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Soybean Powered Harley 282

Posted by Hemos from the would-you-like-fries-with-that? dept.
westfirst writes "Harold Benich has refitted his Harley Davidson motorcycle to run on soybean oil, according to this article. It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries. Soybean oil is, of course, a renewable energy source, but it still costs more to operate per mile. His bike costs about 4 cents per mile, but a gas powered bike costs 3 cents. " I cannot comment on the scientific validity of the story, but alternative energy sources are intrinsically interesting to me, at least.
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Soybean Powered Harley

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  • Re:How does it work? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But I can't see how the modification can be remotely easy if it involves substantially raising an engine's compression ratio.

    Lots of people seem to be missing the fact that this guy hasn't modified the engine of his Harley, he's replaced it with "an engine rescued from a contruction site". Basically, an engine that was already diesel. His big challenge - I assume - is getting the engine to mate up with the cycle transmission. However he did it, I guarantee it ain't pretty-looking.

    I exchanged a couple of emails with a guy who put a John-Deere diesel in his BMW R-class bike. He had done a lot of engineering - had the thing all painted up JD green and everything - and it still looked odd. Especially with the exhaust stack sticking up with the flapper thingie on top. Har!

    Never asked him if he gassed up at the local Chinese take-out tho...

    The local city bus company ran soy-diesel mix as a test program. They're not still doing it - something about the fuel costing twice as much.

    I'd be curious to find out more about bio-diesel's emissions. Sure, there's no sulfur leftovers, but what about soot and particulate matter? Does it leave a greasy film on things? Does it have to smell like fried oil?

    the ever-curious
    Capn Futile

  • Re:No, it is pure (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    >I'd love to see how it's done though. I don't think soybean oil is combustible, but

    I work on commercial kitchen equipment, and I can assure you, soybean oil will burn. Over time, fryer tanks will leak at their seams, and if the operator doesn't have the tank replaced, the burner will eventually light off the dripping oil, with spectacular results! :)

  • Re:it works but... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    yeah, i saw that.

    A bunch of grody dirts packed into a Grateful Dead VW Van.

    From what I remember, it looked like they bathed in the oil before they put it in the van.

  • 4 cents per litre (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Remains the comment that an increase from 3 cents to 4 cents per litre is ridiculously cheap, when you keep in mind what most people in Europe pay for normal gas. Definitely pays then!

  • Yes, it is clean compared to fossil fuel. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Vegetable oil is cleaner than fossil fuel when burned, but one of its most spectacular traits is not releasing sulfur into the atmosphere (which fossil fuels release in abundance causing acid rain). Also, the process of making vegetable oil (growing a plant), cleanse the air we breathe by removing a major modern-day pollutant carbon dioxide and releasing pure oxygen in its place. Instead of adding pollutants from inside the Earth (black oils), vegetable oil only results in polluting the surface and atmosphere of the Earth with substances which were already there (the things it grew from). In a sense vegetable oils recycle the pollution they produce for us, wheras black oils just keep adding and adding to the pollution on the surface of the Earth.

    I would rather we relied on a renewable source, than a black, pollluting, sulfurous rotting substance from the bowels of the Earth. Plants make great solar cells.

  • Veggie van and palm oil replacing diesel (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I remember reading about fuel substitutes before and did a quick search. Here's the link [veggievan.org] to the Veggie Van. The page reads: During the summers of 1997 and 1998, the Veggie Van took America by storm, logging over 25,000 miles on biodiesel fuel and appearing on the Today Show, Dateline, and CNN. Author and filmmaker Joshua Tickell drove the Veggie Van across the US and wrote the book on making fuel from vegetable oil.

    Also of interest is the way Malaysia is investing hugely into a diesel mixture which consists of diesel and replaceble palm oil! The newsitem dated 01/15/2001, is here [isphq.com]. It seems that they are already building their first processing plant.

  • People have tried to increase alcohol usage in the US, though I'm not sure how well it has worked. The father of one of my public school classmates put a lot of effort into starting up a production facility. I live(d) on the northern edge of the corn belt, so a source for the alcohol was readily available. However, I'm not sure if he ever got to be profitable..

    Anyway, gasoline often carries 15% alcohol around here. I think there may be some additives in it to make it a little less hard on car engines..
    --
  • Well, I'm concerned for a few reasons. First, did you know that 2/3 of the electricity generated at power plants in the U.S. doesn't even make it to the customer? It gets lost when running through power lines, transformers, and so forth. Secondly, the energy consumed by transportation vehicles in this country vastly outpaces the energy consumed by eletrical devices. What would happen if we all had electric cars? We would probably be burning even more fuel to get the same output.

    Of course, a lot of the slack would be taken up by the fact that most electric cars have much lower horsepower than their gas-powered counterparts.

    I think there are better ways to make our environment cleaner than using fully electric cars. First off, most people probably don't need as much horsepower as they have. What would happen if people dropped down a notch from V-8s to V-6s or V-6s to 4-cylinder engines? Many people felt the need to go up in horsepower when automatic transmissions were less efficient. Today's transmissions are or at least can be as efficient or better than manual transmissions.

    Another possibility is to use hybrid gas/electric vehicles. It's cleaner and more efficient to run an engine at a single tuned speed rather than to have it revving up and slowing down all of the time (however, the act of converting motion into electricity and back might not be very efficient). Of course, an electric car can shut off whenever it isn't moving.

    In the same vein, it may also be possible to use continuously variable transmissions to accelerate, rather than changing the speed of the engine. Again, I don't know how efficient those are, and they seem to be very complicated.
    --
  • Even an electric car that is recharged entirely from dirty coal power plants still produces ten to a hundred times less pollutants than a modern car at the end of the day.
    Can you provide a reference for that? Really, I'm curious -- I would really love to see a total-system energy-use and pollution comparison between different forms of transportation.

    Otherwise I get suspicious. Like, with people who go on about how absolutely great hemp is for everything. Much of the world has no significant restrictions on the production or use of hemp, as far as I know, and if everything that hemp proponents said was true was actually true the rest of the world would be living in a veritable hemp utopia. It makes me suspicious.

    I get suspicious about electric cars, too. There are places where these issues matter more than they do to us in the US -- places with more pollution and higher energy costs. Why haven't those places developed these kick-ass electric cars that are so obviously superior to gas cars? Like Japan, say. They are just now making viable electric cars -- and how viable are they, really? I'm not sure -- people aren't buying them left and right, they aren't buying them at all if they aren't someplace where its subsidized (like CA). It makes me suspicious.

    Another theory for why car makers have gotten behind electric cars is because they know they will largely fail, and they are okay with that. It will get people off their back for a while, and they will be able to come up with good reasons why they haven't really succeded -- because there are very serious technical issues with electric cars. And if they succede, well, that won't hurt them either -- heck, even if the cars are still significant net polluters, people won't relate them to that because the pollution won't come directly from the electric cars. As long as people don't look to something other than cars. So they give this pipe dream. This might be all silly conspiracy-theory, but the car industry doesn't lead one much reason to trust.

    So I eagerly seek an unbiased review of the real effects.

  • 1. The pollution by coal for power is dispersed over all electrical equipment. This equates to a low pollution production versus gasoline having a few appliances outside the ICE auto for its costs dispersal.
    While gas is only used for cars pretty much, that's enough. It's a large enough market to gain all the efficiencies of scale.
    2. Hemp endures restrictions around the world via US either directly or indirectly through sanctions or polices.
    Yeah, but that doesn't explain hemp's relative economic unimportance. If hemp was as great as people say it is, then it would be produced more in third world countries -- if only for local use (where restrictions are not common). This US may be powerful, but it's not so powerful that it can put down such a good thing on such a large scale.
    3. Places with more pollution and higher engergy costs lack the infrastructure and/or the resources to change.
    Really? China makes their own cars, don't they? They certainly have the ability to build large factories with their own capital. So why didn't they outsmart everyone and build electric cars instead of gas?
    4. Japan is an incorrect example. They yield a mass-transit system superior to the US. There is little need/urgency for electric cars. The population uses rail transportation.
    That doesn't explain it either. Japan is still high-density, still uses cars, and has as much ability to produce electric as anyone. Of course, electric cars aren't useful when the vehicles are actually used efficiently, as they are in places like Japan. If the vehicle has to run all day (as with taxis or most fleet vehicles) then electric won't work. If the vehicle has any significant load electric won't work -- and carrying items is something that mass transit does poorly.

    Electric cars fill a very specific gap that shouldn't be there anyway -- using a large, complicated machine to move a person a couple times a day.

    5. Car manufacturers are behind electric due to policies, force. If it were not for the "oil crisis" of the seventies, you would be driving gas guzzlers today.
    Yes, they are behind electric because they are coerced to do so. Because they are forced to lose money on them, and they've decided they're willing to pay that price.

    Some car companies were making efficient cars before the oil crisis! That's a very important distinction. Compact/efficient cars have real advantages, and they existed regardless of the larger efforts that happened with the oil crisis. Electric cars have only imagined advantages -- "imagined" because there aren't any practical implementations. If electric cars made sense we'd see at least a few, real implementations that weren't forced. Then I could stand behind a concerted public effort to force car manufacturers to adopt electric car designs.

    As it is, electric cars just look like pipe dreams, and they provide an illusion that keeps people from pursuing more aggressively the real transportation solutions.

  • Really, if electric cars work out I'll be happy.

    But I am suspicious. I see no real evidence that electric cars will succede. A lot of effort has gone into them, and while they've had some success it's not very impressive at all.

    Without any evidence, why should I believe electric car proponents? Because they say that the benefits of electric cars are self-evident? I don't buy it. There are lots of solid technical reason why electric cars aren't that good. Which side is right? I'm not sure -- the proof is in the implementation. The implementations have been lacking.

    So a particular electric car can outperform a Ferrari -- Ferraris are rather lame cars anyway, made for prestige not practicality. Electric cars are all novelty.

    Yes, electric cars are a maturing technologies. Many (hell, most) maturing technologies never see the light of day. They are funny novelties that seemed like good ideas.

    Fuel cells? Maybe, there seems like some real possibility there. But I'm very suspicious of the battery-powered cars, and I would hope that plans for future transportation, pollution control, and energy use reduction don't depend on electric cars.

  • My friend Josh has written a book [veggievan.org] on making and using biodiesel. Those interested in this story would no doubt also be interest in his site and book.


    Wil
    --
  • The problem with decoupling the two is that people who are informed enough to know the advantages of hemp are also informed enough to know that marijuana is less harmful than either alcohol or cigarettes.

    Though I do see your point. Since marijuana is in the same group in the uninformed majority of minds as other illegal drugs, a hemp advocate who is also a pot advocate will immediately get disregarded.
  • Both my car manual ('91 Nissan) and motorcycle ('00 Kawasaki) explicitly and emphatically state that gasahol mixtures in excess of 10% ethanol, or 5% methanol, will cause grievious harm to the engine.

    How do you guys avoid destroying your vehicle engines? Are you using some special production models, or do you dispose your cars yearly?


    --
  • Actually, any high-density biomass source will work to make motor fuel.

    If you saw my posting here, there are several commercial crops that could be used as base ingredients for bio-diesel fuel.
  • It also helps that in Europe and Japan, there are strict limits on the level of sulphur compounds in diesel fuel (I believe it's under 300 parts per million, unlike diesel fuel in the USA, which has 1,200 parts per million).

    The new EPA standard will drop sulphur compound levels to under 100 parts per million, the same as the current California Air Resources Board (CARB) standard. Given that bio-diesel doesn't have sulphur compounds to start with, that issue is now moot. The other nice thing about bio-diesel is that particulate emissions are also substantially lower, too.

    Without sulphur compounds fouling up both the intake and exhaust systems, it's now possible to implement things like direct injection, common-rail fuel delivery and lower-cost catalysts, which means lower air emissions along the way, more power and lower fuel consumption.

    I don't worry that the Detroit auto companies can't produce a decent diesel engine. After all, GM and Ford have all that diesel truck engine experience, and they can tap into their experience with diesel engines sold on the European market.

    Don't think diesel engines are slow, either. Anyone who's driven the European-market BMW 330d knows it can easily keep up with the gasoline-fuelled BMW 330i easily up to 140 mph.
  • One thing about diesel engines is that the torque peak comes much lower in the engine rev range than a gasoline engine. Anyone who's driven the TDI version of the Volkswagen New Beetle knows you can do tire burnouts if you keep the engine rev range around 1,900 RPM because of that engine's torque peak at that engine speed. :-)

    That's why in Europe many diesel engines have turbocharging to overcome the issue of power in the higher rev ranges. The result has been spectacular: the European-market BMW 330d can keep up with the gasoline-fuelled BMW 330i up to 140 mph.
  • Tell that to anyone who's driven the diesel-powered BMW's in Europe.

    The BMW 330d powered by a 3-liter L-6 turbocharged diesel engine is capable of keeping up with a BMW 330i fuelled by gasoline up to 140 mph. In short, today's diesel engines need not take a back seat to gasoline engines in terms of performance.

    One thing about the BMW 330d: it can get up to 38 mpg, compared to 25 mpg max for the BMW 330i.
  • You are forgetting that bio-diesel can come from many different sources.

    Here are the following commercial crops that could be used for creating bio-diesel fuel:

    Corn
    Soybeans
    Canola
    Cottonseed
    Sunflower
    Wheat
    Rice
    Peanut
    Jojoba bean
    Coconut
    Sugar beet
    Sugar cane

    We already have the technology to grow these crops on a massive scale. With proper refinery design all these crops could be used to create bio-diesel fuel on a vast scale. In short, countries with large tracts of ariable farmland could become huge bio-diesel producers.
  • Actually, the whole idea of using certain crops to create a bio-diesel fuel has been around for a number of years.

    Crops such as non-sweet corn, soybeans, sugar beets, sugar cane, coconuts, canola seed, and jojoba beans could be grown on a very large scale to create the ingredients for bio-diesel fuel. This fuel has two advantages:

    1. The source of fuel is renewable.

    2. Bio-diesel has no sulfur compounds and very likely burns with extremely low particulate levels, which means easier design for emission control systems.

    The only downside to driving a diesel combustion car is the fact that you have to adjust your driving style--diesel engines tend to have its torque curve peak relatively low in the engine rev range.

  • ...that smell like McDonald's fries?

    ``It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.''

    I wonder if he couldn't get McDonalds to pay him for the free advertising they're getting? It would help him defray the cost of the soybean oil fuel. :-)


    --

  • Corn as a fuel source doesn't do much better than break even, because corn needs a lot of nitrogen-based fertilizer. Soybeans have nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots and actually increase the amount of fixed nitrogen in the soil. They need very little fertilizer in comparison to other crops, and they're not normally grown in places that need a lot of irrigation. Soybeans are a much better choice than corn as a fuel crop. If soybean-based fuels boost the price of soybeans, it will also help encourage corn farmers to rotate soybeans through their fields more often, which will further decrease the amount of energy needed for fertilizer.
  • Thermodynamics, Law 2.

    The energy from oil isn't put in it by the refinery or processing. If it were, we wouldn't bother having engines in the first place -- we'd just build a refineryin every car and cut out the wasteful step in the middle.

    So yes, we can use food oil to process food oil in the future -- same as we use petrochemicals to power all the petrochemical processing plants (and still have enough left over for stuff like cars)...

    ---------------------------------------------
  • The energy is not. The enthropy is. The second law of thermodynamics is about enthropy. It's much easier to mix oil and other stuff than to separate them

    The second law of thermodynamics applies to CLOSED systems.

    The first poster was suggesting that we would constantly lose energy in the processing of oil (which is true) and that therefore we could not use oil power to process more oil (which is not true).

    The potential energy is not put in the oil by the processing. The processing occurs so that we can RELEASE the potential energy that is already in the oil.

    This is not a closed system, there is sunlight and organic matter and blah blah blah adding energy to the process over millions of years. It's not a perpetual motion machine, and the laws of thermodynamics have NO BEARING whatosever on the practicality of using oil as fuel for oil processing.

    ---------------------------------------------
  • ...it takes more energy than you'd think to fertilize, irrigate and harvest crops.
    Er, uh, Good Honest Hemp does not NEED fertilizer (it fixes its own nitrogen, like soybeans), nor does it need much in the way of water. Now we only have to harvest. If it's cost-effective at all, you harvest the second years' crops with a small percentage of the oil you've produced the first year.

    And before anyone accuses me of being a pothead, 1) the hemp you grow to smoke is "sinsemilla"... that's Spanish for NO SEEDS. No seeds, no oil. No oil, no use growing the stuff; and 2) I'm allergic to cannibis smoke. Makes me hurl my toes up. Ironic, given its usual medicinal value, but there it is.

    --
    Good, Honest HEMP!
    -- Robert Anton Wilson

  • Soybean Harley is made from PEOPLE!

    -Chris
    ...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
  • How can an engine run on 100% vegetable oil? I thought that engines worked by burning gasoline (or diesel) that rapidly expands and pushes the pistons. But vegetable oil is hard to ignite, and certainly isn't explosive at all. So how does it work?
  • The engine developed by Diesel originally was designed to burn vegetable oil! they just decided that a cheap by-product of petrol (gasoline) worked just as well - we now know this fuel as diesel now.

    I have seen a lit match be thrown into a bucket of diesel and it went out (note the person who showed me this was not 100% convinced that it would work! so don't try this at home folks!!!) so diesel is not that combustable.

    The point about diesel engines not having the acceleration is not a good one any more- I often drive a BMW turbo desiel (2.5l) and it has more power/acceleration than any petrol car I have driven! the technology is now at that level.
  • Diesel engines have really, really high compression anyway. Well clear 20:1, which is how the compression can cause the ignition.

    But I can't see how the modification can be remotely easy if it involves substantially raising an engine's compression ratio. That's not simple.
  • IIRC, it takes more energy than you'd think to fertilize, irrigate and harvest crops.

    A quote [hempcar.org] from Henry Ford:

    "There's enough alcohol in one year's yeild of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for one hundred years."

    If this were true in Ford's time, it'll certainly be true now with the increased efficiency of internal combustion engines...

  • Well, in the movies, microwaves, toasters, vacuums, and toilets all explode with the same vigor as transport vehicles...
    Heck, in the movies computers explode with frightening regularity! :->
    --
    You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
  • What happened was that our ever so thoughtful local government gave a rebate for alternative fuel vehicles (and when I mean rebate, I mean BIG REBATE - like going from a $15,000 vehicle to $8,000 if if was alt-fuel), but allowed the rebate to go to those who had current cars converted, bought them converted from the mfg (the dealer stuck NG or propane tanks, left in the gas system, so you could use either).

    Here was the problem - they defined the alt-fuel as being propane or NG, I don't think electrics were considered alt-fuel (maybe they were - most people bought the gasoline/propane combo vehicles, though), and did NOT allow a certain alcohol fuel (it is called J60 or something like that), which actually can work fine in certain 4-cylinder Ford Rangers and Probes, with no modifications at all.

    Most of the people went for the combo vehicles - which just happened to be mostly large SUV vehicles (!!) retrofitted, you could use gas or propane/NG in them (tank sits right between the rear bumper and spare) - but most people (read: yuppies on a stick) just fill up with gas, so we end up with:

    A large city of gas burning SUVs, manned by "we-don't-care-about-the-earth" yuppies-on-cellphone-assholes, who have used the system to not only get lower taxes (and probably registration fees - plus the cute AF license plates), but got a cheaper car as well! I can only hope that their erratic on-a-cell-phone-can't-drive driving style causes them to be rear ended, earning them a darwin award (fat chance it would occur - I am sure the tanks are engineered to withstand that).

    I would have loved to use that alcohol fuel in my Ranger (because I could've in mine) - but I wouldn't have gotten the rebate (and the rebate would've come in handy for me, since it is a bitch to get that fuel, as it isn't widely available).

    I am sure there are some who are only using propane, and loved this deal because it allowed them to really do something for the environment - kudos to them. I am just as certain that the majority just took advantage of the system to get something for nothing, and actually make the problem worse in the end (typical for Arizona).

    Oh, and BTW - the rest of the taxpayers are footing the bill.

    I am not saying that what you said, WPL510, isn't true - it very well may be. I just think that it really boiled down to screwing the system, and saving money by shifting the end-cost to those who can't afford a new car retrofitted with the propane tanks...

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • 4 cents a mile isn't too bad compared to 3 cents a mile.

    I have to wonder about the additional costs, though. Gas costs a lot more than what we pay at the pump - there are environmental costs, military costs to keep foreign oil flowing, and so on. And there are agricultural costs for non-sustainable methods that we don't pay for at the grocery store - topsoil erosion, nutrient run-off, water subsidies, et cetera. I'd guess that the extra costs on biodiesel would be far less than for petroleum.

    Some years ago, Volkswagon (IIRC) had a hybrid electric concept car similar to the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight, but with a diesel engine for power the electric motor. I think a design like that coupled with biodiesel would rock.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • Well I guess youll just have to eat some other fuel source, won't you?
  • Beer?

    The day that happens, I will be selling really long straws to teenage kids.
  • Nope, higher octane=slower burning.

    This is why high-performance engines need high-octane fuel. They have very high compression ratios that would cause low-octane fuels to pre-detonate (explode before the spark fired), which is the cause of "knocking and pinging" in an engine. It also can cause a lot of damage.

    This is also why high-octane fuels are a complete waste of money in engines that don't require them. Modern engines have very efficient chamber designs that allow for higher compression without the need for higher octane. My 1995 Yamaha FZR-1000 has 12:1 compression and runs very happily on cheap pump gas. (Don't do this with your 1970 high-compression muscle-car!)

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Recycling food oil can be done. I read recently (Feb. sometime) in the local paper (Cedar Rapids Gazette, I'd give a link to their website, but it sucks and the archive online only goes back a week) about a guy in Mason City, IA who converted his diesel VW Rabbit to run on used deep fryer oil. Local resturants were more than happy to give the stuff to him since it costs them money to have it hauled away normally.

    The problem with using byproducts for fuel is that they will sometime become insufficient to supply energy needs. The reason that gasoline is used to power automobiles is that it was a very cheap by product of making kerosine which was used for lighting at the turn of the centruy. Now that demand has obviously been reversed. I don't think that there is really enough supply of used fry grease to power the world's automobile population. Therefore we really need to look at sources of fuel that actually have the possibility of actually meeting the demand.
    _____________

  • Those damn hippies and their soybeans! Why can't they use an American fuel source, like corn, or beer?

    Seriously, if true, this is awesome. I tend to hear a lot of stories about government repression of good alternative fuels, but it's hard to say which are true, and which aren't. Unfortunatly, I don't think President Bush would care too much. Too many jobs (and too much of his own money) in oil...

    The Good Reverend
    I'm different, just like everybody else. [michris.com]

  • Actually - the life of George Bush (Sr.) was saved during World War II when he was supported by ropes made of hemp as he parachuted to safety.

  • the oil/auto industry has a long history of doing this just to make a *little more* money for worse decisions.

    Near the birth of the auto industry, they found that running engines would knock, or ping, and this could be reduced by using certain additives to oil. One was methanol - made from corn. They figured that *breathing* lead wasn't as bad as eating it, and methanol couldn't be patented, so we got stuck with tetraethyl lead instead...

    It's all about money. That's why we don't see flying cars or moon bases, is because those things haven't entered the realm of profitability.

  • It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.

    That smell of McDonald's french fries [tankgreen.com] is actually manufactured in a plant in New Jersey... like the matrix pulling the wool over people's eyes, the food this nation consumes is like "living in a dream world".

    If you're interested in reading more about this, check out Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" [barnesandnoble.com]

  • Just one issue here. How much land does it take to grow a gallon of agriculturally derived fuel? The US uses 30 million barrels of oil a day so can you scale this technology up to accommodate a large portion of this?

    I am always wary of people running around spouting great cost analyses of these technologies. Why? Because they usually get their fuel oils for free from resaurants and fast food joints who would otherwise have to pay to get rid of it. What happens when everyone is driving these cars and that process of acquiring fuel no longer scales? Then how much does it cost? Can we actually grow enough vegetables to supply Americas vegetable oil needs?

  • How do you square that with the fact that diesel vehicles are responsible for more than half of US air polution? You can't.

    Diesel has many strong points, but cleanliness is not one of them. It's true that you get less NOx because deisel does not burn as hot as gassoline. This is because diesel is made of heavier chains that may or may not burn perfectly as they break down. The result is the light hydrocarbon and soot exhaust we all associate with standing behind a city bus. It's not easy to clean up a mess like that. Think of oil burning locomotives and ships from the first half of the 20th century. Nasty. It can be cleaned up a bit but there is a cost.

    Food should be eaten, not burnt.

  • Also of interest is the way Malaysia is investing hugely into a diesel mixture which consists of diesel and replaceble palm oil!
    Hell yes, palm oil! Naturally produced by all males over the age of 13, this milky substance can be manufactured by applying minimal mechanical motion to pornography. The only by-product is chafing. (Although reduction of visual acuity and hirsutism in the producer have been attributed as such, these symptoms have not been reproduced in in my extensive laboratory testing.)

    Palm oil! Wonderful plan, old bean!

    --

  • That's a bit oversimplified. See this note on octane measurement [repairfaq.org] for a more comprehensive version.
  • Alcohol as fuel is not cost-effective. The "Gasohol" program was basically a subsidy program for Archer-Daniels-Midland, and has been an embarassing scandal for years.
  • cars could be powered by hazelnuts. That's encouraging, considering an eight-ounce jar of hazelnuts costs about nine dollars
    When asked if Hazelnut production could be increased, he replied "What, you think they grow on trees or plants or something?!"
  • If the gas mileage is better, and the hazardous byproducts are reduced, I think most of us could stand it. Or the government could just make it regulation and make us deal with it. I say someone has to do something about our increasing environmental problems, and while we may not always agree with such regulations, perhaps our existence would last a little longer if we'd make a small sacrifice now. (Or are we too selfish for that?)
  • There are a great many things which won't readily catch fire in a solid or liquid state, but which ignite explosively when sprayed as an aerosol. It's all about surface area.

    Hold a match against a solid block of walnut wood. It will char, but it probably won't catch fire before the match burns your fingers.

    Take the same block and grind it into fine sawdust. Blow the sawdust around so it makes a cloud. Light a match in that cloud, and you'll find yourself in the middle of an explosion. Same material... more surface area.

    When the soybean oil is used in a Diesel engine, it's atomized by a fuel injector.

    It's also subjected to extreme pressure. Unlike a standard gasoline engine, a Diesel engine doesn't use a spark plug. Instead, it compresses the air in the engine until the air is hot enough to ignite the fuel as it's sprayed into the cylinder. The fuel burns very rapidly, generating exhaust gases that consume more space than the atomized fuel/air combination, forcing the cylinder down.

    Compare that to gasoline, which gives off explosive vapors at room temperature. The point of the article was making is: Compared to standard gasoline, Diesel engines can run well on fuel that is far safer to store and transfer under normal circumstances.
  • I guarantee you : your vegetable oil will burn like crazy, as the black spot on the roof of my kitchen will testify.

    Man, those things burn like hell.
  • in case you didn't know, soybeans are commonly grown in America, I live in Iowa and my father grows soybeans. Most of the soybeans grown in america aren't the type that are used to make tofu. Most of it is used for other stuff like sweetening(sp?) ice cream (not kidding) and feeding piggys.

    Hmmm, perhaps I should keep the family farm after all! I could be my own Iran! (it's Iran isnt it? the gas people?)

    Klowner
    - I have over 5 computers, tharfor I ain't no hick :)
  • Harold Benich has refitted his Harley Davidson motorcycle to run on soybean oil, according to this article. It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.

    Darn...I was thinking of another kind of bean. Of course, the exhaust wouldn't quite smell like McDonald's fries then.... You'd get pretty good fuel efficienty though, due to all the CH4 that would be produced.

    ---
    The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:

  • Let me clear it up... :-)

    How a diesel engine works. [howstuffworks.com]
    How a gasoline engine works. [howstuffworks.com]
    Is Diesel really cheaper than regular gasoline? [howstuffworks.com]
    What is the difference between various crude oils? [howstuffworks.com]
    And, since I saw a mention about it in another thread here:
    What is octane? [howstuffworks.com]

    Probably a little bit basic, but an easy read, and should give you an easy to remember understanding of the items in question.

  • If soybean-based fuels boost the price of soybeans, it will also help encourage corn farmers to rotate soybeans through their fields more often, which will further decrease the amount of energy needed for fertilizer.

    Probably not. Soybeans require a different infrastructure than corn. Plus, the price of soybeans is so low that the government subsidizes soybean prices with loan deficiency payments. If the price of soybeans rises, farmers will not see any more money, just lower LDPs.

    I agree that corn is hard on the environment. Soybeans are a better choice.
  • If carbon dioxide is a pollutant, then you should hold your breath.
  • Remember he is using a diesel engine. The soybean oil does combust,but it combusts under great pressure not by a spark plug. Diesel fuel is not very combustible (compared to gasoline that is). A diesel engine has a compression ration about twice that of a gasoline engine. If you look at the specs on a military diesel engine they will run on just about any type of liquid hydro carbon. (diesel, motor oil, kerosene, Wesson cooking oil)
  • Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy.
  • The stuff came out of the ground, for godsake, we're just putting it back

    Do you not understand the basic principles of nuclear fission, or have I been snared by a troll?

    The elements mined from the ground are not the elements that are "just" being put back, and they have very different properties from the elements that were taken out of the ground.

    This stuff is so basic, and your logic so bizarre that no rational, dissinterested person could be serious, so I guess I'm the sucker then.

    Ah well. It was a worthy example of the art of the troll. That's my excuse :-)

  • Why haven't those places developed these kick-ass electric cars that are so obviously superior to gas cars?

    A lot of reasons. You seem to be thinking "since electric is being adopted slowly, it can't be as clean as claimed". Clearly, it is as clean as claimed, but there are other drawbacks slowing it's adoption. The big one is storage - electricity is easy to generate and easy to use but incredibly difficult to store. This means that to compete on price with gas cars, the electric car needs either cheap batteries (ie shorter driving range than a gas car) or some other storage system (liquid hydrogen for fuel cells for example).

    Electric car manufacturers also seem to have under-estimated demand, and they generally sell very quickly, but that will presumably change in a year or so.

    What it comes down to is basically that,
    1) Electric cars are a technology that is currently being adopted, not a technology that has finished being adopted. (You argument almost sounds a bit like "If the latest CPUs are so much better than old ones, how come no-one in my hi-tech office already has them?") And

    2) It is a technology that has to compete with billions of dollars of existing gas infrastructure, that means that in order to offer competitive value per dollar, it has to far more efficient and cheaper, because gas is operating via economies of scale, which is a huge "subsidy" if you are trying to evaluate technological merit via market performance, as you seem to be doing.

    3) In a sense, it is still a maturing technology. Currently, when weighing up the choice between a gas or electric car, there are still advantages and disadvantages to both. The electric technology is still quite a few years away from the time when electric cars are superior to gas cars in every useful way. Example: I note that there are now electric cars that, at the fraction of the price* of a Ferrari 550, can out-drag the Ferrari, (0-60 quicker) though the top speed is lower. Still, it sounds like a fair amount bang for your buck :-)

    *Not yet in mass production unfortunately.
  • Lead-acid batteries (used in electric cars) don't last forever.

    Lead-acid batteries are not used in modern electrics AFAIK, because, well, they're crap. (And heavy messy crap at that).
    Personally, I prefer hydrolysing water and storing the hydrogen instead of a battery, but fuel cells are still somewhat costly (though AFAIK they run indefinitey if kept unclogged, and have no adverse environmental effect if dumped)

    Furthermore, I'd should also point out that many countries don't just dump their lead-acid batteries as you assume everyone will, but use the waste. (Mind you, we were talking about the USA, so might have a point :-)

    As to being more enviromentally damaging if they were dumped, I suspect you might be wrong there:
    Say the useful life of a battery is two years. If I were to eat, over the course of 2 years, the entire battery, I would not be healthy, but my (limited) understanding of the toxicity suggests I would be very much alive. If I were to inhale, over the course of 2 years, the fumes from a gas car, I would be dead very quickly.
    Perhaps this is an unfair example, because of the different way the toxins affect the body, but I think you under-estimate gas emmissions, (or are possibly confusing lead-acid rechargables with ni-cd rechargables).

    Regardless, there is no excuse for just dumping toxic waste.
  • As for Yucca, I seriously doubt it would have any radioactive leakage problems for, oh, a few thousand years. Glass is pretty stable stuff. If, by then, we haven't figured out how to deal with it (nanotech!), we deserve to glow in the dark.

    That's not really an acceptable soltuion to me. I guess it comes down to cash or credit - some people like to buy with money they don't have, and pay it off over time. I prefer to buy with money I do have. Locking waste into glass is a bit like buying a flash computer on your child's credit card when you know you're going to die in two days time - you're passing the buck for immediate gratification.

    You can argue that there is unlikely to be any "interest" to pay (clean up costs if there is contamination), but I look to the legacy of wonder left us by the ancient egyptions, and wonder if we will be despised and hated for our greed and immoral gratification at the expense of others. It is not a legacy that I want to leave, and I am prepared to pay more for power generation to achieve it. I don't know whether the heavy-but-short-term pollution of coal outweights the low-but-long-term pollution of nuclear, but it feels fairer that I should have to suffer my own pollution, not pass it on to future generations.
    For the same reason, CA's actions, or attempts to dump US nuclear waste in other countries, also strike me as irresponsible.

    A reason we've got such a pollution problem is because people are so used to inflicting their products on others and never having to deal witht he consequences of their own actions (until you reach the bottom of the heap, usually in the third world, where everyone is utterly screwed).

    Who knows, just because we have no use for the underside of a mountain now doesn't mean we won't ever have a use for that, and I'd prefer not to place shackles on the options of future generations merely to get slightly cheaper power.

    As demonstrated in CA, "green" energy production does not cost much more than dirty.
  • And yet what would happen if you tried to criminalize alcohol?

    I buy into the line that overall, crime etc, during probation was much lower than before and after, people were safer overall as a result. Of course, a huge drop in domestic violence is not as newsworthy or noticable as new gang rivalries, not to mention the vast and sucessful financial investments of the alcohol industry in politicans and marketing to ensure that probation is never considered again. Today, everyone believes without question that prohibition actually increased crime. What a mindjob! :-)

    Strangely perhaps, I think pot would be the opposite - illegal it creates just as much crime as alchol did, but if legal, it would be highly unlikely to create the even-greater-than-when-illegal amount of crime that alcohol does.
  • Hemp, a renewable resource that enriches the land it grows on, unlike cotton. Can be used to make cloth better than cotton, oil for various uses and even paper.

    Unfortunately, those idiots who smoke pot continue to prevent us from being able to use hemp, due to the camoflage it gives to their illegal plants.
    (And some of them then turn around and whine about how hemp shouldn't be illegal!)

    All up, I think decriminalisation of pot is probably the way to go (thus also reducing the reason for banning hemp), but it's going to be a hard sell to society while pot (ab)use is so high in some areas that it sometimes seems almost as socially disasterous as alcohol.
  • Granted I wouldn't want to smell french fries all day

    Infinitely better the stink of normal cars!
  • That's a really good point. Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy. And how much of that energy is lost converting it from

    heat-> motion-> electricity-> chemical->electrical-> mechanical

    instead of

    heat-> motion.

    My guess is it doesn't really save anything at all, although I'm sure that the turbines or whatever is used at the power plant is more efficient per BTU at converting heat into motion. I'm also not counting the energy required to extract fossil fuels from the earth and refine them, because that has to be done in our existing model of gasoline/diesel engines. I'm just comparing the extra steps for electric cars.

    The only slight advantage I can see in an electric car is that by relocating the source of polution, you can eliminate concentrated sources, like in cities. The real solution will come when an efficient, non impacting form of electrical generation is perfected.

  • Won't catch fire... at normal atmospheric pressure. Cylinder compression can be in excess of 15x 1 atmosphere. The more you compress a fuel, the lower the octane. (octane is just a measure of how quickly a fuel burns, the higher the slower) Like all food, it will burn, and under enough pressure it will combust more rapidly.

  • No, that's why high performance engines need high octane fuel. High performance engines are high compression, and high compression speeds up combustion. If the fuel burns to fast, you get what is called "detonation", a condition where the fuel burns extreemly fast. Idealy, you want the fuel to burn for the entire downstroke of the piston, not just a quick explosion. Detonation can burn holes in pistons and electrodes off of spark plugs in seconds if excessive enough. Controversially, a low compression engine often cannot take advantage of a high octane fuel, as it burns too slow at the lower compression, and you either have to run so lean that you loose power, or waste unburned fuel through the exhaust.

  • I agree with you 100% ryancooley, but...
    ...all taxes on Gas will not apply to Alcohol.
    This statement is only true in the short term. In the long term, if it became a popular alternative to petrol, then it would be taxed. The government has a long history of taxing all products with a high price elasticity (i.e. you can increase the price, yet enough people still purchase the product so that you increase total profits). Things such as Cigarettes, alcohol, petrol, and luxury items all fit into this category, and as alcohol became a viable fuel source, it would too.
  • You present an optimistic view of things, but I'm sticking to my original opinion... If the product has a high price elasticity, then the government will find a way or reason to tax it.

    Finally, as the grammar nazi, I must add that it's an excise tax, not and excess tax.

  • Jimmy Fallon:
    'New Scientist' magazine reported on Wednesday that in the future, cars could be powered by hazelnuts. That's encouraging, considering an eight-ounce jar of hazelnuts costs about nine dollars. Yeah, I've got an idea for a car that runs on bald eagle heads and Faberge eggs.
  • For anybody that wan't to convince the world to switch from Petrol, here's what you do...

    1. Get diesel engine manufacturers to use pure rubbing alcohol as a fuel source. Alcohol is easy to produce (any left over crops can be mde into fuel) and the price will go down as the demand increases. Plus, the regulations are getting so strict on Trucks that the price drop for fuel would be immediate, Trucks would right away meet every healt and plution code there is, and all smog equipment would be a thing of the past.

    #2. Once truck are using rubbing alochol as a fuel source, it will be carried by most gas stations. At that point it will be trivial matter to convince consumers to buy your alcohol burning cars because the fuel is available everywhere, cleaner than gas, and likely cheaper.

    There are many other advantages to Alcohol, but I don't feel it would be beneficial to cover them here. Never fail a smog test, all taxes on Gas will not apply to Alcohol, our skys will clear up because alcohol's only byproducts are Carbond Dioxide (what people exhale) and some water. Smog equipment is a thing or the past, farmers will have no trouble growing crops to make fuel from, and with such an easially renewable resource, competition among makers will drop prices. Not to mention that we woulld be completely free of OPEC or any foreign country's control.
  • ...cold fusion, what else?
  • Take a look at the FAQ [biodiesel.org] from the biodiesel.org site. They claim:
    Biodiesel also has a positive energy balance, generating three or more units of energy for every unit required to make it.
  • "I cannot comment on the scientific validity..." I can, as I spent a year doing research on bio-based alternatives to petroleum (you can check out the Carbohydrate Economy program at ilsr.org - several years ago). Bio-diesel is not a new idea, and there are, as the article states, a number of vehicles running on vegetable-oil derived fuels. Typically these vehicles are not running on unmodified vegetable oil; they burn a fuel created through a chemical process called transesterification, where the oil is reacted with a catalyst in the presence of ethanol or methanol (grain and wood alcohols, respectively, to you): This seperates the glycerine component from the oils which promotes a better burn. Although the technology is well established it is unlikely to catch on in the near term due to the stated problems: vegetable oils still cost mere than gas, and there are performance limitations. This is Mad Max stuff - we'll be using it once we enter the technological dark ages thanks to all you dumb-ass conservatives and SUV drivers.
  • I read this article much earlier on my dad's fridge. He had cut this clipping out of the paper for my uncle, a harley rider. from most of the comments i've seen they're all concerned about fuel this and fuel that. Both my father and my uncle like to ride motorcycles, and as in the case of this gentleman, i think that it was more of a customization, something he had that no one else did to make his motorcycle more unique then others sometime people on slashdot tend to over analyze everything down to every technical bone. sometimes its just nice to sit back and go "Neat!"

    besides all, how much money do you spose McDonals is going to give him for a similar model painted red for Ronald to ride around?

  • I doubt if it has to do with conspiracies.

    I worked at Los Alamos National Lab on fuel cell research two years ago. At least in the fuel cell field, I can tell you that the reasons you haven't seen fuel cell cars or any other reasonable electric cars is that they cost too much! In the case of fuel cells, the materials costs eat you up. However, there are material science advances every year, and the materials prices are coming down.

    One of the really big problems is that we Americans want our cars to be big and accelerate like bats out of hell. For the early versions of fuel cell cars to be affordable, they will be forced to have less raw power. There are cars you can buy today that get 50 mpg. Do people buy them? No. They are wimpy and in a crash, you die. When there are fuel cell cars that get 100 mpg, will people buy them? Why would it be any different?

  • Re:renewable ... but is it clean? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:31PM (#306971)
    Most non-brazilians don't know that in Brazil we have been using renewable fuel ( alcohol ) on our cars for 22 years. And it is, in fact, cleaner than gasoline. I mean a lot cleaner.

    A government program called proalcool was created after the first oil crisis. A good english written document about it can be found here [york.ac.uk] but do scroll down or search for proalcool.

    Alcohol is available in every gas station in Brazil to this date. In fact, our gasoline is mixed with 25% alcohol. And the alcohol comes from Sugar Cane produced in Brazil.

    I use to have a alcohol car. It was cheaper then gasoline, but consumed more fuel. In the end, I guess, it kind of had the same cost. On very cold days, we had to inject gasoline on the engine to get it started ( a button on the console ). Newer cars have that automatically.

    I remember that when it started, cars had sticker that said "Moved by alcohol". And as we brazilians love making fun of everything, we soon had stickers in our cars that said: "Moved by alcohol, but just the drivers". Any chance this would be legal in the States?

    Another story, on the grim side, is when there was a lack of sugar cane production, Brazil imported Methanol from abroad, and a few people died from drinking the poisonous imported alcohol. People would drink the fuel, after all, at less than a dollar a liter...

  • No, it is pure (Score:3)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:18PM (#306972)

    Given this isn't a hoax (which is smells like, even though it's a little late for 4/1 stuff), he is using pure oil. Read what it says a little closer and you see "Usually, though, food oils are combined with diesel fuel, rather than used pure, as Benich is doing" (my emphasis of course). So usually it is mixed, but not in this case.

    I'd love to see how it's done though. I don't think soybean oil is combustible, but if this isn't a hoax, I guess I'll be wrong. If it isn't, I wonder how fast it'll take the oil cartel lobbies to make soy products illegal (protect the children from Tofu, or something? ;-))

  • I wonder... (Score:3)

    by verbatim ( 18390 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @02:13PM (#306973) Homepage
    I wonder if anyone has given any thought to the entre economy - not just saving the enviroment. Lots of people are shouting that the oil industry is too big and powerful - and will prevent any "eco-vehicle" from entering the market, but there are more insidious things going on here:

    - Design and Mfg'ing: Someone has to design and manufacture these vehicles in a large enough quantity that they are affordable enough. Perhaps no one is willing to risk enough cash to get someone started. Could you design something to retro-fit existing assembly lines (= cheaper production / design).

    - Consumer acceptance: not all consumers care about the environment. Will they accept a vehicle that costs more to own (assuming the next step)?

    - Gas costs alot, but it's out there in brute force. Most cities have dozens of gas-stations already there. How would you get the fuel to the end user? Will they compete with the gas bars or will they work in their own market (eg. a gas/econ-fuel hybrid station, or something).

    - How are you going to sell it. AFAIK, it's taken 10 years to market the electric cars and they still have a very low acceptance level.

    Anyhow, I think it goes back to that old addage: you can have any two of: cost, quality, and time. I doubt it will be affordabe (at first), the quality will be questionable if it remains untested, and it certainly won't be out today or tomorrow. Perhaps in a year or two when people are tired of breathing in toxic fumes they'll quit smoking and think about this kind of car ;-).


    ---
    Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.

  • We need this in the UK (Score:3)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @06:39PM (#306974) Journal
    "His bike costs about 4 cents per mile, but a gas powered bike costs 3 cents"

    Well, in the UK a gallon of petrol is about £4.00. That is $6.00. If a bike can do 100mpg (for arguments sake) then it costs 6cents a mile in the UK. A bike will probably do 50mpg, which is 12c per mile.

    Yet this soyafuel can do 100mpg for 3 cents a mile. That is half to a quarter of the price of normal petrol in the UK.

    Hey, forget fuel guzzling America, bring your technology over here where we need it. Please. Now. Not next month, tomorrow.

    Now if a car could be made to do 100mpg from cheap soyaoil, then I will be a very happy man. Damn oil cartels.

  • Hmm..intresting... (Score:3)

    by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <nokrog>> on Monday April 09, 2001 @08:32AM (#306975)
    The idea is intersting to say the least. I have always wondered why we don't do things such as this. It makes perfect sense to me. Although then you'd get people protesting the killing of over 100 thousand soybean plants every month! :) They you'll see the tree huggers laying in fields of soybeans so the combines don't get the precious little soybeans. You'll see things such as biodiesel is murder! :)

    Personally fully electric (with solar cell roofs) cars will be the best thing I think. Batteries are getting better it seems like every year and solar keeps getting more efficient over time too. Eventually your car will recharge during the day either by the solar cells or the free electric you get from your place of work(on cloudy days). For the meantime, cars like the Insight and the Prius are very interesting to me. I wish I could afford a Insight or Prius now. I also like the fully electric EV1 from GM but they still won't make those available here in Ohio (no way to heat the car good enoguh in the winter), and if I wanted to throw away 40,000 I'd buy a SUV (EV1's are leased only....once they are done being leased, GM takes them back....they don't even resell them, to my knowledge).

  • This story is a CENTURY old! (Score:3)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @02:00PM (#306976)
    Newsflash: Slashdot sets new record for posting old technological news as new and awesome.

    ANY diesel engine will run on vegetable oil, be it soy, corn, peanut, flax, etc.

    I guess it's just "kewl" that someone did it with a Harley.

    They've been doing it for over 100 years. Volvo even has a working prototype of a multi-oil car that they would love to produce but don't figure there's any market for. A Volvo executive has been driving it as a personal vehicle for 10 years now.

    Hell, 15 years ago I used to run my Mercedes 240D on corn oil. Too bad for me there was no Slashdot at the time, I could have had my 15 minutes of fame.

    KFG

  • Interest in Energy (Score:3)

    by piecewise ( 169377 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:13PM (#306977) Journal
    Of course, we'll only develop alternative energy platforms when it's absolutely necessary. God forbid we think ahead -- no no... we'll procratinate until we have even more major energy problems, and only then will we shift over toward newer technologies.

    The thing is, the major energy and oil companies don't want any of this. A major car company figures out a way to have a car run at 150 miles per gallon. The U.S. Government says, No way, buddy!

    Why? Because if everyone drove cars that got such incredible mileage, gas consumption goes WAY down, and therefore prices collapse. Commodity markets would anticipate this, and spot prices for gas and creud oil would drop off a cliff.

    OPEC has a vested interest in making sure this does not happen, and so does the US Government -- to an extent.

    So, new energy technology will be a long and tedious transition. But you can bet in 50 years, there will be a company greatly benefitting from it, and making billions.

  • Corn? (Score:3)

    by SlashGeek ( 192010 ) <petebibbyjr@@@gmail...com> on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:07PM (#306978)
    I worked with a guy a while back who had a diesel VW Rabbit that he ran that car off of some type of corn oil. He had a friend that, whatever he did, had an abundance of this oil as a by-product of his process. According to him, it ran just as good as with diesel, although yes, it did smell like McDonalds fries.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @10:01PM (#306979)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • What about the big picture? (Score:3)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:12PM (#306980)
    Before we get too excited, someone ought to check to find out if it doesn't take more than one gallon of petroleum to produce one gallon of food oil with today's agricultural technology. IIRC, it takes more energy than you'd think to fertilize, irrigate and harvest crops.

  • renewable ... but is it clean? (Score:3)

    by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:08PM (#306981) Journal

    Renewability is only one desirable trait of a fuel source. I wonder how cleanly this stuff burns, especially since (as the article states) the oil sometimes has to be combined with Diesel. I expect that hydrocarbon pollutants would be a major problem, along with possibly oxides of nitrogen, etc.

    Can you imagine the majority of cars in Los Angeles (or some such city) converting to Soybean oil, and having the stench of McDonalds fries replace smog?

  • Not the point ... (Score:3)

    by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:29PM (#306982) Journal

    Read what it says a little closer and you see "Usually, though, food oils are combined with diesel fuel, rather than used pure, as Benich is doing"

    My point is that I'm not sure the combustion process is clean, where I use the term "clean" to mean that the combustion products are free of pollutants (such as unburned hydrocarbons). The article is silent on this point (unless I have misread it?).

    The fact that the fuel is pure doesn't matter. If the bike uses the Diesel cycle, the combustion products are likely to be dirty under heavy loads (such as during accelleration).

  • smells like McDonald's (Score:3)

    by reverZe biaZ ( 420364 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:25PM (#306983) Homepage
    ...and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.

    Soon you'll not only see biker gangs riding around, but biker gangs being chased by the Hamburgler.

    Or maybe Ronald McDonald will get himself a hog and join the Hell's Burgers?

    -----------------------

  • Re:What about the big picture? (Score:4)

    by -Harlequin- ( 169395 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @09:57PM (#306984)
    like in this case the major problems our nations power grid is going to be facing in the next 20 years

    The problems you cite don't really exist to the extend that they are a problem.

    The power consumption of electric cars even when their numbers reaches CA target (which are higher than any other state AFAIK) is inconsequential - 0.02% of the power normally consumed via the grid.
    It might be 0.06% - I can't remember but the "there won't be enough energy for people to switch" is another part of GM's lobbying package that is now widely and rightfully ignored.

    The money saved on petroleum infrastructure would easily cover any expansion of electrical infrastructure - and the bottom line is that the grid needs to be (and will be) expanded, regardless of whether electric cars are adopted or not. Electric cars are a drop in the puddle. If people are worried about energy conservation, turning the lights off, etc when they're not in use will dwarf the energy needed to run cars, and as running an electric car obviously requires far less net energy than gas ones, even if they did strain the grid (which they won't) it would clearly be worth it.

    That said, yeah, driving SUVs to the gym is stupid. IMO, using a gym at all is stupid if commuting to work each day by bike is feasible (and you'd probably be surprised at how much faster a bike usually gets you there - people think that cars are fast because on the open road they are, but in a city like where I live, even a half hour commute tends to be quicker by bike, as bikes don't get slowed by the traffic).

    (Statistic suggest that biking is safer too, but I suspect they are heavily skewed by open road car crashes, which are frequently lethal. Statistics for city-only travel safety would be interesting)

  • Soy-burners vs. rice-burners... (Score:4)

    by dstone ( 191334 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @07:27PM (#306985) Homepage
    As a sport biker, I love the irony. Harley riders enjoy deriding (Japanese) sport bikes, calling them "rice burners", among other things...

    Now, really, how much better is a "soy burner"?!

  • Karma whoring. (Score:4)

    by Denial of Service ( 199335 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:06PM (#306986)
    The Biodiesel web site [biodiesel.org] has more information on renewable fuel sources.

    ---

  • Re:Interest in Energy (Score:4)

    by Rasta Prefect ( 250915 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @03:27PM (#306987)
    Sheesh. Yeah, the Oil companies like a dependance on oil - but they know this is coming. You'll note that many of them have been restyling themselves as "energy" companies as opposed to oil companies. As for the US Government, I imagine there are few things they'd enjoy more than telling OPEC where they can stick it. OPEC is one of the few world powers that can cause the US really serious problems. And as an added bonus, we would no longer have a vested interest in the Middle East. We wouldn't have to care which tin pot dictator or religious leader had decided to declare a jihad against his neighbor, anymore than we bother with unrest in Africa now. How many of you are familar with whats going on in the Republic of the Congo vs the Israel/Palestinian mess? And we'd quit dumping money into the area for all of the above to buy and develop weapons. All in all, a reduced dependance on oil is a serious boon for the US government.

  • Re:renewable ... but is it clean? (Score:4)

    by jscheib ( 267420 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @07:14PM (#306988)
    I live at an ecovillage in Missouri...we run a Ford pickup truck and VW Jetta on biodiesel and have been doing so for over two years. Don't believe the newspaper hype and start imagining the "stench of french fries" and whatnot. Not true. Every so often, a diesel vehicle (usually soon after startup or hard acceleration) emits a foul burst of diesel fumes. Except a biodiesel vehicle emits a french-fry smelling blast instead of a burnt petroleum smell. A vast improvement.

    This is proven technology, lots of inner city bus lines use it, it cuts emissions of SOx and NOx by 80%, is available from producers all over the U.S.A., etc. etc. blah blah. More details available at http://www.dancingrabbit.org/biodiesel/.

  • Bush on Biodiesel? (Score:5)

    by mattkime ( 8466 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:45PM (#306989)
    When W Bush spouts about the impending energy crisis, I wish he'd fund programs that push alternative energy sources rather than building more refineries. After reading up on the www.biodiesel.org website, I'm quite convinced that we are not facing an energy crisis, but an inevitable energy industry shake up. (Which, for a former executive in the oil industry, is just as bad.)

    If www.biodiesel.org is correct in its claims, then vegetable based energy sources solve MANY of our energy problems. They can be used in existing, unmodified diesel engines. It costs very little to make - a 1:3.24 energy production ratio. Its clean burning. Its safe.

    The problems - not many people use diesel engines. But a significant amount of industrial equipment does. It would be a relatively easy conversion in the market place to produce more consumer diesel vehicles. It smells like McDonalds french fries. Annoying? Yes. Is regular exhaust particularly pleasant? No! Distribution - its hard to buy. But hasn't this been a problem with any other new type of fuel? We won't get past this until we're forced or someone invents a miracle fuel.

    I'm not worried about the future supply of energy. If we run out of oil, we'll find something else. And I won't have pity for the oil industry either.

  • Don't forget (Score:5)

    by Resident Geek ( 16074 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:08PM (#306990) Homepage
    ...about the HempCar [hempcar.org], and that hemp is another great biodiesel. These kinds of fuels, because they are infinitely renewable, are what the petroleum industry does not want to see in use until they can find a way to make money off of it.

    Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
  • The thing is, the major energy and oil companies don't want any of this. A major car company figures out a way to have a car run at 150 miles per gallon. The U.S. Government says, No way, buddy!

    I work for a major car company (GM) and I work in a position that is tightly coupled with the Vehicle Development Process (VDP). And I'm telling you now that GM will eventually have regular production gas/electric hybrids that get 150 miles per gallon! (The last prototype I saw gets around 90, so 150 is not far off)

    Then there is the Toyota Prius, which currently gets 70 MPG, and a representative of Toyota claimed to me at the 2001 North American International Auto Show that next year, the vehicle will get 150 MPG.

    Maybe your scenario was more on-mark 5 or so years ago, but with the rising fuel costs and OPEC's recent production cuts, believe me, the government is in our court on this one.

  • Re:How does it work? (Score:5)

    by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 ) <.tms. .at. .infamous.net.> on Sunday April 08, 2001 @01:23PM (#306992) Homepage
    So how does it work?

    Making biodiesel fuels usually involves some chemical processing of the oil.

    From biodiesel.com [biodiesel.com], Pacific Biodiesel's website:

    Technically, biodiesel is Vegetable Oil Methyl Ester. It is formed be removing the triglyceride molecule from vegetable oil in the form of glycerin (soap). Once the glycerin is removed from the oil, the remaining molecules are, to a diesel engine, similar to petroleum diesel fuel. There are some notable differences. The biodiesel molecules are very simple hydrocarbon chains, containing no sulfur, ring molecules or aromatics associated with fossil fuels. Biodiesel is made up of almost 10% oxygen, making it a naturally "oxygenated" fuel.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • Re:What about the big picture? (Score:5)

    by -Harlequin- ( 169395 ) on Sunday April 08, 2001 @06:15PM (#306993)
    Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy.

    In case you're not aware, only General Motors still tries to make out that that has any relevance, and only because they're trying to dissuade CA from requiring emissionless cars.

    You note that powerplant filters make a difference, but there is more to it than that. Even an electric car that is recharged entirely from dirty coal power plants still produces ten to a hundred times less pollutants than a modern car at the end of the day.

    You are probably forgetting how mind-numbingly crude and innefficient the combustion-engine vehicle is - every time the light goes green, you rip huge amounts of energy from storage and turn it into vast kinetic energy, then when the next light goes red you dump all of that energy, then burn up (ie waste) heaps more when the light goes green. Insane! Most technologies, including electric, allow two-way transfer of energy - when you stop for the red light, you do so by converting your kinetic energy back into storage.
    Testiment to this is that many hybrid cars never need charging - the electric engine is powered entirely by the staggering wastage of the combustion engine.

    Conbustion contraptions truly are a Victorian-age technology - wasteful and crude, requiring you to burn through ten times the energy you actually need to get from A to B. Hence another reason why electric cars powered by dirty generators are a non-issue. As I mentioned, General Motors still seems to be clinging to the line, but it's looking increasinly like this is because they have lagged behind other car makers in these technologies, and now don't want the consequences of a fair playing field, knowing they'll probably get their butts kicked :)

    The real solution will come when an efficient, non impacting form of electrical generation is perfected.

    Nope. No need to wait. The dirtiest of current electrical generation are still more than sufficiently clean to solve the pollution problems. Which is not to say they shouldn't be cleaned up, just that you shouldn't be distracted by the red-herring that GM is still trying to wave (a red-herring that has been largely discredited by the car industry itself).

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