Top Gear

Titanium S1 111S (gla) · Post by **Titanium S1 111S (gla)** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 2:17 pm

Suspect that you are right Tom. Sounded a bit too good to be true.

Still 9,000L will give you 55K miles at 30mpg.

If you do 10K per year then you would need 5 acres to grow your fuel for a year and thatâ€™s assuming you only get one crop per year. Carbon neutral too.

I recon that government should be subsidising a bit of that.

Off top find a field faction.

Stewart · Post by **Stewart** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 8:34 pm

At the moment it isn't a cost effective viable alternative to diesel. This is partly due to the lower cost of mineral oil at the moment and higher value of oilseed rape as a feedstock. IIRC I think the last cost of production I saw for biodiesel was something like 99p per litre.
If you were to produce your own fuel, you would still have to pay duty on it. Admitedly, it is 20p per litre less than diesel.
An average yield for an acre would be 1.8T of OSR. 1T can produce up to 330 litres of fuel so 25 acres would provide 8,250 litres. Enough for 54,000 miles @ 30mpg.
However, as I have said whilst oil is cheap and OSR is in demand for other things you are still financially cheaper using diesel.
But at what price to the enviroment? Biodiesel is a renewable and alegedly produces 60% less CO2 than fossil fuels.
I believe that sugar cane is a better bet for producing ethanol which is presently being added to some petrol. Indycars are set to run on 100% ethanol this year so obviously the daily driver could be set to follow in years to come. The problem with sugar cane is that the UK climate isn't conducive to growing sugar cane and I don't beleive that sugar beet can offer the same efficiency when converting to fuel.

Please do not base your decision on whether or not to invest in renewable energy on any of the above as some of the details may be slightly off

but hopefully you get the idea.

Titanium S1 111S (gla) · Post by **Titanium S1 111S (gla)** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:31 am

Interesting.

Not about to go out and invest but a couple of things do occur to me.

Firstly the 60% CO2 figure sounds like it is a bit off. Surly the OSR (or what ever) organic fuel must be CO2 neutral. Yes it comes out of your exhaust but photosynthesis locks it up, your car is only setting it free, unless there is a net input of energy the two must balance.

Secondly if carbon neutral fuel is desirable surly Tony & Gordon should be giving us motorists a break.

Obviously not a rampant environmentalist type with 18 cylinders and 8.7L

between my various toys but interested all the same. (21cylinders and 9.7L if you count the birds Corsa)

Rich H · Post by **Rich H** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:32 am

Surely though once you have invested in the required land and machinery your production costs will fall. If your growing your own OSR then the price of OSR as feedstock is irrelevant (unless you want to grow OSR to sell and pay for your petrol and become a farmer!?)

Also won't any old crop do, it just won't be as efficient at making fuel. There must be '000 of tonnes of waste from the food industry that could be used. Maybe not exactly efficient but if you don't need to grow it...

Stewart · Post by **Stewart** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:04 pm

Rich, you still need to pay fuel duty, even if it is for your own use. Selling a tonne of OSR at about £125 per tonne is barely break even for the most efficient farmers who are farming thousands of acres for feedstock. If you were only growing a handful of acres, you wouldn't have ecconomies of scale and would perhaps be reliant of contractors to do the work. Either way, at the moment, you would still be (a lot) cheaper going to Tesco's for your fuel, not to mention a lot less hassle.
Remember the machinery will not last for ever and have a depreciation charge. A reasonable acre of land will cost you anywhere from £3k and up - probably not the best return on capital if you have the cash (by growing diesel) and definately a no-no if you need to borrow the cash if all you want to do is grow OSR for fuel.
With regards to food waste, there are a few schemes on the go at the moment that recycle waste cooking oil. Top Gear did a segment on this a few years ago. I also think that there are further schemes using tallow (waste animal products from slaughter houses). I don't know anything about the ecconomics of this.

Graham, I can't remember about the CO2 efficiency of the OSR fuel, but remember you need to burn fuel to cultivate and harvest the crop. There is also a waste by-product which can be used as animal feed.

A further point of interest that some may not be aware of is that up until 2003 there was a requirement for farmers who receive EU subsidies (99.99999% of them) that they must leave 10% (it may have been more) of their land "set-aside". This basically meant that they could not harvest a crop from this ground that would be used for food production, even cereals for cattle. As compensation they received a set-aside subsidy. Set-aside can still exist - don't ask! - farmers are allowed to grow non-food crops on this land i.e. OSR for fuel. A further reason for it being considered by farmers.

OK I'll stop boring you all now

Caveat Lector · Post by **Caveat Lector** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:44 pm

Not only do you need to use fuel to cultivate and transport the crops, you also need to turn it into alcohol. Brewing will give you alcohol, but at too low a concentration to burn (ever tried burning beer?). You need to purify the alcohol away from the water. This requires several distillations each requiring quite a large energy input. I'd be surprised if it were even as efficient as Stewart's 60% figure suggests, but I'd be guessing there.

MacK · Post by **MacK** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:07 am

Of course if you had a deisel engine you wouldn't need to brew and distill it into alcohol.

But I suspect you'd still be cheaper going to Tesco or a cash-and-carry and buying veg oil in bulk. There is also the option of used oils from take-aways etc, but that needs a bit of treatment too.

Rich H · Post by **Rich H** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:56 am

Veg oil in an disesal is a better prospect, all we need is a lightweight diesel about the weight of a K with around 120 bhp and a decent rev range....

Veg oil is what, 20p/l, fuel tax is 20p/l even legit its 40p/l

Write to the tax man and pay duty for 100l of veg oil. Frame the receipt. use veg oil forever and when stopped by Mr Tax man, get receipt from frame and hand over. OK, now prove that that veg oil in the tank has not had duty paid on it....

Job is a liter of tesco value corn oil