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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] A 69.9 MPG Diesel Hybrid -Coming Soon from VW:

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Harmon Seaver <hseaver@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] A 69.9 MPG Diesel Hybrid -Coming Soon from VW:
  • Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:14:47 -0600

Trudie Redding wrote:
> Diesel is not an efficient fuel to manufacture
>
> Trudie

How so? You can get more gallons of diesel out of a barrel of oil
than you can gasoline. If you are talking about growing biodiesel
feedstock compared to growing ethanol feedstock, then of course you are
right, there's no comparison. There are man ethanol feedstocks that will
give you 1000-1500 gallons of ethanol per acre, and grown as
permaculture as well, meaning no replanting, no pesticides, etc. Growing
biodiesel feedstock about the best you can do is 400 or so gallons an
acre with oil palm, and that only in the tropics. Rapeseed is only about
150 gallons an acre grown in northern US midwest.
However -- by mixing just 1%-2% biodiesel with straight ethanol, you
can run that very efficiently in diesels. Or at least in diesels that
have a compression ratio no higher than 18:1, which is easy to obtain in
VW TDI diesels, for example, by just adding a second head gasket.

--
Harmon Seaver




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