If all goes according to plan...

[cracklinrosie]

Three years from now I will have finished my masters degree, and my car's warrenty will be up. So I'm going to have it converted to a biodiesel. That's right it will then run on veggie oil. Curious about what the hell I'm babbling about

Comments

[cracklinrosie]

Do you think it will wreck my car, or that it will be a huge pain in my ass to deal with the oil?

And I have no problem with public transport, I have now sucessfully navigated subway systems in multiple different languages. It's a piece of cake.

[agoodveilsays]

unlikely that you'll find yourself relying on public transportation instead of your own vehicle in portland since their public transport. system is little better than the one here in orlando.

[mylett]

or get your car stolen and exclusively use public transit.

[mylett]

ok, so now we run our cars on veggie oil...

but where do you fill up your tank? have you ever seen a fucking veggie oil station? i haven't, and i won't be seeing one anytime soon. gas stations make more money selling gas, period.

you'd have to go to fucking costco and buy veg oil in 50 gal drums. i'd love to be a pioneer of some cultural fad, but not this one... count me out until the rest of the masses jump on the bandwagon in about 25 years.

[mylett]

the trading desk i work at is on the agriculture futures trading floor, the home of soybean and soybean oil futures contracts among many other derivates such as corn and ethanol. we also trade a bit of crude oil, gasoline, and heating oil futures, so i'd like to think that i know a bit about the subject of biodiesel and other alternative energies. bean oil has an extrememly low tolerance to cold temps. as ketan pointed out, it will freeze very easily in relatively cold temps. and you'll still be burning fossil fuels after your engine conversion. bean oil is used as additive only, not a complete substitute. but i must say it is the most worthy alternative to complete fossil fuel dependence, outside of fuel cells (still in its technological infancy) and nuclear power. i'm not too sure about the effects upon engine performance. i guess that really isn't a concern to the ecocentric perspective, understandebly so.

[cracklinrosie]

From what I have read, most of what you said is true (I've never read anything about mixing fossil fuels & biodiesel though). You are right about the concern about the effect of cold (and heat) on biodiesel. It is likely to solidify at cold temps and oxidize and break apart at high temps. However, scientists are working on changing the molecular structure to make it more stable. If they are successful then hopefully by the time I am talking about doing this there will be a better biodiesal fuel than todays current option.

P.S. Did you know that diesel fuel itself tends to solidify (probably to a lesser extent then biodiesel) in cold weather? And that diesel engines have glow plugs to heat the fuel before you start the engine?

[mylett]

i must correct myself. i did say bean oil is currently used as an additive to diesel, but i may have implied that it can be used as an additive only. that is not true. it is possible to run a combustible engine on 100% bean oil. however, it's actually cheaper to use bean oil as an additive and mix it with diesel. or at least it was cheaper until the past few days. diesel fuel on the futures market is now at record highs, leaving bean oil to be economically competitive as a substitute. this only happened a few days ago

[ketanp]

There's a biodiesel gas station at Kennedy. All the government vehicles run off biodiesel or ehtanol. I think it's kind of ironic that the government uses these cars because they're cheaper to operate but won't pass anything on to us. I smell some old rich man on old richer man fucking.

[mylett]

funny... i remember smelling your finger once and that's exactly what it smelled like, 'old rich man on old richer man fucking.' i just couldn't quite put my finger on it... but apparently you put yours in it.