Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Vegetable oil as fuel
A google ad appeared in my computer offering vegetable oil instead of gasoil. It is an attractive alternative: soya oil cost 1 dollar a liter, gas 2 dollars. The German preheating may be even superfluous in our hot summer. Adding a bottle of cooking oil to the tank may save money? Drainage oil could do even better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
This only works if you have a diesel. Every time the price of fuel goes up, there are stories of theft of waste vegetable oil from the back of restaurants. An added advantage is that your tailpipe fumes smell like french fries(or in Israel like felafel).
BTW, in the US, diesel fuel is around $1/liter, not $2. The world price of oil is the same - the difference is lower taxes. The soy oil is only cheaper because it is untaxed. How long would that last if the government was losing significant revenue?
Waste veg. oil must be treated somewhat to make it "biodiesel". It is not a difficult process but you can't just pour waste oil directly into your tank.
K
K
Here we have a company collecting waste vegetable oil called "Fandango". The used oil could easily transformed into biofuel. Would that be a business? I would be afraid of filling my tank with unknown fuel.
Yes, absolutely. On a commercial scale the quality of the fuel could be controlled. The only limit is that there is a limited amount of waste oil available - it cannot be a major source of energy in the grand scheme of things.
K
Post a Comment