General Chat
Q:
Discovery channel is having "Dirty Jobs" where the host is cleaning out waste oil and helping to make biodiesel for an 82 Datsun King Cab diesel truck. 40 mpg at 50 cents a gallon is what they claim.
79 280ZX -The best selling sports car of all time
A:
Its a rerun, seen it awhile back, guy has a mini refinery in his barn. I think it was meythenol he mixs the cleaned oil with to run in his truck. Was pretty cool setup, one man trash is another mans gold........
Jimmy
83ZX Turbo
A:
Yeah it was kind of cool, I would be always asking who is cooking the french fries and chicken.
Dexter 260ZT Weee Weeeeeeeeeeee
Rebuilt 280zx engine, n/a efi, added t-3 turbo to n/a engine, n/a intake, turbo injectors, n/a afm, 83 5spd, 3.90 diff, new front end, new seat vinyl, carpet, console, 240z black diamond hatch vinyl.
A:
What they failed to indicate was how much that 'refinery' set up costs? I mean how many people would fork out big bucks for that, then have the space for it, not to mention the time/hassle it takes to pick up the oil, then lug it home to make the mini batch first dealing with the testing and measuring, then doing it all over for the big batch. Just seems like a LOT of time and work, so if you take into account the initial investment for the equipment and your time making it, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be $.50/gallon.
A:
personal set-up may be and probobly is expensive. but on a larger scale i see it as a good way to make cheap fuel, that can be made to be cost effective
1990na 2+2 5spd.(sold,10/09/05)
If you can't trust a Spanish used car dealer with an English sir name using a Cameroon e-mail account, who can you trust?
A:
But what the guy only touched on is the real reason for doing it.......Using a deisel generator to power all of the home energy needs. The Datsun truck would be nice, and save some bucks, but running a small deisel generator during the peak hours from when you get home from work until bedtime is where the system pays for itself. It would be nice to cut your driving costs by 75%, but really nice to cut your home's electricity bill by that much also.
Black, bumperless, 78 Z with MSA superturbo system, K/N cone filter, ported intake, and exhaust manifolds.....15.9 @87 mph.
A:
And with the electricity you make with your biodiesel generator, you can weave your own cloth, sew your own clothes, bake all your own bread (and grind your own grain -- it's 1/2 the cost of flour), build your own furniture, make your own shoes, paper, pens, . . .
Or not! I agree that the economics is ignoring the costs of initial investment and personal labor. Most of these "Save a pile of dough" schemes require you to give up huge chunks of time that aren't accounted for in the "savings" calculations.
Finally, as more people do this, the availability of "free" used cooking oil will become scarcer -- raising the costs eventually. There isn't enough cooking oil used to fuel even a modest fraction of our transport fleet.
Alex
'77 280Z
'69 2000 roadster (fathers, but I'm the pseudotechnician)
A:
"There isn't enough cooking oil used to fuel even a modest fraction of our transport fleet."
and in a few years there wont be enough petrol either. we have got to start looking for alternatives, and people like this guy are pioneers of the next wave of power. they will be workign out kinks and putting together better ideas. meanwhile your lugging your lazy butt all over town not even trying to help. enjoy being a consumer, enjoy being consumed.
1991 Pearl White TT A/T - e-mail removed from profile due to spam.
A:
That's my problem with all these "alternative fuel" or hybrid vehicles. The hybrid cars get alot better mileage, and last longer, (BUT), they require a new set of batteries every 4-5 years that cost about $5000, so any perceived savings from the better mileage just flew out the window.
I agree that there is some start up costs with the bio-deisel deal, but if you are persistant, and can scrounge around a bit, I think a one time investment of about $1000 would get you going. As far as the time involved, after a few successful batches, I bet you wouldn't have more than an hour or so of actual work into a 50 gallon tank of bio-deisel. 50 gallons of fuel is more than most of us use in a week.
Black, bumperless, 78 Z with MSA superturbo system, K/N cone filter, ported intake, and exhaust manifolds.....15.9 @87 mph.
A:
The alternative fuel cars will start depending on different "cheap" fuels until all of a sudden there is an increasing demand for those fuels, and the price skyrockets up to match or exceed the cost of gasoline.
Black, bumperless, 78 Z with MSA superturbo system, K/N cone filter, ported intake, and exhaust manifolds.....15.9 @87 mph.
A:
CKelly is right. And by the way, I'm director of research at the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues, so when I say that we couldn't produce enough biodiesel to run more than a fraction of our transport fleet, I know of what I speak. It's pretty simple -- we burn lots more energy than we could grow AND still feed ourselves.
Globally, we really don't have the land to spare. The other option is to turn all the national parks into biofuel farms. How much bambi habitat do you want to burn in vehicles?
Biodiesel and other biofuels (such as ethanol from corn) is only currently viable ANYWHERE because of government subsidies (biodiesel in Europe, ethanol in the U.S. and Brazil) and trade barriers that leave some countries that have large farmland areas with surpluses.
Biofuels will only ever supply a small fraction of our energy needs. There are hundreds of years of fossil fuels in the ground in various forms. Canada's oil sands have enormous petroleum reserves that can yield diesel and gasoline. If we choose not to use them due to fears of global warming (and there have been 9 global warmings and coolings over the last 12,000 years of the same magnitude we're experiencing now, it's a natural cycle in the energy output of the sun -- you'll read about that in the coming year) the only really viable options are nuclear or fusion (not yet viable).
Cheers,
Alex
'77 280Z
'69 2000 roadster (fathers, but I'm the pseudotechnician)
A:
Thanks for the good info Alex280, it's a shame to dispose of all that used cooking oil when some of us could use it for other means, but it certainly won't make much difference in the grand, global scheme of things.
Black, bumperless, 78 Z with MSA superturbo system, K/N cone filter, ported intake, and exhaust manifolds.....15.9 @87 mph.
A:
Yeah, as a libertarian neanderthal, I'm all for home-done biodiesel. Knock yourself out. But then again, I'm also for allowing people to self destruct with drugs, etc. if they so choose. Freedom should extend to do stupidly self-destructive things, as long as others aren't harmed.
Cheers all.
Alex
'77 280Z
'69 2000 roadster (fathers, but I'm the pseudotechnician)
A:
Fusion needs to become a reality, that is the only plausible reality to slove the energy needs of the future, seriously. Great thread!
82 zxt 5-spd, oil cooler!
96 240sxes
78/81 jeep j-20
A:
Government will find a way to tax fusion until it meets, or exceeds the cost of gasoline/deisel fuel.
Black, bumperless, 78 Z with MSA superturbo system, K/N cone filter, ported intake, and exhaust manifolds.....15.9 @87 mph.
A:
Trust me, this has been around forever and sooner or later restaurants will start charging almost as much as the raw grease costs to suck it out of thier barrels. And as long as America keeps getting fatter, the used oil supply will never run dry. The beef industry did the same thing with the bones from veal, they gave them away for free untill they noticed that people were making money off of thier free bones. Plus, we don't actually know of the downsides to bio-diesel yet, we might save the o-zone but we could end up over farming our soy crops.
'79 280zx 2+2
she's alive!!!!!