permaculture

[Charles de Matas <cdematas@hotmail.com>]

Harm  - Is it really as easy as you say?  I can grow oil palms and coconuts 
for oil but I would need some kind of press to extract the oils.  Commercial 
oil extraction needs boiling and steam treatment to extract and purify the 
oil.  Sounds like a lot of equipment that will be needed.  Maybe economical 
on a village scale, but I'm not sure individual farmers would want to make 
the effort.  The oils sold for cooking have gone through a lot of processing 
to get to the desired purity.
   And is it that easy to make biodiesel?  I think you need a lot of 
equipment for that also, and you have to buy methanol and KOH for a catalyst, 
I think.  Can you really make soap with the glycerin that's left over.  It's 
not pure glycerin is it?  It's mixed with a lot of water and waste products 
from the used veg. oil. How much glycerin is produced, and can you really 
make use of all of it? 
   The yield for biodiesel made from WVO is lower than for unheated oils 
because some oxidation occurs when it's used for frying.
 
Charles.
 
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:29:00 
-0500From: Harmon Seaver <hseaver@gmail.com>Subject: Re: [permaculture] svo 
conversionTo: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>Message-ID: 
<47DFD1AC.2080007@gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 
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, oliveoil, etc. You have to have a diesel engine to run it. Sounds 
like youhave a gasoline engine -- your only choice with that is to convert it 
torun on alcohol and distill your own, or convert it to compressed naturalgas 
or propane -- but both the latter, being fossil fuels, are going upin 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 itthemselves -- what they *are* using in diesels is WVO -- 
waste vegetableoil, which many people are able to get from restaurants right 
nowbecause restaurants can only use it to fry with for a short time beforeit 
becomes nasty and makes the food taste bad, and then they have to payto have 
it hauled away. The grease recyclers won't be charging them tohaul it away 
much longer, the ones who have half-a-brain are alreadyhauling it for free 
and making biodiesel out of it.As the price of fossil fuel goes up, so will 
the value of WVO, andsoon you will see the grease recyclers actually paying 
restaurants fortheir WVO, and all the people who have been getting it free 
will be outof luck.The only real answer for the people in permaculture 
community will beto grow their own fuel, which is easy and simple to do. An 
acre or twowill supply all the fuel you need and give you a whole lot of 
animalfeed and other goodies besides.If you think gasoline is expensive now, 
just wait. It will be atleast $4 by the end of 2008, probably at least $10 
within a couple ofyears. And expect to start seeing shortages and long 
waiting lines atthe pump.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
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