A friend of myne ruined 2 engines with biodiesel. Not to mention it is useless in winter. Here eaven normal diesel freezes sometimes so we usualy mix in about 10% of petrol in it for our tractors in winter. And we arent eaven on a wery cold winter territory.
I just remember @JO_Olsson said his wife has a diesel liveing a few steps from north pole perhaps hd will chim in to say how they fight those problems. I know engines have heaters not to crack freze the block but not sure for fuel…
Our diesel comes with an antifreeze additive. I have no idea if it’s ethanol or something else.
The do the same thing here summer and winter mix and be sure you get the summer mix out or your not going anywhere in the winter.
Pretty much all new truck drivers make that mistake driving north in the United States during the winter.
Freezing diesel fuel?/…That’s a new thought…growing up we always worried about diesel growing filter/injector-clogging algae in the heat. Funny that you guys worry about it freezing…
Southern vs northern problems 
At about -18c diesel starts to turn to wax or gel like mud and you aint goeing nowhere. My ouncle used to drive a big truck in norther countrys and always had loads of news paper with him. He lit it under the truck before each drive in the morning to be able to start the engine.
I owe a lot of days off due to this phenomenom when l was in school. School bus didnt start or dyed in the middle of the road at extreme cold mornings and we had a day off
My family owned a tank truck bulk trucking company.
I’m not in trucking anymore.
There are fuel heaters too.
Speaking of heating your fuel…Pyrolysis of ag waste to feed an engine powering a combine harvester comes to mind.
I guess someone has to live up there. hahaha
Where I suggest using biodiesel is in agricultural equipment used during the warm season for farming purposes, seems a nice fit, to use ag equipment running on part of what is harvested.
I have to question the economics, what percentage of agricultural land would be required just for the fuel. Horse farming required roughly 1/3 of ag land for feed and pasture, I suspect this would be similar. But I don’t mean modern equipment, rather the older more efficient stuff.
Gasification does offer fuel from beyond fields, or ag waste, corn stover or sunflower stalk perhaps, the hardest waste to get rid of.
Regards,
The production cost of biodiesel right now is at $2.76 per gallon, or $115 per barrel based on .31/lb soybean oil.
The production cost for ethanol today is $1.22 per gallon, which translates to $51.24 per barrel. Now, on an energy basis — given that ethanol has 67% of the energy content of a barrel of oil, that translates to $76.86 on a barrel-of-oil-equivalent basis.
The price of oil is speculated to go up to 70/barrel by the end of the year.
All according to this article (which didn’t discuss gen2 biofuels or jetfuels)
http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2017/05/18/ethanol-and-biodiesel-dropping-below-the-production-cost-of-fossil-fuels/
Even with winter mix fuel at -20f my duramax lines will gel up if I don’t have it on the block heater and let it idle for more then 5 minutes before striking off. I learned that one the hard way my old driveway was in a 5 mph zone and I almost got run over by a logging truck one morning when it was brand new. Pulled out the driveway took right off got got 50 mph about half way up the hill not a 1/4 mile from my driveway she started coughing and sputtering almost stopped dead on the hill. I looked back to see smoke rolling off the log truck. When I got to the store at the top of the hill the trucker pulled in beside me and said man those new duramax trucks suck if you don’t let them run for about 10 minutes mine does the same thing. All I could say was thanks for not running me over I have never seen a diesel that wouldn’t take off the next morning after being on a block heater all night. Needless to say I never made that mistake again.
I actually like the idea of a combine harvester that would gassify part of what goes through it. It could gassify whatever weed seeds for one thing. And if the farmer wanted to he could save the biochar to spread on other fields, burn in other machines, or perhaps to sell.
I think a very stout version of this might even be used in forest management. California and the rocky mountains burn every so often. There are too many people building houses on the mountain. Yes, I know they shouldn’t. But you KNOW they are going to do it anyway. And you KNOW the rest of us are going to try and protect them. I went to a lecture at NREL (National Renewable Energy Labs) where a chemical engineer named John Skahill said that 40% of this nations energy could come out of our western mountains.
Rindert
Back in Soviet days, they had a model of tracked forwarder running on wood, supposedly would run on green wood, though I’m sure it would run nicer on dry stuff.
I like the idea of a flow through straw gasifier. Given that the ash apparently has a low melting point, the goal would be to have a high flow through unit producing char, or a swirl type of burner, basically throwing embers into a low oxygen environment?
Thanks for the response. You really did some digging to uncover this two year old topic. Thanks for firing it up again. I thought of bumping it myself just never got around to it. Didn’t get the warm fuzzies the first time around. Good to restart it on a positive note. What you said makes sense to me. I think the numbers need to be run to see if it makes sense on a amount of carbon sequestration to trouble and cost sort of thing. Just being carbon negative might not be enough to justify cost if the cost associated with it would be better spent on electrifying autos or something else. A carbon tax might do more good.
In Canada we have a carbon tax, it’s miniscule, and will top out far short of what they estimate would be an appropriate market signal, supposed to be effective at roughly 200 bucks a ton. It may well turn out that sheer oil scarcity turns things strongly in favour of biofuel.
I suspect that crop residues are an excellent energy source, particularly for stationary heating. There are precedents for mobile straw gasification going back to the 1920’s in western Canada. I suspect it would prove too bulky for mobile use, unless as you envision, part of the straw from combining is diverted through a gasifier. I think the biochar potential is very important, probably most important. It would make the energy source quite carbon negative, and could be deployed at a scale to improve farm land and supply significant heat energy, and potentially syngas as a feedstock for industrial processes.
I think if you really look into it, vehicle electrification gains little environmentally. The energy expense of our personal vehicle culture is just too high to sustain post fossil fuels. So I would vote for gasification. And isn’t it odd that gasification is hardly mentioned by environmentalists, and those concerned about climate change? …
Do you think burning or pyrolicizing straw and putting it back on the ground would be more beneficial to soil than just dropping the straw and working it back into the ground for the next crop? TomC
Honestly I think it is considered too old fashioned and a lot of people don’t understand the difference between burning carbon from biological sources vs ff.
But the idea of carbon sequestration into the farm land is getting a ton of attention lately. There would definitely be intrest in that aspect. I saw recently that something on the order of. 3% increase in soil carbon for all crop land globally would drop the CO2 in the atmosphere 100 parts per million. I wish I could remember where I saw that. But it would be enough to put us back to pre industrial levels. Not to mention that is would increase soil fertility and water storage which is definitely a plus for most crop land.
Yes because the carbon is more likely to stay in the soil not be released as a gas during decomposition. Also the straw makes a place for pests to winter over. I suspect we could reduce the need for pesticides by eliminating the straw.
You have already “burned” the gases out of the straw and most carbon when you ran it through the gasifier to drive the combine. So any gases that stayed with the residue would be an improvement. Pest??? You would have to explain that one. I rent my land out by what kind of crop the renter plants. Anything that has a residue is rented cheaper other than hay. The residue adds fertilizer to the soil AND stops erosion ( hay adds nitrogen and has deep roots year round. TomC
I was thinking about how squash bugs and other pests in a garden will winter over in the dead plant matter which I haven’t removed from my garden and there is snow here now.
As to burning plant carbon to do work I view that as much better than letting it escape and not get the benefit of the work.
Yes, what Dan says. Char in soil is said to be very beneficial for soil health and fertility in a number of ways. It increases the moisture retention of many soils. Soil aeration will be improved just as adding perlite to potting soil, the soil should be more workable,.less apt to compact. It makes physical homes in the soil for various microorganisms, fungi,and tiny soil invertebrates. Apparently charcoal also improves nutrient availability in soils, probably by chemical action and improved biological activity. Best of all, the char should be stable in the soil for perhaps thousands of years. There is some very old soil charcoal around from ancient forest fires. So no matter how a person views climate change issues, it is a win win.