Posted on 04/30/2005 6:10:42 AM PDT by grania
Problem will be getting rid of the craving for a ceasers salad every time you drive.
Now when they get it to run on Ben and Jerry's they will have really hit on something!!!!
Yeah... like we have reserves of vegetable oil-bio-diesel to exploit...as large as Saudi Arabia's oil reserves
We keep hearing a lot about soy bio-diesel around here.
Doesn't it take more of regular oil to harvest corn oil. I feel like if this was such a great idea it would have been done already.
The nice thing about biodiesel is that not only is it very clean-burning in a diesel engine when refined properly (you don't even have the French fry smell of used cooking oil), but by just changing the refining process slightly you also get heating oil of the type that can be used in furnaces that use heating oil.
mmmmm.....living near a highway will be like a walk through the food court.
The cynic in me says that corporations and governments are going to exploit traditional fuel for profit as much as it can before there is a "crisis" and we're all using McDonald's french fries (or whatever) for something useful.
BTW - you ever buy cooking oil? It is more expensive than diesel.
At a personal level, for those that want to grow and produce bio-diesel, it might be viable, but not large scale.
Lastly, diesel can run straight vegetable oil, with some minor mods first.
Generally, I fill the car with very old vegetable oil.
The energy inputs are probably as ridiculous as growing corn to make ethanol. It takes a lot of oil to grow a bushel of corn. Oil is also used to make fertilizer
You would have build millions of acres of cement algae ponds. That costs billions. You would be using oil to fuel all the machinery to harvest and grow the stuff.
Petroleum is so convenient because nature has done most of the work making it
I could about 2 acres into oilseed production. With a small tractor with a PTO to run the press... could work.
sure at $3.99 per pint. every pint i used in that car would be a major hurdle....i would have to decide....hmmmm....do i taste this or drive on it?
But of course. I think old cooking oil is a nuisance to dispose of and restaurants let renderers take it for free. Hey, you could pull into your local grease/fat renderer and tank up on it
ping
I'm first in line. :-)
I agree, it will work, but how much can you make? Enough for yourself. You won't be solving the energy crisis, though.
Not that you shouldn't make it. I suppose if enough people were more self-sufficient, it might take the pinch off the petroleum industry.
Wow! This is great! I suppose soon I'll be paying $20 a litre for extra virgin spanish olive oil, and the whole continent smelling like french fries. Soon our automobiles will be endangering not only our lungs and our environment, but consuming our actual food supplies. Shades of 'I Robot'.
You would be consuming petroleum to grow it. You are growing the middleman. Far better to consume petroleum directly than to grow crops with it and make it into fuel for cars, such as ethanol and bio-diesel
Fertilizer is made with oil
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