Renew News » straight-vegetable-oil

Discovery’s Future Car TV Show Talks Fuel

Mark — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:23:54 +0000

The Discovery channel is 3/4 of the way through their four part series on the car of the future, appropriately called Future Car. The most recent episode was about fuel and hit on everything from ethanol, bio-diesel, hydrogen and solar all the way to having a car powered by air.

A few of the finer details are a little off, but all in all the shows have been great. It’s really cool to see what the designers are thinking about, and what is on the way. Perhaps the most interesting thing for me in this episode on fuel is that a lot of the future is already available now. Of course they showed prototype cars that can do some amazing things, but really the near future of fueling our vehicles is not so much about bringing in new technology, as it’s about getting more people on-board with the advances that are already commercially available like ethanol, biodiesel and hybrids.

One of the great things about cable is that you get more than one chance to see a good show. If you missed any of Future Car, check out the schedule for your second chance.

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Biobutanol is the Next Big Thing in Renewable Energy

Mark — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 04:51:57 +0000

As excited as I am about Biodiesel and SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) as fuel for vehicles, I don’t have a diesel car and don’t see one in my near future. If you are like me there is new hope: Biobutanol.

Biobutanol is a form of alcohol that can replace gasoline. It is similar to ethanol but has more favorable characteristics as auto fuel.

the “bio” in biobutanol refers to the fact that butanol can be made from biological sources including a wide variety of crops, which leads to all kinds of environmental, economic and societal benefits (like less dependency on foreign oil)
butanol has a higher energy content than ethanol
it is less corrosive than ethanol so it can be transported through existing infrastructure (trucks, pipelines, etc)
requires little or no modification to work in your car
can be a 1:1 replacement for gasoline (unlike ethanol that can be up to only 10% in most vehicles)
it may even be able to be used in diesel engines

So if it’s so great why can’t you buy it right now? It seems as though the new technology to produce biobutanol efficiently is so new that it is not yet scaled up to an industrial level, and very little testing has been done on how cars will react to the fuel. The good news is that several groups are working on it, like a fairly new partnership between BP and DuPont, and it seems like a very promising fuel. You can find a whole lot more information at butanol.com

Biodiesel Co-op Starts Up in Madison WI

Mark — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 15:49:56 +0000

A group of ten forward-thinking Madisonians have turned the former Car Care Clinic at 1894 E. Washington Ave into PrairieFire BioFuels Cooperative. If all goes well they will be selling 100% biodiesel from a real, honest-to-goodness pump on E. Washington Ave. by the end of the summer. At the moment all fuel sales are done at 100 S. Baldwin St. When winter comes there will be blends available that won’t congeal in the cold weather.

In addition to the fuel sales, you can pay PrairieFire to convert your diesel vehicle to use Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO), or they can teach you how to make your own biodiesel.

There were a couple of articles on this new co-op in Madison, but they don’t seem to be available online, so you’ll just have to check out their website: www.prairiefirebiofuels.org

Myth Busters Tries Biodiesel… sort of.

Mark — Thu, 25 May 2006 05:33:09 +0000

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.