The Toxicity of Soy Biodiesel Combustion Waste and Petroleum Diesel Combustion Waste Compared.
Last edited Mon Oct 7, 2019, 10:57 PM - Edit history (1)
The paper from the primary scientific journal I'll discuss in this post is this one: Soy Biodiesel Exhaust is More Toxic than Mineral Diesel Exhaust in Primary Human Airway Epithelial Cells (Katherine Landwehr et al, Environ. Sci. Technol. 2019 53 19 11437-11446)
In general, I am a critic of so called "renewable energy" - although, albeit some ago, I supported it - since it didn't work, isn't working and won't work to address climate change or the other massive environmental and health consequences of fossil fuels. To me, betting the future of humanity on this unworkable, & failed strategy is nothing more than a de fact acceptance of the death toll associated with dangerous fossil fuels.
This said, since we have destroyed the planet with our wishful thinking about so called renewable energy, I try to ameliorate my knowledge of the disgrace that my generation has brought on itself, by imagining ways that future generations might restore anything left to restore, in particular, the atmosphere. The energy requirements, if only because of the entropy of mixing, of removing carbon dioxide from the air are enormous, and so I turn a less jaundiced eye on biomass than I do on say, wind or solar energy, both of which are useless in any case, and both of which will involve the destruction of huge amounts of the already vanishing wilderness for mines and industrial parks.
The use of biomass, of course, extends way back. Humanity only abandoned biomass as its primary source of energy beginning in the early 19th century, because most people lived short, dire, lives in poverty, even more so than today.
The current use of biomass is still killing people as it did back then, although the death toll associated with it is slightly superseded by the death toll associated with dangerous fossil fuel waste.
Dangerous fossil fuel waste and dangerous biomass combustion waste are responsible for about 7 million deaths per year, something I often state when confronted with an ignoramus chanting his or her ignorance about so called "nuclear waste."
Some biofuels are better than others, of course. Back in the 1970's, when I was a dumb-assed anti-nuke,with effectively no education (and no access to the primary scientific literature) - when as dumb as the assholes here who chant about so called "nuclear waste" (about which they know zero since they are spectacularly unacquainted with the contents of science books) - I thought Jimmy Carter's ethanol program was a great idea.
It lead, of course, to the complete destruction of the Mississippi River Delta's ecosystem, because of phosphorous and nitrogen run-off, and it placed responsibility for selecting the candidates for Presidents of the United States in the hands of Iowans, a group of people who do stuff like vote for an orange racist pervert chanting, similar to dumb anti-nuke chants in their depth of thought - about "Making American 'Great' Again" by turning it over to the kind considerations of Vladimir the Giggler, the imperialist fascist running Russia.
So much for corn ethanol.
In the past, I've thought better of biodiesel, and once even gave serious thought to making some myself. As is well known, at least by people who give a shit, "renewable energy portfolio standards" - many addressed by biodiesel in Germany, has lead to the destruction of huge swathes of the South East Asian rainforest to make palm oil plantations.
Biodiesel, of course, is the esters of plant lipids (although animal fat has also be used) produced by transesterification of the glycerol found in natural lipids with methanol (usually) and more rarely ethanol. Methanol is usually produced by the partial oxidation of dangerous natural gas.
At least, I thought, somewhat as a consolation to this reality is that at least biodiesel burned cleaner than petroleum diesel and at least, I thought, it was something of a closed carbon cycle. The latter point of course, needs consideration of the carbon content of a rain forest in comparison to a palm oil plantation, but the former, which I assumed to be the case until I came across this paper last night, also turns out to be questionable.
From the paper's introduction:
Most previous studies comparing mineral diesel and biodiesel combustion have found that biodiesel exhaust contains more toxic gases such as nitrogen oxides and a greater proportion of smaller particles which, when inhaled, penetrate deeper into the lungs.(3,4,8,9) Despite the potentially more toxic effects of biodiesel exhaust, most studies comparing biodiesel with commercial mineral diesel rather focus on fuel economy and engine wear or the physicochemical differences between the exhausts.(4,9) Few studies compare the health effects with exhaust exposure.(7,10,11) Such studies primarily use the Ames mutagenic assay(12,13) or immortalized cell lines(8,14) and the majority of the studies only focus on the cytotoxic and mutagenic potential of the particulate matter, ignoring the effects of the gaseous components of the exhaust entirely.(7,15) Particle concentrations are also rarely relevant to real-world exposure levels, often being far too concentrated to simulate a realistic dosage.(15) In addition, in in vitro-based studies, the cell lines used are not always human, or even derived from respiratory tissues.(3,16) This brings into question their relevance in human exposure studies where the main exposure route through inhalation of the exhaust means that the respiratory epithelium is among the first tissue exposed and thus likely to be among the most effected. Immortalized cell lines also negate genetic variability and are limited in how accurately they can model normal human tissues.(17)
If exhaust is typically inhaled, health complications can occur in the respiratory,(18,19) circulatory,(20) and immune systems.(21) Of concern, inhalation of ultrafine exhaust particles has been correlated with exacerbation of childhood asthma,(22) and associations between air pollution from major roads and decreased lung function in children have been identified.(23,24) This suggests that children may be at greater risk from adverse health effects caused by exhaust exposure. This is unsurprising as children breathe faster than adults and have higher ventilation to lung surface area/body weight ratios,(25) meaning that over the same period of time, they are exposed to a larger dosage of exhaust than adults.(25,26) In addition, the respiratory and immune systems of children are still developing and insults, such as exposure to large concentrations of exhaust, are known to have lifelong consequences.(23,27,28) Despite this, the effect of exposure to biodiesel exhaust has not yet been studied in children.
Because of the paucity of information in this setting, we tested the hypothesis that the soy biodiesel exhaust would contain a greater proportion of ultrafine particles and more oxides of nitrogen and thus exposure would result in more pronounced effects on the airway epithelium. To test this, we exposed primary human airway epithelial cells from young healthy volunteers to whole exhaust from a diesel engine fueled by either pure mineral diesel, a 20% blend of soy biodiesel with mineral diesel, or pure soy biodiesel. Physicochemical exhaust properties were recorded and 24 h post exposure, cells were analyzed for a variety of health effect end points.
The authors obtained epithelial cells from children, cultured the cells, and exposed the cells (not the children) to the exhaust of petroleum diesel and biodiesel.
The fuels were burned in a test engine to produce the exhaust. The test engine was a Yanmar L100V engine, a single cylinder small diesel engine for industrial use.
The exhausts were tested using standard equipment like for which the Volkwagen company programmed defeating software into its "green" cars.
These graphics show the results:
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A little on cytokines, since this topic may be somewhat obscure:
Cytokines are small signalling proteins, very much involved with the immune system. Under certain conditions, they can be pathological in the sense of producing inflammation and (as implied here) cell death.
Not necessarily, good news, this paper, I think.
It is possible, still, I think, to utilize biomass safely, particularly fast growing biomass like algae. This approach can capture carbon dioxide because of the inherent ability of life forms to replicate and expand surface area. The use of such biomass were it to be done safely, however, in contrast to simple chemical modifications like transesterification, would involve supercritical water oxidation (SWO) or pyrolysis, subjects about which I've written here and elsewhere.
This paper, nevertheless, suggests that in the case of a particular biofuel, soy biodiesel, operating in a particular type of diesel engine, a one cylinder portable diesel, the "renewable case" is actually worse than the dangerous fossil fuel case, which is not to excuse the dangerous fossil fuel case.
The current issue of Environmental Science and Technology, a scientific journal I read almost religiously, and have been reading for many, many years is pretty focused - it's nice to see this at long last - on some questioning of the common "renewable energy" assumptions, and myths one being whether "renewable energy" is actually "renewable." I especially enjoyed the paper I found yesterday about which I posted. It was about how a tiny country, an offshore oil and gas drilling hellhole, that likes to put "renewable energy" lipstick on its fossil fuel pig, will most likely not be able to sustain its wind energy program because of material considerations. The same Danish research group published in the same issue, a detailed analysis of the platinum mass flows associated with so called "renewable energy" and the "100% renewable by 2050" bullshit we hand out with our continuing contempt for future generations.
Nevertheless, the nice thing about reading scientific journals is that, even if they go off on a trend that is less than fruitful or even wise, reality ultimately leads to self correction.
Published science can be wrong, or more mildly, mistaken, but science that is either, is self correcting, because in science, facts matter. More and more, I'm seeing questions rising about so called "renewable energy," and this is a good thing, because a process which cannot stand questioning does not deserve to proceed, particularly at risk to all humanity.
It is, by the way, no matter how much chanting and sloganeering goes on, a fact that the death toll from dangerous fossil fuel and biomass waste - about which many people here (I'm referring to rote anti-nukes of the type populating my ignore list) couldn't care less - is enormous, while the death toll from so called "nuclear waste" (about which they chant in a phenomenally ignorant fashion) is trivial, despite all the coal and oil burned to run computers to complain about "nuclear waste." So called "nuclear waste" hasn't killed anyone in this country in half a century. Air pollution, by contrast, never stops killing.
Betting the planet on so called "renewable energy" which hasn't worked, isn't working, and won't work, is the equivalent of announcing that one accepts the death toll associated with air pollution (not to mention climate change) and thinks it trivial and also that one thinks that destroying the entire planetary atmosphere, the climate, and all the ecosystems dependent on the climate and the atmosphere is acceptable because one is mindless enough to engage fetishes involving the dopey selective attention that thinks that Fukushima was the end of the world. It wasn't. This is a fact.
One of the interesting facets if one is to ponder this quality of thinking, which is Trumpian the depth of its delusion and the inherent gaslit (literally) lies such thinking involves, is the amusing fact that it is easy to insert one's head very far up one's ass if one's brains are soft, small, and largely empty.
All joking aside, dangerous fossil fuels must be banned. It can be done, but not so long as we surrender to the application of deliberate ignorance. Fuels based on food products won't do it any more than wind turbines, electric cars and solar cells will do it.
Have a nice day tomorrow.
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