permaculture

[Harmon Seaver <hseaver@gmail.com>]

DGilsen@aol.com wrote:
> What is SVO?  what does it mean and what is it?  I just paid  54.dollars 
> for 
> 16 gal of gas.  and that is alas only a days worth  sigh.  I have a big 
> truck 
> that I need for my work and the price of fuel is  killing me more and more 
> each day.  I live and work in Tucson Az.   where it is usually warm.  Help 
> Carol
> 


   SVO = Straight Vegetable Oil -- like canola oil, peanut oil, olive
oil, etc. You have to have a diesel engine to run it. Sounds like you
have a gasoline engine -- your only choice with that is to convert it to
run on alcohol and distill your own, or convert it to compressed natural
gas or propane -- but both the latter, being fossil fuels, are going up
in price just about as fast as gasoline and diesel fuel.
   For that matter, the price of SVO will be doing the same thing.
Nobody is really using SVO for fuel unless they are growing it
themselves -- what they *are* using in diesels is WVO -- waste vegetable
oil, which many people are able to get from restaurants right now
because restaurants can only use it to fry with for a short time before
it becomes nasty and makes the food taste bad, and then they have to pay
to have it hauled away. The grease recyclers won't be charging them to
haul it away much longer, the ones who have half-a-brain are already
hauling it for free and making biodiesel out of it.
    As the price of fossil fuel goes up, so will the value of WVO, and
soon you will see the grease recyclers actually paying restaurants for
their WVO, and all the people who have been getting it free will be out
of luck.
   The only real answer for the people in permaculture community will be
to grow their own fuel, which is easy and simple to do. An acre or two
will supply all the fuel you need and give you a whole lot of animal
feed and other goodies besides.
   If you think gasoline is expensive now, just wait. It will be at
least $4 by the end of 2008, probably at least $10 within a couple of
years. And expect to start seeing shortages and long waiting lines at
the pump.

-- 
Harmon Seaver