Hello Mike >On this day in 1893 Rudolf Dieselís engine ran for the first time, and >it ran on peanut oil. So today we celebrate ìInternational Biodiesel >Dayî and raise our glasses to the genius of using fuel that grows back! > >Praise the Lard! > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Historical_background
:-) And tally the tallow - sorry, but it's a myth. Rudolf Diesel patents the diesel engine in 1893. Diesel is awarded the Grand Prix at both Paris World Fairs (1900 and 1910) for inventing and developing his engine. But he didn't run it on peanut oil. The true story: "... excerpts from some of Dr Diesel's work, that he published 1912 and 1913, where he states that it was the Otto Company that ran one of his engines on peanut oil at the request of the French government during the 1900 World Fair. He later conducted some trails where he determined fuel consumption and assessed operability. He also mentions similar successful experiments in St. Petersburg using castor oil and animal oils." - Darren Hill "It WASN'T him! I recently borrowed his book "The Development of the Diesel Engine" -afaik the last one he published until he drowned himself in the Channel. All kinds of fuels that had been tested are described there, from coal dust over weird chemical mixtures that had been sent to Diesel by the industry to all sorts of crude oil and even tar-oil. Vegoil just got about 4 lines- remarking that it was the French "Otto-Company" (yes the Otto-engine!) that ran Diesel's engine on peanut oil: "The engine was built for crude oil and was used without any modification on vegoil."..."it worked so well that only a few insiders took notice of this insignificant circumstance." (Diesel, Rudolf. 1913. Die Entstehung des Dieselmotors" 1st reprint by Braun, Hans-Joachim (Ed). 1984. Moers: Steiger. Page 115.)." - Stephan Helbig It'll be a long time before wikipedia gets to be much more than knowledge-lite, IMHO. "Worldwide production of vegetable oil and animal fat is not yet sufficient to replace liquid fossil fuel use." Yet? LOL! So all we have to do is wait a bit, what a relief. 5,000 gal/acre from algae, sigh... Best Keith _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
