Overwhelming and inspiring, it’d to us all some good to look deeper into the subject.

As usual I’d like to encourage everyone to switch from petroleum to biodiesel. it’s renewable, cleaner for the environment and domestic. The more we support it the more we can build the infrastructure for the fuel to be more widely available. Buy a used diesel car and start being part of the solution.

no way can biodiesel support the entire needs of U.S.

It can only supplement 10%.

The only way is to actually reduce energy consumption.

Have mandatory laws that require cars get 35 MPG etc.

biodiesel is only a small-time alternative while we’re within the petroleum economy. we can never replace the way we live now with a biodiesel-run economy. it wouldn’t work. the amount of land necessary to grow enough veg oils would make biodiesel actually more hydrocarbon-intensive than gasoline. but as far as using filtered fryer grease, it’s the shit. it’s fun getting free fuel, or free food in exchange for taking the grease off their hands. they usually have to pay for it to be removed and dumped. i’ve even been payed for taking it away, while traveling on a school-bus that ran on grease. it was cool. takes dedication though.

“Have mandatory laws that require cars get 35 MPG etc”

that will never happen at the rate they are moving those laws unfortunately. the real answer is to stop dependency on individual automobile transportation. one person can ride a bike and get 50mpg or more. improving public transportation is another real answer but only rising gas prices will force these things to happen. the problem with that is that once gas prices go up that much we’ll be looking at a recession and it may be too late to implement large scale societal changes.

Buy a diesel and a standard gas car – brilliant!

“no way can biodiesel support the entire needs of U.S.

It can only supplement 10%.

The only way is to actually reduce energy consumption.

Have mandatory laws that require cars get 35 MPG etc.”

Oh ye of little imagination.

Maybe current levels of production make this statement true. But improving MPG’s can obviously make a huge difference. There’s a diesel VW called the Lupo in Europe that gets around 80 MPG. That’s 2-4 times greater than your average US auto (although I own a 1985 VW jetta Diesel veh that gets more than 40 mpg, and that’s 20 year old technology. We could be doing better if we chose to put the R&D into it, and of course there’s the possibility of Diesel hybrid vehicles – there’s a motorcycle that gets more than 100 mpg using this sort of technology – but it’s still in development). So from 10% we’re talking maybe 20-40% of the demand or more, depending on what improvements are possible. Now we work on the supply.

A little known detail of Biodiesel is that it can be made from Mustard Seed. Mustard is a nitrogen fixing crop. US farmers could add this crop to their existing agricultural products. When they need to do crop rotation for nitrogen fixing purposes they can grow a mustard variety and use the seeds for fuel production. With the same land they can produce a new crop and have a new income source.

And of course there’s the option of the electric car. They are cheap to charge up but only get about 30 miles per charge. Now, there’s a japanese inventor named Kohei Minato who designed an electric motor utilizing magnets to assist the propulsion of the rotor. His design is 5-10 times as efficient as a conventional electric motor. If we multiply the efficiency of an electric car by this factor we have a range of 150- 300 miles for the same cost to charge the battery. This is an option that starts to become viable at those ranges.

For more info on the motor check out this link.

http://www.rexresearch.com/minato/minato.htm

And of course there are other energy alternatives like fuel cells/hydrogen power, solar, wind, water and biomass. And who knows what kind of efficient alternative designs were bought and shelved by Chrysler and GM back in the 50’s. I’ve heard rumors of highly efficient options that have been buried. We could also increase our mass transit infrastructure for more efficient ways to get people from A to B.

Technology exists now that could make alternatives a viable reality, plus we’re a pretty ingenuous species when we put our minds to it. Don’t think that these options won’t fly. They can.

And as Shifty pointed out, used cooking oil can be a fuel source for vehicles equipped to use SVO, or the reclaimed oil can also be made into biodiesel instead of being recycled by a processing company.

Biomass means using animal and human waste products to create combustible fuel. Instead of treating our sewer and dumping it in the ocean we could be making it into fuel for our cities energy needs. One thing humans produce in no small quantity is sewage.

We should also make one a them engines like Doc Brown has at the end of Back to the Future that runs on garbage and banana peels. Oh yeah, and the flux capacitor while we’re at it.

here are some wonderful folks i’ve been working with and learning from recently:

Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI) Foundation

Personally, I’m all for mining landfills, using Thermal Depolymerization to turn biomass waste into fuel and plastic waste into plastics manufacturing feedstock, and recycling our waste streams.

Eventually, I think we’re gonna have to start thinking nuclear. Pebble-bed reactors or perhaps fusion, if there’s indeed any future to that line of research.

scrap metal and scrap plasitc will become big business in post-petroleum and post ‘peak-metal.’

Bump

Nice bumps, szam.

yeah… wouldve missed this one. Thermal Depolymerization is the bomb, dude!

We could burn fat people and still feed the rest corn , soy, and organic waste.

disclaimer: in now way am i prejudiced against the obese. this is clinically theoretical and open to speculation

timely bump indeed

related:

http://perceptualchaos.gnn.tv/blogs/15439/Carbon_cuts_are_cheap

i wish pc was still around, maybe he is, lurking, who knwos…

pc, if you read this: you should blog more often dude, i knwo you’re busy at uni and all but your contributions here are missed!

^{i can’t believe i have succumbed teh knwo-rage: proof that language really is a virus! or maybe it is because i miss neverknwo}

Thermal Depolymerization – Sounds good till you get to the heating it up part. Why not just cull the methane that comes off the pile naturally? Cars can be adapted to run on it – I saw a car filling up at a methane pump in Sacramento, near the airport, and have been trying to get info since (guy said he’d been doing it for years).

I’m just not going to buy a new car until the energy and automotive industries get their heads screwed on straight and put a real working alternative on the market. If that means I have to move to a city with functional public transportation down the line, so be it. I’m also going to put more effort into avoiding long periods of idling at stop lights (really…where are the “minimal idling” routes planned out for us at mapquest? They’re really good at sending us through toll booths though. I’m always redoing my routes to avoid that anyhow) and continue to try to drive as little as I can.

Chickenma1,

You’re right on with methane as part of the solution.

The thermal depolymerization process has a significant place in the mix, but again plays into the oil companies preference for the continuation of liquid fuels.

If biomass is ever to play a significant role in the energy equation, gasification is the future because it utilizes the existing natural gas distribution system and can begin with coal as a primary feedstock as the transition to biomass takes shape.

The greatest disadvantage to biomass is the transportation from producer to the energy consumer. This is immediately overcome by small scale gasification processing plants linked to the general gas distribution system.

I’m just not going to buy a new car until the energy and automotive industries get their heads screwed on straight and put a real working alternative on the market.
~empress,

The new gasoline-electric hybrids are the next best step. The no-idle, electric only at low speeds function are literally a breath of fresh air in the cities. If the manufacturers would install batteries to make these vehicles true plug ins they could do so for less than $6,000.00 a vehicle.

If you can afford a retrofit that unfortunately voids the warranty on a brand new car, you can install a battery pack in the wheel well where the spare goes to make these hybrid vehicles plug- ins. Then you’ve a range of 30 miles or so of city driving without ever running the engine. Many that have done so are now boasting averages of as much as 250 mpg, since actually starting their engines is such a rarity.

The next step in making this even better for the environment is to break the liquid fuel cycle and run these vehicles on propane or CNG. That’ll mean even less pollution out the tailpipe, fewer changes of the engine oil and fuels that are available here in North America that nobody has to bleed for.

See the preceding post as to what coal can do regarding this next best step in a viable energy future.

The planet is blessed with 1500 years worth of coal at the current rate of extraction and if conservation and responsible energy use patterns were implemented instead of just being proposed and rejected, this would promote a higher standard of living generally without radical increases in energy production.

Public transit will always make sense.

Nah…I think I’ll just have an old buddy of mine make me one of these

(and y’all are dreaming about hummers?...man…)

Leave it to Popular Mechanics.

The diesel electric drive is a great idea though and could save billions of dollars in fuel savings in the transportation sector, reducing pollution, if commercial trucks were fitted with similar systems. No more house rattling jake breaking either.

Peace,