James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

Okay, first up some disclaimers. I am not an engineer. The closest I've come to fuel manufacturing is the internet and a softdrink bottle full of potentially successful bio-diesel. Also the following has not been costed in any way, so may end up being about as viable as cold fusion and as expensive as the QE2.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get into the shiny part.

Now that I've successfully (I think) made bio-diesel, I've been thinking about how to scale up production to say cater for a diesel car/van (the kids are starting to grow out of the car we have at the moment). Me being me, I've also taken it to the nth degree and thought about the best way to scale up to industrial production in the most environmentally friendly manner.

Energy

Any truly environmentally friendly plant needs to take energy production into account at the design stage. The ideal production figure for self energy production would be 120%. This allows for growth in plant production and also allows for a secondary income stream via putting energy back into the grid.

In this thought experiment I've selected a hetrogenous energy production solution, a combination of Solar, Wind and Biomass (Biogas). I've chosen those three based on where I live. The Illawarra is blessed with a high number of sunny days (though as I look outside it's grey and overcast now), coastal winds and is chock full of farms (for the moment, but that's another rant) which could supply biomass in the form of manure and other agri-waste.

Water

Water is a big part of the process of creating bio-diesel. Both in the titration process and after the initial reaction, in the washing process, water is used. An environmentally friendly plant would recycle as much water as possible. This would mean filtering the water after use, removing any contaminants and then feeding the water back into the system.

Just off the top of my head, this could be done by taking the water from the bio-diesel washing process and feeding it into the biogas power gen system. The heat could be used to seperate the various contaniments (need to check boiling temp of each part really) and then the boiling water could then turn a turbine, generating power. Certain contanimants such as glycerol could produce issues for the biogas system (clogging pipes and so on) and so would be filtered out before the water got to the system.

Waste

Managing waste from the various systems would be a bit of a challange. However I believe that even the waste could be turned into useful products. One of the major by-products of the bio-diesel process is glycerol, a product that can be used in a range of different items, in fact there have been recent breakthroughs which mean that glycerol can be on-converted into ethanol, another bio-fuel.

The waste from the biogas process can similarly be reused. By the time the process of extracting the methane has been completed you should be left with a high nutrient fertiliser which can be sold. The waste water from the process can also be onsold or re-processed.

There will still be waste that cannot be converted however the aim is to reduce the amount of this sort of waste to a minimum.

Well that's it for the moment, comments, thoughts and constructive rants are always welcome.