There are still concerns about the ethical content of biodiesel.

The cutting edge of biodiesel belongs to Berkley, California. It is not without its own critique of the practice when the source changes from recycled vegetable oil to soybeans.

Berkeley first in Bay Area to recycle with biodiesel Trucks from Ecology Center run on waste oil from restaurants (cick here) Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, April 24, 2001

(04-24) 04:00 PDT Berkeley -- The city of Berkeley, which pioneered curbside recycling, has scored another environmental first by running the trucks that pick up newspapers, bottles and cans on fuel made from recycled vegetable oil.
"It smells like doughnuts, it's pretty weird," truck driver Todd Miller said yesterday. "I'm used to it now, but for the first couple weeks it smelled like one of those all-night doughnut shops."
The fuel, known as biodiesel, is made from waste oil collected from restaurants such as McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts and KFC. Advocates say that although the fuel is more expensive than regular diesel, it burns cleaner, is an alternative to fossil fuels and can be used in any diesel engine....




Biodiesel (click here)

Saturday, February 26th, 10am to 4pm

3107 Etcheverry Hall, UC Berkeley

Number of participants: 25

This homebrew workshop is a quick-moving, hands-on class, where you will make several small batches of biodiesel, learn safety and basic lab processes, test oil and biodiesel for quality, and work with ethanol and discuss acid-base biodiesel processes.

Students will also make a full size batch of biodiesel in a homebrew reactor, we will demonstrate washing processes, demonstrate purification of glycerol and it's uses, discuss biodiesel reactors and demonstrate methanol recovery equipment, discuss solar heating for the process, discuss heat exchangers, use of vacuum for energy savings, dewatering of waste vegetable oil, safe glycerol/waste oil burners for process heat, biodiesel co-ops and production groups, and more.

We need to resolve these problems. There has to be a sustainable source of biodiesel to replace the products of the petroleum industry. I am confident there are hybrid forms of soybeans that can be grown in hydroponics in greenhouses the size of a warehouse to solve this. Rapid growing and high yielding specifically for biodiesel. If California can build the Cyrstal Cathedral it can build a greenhouse large enough to supply biodiesel for its commuter needs.

Bloom is off the biodiesel rose: Berkeley says "no" to soy biofuel (click here)

January 9, 2009

Often in the lead in progressive causes, the City of Berkeley started using biodiesel in more than 100 city vehicles six years ago. For a while, the biofuel came from recycled waste grease and everyone was happy. The source shifted to crop soybeans when not enough grease could be found but, due to new concerns about growing crops for fuel, the city has now decided that enough is enough. The City Council took delivery of its last shipment of biodiesel made from soy last month and will discuss formalizing its biodiesel policy this fall, taking land impacts around the world into account. The city had been burning biodiesel in trucks and other heavy machinery. Deputy Public Works Director Andrew Clough told Inside Bay Area that, "What seemed like a really good idea maybe isn't such a good idea as we thought because of all the considerations."

Berkley is sincere about biodiesel. It has dedicated a great deal of effort to the investigation of the fuel and all the pitfalls along the way. We need different synthetic gaskets, too. The problems are not huge and can build more economy than one realizes.

Usage Of Biodiesel Fuel (click here)

Biodiesel fuel usage can be done in pure form or it may be blended with petroleum diesel at any concentration, as in most injection pump diesel engines. Let us study the usage of biodiesel fuel on this page.

New common rail engines with extreme high pressure have stern factory limits of using biodiesel fuel, B5 or B20 depending on manufacturer. As Biodiesel fuel has different solvent properties than petrodiesel, it can degrade natural rubber gaskets and hoses in vehicles. Plus Biodiesel has been known to break down deposits of residue in the fuel lines, so as a result, fuel filters may get clogged with particulates if there has been a fast transition to pure biodiesel fuel. Therefore, when using biodiesel fuel, it is suggested to change the fuel filters on engines and heaters in a while after first switching to a biodiesel blend.

Manufacturer acceptance and vehicular usage of biodiesel fuel began in 2005, when Chrysler released the Jeep Liberty CRD diesels into the American market with 5% biodiesel blends. This was an indication of at least partial acceptance of biodiesel fuel usage. 2004 saw the the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia updating its bus system to allow the fleet of city buses to run completely on a fish-oil based biodiesel fuel. In 2007, McDonalds in UK announced that it would start producing biodiesel from the wasteoil of its restaurants and use biodiesel fuel to run its fleet...