rapeseed oil can save the planet. does anyone agree?

Question

all diesel engines are heat engines, so can use any type of fuel
because they use atomizers to inject the fuel into the piston
at high pressure thefuel can be any type ie.palm oil veg oil and most plant oils the oils can be heated before use to help viscosity
from tank to fuel pump its been with us for years it saves pounds
on your fuel bill and no carbon emmissoins

Answer 1

Some people use the bog standard sunflower or vegetable oil from the supermarket or even better try to use waste oil from restaurants. There are a few problems though, Gordon Brown wants to ensure he gets his stisky hands on your well earned dosh so you must pay tax on it or go to jail if caught and the oil companies who are all powerful will do anything they can to prevent people from doing this. Otherwise it is a good idea and should be promoted but you should use oil produced in your country (unless reusing oil from catering!).

Answer 2

IF the problem is caused by the emission of carbon, and IF plants absorb atmotpheric carbon when they grow, then using plant-sourced sugars and oils (not just canola) will solve the problem (we can avoid excessive land use by growing foodstuffs, fibres, etc, that also produce plenty of oils & sugars).

But if the problems (not just global warming, but traffic congestion, water use, population concentration etc) are caused by the amount of energy we are releasing (total heat throughput), then ANY fuel is adding to the damage, regardless of its source.

Energy released from fossil fuels was once sunlight, which plants & animals diverted from warming the planet (the same energy cannot do two things at the same time) and stored as chemical bonds in the hydrocarbons that we dig up and burn.

Basically we are adding 'frozen' heat to the current heat of our sun.

Energy from nuclear power was never sunlight; it is released by atomic decay, accelerated by other decay events nearby. When we concentrate radioactive material, we are adding totally 'new' heat to the current sunlight and the preserved sunlight.

That's a lot of energy to be processing all at once ! And however it is used, it all eventually escapes into our surroundings as HEAT.

Answer 3

Not really; canola (rape) needs farmland that should be used for growing food.

Coconut oil can also be used, and third world countries could benefit by growing and exporting crops from saline desert areas.
For example the Sudan has a salt desert which is lower than sea level. If a 20 mile canal was cut to the sea, seawater could provide energy and flood the salt pan. Passive desalination could be used to start to reclaim some of the desert and use it to grow oil crops.
The problem then would be transporting the oil; so it would be best used locally.

Answer 4

no that's uncomplicated to assert precisely what's going to ensue, yet there are some issues that are for particular. one among those issues is that for particular is this planet won't be able to keep up the form of people at present residing right here. there will be a number of starvation besides as a number of suicide. also, i do not understand if that's going to keep the planet from global warming. that form of relies upon on how far we push the planet. regardless of if we stopped putting greenhouse gases into the ambience as we talk and stopped scaling down trees, the planet might want to nonetheless proceed to warmth a necessary volume for a even as. no matter if disaster would properly be prevented even as oil runs out is uncertain.

Answer 5

diesels can burn bio-oils: yes, that's what Rudolph Diesel invented them for (he was thinking peanut oil)

rapeseed oil is solar energy in a bottle: yes, but there are fossil fuel inputs in the process, not least fertiliser made from natural gas. Estimates of the CO2 benefits vary wildly from about halving the CO2 to actually increasing it. I think the net result is "sufficiently better than petrol that it's worth doing".

rapeseed will save the planet: a wild overstatement. Bio-oils are part of the solution though.

Answer 6

I worry about the vast amount of land that would be needed to grow enough of any plant to produce sufficient fuel for all the cars on our roads.

What we really need is a car that will run on water - Ha Ha ! - a steam engine! Hasn't that been done before?

Answer 7

Agree with concept but we don't want to use Palm Oil as that is from abroad and is costing us environmentally with people chopping down trees to grow it...

Answer 8

And the big multinational oil companieswill block it all the way.

Answer 9

I think Wild Eep answered that one clear enough...