Hurricane Katarina

Haesslich said:
But then it wouldn't be any cheaper than gas, and you'd STILL have to figure in the fuel costs for transporting the car and the fuel around. Now, if gas/petrol hits $10 a gallon, veggie-powered systems may sound better, but until it does so, most people are going to take the easy way out, unless they're forced to go with a new solution by civic, state, or national governments.
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The ammount of veggie oil produced could be greatly increased we have the agriculture capacity to support way more than we need just dont use it. Thats why the govn pays farmers to destroy crops so as to not flood the market. If there was a HUGE demand for it the price would go down.
 
BusbyLogic said:
Duh Sams Club or Cosco where ever you live BUY IN BULK you can probably buy it by the gallon at one of those places. That and used oil you would have to strain I dont know about you but straining my veggy oil doesnt sound like a fun afternoon.
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So...you've got room in your vehicle to pick up 50 or 60 gallons of vegetable oil? I don't care if you buy it in bulk or not...that's still going to cost almost as much as gasoline right now and transporting that out to your car is going to be a pain. Not to mention you'll need to do this every week or so.
 
that's so stupid. We have perfeclty good ethanol engines here. We even have engines who can run on EITHER ethanol or gasoline. Ethanol is made from sugar cane. why doesn't the rest of the world use it is beyond my imagination.
 
Not to mention that generating that ethanol for use in car engines (you can't just shove a corn cob down into your gas tank and make it work, after all) takes more energy than the resultant mixture puts out (and even then "pure" gasoline is most likely involved in the transportation of that ethanol, at some point)..
 
Maj.Striker said:
Even if you could convince local restaurant owners to give you their used vegetable oil on a regular basis...how many gallons would you need to fill up a Dodge truck? A lot...which would mean a lot of your day spent going to these places and picking it up.
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I used to do a lot of deliveries to restaurants and just about every week the major chains would have a 55 gal. drum of old oil sitting out back that they have to pay to have hauled away. They would be more than happy to have someone take it for free.


Edfilho said:
that's so stupid. We have perfeclty good ethanol engines here. We even have engines who can run on EITHER ethanol or gasoline. Ethanol is made from sugar cane. why doesn't the rest of the world use it is beyond my imagination.
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It's not all that hard to imagine, oil companies don't make money off of sugar cane. My Ford Ranger has a dual gasoline/ethanol engine, but in five years I'm yet to find an ethanol pump.
 
Veg- Continued...

Well,

until the perversion of political power by oil companies is ended, the only "non-fossil" solution will have to be addressed by the ingenuity of individuals. NO ONE with ties to the oil companies would make biodiesel available 'at the pumps' (vegetable-based diesel; burns 30%+ cleaner than traditional diesel, costs about .60/gall. US and is abundant. It DOES, however, use a very small amount of methanol {fossil-based} to convert vegetable oil to diesel, but is still very efficient.)

Hydrogen is NOT a solution (as the automakers big oil, & lawmakers would have you believe) but will be most likely the next evolution of fuels since it uses fossil fuel to create (or actually, stabilize) hydrogen. (Who do you think went for this route? hmm.. Lesser of several evils?)

Barring any huge jump in bio-chemical batteries (not foreseeable) electric cars have reached close to their max. potential, which has left us with 200+ miles between 4-8 HOURS of charge time....

I don't know anything about ethanol so I can't comment.

The vegetable oil system is great as you can still rely on 'the pumps' when necessary, but enjoy the benefits of purchasing (or acquiring the used "cheap/free" stuff) at will.

Look at your local "Smart & Final" (or whatever your state has for bulk restaurant equipment/supplies) as your new gas station!

Your 10-gallon can of corn oil can be deposited directly into your veg-tank IN the parking lot (don't blame me if someone gets pissed, though) and you're on your way. No need to 'stock up' or haul extra cans around. I think So. Cal.'s prices are still holding at $19 bucks, which isn't DIRT cheap at almost 2 dollars a gallon; but it IS cheaper, and you CAN thumb your finger to the man...

And demand IS increasing. Just google vegetable oil and see what you turn up.

Here's a decent middle-of-the-road assessment (albeit a little short) of the whole "veg-power" movement (I don't like the term 'veggie' either !) from Car & Driver.

http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=4&article_id=7818&page_number=1

I think it still needs refinement (pardon the pun) but I don't see a lot of other options at this point. Anything that requires some sort of big business or government undertaking WILL be shutdown by those who stand to make money from oil, and unfortunately, that includes too many of our political leaders.

This has to be a revolt by the people to prevent certain businesses from TELLING us what we have to use to be mobile and HOW MUCH we're going to pay for it. That may mean an inconvenience for awhile....

(My 2cents)
 
Looks like someone registered specifically to tell you you should drive a corn powered car.

You people sure managed to make a natural disaster seem worse.
 
BusbyLogic said:
We can produce more crops than we currently supply. If we increase supply to match demand prices should go down.
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This assumes that a) there's demand in the first place, and b) that the OTHER steps in that logistical chain (harvesting crops, transporting crops to processing area, processing crops into fuel, transporting fuel to distribution points, heading to distribution point to take fuel into vehicle) aren't too expensive. People always forget to calculate in those costs when they claim benefits in anything - if you have to drive the fuel anywhere, unless you're using a veggie or ethanol-fuelled truck, they're burning gasoline again, and if you're transporting crops to a processing plant further than a short drive away those crops are probably being flown on a plane which uses a - you guessed it - kerosene or avgas burning engine.

Creating a supply does not automatically create a demand for a product, as many game and other companies have discovered over the years. Yes, they can be fueled fairly easily - assuming you have access to the fuel - but the processing's another story. Chances are, most of those processing plants used power derived from oil or oil-based products, which means that there's still a demand for gasoline.
 
desoto said:
Hydrogen is NOT a solution (as the automakers big oil, & lawmakers would have you believe) but will be most likely the next evolution of fuels since it uses fossil fuel to create (or actually, stabilize) hydrogen. (Who do you think went for this route? hmm.. Lesser of several evils?)
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Hydrogen is not a solution for now. However, once nuclear fusion becomes safer and more reilable, then it will cease to become a problem. Sure, hydrogen uses a lot of energy to stabilise, but fusion provides that energy, cleanly, and there's plenty of it. As far as I can see, it's the only energy source that's close to being ready for when we need it that will produce enough power to satisfy our growing energy needs cleanly. Wind power, solar power, tidal power etc. just don't produce enough. It's also worth remebering that while ethanol or vegtable oil is a neutral emmission energy source, in order to keep up with demand, damaging intensive farming techniques would have to be used, and the fact that all that grain could be used to feed people in the 3rd world, makes it seem like ethanol isn't such a great solution after all.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Looks like someone registered specifically to tell you you should drive a corn powered car.

You people sure managed to make a natural disaster seem worse.
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lolz.
 
Veggie - Continued...

Chrysler hasn't made a veg-DeSoto.... YET! They brought back the 300 nameplate (a decade ago now?) and now the Charger.... The formally retired DeSoto just seems to be the next logical step! LOL.

Yes; I agree about the many obvious factors in pricing, but those have (and are being factored in now. Wholesale vegetable oil for commercial (restaurant) purposes are in relatively low quantities (compared to using as a fuel source) and the price is borderline competitive. It *seems* to reason (having no hard data to back this up; but this seems simple enough economics) that if the same product was created in MAJOR quantity, the price would go down. Shipping and harvesting more in a single "shot", as it were, would (should?) drive the cost down. I think it works in this particular case, because we're not talking about something finite. Corn can be grown until we run out of water.

I personally am not looking at this to "end the use of fossil fuel", but simply to *hopefully* take some of our dependence off of Middle Eastern and South American countries. If fossil fuel is required to ship veg-; so be it. It would still be less...

The fact that mother nature catches a break is simply a bonus.

(more change in the jar)

An yes; sad to say, I've been a long-time viewer, but didn't bring myself around to posting anything until this came up! How sad... The CORN made me do it!

...And I personally have no plans to give up (or convert!!!) my old Detroit steel...
 
3rd World

One more comment: I think we've pretty much proven that supplying food to those less fortunate than us does little more than ease our 'guilt' for being prosperous. Without teaching them how to create their own food, it's somewhat pointless to ship them food that could be our gas... So burn it up! ;)~

And I definitely agree about the consequences of not crop rotating, but I think (hope?) we've somewhat learned our lesson from that. The great thing is we wouldn't be limited to corn, and could constantly change the crops, continue to create fuel, and (nearly) eliminate the soil depletion.

OK, that's more than enough coin -

Thanks for giving me a spot to (rant?) breathe.

-D
 
desoto said:
One more comment: I think we've pretty much proven that supplying food to those less fortunate than us does little more than ease our 'guilt' for being prosperous. Without teaching them how to create their own food, it's somewhat pointless to ship them food that could be our gas... So burn it up! ;)~
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So, you're saying...instead of feeding some starving child in Ethiopia, I should just fill my SUV up again???
 
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