"Friend's Ambulance Unit
The Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) was originally set up in World War I to provide a channel of service for Conscientious Objectors (C.O.), mainly Quakers. It was resurrected in 1939 for the same purpose; to provide opportunities for COs to take part in the relief of suffering brought on by war. One of these opportunities was the China Convoy. The only available land route into 'Free China', the part controlled by the Guomindang under Chiang Kaishek, was via Burma and the new Burma Road over the mountains from the railhead at Lashio in north Burma to Kunming. The original plan for the China Convoy was to carry out two tasks; to transport medical and relief supplies into 'Free China' via Rangoon and the Burma Road and to provide medical teams to work with the Chinese Red Cross in military hospitals. During the summer and autumn of 1941, members of the original team of 40 arrived in Rangoon and set about assembling their trucks, mobile operating theatre and mobile workshop, all of which had come from The States. Then came December 8th 1941 and by early 1942 the Unit was desperately engaged in getting trucks and supplies off the Rangoon docks and into China. By the end of 1942 a transport system was in operation; having no supplies of petrol some trucks were converted to run on charcoal-fuelled producer gas, others had diesel engines running on rapeseed oil installed and some were run on alcohol and 'petrol' distilled from tung oil." http://sacu.org/cifc2.html This seems at variance with the mention of the use of Tung oil directly in diesels (which struck me as odd odd, since it's a drying oil, correct?), by Mike Brown, in the article below.... "Then, in the twentieth century, the Chinese were hit by terribly inflated petroleum prices . . . and they solved the problem—in part—by running their diesel engines on vegetable oil! It seems that—prior to World War II—diesel fuel cost about twice as much as did vegetable oil in China . . . and the petroleum product’s price doubled and trebled following the war. So, under those circumstances the vegetable-based fuel made good economic sense. (For all I know, the folks in China may still be running their tractors on tung oil.) " http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/soybeanoil.htm ..and a bit more wartime trivia...about rapeseed oil and Canola in Canada... "The development of rapeseed as an oilseed crop on the prairies was also triggered by World War II. Rapeseed oil was an essential lubricant for marine engines, and the disruption of ocean shipping as a result of the war threatened to cut off Canada's supply from Europe. In 1942, Stevenson secured a supply of seed of Brassica napus from Argentina and distributed it the following spring. The first Canadian rapeseed crop was grown in 1943 on 1300 ha in Saskatchewan and Manitoba; by 1948 it had increased to 32,000 ha. Because of its origin, the first lot of seed was called "Argentine" rapeseed and the name stuck. In the meantime, a Shellbrook district farmer, Mr. Fred Solvoniuk, had been growing a different type of rapeseed in small plots on his farm since 1936. He had obtained the seed originally from a friend or relative who had brought it with him when he emigrated from Poland in 1927. As information on rapeseed cultivation became more available after 1943, Mr. Solvoniuk began field scale production of his rapeseed strain, and sold seed to his neighbors. It was quite different from the Argentine type and it soon bécame known as "Polish" rapeseed. It was determined later that it was a different species, Brassica campestris. It was much earlier than B. napus and it rapidly gained favor with farmers in the more northern growing areas. It was well known at the time that rapeseed was an important source of edible oil in other parts of the world. With the end of the war, and with it the critical need for marine engine lubricants, White, with an eye on the edible oil market, started a modest research program to breed a better rapeseed. The original material appeared highly variable and it was obvious that improved selections could be made from it. Mr. H.G. Neufeld of Nipawin was one of the original growers of Argentine rapeseed in 1943. With great foresight he had selected 40 single plants from that crop and kept the seed of each separate. He offered the seed to White, who grew it out in the first rapeseed yield test in 1944. At first, selection was limited to Argentine rapeseed, partly because it was the only type available initially. It was also fairly self-fertile and this made it relatively easy to develop pure lines. Selecting lines for higher seed yield and earlier maturity was routine, but determining oil content and oil quality was another matter. At that time, methods of analysis were cumbersome, requiring a lot of time and a large sample of seed. As a result, progress in breeding was very slow at first and it was not until much later that highly sophisticated methods of analysis enabled the production of today's greatly modified cultivars. Nevertheless, progress was made and Golden, the first licensed cultivar, was released in 1954. " http://collections.ic.gc.ca/agrican/pubweb/hs200011.asp (Later varieties became known as Canola) "Canola and rapeseed are actually the same species. Rapeseed was good for industrial uses; it was used as a lamp and cooking oil by ancient civilizations in Asia and Europe, and was found to be the best lubricant to cling to steam washed surfaces on steam engines. " http://interactive.usask.ca/ski/agriculture/crops/oilseeds/canola.html Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?list=biofuel Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/