Don't know if that would be the Colonel, per se; might actually be a Tyson stock bump. There was a lot of talk about getting used French Fry oil as a fuel, at some point in the past.
It may be those commodities guys at work building up their financial empires.
part of the reason for high food prices may well be biofuel production but a lot has to do with the deregulation of the commodities markets - and one reason all the trouble in the Middle East was sparked off.
It is certainly behind the rise in chocolate prices.... it is nothing to do with production costs, the farmers still earn next to nothing, and all about commodities dealers speculating....or so I am lead to believe.
Hence anything to build artificial value into any commodity there is.
I had a buddy that bought spent frying grease and added it to his diesel in his vehicle. His truck exhaust smelled like a McDonalds.
Actually, gathering, cleaning (filtering) and re-selling used up frying oil as a fuel supplement is old science.
This article said chicken fat which in a connotative sense could be chicken grease, but it could also be chicken fatty tissue. Either would make a good fuel and either would be a good way to spend up a bunch of taxpayer dollars.
Fish fry oil is considered much better than chicken fry oil as it does not get so contaminated with the heavy greases coming off the animal tissue being served up.
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You can use it all: yellow grease, used fry oil, tallow- the lot. Just a few more steps in the process.
It's a mistake to assume that this kind of thing is a "waste to fuel" process though. All these materials can also be used in dog food etc., and since we still have dogs, fresh oil moves in to displace any of this waste which goes to fuels uses. The price of human-food oils therefore rises. Gone are the days when anyone generating significant quantities of this stuff was content to just chuck it into a landfill. And all of it is still a drop in the bucket relative to how much petroleum we use.
Fat is even a problem for many cities, in that it can cause sewer clogs (probally with help of other stuff). But I haven't seen any efforts, simular to the reclying programs, to collect it. So yes some amount still clogs our land fills.
The ethonol requirements for fuel in many locations is still out there for reduction of smog, so corn based alcohol won't go away. Nore will the problems it has.
The other factor in prices is the de-restriction of the commodities market.
Chocolate prices went through the roof not because of supply and demand factors and not because the farmers finally got a fair payment but simply because commodities traders had a free run.
Fat disposed of improperly as a result of laziness and stupidity is what clogs drains. All the major fryer users (fast food chains) already have agreements with waste oil collection and hauling companies.
Nothing new about this, owg- they're merely reforming methane in the biogas from an anaerobic digester which is part of the water treatment plant. Since this methane comes with nearly an equal mole percentage of CO2, this represents some bother and energy efficiency loss to many other uses you might put that methane toward. The same is true of reforming, even the so-called "dry" reforming which uses CO2 as a reagent- 50 mole % CO2 is a PITA.
I remember a show on cars, where they talked about a proposed car engine that was simular to a gas turbine, where it is much more flexable on the fuel used. Which brings up the question, why hasen't that been proposed for flex fuel vehicles?
I still believe we are not serious about the flex fuel stuff, because I don't see very many proposed examples. Just a few prepackaged we want alternitives.
There at a time were cars run on wood as a fuel, but I don't want to see us go there.
