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In the old days people would convert diesel trucks and cars to run on "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil. You could tell who did that bec

In the old days people would convert diesel trucks and cars to run on "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil. You could tell who did that because their cars always smelled like french fries.

ralferoo 7mo ago
In the UK, all the used oil from MacDonalds is converted into biodiesel. I often walk past the plan where they do this and there's usually a lorry waiting to be allowed in through the gates. A few years back there was some eco-warrior protest outside trying to stop the lorries going in. Not really sure what they were trying to achieve with that as it seemed counter to their aims.
- ajb 7mo ago
  Occasionally people in the UK get caught putting cooking oil in their (diesel ) cars, which is not illegal per se - but technically if you do it, you should pay fuel tax, which they generally don't. McDonald's are large enough that they will be, knowing that they would inevitably be caught.
- rmunn 7mo ago
  Many eco-warrior types, not every single one but many, have... how to put this gently... not thought things all the way through. To name just one example I can think of: protesting an oil pipeline being constructed and/or extended. Well, what will happen if the pipeline doesn't go in? People will still want gasoline — protesting the pipeline isn't going to do anything about people's desire to drive their cars around — so that oil is going to get transported to the refinery somehow. If not in a pipeline, then it'll get transported by train or truck. Which will 1) burn a lot more fuel than transporting the same amount of oil through a pipeline, and 2) be more prone to accidents and oil spills (a tiny chance per truck, but that adds up fast when there are thousands of trucks per month), therefore very likely to spill more oil than the pipeline would have. In other words, blocking that pipeline is very likely to cause more ecological damage than having it built would have caused. The eco-warrior types protesting the pipeline probably think that they're reducing the use of oil. But they haven't thought it all the way through.
  - adzm 7mo ago
    Are you sure this isn't a strawman? The recent Dakota pipeline protests for example were very clearly about water safety and building through native burial grounds and other historic native sites. Pretty much every pipeline protest I can think of is more concerned with environmental danger of spills, not reducing oil. And a catastrophic pipeline spill can be much worse than isolated truck spills, though I'd love to know more about research on that front.
    - gruez 7mo ago
      So standard NIMBY? "I think oil pipelines are great, just not in my backyard!"
      - Loughla 7mo ago
        There is a clear difference between "I don't want to look at the pipeline" and "pipelines have an established track record of cutting corners and avoiding regulation wherever possible which leads to leaks and spills, leaks and spills cause irreparable damage to the environment including the environment in the middle of our community, and the company is attempting to exploit our already historically exploited community"
  - acyou 7mo ago
    While we're at it, let's think the rest of the way through, and consider the marginal effect that additional transportation cost has on price and therefore both the supply and demand side, shall we?
    - xp84 7mo ago
      To prove or disprove your hypothesis, we can look at historical gas prices. In today's dollars (adjusted for inflation) the US average gas price stayed below $2.75/gal from roughly 1986-2002. Then they broke through that barrier, only ever going below it again for two brief moments in 2016 and in 2020. Most of the time since, they've been well above $3.50, and above $4 sometimes. [1] If you're right that demand for gasoline is highly elastic, meaning people adjust their demand in response to price, then since gas prices got much more expensive, we should expect that gas usage decreased. Have we seen this? (No. [2]) Of course we haven't, because somewhere between 63-67% of people in the US and Canada live in car-dependent suburbs.[3] These cities and towns, in addition to most rural areas, are fundamentally car-dependent and cannot function without daily car use by a majority of residents. The only way for our society to consume less gasoline would be mass electrification of private transport. And notably, even the recent increased popularity of EVs in the post-Model-3 era isn't manifesting in the data [2] in the form of decreased consumption to my eyes. Perhaps for every new BEV out there not using gas, five people traded the cars they used to drive for inefficient, huge SUVs. 1. https://www.inflationtool.com/adjusted-prices/us-gasoline https://www.inflationtool.com/adjusted-prices/us-gasoline 2. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=wgfupus2&f=4 https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=w... 3. https://lcau.mit.edu/research/american-suburbs-project https://lcau.mit.edu/research/american-suburbs-project
GJim 7mo ago
> "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil No. Biodiesel is fuel made directly from vegetable matter; typically it needs a ""special"" engine to run, or is blended in a low ratio with ordinary diesel (B7 in the UK and EU). Processed cooking oil is made into HVO. This can be used as a direct 1:1 replacement for ordinary diesel without engine modifications. Very green! Unsurprisingly, HVO has a higher price than biodiesel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrotreated_vegetable_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrotreated_vegetable_oil HVO is easily available in the UK and is typically bought by bus companies and delivery companies seeking to improve their green footprint. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=HVO+supliers+UK&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=HVO+supliers+UK&ia=web
- adiabatichottub 7mo ago
  In the early 2000s I traveled thousands of miles in an old school bus fueled by waste vegetable oil (WVO). The system was very simple, the bus had an extra fuel tank with a heat exchanger to the engine coolant, a couple fuel filters, and some hand-operated valves in the engine compartment. You start on diesel, warm up and switch to WVO. Before shutting down you would switch back to diesel to purge the system. You also pack a box of extra filters because they'd need frequent replacement. It was a somewhat popular conversation in some circles. Old Mercedes Benz diesel sedans were a common choice.

ralferoo 7mo ago

In the UK, all the used oil from MacDonalds is converted into biodiesel. I often walk past the plan where they do this and there's usually a lorry waiting to be allowed in through the gates. A few years back there was some eco-warrior protest outside trying to stop the lorries going in. Not really sure what they were trying to achieve with that as it seemed counter to their aims.

ajb 7mo ago
Occasionally people in the UK get caught putting cooking oil in their (diesel ) cars, which is not illegal per se - but technically if you do it, you should pay fuel tax, which they generally don't. McDonald's are large enough that they will be, knowing that they would inevitably be caught.
rmunn 7mo ago
Many eco-warrior types, not every single one but many, have... how to put this gently... not thought things all the way through. To name just one example I can think of: protesting an oil pipeline being constructed and/or extended. Well, what will happen if the pipeline doesn't go in? People will still want gasoline — protesting the pipeline isn't going to do anything about people's desire to drive their cars around — so that oil is going to get transported to the refinery somehow. If not in a pipeline, then it'll get transported by train or truck. Which will 1) burn a lot more fuel than transporting the same amount of oil through a pipeline, and 2) be more prone to accidents and oil spills (a tiny chance per truck, but that adds up fast when there are thousands of trucks per month), therefore very likely to spill more oil than the pipeline would have. In other words, blocking that pipeline is very likely to cause more ecological damage than having it built would have caused. The eco-warrior types protesting the pipeline probably think that they're reducing the use of oil. But they haven't thought it all the way through.
- adzm 7mo ago
  Are you sure this isn't a strawman? The recent Dakota pipeline protests for example were very clearly about water safety and building through native burial grounds and other historic native sites. Pretty much every pipeline protest I can think of is more concerned with environmental danger of spills, not reducing oil. And a catastrophic pipeline spill can be much worse than isolated truck spills, though I'd love to know more about research on that front.
  - gruez 7mo ago
    So standard NIMBY? "I think oil pipelines are great, just not in my backyard!"
    - Loughla 7mo ago
      There is a clear difference between "I don't want to look at the pipeline" and "pipelines have an established track record of cutting corners and avoiding regulation wherever possible which leads to leaks and spills, leaks and spills cause irreparable damage to the environment including the environment in the middle of our community, and the company is attempting to exploit our already historically exploited community"
- acyou 7mo ago
  While we're at it, let's think the rest of the way through, and consider the marginal effect that additional transportation cost has on price and therefore both the supply and demand side, shall we?
  - xp84 7mo ago
    To prove or disprove your hypothesis, we can look at historical gas prices. In today's dollars (adjusted for inflation) the US average gas price stayed below $2.75/gal from roughly 1986-2002. Then they broke through that barrier, only ever going below it again for two brief moments in 2016 and in 2020. Most of the time since, they've been well above $3.50, and above $4 sometimes. [1] If you're right that demand for gasoline is highly elastic, meaning people adjust their demand in response to price, then since gas prices got much more expensive, we should expect that gas usage decreased. Have we seen this? (No. [2]) Of course we haven't, because somewhere between 63-67% of people in the US and Canada live in car-dependent suburbs.[3] These cities and towns, in addition to most rural areas, are fundamentally car-dependent and cannot function without daily car use by a majority of residents. The only way for our society to consume less gasoline would be mass electrification of private transport. And notably, even the recent increased popularity of EVs in the post-Model-3 era isn't manifesting in the data [2] in the form of decreased consumption to my eyes. Perhaps for every new BEV out there not using gas, five people traded the cars they used to drive for inefficient, huge SUVs. 1. https://www.inflationtool.com/adjusted-prices/us-gasoline https://www.inflationtool.com/adjusted-prices/us-gasoline 2. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=wgfupus2&f=4 https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=w... 3. https://lcau.mit.edu/research/american-suburbs-project https://lcau.mit.edu/research/american-suburbs-project

GJim 7mo ago

> "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil No. Biodiesel is fuel made directly from vegetable matter; typically it needs a ""special"" engine to run, or is blended in a low ratio with ordinary diesel (B7 in the UK and EU). Processed cooking oil is made into HVO. This can be used as a direct 1:1 replacement for ordinary diesel without engine modifications. Very green! Unsurprisingly, HVO has a higher price than biodiesel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrotreated_vegetable_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrotreated_vegetable_oil HVO is easily available in the UK and is typically bought by bus companies and delivery companies seeking to improve their green footprint. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=HVO+supliers+UK&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=HVO+supliers+UK&ia=web

adiabatichottub 7mo ago
In the early 2000s I traveled thousands of miles in an old school bus fueled by waste vegetable oil (WVO). The system was very simple, the bus had an extra fuel tank with a heat exchanger to the engine coolant, a couple fuel filters, and some hand-operated valves in the engine compartment. You start on diesel, warm up and switch to WVO. Before shutting down you would switch back to diesel to purge the system. You also pack a box of extra filters because they'd need frequent replacement. It was a somewhat popular conversation in some circles. Old Mercedes Benz diesel sedans were a common choice.