Diesel Alternative Offered

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Just stumbled on this on the Drudge Report scroll to the bottom of the page to Talk Radio Daily, then scroll to a wonderful interview by Jim Hightower (sorry unable to link) about two young 20 something inventers that travel across the country in their diesel Winnabago powered mostly by vegetable oil procured from fast food outlets. No adjustments to diesel engine required! Vegtable Oil mixed with two other ingredients - a little lye, and methanol. Sounded quite interesting. Maybe of valuable use in generators and other equipment. The small snippet from the interview lists a 1(800) for their book titled "Fryer to Fuel Tank" at 1(800)Book Log.

-- (snowleopard6@webtv.net), April 21, 1999

Answers

You can read more about this at http://www.veggievan.org and please note the cost of the equipment and the continously consumed supplies needed to convert the free waste oil. Read their cost anaylisis. A 55 gallon barrel, some #1 or #2 diesel with some PRI-D in it is more economical for most people. If one had a free source of methanol this would be more possible. Please note that methanol can be used in a gasoline engine in various ways via various modifications if you decide to build a still.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), April 21, 1999.

This is the author of the Y2K website http://y2ksafeminnesota.hypermart.net. I have some background in this area, and can tell you that methanol is undesirable to work with any more than you have to; it is a poison, and goes straight to the optic nerve (causes blindness). Look up Biodiesel or Gasohol (in a big University library) to find out more on the vegetable oil as fuel idea. MinesotaSmith

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2kminnesota@hotmail.com), April 22, 1999.

Minnesota,

I didn't know you were supposed to drink it; I thought you filled the fuel tank with it! :-)

Are you saying the fumes are poisonous or what? More poisonous than gasoline?

-- Elbow Grease (Elbow_Grease@AutoShop.com), April 22, 1999.


It amazes me that there is such resistance to ethanol in California as an alternative to the recently "banned" MTBE. We have the surplus corn and grain. Farmers are suffocating in low market prices and many are folding. Ethanol is environmentally sound. Where is the roadblock???????

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), April 22, 1999.

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