Rodney

I've talked to guys who make biodiesel in their garages from grease scavenged from restaurant grease traps. It's work and slightly dangerous -- involves lye and other fun stuff, and you're essentially putting together a mini-refinery. I also know people who are trying to make biodiesel commercially from the same sources (restaurant grease), but they can't compete with the renderers, who'll pay more -- it can be made into soap. There are also two or three cars in this town that run on soy oil as well.


Aside from that, there's an outfit called Changing World Technology, backed by a lot of heavy hitters, that's rolling out a technology called depolymerization, that basically can break down any organic waste matter -- sewage, food processing waste, old tires, practically any any polymer -- into useful products, particularly fuel oil, in a cost-effective manner. They've got a pilot plant and one commercial operation going already. If you can image putting a plant like this at every sewage treatment plant in America, you could produce _a lot_ of oil. Here's the website:

http://www.changingworldtech.com/home.html

None of the above address the issues of global warming through vehicle emissions, of course, and that may be more of an issue as time goes on. Even soy-oil-burning cars put out CO2.