By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
I wrote the other week about biofuels but due to illnesses I had been contending with the past many months, rather years, I forgot a lot of things. Now they are slowly coming back. One thing got revived from the recesses of my brain by the smell of tempura from lunch a few minutes ago.
With all the world problems due to fossil fuel scarcity caused by the folly and greed of US Pres. Trump, routed thru increasing of the demand for military drones by the US armed forces was done simply. One of the sons of Trump invested extensively in the drone manufacturing business then his father started the US-Iran war. All production out put are now being snapped up by the Pentagon.
And now, with the world-wide problem of fossil fuel shortage, ways have to be found on how to make our cars run. There are ways like one I’ve read about back thirty or more years ago.
The scene was California in one of the university towns there known as a purveyor of progressive ideas. A creative person started a taxi service inside the campus using only two units. These were old model Mercedes Benz units (circa mid70s) with diesel engines. Back then there were conversion kits he could buy to make the cars run not on the usual diesel fuel but on used vegetable oil. So he would go around the fast foods (McDonalds, Shakeys, etc.) in town and got for free their used cooking oil.
Another advantage was a lot of students were eager to put into practice the four RS of being environment-friendly (Reduce, Recycle, Repurpose, Reuse) and they would patiently wait for the two cabs in the taxi stands so they could patronize them.
Another good thing the students found out was that at times, the exhaust of the cabs sometimes smelled good like fried chicken, or tempura, or French fries, etc. depending on what food the vegetable oil fried before being used as fuel for the cabs.
So what the conversion kit did must have been to filter the salt or other impurities from the used cooking oil that could hurt the engine. For clean vegetable oil can run the traditional diesel engine.
Thus, if a lot of us used such used oil discarded by fast foods, the whole world can smell a lot better. And there will be a lot less pollution due to the better combustibility of veggie oil compared to the ordinary diesel fuel.
As found out during the second World War, the only problem of using veggie oils as fuel in cars is it could solidify in the tank during winter. But as one contributor in the Philippine Daily Inquirer wrote, the easy remedy in Europe was to mix a liter of gasoline to a full tank of the oil. With that, as he claimed, the vegetable oil will not solidify.
So there. A way to make the world smell better and reduce pollution and fuel costs at the same time.**
