Alt. Fuel

[Steve P.]

Troy, I can only tell you from my little experience with this so far that I like what I see.. I live in Florida. The weather here is normally warm enough to run PURE veggie oil without ANY additives.. I spoke with a guy here that IS driving a VW Jetta on Mc Donalds French Fry Grease... He has the original fuel tank and an additional tank in the trunk. That tank has a copper coil in it that he puts engine coolant through to keep the "VO" above 70*.. He tells me it isn't needed most of the time here as we are usually above that temp here anyway... Other areas get colder and he does head North now and then..

He told me that he has a 14 gallon tank in the trunk with an electric pump and filter. He also pumps out of it to tanks at home to stock up.. He uses no additives and does nothing but filter the oil.. He also added that the best oil he gets is from a resteraunt but he wouldn't say where..



The guys on Dirty Jobs and Trucks and also Willy Nelson are all Bio-Diesel guys.. They are chemists.

Willy adds veggie oil to DIESEL. He says it cuts pollution by 20%. I say, why not 100% ?

Trucks took "VO" and added Racing Fuel..    Come on!!!   Lot's of spinning and separating and then added racing fuel...

Dirty Jobs used "VO" strained it and separated it, (nice job), then they treated it for acid with lye.  I need to look into that myself.. The truck they showed had a gazillion miles on it but so do most diesels.. The guy I talked to with the Jetta is over 200K also.. He bought it with over 100 k on it..


For me, the whole nut is this. We are pollllllllllluttttttting like there is no tomorrow.. We don't have to!!!!

We are buying oil from all over the world. We don't have to!!!!!

We are using carbon base fuels and oils that we have allready proven suck and yet we continue. WE DON'T HAVE TO!!!!!!!

We have come up with just about every kind of chemical compound you can think of.. We now need one to stop "VO" from gelling in cold weather.. Who's going to be our next gazillionaire?

What the hell happened to us THINKING???

All you guys that live around Long Beach and have to drive through there, Take a pic. and post it here for all to see.. Next time you see an old Mack Dump truck tacking off from a red light with a full load.. Well, I don't need to say!! "VO" burns clean and will not kill you.. The most it will do is make you hungry or just the opposite. You may hate fries.. That could be a good thing...  Hahaha......

[Mopar440+6]

I think I like the idea of growing alternative fuel (corn?) a bit better since it can be mass produced and distributed which should help control costs.

Troy

Troy, I can't remember where I saw it but IF all the soybeans produced in the US in one year were turned into biodiesel it would only make up for 10% of the diesel used. And considering that small farms and decent farmland are dissappearing at an alarming rate I really don't see much of a solution in biodiesel or ethanol. BTW- "Veggie" oil is usually produced from soybeans, canola, peanut or sunflower seeds. Corn is usually used to produce ethanol. 

Would environmentalists fight a corn refinery as much as they do an oil refinery? That would be interesting to see.

Troy

The only answer to that one is yes. Ive been watching them do it in my hometown for the past year. A year ago a proposal was made to build an ethanol plant in an already established industrial zone. There has been so much resistance from the friggin tree hugger yuppie pricks that the company never even got off the ground. I can't even drive through town without seeing at least 3 or 4 of the "No Ethanol Plant in Franklin County" signs. And what really makes me mad is that for every 20 or 30 of those signs I see I can only ever find one of the "Support Alternative Fuel" signs. Yet those friggin people with the "No Ethanol Plant" signs still have the cajones to pull up next to me at the gas station and b*%&^ about the gas prices!!!  Wheres my mean guy smiley when I need him. PEOPLE SUCK!

[The Mad Scientist]

Here's another fun factor to add in.   A lot of fast food resturaunts have recylcer outfits that puchcase their used frier grease and recycle it.   Yes they recycle it.     Now of course if the Mc Manager or whoever got more profit selling the stuff as fuel then they might do that, that wasn't my point.   Point is.   If people start buying up VO on a bigger scale.   Then recycled VO isin't gonna be available on the market as a recycled good, which should raise the demand for VO and raise the price significantly.   Before you know it the'll be VO shortages and you'll need to get your used VO on odd or even days, blah blah blah.  

Whatever happens with alternate fuel in the future may have to be a self adaptive system.   Pulling a bran new infrastructure out of thin air just doesn't seem feasable to me.  

Hydrogen seems the most feasable alternate fuel to me, and something tells me that automakers would agree.  

links

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030521092358.htm

http://www.energycooperation.org/bioproductionH2.htm

http://www.livescience.com/technology/050426_hydrogen_waste.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/17/hydrogen_cars/


Imagine a nation wide compost pick up program.  The city could pick up the organic matter; bananna peels, apple cores, rotten eggs, last weeks leftovers, etc.  Take them to the retrofitted wastewater treatment plant dump them in the bacteria producing chamber.  Then the city owned wastewater treatment plant could sell the hydrogen to refueling stations.  That would generate income for the city that isin't in the form of a tax you have to pay.  It might not produce enough hydrogen to run a hydrogen car on.  I dunno.  Fuel mileage for automotive hydrogen fuel cells seems to still be under wraps.  Still...  Seems like an awful lot of hydrogen is being thrown away every day.   

[Steve P.]

From what I have been told by ass. managers of Mc D's and such, they have to PAY to have the veggie oil hauled away.. Drunken Doughnuts says they go through more than 60 gallons per week..

Of course if many of us are getting our VO from these sources there will not be enough to go around. This was not my point entirely. I brought up French fry grease as a replacement for diesel to paint a picture in peoples minds that we don't have to live under the rule of BIG OIL COMPANIES. Of course we will have to figure things out and nail things down, but that's what it's all about, isn't it??

It seams like we stopped thinking for ourselves when TV commercials started getting sexy and funny. The more they shovel shit down our throats the more we eat it.. My neighbor down the street doesn't need his Hummer to pull his 12 foot row boat. Matter of fact, he used to put it in the back of his F-150 6-cyl, stick pick up. Now he has to have a little trailer to put the tinny boat on to go out on the river with a few times per year.. He drives the Hummer to Tampa 5-6 days per week for work. That's about 70 miles round trip per day..

OK, Sorry....  white spots on the brain taking over again!!

Point is that we HAVE TO find something new and much better all the way around. If this isn't it, good. At least we looked at it..