The latest issue of
Wired briefly mentions biodiesel:
"Saving the planet can be a real pain in the butt. Just ask Peter Bethune, who's powering his speedboat with biodiesel made of fat from his backside. In May, the 41-year-old New Zealander embarks on a voyage to promote the use of renewable fuels and to break the record for circumnavigating the globe. (Bethune hopes to finish in 65 days - 10 days faster than the current speedboat record.) His eco-friendly vessel, Earthrace, is a wave-piercing 78-foot trimaran capable of hitting 45 knots (58 mph). Of course, nobody's butt is big enough to sustain a 27,600-mile journey. Bethune's contribution amounts to only a liter of fuel; the rest comes from vegetable oils and other animal fats. Besides, liposuction hurts. 'I was bruised all over,' he says. 'It was a personal sacrifice.'
The numbers at the end of the piece are a bit
FUD-y though:
Fuel by the numbers
- Gallons of biodiesel that can be made from one acre of soybeans: 50
- Arable acres in the US: 427 million
- Gallons of gasoline used by the average American driver in a year: 464
- Drivers in the US: 198 million
- Arable acres needed to make enough biodiesel for all of them: 1.8 billion
Only a small percentage (3%
according to the San Diego Union Tribune) of cars on the road in the US are diesel-powered...
Posts
So I guess you could call Bethune an "asstronaut."
ReplyDeleteHee, hee.
It's good to know that there are a lot of people espousing the use of biodiesel but it has many hurdles to pass such as practicality. I, myself have huge amount of work segregating wastes. It takes education and ample time to do that but I think it's doable and beneficial to mother earth in the long run.
ReplyDeleteI recently read an article by a professor who advocates using algae
ReplyDeleteto create biodiesel. He went thru the math of yield per acre, available acreage and total requirements for both trucks(120 billion gals / year) and cars (60 billion gallons/year)
and determined that only a small percentage of available (NOT arable)
land would be required to produce all of the biodiesel required in the US
S.O.S I am trying to find a workshop were a Car can be modified to use biodisel.
ReplyDeleteI need to find about the cost and the technical needs for finding a used car that can be modified. Can you help me to find a north of where can I found information or the contact of the shop in mexico??
Thank you very much
Hi. Could you help me to find information about where I can go to modify a car in mexico city?
ReplyDeleteThanks