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Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz
Okay, that's a nice rant, but your math and a few of your assumptions are way off.
Firstly 114 million !=1,140000
Think about it, do you actually think anyone is dumb enought to build a plant that will produce 3000l of diesel per day?
114million = 310 000 l/d of diesel (a volume that is actualy worth producing)
Secondly, converting it to oil based on how much gasoline comes from a barrel of oil is a little problematic considering Gasoline and Diesel are not the same thing.
Do I believe that using food sources as an energy source is a good idea?
Of course not, but I also believe that before someone goes off about how stupid of a solution it is they should at least make sure their numbers and facts are straight.
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You are correct, my math was way off and I apologize. I guess that is why you do not try to post intelligently on a subject matter after a night of drinking at 2AM in the morning
See if you can find any fault in this logic. Biodiesel is suppose to replace dependency on gasoline, provide an alternative that we can use in its place. It is generally accepted that Alberta uses about 220,000 barrels of oil a day, Canada using a little over 2.2 million barrels of oil a day. On average, a barrel of oil produces 75 litres of gasoline.
Based on those assumptions, Albertans use about 16 Million 500 Hundred Thousand litres of gasoline a day (16,500,000) (or 220,000 X 75)
This plant, which does produce 114,000,000 million litres of biodiesel a year produces a shade over 312,000 litres of gasoline a day. (114 million divided by 365)
Assuming that gasoline engines are approximately 85% as efficient as diesel engines in terms of fuel economy, the equation should be 16,500,000 X 0.85 = 14,025,000
Which basically means that given the same fuel efficiency this plant is effectively producing 2.2% of Albertans daily gasoline needs.
You would pretty much need 45 of these plants to completely replace gasoline dependency. When you add in the fact that a barrel of oil produces about 26 litres of diesel on top of the gasoline, and that this diesel is also in the amount of fuel that Albertans daily use, the numbers become somewhat even less compelling for biodiesel
Assuming 26 litres of diesel on average out of each barrel of oil, one gets 5.72 million litres of diesel a for use by Albertans. Given that diesel and biodiesel are similar in fuel efficiency (with traditional diesel still being more efficient) lets just add 5.72 to 14.025 which gives us 19.744 Million litres of combined gasoline and diesel use in the province of Alberta daily. 310,000/19.744 Million. This lowers the percentage that this massive plant will produce down to a bit below 1.6% of daily Alberta transportation fuel use. What this all basically means is that you would need 64 of these plants to replace traditional diesel and gasoline dependency.
Finally, Canada's ethanol goal is 650 Million litres a year by 2010
http://www.greenfuels.org/ethanol/canada.htm I am sure most would agree that that is a pretty friendly website. So, basically Canada is going to produce about 1.7 million litres a day if it meets its goal for production. Meanwhile, Canadians are currently consuming 197 Million litres a day of gasoline and diesel. Which basically means if we meet our ethanol targets at best it will be about 0.9% of the national gasoline and diesel needs.
After citing all those numbers, I still contend that the biodiesel is a huge waste of money and is a disguised government subsidy for farmers. And good on Harper for giving the subsidy out. A real leader in this country would look at nuclear power and fuel cells if you really wanted an alternative source for fuel