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Around The Country Without Gasoline
IronChefMorimoto writes "Autoweek has an interesting write up on an Australian man's 16K mile trek around the United States using anything but gasoline to power his variety of alternative fuel vehicles. Featured are bio-diesel Hummers and RVs, a solar-powered canoe, and an excrement-powered scooter." Note that if your car generates electricity, you could conceivably make a few bucks selling juice to the grid at peak hours.
I've driven and worked on passenger car diesels exclusively for the past ten years. They're robust and reliable, but you can't just fuel them on anything. They run terribly on gasoline!
The most critical part of the diesel is the fuel pump and injectors. They run at 3000-5000 psi with very low volume per stroke, so leakage cannot be tolerated. The fuel has to be filtered extremely well (sub micron). My worry with biodiesel is that it might plug filters due to microbial growth [always a problem in diesel], or the vegatable oil hydrolyze into organic acid plus glycerol. The organic acids will cause corrosion of the injector pump plungers and injector tips. Not good at all. The fuel will also have different rubber swell characteristics, so you may get fuel leaks. I'd try this first on a imetal-to-metal Mercedes with simple to replace rubber rather than a Peugeot or VW with a fuel-lubricated pump and that main O ring soaking in fuel.
I expect vegatable oil could be made to work with additives: a biostat, acid neutralizer plus seal swell control. But it would have to remain a separate product becauase petroleum oil and vegatable oils aren't miscible. If you wanted a blend, you'd need an emulsifier, and the results might be too viscous.
You don't sell the electricity ALL the time.
Only in extreme peak demand conditions.
Like when a blackout is about to occure. So instead of turning on the old, horrible polluting but instant-on generator for 10 minutes, they drain a couple million car batteries for those ten minutes, while a slightly better generator is brought online.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
With whole oil thing the middle east actually is the primary supplier to EUROPE not the U.S. we get most of ours from south america, africa and canada
Biodiesel is more expensive than gas
Wait, what? My mother-in-law gets processed biodiesel for about a buck a gallon (Near Eureka, Northern California, where Gasoline is over $2 per gallon and dino-diesel is less then $2 per gallon).
Granted, I don't think her 'distributor' is looking to make a hefty profit, but he pays for the equipment, labor and some profit. Even if he raised his prices by 50%, he would still be cheaper then regular diesel.
I think he bought a processor for over $1000, and gets the grease for free. Sometimes the resturants pay him money to haul the grease away.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Here, in Brazil, it's common to see dual-fuel cars around. (There are commercial names like "flexpower" or "total flex").
:-)
Gasoline AND Organic Alcohol. In the same car. Mixed together in any proportion.
We have been using Alcohol in cars since the 70's. Nowadays, we can choose the best ($$) fuel in the gas stations.
And it's alcohol, because of Iraq and Saudi Arabia troubles.
Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel will also eat natural rubber hoses and gaskets on older diesel engines. As of 2006 all consumer diesel fuel will have to meet the ULSD standard. This is why all diesel vehicle cars manufactured for sale in the US since 1996 or so have replaced them with synthetic rubber components. Even if you have an older car, running a 20% blend of biodiesel should not result in rapid deterioration of rubber components. Or for $30-$50 you could just replace the parts... California is already mandating ULSD, hence the problems seen and already fixed.
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Yep. Here's a nice map showing where the US gets its oil imports. The top four sources are Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, each at about 15%. Which one is the top source varies from month to month. Other Middle East sources -- Iraq, Kuwait, UAE -- add up to about 15% as well. Summing up, about 50% comes from the Western Hemisphere, about 30% from the Middle East, and the other 20% from places like Africa, the North Sea producers, and Indonesia.