further splitting the veg-folk from the enviros...

[Guest guest]

I saw this on Reuters this morning and thought folks

would be interested...

 

Company says run your car on cow fuel

Thu Dec 1, 2005 9:27 AM ET

 

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

 

VILLE STE. CATHERINE, Quebec (Reuters) - A Canadian

company has an idea for motorists worried about global

warming -- put a cow in your tank.

 

A C$14 million factory near Montreal started producing

" biodiesel " fuel two weeks ago from the bones, innards

and other parts of farm animals such as cattle, pigs

or chickens that Canadians do not eat.

 

" We're using animal waste to reduce greenhouse gas

emissions, " said marketing director Ron Wardrop of

Rothsay, which runs the plant.

 

" We need more of this type of thing, " he said at the

plant by the St. Lawrence River, near Montreal where

189 nations are meeting this week to work out how to

curb climate change widely blamed on emissions of

heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels.

 

Rothsay, a unit of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., is also

making biodiesel at the plant by recycling oil from

fast food restaurants, like from the deep-fryers used

to cook french fries.

 

Biodiesel emits little of the smog of conventional

gasoline or diesel fuel and almost none of the

heat-trapping gases that most scientists say are

driving up temperatures and could cause more floods,

storms and rising sea levels in coming decades.

 

At full capacity, the Rothsay plant will produce 35

million liters (9.2 million U.S. gallons) of biodiesel

a year, the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing

16,000 light trucks or 22,000 cars from the roads.

 

" So far we're producing at about a quarter of

capacity, " Wardrop said. Production is a pinprick out

of Canada's total diesel use of 2.2 billion liters.

 

PEANUT OIL

 

Biodiesel can also be made from farm crops, such as

soy or canola. Germany's Rudolf Diesel, who built the

first diesel engines in the 1890s, designed them to

run on peanut oil.

 

Wardrop said he believed the Rothsay plant was the

third of its kind in the world, along with one in

Germany and one in Kentucky. Vehicles using biodiesel

get tax breaks or subsidies from governments.

 

" Biodiesel is competitive in price, with the support

of the government, with oil prices at $55 a barrel, "

Wardrop said. It would not compete if oil prices

dropped to $20, he said.

 

At the Ville Ste. Catherine plant, the animal and fat

waste arrives from a rendering plant as a thick brown

liquid -- with a gut-wrenchingly rancid smell. It

leaves as an almost odorless clear yellow fuel.

 

Biodiesel is produced by combining natural oils or

fats with alcohols such as methanol or ethanol. The

process leaves two products -- biodiesel and glycerin.

 

" When you drive, some people say it smells of popcorn

or french fries, " said Claude Bourgault, general

manager of Rothsay in the Quebec area.

 

 

 

 

 

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