Date:         Fri, 9 Mar 2007 11:19:24 -0600
Reply-To:     Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Subject:      Re: Anybody burning WVO in Illinois?-Fryeday rant
In-Reply-To:  <vanagon%2007030911401687@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
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>

While I can't say that I've studied the situation, I have thought
about it. First off, 200 million vehicles won't be powered by cooking
oil. There isn't enough cooking oil, and there aren't that many
diesel vehicles. And even if there were, cooking oil isn't located
centrally. It has to be collected, which is expensive. What's going
to happen is that the cost of that oil is going to go up, as will the
cost of the french fries will go up (corn doubled in price last year,
and we're not even really using it yet). In checking locally for oil,
I find that some restaurants already have a contract for their oil,
and I can't have it. It's possible that at some point all of them
will have such agreements with someone, but only if diesel vehicles
get more popular and making biodiesel or converting cars to run on
grease becomes less problematic. I think, though, that biodiesel
will, at least for a while, remain far enough outside the mainstream
of officialdom that it will long hold its place as the backyard
alternative energy fuel for vehicles. There will be continuing
sniping at biodiesel-makes by taxing authorities, and a lot will be
said about that in the press, however rare and counterproductive it
remains.

If (when?) the decision turns from "which is the cheapest way to
drive" to "there's no gasoline in the pumps this week," People then
won't worry so much about how much trouble it is to make or how
difficult it is to acquire. To illustrate my point, check out the
trailer-based charcoal gas generators that so often powered vehicles
in postwar europe. Talk about trouble... but they did it to get
around. If there are fuel shortages, getting around will become a
very big deal. Any vehicle for which you can make fuel in a community
would become very valuable, and in fact would probably comandeered to
drive the tax investigators around : ). I'm not saying that it's
going to come to this, or if it does that it would be permanent, but
it's all part of why you might want to be able to make and burn
biodiesel even if it doesn't make great economic sense right not, and
why restaurant-grease fuel will  always be a backyard endeavor.

Ecologically, the french fry solution is good for our old and
inefficient diesels in Vanagons. When you burn petro diesel, you are
adding back to the atmosphere the soot that was removed millions of
years ago when the coal and oil beds were formed from bogs (sorry, if
you think there aren't enough french fries, figure how many dinosaurs
would have had to have lived on earth to create the oil that we
use!). In using biodiesel, you are just returning what was taken out
by the plants last year, so no net gain. You don't want to put any
carbon in the air if you don't have to, but if you have to, it's best
to use last year's carbon.

Jim
> My big question regarding biodiesel is somewhat different. What
> happens when
> we run out of French Fries? Seriously, has anyone stopped to
> consider the
> ecological, etc., impact of running not just a few thousand but 200
> million
> + vehicles on used cooking oil? I haven't really studied the
> situation, but
> it does seem like a problem.
>