scott Durkee
How to get articles from Home Power ...
Home Power Magazine -- Issue 93.Good how to article on making biodiesel.
http://www.utahbiodieselsupply.com
Some good good detailed tutorials on biodiesel, including a series of videos and pages on everything from biodiesel chemistry to making biodiesel.
There is some obvious commercial slant to the videos, but also lots of good and helpful information.
(Thanks to Karen for suggesting this)
http://www.bozemanbiofuels.com/index.htm
This
is the site run by Paul, our own Bozeman biodiesel powerhouse. Helpful
information on biodiesel, EV's, and conservation.
Paul even offers a renewable energy cottage to rent while visiting the
Bozeman/Yellowstone area.
Forum:
http://www.frybrid.com/forum/index.php?
Much Vege Oil Conversion Info:
http://www.frybrid.com/test.htm
This site has a wealth of information on conversion of diesel vehicles to
run on straight vegetable oil.
The site also hosts a very active
discussion forum on vegetable oil for fuel, conversions, etc.
Jeff
Jeff describes his conversion of a 1998 VW Jetta Diesel to burn straight vegetable oil. VERY detailed.
Thank you Jeff!
Details ... A posting on Fieldlines.com explaining how the poster uses veggie oil and other oils to heat his home.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wastewatts/
A project in work to generate electricity and heat from a Lister diesel engine using waste vegetable oil as fuel.
One source for Lister type diesels in Maine.
Information on powering generators and running on vegetable oil.
(Thanks to mark for finding this)
There is a bit of a controversy between the BioDiesel folks and the WVO folks. Here is one assessment from Journey To Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html
If you know of other good and factual material on this area, please let me know: Gary
They're Doubling The Value Of Their
Soybean Crop, Walder Mfg.
From Farm Show Magazine, volume 30, issue 5, 2006
http://www.farmshow.com/view_articles.php?a_id=201
Fairly good description of a farmer made press that extracts about 1 gallon of oil per bushel of soy beans, and leaves a high quality protein meal. The system uses two presses to get a better oil yield and higher quality meal. From Farm Show Magazine
Cars and People Compete for Grain...
There appears to be a consensus emerging that the large scale use of corn to make ethanol for motor fuel is a bad idea because: 1) the energy balance is poor -- that is, the energy you get out of the corn based ethanol is little more than the fossil fuel energy that went into making the ethanol, and 2) the use of corn to produce ethanol puts it in competition with petroleum, and results in price increases in corn when petroleum goes up.
http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/index.html
A wealth of information on all aspects of making and using Ethanol (alcohol) as motor fuel.
http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol.html
An assessment of Ethanol as a fuel for vehicles from Journey To Forever.
Picture from
Auto Blog Green ...
-- a great green auto news site.
Energy Self Sufficiency Newsletter
http://www.rebelwolf.com/essn.html
Article in ESSN Newsletter by Al Rutan covering the basics of methane generation with information on a small scale methane generator. The ESSN has carried a number of good articles on bio-fuels.Al Rutan, the Methane Man
Search the Home Power article archive for issues 26, 27, 28, 30, and 40, and order them.
How to get articles from Home Power ...
Some of this material may be available here:
http://www.green-trust.org/2006/11/self-reliance-in-troubled-times-al.html
Dairy
farm uses cow manure to make methane that power a generator producing
electricity to sell to grid.
Reduces green house gas emissions, provides some added income, and "green"
electric power.
The University of Adelaide
has a lot of hands-on material on generating and using biogas, including
very detailed plans for making an inexpensive poly bag digester to produce
methane.
(Thanks to Dave for suggesting this)
How to
get articles from Home Power ...
Home
Power Magazine article, Issue 116.
Good practical article on how designing biodigesters that produce methane
fuel. Details on how to build a simple one from poly tubing.
Jeannie Leggett, Extension Assistant
Robert E. Graves, Professor of Agricultural Engineering
Les E. Lanyon, Associate Professor of Soil Fertility
Penn State Agricultural Extension
Full Paper (85K pdf) An overview of methane production from manure on farms. Covers how it works and the major issues involved.
http://biorealis.com/wwwroot/digester_revised.html
From Biorealis Systems A calculator to estimate methane production based on various organic materials inputs.
http://biorealis.com/digester/construction.html
From Biorealis Systems
Complete plans for a small methane generator.
Nepal Biogas Plant -- Construction Manual Another farm size biogas plant with full construction plans.
VITA -- Volunteers in Technical Assistance
Full Plans Very interesting paper on making a family scale BIO gas plant that produces methane from manure.
Lots of detail on the design, construction and operation.
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
Fairly detailed instructionfs for building a 100 cubic ft per day that runs on 100 lbs of manure.
Mother Earth News, May 1970
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
Building and operating methane producing digesters fueled by manure.
Mother Earth News
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
Interesting article from 1981 Mother Earth News on the use of home scale methane generators in China.
Wonder what the story on this today is?
Barry Grindrod
www.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/batesmethane.htm
Article
on converting a gas IC engine car to run on methane that was produced from
chicken and pig manure.
The article is fairly detailed, and the car has been running for years.
Other useful methane generation and use information here:
Please be careful!! -- There is a Carbon Monoxide poisoning hazard with all wood gasifiers
Food and Agriculture Organization --
UN
paper 72 (pdf)
A very complete 1986 design manual for wood gas generators to run IC engines. Includes design, construction, and operating experiences for a number of types of wood gas generator applications.
Both vehicle and fixed applications are covered.
www.gengas.nu/byggbes/contents.shtml
Very complete set of plans for building a wood gas generator. The gas produced by this generator can be used to power internal combustion engines.
A picture of it
WARNING -- One of the components of wood gas fuel is Carbon Monoxide -- a highly poisonous gas.
Clifford W. Mossberg
How to get articles from Home Power ...
.
Home Power article in issue 21 covering how to produce wood gas, and how to use it as a fuel to power internal combustion engines.
The Resources section of the TLUD site provides an extensive list of resources for wood gas burning stoves and engines.
The Gas Producer - Science and Construction
Some material on constructing and using a trailer mounted wood gas generator to power a car.
Preheated air gasifier:
http://allpowerlabs.org/ ...
GMC Truck:
http://whatiamupto.com/gasification/woodgastruck.html
All Power also offers various levels of kits for building their
gasifiers as well as detailed free downloadable plans.
There is also a
Wiki and a
User Forum
-- so much stuff its a little hard to keep it all straight, but lots of
interesting stuff.
(thanks to Les for sending this in)
Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank,
Low-tech Magazine, January 18, 2010
www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-cars.html
[画像:wood gas powered cars]Quite a collection of wood gas powered cars spanning many years and with a history narrative.
Very extensive collection of articles, FAQ's, and a searchable data base of questions and answers.
[画像:greenhouse gas emissions wood stoves]A good site for factual information on wood burning devices including efficiency and emissions.
A good place to look before you choose what kind of wood burning applicance to go with.
http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/FNR/FNR-79.pdf
Residential Wood Stove Installation,
FNR-100, Purdue University
www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/FNR/FNR-100.html
Lots
of good information on wood burning. Heating value compared to other
fuels, payback, wood burning and cutting hints.
Installing wood stoves.
Download this paper here:
http://hotandcold.tv/wood furnace.html
A
research paper on the development of a fairly simple, clean burning,
efficient wood furnace.
Quite a bit of good practical experimental work and measurements leading to
this furnace design, as well as a number of variations that did not work and
why.
The design shown is a water heating furnace.
(Thanks to Tom for suggesting this)
http://www.mha-net.org/index.htm
A great site for learning about and building Masonry Heaters. Information, pictures, plans, newsletter, ...
Note that the "bookstore" at MHA offers detailed plans for 5 masonry heater designs that they have built and tested.
A good sequence of pictures on
how a Masonry Heater goes together....
Masonry heaters work well for heating well designed homes -- they burn hot a
clean for a relatively short time, and store the heat in the mass of the
heater for slow release over the day.
http://www.heatkit.com/index.htm
Construction and planning info:
http://www.heatkit.com/html/guide.htm
Helpful doc:
http://heatkit.com/docs/Man00.PDF
"we
used a style common in Germany, the hybrid masonry stove. It uses a steel or
cast iron stove for the firebox but wraps masonry around the metal on 4 or 5
sides, excluding the loading door and, optionally, a cook-top. We added a
large masonry chamber behind the stove to allow flue gases to circulate
through some extra mass, boosting the total masonry weight to 2 tons."
Gimmie
Shelter is a Wisconsin home builder that often includes masonry heaters in
their homes.
Their website section on masonry heaters provides a lot of good detail on
masonry heaters, including a pretty detailed construction series. Lots
of examples of heaters they have dome -- some works of art.
Masonry Heaters: Planning Guide for Architects, Home Designers and Builders, Alex Chernov
http://www.stovemaster.com/files/masonry.pdf
[画像:MH heater]A good guide for designing and sizing masonry heaters.
Lots of good detail on detail on designing, building and locating the MH. Also covers heat output from an MH and how to size the heat output to your home.
This is Doug Kalmer's version of the traditional masonry stove. Doug constructed this massive and beautiful stove (along with the rest of his house).
It provides many of the advantages of the traditional masonry stove with less somewhat less mass, cost, and labor.
See all of Doug's solar projects ...
How to get articles from Fine Homebuilding ... A nice and detailed Fine Homebuilding article on designing and building a masonry heater.
These heaters provide a very clean (hot) burn and the masonry retains heat and radiates to the room for hours.
All the
details...
Scott
gives the details on how he retrofitted both an airsupply for a secondary
combustion area and also how he added a catalytic combustor to his 1981 wood
burner.
He also goes over a simple way to measure wood burner efficiency and the
before and after measurements -- which lead to a substantial improvement in
efficiency.
All the details...
Building Rocket Stove Mass Heaters...
Some hands on material on efficient and simple rocket stove mass heaters on the richsoil.com site.
Mother Earth News
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
Plans for a sawdust burning heater from the Mother Earth News archives.
Cautionary feedback on the sawdust heater:
http://www.vtwoodsmoke.org/index.html
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
Outdoor
Wood Furnaces burn wood in a furnace located in a separate enclosure away
from the house. They heat water, which is piped to the house for space
heating.
Its an appealing concept, but unfortunately the current generation of these
furnaces are half as efficient and 20 times more polluting than certified
indoor woodstoves.
There is some effort underway to offer cleaner versions. So, if you
are interested in one these, do your homework on certified versions, and
think about impacts on your neighbors.
http://www.bioenergylists.org/
"This site exists to help people develop better stoves for cooking with biomass fuels in developing regions"
Especially good section on efficient stove design.
Chofu: supplier (one of many):
http://www.thesolar.biz/Chofu.htmMother Earth News article:
Mother Earth News article: Wood-fired Hot Tub, Stocking
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
Snorkel and Scuba Underwater Woodstoves:
http://snorkel.com
It seems like this might be a simple, and
greenhouse gas friendly way to add heat to a solar heat storage tank
when there is not enough sun?
Go to the Lehman's website for the title "Hot Water From Your Woodstove"
This is a 45 page booklet available from Lehman's that covers heating domestic water using a coil in your wood stove firebox.It has quite a bit of detail on both thermosyphon and pumped systems, including a lot of advice on troubleshooting and adjustments when things don't work quite right on the first try. It also has a lot of emphasis on safety, which is very important for these systems.
http://www.woodheat.org/heating-water-with-a-wood-stove.html
This
excellent article on domestic water heating with a wood stove provides
descriptions of several good systems, and covers the features a good system
should have.
It also provides safety information which is MANDATORY READING for anyone
adding water heating to a wood stove.
http://www.michigan-horse.org/preheater/
A similar arrangement from Mother Earth News: Build a Woodstove Water-Heating Attachment
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
A
design for a system to preheat water with your wood stove that does not
require major surgery on the wood stove.
Be sure to read the material on safety in the article above -- especially on
placement of valves and pressure relief. There should be a
pressure/temperature relief valve mounted in the line closer to the stove.
http://www.hilkoil.com/product.htm
One source for coils that can be placed inside a wood stove firebox to heat water.
Be sure to read the article just above on how to do this safely.
Installation instructions... (pdf)
These instructions look pretty good and show several plumbing
arrangements.
Burning Shelled Corn as a Heating Fuel
A very good paper on the basics of burning corn as a heating fuel. Covers the equipment, process, and economics. Well written.
Penn State Agricultural and Biological Engineering
http://energy.cas.psu.edu/shellcorn.html
Some good and reliable advice on burning shelled corn as a heating fuel.
The Penn State Extension section on shelled corn as fuel has been recently updated, and is quite helpful.
"I
Burn Corn" a fine personal site on the practicalities of burning corn
for fuel. Great source of practical, hands-on corn burning
experience.
Also provides a number of good links, references, and a discussion forum.
Pictures of some of the odds and ends you need for a complete corn burning system.
More material on waste or veggie oil burning:
http://journeytoforever.org/...
(includes material on Mother Earth News burner)
The original Mother Earth
burner that above are based on:
Make a Waste Oil Heater, Freudenberger
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
From Journey to Forever: Plans and design information on burners that will burn biodiesel and/or WVO.
Quite a bit of design information and experiences with prototypes.
Heating a greenhouse with compost
The Report (pdf)
Very
extensive and detailed report on heating a greenhouse with compost.
Two years worth of testing on design and type of compost issues.
The Methods of Jean Pain: Or another kind of garden, Ida Pain, 1980.
This book is out of print, and I was not able to find any
used copies of this for sale. If you search for "The Methods of Jean
Pain", many free (questionable?) download sources come up.
http://www.jean-pain.com claims to be
the official Jean Pain family website and sells a pdf copy.
Mother Earth News has some articles by/on Jean Pain -- search for Jean Pain
Finding Mother Earth News articles...
Journey To Forever on Jean Pain:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/methane_pain.html
A good
two part video showing details of a large compost to heat and biogas pile
and more:
http://www.youtube.com/... (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/... (part 2)
The book covers Jean Pain's research in using compost for both
agricultural and energy production. There is some good, practical
information on building large compost piles for the production of heat for
water or space heating.
One example 50 ton pile provided the equivalent of 200 MBTU over a 6 month
period -- enough to heat a house.
Picture from the video -- finely shredded wood with plastic pipe to capture
heat and fermentation vessel in middle to make biogas.
(Thanks to Curbie for finding the video!)
http://energymd.wordpress.com/...
This is a very nicely thought out space heating scheme that uses a large compost pile to generate heat.
Marc has worked out a design that provides for aerating the pile, keeping it moist, collecting the heat, and insulating the pile for greater efficiency.
More from Marc and his results for the first year of operation...
Details here... This is an interesting set of concepts that use the heat generated through the decomposition of organic mater for space and water heating.
This uses surplus heat from a large compost pile under the greenhouse
floor to heat water for the house. You get water heating and
greenhouse space with the same structure!
This
is a pretty slick idea for heating water with heat generated from compost,
as well as providing greenhouse space.
The thing that intrigues me is that you can apparently have working
greenhouse space above the heat generating compost pile?
I'd like to hear from anyone with composting experience on how workable this all seems? Gary
