Maybe Rudolf Diesel had it right

hr

My solar PV buddy has his pickup and his wifes old Mercedes up on the fat, now.

Fill er up with the McOil 200 please, and check the tires.

Maybe the exhaust smelly would increase fast food sales, also.

hot rod

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Geno_15

diesel had it right

and they killed him for it, his engine was designed to run on veggie oil, specifically soy, hemp, etc. The oil co's had a different idea.

Imagine if we convetd all the fat fryer oil in this country to biodiesel and put farmers back tp work growing hemp and soy and corn for bio diesel and bio fuel, we could tell the Saudi's what to do with the price of crude, but that wouldn't sit well with the Saudi's bestest friends,.........
The Bush's.

Boiler Guy

We have

two "blended fuel" plants operating in my area, with a potential of 4 more in the works. Most users, currently primarily farmers and local trucks, say it works well for them. Why could this not work for oil burners; especially waste oil units?

Ranger

Rudy...

....I thought "Rudy" met his untimely end while working on one of the first diesel tugs???....hum....

joel boucher

boilers

It can work on boilers Brookhaven has done some tests and there are folks using it in thier homes , but on a limited bassis it's tough to get. idon't know of any oil company near me that delivers it and no way am i picking it up in 5 gallon jugs to fill two 330 tanks!

jp_2

Mc diesels

well its kind of a good idea but not practical on a large scale.maybe local pockets.

next time you're eating Mc fries take a look at the truck delivering Mc oil compared to the truck delivery at the gas station across the street, big difference. we have 4 fast food places and 8 gas stations in town.

I'm not fond of seeing increased soil depletion and ground water pollution due do increase farm production just to make fuel! leave the farmers to feed us. look for fuel elsewhere, PV's, windgens, electric cars.

it would be better for farmers to look into alternative productions, organic produce, etc. local co-op store sells buffalo hamburg for $6.00/lbs.

I think it would be great to see buffalo, elf, moose steaks in the store.

hemp is a good idea.

Constantin

Well, yes and no?

The reason we see small trucks delivering oil to eating establishments is that there isn't great demand. I imagine that the McCains of the world get Veggie oil by the train car load. Plus, we have to weigh all the costs and benefits of our energy choices...

For example, not wanting to grow rapseed, sunflowers, corn for oil is fine and dandy, but unless we want to entice/force people to change their living habits, how do we re-create the energy density of extant fuels? The reason that gasoline/diesel/kerosene remain as popular as they are is that no other fuel comes close to providing the range that the two do.

Brazil tried Ethanol, and while it preserved some foreign exchange, the experiment has been widely characterized as a failure because oil prices did not increase the way that the Brazilians thought they would.

Ultimately, the only way forward is conservation. You can switch fuels all you want, but unless fusion reactors become a reality, there is a limited amount of fuel that can be harvested via the sun, the soil, etc.

BTW, I have heard that while the current Lye/Methanol tranformation process for waste fryer oil is producing the stuff for less than market prices, achieving the same thing via virgin oils will be around $2/gallon. In other words, it's doable and much more attainable than the Hydrogen economy. Yet, very little federal money seems to be going towards the establishment of such facilities, while funding Hydrogen research continues...

I wish the government could better address the current market deficiencies related to people not electing to heat, insulate, and maintain their homes efficiently. However, that is a whole other can of worms including writing codes well, having them enforced properly, etc. Not in my lifetime, I imagine, as there are too many interests aligned against it.

jp_2

U R missing the point.

I was talking about used frier oil.

U.S. corn oil production (October/September) recovered in 2002/03 to a record high 2.6 billion pounds....

take 7.7lbs per gal corn oil, thats 338 million gal/yr. if you converted all U.S. production of corn to oil in one year.

Oil Consumption (2002E): 19.7 million bbl/d
Net Oil Imports (2002E): 10.4 million bbl/d

I think a barrel is 40 gallons?
thats 788million gal/day

338 million gallons a YEAR corn oil to 788 million gallons per DAY crude oil. see the difference

so the entire years production of corn, convert into oil wouldn't last one day.

thats the point I was trying to make. so are you telling me the farmers could make up this difference?

I think we should become independant but theres a heck of a long way to go.

Constantin

Interesting...

I had no idea that oil imports were that high. A barrel is 55 gallons, BTW, so that makes life that much more difficult. If we were to simply displace imports, that's 550M Gallons/day of oil, which seems quite reasonable (2 gal/citizen or ~4 if you take totals).

If we take a look at current renewable oil production, it is quite low, as you point out. If we add all the sunflower oil, that's another day of fuel... quite a wake-up call, I didn't know it was this bad. The scale of the problem is just starting to sink in...

Lurker_2

re

An oil barrel is 40 or so gallons, just a nomenclature, they don't use barrels anymore.

"today" there is no capacity for veg oil, but there very well could be. You picked out veg oil, but how about booze? All grain alcohol baby. Hell, I have friends that drink more in a day than they put in their car

I had read some years ago that using best technology, and assuming no waste or spoilage, Kansas could feed the world.
Growing corn for oil/alcohol is almost a zero loss game. By that measure, oklahoma could be the next saudi arabia....

jp_2

42 gal BTW

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html

bicycles, horses and dogsleds!

jp_2

42 gal btw

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html

bicycles,horses and dogsleds!

Geno_15

Diesel was found floating

in the English Channel, he mysteriously fell off a ship. I believe it was originally listed as suicide but that changed, he was having problems with the Germans and English not to mention big oil, the Germans wanted diesels for their subs in WW1 and he wanted nothing to do with them. In the end all got what they wanted and he was dead.

Constantin

Thanks for the correction, and the link..

... it's certainly an eye opener. If the page is correct, as of Jan 1, 2003 we had 22,700 million barrels of proven oil reserves in the USA.

Current oil consumption is on the order of 20M barrels a day with 68% going into transportation. At the current rate of consumption, even if we import 50% of the stuff, that's only 5 years of domestic supply left... scary thought! Never mind that the strategic supply is only good for 30 days w/o rationing...

Conservation leads the way, evidently. If we could make US transportation just 10% more efficient, that would translate to 1.35 Million barrels less consumption per day... 500M gallons less per year!

IMO, CAFE standards or gas prices ought to be raised to achieve a 25% efficiency increase. With hybrids this can be achieved easily in towns. Also, there are better ways to keep a truck cab warm at night besides idling engines...

hr

Rent and watch this video

"End of Suburbia" some very interesting takes on the oil situation. Mostly focuses on how are towns and cities will change as oil gets scarce and expensive.

Some claim 60% of the remaining acessible oil lies in the Persian Gulf. Some experts feel the OPEC countries way overestimated the remaining reserves to get their sell quotas up. Who knows? Really interesting watch, however. try it.

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Uni R

Don't forget the French...

Their motives were the same as the Germans. They had his engines in their subs and Diesel was going to see Rover in the UK. France at that time had a very large fleet of subs.

Ken D.

Oil

If Dubya really wanted to do us a favor he would turn our scientists loose to develope an alternative source of energy, We could tell the Mid -East to go scratch. It would be similar in breadth and scope to the Apollo moon project. Think what it would do for our pestige and economy. Unfortunately Dubyas an oilman. Oh, well.

t. tekushan

biodiesel blends etc.

I'm a steam guy and an electronics guy, but I've been driving turbodiesel cars for years.

The beauty of biodiesel (and straight vegetable oil) is the fact that the emissions are virtually nil. But a blend, even of 10-15% has an impact.

The epa is soon mandating a huge reduction in the sulfur content of diesel fuel, and this has a large impact on the lubricity of the fuel. Blending with bio restores the lubricity while reducing pollutants even further. Diesel fuel sold in France is 10% biodiesel for this and other reasons.

Furthermore, modern direct injection diesels are both very powerful and amazingly economical. This gets to the heart of modern diesel power: They use a lot less fuel. I'm imagining how much less fuel we would use if the average fuel economy would double or triple.

Example: The new MB E class diesel sedan, weighing more than 2 tons gets 40mpg and goes 0-60 in 5.9 seconds. Peugeot 407 v-6 turbodiesel sedan has 180 hp, nearly 300 lbs torque and delivers 48 mpg. VW, BMW, Fiat all have similar contenders.

Bio need not preclude petroleum, petroleum need not preclude bio, and economy need not preclude speed, comfort and safety.

All we need is an open mind.

hr

Diesel autos

are making a comeback according to a recent Road and Track piece. VW now has 4 or 5 US diesel models. Jeep is supposed to come out with some retro Willys diesel, maybe some other Daimler Chysler models also. They certainly know diesel Sounds to me that diesels have always been popular across the pond.

Noise and emissions.

My new Super Duty diesel doesn't even have an injector pump! So they tell me Diesel fuel used to be cheaper tha gasoline, now it seems to run 10- 15 more than gas around here.

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RonWHC

A barrel of

oil is 42 gallons. Why? That was the size of old cured herring barrels when we first started transporting the stuff.

JohnWood1

Canadian Oil sands...

There is MORE oil in the canadian oil sands of western canada than there is in saudi arabia......... and it is coming on line as we speak. Do a google search.......... you'll be surprised. I was.

greg_7

Brazil

Has a new generation of ethanol/gas autos being produced and they are selling well.

Christian Egli

Looking for the stinkiest stuff

Diesel, first wanted to build an engine that would burn ground up coal. The idea was brilliant because coal was plentiful in France when he was designing his motor. It also burned good.

But the ashes were not good for lubrication. Engine life was not long. Fuel with some kind of lubricity had to be used. Diesel fuel came in. Note that gasoline has no lubricity and is about the only thing you can't burn in a diesel engine, beyond that, anything will do.

Apparently the French are known to pour their old engine oil down the gas tank of their diesel powered vehicles. It burns good. It makes sense when you think what they pay for fuel over there. I've once read that in the owner's manual of a French car where it said you shouldn't do it, which means... people must be doing it.

Burning coal would be great, because we have the stuff. Burning used cooking oil is OK too, but I believe all the oil that can be economically recuperated is already used in the soap industry. Since soap is more expensive than fuel oil, I don't see a commercial market for road use cooking oil.

Jimmy Gillies

Veggie fuel.

I drive a french diesel van and it doesn't say anything like that in the my manual!! In fact french vans are very, very good.

There is a strong view here in the UK that the world would not be able to grow enough crops to provide a fuel like biodiesel. Hay, we can't grow enough crops to feed the world population, for $&*(??? sake.
Regards.
Jimmy Gillies.

Jimmy Gillies

Yes Hot Rod.

All our vans are deisel and I also have a VW Golf TDI car that's deisel and it's a great wee car, yes the Germans know how to build cars/vans. But the 'petrol head' car drivers, turn their nose up at diesel cars saying ''that's not a real car''. It may have something to do with the great record/history the UK has with racing cars, who knows?

Has anyone tried using cooking oil on oil burners? Most of our oil burners use Kero.

Thanks for reading.
Jimmy Gillies Scotland.

Constantin

Well, also consider...

... how much of EU crops are subsidized up the wazoo, then sold or given away at below world market prices. There are government warehouses chock-a-block full of surplus, yet what do we do with the stuff... in some cases, it's simply burnt or landfilled because even giving it away is expensive once you factor in transportation charges.

Plus, imagine how easy it is as a local African, etc. farmer to compete with free shipments of food from abroad...

My hope is that if renewable fuels can be produced en masse that the need for subsidies to farmers will fall away because their crops will become more valuable. Time will tell.

Constantin

Canadian Sands?

... there are some "minor" differences between Canadian Sands Crude and Saudi Crude... One is extracted via trucks in a giant hole, then separated out via steam and other means, while the other has some wells where the crude is almost sweet enough to fill straight into gas tanks.

The cost of getting at all that crude in Canada is enormous. The people that work the stuff up there have gotten the costs down significantly, but only high market prices make them truely competitive. The current plant produces about 124k barrels a day, the planned expansion will get them up to 500k barrels a day. In other words, considering the scale of the shortfall facing the US within the next 10 years, this is a drop in the bucket...

Boiler Guy

Recycling

of engine oil has been done (and still is, I believe) in highway trucks while they are rolling up and down our highways. From what I understand, a complete oil change occurs over 40,000 miles, at which time all that is required is a filter change. I might not have all the details right, but I know for sure it has been done.

Tony Conner_2

For Anybody...

...old enough to remember the fuel crunch of the 1970's - all kinds of fuel economy measures came out of the woodwork, along with technology that had been sitting dormant, because it wasn't cost-justified until fuel prices rose. There were oil-shale projects in Wyoming, the tar sands in Alberta, WWII German technology for making diesel fuel from coal got pulled out of file boxes that hadn't been opened since the war ended, etc. Humans are actually pretty resourceful and inventive units. Oil won't likely just suddenly STOP being available one particular day at 4:20 PM. If and when it happens, it'll be a gradual thing - and the price will rise with reduced supply. And in step with increased cost, people will start figuring out how to get by with less, or find something else to use. If nothing else, there's enough coal in North America to last for a long, LONG time.