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[majiktt]

I've had my new tdi jetta for just over a week now, and its time for more fuel. I'm going to fill it up with biodiesel and see how it runs. For those of you who haven't heard of biodiesel, it's basically chemically altered vegetable oil. Producers of biodiesel make it out of things like soybean oil and recycled cooking grease. Isn't that cool

Comments

Hidden costs

[anonymous]

The other appealing thing about biodiesel is that, beyond the emissions figures MajikTT cites above, when you factor in things like reduced transportation energy costs (all the fuel and environmental damage involved in transporting and refining the crude oil that becomes a gallon of gasoline from the middle east, not to mention the pollutants generated by bombing Iraq, etc.), it becomes even more appealing. Biodiesel is a domestic product, often produced locally, usually from grease that would otherwise simply be waste.

Another variant is what's called waste vegetable oil, or WVO -- basically a less refined type of biodiesel. You need to make some more modifications to your car to run on this stuff, since it's quite a bit more viscous, but the advantage is you can pretty much pull up to KFC and fill up directly from their deep fryer waste. Wired had a big article on it last week -- http://wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,64385,00.html

I think all of this stuff is a great way to reduce our dependence on mideast oil, prevent wars, etc. etc. Very appealing.

- Aaron