Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.......
If you want on or off the DIESEL "KNOCK" LIST just FReepmail me........
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......
Posted on 12/21/2006 10:00:39 AM PST by Red Badger
Biodiesel, an alternative fuel made from used and new oils or animal fats, has been fueling diesel engines since their conception 113 years ago.
The first production of biodiesel was conducted by an English scientists in 1853. Forty years later, Rudolf Diesel's first diesel engine, built in 1893, was powered by peanut oil, and won the grand prize at the 1900 World Fair in Paris.
"The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroleum and the coal-tar products of the present time," Diesel said in a speech in 1912.
By the 1920s, the petroleum industry made inroads in fuel markets because it was much cheaper to produce than biodiesel at that time. Diesel wouldn't see biodiesel become a viable fuel source in his lifetime, but today, almost a century later, his initial idea has come full-circle. Just recently, here in the valley, the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority upped the amount of biodiesel it uses in all of its diesel busses from B5, a 5 percent biodiesel/95 percent conventional diesel mix, to B10, which uses 10 percent biodiesel. RFTA spends about 5 to 8 cents more a gallon for the B10 mix, but when considering the environmental and health benefits reaped by RFTA, its passengers, and the world community, it is an excellent price.
By increasing the fuel's cut to 10 percent, RFTA is contributing to a nationwide effort to reduce greenhouse gases. Nationally, more than 75 million gallons of biodiesel were consumed in 2005. Compared to conventional diesel, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that pure biodiesel has 67 percent less unburned hydrocarbons that create smog, and 48 percent less carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas.
The fuel has 47 percent less particulate matter, a health hazard for those immediately around diesel, virtually no sulfate emissions, an ingredient in acid rain, and 80 percent less Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, a cancer causing agent.
However, it does contain up to 10 percent more nitrogen oxides, a contributing factor to localized smog. The fuel's lack of sulfur emissions, however, will allow for the use of nitrogen oxide control technologies in the near future, similar to a catalytic converter, which cannot be used with conventional diesel. In addition, by converting to a fuel that drastically reduces greenhouse emissions and reduces or possibly eliminates dependence on foreign oil, biodiesel creates a production need from a long-time slumping agricultural industry.
But the real environmental advantage and economic advantage is even more fundamental. Instead of producing an irreplaceable fossil fuel from deep below the ground, biodiesel is produced by American crops and American farmers. RFTA gets its biodiesel from a northern Colorado supplier. As with all plant life, these crops eat carbon emissions and release oxygen. Not only are emissions drastically reduced, but the overall impact of other greenhouse emissions are reduced as well.
And RFTA is doing much more than putting biodiesel in their vehicles to combat greenhouse gas emissions. RFTA has ten new Invero buses, seven of which are "clean diesel" technology, and three are hybrids. The addition of the hybrid units brings RFTA's hybrid fleet to seven, and four additional hybrids funded by a federal grant providing low-emission public transportation in the Maroon Bells should be delivered late June or early July 2007 when the Maroon Bells route hits its peak rider-ship.
This means that by next summer, RFTA will be operating 11 hybrid buses making RFTA one of the leaders in hybrid technology in the state of Colorado. In fact, the national average fuel consumption of public busses is 3.5 miles-per-gallon, but RFTA's overall average in the City of Aspen is 5.1 mpg, a 45 percent reduction of emissions. When combined with the overall 7.8 percent reduction of emissions from the use of B10, RFTA busses are more than 50 percent more friendly to the environment. As an alternative transportation, when you ride RFTA one time, that is as good for the environment as riding the bus two times in any other city on average. For commuters who do not frequently use the bus or carpool with friends and co-workers, or do not have hybrid vehicles that use biodiesel, town of Snowmass public transportation engineers have a few suggestions to help reduce your own carbon emissions, and increase fuel mileage at the same time.
Make sure to clean your fuel injectors using fuel injector cleaner twice a year, and replace your spark plugs and fuel filters according to your maintenance schedule in your vehicles owner's manual. A dirty fuel filter can be a major emissions offender. Keep your tires properly inflated and stay out of four-wheel drive when you don't need it. Finally, keep your car in good repair, especially your exhaust system, to keep those emissions down.
Visit www.communitiesinmotion.net for more information about your alternative transportation options, upcoming Communities in Motion events, or to join the Commuter Club. Or, visit www.rfta.com or call 970-925-8484, for more information on bus routes and schedules. If you do have to drive, carpool. If you already take public transportation, but need a car once in a while, enroll in the City of Aspen's car-share program.
Overall, think of ways to drive less or to at least drive smarter, and to help reduce the harmful effects of CO2 emissions and global warming right here in the valley.
Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.......
If you want on or off the DIESEL "KNOCK" LIST just FReepmail me........
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......
The ability to reduce dependence on hostile foreign nation is really the greatest trump card the biodiesel industry holds. Greenhouse gas reduction might be big in some circles, but national security wins every time. What's an extra dime or two per gallon when compared to drying up the cash-flow to the Middle East?
This guy veered off the road in the past paragraph. Climate change is controlled primarily by cyclical eccentricities in Earth's rotation and orbit (the Milankovitch cycle) as well as variations in the sun's energy output.
"Greenhouse gases" in Earth's atmosphere also influence Earth's temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2% - 0.3% of Earth's total greenhouse effect.
Please put me on the list. Thanks.
Done!....
True. But useful idiots like this can help to get biodiesel off the ground faster, thereby reducing cash-flow to the supporters of terrorism and producing more jobs here.
Bingo.
Diesels will also run on a coal slurry. I recall that the Germans did this in the 1920s.
One difference between then and now is that last year American restaurants produced 28 billion gallons of used cooking oil that had to be disposed of.
McDonalds in Germany recylces their used oil to make biodiesel to run their delivery trucks on, so there is a precedent that even the majors can follow.
Can't say I buy your arguement on global warming (although I agree the Milankovitch cycle is a factor, there is plenty of evidence & scientific agreement on the impact of greenhouse gases), but the journalist was definitely sloppy from the start.
How did anyone invent "bioDIESEL" 40 years before Rudolph Diesel invent the engine???? And what about 'balance'? The comments about carbon monoxide emissions, failed to compare them with gasoline engines, which produce vastly more of the stuff, yet there is no mention (is he trying to make diesel sound poisonous?)
As for the motoring advise, why not include advice to change the air filter? Regardless of what the manual says, I change mine at least once a year and there is an immediate noticeable improvement in power and mileage.
The soundest piece of advice was carpooling. I’d rather share the costs and help out a buddy than hand over my hard-earned to companies who don’t need it.
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