The Natural Philosopher wrote:
John Phillips wrote:
On 2006-10-08, Peter Ashby wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:

However true biofuel has a zero carbon footprint as the carbon in it came
from the CO2 in the air as the plants grew and released the O2 back. The
sooner that decent sized commercial plants are built to produce/recycle
vegetable based oils for fuel the better but I bet HMG will stifle it by
upping the duty (currently 28.32p/l) on it once it becomes widely
available.
It is zero carbon if you ignore the machines used to till the soil,
apply fertiliser, make the fertizer, deliver the fertilizer, harvest the
crop, extract the oil, etc. etc.

An extensive academic study I saw recently concluded that biodiesel
suitable for cars is not 100% effifient WRT carbon neutrality but
actually 79% efficient.

Yup. However its a very moveable feast. Some oil company sponsored type
in the USA calculated it was negative efficiency to make alcohol for fuel..

Running tractors off biodiesel seems eminently feasible to me.


The Diesel engine was designed just for that! Rudolf Diesel invented it
for agricultural use and designed to run on peanut oil to begin with,
Diesel as we know it came along later.