ME: I have 2 diesels, one Jetta TDi and one Powerstroke. Been driving them for years. Expert, no, but lets just say I'm an especially educated and enthusiastic supporter of BioD. I have put B20 to B100 in both tanks.
Problem is, even if we could produce all the BioD we wanted to for nothing, we will STILL rely on foreign oil. Here's why:
Perochemical products like plastics and lubricants still have not been figured out with alternative sources. Things like plastics (the keyboard you are typing on) can not be made without dino oil.
Where do the lube oil basestocks come from that we use in cars and trucks? Natural gas and dino oil. Even synthetic oils start out as some form of foriegn energy source.
What about the chemicals required to make the tires that all these diesels will drive on? Petro based.
High dino diesel prices are not due to foreign oil, its due to limited production due to modernazation (0 ppm sulfer mandated for 2006) and due to hurricanes. It used to cost 1/2 of unleaded. NOw it's street price rivals premium.
The sick sad truth is that the highest yield oil source for BioD is not cash crops like soy and canola, but ALGAE, read = POND SCUM! 98% water, almost 1% extractable oil, 1% other stuff. Easy to produce and extract. Thing is you need 100,000 acre ponds to make the stuff to make it economically viable.
The advances announced will make it safer and cheaper to produce BioD. I have seen picures of BioD processor accidents with methanol and it looks worse than a crystal meth lab gone kerblewy due to poor methanol handling.
This is not the holy grail, but one small step towards a better environment and easier production.
As far as benefits towards the US farmer: its meaningless. Do you know an individual farmer can not sell to anyone other than the domestic grain elevators? Not even to cross the border to Mexico or Canada. He has a product that he can only sell to a limited number of buyers. As a producer, he CAN NOT sell to foreign countries. Think about what each one of you 'makes,' codes, products and think about the export controls you face. They are insignificant compared to you can ONLY sell to ADM/Cargill/Mosanto/Frito Lay!
On th otherhand, cohnsider that Venezuala, or maybe Columbia just shipped over the first tanker full of BioD derived from Palm oil to Miami. That tanker got bought and the BioD went into the pipeline. No import controls whatsoever. BioD is a product like any other comodoty. The national Soy council was PI$$ED because the Bush administration did not listen to its recomendations to protect BioD years ago. Now we are cought with our pants around our ankles.
So, yeay, it sounds like it's a great advance, but we are not totally there yet.
To the most of you who are shaking fists or pom-poms, what do you drive?
Would YOU drive a diesel? How about a diesel-electric hybrid?
josh tickell (don;t laugh, it's his real name)talked about this in his book From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank. thats 8 years ago! he drove around in a painted mini-winnebago promoting bio/veggie burning waste oil for fuel.
the notion is that algea are about 90% water, and on the order of 5% oils. growing the algea on large shallow ponds is cheap and easy. reduction of the algea into oils is pretty easy with centrfuges. then making it into bio while simple, is very energy intensive, heat it up to react, use nasty chemicals made with lots of energy etc.
the end result was it was very energy intensive to make bioD, to make it economically viable. was, still is.
before you start wining about diesel 'soot,' soot is caused by excessive SULPHER in the fuel. bioD has no sulpher, so huge reductions in emissions. USLD will allegedly be here in a couple of years.
some of us ARE getting 45+ mpg in regular non-hybrid cars using regular diesel, bio, WVO/SVO plant oils. 25+ in 3/4 p/u. what do you drive? are you still driving mommy's SUV?
figures how an out of work rocket scientist instead of a truely green pioneer gets the press and the seed money.
So this security is a $40 million expense with no real benefit for the bank itself.
but you are missing the point here- so what if it costs $40 per person? point is that the bank is not paying that $40M, the customers pay it. the bank passes that on as a value added service. and when they put the reduced teller labor spin on it, they actually make money on it too! and if they screw up and the accounts get compromised, the FDIC covers their asses and they have already made their profits on your money!
i am not sure what your point is? the emission components on the vw are a higher increment, like 8yr, 100k. in fact all cars i think have emisions components covert to that or higher. i think the hybrids are too for same reason.
yeah, my EV batteries sucked. no argument there on all fronts.
what is the cost of replacing the batteries on the prius after they are shot? of maybe one of the boards when it fries? or one of the electric motors-regenerative units? i have heard of $3k to $5k for new batteries. does not cover related electrics.
you are not going to go to pep boys and get a set of batteries for your hybrid either. they are proprietary and the anti-trust thing is yet to be resolved. you are going to be pretty pissed when you find out that your only option is to go to a dealer and the price is fixed! doesn;t matter how much fuel you 'saved' it gets wiped out by the higher intial cost and the cost of batteries.
my 85 1.6 normally aspirated vw has over 200k.. before i sold it. i personally know others who have over 350,000 miles on their VW's with little more than general maintenence. i have always gotten anywhere from 45 to 55 mpg.
my 04 on a bad day gets 45 combined. best ever is 52. nothing fancy here. rock solid, steady. rang of 800 miles plus per tank.
what really humors me is most people who are championing hybrids either 'know someone' or have had one for 50,000 miles. knowing someone doesn't count. 50,000 miles is nothing. i do that in 16-18 months. you car is just getting broken in at that point.
find some hard-core hybrid owners, those with over 150,000 and start looking at the repair and maintenance issues they have had.
hey, i am all for increassing fule economy and lowering emissions. but making hybrids out to be answer is wrong. you are still reliant on resource intensive gasoline and tied to foriegn oil.
it's been well discussed here that a diesel-electric running bio is way better than gas burning hybrid.
yes, i have. 80's ford courier truck converted to complete electric. it was about 10 years ago. range: 20 miles. cost per mile $$$$ granted that was 10 years ago and things change. entire bed was full of batteries. would i do it again, even with todays technology and even future technology: NO!
those of you wishing for 100% electrics are fools: you are only making yourself feel good by transfering the source of pollution to someone else. dirty little secret of power companies- they sell pollution emmisions to each other like commodoties. because you don't see smoke from a tailpipe doesn;t mean energy by nature is a polluting process.
for those wishing for 100% electrics and for you hybrid owners: what do you happens to the batteries when you have to change them. how do you think they get all the nasty chemicals to put in them? what happens when they 'recycle' them?
look at ALL the issues before you champion and blindly trumpet how great a technology is. look at cost of ownership. lifetime on prius batteries is like 7 yr or 120k? i don;t remember the exact number but on that order.
me: i choose to drive a vw TDI. i consistently get 45+ miles to the gallon on #2 rot-gut diesel doing 1/2 city and 1/2 highway commute. and that is with exising technology and a car that costs $5k less than a hybrid. $5k buys me the fitst 100k miles and maintenance... and i ass emissions.
don;t believe me that diesel is the way to go: look at this story previusly covered on/.- 85 mpg+
EPA Supercar
and to those who think that 28-33 mpg is 'efficient- quite sucking on you tailpipes and get soem fresh air!
hmmm, maybe NYT is taking clues from AOL adds?
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
reading this story somehow made me think of the recent aol adds for their accelerator. dumb and dumber-er....it's not really news.
i did read the article, and the company's site. while neither made any attempt at disclosing the history of the idea, they DID present it as this was THEIR ground breaking technilogy and a THEIR monumental advance.
aside from porsche, you also have the epa's supercar hybrid which was also covered here on slashdot. toyota and honda have been at this for how long with gas engine powered hybrid.
i sincerely hope that they succeed, it would be good to see yet another improvement in the fuel efficiency standards.
now, if they only rolled into their marketing the use of biodiesel, say rendered from turkey scraps, or better yet 100% rapeseed oil, then well we will have TRULEY groundbreaking advances.
this is news how? the idea was built and proven over 100 years ago. ferdinand porsche, who was an ENGINE man, did this in like 1900 and won lots of races with his hybrid car. this feat alone put his name on the map beginging his career.
see this this page
I have an aeron at work. they were the first ergo chair, hence their popularity. Frankly, I find them not so comfy. at home i have a steelcase LEAP chair, its REALLY comfortable and looks cool. Steelcase LEAP site" only thing is when you buy, you have to choose everything: fabric, color, armrest style... you get what you pay for, invest wisley. better chairs offer you better adjustability.
There are other chairs as comfy at a cheaper price. If you are shopping for a chair, I have a few tips to offer: 1. because a chair is expensive, it doen;t mean its good. i have seen crappy chairs at the office superstores far more expensive than a good 'designer' chair (aeron, leap, parachute etc...)
2. buddy up with an architect or interior designer. Get their old copies of Contract Interiors or similar trade magazines. Look at the pictures and the reviews. they don;t oftem have LAN type furniture, but use the ideas you see. there is no excuse to have a dumpy shack!
3. buy the said buddy pizza, beer, fifi coffees, whatever. the dirty little secret the a/e design profession has is that the dealers sell to the designers direct at like a 50%-60% discount, its a 'courtesy discount.' if your business card has the word 'engineer' on it, they might have them get the chair/table for you. realize that interior designers often buy the furniture and sell to their clients, its their business so don;t overdo the favor
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is, even if we could produce all the BioD we wanted to for nothing, we will STILL rely on foreign oil. Here's why:
Perochemical products like plastics and lubricants still have not been figured out with alternative sources. Things like plastics (the keyboard you are typing on) can not be made without dino oil.
Where do the lube oil basestocks come from that we use in cars and trucks? Natural gas and dino oil. Even synthetic oils start out as some form of foriegn energy source.
What about the chemicals required to make the tires that all these diesels will drive on? Petro based.
High dino diesel prices are not due to foreign oil, its due to limited production due to modernazation (0 ppm sulfer mandated for 2006) and due to hurricanes. It used to cost 1/2 of unleaded. NOw it's street price rivals premium.
The sick sad truth is that the highest yield oil source for BioD is not cash crops like soy and canola, but ALGAE, read = POND SCUM! 98% water, almost 1% extractable oil, 1% other stuff. Easy to produce and extract. Thing is you need 100,000 acre ponds to make the stuff to make it economically viable.
The advances announced will make it safer and cheaper to produce BioD. I have seen picures of BioD processor accidents with methanol and it looks worse than a crystal meth lab gone kerblewy due to poor methanol handling.
This is not the holy grail, but one small step towards a better environment and easier production.
As far as benefits towards the US farmer: its meaningless. Do you know an individual farmer can not sell to anyone other than the domestic grain elevators? Not even to cross the border to Mexico or Canada. He has a product that he can only sell to a limited number of buyers. As a producer, he CAN NOT sell to foreign countries. Think about what each one of you 'makes,' codes, products and think about the export controls you face. They are insignificant compared to you can ONLY sell to ADM/Cargill/Mosanto/Frito Lay!
On th otherhand, cohnsider that Venezuala, or maybe Columbia just shipped over the first tanker full of BioD derived from Palm oil to Miami. That tanker got bought and the BioD went into the pipeline. No import controls whatsoever. BioD is a product like any other comodoty. The national Soy council was PI$$ED because the Bush administration did not listen to its recomendations to protect BioD years ago. Now we are cought with our pants around our ankles.
So, yeay, it sounds like it's a great advance, but we are not totally there yet.
To the most of you who are shaking fists or pom-poms, what do you drive?
Would YOU drive a diesel? How about a diesel-electric hybrid?
there is nothing new here....
josh tickell (don;t laugh, it's his real name)talked about this in his book From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank. thats 8 years ago!
he drove around in a painted mini-winnebago promoting bio/veggie burning waste oil for fuel.
the notion is that algea are about 90% water, and on the order of 5% oils. growing the algea on large shallow ponds is cheap and easy. reduction of the algea into oils is pretty easy with centrfuges. then making it into bio while simple, is very energy intensive, heat it up to react, use nasty chemicals made with lots of energy etc.
the end result was it was very energy intensive to make bioD, to make it economically viable. was, still is.
you are best off reading more at biodieselamerica.org
before you start wining about diesel 'soot,' soot is caused by excessive SULPHER in the fuel. bioD has no sulpher, so huge reductions in emissions. USLD will allegedly be here in a couple of years.
some of us ARE getting 45+ mpg in regular non-hybrid cars using regular diesel, bio, WVO/SVO plant oils. 25+ in 3/4 p/u. what do you drive? are you still driving mommy's SUV?
figures how an out of work rocket scientist instead of a truely green pioneer gets the press and the seed money.
that's america for you.
but you are missing the point here- so what if it costs $40 per person? point is that the bank is not paying that $40M, the customers pay it. the bank passes that on as a value added service. and when they put the reduced teller labor spin on it, they actually make money on it too! and if they screw up and the accounts get compromised, the FDIC covers their asses and they have already made their profits on your money!
i am not sure what your point is? the emission components on the vw are a higher increment, like 8yr, 100k. in fact all cars i think have emisions components covert to that or higher. i think the hybrids are too for same reason.
yeah, my EV batteries sucked. no argument there on all fronts.
what is the cost of replacing the batteries on the prius after they are shot? of maybe one of the boards when it fries? or one of the electric motors-regenerative units? i have heard of $3k to $5k for new batteries. does not cover related electrics.
you are not going to go to pep boys and get a set of batteries for your hybrid either. they are proprietary and the anti-trust thing is yet to be resolved. you are going to be pretty pissed when you find out that your only option is to go to a dealer and the price is fixed!
doesn;t matter how much fuel you 'saved' it gets wiped out by the higher intial cost and the cost of batteries.
my 85 1.6 normally aspirated vw has over 200k.. before i sold it. i personally know others who have over 350,000 miles on their VW's with little more than general maintenence. i have always gotten anywhere from 45 to 55 mpg.
my 04 on a bad day gets 45 combined. best ever is 52. nothing fancy here. rock solid, steady. rang of 800 miles plus per tank.
what really humors me is most people who are championing hybrids either 'know someone' or have had one for 50,000 miles. knowing someone doesn't count. 50,000 miles is nothing. i do that in 16-18 months. you car is just getting broken in at that point.
find some hard-core hybrid owners, those with over 150,000 and start looking at the repair and maintenance issues they have had.
hey, i am all for increassing fule economy and lowering emissions. but making hybrids out to be answer is wrong. you are still reliant on resource intensive gasoline and tied to foriegn oil.
it's been well discussed here that a diesel-electric running bio is way better than gas burning hybrid.
yes, i have. 80's ford courier truck converted to complete electric. it was about 10 years ago. range: 20 miles. cost per mile $$$$ granted that was 10 years ago and things change. entire bed was full of batteries. would i do it again, even with todays technology and even future technology: NO!
/.-
those of you wishing for 100% electrics are fools: you are only making yourself feel good by transfering the source of pollution to someone else. dirty little secret of power companies- they sell pollution emmisions to each other like commodoties. because you don't see smoke from a tailpipe doesn;t mean energy by nature is a polluting process.
for those wishing for 100% electrics and for you hybrid owners: what do you happens to the batteries when you have to change them. how do you think they get all the nasty chemicals to put in them? what happens when they 'recycle' them?
look at ALL the issues before you champion and blindly trumpet how great a technology is. look at cost of ownership. lifetime on prius batteries is like 7 yr or 120k? i don;t remember the exact number but on that order.
me: i choose to drive a vw TDI. i consistently get 45+ miles to the gallon on #2 rot-gut diesel doing 1/2 city and 1/2 highway commute. and that is with exising technology and a car that costs $5k less than a hybrid. $5k buys me the fitst 100k miles and maintenance... and i ass emissions.
don;t believe me that diesel is the way to go:
look at this story previusly covered on
85 mpg+
EPA Supercar
and to those who think that 28-33 mpg is 'efficient- quite sucking on you tailpipes and get soem fresh air!
reading this story somehow made me think of the recent aol adds for their accelerator. dumb and dumber-er....it's not really news.
i did read the article, and the company's site. while neither made any attempt at disclosing the history of the idea, they DID present it as this was THEIR ground breaking technilogy and a THEIR monumental advance.
aside from porsche, you also have the epa's supercar hybrid which was also covered here on slashdot. toyota and honda have been at this for how long with gas engine powered hybrid.
i sincerely hope that they succeed, it would be good to see yet another improvement in the fuel efficiency standards.
now, if they only rolled into their marketing the use of biodiesel, say rendered from turkey scraps, or better yet 100% rapeseed oil, then well we will have TRULEY groundbreaking advances.
this is news how? the idea was built and proven over 100 years ago. ferdinand porsche, who was an ENGINE man, did this in like 1900 and won lots of races with his hybrid car. this feat alone put his name on the map beginging his career.
see this this page
I have an aeron at work. they were the first ergo chair, hence their popularity. Frankly, I find them not so comfy. at home i have a steelcase LEAP chair, its REALLY comfortable and looks cool.
Steelcase LEAP site" only thing is when you buy, you have to choose everything: fabric, color, armrest style...
you get what you pay for, invest wisley. better chairs offer you better adjustability.
There are other chairs as comfy at a cheaper price. If you are shopping for a chair, I have a few tips to offer:
1. because a chair is expensive, it doen;t mean its good. i have seen crappy chairs at the office superstores far more expensive than a good 'designer' chair (aeron, leap, parachute etc...)
2. buddy up with an architect or interior designer. Get their old copies of Contract Interiors or similar trade magazines. Look at the pictures and the reviews. they don;t oftem have LAN type furniture, but use the ideas you see. there is no excuse to have a dumpy shack!
3. buy the said buddy pizza, beer, fifi coffees, whatever. the dirty little secret the a/e design profession has is that the dealers sell to the designers direct at like a 50%-60% discount, its a 'courtesy discount.' if your business card has the word 'engineer' on it, they might have them get the chair/table for you. realize that interior designers often buy the furniture and sell to their clients, its their business so don;t overdo the favor
good luck