$0.70/gallon to make homemade biodiesel, wow!

[NickB79]

I was visiting my dad and my brother this week, and they were telling me how they're going to be buying biodiesel from the mom of one of my brother's friends to fuel the farm equipment. She is collecting deep-frying oil from local restaurants and converting it at home to biodiesel, at a cost of $0.70/gallon. She is currently making 50 gal/day, but says she can go up to 100 gal/day if the demand is there. She's going to sell it for $1.70/gal, vs $3/gal for conventional diesel. When you burn 2000 gallons of diesel a year running tractors and combines, that translates into a savings of $2600.

The sample I saw looked just like biodiesel is supposed to look like (honey-colored, smelled like french fries :-)) and the first tank of it through the farm truck ran perfectly. Just goes to show what a little ingenuity can do to help save money and be more ecologically sustainable.

[Deja Q]

1. 70 cents plus the cost to procure the oil...

So it's not that cheap.

If the price of gas in the USA was the same as the price in China, it would be about 70 cents/gallon...

[CanSocDem]

3. 70 cents a gallon to produce sounds like gouging....

....considering how little 'refining' is required. If the farmers already have a farm, they should make their own bio-fuel.

[John Q. Citizen]

5. You also need methanol and lye as imputs, plus a small amount of

energy to convert the oil to biodiesel and to obtain a clean quality product.

.70 a gallon is considered to be about the going cost of production if one has access to free used fry oil.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. No, China was paying $2.19 back in March 2006

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2006-03/28/content_603124.htm

That quotes 58 US cents a litre, which is $2.19 per US gallon.

[ThomWV]

13. I'd Pay That

Adn think I was getting a deal instead of a royal screwing.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. My neighbor makes it.

He ses it to run his truck & heat his house. It's a lot of work to save maybe 3 thou a year, & is dependent on a cheap or free source of waste oil. Soon as the restauranteers figger out they're sitting on something valuable, the waste oil apprach isn't gonna be all that viable.

[John Q. Citizen]

4. They already sell "white grease" or used fry oil on the Chicago

Commodities Exchange.

There are many large well funded companies that collect waste fry oil on a daily or weekly basis from resturants/food processors.

But, people can still make biodiesel at home, and it works great. Nothing wrong with that.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. What's she gonna do when...

someone comes in paying half a buck a gallon and up for all that fry oil?

And about ecologically sustainable-- No2 fuel oil, chicken fat, white grease, and tallow all put about the same ampount of CO2 and other stuff in the air, with sulfur compounds and ash possibly reduced. So, other than not importing foreign oil, where's the benefit if we keep burning stuff in the same inefficient engines and boilers?

[John Q. Citizen]

8. biodiesel isn't chicken fat, white grease, tallow, etc. Biodiesel won't

replace diesel, but it's a good place to start. Just as wind power won't replace oil powered turbines, it's a good place to start. Biodiesel is clearly and for many reasons superior to pure diesel. Biodiesel is usually mixed with petroleum diesel but can be used straight or neet, as they say.

I'm all in favor of folks making some of their own and using it themselves or selling it. In her case she's taking what would be a waste product at her location, (used fry oil) and turning it into a useful product.

It's not a magic bullet but it is useful and accessible home technology. It's superior for engine performance to neet petroleum diesel, it's less polluting then petroleum diesel, and if her used fry grease source starts charging her .50 a gallon, then she can raise her price .50 cents a gallon and still sell a better product for less than a person can buy an inferior product at the pump.

So what's wrong with that?

[ThomWV]

10. Bingo! One or two other little difficulties as well ...

And to add to that just how much fry oil do people think there is out there in this vast country? Go ahead and assume that every greasy-spoon in the country has 50 gallons of it stashed away somewhere, figure every McDonalds has 100. We could burn up every drop we have in about 3 days if this was a serious venture.

Oh, and how long is this operation gonna last when EPA discovers this lady is running an unlicensed refinery? Then one has to ask who is paying the motor fuel (not state road-use) taxes on this particular juice.

[MadHound]

11. Then you start growing commercial quanties of biodiesel feedstock

I highly reccomend that we start growing oil bearing algae myself, since we can grow enough of it to fuel the entire country.<http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html> Yup, all the fuel we need can be grown on 15,000 square miles of water. We can grow most of it in the holding ponds at every wastewater treatment plant across the country, thus not only growing our own fuel, but efficiently cleaning up sewage water, a twofer:think:

All we really need to do is to mandate that every new vehicle, from trucks to motorcycles are manufactured with a diesel engine. The infrastructure for distribution is in place, refining plants are being set up across the country(I've got two being set up within 125 miles of me). And it makes sense. Biodiesel is ninety percent less polluting than gas engines, and the waste products from its manufacture are glycerin, which could go into making soap, and water:shrug: Sounds great to me. It would also give our farmers a boost.

We also need to switch our electrical generation over to renewables, a combination of wind and solar. A 1991 DOE report found that there is enough havestable wind energy in three states, North Dakota, Kansas and Texas to fill all of our electrical needs, including the growth factor, through the year 2030. Not that I'm saying we should cover those states in wind turbines, but just to show you how abundant wind power is in this country. No nukes, no coal, no fossil fuels needed, just wind.

The sooner this country becomes energy self sufficient the better off we'll be. Alternatives like biodiesel, wind and solar power are off the shelf technologies that will help us achieve that goal. Past time we started using them, don't you think?

[ThomWV]

14. I Just Read The Paper - What Undergrad Wrote That?

[MadHound]

16. That would be professor of physics at UNH Michael Briggs

Why are you so dismissive of facts that fall outside of your pervue? Are you capable of doing the sort of work that he did? Why are you trying to downplay biodiesel so much, afraid it will hurt your oil stock portfolio?

I'm sick to death of people like you, who still continue to deny reality and try to knock down solution after solution. I've seen this all my life, and it has drastically hurt this country. It was people like you who took out after the wind and solar sector in the late seventies, and essentially killed it. If that hadn't happened, we wouldn't be where we're at today. Instead, we've become a warmer planet, more dependent on oil, and further away from a real solution.

Stop being so negative and try being part of the solution. Unlike most keyboard critics, these people have real science, and real degrees to back their ass up with. It is past time that we started paying attention to them.

What do you have against biodiesel? If we model it along gasoline, you won't have to make it, it will be mass refined. It doesn't have to smell like fry oil, since it can be run over a bed of activated charcoal before the final wash. Why are you so negative on a solution that can save our country?

[lectrobyte]

20. Sustainable? OK, what would you propose? I think bio-diesel is

a great idea, and importing even one less gallon of oil from someplace like Saudi Arabia is a step in the right direction.

[madokie]

7. Good on him and good on her. but why so many want to find fault

with that I don't understand. If it only last for a short time it was good while it lasted, nothing more nothing less.

[ThomWV]

15. Because So Many Of Us Have The Habit Of Calling "Bullshit"

When ever we see schemes that are invalid and do nothing more than raise the hopes of the ignorant.

By the way, I do not use the word ignorant in a demeaning way, I simply mean people who have not been informed of the underling science.

These schemes all ignore the basic rule of Conservation of Energy. In every case if you bother to investigate in any depth you find that they suggest less energy input than they output and that, in a quite blunt term, is "Bullshit".

[madokie]

17. it doesn't take long to paint something when you use such a large brush

The process she's using is not all energy consuming, the point is that it is a step in the right direction not that it is a solution to a problem. One of the problem being dependency on the energy of other parts of the world, places that don't necessarily share our same philosophy. All steps no matter the size in the right direction is good. Anyways wash that brush you're using it's getting pretty dirty.

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. What about the cost of energy inputs...

to grow the corn, peanuts, soybeans, or whatever crop is used to produce the oil? Fertiliser, pesticides, ploughing, harvesting, processing, shipment, et cetera? Something tells me that 70¢/gal. is probably too low by at least a factor of two, since that figure fails to take into account the rest of the process. (Not to mention that the whole process of production uses up a lot of fossil fuel energy anyway.)

[focusfan]

18. We can do it,,if we set our minds to it

The farmers just like every industry in the U.S. have the capcity to over produce they just don`t use it when it is not needed otherwise prices would fall and they would go broke,that is why oil companies have not built a new refinery in thirty years and keep cutting production that keeps prices up.Gas spoils just like milk(although not as fast)so after making it,it needs to be used,ever smelled the gas in a car after it has been sitting for a long time.I love diesel engines and would gladly buy bio-diesel even if it cost more than regular diesel,because that money would stay here and not go to some other country which in turn helps our economy.I think we would have more diesels in this country had General Motors not screwed them up in the seventies turning people against diesels,and slowing development of them in cars and light trucks.I have read about Ford`s direct injected turbo diesel Focus in Europe getting 59 M.P.G.that beats Toyota`s Prius Hybrid and over time the Focus would be a lot cheaper to own.

[MadHound]

19. Growing algae in wastewater treatment ponds costs next to nothing

And in fact it saves money for the wastewater treatment facility, since algae helps breakdown and absorb the waste. And yet this oil bearing algae can produce enough feedstock for biodiesel to fulfill all of our fuel needs. See my earlier posts and link for further details.