Biofuels, Biodiesel, Alternative Energy Obama's TOP Priority

Palm oil has lost 55% of its value since its high of prices last March, according to this story in the Daily Times from Lahore, India. Of course in North America where much of the biodiesel market is driven by ecological concerns palm oil's reputation has sunk so low because of tropical forest being devastated by planters that some biodiesel makers might fear for their reputation if it was so much is rumored that they were using palm oil. Meanwhile, soy oil remains high in the U.S. The Daily Times article quotes and vegetable oil industry spokesman saying he expects soy oil to remain stable due to the existing route in Venezuela and expected shortages of rainfall in Brazil.

Although we know neither the amount nor the terms Seattle biodiesel maker Imperium has repaid some portion of the money it owes. The Seattle Times reports that this money came from existing investors in the company. The story also includes the quote, "With this recapitalization and cooperation of our creditors, we hope to resume operations as soon as possible," said Chief Executive John Plaza in a statement. The 100,000,000 gallon per year biodiesel plant operated by Imperium a stone's throw from the ocean at Grays Harbor is currently one of the largest in the world.

A few days ago at an investors' conference in New York DuPont Company Vice President John Ranieri confirmed that they have a dual biofuels strategy. Although as far as we know the two plants they have under construction in Britain are a small plant to produce Biobutanol and a large plant to produce ethanol in the traditional manner from sugar beets Mr. Ranieri indicates that they are making steady and significant progress toward producing commercial quantities of Cellulosic ethanol and Biobutanol. Cellulosic ethanol, of course, sidesteps the fuel vs. food controversies, while biobutanol offers the advantage of being 100% compatible with existing gasoline delivery infrastructure.

In a classic case of too little information really decipher whether this is news or not the website domesticfuel.com is reporting that the Energy and Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota has formed some sort of alliance with Great Plains - the Camelina Company. The key element of the press release seems to be that the Energy and Environmental Research Center have developed a technology that allows feedstock flexibility to produce gasoline, diesel and jetfuel that are molecularly identical to the traditional petroleum versions. Great Plains currently is capable of producing biodiesel but I gather they are enthused about this new capability. The fact that the process is reportedly not too fussy about feedstock, and can produce various hydrocarbon fuels as output makes it sound more like traditional petroleum refining than the simple biodiesel process, but if they have managed to keep it simple, or better yet, keep it inexpensive to make the transition, the combination could represent a breakthrough of sorts. Certainly, we, at DaoChi Energy, are interested, since we too are working on a process design to catalyze certain oils into high grade kerosene and diesel type fuels. We'll be watching Great Plains and the Univ. of North Dakota's EERC closely for a while.

Renewable Fuel Corp. (RFC) a US-based company has acquired two more biodiesel plants in Indonesia in addition to the one they already owned. The two new facilities are located in Dumai, and will produce approximately 120 million gallons per year between them. The plants will process both raw palm and jatropha oils into biodiesel, according to this brief article in Energy Current's website.

The second presidential debate took place between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain on Tuesday. Pundits will differ on who won. It looked like a draw. Senator McCain failed to make much headway in slowing Senator Obama's growing lead, though he seems to have "fooled" everyone by claiming ownership of a policy proposal that would direct his Secretary of the Treasury (if and when electred) to buy up "toxic" mortgages and renegotiate them so that homeowners will not lose their homes to forclosures. Oddly, everyone commenting around the debate seemed to accept that this was "new" policy, and pointed to the fact that McCain claimed it was not a proposal from Bush or Obama. That is "odd" in my opinion because as far as I know (and I have not read the whole of the "rescue" bill that passed both the House and the Senate last week, but) this was already the basic intent of the so-called "rescue" bill and was authority already built in to that legislation and placed in the hands of the Treasury department. Although details of how this would be administered are yet to be worked out, this is hardly a McCain innovation by any stretch of even my rather vivid and expansive imagination.

The one important (?) thing that was established (if you can believe anything that any politician says) is that Senator Obama placed ALTERNATIVE ENERGY as his top priority for a new administration, even above fixing the health care system, though he obviously wants to reform that too.

On the entertainment front, we watched a DVD called Lions for Lambs that was directed by Robert Redford in such a ham-fisted way that although it had the look of a Sidney Pollack film (and was edited by an acquaintance from my Hollywood days when he was still a very junior assistant editor, who should therefore get a good deal of the credit for the "look"), but as I said, so heavy-handed a treatment of anti-war, anti-conservative sentiments that the most I can say is, "It was all right if you like that sort of thing."

Since I prefer to end on an upbeat note, I'll just quickly mention that I saw a couple of episodes of the returning Lipstick Jungle and so far, it is at least living up to what it showed last season, which was spicy and slick, a sort of tamed down broadcast version of HBO's Sex and the City. I am still a fan.

Love and warm wishes,

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

Don't just stand on the sidelines, join the green revolution!

http://making-biodiesel-at-home.psyrk.us/