The new clean diesels are absolutely incredible. We got one in late last year, and this car, in a word, marvelous.
Best of all is the exhaust. There is almost none. You can literally breathe what comes out. It’s clean even when the engine is cold. I found this out when I was loading through the open tailgate of the idling car at 4am and noticed – well, nothing. This is an ideal car if you care about pollution.
Only problem is, you can’t put in more than 5% biodiesel. And I checked – NONE of the diesel passenger cars being offered this year let you put in more than 5% biodiesel (20% is allowed in some corporate fleet environments only). Check the list here: http://bit.ly/vZ4b.
You can safely violate these guidelines, according to the Biodiesel Myths site at http://bit.ly/pwNdz. But this puts a damper on things. Even if you’re willing to go against guidelines, you could find yourself unable to start on a snowy day in the mountains because the biodiesel has turned to gelatin.
But we really need biodiesel because it’s a community-friendly refining process unlike classic refining. And technically, the process is improving fast and I think we’ll see it come closer to ‘true’ diesel in the years to come.
Ultimately that will result in clean diesel that can also run 100% biodiesel fuel with the manufacturers’ blessing. Finally!
Riggs
[...] A: Algae converts to diesel like any other vegetable oil. Algae based fuels can be converted to biodiesel, but there is a limit to how much biodiesel the new clean diesels can have in their tank (usually 5%). This is a matter that should be resolved soon and has nothing to do with algae. I covered that in a recent blog [...]
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