This is my first diary, so
If perchance I have offended,
Think but this and all is mended,
I'm trying to share a helpful notion,
If you can do better-be my guest.
Crude oil prices will exceed $100 per barrel before the peak of this years heating season. If I, a simple country lawyer and retired helicopter pilot can see it coming, the oil industry experts must have seen this coming for months. Why can't we buy ethanol of our furnaces, they're a heck of a lot simpler than internal combustion engines after all and yet we're all buying pure petroleum for our heating needs. Can't our furnaces burn something we grew this summer? Turns out-we can. (More past the link)
A quick search revealed this brilliant article from Mother Earth News back in 2005: http://www.harvestcleanenergy.org/...
In a nutshell, heating oil can be mixed with a biofuel that is a mixture of ethanol and vegetable oil. There are two potential problems;
- biofuel is a more potent solvent than heating oil so some seals may be effected, and
- pour point (the temp. at which the fuel behave like a liquid)is higher than heating oils -11 degrees so you need an indoor fuel tank in colder regions.
That said, according to the article these problems don't arise if the biofuel-petroleum mixture is correct;
Sponsored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y. conducted its own series of tests on the use of biodiesel for space heating.
That facility's 2001 test report found that biodiesel blends at or below B30(30% biofuel) can replace fuel oil with no noticeable changes in performance. Burning of the blends also reduced carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide emissions.
But can you even buy this stuff? Well, apparently it's possible. According to the article;
In some parts of the country, homeowners who have been frustrated by the lack of local distributors have formed energy co-ops, through which they order biodiesel in large quantities and at lower prices. Co-opPlus, a member-owned energy cooperative in western Massachusetts, is involved in a variety of renewable energy programs, including a biodiesel initiative that is now associated with Alliance Energy Services in Holyoke, Mass. Alliance currently offers a B20 blend and B100; in addition, every gallon of fuel oil it sells is now at least a B3 blend.
The reason you're not being offered a biofel alternative probably has as much to do with the Big Oil Bottom Line than it does with a slightly higher cost, after all, knowing what is coming the bastards should have been pushing this alternative two months ago - but they're not. Draw whatever inference from this fact you want. In the meantime, if you heat with oil they're going to make you bleed this winter. Find a supplier that can blend a 30% biofuel mixture and pay him and some farmer instead of Exxon and King George's terrorist pals in the house of Saud. Talk to your neighbors and form co-ops.
Be warm and be well my friends-Winter is coming.