More bio fuel amusement – this time from the French
This week the amusing bio fuel story is about French nonsense. Apparently the French government does not exactly permit drivers to use vegetable oil in cars, but a large number of French citizens are doing so anyway.
The driving force, if you’ll pardon the expression, is pure economics. Apparently vegetable oil over there costs around 60% of diesel by volume. I’m not sure how that figures on a BTU content basis (quick question, does anyone know if the French actually measure energy value in British Thermal Units?), or what it does to mileage. A quick websearch did not yield a good answer.
The article also suggested that there were serious technical problems as well if you used a greater than 50% mix of vegetable oil/diesel.
The EU is quite big on vegetable oil as well as ethanol as a fuel substitute, but France is not yet. They have pushed mainly ethanol as a substitute. Check it out.
Veggie oil has similar btu rating to diesel. Mileage numbers won't change appreciably. Running cold oil does nasty things to your injector pump and injectors, so a coolant heated second tank is often installed to ensure long life. See http://www.green-trust.org for more info.
So what the heck are they doing with all that left over Freedom Fry oil? http://www.scion66.com
(quick question, does anyone know if the French actually measure energy value in British Thermal Units?)Ummm, any idea as to who invented the metric system??????