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Utilizing Bio-fuel Beyond Experimental Use
grumpyman writes "A C$14 million factory near Montreal started producing biodiesel fuel two weeks ago from the bones, innards and other parts of farm animals. At full capacity plant will produce 35 million liters (9.2 million U.S. gallons) of biodiesel a year, the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing 16,000 light trucks or 22,000 cars from the roads."
For some time I've thought the future of automotive fuel lies in biodiesel rather than hydrogen. Hydrogen is just very hard to work with because of its low energy density and the fact it is normally a gas. Generation, transportation, storage and utilization all face large challenges.
For biodiesel, all the steps except generation are already solved and the infrastructure in place, and the generation problems do not seem large. (Even without the existing infrastructure, I suspect biodiesel wins economically.)
Generation from algae is particularly promising, as it doesn't require arable land, and can use salt water.
Check out my website: Playfully Clever
does this mean i can start shitting in gas tanks?
Just because no one the submitter knows uses biodiesel doesn't make biodiesel an "experimental" fuel.
There's a shuttle service of ca. 6-8 tractors towing two trams circling the entire grouds and they've been running biodiesel from local farmers for years.
I think there are plans for an "all natural" city in the northern part of the state, which will be limited to -E, biodisel, fuel cells, etc. due to switch over within the next year or two.
So lemme get this right, we no longer bury our pets and other animals when they die, we bag them up and send them to a bio-fuel plant. I wander where well be sending humans next other than graveyards when they die!
Now mad cow disease can be spread by cars too!
Seriously, I hope the rendering process is complete enough to destroy any prions, because anyone who has been behind a diesel truck knows that the engine certainly does not combust cleanly.
My DeLorean has a Mr. Fusion powerplant installed. I called the manufacturer and they said that bio-diesel can be used in it. Hooray!
What about dead humans? Why waste them by burrying them... It would be great to drive arround in a car powered by DEATH :)
It's a great idea in concept. Make fuel using old frying oil, or in this case.... animal parts?! Seriously people, how is this feasable on a large scale. 9.2 million gallons is perhaps a day's worth of oil in the US. Plus I can't imagine how PETA and the like will take to using animal parts as fuel. I could also see a day when energy needs become so great that there will be an ethical debate: use human body parts as fuel, or the moral standard of burning/burying our dead. They also mention using canola and soy as a source of energy, which is again, very unfeasable on a large scale, but better in terms of carbon reuse. And to top it all off, it doesn't eliminate the CO2 output, which is probably the #1 problem with fossil fuels, but at least it doesn't create more.
The story doesn't mention how many acres would be needed to supply the US alone's energy needs for a year. I believe that would be more fields than the US has.
Biodiesel is PEOPLE!!! It's PEOPLE!!!!
Lousy facepalm.
I wonder how PETA feels about this factory. Methinks the intersection between biodiesel consumers and PETA members is nonzero.
... diesel fuel in the US is incredibly dirty. European engines need to be specially modified to deal with it. Furthermore, there just don't seem to be any good US-made diesel engines once you go smaller than large industrial engines (think 30 litres and up).
Premptively, let me make this very clear so we don't need to have the same discussion everytime biodiesel comes up.
First, biodiesel has a positive energy balance, to the tune of about 3.2 units out for every unit you put in. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24089.pdf
Second, biodiesel is 78% carbon neutral with regard to greenhouse gas emissions (see previous pdf). That is because the majority of the carbon emitted when you burn a gallon of biodiesel was captured from the atmosphere when you grew the plant to make the vegetable oil. However, the methanol used to make the biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester) is made from natural gas, at least in the US. You could make 100% renewable ethyl ester biodiesel from ethanol, or make methanol from landfill recovery biogas, but we don't currently.
Third, soy and corn oil are crummy crops to make biodiesel from. But that's where the lobbying money is right now. Other plants have much higher yields.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html
Forth, no, it isn't a question of "food or fuel"? We can do both! Whenever you hear that argument ask yourself whether the person is well meaning but misinformed, or as been happening recently, is part of astroturf campaign to preserve the status quo of the petroleum economy.
Want to try making some biodiesel yourself?
http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/howitsmade/
Already making biodiesel and want to show it off?
http://www.cafepress.com/RenewableWear
Where I live, in Denton, TX, they have switched most of the trash trucks and other large vehicles over to bio-diesel. They mentioned that it was cost effective, often cheaper than petroleum diesel. But, they forgot to factor in one point...
Many of the products that go into bio-diesel are subsidized by the government here in the U.S. If the government is subsidizing it, then it isn't as cheap in the big picture. Sure, it's a better concept, but I want to know how much it costs up front, and how much the government (read: our tax dollars) are going to help a company make money.
If it's being made from canola, then don't let the government pay part of the bill, and assist some company in making more money while taxpayers suffer for it. That, or make the producers of canola based bio-diesel rebate the money back to the government for the original subsidization, so farmers aren't the ones being penalized.
This is simply a function of the efficiency of the vehicle in question. It's not a problem of any single fuel. Biodiesel burns quite clean in an efficient engine at operating temperature.
Have you ever smelled a biodiesel vehicle in operation or at rest? Uhg! What a stench.
I have yet to smell one that was offensive to me. The worst I've smelled was a bit remimniscent of carmelization. Diesel smells much worse.
Have you ever driven a biodiesel vehicle? They are a bit quieter than when running on regular diesel but they also lack power compared to when running on regular diesel.
No. I've driven an SVO for a year. It had more power on the vegetable oil than the diesel. The fuel system ran smoother and the engine knocked less.
Biodiesel may become more widely used in commercial or off-road applications but, it will never take off for highway vehicles.
What do you mean take off? A certain percentage of auto-diesels are operating on it right now. Maybe you should say "everyone that uses biodiesel is a hoser, and can take off", or just grumble to your friends at the refinery.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
WTF? Who told you all this? I've been running biodiesel made from vegetable oil for over a year now, it does'nt smell bad or make white smoke and performance is slightly higher than regular diesal.
I have seen them. I don't see what you describe.
I live in Denton, TX. The City has it's own Biodiesil Plant, one of the first. All the city vehicles run on B20; all the city trucks, heavy equipment, garbage trucks, etc...
Even though, its not 100% biodiesil (B20 is 80% diesel 20% biodesieal) they use a remarkable amount of it. There are a few more public biodiesel pumps in DFW area, and I think one other city around here uses it for thier equipment.
Ours plant is out by the land fill, and basicly all the vegetable oils, from restaruants and farms etc.., get processed. Pretty cool, and not experimental at all.
Now I've seen Everything
> The primary greenhouse gas is CO2
False: the primary greenhouse gas of note is water vapor. Look it up.
[ home ]
I call bullshit. No idea where you get your information from, but... yup... just about every word of it is utter utter crap.
:) Yeah, feel free to mod me for that.
HTH
The problem with slashdot is that any fuckwit can be a moderator too...
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http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007802.php
It covers: Bio, Electricity, Fossil Fuels, Geothermal, Hydrogen, Nuclear, Solar, Water, Wind
US biodiesel production will reach 75 million gallons in 2005
A former malting facility in Jefferson, Wisconsin will be converted to house an innovative, $200 million ethanol production plant that, in addition to 140 million gallons of ethanol a year, will produce 20 million gallons of biodiesel and, yes, 8 million pounds of tilapia fish filets.
an Illinois fertilizer plant that previously used natural gas as a feedstock is being converted to utilize gasified coal instead, and will produce 87 million gallons/year of synthetic gasoline and electricity to boot.
and with solar: Plans for large solar thermal power plants have recently been approved in Nevada and California, with a 64 MW plant planned near Boulder City and a 4,500-acre, 500 MW plant north of Los Angeles.
"no blood for oil"?
Got to take care of this stupidity one bit at a time...
White smoke? Well, emissions-wise, biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have fully completed the health effects testing requirements of the Clean Air Act (biodiesel.org).
Smell? Hmm, better to smell the sweet stench of salvation than the liquid death and carcinogens found in traditional emissions. Plus, it is a new fuel...many things can be worked out as it becomes more of a staple in America's great fuel buffet.
Oh, no highway usage? That must be why Big Willie's (Willie Nelson) Biodiesel Fillin' Station is located...survey says...in Carl's Corner, TX, 1 trillion miles from anything EXCEPT the I-35 corridor coming into Hillsboro, which is a major truck stop here in Texas.
Foolish mortal.
Seems to me that the bones, innards and other parts of farm animals such as cattle, pigs or chickens that Canadians do not eat are the yummiest, at least necessary to make stock (the basis of any proper kitchen) in which you can cook your vegetables, make your soups, use as a base for your sauces and equally important, give Rover some real marrow to eat as opposed to frustrating him with emptied, or worse, plastic bones. In most markets, the only place one can find bones, etc. is from the near-extinct local butcher, a sympathetic farmer, or from US Chinatowns where freshly slaughtered poultry can be purchased whole (i.e., everything but the feathers).
It could be that the most Canadians demographic they're referring to are those folks who grew up shopping in supermarkets not knowing any different. I doubt it applies to the French, or any other group still in touch with their ethnic roots. As an illustrative example, I'm Canadian but my dogs will be enjoying the discarded turkey carcases donated by friends and family for the next few months, while I can enjoy Turkey-based soups and sauces.
Recycling fast food frying oil made from soybeans as mentioned in the article, on the other hand, makes perfect sense. Personally, I think fresh soybean oil should go straight to the gas tank.
The "White Smoke" you speak of is - oh my god - Steam! Yep, hot water - other stuff, too, but that's what makes it white.
I'm not sure what Biodiesel vehicles you've been stuck behind in traffic. My only experience with biodiesel vehicles is a local hobbyist who buys (cheaply) used oil from local restaurants and filters/processes it, and it doesn't stink at all when his old Volvo Diesel is buring that fuel. In fact, it smells faintly of french fries. And I've ridden with him many times on the highway; he certainly doesn't have any trouble getting into traffic or passing slower vehicles; I've never seen him drive over 75 mph, but since 70 is the highest speed limit on local hiways, I can't imagine *needing* much more. Most resources one can locate on Google suggest a 10% loss in power. Significant, but not fatal; a 225 HP diesel will be a ~203 hp biodiesel. A matching 10% loss in 'economy' is also measured, so if you got 25 MPG, you're now going to get ~22.5 MPG. Again, not fatal from a pragmatic standpoint.
To the poster earlier that noted that it must still produce CO2, therefore cannot be carbon neutral - your assumptions are wrong. It's carbon neutral because it's adding no NEW CO2 to the atmosphere - ie, it can only release CO2 that was already in the atmosphere, and then bound by plants in the production of leaves, seeds, stems, etc. Thus, using biodiesel adds no NEW CO2 to the atmosphere, and cannot increase the overall CO2 percentage; burning petrochemicals releases CO2 that has been locked under the crust of the planet, increasing the overall CO2 content of the atmosphere.
To anyone who's looking at this thread and interested in Biodiesel, I suggest you get cozy with google and find out for yourself, rather than paying attention to the FUD here.
Thinking outside my Head
Yes, biodiesel emits CO2 just like normal diesel and gasoline, but the catch is that if you now have large algae vats in the desert, then this is the same CO2 taken out of the atmosphere when the algae was growing.
That said, that doesn't apply in this case, as they are using waste animal/plant matter that would have otherwise been disposed in some way. If this matter would have otherwise been composted and returned to the ground, then yes, the result is a net CO2 emission.
They overstate the magnitude of the improvement. It is not the equivalent of removing 22,000 cars from the road, because building the cars and laying the infrastructure also cause pollution, and 22,000 cleaner cars still require the same volume of roads and tires. Only public transportation makes sense in the long run.
Farm tractors burn diesel to harvest the peanuts
And farmers can cut the process's net carbon contribution by running their tractors on biodiesel. In the future they may be modified to burn straight vegetable oil, using diesel only to start up and shut down the engine.
fetiziliers made from and processed with petroleum are throw into the field
Not all farming methods use petrofertilizers.
Montreal stores report hot dog shortages
My first bio-fuel powered car was a Brazilian 1983 Chevette with a 1.6 liter motor burning 96% pure ethanol. For over 25 years there have been ethanol pumps in every Brazilian gas station.
Besides the cars that burn strraight ethanol, the gasoline distilled from petroleum in Brazil gets a mix from 20% to 25% ethanol, depending on the season. Today, most new Brazilian cars are equipped with "flex" motors that can burn any proportion, from 0% to 100% ethanol.
In Oil City, Pennsylvania near the site where oil was very first discovered on this planet (you did know that oil was first discovered in the US, didn't you?), they are doing a similar thing with soy beans. The city's economy collapsed when Pennzoil closed up shop in 1999 when it no longer became profitable to refine oil at the site.
h tml
It is great to see the community "rediscovering" itslf and at the same time potentially benefitting the local farmers of the area who also feel the downturn in the economy (oh - and benefitting the world in its own little way too).
Here's a link for more info: http://www.thederrick.com/stories/12012005-4012.s
Cheers
So everyone thinks this is perfect, except perhaps PETA and militant vegans. Protests at the fuel pump? Red paint being tossed at motorists?
I see one everyday. My VW doesn't smoke unless the engine has coldsoaked for a couple of days below freezing. And then the smoke clears up within the first minute.
Have you ever smelled a biodiesel vehicle in operation or at rest? Uhg! What a stench.
Why yes I have. I've even gotten down on all fours and sniffed my tailpipe. It has a distinct smell, but it doesn't smell like fries or eggrolls, and it smells much much better than the sulfur laden petrodiesel we get here in New England.
Have you ever driven a biodiesel vehicle? They are a bit quieter than when running on regular diesel but they also lack power compared to when running on regular diesel.
I drive one everyday. It's certainly not lacking in power and the increased cetane rating makes the engine run much smoother. The BTU content of biodiesel is about 95% of that of petrodiesel. So does it get slightly worse mileage? Sure. But it isn't the anemic dog you make it out to be.
Biodiesel may become more widely used in commercial or off-road applications but, it will never take off for highway vehicles.
My commute is 90 miles by highway and I use biodiesel. I know of two retail biodiesel pumps just off I91 (one in Holyoke and one in Brattleboro). I think you are misinformed.
Finally, I have a question for you Mr. Anonymous Coward. You seem rather put off by your biodiesel exposure. Is that just armchair experience from surfing or have your actually driven a BD powered vehicle. If so, was it a modern german turbodiesel like my '03 Jetta or was it a 20 year old out of tune beater MB hippiemobile. No offense to the old-school MB diesel hippies, but they make the rest of us look bad.
Unless there is a tax or government subsidy for recyclable diesel (diesel in which the CO2 was trapped by plants recently)
Motor vehicle fuels are already taxed. Drastically cutting taxes on biofuels compared to petrofuels can subsidize them without "subsidizing" them, although European countries generally have more room to cut taxes than North American countries do.
few consumers will double or triple their fuel costs to use a sustainable energy source.
Unless worldwide crude oil extraction peaks and the supply curve moves so as to double or triple petrodiesel prices anyway. Then biodiesel will become even more attractive.
I never really thought of bones as a fuel. I wonder what kind of interesting pollutants burning calcium in your engine produces.
9,200,000/42/365 = 600 BOPD.
The USA uses about 20,000,000 BOPD. Canada and the USA use over 22 million BOPD. This is a drop in the bucket.
If they scaled this up by a factor of 1000 (a $14 BILLION plant) then this would still be small potatoes compared to what we need. Even the Alberta tar sands expansions which will take us to about 3.3 million BOPD with investments in the 10's of billions and maybe 100's of billions by 2015 are small potatoes compared to what we need.
Yes - every bit helps but...
Lets look at the 4 top oil fields:
Ghawar (Saudit Arabia) 5 million BOPD Likely near decline
Canaterall (Mexico) 2.2 million BOPD In decline, 14% per year
Bergan (Kuwait) 1.6 million BOPD In decline, rate unknown
DaQing (China) 1 million BOPD In decline, 7% per year
These 4 feilds produce about 10 million BOPD, or about 12.5% of the world's 82 million BOPD production.
A decline rate of 10% in these 4 feilds translates to a loss of over 1 million BOPD. If we multiply that biodiesel plant by 1000 we still do not make up for the lost production of the top 4 oil fields.
The North sea went into decline in 1999 at a rate of about 14%. The UK became an oil importer this year.
Indonesia became an oil importer this year.
Australia use to be supplied by Indoneasia and since Indonesia can no longer supply Oz, Oz also has lined up at the Straits of Hormuz, hat in hand, asking for middle east oil.
This plant is just a drop in the bucket! If we build a plant like this every day for the next 10 years it won't be enough. That is how big the world oil peak problem is. We do not have a workable energy policy in place.
Has anyone even heard any of the damn pollies even dicusssing it seriously?
The most believable estimate I have is that world oil production will peak in 2007 and this is an optimistic estimate taking into consideration every oil production project on the planet.
Hope your paying duty on your fuel!
In some jurisdictions, it's likely that use of straight vegetable oil in motor vehicles isn't taxed, on purpose, to promote the use of renewable energy. What are the laws that affect SVO use in US, UK, NZ, AU, CA, or other developed English-speaking countries?
Have you ever seen a biodiesel vehicle in operation? White smoke pumping out.
I have followed my friend who has a biodiesel burning Dodge/Cummins truck from Nashville, Tn to Dayton, Oh. (among other trips that are 100s of miles) I didn't see any "white smoke".
Have you ever smelled a biodiesel vehicle in operation or at rest? Uhg! What a stench.
The slight smell of french fries maybe, but I like french fries. No worse than any other diesel.
Have you ever driven a biodiesel vehicle? They are a bit quieter than when running on regular diesel but they also lack power compared to when running on regular diesel.
He pulls a huge trailer packed with heavy gear all over the southeast when going to hamfests. It has plenty of power.
--fatboy
The city also runs Natural Gas in it's busses. The air quality in Dallas is better than it used to be, based just on my impression of the way things are.
Bio is the way to go IMO, especially when produced by small time operators. We have so much of the raw materiel that is treated as waste matter (cooking oil), we can kill multiple birds with one or two old water heater processors.
Water vapor is the gaseous form of water. It's fog that's liquid water in suspension in air.
When they said "Put a tiger in your tank" I didn't think they meant it literally.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
If more usable energy comes out of that process than went in, the increase in CO2 in the environment has been reduced.
Wow, and we have violated the laws of themodynamics to boot!
Biodiesel really is amazing!Estimates on what the US price of gasoline would be if it wasn't subsidized by the federal government range from twenty cents to over a dollar per gallon more than the price we see at the pumps. So if you're going to include government subsidies on the side of biodiesel, you also need to include it on the side of regular diesel and gasoline.
Further, if you're doing a truly economic analysis, you have to include external costs. If biodiesel burns cleaner, then you have to include the cost of increased pollution on the side of regular diesel. If producing biodiesel can help remove dependency on foreign oil, then you have to include decreased defense costs. I'm not claiming that biodiesel necessarily does either of these, I'm just pointing out that you need to analyze the big picture rather than just the price at the pumps.
Prion disease might be an in issue if you started ingesting the biofuel. :P
:( :)
On a slightly different note, I wonder what consequences it will have on the utilization of farm animals. Kind of puts a different twist on the idea of horsepower.
I'm going to assume you're trolling. If not I have to ask how did someone as dumb as you get a four digit /. ID? You're giving the rest of us a bad name.
And, fucking *Insightful* moderation? Jeesus...
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Cities like Philadelphia will soon be handing out more parking tickets, in that case. When you run low of that group, you can start on jay-walkers. Think of it: At the same time you get a cheap source of energy, reduce vehicular and pedestrian traffic, and clear the way for urban renewal (fewer people, you see). I like it! Someone call Mayor Street and let him know the good news.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
When I was in UNI I read an artical in Scientific American about a study (out of Texas I think) which stated that a car that got 25 MPG was more efficent fuel wise than the average transit system.
Pay very close attention to those monsters off peak hours. They weigh in the TONNES and they are typically empty. A taxi fleet driving hybreds might both be cheaper and more fuel effcient - especially if driven by a ROBOT like the Johny Cabs in Arnie's movie "Total Recall".
I think we are pretty close to being able to build a transit system like this.
If your looking to for even greater fuel efficiency, try combining bio-diesel with Hydrogen Fuel Injection Hydrogen is produced on board the vehicle and will improve performance and efficiency. Problem is what to either of the do to the manufactures warranty?
Although small, this processing plant in Canada is at least a good step, we need more setups like this.
In the UK, there is a 20p/litre tax relief for biodiesel, but this isn't enough. Even with current oil prices biodiesel is still more expensive. What we need is to completely drop the tax on biodiesel, that way oil companies and others will see a reason to invest. The tax break would also need to be guaranteed for a decent length of time, say 20 years so that investments would pay off.
There are problems with biodiesel. It would require vast tracts of land, and would probably end up using land in the 3rd and developing worlds to meet our needs for fuel. This land may have been better used for local food production. IMHO, this is not a huge problem, as it would provide much needed investment into developing and 3rd world nations, and of course many ppl would be employed to harvest the crops.
Some interesting biodiesel sites:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html
http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/
I wouldn't worry about the Vegans until they finish their Hyperspatial Throughway. So, Don't Panic, OK?
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
If every slaughterhouse in the states sold its leftovers to be processed for biodiesel, that would account for a significant percentage of the fuel needs of the states. Then add in the reprocessing of all the waste oil from deep fryers and greasy spoons and you've covered an even higher percentage of US fuel needs by merely processing what would normally go to a landfill. Then add in processing of surplus crops that the feds currently buys and lets rot in storehouses in biodiesel. Then add in crops that are grown specifically for biodiesel. That all starts to add up.
And if it's not enough? Well, if everyone's running diesel anyway, you can also make diesel fuel from coal.
Montreal is known for its smoked meats. Pate is made from livers. Livers are an innard. Steak and Kidney pie is made from innards. So is blood sausage.
Sausages are made from guts. Well - sausage casings are! When you eat polish sausage and breakfast sausage then you are eating innards.
Gutz Gutz - GLORIOUS GTUZ!!! Please pass another sausage?
Yes I have.
I've been running my car on biodiesel for more than 5 years now.
I have never had any problems with it and I can recommend it whole-heartedly to everyone.
It's an Audi A4 1.9 TDI which is fully certified on biodiesel, I've been running it for more than 300.000 km now.
Besides giving me the feeling of running an 'environmentally friendly'' car it also saved me a lot of money on my gas bills.
Honestly, I pity anyone that's still driving a 'gasoline car' - Poor guys..
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
Could solar panels on every home/business save us?
I happen to think there is a flaw in your statement, not a major one, just an assumptive mistake.
it's one of two things, either, carbon going into the ground is indeed part of the "carbon cycle of the planet". (only on a grander scale than most think about) or the error lies in think that no tree 'burned down' was not destined for the 'greater carbon cycle' and burning it steals the carbon from becoming fossil fuels.
perhaps the day will come when beings with intelligence will realize the real disruption to the carbon cycle was in not allowing more of it to be laid to deep rest through natural means....
My presumption has always been that WE WILL make this planet unihabitable, my hope has been that we would be able to advance ourselves enough that we can spore off the planet before the point of no return eliminates the species. Hopefully in multiple directions
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
A couple of years ago, a company called Changing World Technologies was all the news. They had perfected a process for converting garbage to oil. There was an article in Discovery magazine. They built a plant to convert turkey guts and had plans to roll out the technology to several more plants. It really hasn't moved forward a lot. I presume they are having some kind of trouble. www.changingworldtech.com
One of the statistics that Changing World cited was that if you could convert all the agricultural WASTE in the US to oil, that would do away with the need to import oil. If that statistic is true, then what Rothsay has done is really important. If their process is actually economical then they have beaten Changing World to the prize.
The other thing not to be ignored is that the Changing World process, and this one too presumably, destroys the prions that cause mad cow disease. This process may take animal carcasses out of the livestock feed chain by providing an alternate market for slaughterhouse refuse and dead stock.
On the other hand, their business stinks, literally, and I don't expect that to change. Anyway, I hope they succeed.
If you meant drilled oil, perhaps yes, it could peak in 2007. I don't think so, but it could be.
But there are projects to unlock the oil sands in Canada, they'll be online and working soon, and they'll certainly take up the slack for any drop in liquid crude pumping.
I'm not nearly as concerned about "peak oil" as I am about the precipitous rise in use. Yes, we're bad in the US, buying so many SUVs we don't get any better gas mileage than we did in the 70s. But the real issue is so many countries that are increasing their oil use many times for cars and power generation (article said Indonesia became an importer this year for example.
If the rate of oil use continues to rise rapidly, it doesn't matter how much we drill, we can drill it faster and faster, and we'll just bring the true date of peak oil sooner.
The 3rd world is going to increase their industrialization, so energy use will rise. We have to increase our energy efficiency to minimize the problems, and find alternate sources (including nuclear) also.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Yes, we do need to pay our fair share of road usage. In the UK (the nation I was refering to), this is called the Road Tax (Source), although for newer cars this is based upon CO2 emmisions. I agree, it should be the same and should also be quite a bit lower, with the extra being made up by an increase in fuel tax. That way ppl might think twice about making a journey, as the more you drive the more it costs.
Forget the environmental wackos, has PETA caught wind of this? PETA vs. The Heartland Institute....
They're not the first to do this.. there's a product called Petrel made from seabirds. The same firm also makes fuel from surplus wine and other renewal sources, in addition to a range of other interesting fuels.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Sounds like the hip-hop way to say mad cow disease -- "mad cow diesel"
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
Some of the people who contracted Mad Cow disease were vegetarians who got it from using fertilizer that (unknown to them) contained cow offal. There's no question that if a prion gets blasted out of someone's tailpipe, it will wind up in the food chain. The prion that causes Mad Cow is extremely difficult to destroy - it's a protein molecule, not a living organism. Even heat as high as 360C will not break it down, and traditional chemical sterilization doesn't work. I would be extremely worried about using any animals known to carry prion brain wasting disease (cow, deer, humans).
Horses are probably OK.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
I recently splurged and bought a VW Jetta TDI simply because the highway mileage is so good (~50 mpg) and it can run at least partially on biodiesel. My old newspaper The Wisconsinite ran a story on biodiesel (b.d.) in 2004, and I've been excited about it ever since. My Jetta seems to run a little more smoothly with it, and it doesn't smell bad in cold weather like dino diesel does.
The problem currently I have with it is trying to find it in great quantities. I fill up at a CENEX agricultural co-op gas station. They have B2, which is 98% dino diesel, 2% bio. It's still mostly dino diesel, of course, which annoys me. But it's better than nothing. What I really want is B20, which is 20% bio, 80% dino. And during the summer, I want to try progressively higher ratios of bio to dino diesel. Volkswagen officially approves using B5. I'm pretty sure then it can take a higher grade biodiesel.
The problem of availability will be overcome in good time. There are b.d. production centers opening up around the country, everywhere from Oklahoma to Nevada, and one coming soon near Madison, Wisconsin (which is near to me). I'm contemplating opening a biodiesel fueling station in Milwaukee. Anyone interested? I regularly post about b.d./alt.energy on my blog; you can easily reach me through there.
-- haaz.
mmmm not french fries, nope tasty mad Cow fuel mmmmmm
16,000 light trucks or 22,000 cars
How much is this in burning Libraries of Congress?
White Smoke (often bluish in tint) is generally caused by burning oil leaking past piston rings and into the combustion chamber. A blown head gasket can cause something similar as coolant is now being introduced. Both of the problems are major and will require an engine rebuild. In the mean time, installing a sparkplug with "hotter" rating will keep the engine running smoothly. Such engines in poor conditions are notorious for sparkplug fouling.
I suppose in theory, it can be caused by too rich of a bio-fuel/air ratio mixture or poorly processed bio-fuels
FYI, I'm an auto mechanic by trade.
Life is not for the lazy.
The article states that the plant processes animal remains that come from a rendering plant, having already been cooked down to glop. The question this raises is simply, does the analysis take into account the energy requirement of the rendering plant?
The promotion of "gasahol" here in the US turned out in fact to be a scam. The alcohol (distilled from corn) that we add to our gasoline actually REQUIRES MORE PETROLEUM to run the farm machinery and the stills than the energy content it brings to your tank. When this was revealed some years ago, suddenly gasoline with alcohol added was re-branded "oxegenated fuel" and touted as an anti-pollution measure. In reality, the legal mandate for its use is largely the result of intense lobbying by agri-business (in particular, Archer Daniels Midland) to rake in the subsidies the government pays to corn producers.
About the only place in the world where the use of biofuel in vehicles has been a net energy gain is Brazil, where they produce large quantities of ethanol from cane sugar, using the stalks as boiler fuel for the distillation. (A "rum-based economy", if you will...) This is however far less than ideal, since the distilleries generate quite a bit of pollution and the whole enterprise contributes to destruction of the Amazon rain forest to obtain more arable land.
Personally, I think you look like a whining idiot. Whining about a post without imparting any knowledge is just another form of trolling.
From TFA: "At the Ville Ste. Catherine plant, the animal and fat waste arrives from a rendering plant as a thick brown liquid -- with a gut-wrenchingly rancid smell. It leaves as an almost odorless clear yellow fuel"
I'm all for this sort of thing, just not within olfactory distance of my house (or my commute, or my work, etc).
Probably selfish, I know. But I already have a Conagra "chicken factory" about 3 miles away, and with just the right wind (and factory) conditions, I get a whiff of the wonderful work they do there. This plant would probably smell an order of mag worse!
The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race. - Don Marquis (1878-1937)
Road damage increases quickly with vehicle weight; roughly with the fourth power in the most well known study (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHTO_Road_Test). Light cars cause only trivial damage compared to trucks.
Now that I know what bio-diesel is, I don't support it. I went vegetarian because I didn't like how people treat animals and because I don't want animals to die just so I can live my life. I won't support bio-diesel for the same reasons. In fact, I don't know which seems less personally moral to me: regular gas, or bio-diesel.
Yeah I had to respond to this. I drove an 85 300D for quite a long time, and loved it. The reason you see so many crappy ones is that they run damn near forever even without basic maintenance (periodic valve adjustments, injector cleaning, not just changing the oil and praying). I kept mine maintained and it ran like a top. Yeah it clattered like a diesel but it barely smoked, it got at the most 25mpg on the highway (which for a 3500 lb car going 80mph with the AC on and full of luggage isn't bad) and I put 300,000 miles on it before I sold it. I think I saved the equivalent of at least one car in the scrapyard which has to count for something towards the environment. Add to that the advantages of a large, roomy, comfortable, cargo-carrying, safe automobile that was very easy and generally inexpensive to maintain myself and never, ever left me stranded. While I like the new TDIs the quality of an old, well-maintained (key words here) MB is hard to beat.
12:50 - press return.
S-Oil NT-Green, it's made of people!
Why hasn't the rest of the world caught up?
While Bio-diesel is a great product in many ways (foreign oil / environment / etc) and in some ways better than regualar diesel (more power at the crackshaft) it does require that you change or clean the fuel filters every few days / weeks even when a 20% blend is used. Our tractors (Deere mostly) used to have their filters changed only every few months. Notheless, it's very promising and the best part about using the stuff is that the exhaust that blows back in your face smells like french fries!
why is it bad in modern diesel engines? what's the difference?
Biodeisel Fuel - A Moral Crisis
(Note: This article does not reflect how I, the author, percieve environmental activists as a whole in any way, shape, or form. If any of this offends you, that's not my problem.)
A young gentleman whom we shall refer to as Generic Hippie Treehugger wishes to utilize a clean, efficient, environmentally friendly biodeisel fuel in his automobile. That's great. Biodeisel's an excellent idea, and it'd seem our good friend G.H.T. is on the right track, protecting his planet and supporting the further development of biodeisel fuels by purchasing them and advocating them to his peers.
But wait! G.H.T. is also a vegetarian, which means he refuses to consume any meat or meat byproducts. He also just discovered after the fact that a good portion of his biodeisel fuel is being produced from unused animal parts! Now he has to choose. Should he continue to use petroleum based fuels, further damaging an already withered global ecosystem, or should he utilize this new, clean fuel, at the cost of hundreds of animal lives?
The solution?
RIDE A BICYCLE, YOU CLOD.
I can see some of the more overzealous PETA folks standing on top of biodeisel powered SUV's shrieking at the top of their lungs, "IT'S PEOPLE! ETHANOL BASED BIODEISEL FUEL IS PEOPLE!!!" You know, like that'd make the animals that filled their gas tanks any less dead. That, or I can see a lot of them suddenly realizing where their revolutionary new environmentally friendly fuel comes from, having a brief personal crisis, and then driving straight to McDonalds in their new eco-friendly cars and ordering ten triple cheeseburgers at the drive-through. It's madness, I tell you, madness. Think of all the mental and emotional distress this will cause all of the oversensitive animal-rights zealots! THINK OF THE CARNAGE! Getting attacked for even wearing faux fur that looks real is bad enough, I don't need these people throwing blood on my car.
In all seriousness, though, if the animal parts weren't being consumed anyway, then that's turning waste into gold, or at least gas. The same thing goes for plants, and solid waste, too. This is an excellent idea, turning stuff that would just wind up in a landfill or, worse yet, in the food at MCL into a usable fuel product. If effective, highly efficient methods of turning waste byproducts from agriculture and food production into fuel are developed, and this information is made widely available - and entrepreneurs willing to take advantage of it seize the opportunity - this could make a huge difference not only in our environment, but also in our economy, granted this stuff is actually cheaper than gasoline. I'm behind this 100%, and hopefully, I'll live to see it in a gas station here at home one of these days.
The only thing that concerns me is that the methane emissions of facilities producing biodeisel may get out of hand if left unchecked. Methane is a pretty nasty greenhouse gas, too. Sure, getting rid of a lot of our carbon dioxide would be dandy, but what's the point if it's just being replaced with methane? I'm sure that's already been taken into consideration, though, considering that any methane that escapes is wasted fuel. (And thus, wasted money.) So... really, I can't see anything wrong with this. You make food and fuel all at once. All it needs to do now is clean my water. Who wants to try extracting this stuff from sewage?
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The notion that ethanol production is an energy loss stems from the eroneous conclusions of David Pimenthal, a Corenell university insect scientist. He should have stuck with his bugs.
Making fuel from corn however is not nearly as good an idea as making it from plants such as hemp.
Its PEOPLE, ITS PEOPLE !
I mean, the rendering plant is going to be there anyway. I thought you only include things that exist specifically to create the fuel you are after. If I live next to an office building with a big ventalation port, and I put a little windmill in front of that vent to power my Playstation, my costs are the windmill and the wires. I don't include the office building because it's already there anyway. From the POV of my system, it's a natural resource. ;-)
Good thing Thermal Depolymerization uses temperatures in excess of 600C.
"This is a pain in the ass. I have calcium deposits."
"Where?"
"My engine."
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Biodiesel is just another in a long line proposed new energy sources that will never scale to point of true usefulness. I came of age during the "Energy Crisis" of '78-85 and I have see more of these boutique energy sources come and go than I can count.
Its the same pattern every time. Its the same pattern every time: Super-intellegent, (usually young) techies turning out nifty projects in their garages and grad schools, ernest politicians voting money for demo projects, special interest grubby for subisdies, much media fan fare and then nothing. I remember when bio-methane and ethanol were going to save the world to.
Biofuels will always be like solar power, useful in a handful of unique environments but largely irrelevant otherwise. The real harm done by the fads is that they distract people from the real choices that much be made. Replacing a few coal and natural gas powered power plants with a nuke would reduce CO2 emissions more than all the biodiesel that will ever be produced.
People need to stop fuzting and get serious.
it was an original thought.. formed when I read that post. ....
some people have those. it's a different thought- perhaps it's not a contributor to warming, but rather a detractor to destined cooling/balnce
Yes, if I burn a tree, I only release carbon that was in the atmosphere over the last few (20-100) years... but perhaps the natural geologic process expected that carbon to be subsumed under the planet. To continue a cycle of removal from the atmosphere/temperature. Perhaps if it stayed bound up in the organic matter, it would not be in the atmosphere.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
If more usable energy comes out of that process than went in, the increase in CO2 in the environment has been reduced.
You are not thinking clearly. Petroleum pumped from the ground is already chemically reduced (in the oxidation/reduction sense) by nature. So it is useful to us on the oxygen rich surface where we can use this chemical energy through burning. To reduce animal products to useful hydrocarbons takes similar energy input. That energy input has to come from somewhere, probably from a CO2 belching coal fired electric plant, rather than the natural source of anoxic burial at depth. It may make you feel good to produce hydrocarbons from animal waste, but we would all be better off if they were pumped from the ground. We must drill ANWR!
an ill wind that blows no good
The short answer is that if combined with insulation and good design - YES. The cost at the moment will eb abvout $150,000 per house using data from the "solar decathalon" competition. http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar_decathlon/
Some of the people who contracted Mad Cow disease were vegetarians who got it from using fertilizer that (unknown to them) contained cow offal.
This is a very sensational claim. Do you have a link? Do you even know that between 1996 and 2005 only 155 people in UK have been diagnosed with this disease? Its probably less than 200 people worldwide with this infection. I think this vegetarian fertilizer connection would have made major headlines. Sounds to me like you are just perpetuation a myth.
http://www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/vcjdqmar05.htm
Surur
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
bio-diesel is a nice small scale(ie city to at most county only) solution and will only work as long as some semblance of the current oil/gas based economy stays intact. in other words i would like to see them try to keep the plant up and running with no input at all from any facet of the current oil based economy before it's viable at all.
this is a sad fact of all of the alternative energy sources, that they can't be made and maintained without the current underlying oil economy in place to provide either the raw input of materials(directly or indirectly) or oil based products that are needed to maintain said alternatives.
Brazil already has two biodiesel plants in production.
What's the logic here? Producing more fuel won't be removing any vehicle from the roads! We need less vehicles, not more fuel.
The real problem is that the U.S. Government has subsidized petro-oil since the mid-70's. See John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hitman. After reading the book, I've come to believe that the federal government has been hijacked by thugs who use it to maximize their own profits (Haliburton getting no-bid contracts to clean up New Orleans).
If oil prices had stayed high/volatile after the 70's oil embargos, economic development in the U.S. would've been totally different. We certainly wouldn't have seen the mass proliferation of SUVs and suburban sprawl with gas at $2.50/gallon in the late 90's (I distinctly remember paying $.89/gallon in 1999).
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
The Great Depression was a product of the free market. Our entire way of life is dependent upon oil in ways that are difficult to realize even with the most comprehensive economic models. And when oil goes, our standard of living will suffer in one way or another.
It's that simple. Oil is the single most massive, easily obtained energy resource humans have ever found. And we've used it all in a single century. We've used it to fly across the globe for frivilous reasons, to drive around in tank-like vehicles, and to build armies to wreak destruction on each other. We've used it to create a disposable society, and to fill our landfills with worthless trinkets and shiny objects that will never decompose. We've used it to fill the air with pollutants that may cause global climate change, to fill the world with people living in places that could otherwise not sustain them, and, worst of all, to fill the hearts of the next generation with a false hope of the permanance and continuance of human progress.
As for capitalism saving the day, it hasn't yet. Oil companies don't charge a realistic market rate for their products. By and large, they don't take the profits and invest them in alternatives. I'm reminded of the news story prior to Y2K that showed a successful computer programmer purchasing a farm and horses because he had no faith in the robustness of the new economy. That's what I imagine oil executives doing. Only, instead of buying farms, I imagine them buying huge houses on tiny lots in the suburbs that require $500/mo heating bills. I imagine them building statues that read "look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
In order for peanuts to be an economically viable biodiesel fuel, the energy produced by biodiesel use has to be greater than the energy consumed to make the biodiesel. It also needs to have high enough yields to supply the energy needs of a voracious country like the U.S. (Lets not even consider a shortage of farmland available for FOOD.) While not all farming methods use petrofertilizers, the question remains: what are the yields from alternative fertilized fields? And what the heck would you use? How much nitrogren can be produced by it? How does it compare to the volume produced using petrochemicals? Can that volume sustain our current scale of COMMERCIAL agriculture? Commercial farming is not chucking a couple of seed into the field and spraying your human waste all over the field. Yields from Mom & Pop farming two hundred years ago SUCKED. It was adequate because there were a lot less humans requiring foodstuffs two hundred years ago. I'm not saying biodiesel is not an option for near future vehicle fuel. I'm saying its a much more complex problem from an industrial point of view, and the dollar is king. If you can't meet production volume and make it break even in production costs, its not going to happen.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The real bitch is the drop in Energy Profit Ratio.
Oil has historically required one barrel of oil, to extract thirty, although this decreases as the well becomes emptied. Biofuels, as noted elsewhere on this thread, have an EPR more like 1:3. The alternative fossil sources such as oil shale are all unproven technologies, but none have a projected EPR above 5.
The western economy depends on growth. How fast do you think it will continue to grow when energy costs 10 times as much? We are dependant on fossil fuels as energy and feedstock for heat, light, food, transport, plastics, pharamaceuticals, chemicals.
It doesn't take a sudden absence of fuel. A mere decline in the supply, particularly at a time when demand is set to rise sharply with the growth of the Chinese economy and others, should be sufficient to precipitate a recession of epic proportions.
It takes 10 calories of oil to produce every calorie of food the US consumes. I'd imagine all our belts will be tightening when we have less than one tenth (1:3 = 2 spare barrels instead of 29 spare) of the energy to devote to lining our bellies.
"It should be easy to see farmland usage would need to be increased by 1-2 orders of magnitude to make a complete replacement."
This is obviously a large-scale problem. But is it necessarily a difficult one? Surely there are enormous swaths of unused land now that could be utilized for growing soy, peanuts or corn for the purposes of making fuel. Just about the entire crop could be converted with the right engineering - turn oils into biodiesel and turn cellulose into ethanol.
One of my biggest concerns is what we're going to do about aviation. There are no fuel sources I can think of that have the energy density and storability of petroleum-based stuff.
+++ATH0
what about 'my rights online'?
"European countries generally have more room to cut taxes than North American countries do."
::shrug::
And they don't. Cut them, I mean. A friend of mine lives in the UK and has told me stories about how you can go to jail for using biodiesel you make yourself because it isn't subject to the same exorbitant taxes their petrofuels are.
What apparently goes right over Parliament's heads is that they have a huge opportunity to lead the way in alternative fuels technology, but I guess they just don't think their constituents are interested. Maybe they aren't.
+++ATH0
quite informative
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
If you add current US ethanol plants + plants underconstruction, the US has more ethanol than Brazil (though Brazil is building more plants too, so this isn't meaningful. I have no idea how many they are building so I can't give you those numbers)
Minnesota has had all gasoline as E10 for nearly 10 years, and other states are putting the same into place. (Hawaii and Montana that I know of). In Iowa make sure you can buy pure gas, but it would be stupid because everyone else buys E10, and thus the pure gas may have been sitting in the tank long enough to go bad. Several other midwestern states have similar results.
Minnesota turns 40% of their corn crop into ethanol for fuel use, and Iowa even more. (but Iowa has more corn, so as a percentage they do less)
I've been looking for ethanol or biodiesel companies to invest in because it seems like a good idea. So far I have not found any, but I'm picky.
There are more than two choices. More than black and white, or left and right. I think you refer to these ideas in a condescending tone as pluralism, or relativism.
Fucking idiot. Communism is not the same threat as environmentalism. The masses will never go for living in teepees and mud huts, but they wouldn't mind clean lakes and streams and a pretty landscape just outside their suburbs. Me? I hate catch and release. I want to eat fish again, comrade. I'll join their side for my own ends.
Don't you have some corporate sponsored "grassroots" thing to be doing? Maybe updating your anti mainstream media blog with the latest news from the wire? organizing a counterprotest protest?
I've heard many politicians talk about it. Most of them in the US midwest, or Brazil. Guess which areas of the world have more farming capacity than markets and see bio-fuel as a way to help farmers?
A small number from Washington (state), and a few other areas are also interested. Some locals are more into this type of thing than others, and if enough are interested in the area the politicians becomes interested to, to get that vote.
Come to the of it, George Bush is interested. He knows the situation. Why do you think he pushes hydrogen? If it is as easy a solution as the optimists say, it will solve the whole problem just as peak oil is really hurting things.
In order for peanuts to be an economically viable biodiesel fuel, the energy produced by biodiesel use has to be greater than the energy consumed to make the biodiesel.
EROEI (energy return) for biodiesel production through soybeans is currently roughly 3.2 to 1 according to a widely cited U.S. Department of Energy study, and it has nowhere to go but up as new vegetables are experimented with and the process is refined. Particularly, soy is thought to be far from ideal for producing biodiesel.
(Lets not even consider a shortage of farmland available for FOOD.)
The hunger problem isn't a food production problem as much as a distribution problem, as warlords and dictators manipulate food supply to control the people on their land. (Analogy is to air in Total Recall.) Besides, it's still possible to make biodiesel from used vegetable oils, letting McDonald's customers subsidize the oil that goes into biodiesel (and into the tank of diesel vehicles whose engines have been modded to run on straight vegetable oil).
the dollar is king.
You must mean "the euro dollar is king," as look at how much the dollar has fallen over the past five years.
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As a biodiesel user and vegetarian I am frikin TORN! ;) Does the reduction in greenhouse gases outweigh the negative of grinding up animals for fuel?
;)
Hmmm... well those animals would have been producing methane and carbon dioxide - and using them for fuel reduces greenhouse gasses even further... twice the reduction in CO2 emissions, hmmm tempting. Uhhh... well... whatever the carnies can use it and I'll stick to SME (soy methyl esters)
Soylent Green is PEOPLE!
One factory clones the bio matter in bulk quantities , pumps it to the bio diesel plant next door.
Maybe with some genetic manipulation, a more efficient organic substance can be used.
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I've searched this entire discussion for the word "Jatropha"
Google will point to promise this plant offers.
A simple Google search will reveal that I am correct that the US federal government does subsidize the production of gasoline. The largest methods are (1) tax credits for oil exploration and development and (2) direct subsidies for oil based exports and foreign production of oil. Other subsidies also exist such as leasing federal land to oil companies for less than the lease of such land is worth and cleaning up oil spills and fining the companies that caused them at less than the price of clean up. From an economic perspective one can also argue that the national oil reserve is effectively a subsidy by artificially increasing demand which shifts the demand curve upward which results in higher prices for all consumers. One can also argue that a significant number of US military campaigns take place only because the US wants to buy oil from certain producers.
Without the last two considerations, estimates are that US federal subsidies amount to at least 22 cents per gallon at the pump. With the last two considerations, estimates end up being that subsidies end up over a dollar per gallon at the pump. Federal gasoline tax is presently less than twenty cents per gallon and many uses of gasoline are exempt from federal taxation (as you yourself mentioned). Hence, the undisputed federal subsidies for oil production is higher than the federal gas tax. When one adds the highest state gasoline taxes (just over thirty cents per gallon in some states) the price at the pump may still be less than federal subsidies alone.
How is the National Renderer's Association (my source for the figure of the amount of animal waste produced each year) and Gas Price Watch (my source for federal and state gas tax numbers) biased?
The environmentalist wacko people are the ones arguing that the true price of gasoline in the US is fifteen bucks a gallon. I did not source any of those groups, nor did I use any numbers from their web pages.
This is a good start for canada, but you should know about whats happening here; /. story last week a group of tokyo researchers have found a way to crack the biodiesel out of the plant esthers without using industrial Lye, they use an corn derived acid that they claim will cost 1/10th to 1/50th of the present methods. Not to sound corny(bad pun) but this industry is poised to do an end run break out & if we're not careful and actually amount to something significant. Personally , I hope it does!
For instance in North Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota there are plants under construction that will each have the capacity to produce 50 million gallons of biodiesel per year. Along with plans to build or feasibility studies going on in Missourri, Mississippi, South Carolina and North Carolina. Add to that the State of Minnesotas mandate that all state vehicles must use bidiesel or gasahol blends where possible. Yeah it is only a drop in the bucket, but it is a start. Also during the course of the last year there were some significant cost and production improvements . At Penn States AG school, they found a better way to crack the chemicals that enhnaces the output by 25% and from a
I finally got my delorean running last night, and as i lay in bed fantasising about how much fun im going to have cruising around in it, i realised the planet is about to run out of petrol.
since the DMC has an underpowered 140hp V6 2.8 Peugeot/Renault/Volvo engine in it anyway, i wonder whether there is a new-fangled biodiesel turbo that i could replace it with. i dont imagine its a drag and drop affair since this is a conversion from petrol to diesel, although it is fuel injected so maybe the fuel circulation system would still work.
it would be cool if it went fast and saved the planet simultaneously
ps. the PRV wont run on banana skins and beer cans, and certainly not plutonium. it does run on 18 month old stale petrol though!