Thread: Bio Fuel

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One thing can not be stretched that far period...............It needs to be like a potluck dinner,a little bio ,a little electric a little solar etc.
There are billions of people drawing on one resourse,it makes it a tall order to replace that fully with one thing,therefore it needs to be diversified ,many different sources at this point,later when a replacement become viable ,then we can all shift to the new viable source....there is no viable source at this time for a full switch,which makes it nessisary to use many things at this point ,just to lighten the load for now.
Solar is looking good now ,with the new panel tech ,such as lining up all the crystals in the panel for a better output over a longer period of time.
Solar is viable now on the housing end ,there is just not very much savings over normal fuel at this point because of solar panel /battery life exspectancy.So not many people want to deal with it for no savings over a 20 year period,even though it would have a trickle down effect of lighting the load on oil based natural fuels quite a bit.
If we only burnt the stuff in autos ,there would be alot less demand at this point.

Bio fuels....E-85 is a boon to the local hotrodders as it allows very high compression, blowers etc for some real fun and not required race gas. It's becomming the thing here in the mid west. There are already several co. doing E-85 carb conversions and most of the EFI co. can handle it too. I don't think it will last for a long time (much beyond our life time) due to the food for fuel issue.

However the bio diesel is a different story. The home made stuff is made from waste veg oil, a small amout of methanol and lye. As long as there are fast food and family restraunts there will be waste veg oil. The methanol is 90% easily recoverable and 10% more difficult be doable. The lye is combined and recovered when the glycerine is converted into soap. The remaining by products of fats and oils are used to make brickets for the fire place and or fed to the pigs the enhance them. (maybe we should send some to Wash.) haha

Commercially made bio diesel is made from oil seed crops specifically grown to produce it. Not much if any comes out of the food chain. The algae process is well underway and will eventually replace the oil seed. Volume wise it will be a while before we could produce even 50% of the diesel used just for transportation but it is coming.

I keep an enormous spread sheet for my diesel truck and fuel is by far the highest cost per mile item. It's greater than financing and depreciation by quite a bit. I drive for economy as part of the diesel truck hobby and gear my modifications around this.

Diesel fuel will have to get to $5 per gal before I can even consider home brew unless shared with others. Home brew compared to standard fuel is probably in the 3rd or 4th decimal point as far as volume produced here in the states.