Brew Your Own Auto Fuel For 41 Cents A Gallon 991
Iphtashu Fitz writes "Damon Toal-Rossi of Iowa City, Iowa had enough of the high price of gasoline, so it didn't take too much for his friend to talk him into switching to biodiesel, an alternative fuel based on soy or vegetable oil. But after a few months of driving 10 miles to a biodiesel fuel station he decided it was time to start brewing his own. It didn't take him long to find a recipe for biodiesel, and with used cooking oil that he gets for free from a nearby restaurant, he figures he's now getting 44 miles per gallon out of his diesel powered VW Golf and only paying 41 cents a gallon. According to the National Biodiesel Board the number of biodiesel stations in the US rose by 50% last year (to a whopping 200). The president of the American Soybean Association claims biodiesel has almost the same amount of energy as petroleum-based diesel, but cleans an engine's fuel injectors and cuts down on the number of required oil changes. Perhaps these are some of the reasons why diesel powered cars are making a comeback in the US."
My next truck.. (Score:3, Informative)
Daryl Hannah (Score:4, Informative)
Google (Score:1, Informative)
This has been raised before... (Score:3, Informative)
How much is regular gas in the US, and how much for diesel?
Re:My next truck.. (Score:3, Informative)
Why, back in my day, I remember a time (Hmm... was it mid-80's or perhaps very early 90's?) when diesel was more expensive than gasoline.
Just prior to that time, diesel was indeed less expensive, and there was a big push for diesel cars from consumers... then suddenly it was more expensive and all the people who bought diesel cars were griping about it.
It was kind of a kick in the teeth.
Re:Pollution (Score:1, Informative)
What about hemp? (Score:3, Informative)
So why not hemp-oil for cars?
Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
Not anymore -- most restaraunts get money back for recycling purposes...some have even proscecuted folks that have taken their cooking oil because while it makes very little money -- it is still a few hundred $$$s a month for them.
Humboldt California (Score:5, Informative)
CCAT's website includes a recipe for biodiesel:
http://www.humboldt.edu/~ccat/biodies
I've been told that most of the public trasportation in Berkeley, CA runs off of biodiesel (?).
Re:Not viable (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Pollution (Score:1, Informative)
from my understanding it's gotmore nox and less c02 (especially since the c02 is mitigated via the growing of the plants), but cancer-causing and smog-forming particulates are drastically reduced (something like 30-90%) again find the stats on the website or on the epas relevant pages.
Re:Clean?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clean?! (Score:4, Informative)
And when using waste oil for bio-d, you do have to process and clean it before putting it in your car's fuel tank.
Re:Great... (Score:1, Informative)
Which around here, is nobody. In fact I'm suprised this guy can get the oil for free. Most of the fast food places and restaurants have contracts already with people who buy their used oil.
This is only "cheap" because he's able to get something for free, that is not free. I'm sure if he had to actually pay for the cooking oil it would be just as expensive (if not more) than regular diesel.
Plus of course, there's only a limited amount of "used cooking oil" from restaurants. If everyone wanted to buy it for their cars then the price would naturally rise.
Re:Great... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My next truck.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fuel Taxes (Score:2, Informative)
I believe this is being done in many US states also.
Re:Pollution (Score:2, Informative)
And:
ie. Biodiesel provides no net increase in carbon dioxide.Most comparisons focus on the difference between biodiesel and dino-diesel, not gasoline. However, in general, gasoline has higher levels of greenhouse gasses and unburned hydrocarbons. Biodiesel produces more nitrogen oxides than gasoline, which, combined with unburned hydrocarbons, makes smog.
Ob Simpsons Reference: Lard of the Dance (Score:3, Informative)
How else to explain Groundskeeper Willie's despairing cry when he realises that Homer and Bart have siphoned away the school's frying grease...
Re:No conversion necessary with current engines (Score:2, Informative)
If you are planning to run straight or waste vegetable oil (SVO/WVO), then you need to modify the vehicle.
Biodiesel is not SVO. It has been processed with methanol and lye to convert long carbon chains to short.
Motor vehicle fuel tax evasion (Score:5, Informative)
You can run a diesel car on home heating oil too, but you are evadeing the fuel tax.
The per gallon Federal Motor Fuel Excise Tax is 18.4 cents on gasoline, 13.6 cents on LPG, 24.4 cents on diesel fuel, 13.0 cents on gasohol, 19.4 cents on aviation gas, and 4.4 cents on jet fuel. These monies go to the Federal Highway Trust Fund. [sddot.com]
The by-state fuel tax averages 22 cents a gallon for gasoline [sddot.com], I am too lazy to find a diesel link.
Google for federal fuel tax and state fuel tax for more info.
Here is one of many links for the actual prices of fuels, before the tax. [doe.gov]
Re:The tax man cometh (Score:1, Informative)
We have the 2nd most expensive petrol in the world with our excessive 'fuel duty' which is worded vaguely enough that it HAS been applied to cars converted such as these.
see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2312521.stm [bbc.co.uk]
(they can handle a slashdotting...)
Police target 'cooking oil cars' (Score:2, Informative)
"I put my hands up to the offence and the car was towed away. They said Customs would be notified."
Police target 'cooking oil cars' [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)
This kind of thing only works if it's cheap, and it's only cheap for this guy because so few other people do it.
Re:More Great News About President-Vice Cheney (Score:2, Informative)
Schlumberger. I'll take my ten points, please.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)
According to the article linked in this slashdot discussion [slashdot.org], the US uses the equivalent of about 141 billion gallons of diesel fuel per year.
That's around 500 gallons per person in the country. You'd need a thousand times as many restaurant fryers to come up with that much vegetable oil.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
-It's about 12.5 gallons/year for one acre of Soy from what I could find.
-There's 470 million acres of arable land in the US.
-Average gas usage/person in the us is 1,050 gallons per year
-US population is 293 million
So, maximum output is 5.875 billion gallons of diesel/year. Usage is somewhere around 297 billion gallons of gasoline/year. SO it's not possible to completely replace gasoline with soy.
The other thing is that oil prices are relatively stable over time because the extraction process is fairly predicatable. They know how much is in the ground, how much is left, and how much it will cost to get it out. With a farmed fuel, the weather, from year to year can cause potentially large swings in price.
Attribution (Score:4, Informative)
I'll grant, if you follow the links the truth will be obvious, but I imagine the author of the Wired
News piece wouldn't mind getting a bit more explicit credit.
Re:More Great News About President-Vice Cheney (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good for individuals, not practical for society (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about hemp? (Score:4, Informative)
Wood-pulp paper products are almost entirely from newgrowth forest, where reforestation happens at greater than 1.1 planted trees/harvested one.
Feh
I win 10 points! (Score:3, Informative)
Bechtel
CARB policy and auto company politics... (Score:4, Informative)
What happened was, certain automakers played to these black smoke prejudices, and got diesels banned so their competitors couldn't get a toehold. Using pollution issues as an excuse, the CARB took a radical stance against diesel cars at the behest of Toyota, Honda, Ford, etc., in order to keep out Volkswagen and Daimler/Chrysler (Mercedes). As if a few more relatively clean diesel cars on the road would make a difference, considering the number of diesel trucks, locomotives, industrial equipment, and jet aircraft!
Re:Great... (Score:2, Informative)
They aren't available in the US but Toyota "does do diesel". They even make diesel engines for other car manufacturers (e.g. the diesel version of the Mini is a Toyota-made engine...again, not available in the US).
Do a google search of "Toyota Diesel".
Re:Biodiesel - myth? (Score:5, Informative)
Then you were doing something wrong.
Some facts: one gallon of vegetable oil will produce one gallon of biodiesel (you also add some methanol and lye, but not in large quantities).
One acre of each of these crops can produce this many gallons of biodiesel: soybean 49, sunflower 84, canola 76.
when she said it produced no carbon dioxide, I just switched the channel.
Biodiesel produces no net increase in carbon dioxide. Burning biodiesel does release carbon dioxide, but the plants grown to produce the biodiesel convert carbon dioxide to oxygen in the same or higher amounts.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)
Halve the mass of the vehicle and you halve the amount of energy required.
Another intersting formula is: F = ma.
If you have a heavier vehicle then you have to use more force to accelerate it, which of course mean more energy being expended.
We can all drive a little more slowly and little less aggresively to save energy. But if we don't want to be bored to tears then then the other option is to reduce the weight of the vehicle. You're right though, it's stupid to move around extra weight.
Re:What about hemp? (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Great... (Score:2, Informative)
And, what does it matter as long as we can make a dent in gas consumption. We don't want another end-all-be-all energy, do we?
btw - Do you think swings in my area from $1.30 to $2.00 per gallon over a few months is stable?
Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
My 2001 Honda Accord has one; you can actually feel it locking up; it feels like a subtle additional shift when you reach 40MPH or so and stop accelerating.
You can tell it's engaged, because if you depress the gas a little more, the RPM won't immediately jump, but rather it will rise linearly with your speed, since there's no fluid link (from the torque converter).
Try it on the highway; open the throttle a LITTLE more at highway speeds. The lockup can't handle too much torque, though, so if you press the gas too much further down, it will disengage the lockup and you'll see the tach spike up a bit.
-Z
Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:CARB policy and auto company politics... (Score:3, Informative)
The reality of the situation has nothing to do with corporate conspiracies and is completely dependant on two factors: US diesel fuel has more sulpher than european diesel (it acts as a lubricant) which makes the "new" diesel emission control techniques less effectiive, and California has the highest emission standards in the world.
Oh yeah, and all of trucks, trains, and industrial equipment you mention will eventually be covered by these laws as well. The way most such emissions laws work is that you regulate new entrants and do not try to apply new regulations to existing equipment. As the old stuff wears out and is replaced you end up with everything meeting the standard without needing to force everyone to go through the expensive process of replacing equipment that still actually works.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
It's because the demand for manual transmissions is pretty low. Manufacturers just go to the parts bin and find the appropriate (manual) tranny. If the manual they match up to the vehicle is less robust (in either strength of cooling) than the slushbox they originally speced out for the vehicle, sobeit -- it's hardly a significant market share. They just downgrade the rated towing capacity for the manual to match the transmission they put in there...the automatic tranny car keeps it's higher rating. Many manufacturers of sport sedans do the same thing with their more powerful motors. For example, the Lincoln LS V6 was available in a stick, but the V8 wasn't. They're weren't trying to undermine standard trannies -- and a stick can certainly hold that torque. They just didn't have the right manual tranny for the job and didn't want to develop a new one for that market.
IMO, manual transmissions are still better suited to pulling. Less moving/friction parts to break/replace, and I believe that they can be built stronger and cooled easier...which is one of the reasons why tractor trailers still have manual transmissions. For towing, a manual may be better anyway. They tend to hold a gear better, which may be good if you're towing in hilly regions and need to drop a gear to maintain/shed speed. Most tiptronic/sportamatic/autostick/whatever trannies can't even hold a gear.
Anyway, I digress...but this may be a case similar to Betamax Vs. VHS.
Re:CARB policy and auto company politics... (Score:3, Informative)
The reality of the situation has nothing to do with corporate conspiracies
The reality is that I was a lobbyist for an automotive components manufacturer, negotiating with CARB, going toe to toe with lobbyists from the other side. They promised more money for campaign donations, so they won. No conspiracy, just business as usual in American politics.
but for the moment these new engines may be good enough for Europe but they are not clean enough to be acceptable over here
That depends on where you draw the line. This one was very purposefully drawn.
Re:Great... (Score:4, Informative)
Recycling vegetable oil is not important anyway. The oil was produced by CO2 fixing plants within the last year, you could just burn it and not add anything to the Carbon Cycle (which is why using it to fuel cars is so cool).
Btw, just bought a fresh bottle of extra virgin olive oil. That's pretty much straight from the plant, and clean enough for me
Re:Stick shift on a hybrid? (Score:5, Informative)
Electric motors don't have an 'optimal' fuel-efficient or torque-producing range of RPMs in the sense that internal combustion engines do. If you want more power, you apply more juice, and the electric motors happily spin faster all the way up to their rated capacity, providing high levels of torque through the entire range.
Even if its not free its our best choice TODAY!!! (Score:1, Informative)
True. I gladly pay more for my B100 (currently ~$3.00/gal) than I would for Dino Diesel but I feel a lot better about it because we didn't go to war for soybeans, at least not since 1812 or so.
> Additionally, it is not a renewable resource
BS, falling from the sky isn't a requirement for renewable fuel. I would love to have a solar car. Find me one that will make my SF to Silicon Valley commute.
Farmers are using biodiesel:
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewssto
http://articles.findarticles.co
http://www.livejournal.c
I agree soy biodiesel and hemp biodiesel alone are not a solution.
Algae has great potential:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/artic
(BTW...I wish you could get a NB convertible TDI...)
http://www.national-hero.com/algae_biodi
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat
Maybe SOMEDAY we will have clean, cheap hydrogen power cells or even fusion power. TODAY I have burned nothing but B100, straight biodiesel, for a year and a half and 25K miles and I'm a newbe! There are people with 100-200K on biodiesel or even straight veg oil. Soooo:
A. Get your facts straight
B. come up with a BETTER solution
or C. Shut the fsck up
Yes I am pationate about this.
NO ONE DIED TO BRING ME MY BIODIESEL!!! It comes from the Midwest NOT the Mideast.
-PaulK
PS My 2003 New Beetle TDI w/5sp manual is more fun to drive than any Hybrid and gets about the same MPG (real world MPG not EPA BS)
Re:Availability (Score:3, Informative)
I think everyone worth listening to would agree that it requires more energy to produce biodiesel than you get from burning it. The question is how much of the energy comes directly from the sun vs. from petrol. I think this has been aswered somewhat. In the US midwest it takes about as much petrol to create the biodiesel as it displaces, in Brazil it takes much less petrol to create the biodiesel than the petrol it displaces. Climate and technology is the major difference. In the midwest you have poor soils, poor climate and a very resource intensive farming methods. In Brazil you have poor soil, good climate, and more efficient farming technology. Midwestern farmers are buying up land in Brazil at the moment, and I'm sure we will adopt some of their technology too our climate and crops someday. Significant amounts of government funded research was needed to create their process, and it's based on using sugar which doesn't grow in our climate.
Re:Great... (Score:2, Informative)
In 2003 We consumed 20 Million Barrels per day. (ref: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html). That would be 7.3 Billion barrels a year.
There are 42 Gallons per barrel, which gives us 306 Billion Gallons per year of crude oil. This number seems very close to 297 Billion Gallons, until you note that only 45% of this is used for automotive fuel.
Re:Great... (Score:4, Informative)
Already illegal in the UK (Score:3, Informative)
Hullo! Oil from anything!?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:More Great News About President-Vice Cheney (Score:2, Informative)
"Dig me a hole in the ground."
"What is the soil like?
"Don't know."
"What is down there?"
"Don't know."
"Is the soil contaminated?"
"Don't know. How about a hard bid?"
"Drop dead, I'll do it T&M (Time and Material) if at all."
And yes, this kind of thing happens all of the time.
As for incentive under a cost plus vs. hard bid, you are correct that an unscrupulous contractor will drag the job out. That same unscrupulous contractor will also commit fraud under a fixed price bid: inferior materials, bogus change requests, shoddy workmanship.
Also, the US gov't is moving AWAY from strictly hard bid contracts and toward a combination of negotiated and bidding, at least in construction. This is to geta away from the situation that exists now: a contractor will bid the job at a loss, and then immediately start placing claims on the project to recoup profit via change order work. This almost always ends in court, with the Gov't. being worse off than if they had gone with the higher, but more reputable bid.
Re:Great... (Score:4, Informative)
All oils may be recycled. But they're not gonna be used to the same purpose! Give me a break, recycle cooking oil to fry stuff? Just the thought of it makes me sick!
My granma uses NaOH and used cooking oil to make soap. And she makes a very nice soap. This is a fine way to convert a highly polluting product into a useful and environment-friendly one.
Re:Great... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Great... (Score:2, Informative)
Saying that all causes cancer is a good way of ending a discussion, but it adds nothing to it.
Re:Aah, the seeds of rape... (Score:3, Informative)
Greasecar.com - no conversion, use regular oil (Score:2, Informative)
You can use standard filtered vegetable oil without all of the biodiesel headaches.
Basics of Simple Motors for Non-Engineers (Score:3, Informative)
I admit to not knowing a lot about electric motors (other than the basic concept of how they work). However, I am positive that what you say about them not having an 'optimal' RPM is wrong. I can prove this to you simply by taking a look at some extremes:
You're very right. I know people with degrees in electrical engineering who don't understand what you do.
If you apply very little juice to an electric motor, it will not spin, not having enough power to overcome friction. So clearly, electric motors are not efficient at the extreme low end (since you get no output power for an input power).
This is true for universal motors (which use brushes). Torque is most when the motor is stalled. But remember that torque is NOT power! Power is work over time; torque is just a moment (engineering term for force around a point). Power (at a given speed) is, of course, related to force (in this case torque) by basic high school physics equations which I seem to forget right now. [grin]
A universal motor consists of a bunch of coils of wire. We'll take them as running off DC or such low frequency AC that we can ignore its effects. As the coils of wire rotate on the armature, brushes and the commutator ring switch different coils in and out of the circuit. This switching causes the rotating coils to be receiving AC power. Coils are inductors, and inductors have reactance (fancy term for resistance to AC) on top of their DC resistance.
When the motor is running, the impedance (resistance at AC) of the coils in the armature is given by Impedance = InductiveReactance + DCResistance. Ohm's law then applies as usual, where P=I*I*R=I*I*Z where Z is the impedance instead of the resistance.
When the motor is stalled, the current flowing through the windings is DC, and inductance has no effect. The only limit to the current is the DC resistance of the windings.
The magnetic field generated by a coil of wire is proportional to the amount of current flowing through the wire. And the speed (for a given load, whether that's just friction or something useful) will therefore be proportional to the current through the windings.
So, when the motor is running, the impedance ("resistance" at AC) of its windings increases, and the current flowing drops. Then the speed drops, the impedance drops, more current flows, and the motor speeds back up. In reality, it finds a happy medium.
But this all means that the more you load a universal motor, the more current it consumes. It also means that sticking an ohmmeter across the motor will let you calculate the stalled current but will give you no useful information about how much current the motor will use when it's spinning.
Of course, a universal motor doesn't care if it's running off AC or DC. The commutator ring will switch poles back and forth far faster than 50/60Hz AC power, so the effects of 60Hz AC are so small as to be negligible.
In general, the complete opposite is true for stepper motors.
With pure AC motors, there's a lot more variety. You should consider a brushless motor (whether in a computer fan or an electric car) as being an AC motor. Most common AC motors (washing machines, furnace blowers, etc.) are of the squirrel-cage induction variety. They're essentially rotating transformers, and use almost no current when they have no load. When you stall them, the effect is similar to shorting the output of a transformer. The transformer's secondary (or motor's rotor) will suck up all the magnetic field in the core. As a result, the input power will be limited only by the DC resistance of the windings, and you'll eventually blow the motor.
Most AC motors will only run happily at a given frequency and related speed.
Neither the universal motor or the garden-variety induction motor is even remotely suitable for use as traction motors in cars. The universal motor is horribly inefficient, and the induction motor has to be designed to run at a given frequency and its speed is directly related to that
Re:The cheaps want to save even more... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's illegal here... (Score:2, Informative)
UK tax rules [hmce.gov.uk]
I am brewing my own biodiesel legally in the UK!
http://prisonerblog.zapto.org [zapto.org]
Re:Biodiesel - myth? (Score:1, Informative)