Hell yeah!
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Rian Jackson
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GuinivereElise
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Rian Jackson
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Rian Jackson
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GuinivereElise
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samtzu
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Did they come in a large, open topped container with a handle?GuinivereElise wrote:hmmm.. seems i lost the card....
wierd....
guess we'll never know....
Hmmmmmmmmm?
The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing ~~ Eric Hoffer
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GuinivereElise
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GuinivereElise
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GuinivereElise
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Simply Joel
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hell yeah
I say hell yeah, 'cause this stimpulates my interest in doing all my glaze firings with used cooking grease.
December 27, 2004
On This Freedom Ride, Fuel Comes From the Fryer
By ALAN FEUER
Brent Baker sees one answer to the energy crisis in the ordinary French fry. His logic goes like this:
Wherever French fries are consumed, there is bound to be a quantity of cooking grease. Diesel engines can be made to run on grease. It therefore stands to reason that the French fry, if made in quantity, can result not only in a side dish. It can be counted on, as well, to leave behind a cheap supply of fuel.
Humble as this proposition seems to be, Mr. Baker, an environmentalist who moonlights as a carpenter, has proved that it can work. He has taken a 1989 International Blue Bird school bus and hooked some filters and hoses to its engine, and now careers through town and through the country on discarded grease alone.
The ride is smooth and quiet, and his bus smells something like a barbecue. As for the fuel tank, he pulls into roadside diners when the gauge is running low.
"What I usually say is, 'Hey, I got a bus outside that runs on grease,' " said Mr. Baker, who is 34, wears a watch cap on his head and a soul patch just beneath his lip and is known as Arrow in the hipper quarters of New York.
"Then I say, 'I notice you've got some nice grease in your Dumpster out there. Mind if I clean it out?' "
Usually they do not and usually he does. Mr. Baker traveled 15,000 miles last year on S.V.O., or straight vegetable oil, carrying his deep-fried vision of alternative fuel across the United States.
As it happens, he is not alone in his belief that vegetable oil, available in grocery stores and greasy spoons, might someday prove a viable source of fuel. The fleets of more than 40 federal and state agencies across the country already run on a blend of diesel fuel and vegetable oil, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Last month, DaimlerChrysler introduced the Jeep Liberty Common Rail Diesel, which runs on a similar blend of fuel. There is even a salt mine in Kansas, operated by the Hutchinson Salt Company, that just last week became the first mine of any kind in the United States to run on diesel fuel and grease.
Mr. Baker, as a purist, prefers to run his bus on grease and grease alone. Beneath its windows is the slogan: "This Bus Runs On Vegetable Oil." He gets 10 miles to the gallon. More important, he fills the tank for nothing. And grease does not give off many of the dangerous emissions that fossil fuels do.
As a devotee of S.V.O., he acknowledges a debt to Rudolf Diesel, who introduced the diesel engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900. Dr. Diesel planned, at first, to run his engine using peanut oil as fuel. Since then, the diesel has been modified to run on petroleum, which is, historically, the least expensive and most easily obtainable type of fuel.
Still, it is child's play, Mr. Baker said, to reconfigure diesel engines to run on grease. It is mainly a question of heating the grease to reduce its natural viscosity. The grease also must be kept clean.
To that end, he has installed beneath the bus a 10-gallon "warm-up tank," which heats the grease in the 40-gallon main tank until it flows smoothly through the fuel-injected engine. He also jury-rigged a filter system that prevents small bits of deep-fried cod or French fries from clogging the fuel lines.
"You can go on the Internet, get the conversion kit and start running grease this afternoon," he said. Those familiar with the insides of a car should expect to pay about $800 for the kit alone. It will cost an additional $700 for a professional mechanic to install it, he said.
Mr. Baker's interest in grease began in 1995, when he was traveling the country with an acting troupe and discovered that "the lion's share of the money we were raising went straight to Shell." The acting troupe was of the sort that staged environmentally conscious, anti-corporate political sketches. It seemed to contradict its mission to spend its money in support of Big Oil.
As the story goes, they came across two women somewhere east of San Francisco who were cooking up a blend of grease and diesel with some cheesecloth and a Bunsen burner on the side of the road. "They said, 'Yeah, we're making biodiesel," he recalled. Mr. Baker was immediately hooked.
Shortly after, he heard talk of a group of young Australians who had gone all the way and started powering their vehicles on S.V.O.
"These mad-scientist geniuses had altered their fuel lines and heating lines to run on straight vegetable oil," he said. After years of interest, Mr. Baker was the lucky recipient of a bus donated to him by Greenpeace in February 2003.
These days, he travels from New York to Texas, stopping off in spots like Kansas City, to promote his concept of using grease as fuel. He is often in the company of his daughter, Felix, a precocious 9-year-old.
While journeying, the bus is both a working demonstration of his concept and a makeshift mobile home. The seats have been removed and cots installed. There is a hi-fi system that is powered, by way of solar panels, by the sun.
When Mr. Baker is at home, he parks the bus in the flatlands of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There it sits on winter afternoons with environmentalist stickers on the dash and a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
An ambitious man, Mr. Baker plans this spring to open a biodiesel service station, possibly in Williamsburg, where like-minded motorists can fill their tanks with the blended fuel at a series of gas-like pumps. The project will require a set of 50-gallon drums, some rubber hoses and a centrifuge for blending. "It's not much more complicated than making moonshine," he explained.
As he conceives of it, the service station will produce some 200 gallons of fuel a month, which pales in comparison to the refinery he dreams of building that could pump out as many as five million gallons a year.
Even now, he said, the resourceful driver can find grease in places where gas does not exist. Last year, for instance, he visited the Grand Canyon and drove for miles on a windy uphill road. Near the end of road, he noticed that his tank was running low.
There was not an Amoco in sight, but off the road there was a diner. Mr. Baker walked inside.
"All I had to say was, 'Excuse me. Do you serve fried food here?' "
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
December 27, 2004
On This Freedom Ride, Fuel Comes From the Fryer
By ALAN FEUER
Brent Baker sees one answer to the energy crisis in the ordinary French fry. His logic goes like this:
Wherever French fries are consumed, there is bound to be a quantity of cooking grease. Diesel engines can be made to run on grease. It therefore stands to reason that the French fry, if made in quantity, can result not only in a side dish. It can be counted on, as well, to leave behind a cheap supply of fuel.
Humble as this proposition seems to be, Mr. Baker, an environmentalist who moonlights as a carpenter, has proved that it can work. He has taken a 1989 International Blue Bird school bus and hooked some filters and hoses to its engine, and now careers through town and through the country on discarded grease alone.
The ride is smooth and quiet, and his bus smells something like a barbecue. As for the fuel tank, he pulls into roadside diners when the gauge is running low.
"What I usually say is, 'Hey, I got a bus outside that runs on grease,' " said Mr. Baker, who is 34, wears a watch cap on his head and a soul patch just beneath his lip and is known as Arrow in the hipper quarters of New York.
"Then I say, 'I notice you've got some nice grease in your Dumpster out there. Mind if I clean it out?' "
Usually they do not and usually he does. Mr. Baker traveled 15,000 miles last year on S.V.O., or straight vegetable oil, carrying his deep-fried vision of alternative fuel across the United States.
As it happens, he is not alone in his belief that vegetable oil, available in grocery stores and greasy spoons, might someday prove a viable source of fuel. The fleets of more than 40 federal and state agencies across the country already run on a blend of diesel fuel and vegetable oil, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Last month, DaimlerChrysler introduced the Jeep Liberty Common Rail Diesel, which runs on a similar blend of fuel. There is even a salt mine in Kansas, operated by the Hutchinson Salt Company, that just last week became the first mine of any kind in the United States to run on diesel fuel and grease.
Mr. Baker, as a purist, prefers to run his bus on grease and grease alone. Beneath its windows is the slogan: "This Bus Runs On Vegetable Oil." He gets 10 miles to the gallon. More important, he fills the tank for nothing. And grease does not give off many of the dangerous emissions that fossil fuels do.
As a devotee of S.V.O., he acknowledges a debt to Rudolf Diesel, who introduced the diesel engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900. Dr. Diesel planned, at first, to run his engine using peanut oil as fuel. Since then, the diesel has been modified to run on petroleum, which is, historically, the least expensive and most easily obtainable type of fuel.
Still, it is child's play, Mr. Baker said, to reconfigure diesel engines to run on grease. It is mainly a question of heating the grease to reduce its natural viscosity. The grease also must be kept clean.
To that end, he has installed beneath the bus a 10-gallon "warm-up tank," which heats the grease in the 40-gallon main tank until it flows smoothly through the fuel-injected engine. He also jury-rigged a filter system that prevents small bits of deep-fried cod or French fries from clogging the fuel lines.
"You can go on the Internet, get the conversion kit and start running grease this afternoon," he said. Those familiar with the insides of a car should expect to pay about $800 for the kit alone. It will cost an additional $700 for a professional mechanic to install it, he said.
Mr. Baker's interest in grease began in 1995, when he was traveling the country with an acting troupe and discovered that "the lion's share of the money we were raising went straight to Shell." The acting troupe was of the sort that staged environmentally conscious, anti-corporate political sketches. It seemed to contradict its mission to spend its money in support of Big Oil.
As the story goes, they came across two women somewhere east of San Francisco who were cooking up a blend of grease and diesel with some cheesecloth and a Bunsen burner on the side of the road. "They said, 'Yeah, we're making biodiesel," he recalled. Mr. Baker was immediately hooked.
Shortly after, he heard talk of a group of young Australians who had gone all the way and started powering their vehicles on S.V.O.
"These mad-scientist geniuses had altered their fuel lines and heating lines to run on straight vegetable oil," he said. After years of interest, Mr. Baker was the lucky recipient of a bus donated to him by Greenpeace in February 2003.
These days, he travels from New York to Texas, stopping off in spots like Kansas City, to promote his concept of using grease as fuel. He is often in the company of his daughter, Felix, a precocious 9-year-old.
While journeying, the bus is both a working demonstration of his concept and a makeshift mobile home. The seats have been removed and cots installed. There is a hi-fi system that is powered, by way of solar panels, by the sun.
When Mr. Baker is at home, he parks the bus in the flatlands of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There it sits on winter afternoons with environmentalist stickers on the dash and a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
An ambitious man, Mr. Baker plans this spring to open a biodiesel service station, possibly in Williamsburg, where like-minded motorists can fill their tanks with the blended fuel at a series of gas-like pumps. The project will require a set of 50-gallon drums, some rubber hoses and a centrifuge for blending. "It's not much more complicated than making moonshine," he explained.
As he conceives of it, the service station will produce some 200 gallons of fuel a month, which pales in comparison to the refinery he dreams of building that could pump out as many as five million gallons a year.
Even now, he said, the resourceful driver can find grease in places where gas does not exist. Last year, for instance, he visited the Grand Canyon and drove for miles on a windy uphill road. Near the end of road, he noticed that his tank was running low.
There was not an Amoco in sight, but off the road there was a diner. Mr. Baker walked inside.
"All I had to say was, 'Excuse me. Do you serve fried food here?' "
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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Simply Joel
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cowboyangel
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just when you thought man/war/vermacht/star wars/ were making the definitive statement of power....along comes Mother Nature with 9.0 and a rift 600 miles long with a charge many times greater than a few hundred thermonuclear bombs!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believe is false."- William Casey, CIA Director 1981
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buckethead alien
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Simply Joel
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Rian Jackson
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Hell yeah.
What was just lyrics yesterday (and a tune in my head) is now a song that should be ready by the 5th.
Someday I'll learn not to write new songs for performances the week of/ the night before. Or maybe not. this happens EVERY FUCKING TIME.
further hell yeah: got my ticket for Guin's show on NYE.
What was just lyrics yesterday (and a tune in my head) is now a song that should be ready by the 5th.
Someday I'll learn not to write new songs for performances the week of/ the night before. Or maybe not. this happens EVERY FUCKING TIME.
further hell yeah: got my ticket for Guin's show on NYE.
surlier than thou
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Rian Jackson
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gigglesnort
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Rian Jackson
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gigglesnort
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Rian Jackson
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theCryptofishist
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Ya know, the mrFishist may have a gig in LA for NYE--working a rave. IT almost makes me wish I was heading down there with him. . .stuart wrote:Hell Yeah,
I get to meet Tisha tomorrow night!
The Lady with a Lamprey
"The powerful are exploiting people, art and ideas, and this leads to us plebes debating how to best ration ice.
Man, no wonder they always win....." Lonesomebri
"The powerful are exploiting people, art and ideas, and this leads to us plebes debating how to best ration ice.
Man, no wonder they always win....." Lonesomebri