My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on November 15, 2007

Those of you wanting a bit of luxury while sipping fuel might want to start saving your pennies. Mercedes Benz has announced their new S400 Bluetec Hybrid that will be available in 2010. The 265 HP/465 pound-feet of torque V6 diesel coupled to a high-torque electric motor will whisk this large luxury S-Class sedan to 60 mph in about 7.2 seconds while returning 40.5 mile per gallon on the highway. The vehicle doesn’t sport a price tag, was just another announcement at the LA Auto Show.

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Posted By RichC on November 15, 2007

An analysis article written my Timothy Gardner and published in Reuters summarizes the challenges of running a biodiesel business. Although fuel prices have risen significantly and demand for alternative have tripled sales of biodiesel to 250 million gallons last year, the oil feed crops have risen as well. Soyoil, the primary oil feed crop in the U.S., have risen to a 33 year high this past year as plants continue to come online processing the oil into fuel. The spike in feedstock has pinched margins for processors and is taking a toll on profits.

According to the article, the amount of U.S. produced soyoil being used for biodiesel “should be 20% this year, which is up 6%'” The concern is that even with record crude oil prices that some biodiesel producers are still facing negative margins.

“We’ve produced capacity well beyond the ability of the market to absorb it today,” Lapp told the Soya and Oilfeed Summit 2007 this week.

And any increase in soybean production may not help much because demand for soyoil for food keeps growing as the global population rises, experts said.

Even record oil prices above $90 a barrel are unlikely to boost demand for soy biodiesel as a substitute for diesel made from crude, because the food industry will always outbid the energy industry for soyoil, Lapp said.

“The food industry is always going to be willing to do what it takes to produce that food,” he said.

To end on a positive note, the alternative and biodiesel industry is even more serious about looking into new feedstocks — ones that are not a food-based oilstock. About the only problem is that North American based oil crops are grown on traditional farms, ones that are currently growing soybeans or canola. Perhaps this new demand for ‘grown oil’ will simulated the Algae to Oil research and development?

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Posted By RichC on November 14, 2007

We are all familiar with an online mailbox, but do you know about Earth Class Mail “online” mail? Its not email in the traditional sense, but its your paper mail delivered on the Internet. Think of them as an electronic Post Office Box for your paper mail. Earth Class Mail receives, opens, scans and posts your mail online so that you can review it or trash it where ever you have Internet access. If the price was affordable, I’d be interested. (its the ‘modest fees‘ part that has me concerned as the junk mail begins to pile up)

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Posted By RichC on November 13, 2007

If you live in the city of Erie Pennsylvania (pop 102,000), or the surrounding county (pop 280,000), you will soon be seeing a significant donation being put to use through community based charities. A recent anonymous donation will benefit some 46 charities distributed through the Erie Community Foundation. A wealthy Community Foundation ‘friend,’ who wants to remain anonymous, has donated a $100,000,000 (that’s 100 million dollars) to the Erie community; this should make a significant impact on the community and people in need of charitable services in the area. What an incredible gift to a community.

The director of the foundation Mike Batchelor has been delivering the news to each of the charities doing work in Erie and committing the one or two million a piece to each, like the homeless shelter, women’s center, food bank, group for the blind as well as universities. Although people in the community would like to know who has given such a generous gift, some believe prying to find out who the donor is would not be honoring the anonymous wishes.

About Erie Pennsylvania:
The city has a population of about 102,000 and the entire county is 280,000. It was once an iron and steel town located in the northwest corner of the state on Lake Erie between Cleveland, Ohio and Buffalo, New York. Industry develop from machinery, plastics, paper and furniture as with manufacturing in the U.S., many have moved overseas while other just try to survive. There was a large paper mill which employed 2,000 people for decades but it shut down in 2002 after more than 100 years in business. The city has a growing service industry and has tried to remake itself as a tourist destination with a new slots casino. But its poverty rate is about 19 percent, or twice the national average, median household income is $31,196, versus $48,451 nationally, and as of 2006, it had an estimated 400 homeless people.

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Posted By RichC on November 12, 2007

LiveFuels Inc. is an alliance of scientists expecting to make algae ‘biocrude’ a viable biodiesel oil source by 2010. They believe if the Manhattan Project took only 3 years that their project can be done in 4 years. The alliance is being lead by Sandia National Laboratories, a U.S. Department of Energy Nation Laboratory and they expect to sponsor dozens of labs and hundreds of scientists. According to Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, CEO of LiveFuels, she believes they have the “expertise in process engineering, bioscience and biotechnology” to create ‘biocrude’ from algae that will be able to be processed into biodiesel by the “millions of barrels of biocrude oil per day.” She states that “the initial focus of LiveFuels’ team will be algae-to-biocrude.”

Here’s a segment about “algae-to-biocrude” from their site:

Algal oil is similar to soybean oil but can be grown on marginal lands unsuitable for food crops. Thriving on sunlight and CO2, algae can be grown in fresh or brackish water. This makes algae an ideal solution for farmers dealing with issues of agricultural run-off. Moreover, a shortage of vegetable oil has been predicted within 3 to 5 years in the United States, and algal oil could fill the gap for non-edible uses like biofuels.
In order to make biocrude for less than $60 a barrel, algae must be high in fats or oils. Commercially-grown algae like Spirulina are high in protein and starch but low in fat. A few high-fat species of algae like Haematococcus are promising, but the fats — at prices around $1,200 a pound — are too expensive to fuel America’s vehicles today.
“Fat algae” doesn’t sound like a biocrude oil feedstock, but the petroleum we use today is derived from prehistoric biomass (including algae). Nature’s biomass decomposition process occurred over millions of years under conditions of enormous heat and pressure. Much of the petroleum we use today began some 200 million years ago in the Carboniferous Period. The deposits of oil pumped from the North Sea, for example, consist partly of decomposed haptophyte algae called coccolithophorids.
The challenge facing LiveFuels’ scientists will be growing and transforming algae cheaply into biocrude within days rather than millennia. The entire United States’ supply of imported oil could potentially be grown on 20 to 40 million acres of marginal land, leaving the 450 million acres of fertile American soil that are presently farmland still available to feed the nation.
“LiveFuels will enable American farmers to replace imported oil with home-grown biocrude and supply it to the United States,” said Morgenthaler-Jones. “Other countries are ahead of the U.S. in biocrude research, but other countries were once ahead of us in the space race too. America put a man on the moon in eight years, and America can make its own biocrude in four.”

CNET recently did an interview segment with Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones that I’ll include below:

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Posted By RichC on November 11, 2007

In doing an informal survey of about Veterans Day this past week, it was apparent that very few people realized that it was originally called Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. (interesting the U.S. holiday is often written incorrectly with an apostrophe, but it is Veterans Day … without an apostrophe) We celebrate the U.S. State and Federal holiday on November 11th each year honoring all military veterans. The day is the anniversary of Germany signing of the Armistice that ended World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. President Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day in 1919. U.S. Congress then formally set November 11 as a legal ‘Federal’ holiday in 1921 to honor all those who participated in World War I along with establishing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. It wasn’t until 1938 did Congress pass legislation that made November 11th a legal Federal Holiday. In 1954 the name was changed to Veterans Day which honored those who not only served in WWI, but WWII and Korea as well. Congress made a change to the date in 1968 which would celebrate Veterans Day as the fourth Monday in October beginning in 1971. Then in 1975 under public pressure, congress passed legislation to return the Federal observance of Veteran’s Day to November 11th beginning in 1978.

Thanks to all who are wearing and have wore the uniform of the U.S. Military for your service to our country.

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Posted By RichC on November 10, 2007

Oh my … if you’re going beach combing, don’t slip.
😀
At least six cargo containers broke loose and fell into the sea in a storm off the coast from the Netherlands. A sailing blog (Litoralis) posted this photo which indicates at least one container must have broken open and spilled bananas from Cuba which are washing ashore. Interesting photo, but those barely submerged steel containers wouldn’t be something I’d want to run into while sailing.

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Posted By RichC on November 9, 2007

If you live in Cleveland Ohio you might have noticed this fine looking 2 door BMW hatchback running around the east side, but if you are like most of the U.S., do not see BMW 325 TDS vehicles all that often. What makes it unique??? “Yes, Its a diesel”

This particular car belongs to Ray Holan and it is actually for sale. He had the 1995 BMW Florida car converted last year from gas to diesel with an imported UK engine. The engine, 5 speed and cluster were all upgraded to a 40 mpg Upsolute chipped diesel. The list of other improvements are available over at the TDIClub. I had a chance to drive this sweet little car and it handled well. If not for the fact it was missing air-conditioning, I might have considered buying it! Anyway … it is still available. LINK

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Posted By RichC on November 8, 2007

Disappointing news from Volkswagen — the new ‘clean diesel’ 2.0 liter TDIs that were to be available in April 2008 are now going to be delayed until late summer 2008. (perhaps in time for the TDIFest OH-08?) The information comes from VWoA and was announced to the dealer network. The delay is due to a technical issue found in late stage durability testing according to the information.

There is still hope that promotional diesel vehicles will be brought into the U.S. and that the marketing efforts with the Dieselution tour will stimulate pre-orders while educating car buyers about the benefits of owning clean diesel cars. The new diesel products will be in high demand and so VWoA will work to speed up shipments of TDIs. The other models due to receive the new ‘clean diesel’ engines are said to be on track for their 2008 – 2009 deliveries.
EDIT: See Brandweek.

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Posted By RichC on November 8, 2007

While driving through Columbus Ohio I often tune into check the traffic on AM radio 610 WTVN. The talk station does a pretty good job updating accidents and slowdowns as I transit through on my way to and from Northeastern Ohio. This week the Joel Riley mentioned an interesting blog post where blogger Johnny Virgil finds a 1977 JCPenney catalog. He posted a few photos and observations. Pretty funny … and from the string of comments he obviously triggered memories and laughs from a few others. Its amazing that the decade (hmm … the decade I grew up in) was arguably the most creative when it came to music, yet it seemed ‘far out’ (RIP John Denver)when it came to attractive decorating and dress?

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