"biofuel" news and stories

Could kiwis be the next major source of biofuel? There's some research going on in New Zealand (of course) about the feasibility of using the green fruit as a source of the plant based fuel alternative.

Right now, they say, ruined fruit gets used as stock food, but that could be turned into a fuel source. They're even working on using it for bio plastics. The "refineries" would be like wineries. There are a lot of people in New Zealand who are excited about this.

My question is, would kiwi biofuel cause any of the same problems that corn based biofuels do now? I know that the world doesn't survive on kiwi (tasty as it is) the way it does on corn. I mean, if using kiwis as biofuel doesn't cause world food shortages and all, then I would be all for it. What do you think?

[Via New Zealand Herald.com]

Leave it to The Simpsons to accurately predict the future. Remember the episode where Homer and Bart suck the grease from Springfield Elementary's cafeteria to try and turn a profit, but the vacuum explodes and the kids wind up playing "snowball fight" with grease balls?

Well, that scene is now a reality. Okay, not the part about the grease fight - but pretty much everything else.

As the demand for biofuel rises, thieves making to look a quick buck are stealing the "yellow grease" leftover from restaurants that cook their food in veggie fat. Like Homer Simpson, they suck up the substance with vacuums, and can get a few thousand dollars from about 5,000 gallons (grease has shot up to 32 cents a pound).

It's not a job for the dainty thieves: Christian Science Monitor writer Ben Arnoldy describes the smell of a grease rendering plant as "like a combination between a fast food restaurant and a butcher shop, where maybe the meat's gone bad."

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We don't know why we're feeling especially green this weekend, but we were tickled when we came across news that Safeway, the nation's third-largest grocer, announced that it will convert its entire fleet of trucks to run on biodiesel. This will reduce Safeway's carbon emissions by 75 millions pounds each year.

The move is just another step in the grocery chain's full-scale initiative that executives call their "green energy tree." The program includes recycling, energy efficiency, and using sustainable sources of fuel like solar power in stores and now, biodiesel based on soy in their 1,000 trucks.

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In my mind, it all started when Doc Brown introduced us to the idea that you might be able to run your car on food waste, at the very end of the original Back to the Future when he threw a banana peel and a beer can into the Mr. Fusion attachment. Ever since then, scientists have been working on ways to create fuel out of food byproducts (they may have been looking to do this before BttF came on the scene, but I'm sort of a pop culture girl, so that's my first reference).

US scientists at Syracuse University are now looking to turn whey (Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet...), the liquid substance leftover from cheesemaking, into vehicle fuel. Whey is rich in lactose (dairy sugar) and since other sugary biofuels have been successfully created from food (ethanol for instances) researches think that whey could be the next frontier.

Via The Daily Green
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