Homemade Biodiesel Is It The Right Fuel For The Future
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If you sometimes sit back in your chair and watch, with an element of incredulity, the violence that inevitably breaks out whenever climate related political summits occur, then you can see an element of the tension that is slowly but surely building up around the world. Now we are coming to understand how unsustainable our lives are. Nobody can justify this kind of violence, and it makes us think how these individuals can be so angry and driven, but then when we look at all the material that scientists now give us and realize that our crazy lifestyles really are alien to the sustainable future of our planet. Everyone of us has to take steps to cut down, in aggressive fashion, the energy that we use, both at home and at work and be responsible for what is happening all around us. Greenhouse gases are building up in our atmosphere due to our use of those traditional fossil fuels – gas, coal and oil, raising our Earth’s temperature and threatening considerable harm to future generations unless we act quickly.
As always, political developments are slow and we are often frustrated by the inability of our political leaders to make headway. Recent and crucial talks in Copenhagen resulted in only moderate agreement and few, tangible results. Each one of us has to take action and we are aware, for example, that we need to cut back on our transportation needs. Public transportation is very underused and we tend to scoff at the idea of carpooling, riding a bicycle, or even walking! Most of us are not sufficiently aware of environmental reasons to cut back on energy use, even though we recently saw just how volatile the supply chain can be during 2008, when gasoline prices went through the roof.
Our cars, trucks and buses are huge polluters of the environment and the automotive industry in the United States in particular is slow to shrug off the vestiges of an era when gas guzzlers were totally acceptable. Once, it was acceptable to drive the lumbering, cumbersome and thirsty vehicle, especially when gasoline was much less than a dollar per gallon.
Now we know that biodiesel fuel represents a much more palatable option. It is derived from widely available agricultural sources. It is produced by mixing vegetable oil or leftover fats with methanol through separation. With a little bit of application and ingenuity, making biodiesel at home is a very viable solution. As a rule of thumb, homemade biodiesel in undiluted form can be used in your diesel engine vehicle with no additional effort, but many vehicles use a blend of conventional petrodiesel and biodiesel, called B20, B40, etc.
Biodiesel may not yet have “arrived” in terms of popular culture, but as our desire to cut back on consumption, to explore alternative hybrid vehicles and to generally live greener lives increases, we’re sure to see more emphasis on this renewable form of energy. When this special fuel does eventually become widely available to people all around the world, we will have a much better chance at slowing the incredible rate of global ecological change.
