since diesel cars can run off vegetable oil......................?

Question

apart from the fact that the oil industry would make less money, why has this not been advertised more as a way to help lessen global warming?

Answer 1

People are decrying our country's dependence of foreign oil and are seeking ways to obtain efficient and environment friendly energy source. The biofuel e85 is such example, it is a fuel that contains 85% ethanol derived from crops such as corn and potatoes. It gives off about 25% less greenhouse gas than the conventional gasoline. It however is considered inferior to gasoline because of its high cost and less fuel efficiency.
Now to answer your question, it is simply because using vegetable oil on diesel cars will result in more fizz than pop. Replacing diesel with veg oil will get you about 10 FEET per gallon partly because diesel engine is optimized for diesel and diesel only and because veg oil contains insignificant amount of energy per volume compared to diesel and even e85. You would have to commit an engine specified for veg oil or the engine will suffer from permanent failure caused by extreme strain caused by using such ineffient fuel. The public doesn't know about it because its practically useless. Besides, its more cheap to buy gasoline than buying a gallon of vegetable oil. Hope I answered to your satisfaction.

Answer 2

Why would you think that burning vegetable oil would lessen global warming? Vegetable Oil is still oil? It's still made of hydrocarbons, and the end result of burning or using hydrocarbons is still water and carbon dioxide (the cause of global warming).

To lessen global warming we need to stop polluting our atmosphere with carbon dioxide. In the US, the government here doesn't consider carbon dioxide a pollutant. (Which is why the US has more gasoline engines than Diesel). The US is more concerned about particulate pollution in the air.

Carbon Dioxide is a by-product of buring any hydrocarbon (coal, oil, gasoline, diesel, vegetable oil, even alcohol (ie ethanol)) The only way we can lessen global warming is to STOP burning hydrocarbons or find a way to remove the carbon dioxide from our atmosphere at a controlled level.

Much of the carbon dioxide gets absorbed by our oceans, and barrier reefs take the carbon dioxide absorbed and form some of the beauties in the ocean (calcium carbonate). However killing of barrier reefs have now hurt the oceans ability to absorb the CO2 in the air.

So to lessen global warming, humans just need to stop killing the earth, burning vegetable oil will do nothing to lessen global warming.

Answer 3

There is bio diesel, where vegetable oil can be converted into a fuel a diesel can burn. There are very few stations that carry bio diesel though, and there is also a conversion kit you can buy for a diesel that will allow it to run on pure vegetable oil, but it is expensive. There is some question as to whether bio diesel would be more or less polluting in the long run.

Answer 4

There is a school of thought that if everyone did it there would simply not be enough vegetable oil to go around at the moment, although this might not be true in future.

Oh, and to whoever says vegetable oil is just as bad for the environment - it's not. If you're burning plants, you are releasing carbon that is already on the surface of the planet, so it can be reabsorbed into the ecosystem without affecting the net balance. If you're burning fossil fuels, you're digging up more carbon and releasing it into the atmosphere, so you're going to create a co2 imbalance. Vegoil is what they call 'carbon neutral'.

Answer 5

New vegetable oil is more expensive than diesel particularly if it became widely used and the government taxed it at the rate they do road fuels.
Using 'old chip fat' by simply pouring it into the tank is a big NO-NO. Look in a frying pan at all the bits of charred spud. It needs to be cleaned up which is expensive. Some companies process old vegetable oil for reuse in cooking being more profitable than using it as a fuel. It also needs to be treated to stop it solidifying in cold weather - remember the problems we had with buses in a cold Winter a few years ago?
RoyS

Answer 6

First things first! Vegetable oil will still produce some sort of "pollution", -- (some "iodiot" is even trying to get controls on carbon dioxide now)..but that is another story! Whenever anything is burned it produces carbondioxide! This is the most "pollution" produced in combustion process,-- be it gas oil, forests, volcanos, ("breathing") even decay produces carbon dioxide! Lets face it, the world has too many people (however the islamic terrorists seem to have come up with the solution)! If we eliminate over 50% of the people tehre will be a whole lot less carbon dioxide produced too!

The biggest problem with "alternative fuels" is not the production, or the complexity, it is the governments problem of letting it be produced! They have to "tax:" everything, regulate everything, (and the e.p.a. has to regulate, it even more)- and of course the senators have to get the "max" benefits for their constituents!! The problem is that there are 50 states that all want the most!

Alcohol can be produced from decayable matter! The best is corn, soybeans, potatos, wheat (&other grains)! But of course teeh BATF has to gegulate that, "because somebody might drink it", the EPA has to regulate it "because it might release some kind of vapor into the air", - the DNR has to regulate it to make sure nothing from the "leftover product" gets on the ground, (by the way it makes excellent livestock feed and fertilizer when finished making alcolhol)! In addition to that it has to be liscensed to use in automobiles (and other engines), it has to be taxed (of course), and somehow it has to be prevented from being made by individuals, (as they might not be taxed enough)! Now all we have to do is to make sure that the "fuel suppliers will use it in the first place (as it cuts profits on petroleum).

Of course the cars can run on the alcohol, and diesels run on "vegetable oil", -- but a certian amount of alcohol can be mixed with the "oil" an it will not jell as easily! Vegetable oil works best when heated, and will work best in wintertime also, due the fact that "hot oil" doesn't jell easily (even a problem with "normal diesel' fuel "jelling" ) in extreme cold weather!

Now production, it is fairly easy to produce "oil" from some things, like sunflowers, saflowers, and corn (these come readily to mind)-- These can but run through a "roller mill" at about 50 tons pressure, and the oil will come out one place, and the crushed stuff out another (for "final straining"), - at this point additives could be added, or the fuel can go directly into tank to run engines.The additives are to make fuel burn a little cleaner, and protect the engine a little from damage by different substances!

I know that the "flowers" produce more oil from a bushel, but I don't have statistics. However after the oil has been "squeezed out",- the remainder can but put in a mill to make alcohol from what is left!

I do know that corn "directl" can produce about 6 1/2 gallons of alcohol from a bushel of corn, - (which brings farmer about $2,50 - $3.50 a bushel). and I think the production (less cost of building the plant), - is around 30 cents a gallon! Obviously you would get a little less alcohol from "crushed product after oil is removed, but tehre is still a lot of "plant matter" to distill down!

If you look at the latest theory on "global warming", - you will see that the scientists would like to put a "carbon sunshade" up to make the "poles" produce more ice, (since it gets colder in the shade!) (By the way,-- they say one relly big eruption of a volcano could do this naturally)!! However the "old thinking" says the "shade" of the atmosphere is causing "thermall warming".

Personally (I'm going in the last 1/4 of a century).. I would say there a "cycles of this nature" have happened for several thousand years both colder and hotter, --- but now man is so "smart" that he thinks that somehow he caused this and somehow he can "cure it"!! After all look how successful he has been in controlling the weather in the last 100 years! Can't even forecast tomorrow,---- with more than 50/50 chance of being right!

Answer 7

Burning vegatable oils doesn't really lessen global warming. It's just cheaper than fuel. Also, even if you use vegetable oil, you have to start the vehicle using fuel, run on the oil after the vehicle warms up, and switch back to the fuel for 30 seconds to a minute to burn off the vegatable oil residue before switching the engine off.

It's just considered a great idea because so many fast food restaurants, not to mention households, producing so many thousands of gallons of used oil a year, burning it as fuel makes it easy to dispose of.

Answer 8

There are a number of issues.

There is a big problem with meeting the latest EC emissions legislation with vegetable oil. To meet the emissions legislation you need very high pressure injectors with very fine nozzle holes, which get clogged when vegetable oil is used (think of the stick mess that forms around the top of a bottle of vegetable oil when it is used slowly in your kitchen, and imagine that in a fine-spray nozzle and you'll understand the problem). That's why is is easy to run a 1980s diesel car (not designed with current emissions legislation in mind) on vegetable oil, but not a new one.

There is also a problem with supply/demand. To meet the demand for diesel fuel with only vegetable oil we would need to turn over a lot more land to fuel production - and reduce food production. In the UK this is not a major problem as we have slight surpluses of some foodstuffs, but globally it is a big issue. There is even a risk of causing famine in some parts of the world, because the demand from the rich nations for bio-fuels could mean that farmers switch to fuel production instead of food production, until food becomes so scarce that prices rise enough to make production economically competitive with fuel.

Also consider the time, resource and money required to design, gain approval for and build the facilities necessary for high-volume production of automotive-grade vegetable-oil-based fuels. Existing oil refineries are not built for the right processes, existing vegetable-oil production facilities do not produce fuel-grade oil, nor so they produce the high quantities required (we buy fuel in 40-litre or more batches, we buy vegetable oil in 2-litre bottles).

Then there are health issues - imagine the amount of hay-fever in this country if we turned over half our farmland to rapeseed production.

Bio-fuels (either vegetable-oil based fuel for diesel engines or bio-ethanol fuel as a replacement for petrol in spark-ignition engines) will play an increasingly important part in our future fuel needs, but there are problems to be overcome.

The UK government has demanded that soon all diesel fuel will contain 5% bio-fuel, with plans to increase this percentage when the technology allows. In France the diesel fuel has been 5% bio-fuel for a number of years.

Answer 9

Probably because the extraction method used to turn the oil into fuel is somewhat complicated and time consuming.....most people don't want to be bothered, and it's still a method of burning fossil fuels. The extra work involved and the continued emission of fossil fuel exhaust do not significantly reduce the O-zone depletion.

Answer 10

it is not that easy only diesel cars will run on vege oil it is not that cheap look at a quart of oil in the grocery store it's bucks. I will not stay in a liquid state at low temps. It is very expensive to produce most deisels cannot even run on a blend of biodiesel it is not compatible with some types of rubber