Posted on 04/30/2005 6:10:42 AM PDT by grania
Diesel engines can run on just about anything, including used cooking oil. An entire industry is emerging to provide brave 'biodiesel' pioneers with the ingredients for petroleum-free motoring.
One day last March, my musician friend Jonathan drove up in a Mercedes. This was odd, since Jonathan is so resolutely counterculture that he once tried recording an album in the woods, without electricity.
His car's exhaust smelled faintly of french fries, and therein lay the explanation: The new Jonathan Richman tour vehicle -- an '84 300D Turbo -- was running on vegetable oil-derived biodiesel fuel as he and his drummer crisscrossed the nation in it, a deep fryer on wheels.
I was intrigued: Biodiesel comes from renewable resources. It's made from soybeans, corn or other oil crops, saving America's farmers. Or it comes from recycled kitchen grease, saving America's sewers. It pollutes remarkably less than petroleum fuel, and could potentially make the U.S. energy self-sufficient, freed from bargaining with dictators and terror-sponsor states.
And did I mention it smells like french fries?
But I was also suspicious. If it works so well, why isn't everyone already using it? I've fallen prey to New Age wishful thinking before, and that pyramid never did sharpen my razor. Even after cruising the Pacific Coast Highway in Jonathan's car, something about it didn't seem real. If a car runs on vegetable oil, does that mean I can run my TV on sauerkraut? Don't let retirement sneak up on you. Create a perfect plan.
Endorsed by Rudolf Diesel himself It turns out biodiesel is not a new idea. When Rudolf Diesel introduced his signature engine at the 1900 Paris Exposition, he said two words as he started it: "Peanut oil." He'd designed his engine so farmers could grow their own fuel. Most diesel engines were indeed run on vegetable oil until the 1920s, when the petroleum industry promoted a gasoline byproduct as diesel fuel.
Environmental concerns, the Iraq war and rising gas prices have spurred a renewed interest in biodiesel, and people have discovered that a diesel automobile can run on it with little or no alteration. (Cars more than a decade old should have fuel lines checked, because the highly solvent fuel eats some rubber compounds. It cleans engines so effectively that fuel filters also bear watching.) It can be used interchangeably with standard diesel fuel, and it's had well over a million miles of road-testing.
I started seriously thinking about joining the biodiesel generation when a butterscotch Mercedes 240D turned up for sale around the corner for $3,500. Saving the environment is nice, but I really like butterscotch. Test-driving the car, however, I found that friends' concerns about the model's 67-horsepower engine proved true. The 240D has a reputation for running forever, but that's also apparently how long it takes to get anywhere in it.
The biggest hurdle: where to tank up Even if this wasn't the diesel steed for our experiment in vehicular unction, I was now set on getting one. My wife expressed doubts about the biodiesel lifestyle, though, when I suggested we could store the 55-gallon drum in the bushes near the garage.
Take a closer look at recycling. Unless it is run VERY efficiently, with volunteer labor and with individuals separating all materials, it isn't economical. We can bury a LOT of rubbish without running out of room.
Should a Ferrari owner use Olive Oil ?
Yes, they pay through the nose on the initial purchase, no reason they shouldn't have to to get their kicks with it... j/k
Price mechanism?
You been to a gas-station recently? :)
I think your "price-mechanism" factor is gonna change a lot of people's minds pretty soon, at this rate.
(That and, y'know, not supporting horrible oil-producing regimes..... like Norway)
Uh...if you'll read what I wrote, you'll discover that I'm agreeing with you.
Popeye does so, why not? ;-)
Gosh....Poyeye drives a Ferrari? <^..^>
LOL!
Zackly
Simple, produce a methanol-ethanol blend. Ethanol is okay as long as its not denatured, but methanol is toxic from the word go. And while the fumes from straight methanol can be toxic (only in long term exposure terms), a mix can denature the ethanol while minimizing environmental impact. Plus methanol has more energy than ethanol (approaches that of gasoline, maybe more). T
As for taking a swig w/o tax, if its road fuel for commercially available use (as opposed to for privately produced fuel for personal use) then there is tax on it... Just highway tax and not booze tax.
I know you don't have to pay taxes on what you don't drink, but that's the problem with the government. Try to buy large quantities of Propane or diesel and tell the vender it's for "farm use". You might get away with it once, but if you are a repeat buyer, he will want you to buy a road tax stamp or go somewhere else, especially if you pull up in a LP powered truck.
Don't forget the states have ethanol taxes also. You will get no help from any government to make ethanol a fuel because of the possibility of drinking without the tax. Lets just say, hypothetically, that you discover a fuel made from cat poop to run your car. You would quickly be put under the jail, have no friends, be called a traitor to your country, because you drove a vehicle without paying your state and federal road taxes. Whose going to fix the potholes you cause and pay for the law enforcement, blahh blahh, etc.
I think Gov Arnold ought to make a 5 year phase in of e-85 a law.
| Daryl L. Hunter - Editor |
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