Biodiesel is cool
Ricky writes that various companies in Australia are getting into biodiesel. Cool. The news.com.au article he writes about says that biodiesel is made from “plant oil or animal fat” which is true, but the problem with that is producing the raw material cheaply enough to make it worthwhile. By “cheaply” I don’t mean inexpensively in dollar terms but in energy terms.
According to “The Answer is Biodiesel” (also here) by Michael Briggs from the University of New England’s Biodiesel group, biodiesel is a lot better in Overall Energy Balance than the current vogue in alternative energy cars, hydrogen.
Briggs says (and shows) that producing biodiesel in large-scale commercial production is quite simple and efficient, particularly if the raw material comes from algae ponds rather than crops. It’s an interesting idea and one that’s convinced me that biodiesel is significantly better than hydrogen.
