Grow Your Own Magazine

This week Nuclear energy and power generation is in the news. A few months ago I remember reading that west Wales farmers were being pulled to one side for the customs duty department to rest the contents of the farmers fuel tanks as they were filling up at the local supermarket with cheaper that normal fuel for their cars. It turns out they were buying all the vegetable oil off the shelves and supermarkets were caught short for their customers who just wanted to cook their chips.
This memory led me to the following snippet from "Community Service Volunteers" web site.

A ground-breaking renewable energy project in Carmarthenshire, South Wales, which makes environmentally-friendly car fuel out of left-over vegetable oil was the winner in the ‘the most unusual location or type of project’ category. Local volunteers collected used vegetable oil from local chip shops, restaurants and schools and helped convert it into a fuel called Biodiesel at the Sundance Renewables production plant. 5,000 litres of the fuel will be made when the recycling process is in full production this autumn, making Carmarthenshire’s car drivers among the most environmentally friendly in the country.
To read the whole piece veggie cars

Did you know that the desiel engine was origionally designed to run on vegetable oil? Because of this, any desiel engine can be converted to run on vegetable oil. Its legal as long as you get the conversion done in an authorised place. My brother had to go to Bristol to get his done and it cost around £500. The way it works is you have both desiel and veg oil tanks. You have to start the car with deisel as a cold engine cant run on the veg oil. Aften ten minutes or so when the engine has heated up, you press a switch and it runs on veg oil. You can buy the veg oil cheeply at wholesalers and save a fortune. You are suppost to pay tax on the veg oil that you use but there is no way to regulate this. Its far more environmentally friendly as the sunflowers reduce the cardon dioxide when they are growing to compensate what you are emmitting.

Hopefully running deisel engines on vegetable oil will catch on in this country. Working for an agricultural and drainage contractor, I read a lot of farming press and know that there is considerable interest in this bio diesel option, and it is already very popular on the continent.
In addition to this, a green power station is about to undergo trials in Engleand, producing power from elephant grass (miscanthus) which is contract grown by farmers within a 12 mile radius -so maybe the UK is finally getting the finger out?
Rat
(wonder how many sunflowers I can grow in my garden !?)

Bio-diesel is all fine and dandy but it isn't the answer for all the cars on our roads. Hybrid forms of fuel have been looked at. Problems:

1. There are unscrupulous individuals who are selling unclean Bio-diesel - it has happened.
2. Crop to car ratio, if we all go towards Bio-diesel, many organisations fear that the only countries that will have the space to grow such vast crops will be third world and the Americas, causing problems and pollution from mass industrialisation of areas. Also, for all the cars in the world to go bio-diesel, we will have one small problem, in GB alone there won't be enough room to grow such crops (it is also feared that this will have adverse knock on the growing of food).
3. The crops used for bio-diesel, soya, oil seed, to be feasible and to produce on a mass scale will have to be genetically modified (this is something that many oil companies are pushing for) - this then causes the problem of genetic contamination of other crops, barley, wheat, vegetables.

Though I support bio-diesel, it is, like any liquid fuel, a double edged sword. There are car engines out there that run on water, electricity and hydrogen but all of these still have the same problems faced with the construction and pollution that such plants create during construction and processing.

Bio-diesel is a solution, it is not the long-term answer.

Further reading:
http://roguepundit.typepad.com/rogue...odiesel_1.html
http://www.abetterearth.org/article.php/1006.html
http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=49135
http://www.publications.parliament.u...29/929we08.htm
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth...3486&pID=23175

One of the farms that grew GM oil seed rape for the Gov't trials isn't too far away from here - I have worked on the field drains there and one of my mates is a tractorman on the same farm.
Whilst the crop was being grown, there was a protest camp set up near the farm, and what can only be described as wanton vandalism occured regularly.
Whilst I appreciate that there is a great deal to be concerned about concerning the growing of GM crops, I think we all have to be realistic and recognise that proper field trials are a necessity. GM crops will be grown sooner rather than later and I for one would rather see that they got it right first time than risk the decimation of wild flowers and any other crops neighbouring fields of OSR.
As far as I know, the farmer has refused to participate in further trials, but not because of the crop itself, but because of the negative publicity and vandalism.
On the subject of Bio Diesel, I agree with Andrew that it is only a part solution - the long term answer is get on yer bikes !!

there was a bit on the box a couple of weeks ago about the problem of waste chip oil clogging londons drains, a couple of the councils, i think bromley was one, are starting a free collection service and converting the waste to biodiesel for their transport fleet. incidentally u can use cooking oil as a diesel additive, about 25% apparently doesn't cause cold start problems. the other potential problem is blocking the fuel filter in cold weather. i may try it when the weather gets warmer. one has to inform customs and excise and pay fuel duty on the oil used though.

It's illegal to pour waste oil of any description into the sewers - of course the average joe at home can't be monitored but the amount described sounds like it came from an industrial setup or the food industry. It does annoy me the way we think we can discard things without consequences - just like the idiots who toss their still lit cigarettes out of moving cars, hello, what happens if someone has a petrol leak behind you? Actions and consequences. Still sickens me though that they woild poor into our sewers, which eventually will end up being recycled and drank!!!!

Andrewo

Perhaps with the current situation in the Far East and Arab nations it would be a good idea for Britain to turn to greener ways of providing combustion for cars and trucks. I know that Iceland will soon not need petrol at all, as they will be 100% self-reliant, using only water technology to run all transport.
Jax