On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Bill Marshall wrote: > What is anyone's opinion of using vegetable-generated fuels? Plants do a WAY > better job of converting sunlight than any solar arrangement. Cars running > on alcohol, diesels running on veg. oil. The existing fuel distribution > infrastructure could remain in place. Last I heard alcohol as a fuel still suffered from serious efficiency problems in distilling -- to the point where cultivation and distilling of alcohol from corn sometimes took more energy than you could get back by burning the fuel. Modern agricultural methods are *highly* energy-intensive. I've never run into similar figures done for biodiesel. Maybe it has better efficiency. Of course, if you can find a way to make fuel out of something that's currently a waste product, that helps the efficiency picture. I suspect for the forseeable future there won't be any one major source of alternate energy, but a bunch of niche ones.
David Brodbeck, N8SRE '82 Diesel Westfalia '94 Honda Civic Si |
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