Biodiesel

I very much doubt electric cars will catch on any time soon. Battery technology has developed very slowly and batteries use rare earth metals which have a limited supply and are becoming very expensive because China has most of the planets reserves of these and wants to keep them for her own production. Also energy supplies are becoming a worry for most countries and unless nuclear fusion is cracked soon I dont think the world would be able to produce enough electricity to power everything it is all ready powering plus emerging economies plus all the energy that would be needed to run all the electric cars. Certainly Ireland would not be able to produce enough energy to power her economy if all the cars here also relied on the national grid.

Despite all the advances in technology that have been seen in the past 150 years, all modern cars still use the basic principle of the internal combustion engine, first developed in the mid 1800's, to propel them. Why has this, fairly simple technology, survived so long in the face of huge scientific breakthroughs? Answer: because it is the best. I believe the next generation of cars will continue to use this principle, but will be powered by biofuels. This should certainly be the case for Ireland and we should get ahead of the pack now, even if the rest of the world doesnt follow.

Ireland has a long tradition of agriculture and we continue to rank among the top countries in the world in terms of agriculture. It makes sense for us to exploit this and grow our own fuel. We could be self-sufficient in this respect. It does not need to take land from food production because the bio-crops could be genetically modified to grow anywhere we cant grow food (people dont like eating GM foods but your car wont mind). We also spent a lot on farm subsidies, growing fuel would see unproductive farms become productive and they would not have to rely on subsidies, saving the government a fortune. Electric cars would be produced oversees where manufacturing costs are lower and it is likely we would have to import some of the electricity needed because we would not be able to produce enough ourselves.

It would be a lot cheaper to set up than electric cars, we have all the petrol stations, pumps, etc. in place already, just fill the tanks with bio-diesel instead of normal diesel. The infrastructure for electric cars would cost a fortune, we would have to build many new power stations in order to produce the energy as well as a network of high capacity power lines covering the entire country. I have no idea how much extra electrictiy we would need but when you think of all the cars on our roads and imagine all of these charging at the mains, Im sure you would easily double our energy demand.

Even if the rest of the world goes down the electric car route, this island could use biofuels with no ill effects on our economy. Irish hauliers could use electric vehicles for travelling overseas and we just need to have charge points at service stations for them. This would also accommodate hauliers driving from the continent as well as tourists coming here. This would be possible because with only HGVs and a few tourist cars recharging their batteries it is not putting a huge strain on our energy production. Most of these would charge up at night to avail of cheap energy when demand is low meaning we dont need to increase energy production capacity.

We could create many jobs in the agriculture sector growing the crops, technical jobs processing the crop into fuel, as well as jobs in distributing and selling the final product. If everyone else was using electric cars it may be even better for us because then we could produce the engines for the cars here as we would have no rivals (just buy in chassis etc. for electric cars from abroad and install Irish made engines). This gives us an entirely new indigenous industry in a sector where we are already strong and we would not have to fear competition from abroad.

Energy costs are going to continue to rise and the added pressure of powering every car on the planet would push the costs up further. Even if the cost per driving 1km in an electric car is less than driving 1km in a biofuel car, it would still be a better option for this country because all the money would be staying in the country. The fuel is produced here with no reliance on imports and everyone employed producing the fuel spends there money here so more money circulating in our economy, not leaving the country. If needed the government could charge 0% tax on Irish produced biodiesel to make it cheaper. It would be worth it because it would be employing many thousands of people and all the money is staying in the country so they will receive more tax indirectly than by direct taxes on a product produced abroad.

banjobeer wrote: »

hi all, im in the prossess of gathering a few bits together to build a prossessor and have read some people saying dont use copper as it reacts with the catalyst and some people are using a hot water cylinder,
what is the correct way to build
thanks folks

dathi wrote: »

5000 euro fine if you are caught burning waste oil without a licence from the EPA

imakebiodiesel wrote: »

I would not need any modifications to run on biodiesel.
It would need either an Elsbet type conversion or a two tank system to run on ppo. Its not an ideal engine for ppo.
John