Biodiesel: An Alternative

Dan Gayle

Design Director

My friend Laurence has this strange fixation with Biodiesel. He says that his plan is to drive his little diesel VW over to some Korean restaurant and load up his trunk with their leftover cooking oil, do some back-room chemistry on it, and Voila! load up his tank with free fuel. Free fuel. Free. Fuel. Crazy - such nonsense.

It turns out that Laurence might not be so off the mark as it first seems. In fact, with recent discoveries by Jap anese scientists that allow biodiesel to be created in a cheaper way, it seems that biodiesel is in fact quickly becoming a viable option for many looking for alternatives to petroleum-based fuels. Biodiesel isn't cheap, which is why it hasn't really caught on with the non-hippie crowd, but now it might just sink down to "Hey! I can afford that!"-level.

Biodiesel is made up of chemical compounds called esters, which are converted fatty compounds found in vegetable oils. Vegetable oil is cheap. The catalysts used to convert the oils into esters are not. The scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have discovered a way to make this catalyst, which is a recyclable solid acid, at up to one-tenth to one-fiftieth the cost of current methods.

The EPA says that biodiesel emits a third of the hydrocarbons and half of the the carbon monoxide produced by petroleum diesel. Biodiesel also has practically no sulfur oxides or sulfides, major components of acid rain. What that all equates to is that biodiesel has a better environmental impact for those of us interested in protecting the environment.

Next time you hear of an oil spill off of the coast of some country's coastline, you might want to consider that biodiesel is biodegradeable. Take that for what you will, but I think that Nemo might appreciate it.

Being able to produce biodiesel at a cheaper rate isn't going to change the world overnight. What it might do is put pressure on various industries and governments to increase the awareness and promotion of alternative fuelsources. It also might make it just a little bit easier for someone like my friend Laurence to dream about cheaper fuel for his crappy little Nissan.

There are quite a few resources online that you can use to do your own research about biodiesel, such as www.biodiesel.org or Seattle's own www.fuelwerks.com. Do yourself and your neighbor a favor and check them out. You'll be surprised.