Interesting Idea

[ashfire]

I was just watching a TV show called Trucks on Spike TV. The host showed a setup that is available for home use to make your own Biodiesel.
You use used cooking oil which you test with chemicals to see what has to be mixed with the cooking oil to change it to Biodiesel after it has run through a pump and valve system. It cost $.70 a gallion to make it.
Now if they only make a system to make gasoline out of used motor oil or something that will work the same and it only cost a few cents.
Boy would that put the oil companys in a spin.

[Ingemar]

Cost of production does not necessarily equal its actual price. Biodiesel is actually quite expensive (at 2.60 per gallon!) It would be indeed be a nice alternative fuel supply, but the problem is that it caters to a very slender market--environmentalists (in particular) with diesel engines (in general). When you consider that most drivers use unleaded fuel (gasoline), biodiesel won't exactly solve the oil crisis.

It wouldn't necessarily put the oil companies in a spin. They may simply just change from selling crude oil to vegetable oil.

[ashfire]

I just found something else that is being used to make diesel fuel, inedible turkey parts used by Brain Appel's Refinery Carthage, MO submitted to Ripley's Believe It or Not. I remember Exxon's old saying PUT A TIGER IN YOUR TANK, Now you might have PUT A TURKEY IN YOUR TANK or McDONOLD'S IN YOUR TANK. MMMMMMM Fries MMMMMMM Turkey

[Mithrandir]

Actually, McDonalds WAS talking at one point about selling their used fries cooking oil to be refiltered as biodiesel.


BEAN KNOWLEDGE!

[Anime Dad]

In australia we have companies that specialise in buying cooking oil from takeaway shops, processing it and reselling it as biodiesel. The vans they drive around in run on biodiesel too.