Interesting.I just learned about this new "clean " burning fuel.At first I heard it was being tested in Seattle and there was a co-op down there.Little or no modifications needed on a diesel engine car.
After some research I have found it has been used for years in Europe and is used by many U.S goverment groups..postal,garbabge,ect..
We can even get it in Vancouver at a few places,even on my home-town Island of saltspring.I am seriously concidering buying a diesel car because of this..although I have found it is NOT completely clean burning and it is made from and I qoute "vegetable oils and animal fats'

I need to do more research,but I dont really want to drive a car based on cow-fat.

Anyone else looked into Bio-diesel? :confused:

hmm... I've heard there's a way to convert a diesel engine to run on vegetable oil, if you can get the oil to the right viscosity.. not 100% sure how clean the veggie oil emission is, though, and it makes your car smell like McDonald's.

http://www.biodieselcanadainc.com/ and theres another site,if someone does a search from the states..hmmm,if it was 100% veg based,I would be very excitied!

here in sebastopol, ca, there is a local vendor that sells used vegetable oil for that exact purpose. there are quite a few people around town that drive diesel trucks and volkswagen golfs and have bumper stickers that say "this car runs on bio-diesel"... kinda cool. kinda makes you wish that hemp could be grown legally in the states as a source of fuel, yeah? the technology has been around for a while and it does make your car smell a little different (vegetable oil smells like french fries kinda, hehehe)... i'm not exactly how clean the emissions are, but that's one way someone can reduce the U.S. dependence on foreign oil. get this though, there are people that mod the prius, spend about $300 or so on additional batteries that fit comfortably out of sight where the other batteries for it are and can get their prius to run entirely on electricity for up to a half hour. there are also little cars people drive around here from this local company (zap electric) that are perfect for getting around town and they're purely electric. kinda neat, huh? personally... if it's less than 20 or 30 miles, i try to ride my bike. keeps my tush looking nice, hahaha.

http://www.zapworld.com/cars/salecars.asp

Zap Electric... founded in Sebastopol, CA... yessssssss =)
Sorry about this being slightly off topic, just thought it would be in the spirit of saving mother earth a tad. There are people here in Sebastopol who install solar panels on their roofs and charge their car at night. Electricity is cheaper at night so during the day their panels sell the electricity to the solar company and during the night they purhcase it back. My friend Rose reduced her electricity bill down to abot $5 a month or so. Crazy, huh?

(last post i promise, i thought this deserved a separate post though because it's even further off topic)

if you own a gasoline car and want to protect the environment a little, think about ethanol! all automobile manufacturers approve of e10 (10% ethanol, 90% gasoline) to be used in their products. using e10 compared to straight gasoline reduces emissions by up to 25%. it burns cleaner and cooler than regular gasoline and thus prolongs the life of your engine. you can also find it grown locally! it is made from fermenting corn (or other sugars, but mostly corn... brazil is the leading producer but there are local american companies that do it too. even in my small town of sebastopol there is a guy that ships out 15 gallons for $54. you just have to figure out the right mixture for your automobile. some cars can even run on e85! here's a good site for information:

http://www.ethanol.org/

My high school is looking into making our own biodiesel using the oil from our cafeteria's deep-fryer. We plan to use the biodiesel to fuel our lawn mowers and mini-buses.

brazil is the leading producer but there are local american companies that do it too.


Brazil is plowing the amazon to grow all that material - what part of the US should we plow to grow more ethanol?

Maybe driving a lot less could be a more environmentally helpful solution to the fuel problem.

Brazil is plowing the amazon to grow all that material - what part of the US should we plow to grow more ethanol?

Maybe driving a lot less could be a more environmentally helpful solution to the fuel problem.

dude... hold up on the personal attacks just a second. i put over 6,000 miles on two of my bicycles (both of which were purchased used) this year getting groceries and going to school and work. that is more than six times how much i drove in the same time period. believe me, i love to drive my VW GTI, but i bicycle because it's better for me and mother earth.

i never said that brazil was doing a great job... i just said they're the leading producer. and here in sebastopol the vendor who produces and sells ethanol does so on land that has long been used for agriculture, and his methods are certified organic. there are produces all over the US who do the same.i was simply saying that ethanol is a safe oxygenate that can be added to fuel, as opposed to the carcinogen mtbe.

so if commuting to work via automobile is a must and one cannot afford to switch to biodiesel (as it requires a diesel engine), ethanol is one way of helping out a little. it is a renewable resource (as biodiesel is) and has a co2 net production of zero (the co2 produced while burning the ethanol is used by the plants that grow the ethanol for their ATP production, as in photosynthesis). there are still carbon monoxide emissions, but ethanol produces 30% less than straight gasoline. and of course, there are other hydrocarbons and particulate emissions, but they are all either on par with or less than gasoline. furthermore, purchasing ethanol grown locally (vendors are available all over the US) supports local business and reduces dependence on foreign oil. that's all i was saying...
i'm a new member to this forum, but when did it become so fashionable to attack others here? from what i've seen it's all peace, love, and happiness. yeah?

My high school is looking into making our own biodiesel using the oil from our cafeteria's deep-fryer. We plan to use the biodiesel to fuel our lawn mowers and mini-buses.

your school wins! that is awesome. i know that people sometimes drive their car for close to nothing by getting used vegetable oil FREE from local restaurants that would just dump it anyways. nice work high school =)

Huh? What personal attacks?

I read an article (unfortunately in Actualite, a french-canadian magazine, so I can't link to it) that analyzed the amount of money the Canadian government is spending on supporting bio-diesel and concluded that if they were to spend it on subsidies for fuel-efficient vehicles the reduction in emissions would be far greater. According to the article, the only people really benefiting from bio-diesel subsidies were the vegetable oil producers. The article also mentioned that a huge amount of pesticides were being used on the crops used to produce the bio-diesel.

This is not to say individuals shouldn't choose to use bio-diesel, just that in my opinion it's far more important to purchase a fuel-efficient vehicle.

(last post i promise, i thought this deserved a separate post though because it's even further off topic)

if you own a gasoline car and want to protect the environment a little, think about ethanol! all automobile manufacturers approve of e10 (10% ethanol, 90% gasoline) to be used in their products. using e10 compared to straight gasoline reduces emissions by up to 25%. it burns cleaner and cooler than regular gasoline and thus prolongs the life of your engine. you can also find it grown locally! it is made from fermenting corn (or other sugars, but mostly corn... brazil is the leading producer but there are local american companies that do it too. even in my small town of sebastopol there is a guy that ships out 15 gallons for $54. you just have to figure out the right mixture for your automobile. some cars can even run on e85! here's a good site for information:

http://www.ethanol.org/

when i was in arizona a month ago there was an article about a station in tucson (i think) which sells e90 (90% ethanol/ 10% gasoline) which a lot of newer cars can be programmed to run on. i had never heard of that before (altho i had heard of the turning engines to run on veg oil). i thought it was the coolest thing ever and wished it would spread around more!

ethanol in the US is pork politics, a huge giveaway to ADM.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031128.html

CAFTA is going to let huge amounts of cargill made latin ethanol in without tariffs and receive the subsidy so hopefully that will create pressure to end it.

ethanol is still used in the production of biodiesel so I don't think we'll see the end of it either.

I attended a lecture today by a woman named Becky Johnson, who is touring the country by a bus converted to run on grease.

She said this wasn't really bio-diesel, since that is a chemical process to convert vegetable oil into fuel. Her bus had a conversion kit that literally allows it to burn grease or oil discarded by restaurants.

From what I understood of the lecture, there are three phases in taking a trip in a grease-burning vehicle. Phase 1 is where diesel fuel is used to start the vehicle and the engine warms the grease/oil until it reaches the right viscosity. Phase 2 is where the grease/oil is used as fuel by the vehicle. Phase 3 is where the vehicle is switched back to diesel shortly before the end of the trip.

Regular diesel fuel or bio-diesel fuel can be used in Phase 1 and Phase 3.

She said the converter kit pays for itself in about a year.

In answer to bumble's question, the discarded restaurant oil is mostly vegetable oil, but may contain some animal fats. She said she finds the best sources for the oil are Chinese restaurants. She also said that since restaurants have to pay to have this oil hauled away, they are usually more than happy to have people take it for fuel (upon request).

She has a website where you can learn more.

www.clearvisionsproject.org

Biodiesel is commercially available throughout a large part of the US. Several friends have been driving their VW TDI's on a 20% blend available in my city for several years without any problems.Minnesota runs all state owned diesel vehicles on a biodiesel blend, and many school districts are switching too. Biodiesel is carbon-neutral, and even at relatively small blends, around 10% or so produces a substantial reduction in particulates and carcinogens at the tailpipe. While it may not be ideal for all of us to switch to diesel cars right now (although several manufacturers are working on hybrid diesels), it's good news immediately since it could be used in commercial trucks, city busses, railroad locomotives, construction equipment, farm equipment...all rather dirty vehicles from an emissions standpoint.

There are some questions to be answered about pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers in production of crops for biodiesel, but there also appears to be substantial hope that certain algae could be used to produce biodiesel; the algae could be grown in shallow saltwater ponds using not only less land and energy to produce than land-based crops, but ideally in a desert situation where there would be little displacement of arable, food producing crop land.

There's always the question of regional climatic change from introducing salt water ponds in a major part of a desert ecology, which only points out that conservation must always be part of the solution.

Okay, i realize i am coming into this conversation late, but:
A) 50% of the corn crop every year (in the us)gets thrown away.
B) 50% of the corn crop land get subsidized to not grow corn(to keep the price high)
--so that makes 4 times as much corn each year with out any more farms
C) Cattle farmers(dairy and beef) grow corn for the sole purpose of keeping the hay fields health, they ferment the corn into silage, and feed it to the cows for extra minerals and such. the mash left over after making ethanol still has all of these mineral, only the sugar and starch has been removed.
D) Most of the new farm land in south america is what they call high altitude tilling 0r something of that nature, basically farming on mountain sides, it has actually been determined (by the powers that be, trust them or not) that this reduces global warming by altering the absorbtivity of the earth and reflecting more heat back to space.
E) there is SVO and biodiesel, SVO straight veggie oil, convert your car(by heating the fuel tank and fuel lines) but you still need regular diesel you can't start or stop the engine on SVO. biodiesel is veggie oil that has been chemically reacted with lye and methanol to turn it into a chemically equivalent version of diesel fuel, which will run in any old diesel engine
F) don't get me wrong, i love biodiesel, the CO2 from burning it is recycled by the plants and used to make more fuel, no net emmisions(co2 anyway). but diesel engines burn high temperatures and make NOx emmission, the second worst green house gas. so reduce driving even if it green fuel.(but there is no sulfur in biodiesel so one SO2 number three on the list)
G) ethonal burns at a lower temp, meaning less NOx then gasoline.
now i'll get off my soap box and leave you to it. and don't forget its REDUCE, then REUSE then RECYCLE.

http://www.zapworld.com/cars/salecars.asp
Zap Electric... founded in Sebastopol, CA... yessssssss =)
Sorry about this being slightly off topic, just thought it would be in the spirit of saving mother earth a tad. There are people here in Sebastopol who install solar panels on their roofs and charge their car at night. Electricity is cheaper at night so during the day their panels sell the electricity to the solar company and during the night they purhcase it back. My friend Rose reduced her electricity bill down to abot $5 a month or so. Crazy, huh?
PV's are great if you get lots of sun, though the up-front cost is pretty high.

I just saw a punk band from Boston and they made a tour bus that runs on vegetable oil. It's an old school bus painted silver, pretty neat. They are stopping at Chinese restaurants and filling up there. They set up a 55 gallon drum behind the drivers seat to hold the fuel.

If you want some vegetarian friendly oils, look to Dunkin Donuts, who only fry donuts in 100% vegetable shortning.

Okay, i realize i am coming into this conversation late, but:

C) Cattle farmers(dairy and beef) grow corn for the sole purpose of keeping the hay fields health,

Growing corn does not keep fields "healthy." It is one of the most damaging crops. If they want to keep their fields healthy they should plant a legume.

D) Most of the new farm land in south america is what they call high altitude tilling 0r something of that nature, basically farming on mountain sides, it has actually been determined (by the powers that be, trust them or not) that this reduces global warming by altering the absorbtivity of the earth and reflecting more heat back to space.

Tilling the soil has a negative, not a positive, impact on the carbon cycle. Untilled soil contains more carbon, keeping that carbon out of the atmosphere. Tilling releases the carbon as carbon dioxide. Farming on mountain sides by tilling is one of the most damaging forms of agriculture.

Not to start a battle, we are all on the same side, but in the interest of having good information... sorry for the typo, its high latitude tilling, trees for north and south of the equator actually absorb more sunlight as heat than low plants do. so when trees are cut to plan crops, more heat is reflected but to space,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo)
and old trees grow slower than new plants, so new plants use more CO2 and produce more oxygen. Also, carbon is stored in soil as organic matter, like organisms and such, not as adsorbed CO2, so its not like shaking a soda.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink)
Well, any nonorganic farming destroys the soil, but corn has been used as a crop rotation for, well ever, and it works extremely well, otherwise they wouldn't do it(by they i mean small family farmers, not the big agri-business farms, they don't rotate, agri-business doesn't care about next year, but family farmer can't afford to destory thier land.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize)


oh and not to be the bearer of bad news, but veggie shorting causes cancer and high cholesterol. I don't eat meat, but i'm also as organic as can be, the only good frying oil is peanut or coconut. Veggie oil can contain canola, which is genetically engineered rapeseed oil(three in one hinge oil that you get at the hardware store)

Don't forget that biofuels are solar energy, the plants use sunlight to make sugar and starch.

and old trees grow slower than new plants, so new plants use more CO2 and produce more oxygen. Also, carbon is stored in soil as organic matter, like organisms and such, not as adsorbed CO2, so its not like shaking a soda.

Disturbing the soil causes the organisms to give off CO2. Annual cropping does no good in sequestering carbon, the carbon needs to be captured by trees or perennial grasses.


but corn has been used as a crop rotation for, well ever, and it works extremely well,

No, it doesn't, not unless you rotate with a legume or leave your land fallow for many years between crops. Growing corn is hard on the soil , period.

otherwise they wouldn't do it(by they i mean small family farmers, not the big agri-business farms, they don't rotate, agri-business doesn't care about next year, but [quote]family farmer can't afford to destory thier land.

Then why is there major topsoil loss in virtually all areas where farming is practiced, including farms owned and operated by the Amish?


Don't forget that biofuels are solar energy, the plants use sunlight to mkae sugar and starch.

They are raised using petroleum.

If you need references on any of this, I'll be happy to provide them.