data:post

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

More bio fuel amusement - this time from the French

Two weeks ago I blogged about the German inventor supposedly using dead cats as feedstock in a biodiesel process.



This week the amusing bio fuel story is about French nonsense. Apparently the French government does not exactly permit drivers to use vegetable oil in cars, but a large number of French citizens are doing so anyway.



The driving force, if you'll pardon the expression, is pure economics. Apparently vegetable oil over there costs around 60% of diesel by volume. I'm not sure how that figures on a BTU content basis (quick question, does anyone know if the French actually measure energy value in British Thermal Units?), or what it does to mileage. A quick websearch did not yield a good answer.



The article also suggested that there were serious technical problems as well if you used a greater than 50% mix of vegetable oil/diesel.



The EU is quite big on vegetable oil as well as ethanol as a fuel substitute, but France is not yet. They have pushed mainly ethanol as a substitute. Check it out.



French drivers illegally use vegoil as fuel


Stumble It! Save to del.icio.us Slashdot It!
Check it Out on Cleantech.org

3 Comments:

At 6:10 AM, Blogger Steve Spence said...

Veggie oil has similar btu rating to diesel. Mileage numbers won't change appreciably. Running cold oil does nasty things to your injector pump and injectors, so a coolant heated second tank is often installed to ensure long life. See http://www.green-trust.org for more info.

 
At 7:23 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So what the heck are they doing with all that left over Freedom Fry oil? www.scion66.com

 
At 10:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

(quick question, does anyone know if the French actually measure energy value in British Thermal Units?)

Ummm, any idea as to who invented the metric system??????

 

Post a Comment

<< Home