Internal Combustion

[Wesley]

So I got rid of one of my cars this week, and it made me think about cars with relation to my lifestyle. Do I want the power and speed of Gasoline? Do I enjoy the renewability of Electricity? How about the savings of Veggie Diesel? I am really thinking about giving up my sweet little VR6 VW for another diesel, so I can run veggie oil in it. What are some of your opinions about cars and fuel and such?

[Shay]

To be honest I am not really familiar with diesel or veggie diesel so I cannot truly comment on this. Are all diesel gas locations now veggie? I can say though that I do support this idea of going electric and getting away from oil and other depleting resources.

[chex]

My extent of fuel knowledge is "walk when it's possible!"

[Wesley]

Okay, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the differences in fuels:

Diesel is a cetane molecule extracted from your average barrel of crude oil.

Gasoline is an octane molecule from the same barrel of crude oil.

Electricity comes from solar, wind, nuclear, coal, hydro, etc.

Veggie, in my case WVO or Waste Vegetable Oil, comes from your local restaurant.

A diesel motor uses compression to generate the heat required to destabilize the cetane molecule and allow for combustion. The same heat and pressure will cause vegetable oil to destabilize and combust. So you see that even though veggie oil is not diesel fuel, it will theoretically work in a diesel motor.

Gasoline is less stable and cannot withstand the very high pressures of most diesel motors, so gas motors use a spark to cause ignition of the fuel/air mixture. You cannot run veggie in a gas motor.

Electricity must be generated, then stored in some form of battery. The traditional lead acid battery is not powerful enough to work in an electric car unless you have about a thousand pounds of battery. Not efficient or cost effective. So they use different compounds like Lithium, Cadmium, Nickel and such to make a smaller battery. These batteries are costly to make, and messy for the environment.

I am looking for a balance of cost, power, and environmental friendliness. I'm still thinking this over, and I will be for some time. I'll post more opinions in here each day.

[Shay]

When you put it that way, I can see your debate and understand the reasoning behind the veggie diesel. I'm curious to know what the outcome will but. Sorry I don't have any advice or worthy input to assist in your decision.

[Wesley]

No need to apologize. I don't need help making a decision. I was just curious if anyone has any strong feelings about this one way or the other. I am going to be stirring it up in a bit.

[Dowster]

Currently fuel in England (Diesel and Petrol/Gasoline) is at around £6.00 per gallon, and could be rising to £8.00 a gallon before too long.

So will always go with whatever I can get the cheapest, my van is diesel and car is petrol. The usage they gets (outside of work) is based on consumption vs current cost with the type of journey having some influence. The car does long high speed trips better, but the van is more suitable for long low speed etc

[bella]

There are two sides to using veggie oil as fuel, one the one hand it is cheap and said to be eco-friendly. On the other hand farm land is used to grow the plants which are turned into fuel (whereas using oil which has already been used to fry something for example is a different concept).
Industrialized countries grow plants (often in less developed countries from which they can buy it cheaply, think of soy which is grown in former rainforest areas) to make fuel out of it (or to feed their cattle, but this is also another story). In some countries people die from hunger.

There's a new kind of fuel here with a higher amount of ethanol. To grow the plants from which ethanol is made heavy machines are needed and during its production process nitrous oxide is generated which is much more harmful to the atmosphere than the CO2 from the regular exhaust fumes.

Electric cars are a good alternative, the problem here is the charge of the battery, it doesn't last that long which means you can't go far without having to recharge it. Charging takes quite some time and good luck in finding a plug at a gas station when you need one.

[Shay]

Here in Nebraska our gasoline with ethanol is cheaper because we grow the corn right here in our state.

Random fact of the day...

[Beany]

Watched a video at school today, about how 'vegetable oil', including that in fuels, can be palm oil, the one that causes large amounts of deforestation to build the plants, and they shoot the orangutans that try to eat the palm shoots.

I just thought that this fitted here.

[LaLou]

I'm interested in the veggie oil. Can you just buy it? Or use your own waste oil?
It's not even legal here to use veggie oil, but that is mostly because the government misses out on fuel tax, which over here is about 70-75 % of the total fuel price. (if not more.)

[Beany]

I don't know the full facts, but it's mainly being mixed into petrol and diesel around here. But the palm oil isn't as good as rapeseed oil, for example.

[Wesley]

Palm kernel oil is the "-palm" in Napalm. the "Na-" is naptha, also known as Zippo fluid.

I would be using waste oil, hopefully smelling of Thai food. They don't tax it here yet, so it is still completely legal, and restaurants actually want you to take their old oil! Mmmm, I can imagine driving around in my old Mercedes smelling Thai egg rolls and not paying a cent for my tank full of fuel......

[Dowster]

£1.40 per smurf litre now, someone plese come up with something else I can use. I piss plenty during the day, surely there must be some way of converting that?

[Beany]

Haven't they just brought it down by 1p per litre? Not that it makes THAT much difference. I'm sure it was in the low 90s this time 2 years ago.

[Wesley]

I have turned a corner mentally. maybe.


In fifty or so years, the largest supplies of natural crude oil will be running on empty. A few years after that, the emergency reserves that the various countries have stashed away will be all gone. And in 50 years, I'll be a silly old bastard who most likely will not be doing much driving anyway. But that is then, this is now, so should I really care one way or the other? I'll just keep on driving my gas (petrol) powered car until it breaks and I have to get a new one. Maybe I'll worry about it then.


Really, though... by then several generations will have grown up knowing that oil is running out. They will have spent their time in college learning and doing research on other ways of making energy, not just for our cars, but for the rest of the planet as well. If we don't blow ourselves up by then, I think things will turn out okay.

[Pete McGiveris]

I'd go with either diesel, or completely electric. You would think that hybrid cars are more efficent, but diesel cars are getting better MPG. Also, you can make bio-diesel (from fryer grease), which as you've said, is all kinds of kick-bottom. And ethanol does more harm than it does good. Insteand of taking time to put into the research and development of sustainable bio-fuels, we half-bottom it and grow it out of corn. Not only does this take an insane amount of water to grow, it also causes epic erosion and requires a nitrogen-rich fertilizer that has been linked to algae blooms and huge aquatic "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico.

And, it makes your car less efficent. Producing it actually requries 30% more energy than we can get out of it. Yah, ethanol.

That was sarcastic, btw. smurf ethanol.

[bella]

Agreed, ethanol is causing more problems than it solves. They started selling it here and are trying to get rid of the usual fuel, so you have the option between ethanol fuel and Diesel. Yay. Fuel prizes are insane at the moment anyway.

[Pete McGiveris]

Yeah, fuel prises are inane. They're $1.27 a litre here, which is about $4.82 (give or take) a gallon for our US friends.

[bella]

I got ethanol fuel for 1,50 Euro per litre, this is 2,17$ and 2,08 C$. And this is supposed to be cheap, prices are rising currently, due to the Easter holidays.