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The big question with any alternative energy source is feasibility. Is it truly more efficient than existing energy sources? Is it economical as a long term solution?
In the case of Veggie oil the feasibility depends on the usage pattern. For small, individual users like us, veggie fuel is very feasible. This is because we can get veggie oil for free, and in fairly large quantities from local restaurants (click here for the results of our restaurant survey). However in the near future this will not be the case. As more people start using veggie oil, restaurants will start charging money for WVO.
For veggie oil to be feasible as a large scale alternative fuel, crops must be grown specially for fuel oil. There simply isn't enough WVO available. The US uses close to 200 billion gallons of fossil fuels (gasoline, diesel, heating oil) per year*. At the same time the US only generates about 3 billion gallons of WVO per year. Therefore WVO can only replace 1.5% of the fossil fuel used. Sunflowers, soybeans, and rapeseed are all common oil producing crops. Rapeseed can produce 100 gallons of oil per acre per year, and in the US an average of 50 million acres of farmland that is unused for food production. Therefore if all idle crop land was used to grow rapeseed, we could produce 5 billion gallons of fuel oil per year. This would replace another 2.5% of the fossil fuel used. Currently with the technology being used, vegetable oil is not feasible as a large scale fossil fuel alternative.
New Technologies
However there are several new technologies arising that would make veggie fuels a very feasible alternative. The first of these is algaculture. Algaculture is the process of farming algae. Algae can be farmed in ponds, pools or any body of water, indoors or
outside. Recent studies have found that certain types of algae can be pressed for oil, and can produce up to 20,000 gallons of oil per acre per year! That is up to 200 times the amount of oil produced by rapeseed! If approximately 1 million acres of algae could be farmed per year, it could completely remove our dependence on fossil fuels. There are several large experimental algae farms in the south west, and researchers are refining the process of removing oil from the algae.
Extracting oil from algae involves first harvesting the algae out of the pond, pool or body of water in which it is growing. Once this is done the algae can be dried, and pressed for oil. This will only remove about 40% of the oil content, the rest remains in the dried pressed paste left over. This dried paste can then be burned to produce heat, or electricity (through steam), and the oil can be filtered for use as fuel.
Emissions
Economics
Rapeseed oil would cost around $0.75 per gallon to produce for fuel. Bio-Diesel made from this oil could be profitably sold for $1.75 per gallon. Compare that to the $2.75 per gallon that it costs for gas, or closer to $3.00 for diesel, and it looks really nice! Not to mention the better emissions. It is estimated that Bio-Diesel made from algae would be sold even cheaper for around $1.50 per gallon. These prices are for Bio-Diesel. This is oil could be sold even cheaper for use in cars that are modified to run on SVO like ours, as it would not have to be processed into Bio-diesel.
* statistic from the United States department of energy.
**Emissions data is from www.greasecar.com