Fuel and Energy Alternatives

THIS is exactly the kinds of thinking we need to be doing. I’ve said it for a long time that we need to find a way to make fuel out of the things that NO ONE wants and is plentiful. (Kudzu…) Add coffee grounds to the growing list of things that could be a biodiesel source. I know many people use spent coffee grounds as a fertilizer of sorts, but the article reports that they estimate that spent coffee grounds could contribute over 300 million gallons of biodiesel around the world (I assume annually.)

The conversion process taking the oils from the grounds and converting to a biodiesel was cheap, the excess solids can be used as compost and is more stable than traditional biodiesels. Waste coffee grounds contain as much as 20% oil.

This from the WOW – “where can I get some of that” category. A fungus has been found growing in the Patagonian Rainforest that naturally synthesizes a hydro-carbon compound that dramatically resembles diesel. From the article:

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Page link should be here. It’s a bit lean now, but there are some good mileage and biodiesel links. More to be added as time allows.

In the last several decades there has been an argument over the energy policy in the United States. On the one side there are efforts to allow for more oil discovery and drilling, greater refinery capacity, etc. The other side says NO drilling that fossil fuels are bad and we need to invest in their replacements. The problem is that in all of this there has been little real progress. Yes, our technologies are improving, but the reality is that we need to develop a broad, comprehensive and DIVERSE energy security plan. Drilling for more oil alone will not answer our energy problems, neither will investing in ONLY wind and solar. I’m not saying this to

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