An answer to a reader's question: Soy appears to yield 50+ gallons of fuel per acre. The oil plus the additives to make fuel (process input) equals the fuel minus the byproducts of production (process output). So squeezed oil is about what is produced in biodiesel
You can also make biodiesel out of different oils, like Rapeseed (Canola), Palm Oil, Sunflower and Peanut, all with different crop yields. Unlike owners of crude oil wells, farmers can change what they plant and grow where the market takes them. There is a plant that likes southern Texas called the Oil Seed that is said to yield 200 gallons of oil per acre.
Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the diesel, developed the first engine to run on a variety of oils and ran it on peanut oil at the World’s Fair around 1900. In a speech, Mr. Diesel emphasized that a variety of oils could be used and that the engine would help considerably in the development of agriculture.
Petroleum diesel did not exist at this time; the petroleum industry hardly existed at all. A Ford Model T, which incidentally got 25-30 mpg, was originally planned to run on ethanol before gasoline emerged as the dominant fuel. The oil industry called their product “diesel� after Mr. Diesel’s untimely death in 1913.
The price of producing soy bio diesel (an industry in its infancy) is still more than producing crude oil diesel and it is subsidized at this point so that it is economically feasible for diesel consumers to use it.
What’s promising about an alternative fuel like bio diesel is that it’s not one raw material (crude oil) yielding a number of products that we all must have controlled by a few greedy people. For now, it’s a lot of independent micro (fuel) breweries that can use different raw materials.
Mr. Diesel would be happy.
http://www.biodiesel.org/
http://biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/retailfuelingsites/default.shtm
Need to find a bio fill on a cross country trip?
According to this site:
Aero in New Oxford sells a 5% blend.
Worley and Obetz Inc in Manheim sells a 100% bio fuel product.
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