Most people have heard of Biodiesel but do you really know what it is? Basically it's animal fats(aka lard) and other cooking oils and/ or plant oils usually mixed with Ethanol or some type or alchol deriative or even good old fashioned petroleum to mix fuel. Reducing use or fossil fuel and gas price and more environmentally friendly and depending on what you use your car can smell like McDonalds french fries all day! lol

Sounds great right? In Theory it is.... application however.....

Negates the fact the main stays used for biodiesel Corn, wheat, and of course the hippie, alternative, and counter culture icon soy bean (the favorite because it's the cheapest at present) are what is used for biodiesel.

Have you noticed the price of foods going up and I mean more then just price of gas justifies? Seen reports from Wholesalers all up the line in the food chain saying it's costing them more straight up to the farmers who grow the food... this includes all meat from cow, pork, lamb, chicken, and fish. The staples of their diets are guess what corn, wheat and also because it's very cheap soy beans. The Huge growth in biodiesel has raised the price of these crops so much Mexico has enacted a law on the price of corn because most Mexican live entirely on it with every meal. It would be like making biodiesel from rice and the price suddenly jumping to 5 times the current cost in less then a year. Plus that amount increasing every year after. Remember it is what almost everything runs on after all. Plus the staples of half the worlds diets.

Just really seems like it's a good idea that wasn't thought out fully when 2 MIT students proved it could be done by driving cross country using nothing but used restaurant grease. Especially when we have some incredible all electric alternative coming out in the very near future and who knows about the hydrogen car approach? I'm still skyptical about that because sure it's safe... when it's running properly but so were the laptops that caught fire and burned a few before the batteries were found to be defective.

Plus when it comes to awesome alternatives...... check this out and you won't smell like week old frenchfries either. 5555

http://www.teslamotors.com/

0-60 in 3.9 seconds OMG I think I'm in love!

PS... thanks for the info on the other posting it has been passed on and now it's up to her. At least she knows she's not alone. Thank you

Posted by beej [ 19 May 2008 | 10:47PM ] You are a ****....... I wouldn't worry about that!

<< Sounds great right? In Theory it is.... application however >>

. . .

Beej and his normal superior intellectual offerings as always. lol

That Tesla Motors car sounds pretty sweeeet.

BioFuels and Biodiesel

Are Two different Things!

Biodiesel can be made 100% waste household cooking oils!

BioFuels are what you are talking about! and have to have a small amount of

petroleum Based fuels,

But I do agree with you here!

http://www.homebiodieselkits.com/

There is however one problem with the Tesla car...it is vapour ware...so far anyway.

If you do want to go for an Electric car that is on the cutting edge of design and technology you may want to look at these alternatives coming to a wall socket near you later this year:

http://www.aptera.com/

http://www.lightningcarcompany.com/

8)

the point of using waste oil from restaurants is that it is precisely that- waste- it's already been used as the food derivative and can now serve as a fuel. nobody is suggesting going to the supermarket and pouring corn oil straight into your car.

Stegee Who's Suggesting That?? Did I miss something here?

In Australia they been using Ethanol for many years,but bad publicity always surrounds the ideals of using it,my guess would be the Oil companies don't support any thing where there ain't big dollars.

point is there is not enough restaurant oil to fuel the worlds needs and people are already stealing the used oil from restuarants and this takes money from companies who collect this in mass quantites to be used for large fleets of vehicles, including city and state fleets. It just really seems like a good idea going wrong quickly and soon as those staples start to be traded on the stock exchanges all bets are off.

Paulgh3rd, I have been think about making it in Thailand when I there on my Time off, I could get enough just from the Houses near where I stay, As each Family always has some used cooking saved wait to get rid of it! But still thinking about it?

We discussed this before and if people do not already understand the damaging effect that growing crops for fuel is having these days, then they probably never will.

Algae is the way to go due to the high yeilds that it produces but that is another topic on it's own.

However, I have just been involved with purchasing six of these;

http://www.vectrix.com/portal/

We used two of them for the Olympic tourch run here in HK and I can tell you that they are a real blast to ride. The throttle goes both ways; twist back for drive as normal but twist forward on the move and you have engine braking and regenerative charging of the battery. Twist forwards while stationary and you go in reverse!

It is entirely possible to ride without ever having to touch the brakes, great fun. Bloody expensive though but it only takes HK$0.30 to fully charge the battery (2.5 hours) to get around 60Km of normal urban riding...

Sure u can use used old cooking oil as biodiesel, but today?s bio diesel is mainly made out of cultivated plants ?.And this comes along with all the problems of using farmland for fuel instead of food?Definitely a problem seeing someone almost dying coz of food shortage and others driving around in 100K cars with bio fuel?

Can you blame a farmer of growing and selling products for bio fuel coz he is going to earn more compared to simple ?food? ?? High prices for fossil oil and gas will progress this development?

And all the hybrid technologies, electric gadgets,?nice things and also sometimes making sense for some specific applications and usage, but for sure no real solution of the problem?

And the cars do not smell like mobile a McDonalds.. they look more like one of these?

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/13/detroit-2008-audi-unleashes-its-diesel-monster-the-r8-v12-tdi/

Nice one Paul, yet again you believing all of the propaganda and making your self look dim.

So do you think multi multi multi billion dollar oil companies and dealers are going to sit by and go ''hell yeah bio diesel lets rock that ****'' ? Nope they are going to put ever bit of bad propaganda they can against it so the people turn against it to save thier profits.

Why are food prices rising? Anything to to with the price of oil being $120 a barrel compared with it being half that not so long ago?

Its business, its the way it works, get over it.