By Indi Riverflow

War, environmental crisis, economic disaster-all things evil seem to go in and come out of that gas tank. Nevertheless, as prices climb and reserves plummet, the vast majority of motored vehicles continue to run on the costly and divisive toxic goo, much to the delight and profit of the multinational corporations still serving it up.

Of course, the friendly oil companies are there for us, leading the charge for alternative fuels. Those lovable humanitarians at Chevron even have an active website “promoting” energy options that would, if adopted, wipe the firm to the dustbins of bankruptcy. This generosity is as stunning as it is unconvincing.

Biofuels International Magazine

Well, one thing they could do is replace the bloody stuff they sell at the pump! While these fuel barons are diligently researching the methods by which they can continue to fleece us, a “grease-roots” movement has already emerged to free us from the petrochemical dependency the media always reminds us we have.

Rudolph Diesel, inventor of the synonymous engine, designed his creation to operate on pure peanut oil. And around the turn of the century, a group of enterprising hippies rediscovered what many farmers already knew: diesel engines will still operate on ordinary vegetable oil, with a few hundred dollars of modification, or on a plant-based blend known as biodiesel, with hardly any modification at all.

BioPro 380
Biodiesel Processor

Biodiesel is made by removing the glycerin from the vegetable oil, using lye and alcohol distillation. The “waste” products can be utilized completely, to make soap and to refertilize the fields where the base plant was grown. While biodiesel pumps are sprouting up more frequently across the country, many people perform this operation at home. There are various biodiesel processing units that can simplify the conversion process so that anyone can easily transform vegetable oil into biofuel.

Biofuels Refining and Performance

According to the website of Pacific Biodiesel, Inc., where we recently purchased a quality tank of biodiesel made from organic mustard seed, it has become more economical for pump trucks to deliver used restaurant oil to Pacific Biodiesel’s Maui processing plant than to dispose of it as waste, resulting in a landfill diversion total of over 40 tons of used cooking oil per month. This pilot project has the distinction of being the only fuel-processing plant worldwide able to boast 0% net emissions.

This issue is very near and dear for the author; in fact, this website is written and managed from a small bus where we work and live, powered by all-natural biodiesel for nearly two years. The very electricity powering this computer on which I write was generated by Herr Diesel’s brainchild in association with Mother Nature and the generous Sun. Today, all of the energy we use aboard our roadboat comes from above the ground rather than below.

Do It Yourself
Guide to Biodiesel

We examined the options, attending several symposiums to hear advocates. They made a compelling case; it was possible, with existing technology, to power every vehicle on Earth with either vegetable oil-even recycled frying oil-or ethyl alcohol distilled from virtually any plant matter or even waste.

And it could be done without having to scrap the vehicles currently on the road while better methods are developed. Unlike electric hybrids or hydrogen cells, this could be done with a twenty-year old used bus right now!

There were many reasons why we made the switch, but primarily it was opposition to U.S. foreign and environmental policies related to fossil fuels that inspired us to find and convert this little blue bus to alternative fuel. We were tired of being told that the war in Iraq was being fought for “us”. Using gasoline seemed incompatible with pacifism.

Biofuels for Transport

Lately, the biofuel solution has come under attack, even within the alternative community, as being impractical for a long-term energy source. Critics point out that vast acreage would have to be devoted to non-food crops, contributing to hunger, further deforestation and agriculture-related environmental damage.

No solution is perfect, and these points are valid to some extent. The most well-known use of biofuel to date is the 85% corn-based ethanol blend being used in several South American nations. Concern has recently been raised about the impact this has had on corn prices, and rightly so. Using food crops for fuel is a dead end.

Pro Future - Pro Biofuel Sticker

However, these criticisms are somewhat superficial and readily countered. The nature of biofuel is such that it can be manufactured from a wide variety of plants, including what we usually think of as weeds, on fallow land, and the waste, i.e. plant fiber, can be returned to the soil to make an excellent and entirely organic fertilizer!

Currently there are millions of acres, where farmers receive payments to grow nothing. Some of these payments are to prevent erosion runoffs and other effects of intensive food farming, but many times farmers are paid to sit the season out for price control. This program, subject to jokes since being immortalized in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, was intended to prevent grain surpluses which would have bankrupted farmers at the time. Today, that fallow land could be incentivized to produce energy crops, without affecting the price of food-grade grains in any way.

Corn is probably the weakest producer when it comes to biodiesel, yielding a measly 18 US gallons per acre. Soybean, which currently accounts for 90% of all biodiesel source, yields over two-and-a-half times that much, nearly fifty gallons per acre, but the best producers such as rapeseed (127 gallons/acre) or even avocados (282 gallons/acre) can’t match the prolificity of certain experimental crops.

Algae to be made into
Biofuel

Algae is the clear winner (over 800 gallons/acre); some optimistic estimates project that as much as 5000 gallons per acre could eventually be produced from this prolific non-food source. There are even plans in some areas to cultivate the ever abundant sewage algae as a sustainable source of fuel.

Diet for a
Small Planet

The food vs. fuel argument brings to light another potential source of biofuel- the land being culled for livestock feed and grazing. Currently nearly two-thirds of all agricultural lands are farmed for the overfeeding of cattle

As many vegetarian advocates have pointed out, this land would better be used for growing food for humans; but it could also be used for biofuel as part of a restorative process.

Challenges remain, but the plain fact is that the only obstacle to replacing petrochemicals with a variety of plant-based alternatives is political. The technology is as much the way of the past as the future.