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Posted
by
michael
from the obligatory-earth-day-post dept.
i22y writes "With Greasel instead of Diesel in your tank, you can pull up to Jack-In-The-Box and fill up both your stomach and your gas tank. Run your car on old fryer grease and vegetable oil! Obligatory pictures and FAQ."
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People have been making "Biodesiel" for years now. This is nothing new. A little lye and some vegetable oil is all it takes.
What is interesting is that it is still cheaper to buy real desiel than vegetable oil. Where biodesiel has an advantage is in recycling used vegetable oil that is no longer food quality but is with a little work good enough to burn in your car/airplane. Unfortunatly there is not enough of this to make a real dent in the American desiel usage.
I don't really seeing this idea getting to be uber-big. First off, there are only soooo many fast food joints to raid. It's going to become like the waste hops from beer, marketed trash with a competitive street price.
If a tone of people start doing this they are going to find the veggie oil costs a HELL of a lot more than diesel. (Anyone ever price out biodiesel?)
Electricity has zero CO2 output (at the point of use), so isn't taxed (at least not directly). LPG has very low CO2 output per unit, so is taxed at a lower rate than gasoline. Gasoline/Diesel/Grease all produce a similar amount of CO2, so they all receive a similar tax weighting.
That's insane. It misses the point of biodiesel entirely: all of the CO2 produced was sucked up by the original plant source, so the net CO2 production is zero.
My friend, I come from a 3rd world country and I am probably 10 years older than you. I responded to you because out of the blue, for no reason you included a stupid, ignorant political statement where it had no reason for being.
The problem of starvation is not a problem of farming, it's a problem of economics. Lots of countries have crappy farmland, but aren't starving, take any mid-east oil producer as an example. The 3rd world economy isn't ruined by too many people; it's ruined by civil wars, and unstable government.
It must be nice to think you're mature and superior because you don't care about the value of human lives lost thousands of miles away, and like to point it out for no reason whatsoever.
BTW Darwinism doesn't apply in this case (since the people born in bad conditions are disadvantaged, not inferior), and you make yourself look like a jerk by bringing it up.
1. In all countries that have reasonable diesel uptake to be interested in BioDiesel the government earns a considerable amount through fuel tax. As a result they are scared shitless of any chance for people to manufacture fuel themselves. A good example is UK where the Customs and Excise department staged ambushes on roads in Wales last year to stop cars that do not smell of abnoxious gasoline fumes and require them to immediately present a document that proves that their fuel has paid fuel duty. Any cars that could not prove this on the spot were impounded. Considering that in the UK you do not even need to carry a driving license with you to drive you can judge by yourself how scared the treasury is. It is the same as with the use of natural gas. The UK government has done anything in their power to make sure that the uptake of that one is only token and very low and is done in a way that cannot use household gas so that it does not hit their revenue stream.
1.1. To add to 1, despite the fact that Biodiesel has a flash point of 300 degrees plus and is as safe to handle as fuel can get government still classes it as car fuel for storage purposes so that people who can buy bulk cannot store it (UK has an ancient wartime law that prohibits the storage of more then 20l of petrol outside a car fuel tank without a license).
2. Biodiesel is manufactured at the moment largely from recycled oil that will have to be disposed of (usually burned) because it is an extreme environmental pollutant. To produce Biodiesel stuff is filtered through HEPA and some of the more obnoxious soluble impurities are removed by running it past an absorbent. It is also usually dried from excess water. In civilised countries the food producers (including the ones that produce bulk rate bakery and supermarket foods) are required to dispose of the oil in a legit manner. AFAIK at the moment less then 0.001% is used.
You could say, Biodiesel hasn't exactly taken off, but here in Germany it *is* available. My relatives own a gas station that offers colza (? I don't know if this is the correct English name for the plant, at least a dictionary turned it up) Biodiesel and quite a few companies (for their trucks) and private customers in the region use it.
Admittedly, not many fuel stations offer it - but as far as I can remember there have been no shortages in the past years - for example from Campa Biodiesel [campa-biodiesel.de]
Jack in the box (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years late on the news front (Score:5, Insightful)
What is interesting is that it is still cheaper to buy real desiel than vegetable oil. Where biodesiel has an advantage is in recycling used vegetable oil that is no longer food quality but is with a little work good enough to burn in your car/airplane. Unfortunatly there is not enough of this to make a real dent in the American desiel usage.
Cost of Veggie Oil (Score:5, Insightful)
If a tone of people start doing this they are going to find the veggie oil costs a HELL of a lot more than diesel. (Anyone ever price out biodiesel?)
here's an article from the guardian.co.uk (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's already been done (Score:3, Insightful)
LPG has very low CO2 output per unit, so is taxed at a lower rate than gasoline.
Gasoline/Diesel/Grease all produce a similar amount of CO2, so they all receive a similar tax weighting.
That's insane. It misses the point of biodiesel entirely: all of the CO2 produced was sucked up by the original plant source, so the net CO2 production is zero.
Re:I'm an asshole, and I'm proud of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem of starvation is not a problem of farming, it's a problem of economics. Lots of countries have crappy farmland, but aren't starving, take any mid-east oil producer as an example. The 3rd world economy isn't ruined by too many people; it's ruined by civil wars, and unstable government.
It must be nice to think you're mature and superior because you don't care about the value of human lives lost thousands of miles away, and like to point it out for no reason whatsoever.
BTW Darwinism doesn't apply in this case (since the people born in bad conditions are disadvantaged, not inferior), and you make yourself look like a jerk by bringing it up.
Re:Not enough crops (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is why:
1. In all countries that have reasonable diesel uptake to be interested in BioDiesel the government earns a considerable amount through fuel tax. As a result they are scared shitless of any chance for people to manufacture fuel themselves. A good example is UK where the Customs and Excise department staged ambushes on roads in Wales last year to stop cars that do not smell of abnoxious gasoline fumes and require them to immediately present a document that proves that their fuel has paid fuel duty. Any cars that could not prove this on the spot were impounded. Considering that in the UK you do not even need to carry a driving license with you to drive you can judge by yourself how scared the treasury is. It is the same as with the use of natural gas. The UK government has done anything in their power to make sure that the uptake of that one is only token and very low and is done in a way that cannot use household gas so that it does not hit their revenue stream.
1.1. To add to 1, despite the fact that Biodiesel has a flash point of 300 degrees plus and is as safe to handle as fuel can get government still classes it as car fuel for storage purposes so that people who can buy bulk cannot store it (UK has an ancient wartime law that prohibits the storage of more then 20l of petrol outside a car fuel tank without a license).
2. Biodiesel is manufactured at the moment largely from recycled oil that will have to be disposed of (usually burned) because it is an extreme environmental pollutant. To produce Biodiesel stuff is filtered through HEPA and some of the more obnoxious soluble impurities are removed by running it past an absorbent. It is also usually dried from excess water. In civilised countries the food producers (including the ones that produce bulk rate bakery and supermarket foods) are required to dispose of the oil in a legit manner. AFAIK at the moment less then 0.001% is used.
Re:Not enough crops (Score:2, Insightful)
Admittedly, not many fuel stations offer it - but as far as I can remember there have been no shortages in the past years - for example from Campa Biodiesel [campa-biodiesel.de]
Chris