Anthony, You wrote: Biodiesel made from used vegetable oil is hardly a route to energy independence except for hobbyists. How much used veggie oil is out there anyway, and veggie oil costs money to produce as well. But the money that it costs to produce the vegetable oil that is used in cooking has been spent to produce it for that purpose. You can't add that in again and calculate the cost to "produce" the fuel. You don't have to make biodiesel from WVO to be able to run it in a car. Biodiesel and WVO are two very different things. I don't remember the numbers, but the amount of cooking oil that isn't recycled after it used for cooking still greatly outstrips what is used for WVO. There will be a significant number of "hobbyists" before all the cooking oil is used up. And I don't understand why you chose to use a derisive or dismissive term like "hobbyists" for people whose vehicles are sure operating in a more environmentally useful way than yours or mine. If biodiesel and/or WVO reduced pollution and use of non renewable resources by 10%, that would be 10% we didn't have to worry about and only 90% left to figure out. Most important, you are painting yourself and all of us into a bad corner if you think the whole solution doesn't have to come from one new energy source. The people who sit around and knock or dismiss every attempt at solving the problems certainly aren't very useful. Sam
-- Sam Walters Baltimore, MD 89 Syncro GL, Zetec Inside 85 Westy Weekender 85 Mercedes Benz 300D Turbodiesel - to become veggie oil powered All incoming and outgoing email scanned by automatically updated copy of Norton AntiVirus. |
Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of
Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection
will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!
Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com
The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.
Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.