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How come Biodiesel prices have to rise and reflect the rising costs of petro-diesel?
Aren't the trucks that deliver Biodiesel, running on Biodiesel?
The price of Biodiesel (in the Pacific Palisades @ USA Gas) has gone up $0.10/gallon (from $3.49/gal to $3.59/gal) just recently.
I was thinking it would have stayed the same and would be comparable or less than petro-diesel (which has gone up alot), but alas, the opportunistic SOCALBUG (Southern CA Biodiesel Usergroup) has gotten greedy and taken advantage of the recent price blast.
And all of this to be part of someone's science project!!! They constantly deliver bad batches which clog filters and cause other problems... I know I'm not the only one b'cuz many of my friends have experienced similar problems to me.
I spoke at length w/ the founder of SOCALBUG and he admitted that they have been having frequent bad batches lately due to transit problems, (precipitation and polymerization due to temperature fluctuations) and irresponsible train shipping companies.
He admitted that, since he won't put petro-diesel in his cars, he cannot leave the LA area in Winter because cold weather will spoil his fun when his fuel gels at 20-36ºF!!! What kind of BS is that? If you are a militant bioD-head, someone else has to drive in the Winter?
What kind of alternative fuel are we talking about here?!
Veggie has much fewer roadblocks and wrinkles left yet to be ironed out. The veggie authorities are so much more knowledgeable too than the bioD folks who have their heads in holes in the ground like ostriches.
Screw commercial Biodiesel! It's a sham and a highly risky fuel alternative. I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned as the results of this big experiment are revealed.
I'm goin back to Veggie until the SOCALBUG starts showing higher ethics and quality control.
If veggie were consistently available (here in LA) I wouldn't even have had to use Biodiesel and risk my car's functionality.
Aren't the trucks that deliver Biodiesel, running on Biodiesel?
The price of Biodiesel (in the Pacific Palisades @ USA Gas) has gone up $0.10/gallon (from $3.49/gal to $3.59/gal) just recently.
I was thinking it would have stayed the same and would be comparable or less than petro-diesel (which has gone up alot), but alas, the opportunistic SOCALBUG (Southern CA Biodiesel Usergroup) has gotten greedy and taken advantage of the recent price blast.
And all of this to be part of someone's science project!!! They constantly deliver bad batches which clog filters and cause other problems... I know I'm not the only one b'cuz many of my friends have experienced similar problems to me.
I spoke at length w/ the founder of SOCALBUG and he admitted that they have been having frequent bad batches lately due to transit problems, (precipitation and polymerization due to temperature fluctuations) and irresponsible train shipping companies.
He admitted that, since he won't put petro-diesel in his cars, he cannot leave the LA area in Winter because cold weather will spoil his fun when his fuel gels at 20-36ºF!!! What kind of BS is that? If you are a militant bioD-head, someone else has to drive in the Winter?
What kind of alternative fuel are we talking about here?!
Veggie has much fewer roadblocks and wrinkles left yet to be ironed out. The veggie authorities are so much more knowledgeable too than the bioD folks who have their heads in holes in the ground like ostriches.
Screw commercial Biodiesel! It's a sham and a highly risky fuel alternative. I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned as the results of this big experiment are revealed.
I'm goin back to Veggie until the SOCALBUG starts showing higher ethics and quality control.
If veggie were consistently available (here in LA) I wouldn't even have had to use Biodiesel and risk my car's functionality.
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Re: I thought we were independent of BIG OIL! WTF?!?!
Mon, November 12, 2007 - 7:19 PMIs it necessary to be so emotionally invested in the type of fuel that you put in your vehicle? I'm emotionally drained from having read this.
High quality B100 that meets ASTM standards will gel at low temperatures. That is a fact. The laws of capitalism aren't necessarily representative of unmitigated greed. A business is in business to do business, even if the owners are trying to have an ethical business. I'm not suggesting that your vendor has any smaller or greater profit margins by raising the price, but how could you begrudge him even if he were trying to make greater profit margins? Presumably, he could use that to expand his business which would further the cause of greater availability of bio-fuels. This could be a good thing, no?
As in any free market, you have alternatives. You can make your own, you can buy from someone, or somewhere else, you can run petro-diesel, or you can ride a bike or take public transit.
Your post here is hostile, judgmental, and insulting. I'd venture a guess and would suggest that it might be inappropriate for civil discourse. -
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Re: I thought we were independent of BIG OIL! WTF?!?!
Mon, November 12, 2007 - 9:40 PMLemme get this straight, you are that empathic that you are emotionally drained from reading my post? Yet you can't find it in yourself to be so empathic to understand where I'm coming from?
This has nothing to do with emotional investment and more to do with holding people accountable for not "walking the walk". All the people with Biodiesel stickers on their car that say "no war required" or who pretend we're acting independently of the big oil interests are basically living in a make-believe world if every time the price of a barrel of petrol goes up, so does the price of BioD.
And for you to turn around and judge my words and take it as an insult to your chosen path, meanwhile you act like nobody has any say over what you do, is hypocritical in my opinion.
Why not just take my rant at face value and don't act so dogmatically and self-righteously "self-reliant" while allowing someone else's tirade to affect your emotional state, K?
And no I don't have a choice to buy Bio from someone else for a reasonable price, because all of the local Bio dealers (all 3 of them) have raised their prices to match the petro-diesel prices. It's opportunistic and YES, greedy. So happens that where I got it, they only marked it up $0.10 while the other 2 have gone up $0.20 and $0.30 per gallon.
You say I can make my own... well it takes veggie to make Bio and if I had veggie, I wouldn't waste my time (and resources and create toxic byproducts) turning it into Bio when I don't need to. I can run straight veg just fine.
And FYI:
A. Local rendering companies have a mafia-style stronghold on nearly all restaurants in the greater LA area and have switched from charging to collect WVO, to doing so for free. There's a good chance that is BECAUSE of the veggie oil movement and the rising demand for used oil. Pretty soon, the renderers will be PAYING to collect. And they use fear tactics to thwart the little guys from taking away their restaurants... I guess they gotta keep makin that dog food.
B. Greasehaulers (a local WVO collection co-op) has decided they have enough members and aren't accepting new ones... so if you want to get a collection and transportation license, you have to incur the entire cost on your own or start your own similar co-op.
C. For some reason, all but 1 of the local filtered veggie oil suppliers has gone out of business within the last 2 weeks. My main source for pre-filtered oil (the only person left standing) is now inundated with dozens of desperate customers and his waiting list is so long that he has opted to neglect his existing customers for the time being.
D. If you think you can get around Los Angeles on a bike or by public transit, you must be joking.
This has become a real problem for a lot of people with this stack-up of f*ck-ups happening all at once. I'm not the only one complaining.
And as for "self-reliance", it's my opinion that there is very little such thing as true self-reliance. I happen to believe that people who think they are entirely self-reliant are looking about an inch deep and in denial of the true nature of interdependence.
I'm making plans and an increased level of "self-reliance" is unfolding for me, but it's all in process.
If you can't even be real enough to find it in your heart to let a brother vent some frustration without taking it personally, then I will agree with you that this won't be a civil discourse for you and I.
~peace~ -
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Re: I thought we were independent of BIG OIL! WTF?!?!
Tue, November 13, 2007 - 2:27 AMWowsa Sayr, you said a mouthful.
Yes their is a problem with unscrupulous retailers of biodiesel, however the problem is being addressed. The Biodiesel industry has come up with a standard called BQ9000 which is a mix of ISO 9001 standards and the Biodiesel industry standards which currently are higher now than even ASTM.
Currently the major problems are consistency in batches of biodiesel. Unheated shipping and storage containers. Mixed use or storage facilities that have converted old diesel storage tanks into biofuels tanks.
Many manufacture facilities do not do even basic quality assurance test on manufactured or stored biofuels nor point to point testing nor are they employing the use of stability additives.
Often times what may have been on spec fuel at the place of manufacture, becomes contaminated by the time it reaches the point of sale. This is from a variety of reasons, none of which is a good excuse to someone who is paying for bad fuel.
The local rising cost of biodiesel [for you] could be for any reason. Without having a contact person or the name of the company that manufactures your fuel, I cannot contact them to request a comment.
Before I get to your bullets I wanted to comment about cold weather and biofuel. You need a tank heater, and/or heated fuel lines and heated filter if your gonna operate in cold climates. Their is no question about that. If it wasn't for winter blends of diesel fuel that wouldn't work either.
Bullets:
A. Rendering companies provide a valuable service and have done so long before biodiesel has gotten to these proportions. Their are other sources for oil out their, biodiesel needs to adapt and stop being so dependent on waste food feedstock and food commodities in general. Mixing food and energy is only going to raise the cost of food to epic proportions and we arleady know that we cannot farm enough oil to provide even minor percentage of the US fuel needs.
B. Critical mass. Sounds reasonable. Limited supply, means limited membership.
C. Again sounds like a supply issue. I think you live in a smallish town. But I like your problems. Responsible people doing their part to reduce their petrol consumption.
D. Diesel motorcycle or converted Ethanol scooter maybe? LA is notorious for their packed highway systems and terrible public transit. Maybe not a small town, but definitely stiff competition for WVO.
Your issues are all very valid, and your anger is apparent and vivid. I'm sorry this bothers you so much. It's growing pains and you must realize that biodiesel is growing at a wild and uncontrolled rate and their are quite a few prospectors out their who may [or may not] have good intentions but do have terribly poor execution. Discussions and [self-regulated] changes have been going on for years.
Biofuels are a young industry with no dedicated pipeline infrastructure or distribution network. Feedstock s only produce a few products per barrel as opposed to the dozen or so you get from petroleum. Profit margins are thinner and a bad batch of fuel can't be blended with a good batch [as with petroleum] and sold it has to be disposed of and all contact equipment cleaned and disinfected.
Their are moves within the industry and the major producers to quell this quality problem, but you must realize that this is coming from a self regulation standpoint and not the federal level. As far as the feds are concerned it makes good fodder to mention it in your speeches and pass some mickey mouse mandatory use legislation [EPACT].
Self-reliance is over rated. Its the other extreme from Dependency. People need people. In business and pleasure.
I wish things where better then they are for biofuels. I wish it was environmentalist and not the farm lobby who where behind the big push for biofuels. I wish over sized inefficient vehicles where illegal. I wish the government would spend as much money on upgrading the houses of the poor as they do on the war. I wish car manufacturers would stop wasting time on impractical hydrogen cars. I could go on, and on with wishes I have dozens but they don't make a difference. A wish is like a dream, sometimes you can make them happen and other times not, the journey is often the adventure, not the destination.
Things rarely go smoothly in a cultural evolution, I just hope its not a fad. -
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Re: I thought we were independent of BIG OIL! WTF?!?!
Tue, November 13, 2007 - 10:55 AMDoctor,
Thanks for you insight.. I *vividly* ;) agree with alot of what you say (in general).
And thanks also for allowing me to express my dissatisfaction without turning it around on me.
I sincerely hope it's not a fad too, yet everytime I see some cheesy, elementary website or video capitalizing in some half-truth way on Biofuel (ie, Bio Bling) and using people's lack of knowledge as a leverage mechanism to take advantage and charge double price for something... or an ad in craigslists for a car or truck that the seller is calling "A Biodiesel car with a Biodiesel engine", when in actuality it's a stock diesel with standard rubber fuel lines.... I lose a little bit o' faith in the movement and start seeing it as a fad. But in another sense, I see that most movements need to start off that way to gain momentum.
>> I wanted to comment about cold weather and biofuel. You need a tank heater, and/or heated fuel lines and heated filter if your gonna operate in cold climates. Their is no question about that.
See, that's the thing... there is A LOT of contradiction of information from source to source. I've been told you should not heat biodiesel or diesel. It's very dangerous to run Biodiesel in a heated tank unless it's very mild heat, just to get it up to liquid temp (above 40-60ºF - just in case it's made from animal fat, which gels at higher temps). Heated fuel lines are WAY too hot for biodiesel from what many sources have told me. The coolant temp is much too hot and risky. If you put bioD in a heated tank meant for veggie (which heats up to 160ºF) I'm told it's really risky. Mild heat only for Bio and... how can it be considered a viable alt. fuel if it gels anywhere between 36ºF and 60ºF?
I'm told by many that a heated filter with either bio or diesel running through it is like a ticking time-bomb... all you need is compression (aka plugged filter) and you have combustion. Not the case with veggie which has a much higher flashpoint.
>> A. Rendering companies provide a valuable service and have done so long before biodiesel has gotten to these proportions.
I'm not saying rendering companies weren't around first, or that they don't provide a valuable service. What I'm saying is that it's wrong for them to resort to bullying (threatening to report people for not having licenses, hiring investigators to follow people etc... ) in order to keep their contracts.
>> Their are other sources for oil out their, biodiesel needs to adapt and stop being so dependent on waste food feedstock and food commodities in general. Mixing food and energy is only going to raise the cost of food to epic proportions
I couldn't agree more!
>> we arleady know that we cannot farm enough oil to provide even minor percentage of the US fuel needs.
You're right if we rely on soil-based feedstock. Algae is, thus far, (from what I know) the only possible source which contains enough oil to solve the supply problem. It's sopping with oil and doesn't require soil. It can grow in greenhouses in the desert where the land is otherwise barren and doesn't interfere with food at all. Algae also has started to be used to clean up the pollution in factories. I foresee factories with algae greenhouses which suck pollutants out of the air and then the algae is squeezed to make LOTS of fuel.
The yield figures are staggering.. algae contains about 30x as much oil per acre as any soil-based feedstock yet known.
A potential problem (as I see it) with algae is that private companies are taking over and racing to set up the monopolies (patents included) so that whoever patents the process will prevent anyone else from using it. We as a race will always have a hard time surviving and solving global problems if private business is allowed to dictate our future. However, I also see it from the other side and perhaps it will take those people to actually make it happen... and I'm sure they will license the technology to make it global and localized.
>> B. Critical mass. Sounds reasonable. Limited supply, means limited membership.
I agree. I'm not criticizing Greasehaulers for closing the door.. I'm just saying that it creates an obstacle.. and that maybe it could be made modular instead of singular. I doubt it has really reached critical mass this quickly. It was only started recently.
To me it seems they're thinking too small and being compartmentalized about it. They should take on more (at a larger scale) if they're going to pretend they have some grandiose vision of improving things. If they max-out at 20 or 50 members, what kind of "collective" is that?
>> C. Again sounds like a supply issue. I think you live in a smallish town.
LA is not a small town. :) It's just that there are A LOT of people here doing the veggie oil thing. You practically can't throw a rock without hitting a 300D with a Lovecraft "100% Vegetable Oil" sticker on the rear window. You could call and visit restaurants ALL DAY (I did) and not find 1 that would even *sell* their used oil to you... actually I did find one who wasn't already claimed and they're using Creamy Frying Shortening (hydrogenated) and that explained why.
Things go in waves and right now, the demand is outweighing the supply. I fully expect that to happen more (and worse) in the future. It's inevitable. There will be peaks and there will be troughs. I'm just venting... no biggie.
>> A is notorious for their packed highway systems and terrible public transit. Maybe not a small town, but definitely stiff competition for WVO.
Oh... that's right. You basically said what I'm saying in your next point. :)
And everything you said after your D bullet was total, 100% word to tha mutha... :)
You get it.
Thank you.
One last thing..
>> Your issues are all very valid, and your anger is apparent and vivid. I'm sorry this bothers you so much.
If you want some insight as to why it bothers me so much, I will share that.. I have - for the last few years, and more so over the last year and then full-force since about May - been preparing to transition my life to use strictly biofuels. I convinced my wife we needed to get rid of our gassers and buy diesels, then convert them to run on veggie. That was a major undertaking. Then I completely immersed myself in studying (practically all day long) networking with knowledgeable folk etc... spending large amounts of time and money to make this work.. never with the intention of getting free fuel or saving money & time. I want to be part of something I believe in. I have set aside my work (music production) and have been spending all of my time spending what little savings we have.
I'm invested in this to say the least. So when someone says to me that they can't understand my emotional investment in what fuel I put in my car, they don't know a thing about me... so how are they expecting to understand without knowing me?
There is only so much you can learn about something until you actually DO IT... and well, I have started to become increasingly disillusioned with vegetable oil-based biofuel the more I learn by experience. And, I have been witnessing a lot of disillusionment and greed in other people within this realm. I have had endless obstacles from trying to take it all on myself by collecting and filtering my own oil. Misinformation is everywhere and nobody seems to know what the hell they're talking about because all of the know-it-alls are constantly disagreeing with each other. I have been trying to follow all the "rules" and still, my filtered drums end up with large curds of phlegm-like balls floating in them. It's shit like that which makes me see that this is a pseudo-scientific thing.
The veggie oil people scoff at the Biodiesel people and vice versa. The more authorities I come in contact with, the more I think the whole thing is a bad joke. There's alot of denial and disfunction and delusions of grandeur.
I just want to see this vision (the overall vision - not just my own) succeed and I feel like I'm taking on as much as I can. I've put everything in and I admit... a big part of me is attached to an outcome in this case. Maybe I need to let that go and chock it all up to experience.
I don't know.
If you don't like what I have to say, don't read my posts... but I will say that most of the time, I am a reasonable and level-headed person. This is just a frustrating experience I've been having with this whole undertaking. -
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Re: I thought we were independent of BIG OIL! WTF?!?!
Tue, November 13, 2007 - 2:40 PMMy original post wasn't intended to be as harsh as it seemed. I wasn't trying to suggest that it was inappropriate for you to express your feelings, just that in the presence of all that, there's little additional rational discourse that can be had. I was trying to illustrate that your post seemed hostile, judgmental, and insulting. I can illustrate specifically which passages make it seem that way, but I don't think it's really necessary or helpful to deconstruct the original post. If you think it's helpful, I will.
It's fine with me if it's your desire to express your feelings. However, I'm not really well-equipped for sympathy and would prefer to constrain myself (and this tribe) to rational discourse as much as that's possible.
All that having been said, a lot of your concerns are valid and doctor's follow-up was very well put. However, it seems to me that in both of your posts that there is some sort of implicit assumption of a socialist perspective. Describing profit motive as "greed" is one of the statements that lead me to believe this. In doctor's case, he wrote, "I wish the government would spend as much money on upgrading the houses of the poor as they do on the war." I have my own issues with this because I feel like the environmental movement has been co-opted by socialists and anti-corporatists. I wish (since we're listing wishes) that one movement weren't being disguised in the other. I feel like that would be more productive all around. My perspective isn't all that surprising given that my own political bent is libertarian. I might be on crack, but I think self-reliance is possible, though it may not be necessary.
Unfortunately, this is a new industry that has yet to make a significant impact on the consumption of oil in this country, which is at present 21M barrels per day and continually rising. The high cost of petro-diesel seems beneficial to me in that it makes the bio-diesel market a more lucrative one for those that choose to enter it. Prices may go up in the short term as a result of increased demand, but that pricing pressure should be an incentive for more suppliers to enter the market.
It seems likely to me that no specific technology will end this country's dependency on petroleum, that would probably come as a result of a myriad of different technologies. However, petroleum is still a relatively cheap source of energy, which is a high bar for any new source of energy. I'm quite thrilled that in some places the cost of bio-diesel is actually less than the cost of petro-diesel.
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Re: I thought we were independent of BIG OIL! WTF?!?!
Wed, November 14, 2007 - 2:23 AMIt's always interesting to hear new myths in biofuels. Heating biodiesel is no more dangerous than heating veggie oil. Because you remove the glycerol from an oil doesn't make it suddenly lower the flash point, it improves the viscosity. Heating biodiesel improves the viscosity further. This is especially important for folks who run B100 made from feedstocks that have high paraffin concentrations and begin crystallizing at temps that are clearly above freezing.
The problem for some folks can come from barnstorming unwashed biodiesel in their vehicles. Methanol is way flammable and hot methanol vaporizes easily. I'm not a big fan of the process or the noxious vapors it produces or the dependency on another manufactured fuel to create biodiesel. Unless you have a distillation and recovery plant setup for methanol so you can recycle it, I'm not really a big fan.
As far as heating biodiesel is concerned. Yes it should be done and if you ever find a BQ9000 certified fuel supplier it will come out of the pump that way. This is a reality for anyone who wants to run B100 year round that doesn't live in a tropical climate. Electric fuel lines and filter heaters and tank heaters are ALWAYS to be thermostatically controlled and set to a temperature that is adequate to keep the oil flowing at a good viscosity and eliminate the possibility of fuel gelling due to adverse temperatures. I dont list any magic numbers like 160 degrees F or any other such magic, every feedstock is different.
Do know this, that the return line from your IP is sending excess oil back into the tank that was not needed to propel the car. The oil in the return can easily reach 150 degrees F just by the fact it was compressed and ready to be injected... if this oil was so dangerous wouldn't we have heard of exploding diesels by now?
I'm sleepy I'll reply some more later... -
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Re: I thought we were independent of BIG OIL! WTF?!?!
Mon, November 19, 2007 - 11:16 PMsheesh, fool,
The price of soy oil and all other oil has gone up astronomically in the last year. This also affects the value of waste oil as renderers also charge more for it, as it's competitive with soy oil in terms of what it's used for (animal feed and biodiesel, also cosmetics, etc- yep, they make your shampoo/lipstick/dog food out of gross restaurant oils, with varying levels of processing in between). You want to complain, talk to the farmers that grow the oil. No one should begrudge farmers getting a raise finally, as many people are making a real profit for the first time ever this year due to these high prices.
Also, methanol recently went up. There were a couple of disasters in the methanol industry recently- it's made from natural gas currently (though it doesn't have to be) and there='s been a major supply disruption. Last time this happened the price of methanol went down to normal after the disruption was over.
However, vegetable oil prices have done nothing but go up, while biodiesel demand has gone up, and diesel prices have gone up. This means biodiesel prices also go up, as you can't stay cheaper than diesel and expect to be able to provide product consistently (as in, we'd be deluged by furious people bitching about how the place always runs out). It will always cost more than diesel, especially when diesel affects the cost of farming. No, oil farmers don't use biodiesel, and neither do the delivery trucks that get the oil to the restaurant, the renderer's trucks, etc/
SVO isn't more sustainable than biodiesel, it's pretty likely that it creates much higher emissions than biodiesel, especially if anything goes wrong with the conversion.
There's nothing wrong with heating biodiesel, it has a really high flash point, much higher than an SVO conversion can achieve.
The local biodiesel producer, Imperial Western, is probably making fuel with whatever oils they can get in LA< which includes the stuff that's hydrogenated and otherwise has high gelling temps. This means that parts of the resulting fuel can freeze in storage, which is probaly what you're seeing as precipitating out of solution because of winter temps (the stuff is coming from a colder location than where you are). If food oils weren't as expensive these days, they'd probably be switching to one of those (they in the past used some waste walnut oil from California walnut meal plant, but my guess is it's probably unavailable as it was a temporary source too) . You sneer at hydrogenated oil, they've got the same stuff to deal with to meet all the demand. -
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Well then... I guess Biodiesel is a lye .
Mon, November 26, 2007 - 9:23 PM>> sheesh, fool,
Yeah foo! That's what I'm talkin bout!!
>> The price of soy oil and all other oil has gone up astronomically in the last year. This also affects the value of waste oil as renderers also charge more for it...
Then don't get it from renderers. That's one too many middle-persons anyhow.
>> You want to complain, talk to the farmers that grow the oil. No one should begrudge farmers getting a raise finally, as many people are making a real profit for the first time ever this year due to these high prices.
One more reason for supporting a switch from *FARMING* fuel where food used to grow. There isn't enough soil to support the rising demand for much longer. If we want to see the failure of our mission then let's support the farmers and hope they can grow enough fuel rather than us doing what we SHOULD be doing, which is demanding better feedstocks (like algae, prairie grass etc...) that doesn't waste water, soil, resources etc... etc...
The fact is, soy, palm, rapeseed/canola and all of the other conventional feedstocks are a TOTAL waste of resources when we have the technology (google: Vertigro and/or Algae biodiesel) already to put algae bio reactors all over barren wasteland and not need much water to grow it. It yields like 100x the oil per acre than the common feedstocks and has many other uses in factories. It could be much more easily standardized (made uniform) which is what it's going to take for it to become an acceptable alternative fuel.
The farmers? Well they'll be fine after they switch back to growing food which is what that land should be used for. Growing vegetables and putting them into a fuel tank is worse than a bucket under a leak, it's two steps backwards instead of a step forward.. and personally the red herring angers me because it jeopardizes the publically perceived validity of the entire diesel biofuels movement. The very non-sustainability of it gives anything veggie oil a bad rap.
>> Also, methanol recently went up. There were a couple of disasters in the methanol industry recently- it's made from natural gas currently (though it doesn't have to be)
I'm not going to touch this one due to the nature of this forum... that would be bigtime flame-bait.
>> diesel prices have gone up. This means biodiesel prices also go up, as you can't stay cheaper than diesel and expect to be able to provide product consistently
>> It will always cost more than diesel, especially when diesel affects the cost of farming.
Should I accept that?? And are you saying that's how it should be? Why are we pretending to be independent of foreign oil then? That's what's called LIE-ING!!!
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Biodiesel "Independence"... is it a LYE?
Mon, November 26, 2007 - 9:47 PMThat wasn't supposed to post yet, but somehow I accidentally hit an unknown key combo that was a shortcut for publishing the post. Never happened before... Wish I knew what it was. I had more I wanted to respond to in your post.
In response to:
>> It will always cost more than diesel, especially when diesel affects the cost of farming.
So what happens when diesel runs out? What happens when it goes up to $4.50 a gallon?! Are we going to raise biodiesel to be a bit higher than that b'cuz bio is better? LAA-AAME argument man. Not buying it - literally.
>> SVO isn't more sustainable than biodiesel, it's pretty likely that it creates much higher emissions than biodiesel, especially if anything goes wrong with the conversion.
If you believe that statement, then it's painfully obvious that you don't understand what "emissions" means and you don't understand what a proper VO conversion consists of.
The risk of a poorly installed or malfunctioning veggie conversion (running VO) is NO greater than that of a malfunctioning unmodified diesel engine running either Bio-D or petro-diesel. When a car is warmed up, well-tuned and the VO conversion components are working properly (all of which will last a LONG time if it's a decent kit) the emissions will be as clean as Bio.. not to mention, the byproducts of Biodiesel aren't clean and the treatment chemicals require a caustic and highly volatile process to create. So, let's not compare the two when VO is obviously the more benevolent and easy to prepare for use. At least you can run VO year-round instead of needing to cut it with Diesel in the winter. And warming up on diesel takes a couple of minutes (less than a cup of diesel) then you switch to VO and you're not burning fossils like you need to if you choose to rely on Bio.
>> There's nothing wrong with heating biodiesel, it has a really high flash point, much higher than an SVO conversion can achieve.
A good VO conversion will heat the oil to between 160-180ºF right at the injectors. That makes the flashpoint very close and if the flashpoint weren't as good, you would notice worse MPG and that's not the reality.
The plain truth is that what you are suggesting has NEVER been backed up by science. There are no conclusive results to say either way. If you have any, I would love to eat my words. I believe that if & when the tests are run, VO would come out either on top or exactly the same. The tests that were performed years ago are outdated and have no relevance to modern VO conversions.
>> The local biodiesel producer, Imperial Western, is probably making fuel with whatever oils they can get in LA< which includes the stuff that's hydrogenated and otherwise has high gelling temps.
Wow, high gelling temps... that's reassuring. Hope it doesn't drop under 50º today. :)
How responsible of them! Better to run out than ruin cars... duh. I would take customers bitching over no fuel over customers bitching about broken-down cars ANY day if it were my choice... but no, not them. They gotta bring in that scrillah baby. $$$
>> This means that parts of the resulting fuel can freeze in storage, which is probaly what you're seeing as precipitating out of solution because of winter temps (the stuff is coming from a colder location than where you are).
Yeah, I know, that's exactly what Kent Bullard (founder of SOCALBUG) told me. But this just means Biodiesel is a big LYE if it's pretending to be safe, stable and independent of foreign oil. So thanks for bringing this discussion full-circle and helping support my initial point.
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