On 40% ethanol the first cold (5 deg.) start will stall when I put it straight into drive after starting.

If I give it a couple of rev’s for a few sec then no problems.

After restarting no problems, Cant notice any difference in the pollution in the car. 5% and over seems to make a big difference.

Have given up running the gen on 50% Ethanol 50% Petrol as it still stinks not as bad as 100% petrol, but still stinks. So now just use 100% Ethanol.

Cant wait until I do a oil change to see the diff.

We need to start protesting, We need the have the right to make our own fuel and should be proud of it.

I Grow my food for me why not my car?

Lets make a change. Power to the people that is clean power not coal petrol nuke but clean and green.

Chris.

(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)

Reports on the internet say that Solazyme has raised more finance, up to $45.4m for its algae based biofuels programme. I’ve had a trawl through EDGAR (worth bookmarking in my opinion) but the company’s filings are all on paper… grrr so I can’t absolutely verify it. But Solazyme has had its profile raised lately and that kind of thing helps persuade investors…

More (from The Big Biofuels Blog)…

(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)

Enterprise-rent-a-car appoints Dr Richard Sayre as academic biofuel director at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The position was created by the family which owns Enterprise (and also Alamo and National Car rental brands) with a $25m donation to the Danforth Plant Science Center. Nice.

He’ll be studying third generation biofuels… that’s algae to you and me:

“Extracting oil from algae to produce a more sustainable biofuel is one of the most promising and exciting areas of biofuels research today,” said Sayre, formerly a professor in the Department of Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology at The Ohio State University. “Algae have significant potential as a clean, renewable, and economical fuel source. And, because algae are not used as food, they are a biofuel source that does not compete with the food supply.”

I’ve asked Enterprise if it has any details of the average fuel efficiency of its fleet of cars over the past five years and how it has changed over that time. Rental companies with large fleets could have some power in getting car makers to produce vehicles which are more efficient… I’ll be asking other rental firms.

More (from The Big Biofuels Blog)…

A friend of mine has been running home-brewed biodiesel in his 2006 VW Jetta TDI. His engine is ruined, potentially due to the biodiesel. Friends of his, who race TDI’s, say biodiesel is a no-no. Don’t know why. Any feedback?

Henry

OK, so my algae project is not going to make me rich in the short term.

So I am doing due diligence on a proposal on my desk at the moment.

Part of this is pressing 35 000 tons of soy beans every day, 5 days a week to make 8000 litres of oil. If I turn this into Bd it is already sold to a local distributor.

What I would like some feed back on is whether I would be able to sell the raw oil as SVO. I am still guessing on costs but I think it would work out at around 80 cents a litre to give me some profit.

What do you guys think?

(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)

If you are interested in the environmental impact of biofuels in the US check this polemic on the Huffington Post. Makes some good points about the end to end efficiency of biofuels in the automotive sector. You can’t comment on it there, so perhaps you’d like to do so here.

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A friend of mine has been running home-brewed biodiesel in his 2006 VW Jetta TDI. His engine is ruined, potentially due to the biodiesel. Friends of his, who race TDI’s, say biodiesel is a no-no. Don’t know why. Any feedback?

Henry

(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)

A Karl and Helen Rehberg from Florida committed a biodiesel scam in Florida the 1990s and pocketed around $20m from investors, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The Rehbergs were sentenced on 22 August.

This is the first case of its kind that I’ve come across.

Hattip to Bizopnews.

More (from The Big Biofuels Blog)…

hey to all.

i have been playing with the idea of using a hand pump to help filter my oil. it the oil has already been prestrained with shopping bags, then through a 5mn filter down into a upflow system. i wish to try and hurry this up a bit.

would one of those drum pumps have enough pressure behind them to push oil through a 1mn filter bag. i thought about one of those drill pumps on a battery drill? but has not seen a decent one that would last.

i have no power out where my filter systems is, so hand power is the only way.
any other ideas?

cheers

Hobie

(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)

Enterprise-rent-a-car appoints Dr Richard Sayre as academic biofuel director at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The position was created by the family which owns Enterprise (and also Alamo and National Car rental brands) with a $25m donation to the Danforth Plant Science Center. Nice.

He’ll be studying third generation biofuels… that’s algae to you and me:

“Extracting oil from algae to produce a more sustainable biofuel is one of the most promising and exciting areas of biofuels research today,” said Sayre, formerly a professor in the Department of Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology at The Ohio State University. “Algae have significant potential as a clean, renewable, and economical fuel source. And, because algae are not used as food, they are a biofuel source that does not compete with the food supply.”

I’ve asked Enterprise if it has any details of the average fuel efficiency of its fleet of cars over the past five years and how it has changed over that time. Rental companies with large fleets could have some power in getting car makers to produce vehicles which are more efficient… I’ll be asking other rental firms.

More (from The Big Biofuels Blog)…

OK, so my algae project is not going to make me rich in the short term.

So I am doing due diligence on a proposal on my desk at the moment.

Part of this is pressing 35 000 tons of soy beans every day, 5 days a week to make 8000 litres of oil. If I turn this into Bd it is already sold to a local distributor.

What I would like some feed back on is whether I would be able to sell the raw oil as SVO. I am still guessing on costs but I think it would work out at around 80 cents a litre to give me some profit.

What do you guys think?

(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)

US this year diverted 24.5% of its corn crop into ethanol production and replaced 2.65% of the total US demand for road transportation fuels — assuming that the 2007 figures for fuel use will be around the same as 2006, according to figures from the US Department of Energy which has issued preliminary ethanol production figures for 2007. These show that in 2007 the US produced 6485 m gal ethanol — 49.6% of the world total — and imported 361 m gal. Total consumption was 6846m gal. This displaced 4642 m gal of gasoline, based on preliminary data.

The US used 24.5% of the corn crop (3200m bushels) in the process.

According to the US department of Transportation, American road vehicles consumed 174 930m gal gasoline in 2006. Those numbers are likely to be updated in April 2009 for 2007.

All of this helps to put the current US pro-corn lobby lunacy into perspective. It also shows how little difference incremental planting and incremental improvements in crop yeild will make in the short- to medium-term. The last thing the world needs is the demand for grains to be getting close to the production levels of grains.

This also shows just how massive the demand for fuel is and how pathetically small attempts at growing our way out of oil dependency based on one type of technology are. If the entire corn crop were diverted to make ethanol, it would only replace 10% of demand.

We all need to be a lot smarter about the kinds of things that we use for fuel, things like food waste and municple waste should be examined quickly and thoroughly. We should throw less away without getting the additoinal benefit from it. We should, through taxation if necessary, price gasoline at a level which reflects its true economic value and then we’d have an incentive to make all road vehicles much more efficient. That’s easy for me to say, I’m not standing for office. .

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