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"Vetrolium" From Agricultural Waste

Posted by kdawson on from the six-gallons-from-a-bushel dept.

junctionvin writes "The company Sustainable Power Corp. claims to have created a form of bio-crude oil from agricultural refuse. They use agro-waste from cracked soy beans, rice and cotton seed hulls, grain sorghum, milo, and jatropha and turn it into bio-crude oil. This crude can then be further refined into everything from gasoline to jet fuel and just about every petrochemical in between. The CEO is quoted: 'Our biggest problem is that we are too good to be true. We can literally replace every gallon of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in the United States using just 12 percent of the waste byproducts in the country.' They also claim that their fuel burns to near 100 percent efficiency." The article doesn't mention what price the "vetrolium" would command in today's market or going forward, except to report the CEO's promise "to one day sell his gasoline for $1 less than the pump price for regular fuel, no matter what the cost. 'Even if it's $2 per gallon, I'll sell mine for $1,"' he said."

4 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. Owner currently involved in a lawsuit... by Kirgin · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2007/sep/28/judge-oks-rivera-fraud-suit/ Yup, do people that get scammed by these people not have access to google? That took me 32 seconds to find.

  2. Re:awesome by hey! · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmmm. An alcohol flame gets plenty hot. Hot enough to melt glass rods if you don't have a bunsen burner handy, so temps can probably reach over 1000 degrees F.

    Alcohol flames burn so clean that they look innocuous. You also can do some impressive stunts that exploit the cooling effect of alcohol evaporation. These seem to have combined to create the myth that alcohol burns cool. Anybody mucking around with alcohol flames for amusement would be well advised not to believe this.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  3. Re:awesome by A+Pancake · · Score: 5, Informative

    Technically speaking the air/fuel charge does not detonate, it deflagrates. In a gasoline engine detonation is a bad thing, and is marked by ping or knock.

  4. Re:snake oil, more like by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You know this is how the Germans survived WWII? Even though they had no

    GTL is looking to be the next "big thing" bio-fuels. Now I'm not saying that this guy has figured out all the hard stuff that is holding big corporations back, but there's a chance.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_to_liquid

    If the cost of diesel fuel goes much higher I might look into buying some from racing stores. Shipping is the killer right now.

    There are a few people running it on the forums and say it's great. 63 Cetane Number, 20% more BTU vs regular D2, etc, etc.