Renew News

It used to be that people only got methane from dung. That is no longer the case. Check out what those crazy Swedes are doing. Svensk Biogas of Linkoping Sweden has figured out a way to use the whole cow too!

In addition to the dung they can now use chopped up cow parts in their fermenters. I’m working under the assumption that they aren’t throwing prime-cut steaks in there.

More on the cow train from Discover magazine here.

Jessica Alba was just on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to plug her new movie: The Fantastic Four 2.  Right at the end of the interview she mentioned that she is really into alternative fuels, and she tried to convince Jay to run his diesel vehicles on biodiesel.  He was thoroughly unimpressed.

Nice try anyway Jessica.

The Discovery Channel’s Myth Busters, one of the best shows ever made, recently used Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) in episode #53 “Exploding Pants”.  It’s a great episode where in addition to trying to replicate the myth of the exploding pants from 1930s New Zealand, they investigate the spectacular claims of mile-per-gallon boosters that they find on the internet. They filter used vegetable oil from a restaurant and use it straight with no modifications to a diesel car to see how it fares against the other (often crazy) methods of getting more bang for your buck when you drive.  Considering that the vegetable oil was free, and had about the same mpg as regular diesel, they do pretty well.
It’s a great episode, and a great show.  Try to watch it if you can.

More info on using Straight Vegetable Oil and Biodiesel here.

Not only is Willie Nelson into Biodiesel, but he has an entire webiste and business devoted to it.  One of their selling points is that biodiesel is fuel that is a fully renewable enrgy source, it is grown right here in America, and it supports our farmers.  I think this is a great way of looking at it and it ties right in with all of Willie Nelson’s efforts with Farm Aid.  The site has some really good information, I learned a bunch the first time I visited it.  Good ol’ Willie….

I was talking to my friend Harish at the dog park today, and he asked me if I had heard of the people in India who use dung to produce energy. He didn’t have any specifics for me, but when I looked around for “Dung Power” this is what I found.

The next energy source: Barnyard animals

Although not about the people in India, this is a cool article and it expanded my idea of what bio-fuel really is. There are apparently a lot of “digesters” out there that process manure and get methane gas out of it. These digesters have apparently been around in Europe and elsewhere in the world for a while since their energy prices are higher than ours, but it’s starting to catch on here in the USA. Even though there is a high initial cost, this is a nice solution because it solves more than one problem at once. Excess manure, and high energy costs.

I would not have thought of Indiana as being a leader on the frontier of environmentalism. But lo and behold, Govenor Mitch Daniels declared Reynolds IN as BioTown, USA on Sept 13th 2005.

The newspaper INtake published an article last week that seems almost too good to be true. Not only is it about trying to make a small Indiana town produce almost all it’s own fuel, but they make it sound like it might not be that hard, and maybe it would even be profitable.

Check it out here:

http://www.intakeweekly.com/articles/5/024302-8225-154.html

I certainly hope that this experiment works out, because it could be a model for communities all over farming areas. Incredible.

I have to admit that I was skeptical when I first heard about people running their cars on french fry grease. Run your car on a waste product, and have it smell good at the same time? Too good to be true.

Now though, it seems that quite a few people are actually doing it. I’m not sure I have the patience to make my own bidiesel at home, and now it appears that we may not have to. Discover Magazine had an article a few years ago about making biodiesel from slaughter-house offal on a mass scale.  I have been waiting with baited breath for a follow-up article… and here it is:

http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-04/features/anything-into-oil/