Biofuel from waste, enough to fuel Europe?

We all know the downside of the biofuel craze. Land being used to produce fuel instead of food, perfectly good food crops being made into fuel, while poor people struggle to buy food.

Here's some sign that we can have our cake and eat it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19179419

Seems to be saying that with new refining techniques, we can make enough petrol and diesel for all of Europe's vehicles, by using just 20% of the waste material from harvest, ie the bits we don't eat anyway. Sounds good.

 

If Adam Henson from Countryfile is anything to go by he makes more money from rape than corn or wheat,
Sad state of affairs IMHO lets hope the new technology comes good and the government dont screw it up with taxes.

 

That's a good point that suddenly makes something I've noticed make a lot of sense. I've noticed more and more 'yellow fields' (oil seed rape) everywhere lately. It seems to be our dominant local crop. I did wonder about it, because our climate in the north east is traditionally more about wheat and spuds until recent years.

 

Thanks for that link clueless. It's very encouraging to see that there's progress being made in this area and biofuel production does not need to come at the cost of feeding the poorest nations.

 

It will all be down to the price and costs of the waste
This year there not much mazie in USA, even GM mazie (drought year), the UK maize dosen't look over good this year (wet year) but uk maize is growen for aniaml feed mostly so the whole crop is used

 

It's a mystery to me why we don't make gas from the human & animal poo here

China has been doing it for decades. Instead, we let our waste decompose & add methane to the atmosphere, where we could be using it for cooking or to fuel power stations.

The by product of a methane digester is compost.

 

Some farmers are doing it from moo poo with help with some tax payers money

and i think wessex water done some thing
Just had look around i think the company is Geneco
http://www.geneco.uk.com/

 

Nice one Jiffy

Ever smelt the gas from a Chinese lighter? Think we can work out how they are making it

 

No, but work with lots of cows !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!