Italian chemists report a new cleaner and more economic biodiesel process.

[NNadir]

For the benefit of our biodiesel aficinados and pioneers:

"Environmental concerns and the predicted shortness of conventional fossil fuels have been the major input in the use of vegetable oils as a renewable substitute of petroleum-derived diesel fuels...

Various technologies are currently available in the industrial production of biodiesel,8,9 and most of the conventional methods use a basic or an acidic catalyst in a homogeneous phase. The base-catalyzed method is today the preferred one in industrial applications: a base such as an alkaline hydroxide or sodium or potassium methoxide is, in fact, widely accepted as the most effective catalyst in promoting the oil transesterification. 9 This method has, however, some drawbacks, such as the neutralization of the catalyst at the end of the reaction, with the consequence that the catalyst is not reusable, and the difficulty in the recovery of a pure glycerol. This last aspect plays a great role in the economy of the process. Acid catalysts, for instance, sulfuric acid, sulfonic acids, or hydrochloric acid, also present similar disadvantages and furthermore show low efficiency and high corrosion power. For both acid- and base-catalyzed processes, to maximize the biodiesel production, the quality and amount of catalyst9 are to be taken into account provided that the molar ratio of methyl alcohol/vegetable oil is above 6:1.10 Also, stirring represents a critical point in the efficiency of the process...

...The aim of this paper is to investigate the performance of sodium phosphate compounds, very slightly soluble in organic solvents, in terms of obtaining an appreciable efficiency in the transesterification reaction together with pure glycerin without complicated separation processes..."

Here is the abstract from the ASAP section of the journal Energy and Fuels:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/enfuem/asap/abs/ef0500686.html

[FloridaPat]

1. Drove by a Ford dealership today. SUV's and trucks as far as I could see.

The US is way behind the 8 ball.

[zalinda]

2. I briefly saw a ford commercial

and they've teamed up with volvo. Volvo's had a bio-diesel car since the 70's and just didn't put it in production because gas prices were so low. They had 3 cars built and running.

zalinda

[skids]

3. Volvo is the owner of their hybrid transaxle...

...since after Toyota left to fork the project in-house.