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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by domefoamer --to futuremodal: Your dismissal of the acid rain problem is so ill-informed and baseless that I'll let someone else spend their morning refuting it. [/quote] Strong words from someone who provides no counterargument. That in and of itself is an indication of someone who is ill-informed and whose retort is impotent. I will stand by my contention that the whole acid rain hysteria was and is way overhyped, as is typical of environmental issues in this day and age. And most climatologist admit that relatively high lake acidity on the East Coast is normal, and that acid rain in general is normal. The only disagreement is how much man's hydrocarbon fuel combustion activities have contributed to the prevalence of acidic precipitation. [quote]QUOTE: I will say, though, as a biodiesel-burning motorist, that there's nothing like the smell of NO sulfur in the morning when I start my car. You might think of BD as a premium fuel that doesn't make your diesel car stink like sharp cheese, and that's a benefit in itself! You should also know that sulfur is poison to various emission control equipment, current and future, that effectively cleans up modern diesel powerplants to levels that beat gas engines in every pollutant category but NOX. Sulfurous diesel fuel has held back the development and use of powerful and clean engines that already make up half the European motorcar market. [/quote] Whether your emisions smell like cheese or french fries is irrelevant to the argument of whether SOX emissions from individual vehicles is a cause for environmental concern. Specific to the topic subject, the production of biodiesel will do nothing to affect atmospheric SOX levels, and admittedly biodiesel NOX emissions will also be insignificant. The whole idea of making farm vehicles, et al, compliant with new SOX standards is a complete waste of time and money. It is axiomatic at this point that the only avenue by which biofuels will have a useful effect on the nation's fuel options is if such biofuels are produced from byproducts and/or waste products of some other process. Here in the PNW they are promoting the cultivation of mustard seed, wherein the main product will be a pesticide, and the mustard seed oil a byproduct from which biodiesel can be produced. This allows the biodiesel to be produced from the lowest cost vegetable oil, since demand for mustard seed oil is low in the consumer markets compared to canola, soy, et al. However, there is still the question of having the main product of the mustard seed effectively subsidize the production of biodiesel. And it still begs the question of why we need to spend precious capital on biodiesel plants when that money would be better spent on synthetic diesel plants that use coal as the feedstock, and can be produced at a lower cost than biodiesel.
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