Science Forums 2

[UncleAl]

WWII Germany converted lignite (brown coal) to oil. South Africa with its SASOL process does much the same. Mobil ZSM-5 catalyst will turn methanol into high aromatics gasoline and by extension any source of carbon plus heat and steam. Bottom line: There is no economic replacement for petroleum as chemicals raw material.

Fat is so cheap that it makes biodiesel only costing two or three times as much as the real thing. If there were any demand for fat as fuel the price would skyrocket, as waste fat is well used as it is. Photosynthesis is very optimistically equivalent to producing 15 bbl/day-mile^2 of diesel fuel and ignoring all energy inputs. It requires 131,000 British thermal units (Btus) to produce one gallon of ethanol, which yields 77,000 Btus of fuel energy. That's a 70% net energy loss.