Posted on 07/30/2007 8:36:50 AM PDT by null and void
The smell seems out of place here in Piesteritz. Once a major hub of East Germany's powerful chemical industry with fully 20,000 workers, the site is now enveloped in a pungent odor more reminiscent of a brewery than the sulfuric acid and ammonia locals were used to whiffing during the Cold War. "You smell that?" plant manager Rainer Mahn shouts over the roaring machinery. "That's the smell of money." In fact -- to be painfully accurate -- it's the smell of rapeseed oil, crushed from truckloads of fresh rapeseed brought from farms throughout the region. By the time the translucent gold liquid reaches the other end of the factory it will be a viable fuel. This brand-new factory built by Neckermann Renewables can produce 220,000 tons of biodiesel per year. Germany's biodiesel market -- the world's largest -- is in upheaval. Last autumn, the infant industry lost its tax-free status, meaning that every liter of biodiesel produced here became nine euro cents more expensive. The results were instant: stock prices plunged; trucking companies that had been filling their tanks with climate-friendly biodiesel switched back to fossil fuels; and a number of smaller biofuel refineries had to close their doors.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
Tagline, I say!
your tagline stinks ;-)
Its more like 9.85 trillion BTU's.
Are you estimating 130,000 BTUs/gallon ? Rapeseed oil can’t be much more than that.
The whole biofuels issue is a pretty bad idea, IMO. (A little off topic) The use of ethanol, for example, has put a huge crunch on the availability of corn and driven the price of corn up without providing much value. Here in the southwest, there are corn crops dying in the field due to the excessive amount of rainfall, something that will likely affect the overall price of gasoline that will have a negative impact on the price of gas - again, another law of unintended consequences kind of thing.
Apparently, it is more important for our political elites to give the appearance of doing something rather than actually doing something!!!
Ethanol boom may fuel shortage of tequila
Mexican farmers switching to corn could create tequila shortage
This time, it really is Bush's fault...
Probably pretty close. Reclaimed motor oil is about the same API, so you could get 138-140,000.
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