The law of headlines ending in a ?
No. Biodiesel is pretty easy to make even with a highschool understanding of chemistry. Converting a conventional diesel over is mostly a matter of installing synthetic fuel lines.
How do you make vegetable oil without diesel-powered agriculture machines? Its EROEI is pretty close to 1:1.
When all else fails, manual labor still remains. Chineses still press peanut oil using sticks and silk screens. Eventually, you’ll have enough juice to power whatever industrial agricultural equipment you’d like.
In the world of yesteryear before industrial fertilizer + diesel, they used animal power in addition to human labor. A horse eats about 10X the food as a person.
The question is about where the sweet spot is. Every person needs food and other resources. Its not a given that a person will produce surplus if the population levels are above the natural carrying capacity of the ecosystem.
At some point excess supply of human labor cannot press peanut oil beyond that person’s requirements. Humans are a net drag on the economy if you don’t have the resources flows at a fundamentally high enough level. (Like the peanuts are finite.)
So when all else fails manual labor also fails.
Industrialization did not arise in a world made by hand. Industry and machines are a product of the oil age. The problem is that fossil fuel stocks and flows are eventually going to dwindle.
The idea that humans are going to press oil by hand is like the idea powering vehicles from used French Fry deep fryers. Yeah, that’s fine as long as you have a running industrial system, but it’s not self sustaining. You need PRIMARY energy resources for any of these ideas to turn over.
A primary energy resource? Like, idk, a sun? Even all that oil you’re salivating over comes from the sun if you shift your perspective back far enough.
The point was that even restarting from scratch, biodiesel is a viable option for replacing the oil dependency when it comes to fuel.
Currently, biodiesel is less than 1% of all transportation fuels globally, around 1 exajoule. Around half of that comes from the united states in the form of soybean oil – obviously highly subsidized by fossil fuel inputs, not truly “net energy”.
What’s your evidence that biodiesel production could scale, say, 3-400X current? Where are you even getting this idea??
I’ve made biodiesel. It’s a simple enough process. I was able to easily pick it up for a vocational education project way back in high school. The chemistry is easy enough a middle school kid these days could do it. You take the oil from any old fry shop or restaurant, you filter it free of any contaminants, add acid and heat to facilitate the breaking of fatty acid esters off the glycerine, then you neutralize the acid and let everything settle out. Pour off your oil on top and you’re good to go.
Bonus: you now also have a good supply of relatively clean glycerine that is perfect for making soap. Yet another application of simple chemistry that brings more yield from your resource with minimal effort.
So regardless of what the production is today with industrial methods, people could easily begin their own production in garage workshops. Imagine every McDonald’s having their fryer grease turned into biodiesel for a single year by local workshops. If 17 year old me and a burnt out middle age electrician can figure it out in a half powered shed in Oakland, anyone can.
Lol. So how do they make the french fry oil?
3 to 1 and 4 to one while close is actually not bad. I mean in modern days. Its about the same as the oil extraction from the oil sands in canada which we actively do. I mean overall globally we are not in a good situation but diesel specifically is not our worst issue. gonna hit up @kinggimpicus@sh.itjust.works to just say no need for any manual labor. Anyway its under 2 to 1 where its questionable if its economically pheasable and diesel is comfortably above that and there is no reason for it to actually go lower since its not like oil where you have to drill deeper. The process is always the same. In some cases to you get oil and food and other products for the cost of getting the oil so the return is a bit better as far as growing the crops. Like you could use soybean oil and still use the soybean for feed and processed products.
The EROEI limit for our current society is 10:1.
2:1, 3:1 or 4:1 is collapse.
There is a chart here: https://www.issuesofsustainability.org/helpndoc-content/EROIHierarchyofSociety.html
Health care cuts off at 12, education at 9, kids start to work for their survival at 7, food production needs 5, transportation needs 2. This is life as we know it ending.
Below 2, you can extract and produce oil only.
Just for context.
Your first sentence was that 3:1 or 4:1 are “not bad”, but I may be missing your meaning.
But that doesnt make a good clickbait title.
Did you read the post? Read the actual post. And, no, biodiesel is not a solution.