Tobacco biofuel to solve energy/ environment crisis?
Boffins in Philadelphia, America have come up with a radical new plan for biofuels. Rather than the cars of tomorrow running on various forms of alcohol, sunflower oil, algae etc, the scientists propose that they should instead be fuelled by burning tobacco. "Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use …
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Plants that produce oil? I've just seen a 2 parter about that on BBC1
Glasses please
the energy still comes from the sun
I have yet to hear a good explanation of why biofuels should be anything more than very inefficient solar panels.
air transport
Solar voltaic panels generate electricity directly. Concentrated Solar Thermal panels generate electricity via heat concentration. Solar heating panels substitute for heating fuel or electricity use by providing hot water. None of these applications are useful for generating fuel for very light and mobile applications, i.e. aircraft. Surface transport may become convertible to sustainably generated electrical use, e.g. through trams and railway electrification and vehicle battery technology. But air transport can't accept the low power to weight ratio of batteries, so to avoid net CO2 release, some kind of biofuel production is needed for sustainable air transport.
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Solar panels don't produce oil, Filippo.
Converting the solar energy into chemical energy - in easily storable compounds - is at least a big part of the reason plants appear so inefficient compared to solar panels.
Construction Costs
Plants may be inefficient solar panels. But they're inefficient *self-assembling* solar panels. Admittedly they're also generally disposable, but fortunately each plant also makes several ready-to-install copies of itself called "seeds" so you can make as many as you want. Neat trick, huh?
except
they tend to be more efficent then solar panels becouse they're more concentrated - go figure.
Efficiency
Solar panels are not very efficient at all. They are usable only because sunlight is free. Plants are much more efficent in converting Sunlight to something usable. But they convert a small amount. Solar Panels are less efficent percentage-wise but can be deployed in larger arrays.
so where are your electric cars
They are most definitely cheaper than solar panels! I think its more the fact that there are hundreds of millions of cars and trucks out there that get SFA benefit from solar panels. If electric cars become as convenient and economical as diesel & petrol driven vehicles i'm sure people will start to buy them. But a worldwide fleet transition is a 30 year project, and a project that we haven't even started with yet!
Only one problem
Doesn’t burning tobacco produce a lot of methane? Methane has more global warming forcing than CO2 by a factor of 20, won’t this make any replacement of conventional fuel 20 times more damaging than the current fuel?
IIRC 32 times
... according to those who only know for certain that they know f*** all, of course.
I would have thought that the generally ignited tobacco would generally ignite the generally ignitable methane immediately on production? Or is that just exploding cigars?
What do they teach kids today?
Methane burns. It's what's in your cooker. Sheesh!
Paris, 'cos I'd like to teach her a trick or two.
pleased at ...
... the idea of every car, train, home boiler etc puffing out clouds of delicious carcinogenic smoke
Er, they already do.
particularly since...
... the switch to unleaded petrol, with its generally headier mix of aromatic hydrocarbons. many cars would be taken off the roads if the MOT emissions tests included benzene.
My tobacco-powered car has broken down...
... have you tried emptying the ashtray...?
Ancillary Benefit?
Maybe this won't compete with food crops so much. But could it compete with the cigarette industry for raw material, thereby pushing up the price of fags? That in turn would probably prompt more people to quit.
Ahh.. kill two birds with one stone.
Tobacco?
The hemp plant would be far superior. A strong, useful plant, great biomass, great fibre production for clothing, and even the flowers buds are useful, although mixing that and driving may not be perfect :)
really?
hemp has sod all THC in it. you would need to smoke ounces to get anything.
Biofuels
So that's alcohol and tobacco. When do we get to try wild, wild women?
-A.
>"This would lead to starvation and deforestation just as ordinary biofuels do."
At least you could have a fag, to stave off the hunger pangs.
My dream source for bio-fuel...
.... is maple leaves. Or grass cuttings. I think about this every Sat. during the summer and fall (autumn), when the Mrs. has me raking this stuff and dumping it in a bin, to be carted off to the local landfill.
Waste indeed.
Am I the only one seeing this?
Oil companies are bastards, even to their own employees. They'll use additives to kill their users and envronment (albeit slowly) and once oil runs out, they'll have nothing left but to shift their line of work to something slightly less bastardy, like real estate, or used car sales. Or religion.
Instead, we'll hand over the reigns to the tobacco companies, who like the oil mongers, have a primary self-interest in money, but are more than happy to kill their users quickly instead of slowly, and spend a substancial amount of their profits on PR work to make their cancer-riddled users feel good instead. On the upside, they kill the environment marginally more slowly than oil.
So that makes it all right.
So, in that case, I welcome our new tabaccy overlords to the top of the energy foodchain.
Now, excuse me while I cough a lung out or something...
Mmmm tobacco
Makes me laugh how people think tobacco smoke is so much more dangerous than any other smoke. At the end of the day would you rather be locked in a room with me smoking or your petrol engined car with the engine running? I know which I'd choose. Unfortunately I don't get a choice about inhaling the tonnes of poisonous gases being pumped into the atmosphere everyday by car drivers.
idiots
Whereas 30-35% of hemp is oil by dry weight. Yet again, lobbyists win over any kind of sensible solutions.
You Drive I Choke
Driving is a disgusting addiction. Drivers should be ashamed of themselves, it's filthy and antisocial. ASBOs and re-education camps for all drivers. All employees of the DVLA to be put on trial for the encouragement of the shameful act of driving.
Anonymous Coward?
You are Gordon Brown and I claim my five pounds.
Fine, I will save the world!
Want to save the world
Step 1
Construct massive, very long Tunnels under a Deserts using TBMs
Step 2
Fill with salt water from the rising seas!
Step 3
Grow billions of tons of Algea
Benifits:
Vast areas of unused land that are not used for food production.
Solar power availiable to run the whole production process
Poor parts of the world hit by Global Warming will turn into deserts so perfect places to build Production Plants that provide jobs and investment in local economy!
Oh wait, this wont make rich evil corporations even richer!
:(
Life cycle costs anyone
Only IIRC tobacco is *very* energy intensive to cultivate. Lots of fertiliser and quite vulnerable to infections (althouth Nicotine seems to make quite a good natural pesticide).
Looking at the breakdown of cigarette smoke some time ago it did seem to me that controlled burning would probably give a nice synthetic mix of chemical raw materials quite like synthetic crude oil, and a rich playground for catalyst chemists to manipulate them.
Itf they think it can compete let's see it.
OTOH hemp is a weed which grows quite well (I'm told) almost anywhere in the world.
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They just have to resort to more GM tinkering to get the hoped for changes, don't they. Can't do proper horticulture as practiced for generations, oh no.
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